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Ral_Brelt
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 05 May 2013
Posts: 221
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 Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:43 am Post subject: |
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Imp star, and in total, all Imp naval vessels run on Coruscant time. The New Republic follows the same legacy for their ships as a lot of personnel are turnovers from the Empire. It makes sense too, timing for assaults from multiple star systems to multiple star systems is just easier this way.
I think a better term than ground crew would be support crew. I would guesstimate crew would be allocated to wings, to keep those that know the craft with them, and would place said crew numbers at 6-8.
Per the Imp sourcebook, an Imp Star II is crewed by 36,755 with 330 gunners and 9,700 ground troops. These personnel are spread over 1,600 meters of length. Granted there's hull, engines, etc in the mix too but I'm sure algebra could help us...volume and all that. |
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Mojomoe
Commander
Joined: 10 Apr 2010
Posts: 442
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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Right. I feel like we were at least approaching this one already, trying to figure out how many crew were at stations, how many off-duty, etc.
I feel like the right approach is to start at the top numerically - pick shift lengths and numbers and define the ship's clock, then split each group (officers, flight crew, engineers, etc.) into those shift groupings, to determine the total number of duty stations or occupied off-duty areas (lounges, bunks) occupied at any one time.
Thoughts? |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Mojomoe wrote: | | Right. I feel like we were at least approaching this one already, trying to figure out how many crew were at stations, how many off-duty, etc. |
I have to say that I've been stalling on that project.
I have no doubt that the number that WEG gave us - the 36,755 that Ral_Brelt mentioned - is actually quite arbitrary, and it seems arbitrarily large in order to make the ISD appropriately epic. I certainly think we should try to live with that number, though it'll be rough to try to figure out occupations for all of those people.
| Mojomoe wrote: | | I feel like the right approach is to start at the top numerically - pick shift lengths and numbers and define the ship's clock, then split each group (officers, flight crew, engineers, etc.) into those shift groupings, to determine the total number of duty stations or occupied off-duty areas (lounges, bunks) occupied at any one time. |
At this stage, I think it's actually quite premature to think about this, and that's because I'm favoring the opposite approach to what you seem to be suggesting. Instead of building the ship around the crew, I think we need to figure out the crew around the ship. I realize that this is possibly contrary to what I may have implied earlier.
Here's my thought about this:
We need to continue plotting out the Big Stuff™, such as the hangar, the reactor, the engines, the stores, and down in size from there. Once we get all the big and (more/less) canonical things worked out, then we can start figuring out all the crew arrangements.
The idea is this: we're going to find out if space for our crew is either plentiful or cramped.
If it's plentiful (which I suspect), then it suggests that the ISD was not under any limitation on size, and so it's not any bother to have four shifts of the natural Coruscant standard of 24 hours. Then we take the crew minus the people who would not be on a particular shift (the captain, maybe the janitorial crew, the maintenance crew, etc.) and divide the remainder by four and figure out jobs for that many people, complete with bureaucratic redundancies.
If it's cramped, it suggests to me that most of the 36,755 are quite essential, and they may run like a submarine crew. 3x6=18. That means that we have to figure out more jobs, which are also more essential. I hope this is not the case, actually.
Anyway, I think we should persist in figuring out the Big Stuff™, and worry about the living arrangements afterwards.
I think you've already worked out the reactor and engines at the 1m=1px (which the SWDA calls their 1M) scale. I think perhaps you should draw it at the 15M scale and tell me how far back I can come from the hangar in order to put in AT-ATs, dropships, etc. aft of the primary hangar. From your earlier sketch, I think I've got about 100 meters to work with, but that might diminish if you flesh that reactor out some more. I will just have to go wide rather than aft in order to fit all the ground vehicles, etc. |
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Mojomoe
Commander
Joined: 10 Apr 2010
Posts: 442
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, I dug up this quote from garhkal from page 8 of this thread, referencing the number of shifts as regards on-duty personnel.
| Quote: |
Normally your work day is split into 3 shifts (8 on 16 off, 12 on 12 off) or for engineers, 6 on six off back to back through the day.
Each 'duty section' has its own OODs (usually senior enlisted or junior officers) with the in port CDO being a senior officer from one of the other departments (at sea, OODs are always from the Deck department). |
So, how am I to interpret the basic duty shifts? Let's assume the 3 shift split, between the Coruscant-standard day of 24 hours, so we're looking at 3 x 8 hour shifts.
