[Scourge of Ages]

Perhaps Definitely an Orion was a bad example to use. I was just trying to think of how many people would actually be required for a ship that size, and what they're actually doing.

As to putting three crew per turret: I again over-generalized. For a blob turret, sure three why not. For a beam or flak cannon probably a few more. But seriously, what are that many people doing (not counting damage control)?

[Scotty]

Identifying targets, determining target priority, inputting said priority, calibrating aim, initiating the firing sequence, etc.

[Blue Lion]

Someone has to do all the laundry and replace all the busted bulbs and empty all the trash cans.

[Dragon]

You have Roger Willco for that (if he's not busy saving the galaxy or dying in an unusual way)  .

[QuantumDelta]

!!!!!!!! <33333 SpaceQuest

[Paladin327]

I had a thought:
Orion: HP = 100,000, crew = 10,000
Sobek: HP = 80,000, Crew = 8000
Fenris: HP =8000/10,000 crew =(?)= 800-1000?

its just a pattern ive noticed. however, snce the leviathan and fenris share a hull, they should have similar crew requirements

[Droid803]

nonsense, the Leviathan must have 3.5 times the crew of the Fenris.
They just shoved more people in there for damage control, hence it can take more punishment.

What, you thought they actually used better armor?

[Paladin327]

great, now i have an image of the crew of a leviathan holding up roman shields against the hull

[TrashMan]

All of this ignores damage control, engineering, navigation, bridge crew, and the whole shebang that goes with a ship that possibly won't return to port for several months at a time.

Read it again. It doesn't. "Regular" ships crew is taken into account.

[Scotty]

It is also wrong for several reasons already established.

[headdie]

nonsense, the Leviathan must have 3.5 times the crew of the Fenris.
They just shoved more people in there for damage control, hence it can take more punishment.

What, you thought they actually used better armor?

nope just more of it

[TrashMan]

It is also wrong for several reasons already established.

Like what?
Turrets and fighter both require a certain number of personnel.

We can extrapolate the average number of crew members the military uses today for ships, fighters and weapons. The FS number would probably be similar.

Granted, that's not the absolute truth, but I never claimed it was. The canon numbers probably weren't meant to make sense. I doubt [V] gave that much attention to details

[Scotty]

It's wrong primarily and foremost by the fact that we have canon numbers that disagree with it.

Besides that, it's in error to assume that by averaging total crew across total guns you can find average crew for a gun.  It doesn't work like that .  Bigger guns (usually) require more personnel to operate, just because they're orders of magnitude more complicated than smaller scale guns.  FreeSpace guns are, as stated previously, all the way up to several times larger than your already quite large fighter.  I think some of the bigger turrets on the Orion might actually contain roughly the same volume as a large modern cruiser (remember that scaling picture with the Ursas parked on a carrier?  They're not tiny.  At all.  And those guns are bigger.).

tl;dr: No, we can't, because we don't know the baseline, and because that kind of extrapolation is flawed.

[TrashMan]

It's wrong primarily and foremost by the fact that we have canon numbers that disagree with it.

We do? Where are those numbers?

Cause the number I sued  approximated crew distribution, not the total number of crew members

Besides that, it's in error to assume that by averaging total crew across total guns you can find average crew for a gun.  It doesn't work like that .  Bigger guns (usually) require more personnel to operate, just because they're orders of magnitude more complicated than smaller scale guns.  FreeSpace guns are, as stated previously, all the way up to several times larger than your already quite large fighter.  I think some of the bigger turrets on the Orion might actually contain roughly the same volume as a large modern cruiser (remember that scaling picture with the Ursas parked on a carrier?  They're not tiny.  At all.  And those guns are bigger.).

It's average because it assumes an average sized gun. You can increase gun size, but there will be a crew limit, simply due to automation and the jobs that actually need doing.
A small AA gun typicly had 2 crew members, the large 16-inch turret had a dozen. We can similary assume that smaller turrets on the Orion will require less crew members.

Again, this is simply an approximation, but it's pretty safe to assume that a turret will require less total crew than a fighter.

