Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comments?

[Shamrock Holmes]

Re: Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comment

Yeah, sounds okay.

The Yeoman (YN) ratings all seemed to be in support red as well as the personnel officer we saw in Court Martial. BM, QM probably wear the yellow. O'Brien referred to himself as a Senior Chief Operations Specialist at one point and was grouped with support. Can't recall what the phaser officer we saw in Balance of Terror was wearing, but Off-hand think he was in support red.

Actually Tomlinson and Martinez wore Command gold, most of the background characters wore the OD overalls (enlisted version of same?)

Likewise, although O'Brien works as an engineer and was described as both Senior Chief Specialist and Chief of Operations, his only specifically stated rated billets were as a Tactical Officer (ie Gunner's Mate), moving to Transporter Operator aboard E-D (he may have been the LPO for the Section) which probably moved him out of Tactical into Support Services and then when he took the billet as Chief of Operations (similar to modern Command Senior Chief or Chief of the Boat?) he took on general engineering tasks due to combination of personnel shortages, natural talent and acquired on-the-job experience?

Shamrock

 

[Sgt_G]

Re: Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comment

I never got wrapped around the axle about uniform colors, but now that you mentioned it I understand why people up-topic are grouping different departments / divisions of the ship's crew together into the categories they're using. Some of the choices weren't making sense to me before.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Necro Time!

I made this based off the information in the thread and cross referenced it to the current USD Military Payment scheme. Long story short, vessels are expensive to provide manpower for.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I'll add that the above graphic does not use one approach to rank names, I sort of mixed and maxed them as I felt fit to do so. The pay grades for certain professions is not perfect, and I'd expect some crew are missing as well.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Some very impressive work there

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Thanks. My goal is to continue expanding the crew until i have a galaxy class size ship and then peel back the crew size for smaller ships and types.

Any help or ideas on the crew would be greatly appeicated.

Thanks.

 

[Pauln6]

I went to see the Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh and they had a full crew manifest on the wall. As it's a royal yacht a lot of the crew doubled as kitchen staff and musicians but the number of crew was surprising for a relatively small ship.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Would love to see if. Actual complements of ships by type seem to be classified or otherwise not an open item for discussion.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Thanks. My goal is to continue expanding the crew until i have a galaxy class size ship and then peel back the crew size for smaller ships and types.

Any help or ideas on the crew would be greatly appeicated.

Thanks.

Will you be using the canonical figure of ~1000 (of which I believe ~800 are supposed to be uniformed Starfleet personnel) or are you aiming for a larger, more realistic number? For instance, relative to estimated (or given mass), the E had a crew density roughly 1.6 to 3.5x times that of the E-D, rising to nearly 4.5x the crew density if you accept that ~20% of the E-D's complement is civilians not found on the E. Also, if the suggested "evacuation limit" given in the DS9 Technical Manual is remotely accurate, the "normal operating complement" is only about 7% of it's total capacity which seems totally ridiculous in normal operations (the idea that the stripped Galaxy-hulls of the Dominion War era operated at that level is somewhat more credible.), in fact the six thousand troops suggested in Yesterday's Enterprise as part of the Battleship Enterprise complement seem rather more plausible in general terms (about 40 to 47% depending whether the 6,000 includes the "original 1000"), though with a much lower ratio of security and other "landing party specialists" to engineers and science staff.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I want a larger more "realistic" number as this is not strictly a Star Trek thing, and if I agree that the Battleship Enterprise is more what I am looking to create. For the purposes of this chart, I'll probably not list every 6000 soldiers and keep the list to just the ships functions and not the assault functions. So the soldiers listed are more anti-bording party / away teams and not the assault teams, etc.

If I were incredibly board or resourceful I'd count all the beds on the TNG blueprints for the BigD; however, Im sure someone already did that; however, I find the blue prints rather the opposite of resourceful since allot of it seems wasted on copy and past type things.