Unless otherwise noted, (as with the engineers having shorter shifts), all personnel will use the same 3 shift duty clock.
So we have to account for Alpha Shift on-duty, with Beta Shift and Gamma Shift off-duty. At any one time, can we assume one full shift at chow stations? For example, is that Alpha Shift on, Beta Shift off, Gamma Shift at mess halls?
So far, the only number I have is 37,085 total crew, 9,700 stormtroopers, with a minimum crew of 5,000 (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_II-class_Star_Destroyer).
The minimum crew should give us a pretty good idea of what needs to be actively crewed at any time to keep the ship running, but taking that figure very literally, that gives us 37,085 total crew / 3 duty shifts = 12,361 crew per shift, or 12,361 active crew at stations, 24,724 off-duty.
If we assume the 5,000 minimum crew is what's needed to keep the ship running, and there are 12,3621 people per shift, there are 2.47 people per station. If we cut down on officers (less redundancy at the higher ranks, i.e. only 1 officer of the watch, PER watch), then we have roughly 3 personnel for every average station.
The next thing I think we could do would be to list the different departments, and divide the 37,085 crew into their various departments. From there, we could further divide by duty shift to find the total number of personnel per section, per station, per shift.
So, of the 37,085 crew, how many are: (and please add to these categories):
*Officers
*Engineers
*Service/repair
*Flight Crew
*Pilots
*Guards/security
--EDIT -
I see you had some different numbers and a different approach. That's what I get for taking so long to draft!
--EDIT AGAIN -
So I ran back across these numbers. They're for an Imperial-I, but that's fine:
The way I'm interpreting that is that the 275 gunners are part of the enlisted number (giving us 37,085), rather than in addition (giving us 37,360). |
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Mojomoe
Commander
Joined: 10 Apr 2010
Posts: 442
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I think you've already worked out the reactor and engines at the 1m=1px (which the SWDA calls their 1M) scale. I think perhaps you should draw it at the 15M scale and tell me how far back I can come from the hangar in order to put in AT-ATs, dropships, etc. aft of the primary hangar. From your earlier sketch, I think I've got about 100 meters to work with, but that might diminish if you flesh that reactor out some more. I will just have to go wide rather than aft in order to fit all the ground vehicles, etc. |
I'd be happy to work this out, but I'm unsure exactly how you hope the scale change will affect your measurements. Are you asking for a re-draw at the larger 15x scale to get a more accurate number? Either way, glad to do so. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 6:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Mojomoe wrote: | | Quote: | | I think you've already worked out the reactor and engines at the 1m=1px (which the SWDA calls their 1M) scale. I think perhaps you should draw it at the 15M scale and tell me how far back I can come from the hangar in order to put in AT-ATs, dropships, etc. aft of the primary hangar. From your earlier sketch, I think I've got about 100 meters to work with, but that might diminish if you flesh that reactor out some more. I will just have to go wide rather than aft in order to fit all the ground vehicles, etc. |
I'd be happy to work this out, but I'm unsure exactly how you hope the scale change will affect your measurements. Are you asking for a re-draw at the larger 15x scale to get a more accurate number? Either way, glad to do so. |
Well, there may well be things around the main reactor that will make it take up more space than your sketch provided for. Anti-resonance plates, for example. They seem to be out on the wings in front of the subsidiary reactors. Maybe the main reactor needs them too.
Because it's right there abaft of the part that I'm working on, and because going aft is my next project in working out the hangar, I just think it'd be a good idea about how far back I can go before I run into your reactor stuff. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Mojomoe wrote: | The minimum crew should give us a pretty good idea of what needs to be actively crewed at any time to keep the ship running, but taking that figure very literally, that gives us 37,085 total crew / 3 duty shifts = 12,361 crew per shift, or 12,361 active crew at stations, 24,724 off-duty.
If we assume the 5,000 minimum crew is what's needed to keep the ship running, and there are 12,3621 people per shift, there are 2.47 people per station. If we cut down on officers (less redundancy at the higher ranks, i.e. only 1 officer of the watch, PER watch), then we have roughly 3 personnel for every average station. |
I'm not sure this averages out so easily. There are tons of positions that are completely unnecessary for the skeleton operation of the ship. The bulk of that will be in the operation of the ship's complement (fighters and shuttles), janitorial, crew services (e.g. mess servers), security, etc.
| Mojomoe wrote: | The next thing I think we could do would be to list the different departments, and divide the 37,085 crew into their various departments. From there, we could further divide by duty shift to find the total number of personnel per section, per station, per shift.