[Wanderer]

Modern turrets rarely have any need of actual crew. Though they often do have a position for the gunner as well as some one being assigned as the gunner. Centralized firing control room (i.e. gunnery control) is where the action takes places. In older guns most of the crew assigned for the gun were loaders as ammo loading systems rarely were fully automatic. In scifi weapon which apparently does not need ammo there is no need for loaders. So it could be assumed that there would be a gunner (or 2 - 3 for bigger/longer ranged ones) for each turret for local control as well as one per every few turrets in control room plus the gunnery officer.

Then there would be command crew, pilot, navigation, command, sensor, comms, the usual as well as some other critical personnel. And those times 3 or 4 according on how many shifts the crew operates. Plus reserves. Though duties can be shared so number could be lower than that (for example gunnery officer could well be part of the command crew in one of the shifts). And then you still need the engineering and maintenance crews, medical, flight staff, clerks, marines/security troopers, etc...

For flight staff for say a fighter of the size the ones seen in FS you could estimate that you'll need the pilot or two (and possibly a gunner) to fly it, and several mechanics/engineers to keep it flying (from size you could say from 2 - 3 mechanics for Uly to something closer to 10 or so for Ursa and the likes). And then you'll need the rest of the ground crew. Flight ops, landing officers etc.

In the end the numbers could vary so greatly that there is no real point in trying to guess them without better info to start with.

[Narwhal]

I had a thought:
Orion: HP = 100,000, crew = 10,000
Sobek: HP = 80,000, Crew = 8000
Fenris: HP =8000/10,000 crew =(?)= 800-1000?

its just a pattern ive noticed. however, snce the leviathan and fenris share a hull, they should have similar crew requirements

Well, maybe it just works like Star Control. Number of crews = HP. That's why when you blow a cruiser up, you have the commander saying "Noooo". He is always the last one dying.

   

[Marcov]

I had a thought:
Orion: HP = 100,000, crew = 10,000
Sobek: HP = 80,000, Crew = 8000
Fenris: HP =8000/10,000 crew =(?)= 800-1000?

its just a pattern ive noticed. however, snce the leviathan and fenris share a hull, they should have similar crew requirements

Err...where exactly did you get the "8000" figure for the Sobek? Maybe considering the Colossus is 3 times longer and has 30,000 crew (3 times more crew)?

Seriously I think I'd base it more on size than HP. Volition states that the Colossus had a crew of 30,000 just because it's 3 times bigger than an Orion.

The Fenris is 250 meters (8 times smaller than an Orion), so, on Volition calcs, would have about 1,250 people (you made quite a reasonable estimate right there  ).

Right, and that'd put somewhere above 90,000 crew on an Icanus  .

nonsense, the Leviathan must have 3.5 times the crew of the Fenris.
They just shoved more people in there for damage control, hence it can take more punishment.

What, you thought they actually used better armor?

Wouldn't it mean that the Leviathan probably had less crew? The Leviathan is EXACTLY the same size (but not mass) as the Fenris, so we can assume it has a much thicker armor. That would limit the crew.

Unless, of course, they used a more durable, expensive metal.

[Paladin327]

In "A Lion At The Door," if you lose the Dashor, the debreif will say that 8,000 vasuadans died

[Buckshee Rounds]

I'm still wondering what those hundreds or thousands of people on a cruiser or corvette would be doing. Not counting damage control, what is there that couldn't be handled much more efficiently by sufficiently advanced computers and robots?

Why does the Nimitz need a crew of several thousand while an oil tanker can get by with a handful of people on the crew?

Can anyone else answer this? I'd be interested in finding out.

[Dragon]

A Nimitz is a carrier and a warship, so you can expect it to get damaged and have to make repairs at sea.
Some of the crew may also be killed in action, so you'd have to replace them.
You need crew for aircraft servicing and maintaining the nuclear reactor, as well as operating weaponary and radars.
An oil tanker is pretty much just a floating barrel, so you only need navigation and engineering crew to operate it.
Also, you could run a Nimitz with a crew only slightly larger than crew of a tanker (it's called "skeleton crew"), but it won't be capable of fighting or launching planes.