 

[Sgt_G]

Well, that was a interesting way to look at things. But it's far more expensive than your calculations suggest because you listed most of the crew as E-3 and below. In real-life, there should be very few E-2 and no E-1 on a ship, and most of the crew will be Petty Officer Third & Second Class (E-4 and E-5), with a Petty Officer First Class (E-6) as a team leader for each shift and a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) over each section.

I see that you "borrowed" heavily from my listing in Post # 67 up-topic. I have no problem with you doing so. ;-)

And I do like how you've indented in outline format to designate the command structure.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Any help or ideas on the crew would be greatly appeicated.

One area you could probably expand on relatively straight forwardly would be the Science Department, by adding additional researchers and assistants to cover additional disciplines.

Years ago whilst googling, I came across a really well thought out PBeM Sim website and spent some time reading through a lot of their information. One piece that was of great interest was the department positions, for which Science was broken down to five divisions:
Physical - Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics
Planetary - Geology, Mineralogy, Oceanography, Volcanology
Life - Botany, Ecology, Microbiology, Xenobiology
Social - Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Sociology
Stellar - Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Stellar Cartography

Whenever I create a Science Department this is the system I continue to use, as under each branch you could have dozens of experts in different fields of study.

 

[Sgt_G]

Okay, so I looked at your list a bit more. You have three teams for bridge crew and engine/drive room, etc, presumably one team per shift. You could have four or even five teams so that people get days off. It does require rotating shifts to have 24/7 coverage.

On the other hand, I'm not at all sure why you need three identical teams of scientists. Unless it's a pure research vessel, I can't see a reason for 24/7 coverage. I think I'd rather see a larger variety of specialists, as Bry Sinclair suggests.

And you absolutely do not need three full teams manning weapons 24/7. During peace time, you only need enough to man each phaser, perhaps with a few extras. One or two phaser mounts would be manned 24/7, but the rest only when required. The few extra crew allows a rotating schedule to man the phasers "at night". During wartime, I can see more crew being assigned to about 150% of full weapons coverage. Again, two or three phasers and one photon tube would be manned 24/7, and the rest as required.

 

[Pauln6]

Would love to see if. Actual complements of ships by type seem to be classified or otherwise not an open item for discussion.

The fully detailed crew compliment was on the wall. If a copy is online it doesn't jump out. Found some fun trivia though. It does sound quite like the Enterprise!

Tonnage: 5,769 GT
Length: 412 ft (126 m)
Beam: 55 ft (17 m)
Height: 123 ft (37 m) to top of mainmast
Draught: 15 ft (4.6 m)
Propulsion: Steam, 12,000 hp (8,900 kW)
Speed: 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph)
Range: 2,400 nautical miles (4,400 km)
Capacity: 250 guests
Troops: 1 platoon of Royal Marines
Crew:

• 21 officers
• 250 Royal Yachtsmen

HMY Britannia was unique in that her Commanding Officer was always a Flag Officer, generally a Rear Admiral (although the first two were Vice Admirals and the last a Commodore). Having such a high ranking Officer as HMY Britannia's 'Captain' reflected the gravitas of the duties he had to undertake. In this respect, all crew (20 Officers and 220 Yachtsmen), were personally selected by the Commanding Officer.

Around half the ship's company were appointed for a two year tour of duty. The rest were hand-picked for permanent service and remained with Britannia throughout their naval career. Promotion on Britannia was slow as so many Yotties turned down their natural promotion on to other Royal Navy ships to stay in their existing rank on board Britannia. Therefore promotion for the Yotties became known as 'Dead Man's Shoes,' waiting for the post holder to retire.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

The list is slightly more than borrowed from yours up thread, and I appreciate your listing as it was the most complete easy to understand presentation. Adding more command structure tabulation was to expanded upon what you provided so that more granule detail was possible. There were other tables provided by other users, but none of them were as easy to follow, self explanatory, or easy to expand. The fact yours was text help immensely in reorganizing it into what I wanted to accomplish. Be proud!

