Do ST ship sizes make 100% sense?

[ARcticFox]

Warning: this thread consists of incessant rambling without pause for readability or spell cheking.
Also: omg hai, love the fan art section - faaaaabulous!




I've recently gotten into a little habit of taking my general sketches and converting them into complete designs in both 2d and 3d.
But as I start working in 2d I naturally start thinking of how to design everything. Naturally I look to the designs of tng, voy, ds9 and so forth in terms of "why are they designed like this, what's the idea of this and that detail and proportion?"
Well, this is where I start realising that federation ships to me don't make a whole lot of sense.


All that crew! Geeze Louise I understand a ship needs alot of people as engineers, officers, a few scientists, and so on. But the numbers are far, I mean really way overblown! My simple view is that if a starship is mostly staying in space the crew better have something to do all boring long day.

Take a sovereign class: almost 900 crew!
I start thinking: engineering probably gobbles up say 4 shifts of 10 engineers or so. Let's round it off upwards: 100 people just for engineering. Then we can add say another 100 people in shifts to work around the ship taking care of it, like maintenance and such. Heck: let's be nice and put in another 100 so they can rotate doing ships chores like cleaning, laundry, and so on.
That makes it upwards of 300 people that I can imagine have something to do all day on a starship: not even just a skeleton crew but one with very leisurely work shifts.
Add some officers, medical crew, security, a couple of scientific minds and other crew: 500 total if I'm nice? And by this I mean of course only for a very large ship like a Galaxy or Sovereign. Voyager managed with a regular crew like 150?
In general it seems both fans and actual producers like to oversize ships because it seems "cool". What the heck to these designs with 1000+ crew do all day out there? Unless the ship suffers major break downs every work shift I don't see a use for all that manpower. I also see a flaw in terms of making a ship that large: what's the point of having all that mass that requires so much energy and crew to propel and shield???

If I'd design a star ship of high capability I don't think I'd make it bigger than a very beefy Excelsior.
A large warp core to power excellent propulsion, weaponry and shielding (looking at MSD's it doesn't seem like torpedo rooms take all too much space). Rather large matter and antimatter tanks and also a healthy capacity for cargo bays so that the ship carries its own spares and repair facilities. And around those: living spaces for about 400 crew in a ship length of about 400m (minus nacelles)

Do you really need more?

 

[Albertese]

Firstly, welcome to the boards!

I haven't paid real close attention to the Sovvie, but I can tell you that a significant proportion of the Galaxy-class "crew" is actually civilians like crew members family and few others like the ten-forward staff, Mr. Mot, et al. I suppose the operational crew of the 1701-D wasn't more than 650 or so.

--Alex

 

[Lorna]

a significant proportion of the Galaxy-class "crew" is actually civilians like crew members family and few others like the ten-forward staff, Mr. Mot, et al. I suppose the operational crew of the 1701-D wasn't more than 650 or so.

--Alex

Exactly. I thought this was well known. The Galaxy Class was a family ship which is also why the Saucer was so big and could separate, the civilians could escape on the saucer as the secondary hull could go into battle. It's also why the Galaxy class has something like Ten Forward as opposed to a simple mess hall like on Voyager. Ten Forward catered for the civilian population.

 

[Captain Rob]

If you want a good idea of what all of the crew is for, get ahold of a set Enterprise-D blueprints. They are loaded with things that require crew staffing. And don't forget about an ample supply of red-shirts. And nobody does laundry or cleans the ship. The ship is self-cleaning and the replicators handle laundry as well as food prep and disposal. We should have seen some little ROOMBAs zipping around vacumming the floor. And then levitating to clean the walls and ceilng.
I think that the engineering staff was quite a bit larger. Remember in addition to main engineering you had an impulse engineering section in the battle section and two in the primary hull. Plus you 've got auxilliary fusion generators located around the ship and you need people to handle the RCS system, power delivery systems as well as life support systems.
And I guess you could include an aviation department to include shuttle pilots and crew as well as shuttlebay and hangar personel and maintenance staff. The weapons crew probably got larger after the Enterprise-E was upgraded after First Contact.
Did I mention red-shirts?

