[Jeff Vader]

Perhaps the Dashor had more refugees on it... Kind of stupid to do what it did in that case.

Which Dashor are you talkin' 'bout? This Dahshor or some other?

[Snail]

Oh bloody **** I meant Nebtuu.

[Mars]

Uh... that was rather too early for evacuation. The Dashor was going INTO the hot zone.

[Snail]

Yeah I see that now... But the Nebtuu point still stands.

[Spicious]

Wouldn't crews be more likely to scale with the cube of length?

[Snail]

I was thinking that, but most ships are more or less a cuboid and proportionally scale with the length.

[Mars]

The Colossus is roughly 3X as long as the Orion and has 3X the crew.

But the population density on the Orion is ridiculously small, so it must be tiny on the Colossus.

[Fenrir]

According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.

According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?

So do I, actually. What would 10,000 people do in an Orion, anyway? Are there that many jobs/positions to fill?

[Jeff Vader]

According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.

According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?

So do I, actually. What would 10,000 people do in an Orion, anyway? Are there that many jobs/positions to fill?

Maybe bureaucratic errors? Like people responsible for the oil-powered boiler room on the ship.

[ShadowGorrath]

Freeloaders and stowaways!

[Fenrir]

Maybe it`s the GTVA`s solution to overpopulation...

Or maybe that`s where they put their prisoners.

[ShadowGorrath]

Well, destroyers are flagships. And the only capital ships that have hangars. They have ground forces, etc. You need engineering, maintenance, soldiers, gunnery, NAV, comms, local command ( if main base is not in system/in contact ), sensors, pilots, etc. I do think that all that people are actually needed. A lot of them can be ground forces, medical, etc.

[WMCoolmon]

For a ship that big, you'd end up with a lot of replication. Damage-control teams would have to number in the thousands, otherwise you could get caught with one section of the ship on fire and nobody to put it out. Or a beam cannon would shut down, and you'd have to send a team to jog clear across the ship to fix it. Further specialization of labor would also require more personnel - does the guy who knows how to fix the beam cannons really know how to safely put a fusion reactor together? Plus you don't want all your engineers who know how the engines to get killed when the ship starts taking damage and the engine compartment gets irradiated in a reactor breach.

(Of course in FS2, if you start taking severe damage besides hull damage you're pretty much dead. However, I get the feeling that crew specs were made without consideration to gameplay constraints and more to sound right.)

Gunners would be more spread out, and the weapons systems on board a Destroyer are undoubtedly more complex/volatile than weapons systems of today. You really don't want the guy who's shooting missiles to also be in charge of checking all of the antimatter rounds' containment is good.

The ship is just bigger. You need more people for the laundry facilities, more cooks, and so on. Without knowing what kind of amenities a typical destroyer provides, you may also have to have a number of civilians to operate those amenities. Also, factor in medical assistance and experts to provide support with any variety of problems a planet may be facing - civil unrest, natural disasters, etc. Marines to patrol the corridors to prevent someone from committing sabotage. Officers to be in charge of all of the additional personnel. Supply officers to handle the hundreds of thousands of missiles, weapons, food, water, waste, ships, and more on board the ship.

Now you get to the flight deck. You need pilots, and people to handle the pilots' and provide some measure of support to them. You need backup pilots. You need crews to service the fighters and backup crews there, as well. You need people in charge of the hangar bays, you need the little guy who waves the wands for fighters and you need the guy who makes sure that the landing lights are on and working.

You need safety officers - people who make sure that procedure is being followed and who account for all radiation in non-safe areas and ensure that it's within acceptable limits.

And you may need support crews for non-fightercraft, although I can't think of a time that we've seen a destroyer launching a shuttle or freighter to provide support to a planet, it's undoubtedly a possibility.

And you need bureaucrats and maybe even lawyers, since a Destroyer would undoubtedly be considered a powerful representative of the GTVA and the Captain of the ship would need legal and representative advice on some matters to ensure that he didn't accidentally start an interstellar war with routine police action. Granted, he could probably outsource this with the advanced subspace computer technology, but the Freespace universe still seems to value person-to-person contact, and in most situations where it's needed the Destroyer itself wouldn't be under threat of destruction.

So overall there's a lot of jobs to fill, and I've skimmed over some of what could be the most numerous - support personnel and civilians to run movie theaters, stores, etc. on board the ships. Some of those jobs, like supply officers, technicians, and medics would scale up dramatically with the ship size in order to ensure an orderly distribution that can provide timely assistance during a crisis. You'd also have to replicate many of the amenities to be within walking distance, in case the turbolifts or equivalent went down - you don't want people dying because the med center is a klick away and a piece of debris is lodged in the turboshafts.

Of course all this seems like a total waste since in the FS2 universe, a beam cannon will cream your craft in a matter of seconds, damage control or no. You might as well fly with a skeleton crew and automated gunnery for all the good it usually seems to do.

EDIT: And might I add that the destructive force required to take down a destroyer must be incredible, since its hull can withstand point-blank detonations from antimatter weaponry without any visible deformation (presumably there are scorch marks).

[foolfromhell]

According to FW, a Hecate is 2174 m long and has a crew of 10,000. Following that, a Fenris at 253 m should have a crew of about 1,163 if the crew scales proportionally. An Aeolus at 272 m should have a little more than that. A Deimos at 717 m should have a crew of about 3,300.

According to the debriefing of "A Lion at the Door", the Dhashor has a crew of 6,000, so we can assume that the crew numbers of a Deimos ranks somewhere similar. But I for myself consider those numbers quite overdrawn. I mean, what does a corvette need a crew of 6,000 people for, when a destroyer with all its deck crews, field engineers and pilots needs "only" 10,000?

I think a Deimos would have less.

Vasuda Prime had somewhat of an evacuation before it was bombed.

Sol was just cut off. No evacuation. I would expect the Terran population to be less than the Vasudan population.

[Droid803]

Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?

[Jeff Vader]

Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?

Most.

[ShadowGorrath]

4 bilion Vasudans. I'd take it that a lot of them survived though, as a homeworld would have much more civies at that year.

[Snail]

Wasn't every transport evacuating Vasuda Prime was destroyed?

Well there were the guys Alpha 1 saved in Exodus, for a start.

[Droid803]

4 bilion Vasudans. I'd take it that a lot of them survived though, as a homeworld would have much more civies at that year.

But it is a desert planet which is relatively inhospitable.

[ShadowGorrath]

So? Earth will be similar by 2335

If seriously, there'd still be AT LEAST 8 bilion Vasudans there. Earth would have much more. . .