Right now, what I am doing is moving everything to a nine hour three shift day with two people on per shift with day 4 being the hump day. What this causes is extreme staffing on day 4 with peaks in staffing every 9 hours. Useful in training, updates on events, people coming out of walls to cover for someone leaving their station, etc. Once this is done, I can re calibrate the departments if needed to decrease staffing; however, as said latter this is tricky.

I am surprised to learn that there would be so many high level Enlisted workers, as it appears that they would be paid higher than officers which seemed silly, and based on the US Military Pay schedule it appears to really frown upon having Enlisted employees stick around long enough to get that high in rank. For example, pay only increases up to a point and then stops for each rank to discourage high ranking long time serving enlisted, or that is how i see it.

Expanding the crew rotation for all shifts, vacation, training away, etc will increase the crew size afterwards some of the support staffing positions may need expansion to compensate; For example, I may need to increase the cooks add janitorial, etc. Once a density is calculated, it may be necessary to add additional staff to the maintenance teams,all adding into a vicious cycle.

I like the idea of more science teams and due to the use of this ship, 24/7 weapons coverage will be part of the need.

Thanks.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Well, that was a interesting way to look at things. But it's far more expensive than your calculations suggest because you listed most of the crew as E-3 and below. In real-life, there should be very few E-2 and no E-1 on a ship, and most of the crew will be Petty Officer Third & Second Class (E-4 and E-5), with a Petty Officer First Class (E-6) as a team leader for each shift and a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) over each section.

I see that you "borrowed" heavily from my listing in Post # 67 up-topic. I have no problem with you doing so. ;-)

And I do like how you've indented in outline format to designate the command structure.

I will make these changes, Who would be officers then, if an E-7 oversees the section?

Thanks,

 

[Sgt_G]

You would still have an officer in charge of each section, probably a seasoned Lieutenant (O-3) or Lieutenant Commander (O-4) or even a full Commander (O-5), depending on the size and scope of the section. You may or may not have a watch officer for each shift, again depending on the scope of the section, probably a Lieutenant Junior Grade (O-2) or junior O-3, but Bridge Watch would be an experienced O-3 or a junior O-4 (larger ships may have all O-4 for bridge watch officers). Likewise, a larger ship may have an O-5 as Chief Engineer with an O-4 and a couple-few O-3/O-2 Engineers on duty every shift.

Note that I did not put Ensign (O-1) on my crew list as they fill an O-2 slot. I'm not one to subscribe to the "stay an Ensign forever" philosophy, but rather I use the "up or out" rules akin to modern military. Ditto on the enlisted side. I don't list E-2 because they're straight out of school and quickly become E-3, and E-4 comes fairly soon thereafter (three years in service on average).

The Chief's job in each section is to supervise and manage personnel, to make sure they are properly trained, and to deal with "issues" before they become "problems" that require getting officers involved. They don't give the orders but rather make sure the officers' orders are carried out.

 

[Sgt_G]

Please PM me when you get the changes made. I'd like you to e-mail me the Excel spreadsheet / Word document. Thanks!

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Sure, that wont be a problem. I can provide you what I have since I may never be done or at least will be consistently under revision until I feel like it works, etc. Plus I'd be interested in what your thoughts are.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

One area you could probably expand on relatively straight forwardly would be the Science Department, by adding additional researchers and assistants to cover additional disciplines.

Years ago whilst googling, I came across a really well thought out PBeM Sim website and spent some time reading through a lot of their information. One piece that was of great interest was the department positions, for which Science was broken down to five divisions:
Physical - Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics
Planetary - Geology, Mineralogy, Oceanography, Volcanology
Life - Botany, Ecology, Microbiology, Xenobiology
Social - Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Sociology
Stellar - Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Stellar Cartography

Whenever I create a Science Department this is the system I continue to use, as under each branch you could have dozens of experts in different fields of study.

Looks good, although would Life Sciences and maybe Social Sciences by similar to/associated with Medical & Nursing Section (both ultimately report to the Chief Medical Officer?), likewise Stellar Sciences sounds a lot like Navigation (a Command/Operations section providing shuttle pilots and Bridge Flight Control Specialists)?