Crew size?

[kolimbo]

Anyone know of a canon figure for the crew size of the ships?

Do they even have a crew?(I can imagine that some ships are fully automated... but the Xenon ship description says that they have a 'fully functioning crew deck' or somesuch, suggesting a complement).

[Alan Phipps]

Examples of related threads here and here.

Xenon designs are based on Terran Terraformer ships which would have needed a human control deck for manned maintenance, inspections, test-flights and certifications, etc. They are now fully-automated under Xenon AI control but use the same basis for ship design as before (previously hard-coded).

[StarSword]

Yes, they have crews. Try hailing a capital ship sometime. You'll be put in touch with the Automated Interaction System as if it was a station, which then has options to contact the captain, the navigation officer, or any of roughly a dozen crewmen.

Now, how big those crews actually are depending on the ship is a heck of a lot more vague. I estimate it ranging from something like one to three people for an M5 to a couple thousand for an M2.

[Girlinhat]

I would say that's a bit steep. 1 for fighters, maybe 2 for a Nova or Eclipse or something. Hyperion maybe a dozen, Tiger probably something like 40 - the lore on the Tiger/Panther is that the crew is packed in uncomfortably.

Keep in mind that 20 marines can take an M2. Assuming that the defending crew is only trained in remedial close-combat, guns are still dangerous and if you've got 20 marines subduing a few thousand on an M2, then they must have crew made entirely of small children or wheelchair people.

[kolimbo]

To be fair, when exoskeletons and combat armour start to come in play, it makes a big difference.

Squiddies don't pack anything heavier than a side arm and those wouldn't punch through military grade body armour. I'd imagine future marine would have similar if not better chance against future-squids.

20 guys with heavy weapons is plenty enough to mow down a few hundred civilians.

[Aragosnat]

If I remember right. One of the split M7's or was it the M2? said it only needed a min crew of 12 or was it 16 to run? Remember we also have driods and Jedi running around to do most of the leg work.

[Progress-M]

To be fair, when exoskeletons and combat armour start to come in play, it makes a big difference.

Squiddies don't pack anything heavier than a side arm and those wouldn't punch through military grade body armour. I'd imagine future marine would have similar if not better chance against future-squids.

20 guys with heavy weapons is plenty enough to mow down a few hundred civilians.

This is all obviously just speculation for fun as has been stated before, but I started thinking about the boarding ops maths a bit, here.

A typical cruise ship has a good few km's of corridors, for example 8 km's in the case of the first one I googled here:

http://europeforvisitors.com/cruises/re ... a-ship.htm

The marines maximum speed in space is 28 m/s, so roughly 100km/h. Assume rocket-powered exoskeletons, computer-assisted and nanonics-enhanced reaction speed and high-power, high-speed, high-accuracy weaponry.

The marines would roam through the ship corridors at say 10m/s, a comfortable 36 kmh average speed, allowing for some speed-ups and slow-downs to deal with resistance. At this speed it would take 2 minutes 40 seconds for the marines to clear 1.6 km's of corridors. Divide 20 marines to 4-person squads and you can cover 8 km's in 2 mins 40 seconds.

For more fun's sake, assume a 700-man capital ship crew, taken out completely, no prisoners. A bit of spray and pray by the marines, average 10 rounds spent per target. 7000 rounds spent. If the marines carried 12.7 mm HMG-size weapons, the projectiles fired over that period would weigh 60g per bullet, i.e. 420 kg all up. That's 21 kg of metal fired per person, not counting for the cartridge weight. Something like 50 kg's of ammunition carried into the ship per marine.

It's a pretty brutal image

[kolimbo]

Lasers man! Lasers!


pew pew pew!

[Aragosnat]

Lasers man! Lasers!


pew pew pew!

Don't forget their nuclear hand gernades too. Yeah energy based weapons might be the standard weapon marines use. Since we can produce split disintagrators and Terrans have EMP rifles. I wonder what Argon use? Teladi I would not be surprised if some used muskets and crossbows.

[Barklight]

...Teladi I would not be surprised if some used muskets and crossbows.

Laser Crossbows! ala Chewbacca in Star Wars. Yeah.

This discussion tangent also brings up a valid point though. There are personal arms available as wares in the game, everything from EMP rifles to Sidearms and Grenades and the like. I wonder if there is a way to use them that I haven't seen yet or if they're fluff wares? It would be pretty sweet if you had a TP with your marine squad and by tossing rifles and grenades into the cargo hold, your troops would utilize them on boarding missions, and likewise for enemy marines on-board defending ships if they have weaponry in their hold.

[Alan Phipps]

Sidearms and infantry weapons are just tradewares in vanilla but a few S&M mods/scripts have used them for operational enhancement purposes.

[kolimbo]

Fluffware... some you can even trade on the stock market (but can't produce yourself. It's kind of maddening).

[Aragosnat]

Fluffware... some you can even trade on the stock market (but can't produce yourself. It's kind of maddening).

Yeah. Like the pirate side arm which is illegal in most CW space yet. We can never buy or sell any. Now only after Rebirth would they make a FPS... One can only hope and dream now.

[Alan Phipps]

The Pirate sidearm is illegal but you will very rarely, if ever, come across them in vanilla through Pirate missions or drops. You may be slightly confusing these with the Low-Yield Sidearms you can openly and legally buy and sell at some stations including Pirate Bases. Here is the race illegal wares list for those you can buy.

Yes you can share-deal in them, but that is just the same as posters, promotional plates and vacuum cleaners etc that you can never buy, find only in drops, and can only really sell by using the Dockware Manager.