Re: Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comment
Because there are no Transporters in this canon fork of mine, shuttles are the main way to get around. I was going to have two Long-Range Shuttles (that are sort of proto-Runabouts), three Medium-Range Shuttles (for intra-system transport), six Trans-planetary Shuttles, and one Cargo Shuttle. And then five Workbees. How's that sound? Maybe I have two many Pilots.
Okay, that I can work with. And with no transporters, perhaps you really do need pilots at the ready round-the-clock .
I would think the Runabouts need a pilot and co-pilot. The medium-range shuttles need a pilot and co-pilot or an enlisted flight engineer. Standard shuttles only need a pilot, unless it's a hazardous / combat mission. The cargo shuttle also only needs a pilot but would usually have an enlisted load master.
I presume the Worker-Bees are tiny one-man things, like a big exoskeleton, not capable of atmospheric entry, for repairing the outside of the ship and such, yes? In that case, they'd mostly be used by enlisted Boatswain's Mates.
It's really going to be a defensive-only ship, with minimal armaments apart from fore and aft torpedo bays and the standard complement of phaser strips. When you say 'weapon mounts', do you mean in the Nu-Trek style of phaser cannons?
Again, the game Star Fleet Battles taints my opinions. Photons are the main heavy weapons, and phasers while quite powerful in their own right are considered secondary weapons. In SFB, a typical Heavy Cruiser will have a bank of four Photons (Disruptors for Klingons or equivalent Plasma Torps for Romulans and Gorn, etc), and six to eight Phasers, usually mounted in pairs. The ships are NOT bristling with rapid-fire weapons that JJ Abrams used (even if that was cool to watch).
The game designer has declared that SFB ships are not fully-automated and thus require crew to run the weapons. Each Phaser has two (a Gunner and Fire Control tech), and Photons have three for each tube, plus a supervisor or two for the entire bank.
Some have argued that, like during World War Two, you would have cooks and such manning the guns during General Quarters, and thus you don't need dedicated weapon-crew. To me, I figure it's the other way around; you have trained gunners who pull a lot of KP duty.
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To give you an idea of my crew rosters, I have a thread on the Federation Commander (sister game to SFB) bulletin board here:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5321
The ship in question is a Police Cutter, which is not part of Star Fleet, and looks like this:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/images/Mongoose/Starline 2500/Federation/Fed_POL_2_-_top.jpg
http://www.starfleetgames.com/images/Mongoose/Starline 2500/Federation/Fed_POL_2_-_side.jpg
In game terms, here's the Police Cutter and the Heavy Cruiser:
http://www.starfleetgames.com/feder...ion 2 Ships/FC_Federation_Police_Sqaudron.png
http://www.starfleetgames.com/feder... Modifiction ships/FC_Federation_CA_SQ_MY.PNG
I have drafted a full set of deck plans for the Cutter, but as they are slated for a future publication I can't post them anywhere on-line.