Oh. I almost forgot about the lucky guys that always get to clean out the impulse manifold. Which I assume requires an EVA suit and a big brush.

 

[Lorna]

Remember that Voyager episode where Janeway walks several decks and makes her way down into the bowels of the ship near deflector control for that one crew member?? All he did was sit around all day writing articles to pass the time because his only job was to adjust the deflector when engineering said so.

It was a small uneventful job but someone had to do it. Just imagine how many other small time jobs around the ship need people on watch for when they're needed to do something.

Also do you remember the TNG episode where we see at least 2 people working in that room at the front of the warp nacelle? It's the episode where one of the crew jumped into the warp nacelle section and committed suicide.

Now consider that those jobs need 24 hour workers so you're talking 4 shifts minimum which already takes up 12 crew members. 4 for the deflector control section and 8 for the nacelle room. In fact there are two nacelles so likely two nacelle rooms and thus really there's at least 16 for the nacelle rooms taking the crew total to 20.

20 crew simply for those tiny sections of the ship.

But wait! that lonely person in that deflector control room needs to go for a break during their shift, who covers for them?

 

[ARcticFox]

Remember that Voyager episode where Janeway walks several decks and makes her way down into the bowels of the ship near deflector control for that one crew member?? All he did was sit around all day writing articles to pass the time because his only job was to adjust the deflector when engineering said so.

It was a small uneventful job but someone had to do it.

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Firstly, welcome to the boards

Thank you

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

The 24th century ships have low crew densities compared to 23rd century ships, (Compare the Galaxy's 1,000 or so to the Constitution's 400 or so), so I've always thought said ships didn't have enough people.

Take Voyager, for example. It's pretty much the same size as the Constitution, but has less than half the crew.

 

[Lorna]

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Some jobs need someone to be at the location at all times, even if the job is a mediocre one. It's just how things work. You don't know the systems used aboard Federations ships, you don't understand the technology and what is required to run them.
If the deflector needs someone there at all times to make adjustments then it needs someone there at all times. The deflector is an extremely advanced and complex piece of technology after all.

 

[ARcticFox]

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Some jobs need someone to be at the location at all times, even if the job is a mediocre one. It's just how things work. You don't know the systems used aboard Federations ships, you don't understand the technology and what is required to run them.
If the deflector needs someone there at all times to make adjustments then it needs someone there at all times. The deflector is an extremely advanced and complex piece of technology after all.

Indeed, but I think with advanced tech comes advanced controls, efficiency and dependability. Only old steam ships should require loads of crew since it's very crude tech.
I don't need 300 people to service a server everyday: only when it's broken.

Do you understand why it doesn't make sense to me?

 

[Irishman]

Of course they make sense! It's the rest of us that keep growing and shrinking!

 

[Lorna]

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Some jobs need someone to be at the location at all times, even if the job is a mediocre one. It's just how things work. You don't know the systems used aboard Federations ships, you don't understand the technology and what is required to run them.
If the deflector needs someone there at all times to make adjustments then it needs someone there at all times. The deflector is an extremely advanced and complex piece of technology after all.

Indeed, but I think with advanced tech comes advanced controls, efficiency and dependability. Only old steam ships should require loads of crew since it's very crude tech.
I don't need 300 people to service a server everyday: only when it's broken.

Do you understand why it doesn't make sense to me?

OK try this on for size.

Starfleet accepts anyone who wants to join, there is no limit. This means all those Starfleet Academy graduates each year need placements. There's only so many ships and bases in Starfleet so they need to put more people into those ships and if that means giving crazy jobs then so be it.
Heck, maybe they just need some experience in space aboard a ship after they graduate so the fresh graduates get the small jobs and any position on a ship will do.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

In theory, you only need 3-7 super-heroic characters to run a ship through what we see in Star Trek.

For a few hours, at least.

 

[Verteron]

I think you underestimate the size of the science staff on an explorer-type ship like the Enterprise-D or other Galaxy class. I always got the impression from episodes where they talked about ops that there was a fairly constant stream of experiments going on, various studies, stellar cartography, work on new technologies, etc.