So, of the 37,085 crew, how many are: (and please add to these categories):
*Officers
*Engineers
*Service/repair
*Flight Crew
*Pilots
*Guards/security |
I'd use the following departments:
Administrative
- intelligence
- political
- strategic
- Supply & Logistics
- Quarters
Deck
- helm
- in-system navigation
- coordination w/ flight control
Operations
- Astrogation
- Communications
- Sensors
Security
Ground (Troops, vehicles, support)
Carrier Space Group (CSG)
- flight control
- Starfighters (Pilots, crew and support)
- Shuttles (Pilots, crew and support)
Tactical
- Weapons
- Defenses
Engineering
- physical
- informational (computers)
(This is just a fraction of what I've worked out so far, though I haven't added any numbers to it just yet.)
Last edited by Mikael Hasselstein on Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Darth_Hilarious
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 17 Apr 2013
Posts: 129
Location: Somewhere over there --------->
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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Dont forget that when you get to fleshing out the total numbers in the Flight group that there are going to be more pilots than flyable craft to ensure that all craft can sortie under any circumstances, after all, Pilots DO get sick from time to time, and you might have a few that are under administrative no fly status for rules infractions.
When I was on the Independence, CV62 the air wing normally had almost 20 more pilots than planes.
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People keep telling me that I'm crazy. I keep telling them "No I'm not, I don't get a check".
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lurker
Commander
Joined: 24 Oct 2012
Posts: 423
Location: Oklahoma
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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Mikael
I just thought of something for your list (I should have caught it before to add to your more extensive lists ... sorry 
Intel & possibly Psy ops (they could be a sub section of intel though)
Also, the ground element will have similar units - that though they may mirror some of the same function will have vastly different focuses. They may even be in conflict & disagree with each other.
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain
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Mojomoe
Commander
Joined: 10 Apr 2010
Posts: 442
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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Well, in that regard, do we have ALL pilots permanently assigned to ships? I suppose I don't know how that works.
I mean, I know we have pilots assigned to fighters. DS-61-2 is permanently assigned to Obsidian Two, for instance (I made up the ship name). But, do we assume that Lambda Pilot 6 is permanently assigned to Lambda-6, or do they rotate? What if Lambda-6 never flies? Do they have 5 multipurpose Lambda pilots? Or do they just have enough multipurpose transport pilots for the many transports aboard?
Curious to see how that would work. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Darth_Hilarious wrote: | | Dont forget that when you get to fleshing out the total numbers in the Flight group that there are going to be more pilots than flyable craft to ensure that all craft can sortie under any circumstances, after all, Pilots DO get sick from time to time, and you might have a few that are under administrative no fly status for rules infractions. |
So pilots don't operate according to the same rotational schedule as the crew does? I had implicitly assumed that they would, and that there would be 3x the amount of pilots as there were craft for them to pilot (more for craft that need more than one pilot). It seems like you're actually suggesting fewer than I had supposed.
| lurker wrote: | I just thought of something for your list (I should have caught it before to add to your more extensive lists ... sorry
Intel & possibly Psy ops (they could be a sub section of intel though) |
Yes, Intel is on my larger list, though I should not have omitted it above. I'll add it. PsyOps could be part of intel, though it might be anywhere else too.
| lurker wrote: | | Also, the ground element will have similar units - that though they may mirror some of the same function will have vastly different focuses. They may even be in conflict & disagree with each other. |
Absolutely! |
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lurker
Commander
Joined: 24 Oct 2012
Posts: 423
Location: Oklahoma
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Mojomoe wrote: | Well, in that regard, do we have ALL pilots permanently assigned to ships? I suppose I don't know how that works.
I mean, I know we have pilots assigned to fighters. DS-61-2 is permanently assigned to Obsidian Two, for instance (I made up the ship name). But, do we assume that Lambda Pilot 6 is permanently assigned to Lambda-6, or do they rotate? What if Lambda-6 never flies? Do they have 5 multipurpose Lambda pilots? Or do they just have enough multipurpose transport pilots for the many transports aboard?
Curious to see how that would work. |
From the AF stand point, I know that transports do have assigned crews for each bird; however, that is very fluid. Ships break, flight crew (or individual crew members) get sick/go to train/up grade/shore leave etc etc etc. Also, things will rotate to get those that need it extra stick time as they need.
