ISD minimum crew?

[Mamatried]

I know that ISDs have crew in the tens of thousands in some cases even more, however we have seen fairly large ships of comparable size being flown by only one pilot, or a small groups of two -four people, perfect size for a player group.

What I spesifically winder about is what is the absolute minimum crew needed to fly, not fight in any way but to only fly an ISD.

I can not remember the novel or story, but I seem to recall Han and Lando actually stealing one, and this would then making it two as a minimum.

if we look to the recent movies we have the holdo maneuver, where she alone piloted the ship crashing it into snoke's ship.

this made me think could a simeple "steal the ISD and -jump- away" be doable with a small band of 3-5 player characters?

I am working on a heist type mission, a small band of very bold rebels decides to steal an ISD and simply hand it over to the rebel navy (or sell it to pirates and the like)

so what would you all think, could a group 3-5 actually pull off stealing an ISD lets say one docked and then make a jump escaping with it.

Since this is not the adventuresand Campaign thread I won't go into the details of the planned adventure, though it does fall on the plausablity or possiblity for a player group of that size to steal an ISD

[garhkal]

I can't imagine an ISD being operated, even at a skeleton level (NO COMBAT what so ever capable), at less than 100 folks....
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[Mamatried]

[Yora]

I think in theory, every ship could be controlled by a single person. But everything would be incredibly slow and take absolutely forever.
Much bigger is the issue of maintenance. Things need to be checked, serviced, and reapired all the time, and the frequency at which these have to be done would be much faster than one person could do them.

Depending on the size of the ship and the amount of people crewing it, they might be able to control a ship for a few hours to a few days before they can't keep up with all the tasks needed to keep the ship running smoothly.
With too few people, all maneuvering would be very slow and combat just be completely impossible.

But assuming you have a star destroyer parked in space, not docked to anything, with nobody on board, the reactor running, and in perfect working condition, a single person could punch in a hyperspace course to a selected destination, turn on the engines, and press the button to jump. Assuming nobody tries to stop it.
But when do you ever get in that situation.

I would say the minimum crew would depend on what you want to do and how fast you want to do it.
i would dare to say stealing a star destroyer is impossible. You'll never find one that is both empty and powered up. The most plausible situation I could see is to board one and take control of the bridge, and to somehow convince the captain to order the crew to surrender. And even getting a boarding team to the bridge of a Star Destroyer would be a major battle, requiring large numbers of boarding crafts that have to get past all the guns and fighters, and then the soldiers have to get past hundreds of stormtroopers and armored airlocks.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Mamatried]

The Only thing I was intenting the players to do was simply to make the thing move somewhat controlled and far enough for a droid to hook the nav grids and then make a jump.

[Yora]

This is something very subjective, but I always feel that the technology in Star Wars has very low levels of automation.
Controlling a Star Destroyer would be like controlling an Iowa-class battleship in the 40s. The navigational calculations are done by a computer, but many of the mechanical parts need to be turned on, connected, and dialed in manually by someone who is in that part of the ship.
The bridge might have buttons to steer the ship and set the speed, but charging up the hyperdrive, disconnecting fuel lines, and releasing docking clamps would have to be done by people in the reactor room and in the airlocks.

You could also make a judgement call that ships don't require any manual handling of components and the ship can be run entirely by a computer, in which case a reasonably high quality droid would be able to give all the required commands to all the systems in the blink of an eye. There could be an automatic component that moves any mechanical parts roboticaly through commands from the computer.

Or it could be anywhere in between. There is no real hard correct answer to these things.
I personally think that the visual style of space combat in Star Wars is basically a reenactment of World War 2 ships and planes, so I would stick with that when making calls like this.
As further examples, we have the Katana Fleet, which was a highly doubted experiment in partial automation that was considered a complete failure.
And in the prequel movies we see individual droids sitting in tanks and driving them, instead of the tanks just having the droid's computer brain installed in its own hardware. (Though we also get starfighters that are simultaneously also droids in the very same movie.)

Making Star Wars more futuristic is certainly an option, but subjectively I feel a big part of the Star Wars style is that it's implausibly low-tech.
If you have decided that your players should be able to steal a Star Destroyer by plugging a droid in the bridge because that feels dramatically right at this moment, then go with that.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Mamatried]

[garhkal]

[Yora]

[CRMcNeill]

The story where Han used a small force to capture an ISD was actually in the aftermath of Endor. The ISD that would eventually be renamed the Emancipator was trapped at Endor, but refused to surrender. The Endor commando team was returning to orbit aboard the Tydirium and Han bluffed his way onto the ISD and conned it into surrender.

That's a world of difference from bringing an ISD from a cold start up to flight ready with a half-dozen crew. It's one thing for 1-2 crew to take over operations for a ship that's already fully activated for short periods (Examples: Holdo and the Raddus, or the captain of the Quasar Fire in Rebels), but that's not a viable long-term option for anything other than "all hands, abandon ship, I'll stay aboard and ram them."

Just as an example, in the Dark Force Rising, we are introduced to Niles Ferrier and his crew of professional ship-jackers. Lando suggests that this group is good enough to steal an MC80 all on their own. But the MC80 only has 1/7th the crew of an ISD (5,156 vs. 36,810), and the Difficulty will scale up accordingly.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[MrNexx]

[Mamatried]

I just found the comic, Han boarded the ship with about a platoon size unit
troopers + leia , him and lando and this other woman.

yes they bluffed their way to take the destroyer, but I did notice from the comic that they did man the bridge pits with troops, most likely republic/rebel capital ship crew.

I actually didn't consider the the cold start, and thank you for reminding me, it actually changes my intial thoughts a bit. yes a cold start up will be hard for a little team, unless they have enough time to fire up reactors, and the competance to do so, and then have the time to make it back to the bridge, then maybe, unless there are systesm related to propulsion alone that requre constant monitoring.

So maybe a platoon , given time in an ISD withough any IMP crew and a little bit of time

[garhkal]

[Grimace]

I had a player once want to take control of an Imperial Star Destroyer and join the Rebel Alliance. I ruled that, in order to get the ship successfully flown to the Rebel (not engaging in any fighting against other Imperial ships that tried to stop it) they would need a minimum of 500 people.

I allowed the player to play the Captain of the Star Destroyer, and have a hand-picked 20 senior officers who would join him (and be able to influence some of the people under them). I ruled out the Stormtroopers, deeming them as loyal enough to the Empire that they would not join the Captain in defecting to the Rebels.

The guy got to decide which positions the officers were in charge of, and decide his plans, then we got some other players to play Rebels that would come in to assist.

It didn't go how the fellow wanted. He neglected to have anyone "loyal to his cause" in the hangar bay, so a majority of the Rebels that landed aboard the Star Destroyer to help out were whisked out into space when the Hanger Operator opened the magnetic field after the Rebels got out of the ship. The Stormtroopers were held up due to the plans of the Captain/Player and some of his Senior Officers (NPCs), but eventually some got out with a Stormtrooper Major as the major thorn in the side of the Captain/Player.

But 500 is what I had settled on, back in the 90s, as a reasonable number that could move a Star Destroyer from one place to another, but not with any combat involved.

[Scots Dragon]