One would imagine a staff of several hundred scientists which make up part of the official 'Starfleet' crew, plus various civilian scientists attached for projects, presumably.

There's also the security staff, probably not many needed most of the time, but under yellow/red alert conditions I imagine they'd be patrolling the ship to fight off intruders, so there might be a large reserve force that can be called upon. Don't forget the large reserves of damage control staff either, who are presumably running about the ship during combat situations.

Gotta explain all those blue shirts in the corridors somehow!

 

[shipfisher]

The crew required to simply fly and maintain a fed starship is probably quite small, but the purpose of the ship is to allow as large a group as is practical to "seek out and explore...", oh, and kick alien butt when required.

 

[Albertese]

The crew required to simply fly and maintain a fed starship is probably quite small, but the purpose of the ship is to allow as large a group as is practical to "seek out and explore...", oh, and kick alien butt when required.

That is, until Voyager gave us fully sentient holograms. Now we don't need crews at all!

--Alex

 

[Timo]

The crew required to simply fly and maintain a fed starship is probably quite small, but the purpose of the ship is to allow as large a group as is practical to "seek out and explore...", oh, and kick alien butt when required.

'Xactly. The ships don't have a "crew requirement" - they have a "crew capacity".

And it does serve the ship well if there are plenty of replacements for those who fall in battle, and plenty of pairs of hands (or octets of tentacles) for repairing those things broken by the enemy. Say, a 5:1 overcapacity would be nice when next crew rotation is two years away...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, as a general rule of thumb, I divide the given crew complement by a factor of four to determine how many people are actually on duty at a given time. That allows for three daily shifts and one slightly smaller "swing shift" (personnel not regularly assigned to any particular shift that can fill in for others--either sick or on leave--when needed).

But then it also depends on the kind of ship and what kind of mission it might be on, IMO.

 

[lennier1]

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Some jobs need someone to be at the location at all times, even if the job is a mediocre one. It's just how things work. You don't know the systems used aboard Federations ships, you don't understand the technology and what is required to run them.
If the deflector needs someone there at all times to make adjustments then it needs someone there at all times. The deflector is an extremely advanced and complex piece of technology after all.

Indeed, but I think with advanced tech comes advanced controls, efficiency and dependability. Only old steam ships should require loads of crew since it's very crude tech.
I don't need 300 people to service a server everyday: only when it's broken.

Do you understand why it doesn't make sense to me?

Actually it's not that much different from airline pilots. Theoretically you could automate the whole process. But if the shit hits the fan you definitely want a person there who knows the task inside out to get the job done.

 

[SicOne]

I do and... I can't buy it. For a ship so advanced all these tasks feel silly to have one dedicated person for each.
I see it as more plausible you have shifts of engineers that do the the tasks needed all over the ships and across all systems. I don't need an auto-engineer to ride along me to set every minor thing all the time. Same with a starship imo: not everything needs constant attention and maintenance and when it does need it you can put it on one of the eng-shifts to do list?

Some jobs need someone to be at the location at all times, even if the job is a mediocre one. It's just how things work. You don't know the systems used aboard Federations ships, you don't understand the technology and what is required to run them.
If the deflector needs someone there at all times to make adjustments then it needs someone there at all times. The deflector is an extremely advanced and complex piece of technology after all.

Maybe they're union.

 

[SicOne]

I've always thought that the crew size of ships in the TNG era didn't make much sense. 400-odd crew on a Constitution-class...but only 1,000-odd on a Galaxy-class, which is significantly larger in volume? I don't know the specific stats, but IIRC the Galaxy is something like 20x larger in volume and deck space than the Constitution was.

I can understand that advances in technology and automation would eliminate many crew positions and you wouldn't need as many technicians or support personnel due to replicators and advanced diagnostics...but it seems to me a gross underutilization of resources to have a Galaxy-class starship that can hold several thousand people in an evacuation situation, and that can probably support a general crew of two or three thousand without taxing its resources. We know there's general science teams aboard, and many specialist teams as well running experiments and exploring the galaxy in minute detail, but a crew of only one thousand, INCLUDING families?

Doesn't make sense.