For fast movers, they tend to be a little more each pilot has his own air frame (to a point especially mid to high ranking fighter jocks). However, even that is fluid. One air craft is broke another is approaching max flight time before a lengthy inspection that will ground it for a week, . But, no one ever ouches Col A, LtCol B, or Maj C (as the upgrade pilot and training certifier) air frames, sooooo 5 pilots rotate through the remaining 3 air frames
If I remember correctly, a 70 - 80% operational status was what the guys I worked with averaged (though they were HELOs getting abused vs high flying fast movers, so the normal AF may have had a better percentage of AC up and running than that ...
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain
Forgive all spelling errors. |
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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| lurker wrote: | | From the AF stand point, I know that transports do have assigned crews for each bird; however, that is very fluid. Ships break, flight crew (or individual crew members) get sick/go to train/up grade/shore leave etc etc etc. Also, things will rotate to get those that need it extra stick time as they need. |
So, do transports (as an example of craft with more than one pilot to operate) have 'alternates' in the wing's or squadron's organization, or are there alternates assigned to specific craft?
In case of a Star Destroyer, with vastly different craft - Blastboats to dropships to Lambda's and Seninals - I wonder if such alternates might not have to be craft-type specific, though they would all need 'Transport' skill to operate (except for the Blastboat which (strangely) is the size of a transport, needs the skill of a starfighter, and has the scale of a capital ship.   ). |
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lurker
Commander
Joined: 24 Oct 2012
Posts: 423
Location: Oklahoma
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Mikael Hasselstein wrote: |
So, do transports (as an example of craft with more than one pilot to operate) have 'alternates' in the wing's or squadron's organization, or are there alternates assigned to specific craft?
In case of a Star Destroyer, with vastly different craft - Blastboats to dropships to Lambda's and Seninals - I wonder if such alternates might not have to be craft-type specific, though they would all need 'Transport' skill to operate (except for the Blastboat which (strangely) is the size of a transport, needs the skill of a starfighter, and has the scale of a capital ship. ).
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I assume they are assigned into the Sq instead of specific Aircraft - On one deployment, we flew into Germany on 1 aircraft, had a 5 hour lay over (enough time to be board and uncomfortable bot not long enough to go to the transient deployment area get some sleep and a shower) The crew that flew our C-17 got off at the base, went to billeting and got rooms and sleep. 5 hours later our new crew showed up, did a flight check and grounded the bird for a 4 hour maintenance issue - that took 18 hours to fix. While we were stuck there in limbo for almost 24 hours, our old flight crew showed up, got on another C-17 and flew it back state side ... Again, I'm not sure if that tracks in a Navy setting though.
For the various crafts, each crew will only be qualified to fly 1 craft, so where a 'character' would jump in and fly any of them with their transport skill, a Imp NPC flight crew would only be checked off on 1 air frame.
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain
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Mikael Hasselstein
Line Captain
Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 810
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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Let's just do starfighters right now. The following is not canon; just the way that I'm thinking about this.
Okay, in my mind, the typical starfighter complement board the ISD-II is the following:
48 TIE/LN fighters
12 TIE/sa bombers
12 TIE/in interceptors or TIE boarding craft
That is six squadrons altogether, but I imagine that the squadron-level is not organizationally distinct, except among the pilots. I mean that they don't have separate support crews.
In terms of where they stay and go, the shifts they are assigned to, I imagine that they operate as flights of four pilots. Because their day-to-day duties are not all that strenuous (they mostly hang out in the flight lounges awaiting the call to scramble), they have 12-hour shifts: 12-on/12-off. So, with 72 craft, there are 144 pilots. If alternates are called for because someone is sick, then they alternate out the entire flight, or have them operate as just one element (of two), with the sick pilot's wingman hanging back. This creates more group cohesion among the pilots, making them more likely to risk their lives for one another and the mission. I imagine flights being led by a Lieutenant (O-4), seconded by a Sub-Lieutenant (O-3) who commands the other element.
The squadron is significant in order to organize the alternation and keep tabs on the pilots' health and readiness. Also, missions (flying picket, bombing runs, flying escort) are probably delegated to the squadron level, and the squadron leader determines which flight/element needs to do what. So, the squadron is in charge of the tactical level of decision-making. The squadron leader gives the pilots of the flight or element their mission orders. I imagine a squadron being commanded by at Lt. Commander (O-5).
The wing is significant for the logistics of keeping the craft operational, and giving the pilots the resources they need to remain healthy, trained, and ready. I imagine a Wing being commanded by a Commander (O-6), who answers directly to the captain (0-7 of the ISD) |
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