Has anyone figured out crew numbers yet?

[StormMagi]

So I know crew is kinda useless on small ships, is necessary for drones on larger, but on L/XL ships, how many do you actually need? Not to mention the odd bit about some freighters running 200ish crew while destroyers take 40ish. One would think that a combat carrier (since that is essentially what "destroyers" are now) would need the 200ish crew for combat/fighter servicing etc (even though they don't do that yet), while a freighter would only need 20-30..

[Antru]

I disagree and say that crews on smaller ships are usefull. As an example: I use the Cerberus to fight smaller ships and when they bail, I land the Fighters on my Cerberus and assign one of the Service Crews as the Pilot.

There are two types of crews here, the Service Crew and the Marines. Service Crews are to repair the ship while in and out of combat. How fast and how much they repair depends on how many Service Crews you have and how well they are trained.
Marines are pretty clear, you need them for boarding an enemy ship and to defend your own ship from boarding. Since nobody tried board my ships I dont get Marines on my shipy expect for boarding others.

I agree with you, that is not well thought that an Shuyaku Freighter can carry a little over 200 Crewmembers while the Behemot Destroyer is at 55 Crewmembers. The only idea may be because the Shuyaku can store 40 M/S-Ships and you can use the Crew to transfer them to the smaller ones.

I would like to see that Cres also affect how a ship performs its task.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I don't completely disagree with you but there are nuances to consider.

(S/M) ships in general - crew size is typically very low BUT far from meaningless
(L) Freighters - crew size typically comparable to physical ship size, the bigger the ship the more crew required. These are notionally civilian type vessels so crew complement is more based on doing a job as efficiently/quickly as possible.
(L) Destroyers - crew size typically low but still comparable to physical ship size, as this is notionally a front line combat the designers would naturally want to keep crew complement as small as possible.
(XL) Carriers - crew size typically comparable to larger freighters but the ship is probably bigger, as with destroyers being a combat vessel the designers would naturally want to keep crew complements as small as possible but there are practical considerations.
(XL) Builder - crew size comparable with primary function, a notionally civilian vessel that has one singular purpose - to build stations, crew complement is exceptionally large for the size of vessel. This could be more for self-defence reasons than anything else. When building stations, they are stationary targets that could be boarded with relative ease.

Where numbers of crew are concerned for own ships - due to the lack of crew training station/module facilities the more crew you have of a low skill the quicker/better they will operate. Boarding would result in some low skilled marines dying but those that survive will be at least slightly stronger. In the context of the Destroyers/Carriers you will want as many skilled people as possible but often have to settle for lower skill crew. The freighters can probably be considered vessels that double up as crew trainers for your combat ships.

Personally, I use my operating (S/M) ships as my primary source for station managers for my build projects. Occasionally, I might promote a skilled pilot of a smaller ship to be a captain of a larger vessel. My patrolling destroyers/carriers train up their crews slowly but that it will do for now. My front-line personal destroyers/carriers I try to crew with the best I can find in my fleet but crew management is a bit lacking at the moment so I keep my crew transfer stints to a minimum.

[StormMagi]

I was refering to S class crews, M class they can be handy. But I haven't seen any improvement for repair past the number of repair drones available/crew to man them. IE 200 crew / 10 drones doesn't seem to repair any faster than 10 crew / 10 drones. But in light of your comment about them being carrier and taking a closer look at all L/XL ships (hell Magnetars can carry 80 S class)...I don't really care anymore, I am just uninstalling X4. This seemingly lack of any coherent design philosophy for the ships/stats is the straw that broke the camels back for me. I had more fun with X: Rebirth at launch than how X4 is turning out. I might check it out again in a year or two.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

This seemingly lack of any coherent design philosophy for the ships/stats is the straw that broke the camels back for me.

I disagree that the design philosphy is not coherant - it is just more nuanced than historic X-series games. The devil is in the details, the ships/stats are coherent in approach when you consider ALL the factors including the background lore.

When you look at any well designed game, the available capabilities of gameplay elements are backed up by background game lore. You don't see sub-machine-guns in the Witcher for example, but you do get various magical skills and effects.

In X4, everything is geared around a space based society that was initially heavily dependent on the gate network, that network got pulled out from under them and so they needed to learn to adapt to that scenario. The ship designs we have now are as I would logically expect given the basic lore-based setting we are presented with.

X-Rebirth by comparison was a good game in a standalone fashion but it lacked any solid lore to back up the balance of the ships in it. Some were reasonably well thought out lore wise, but most were less well thought out. It was more an X-series themed tech demo than a well thought through and consistent X-series game - from a lore perspective, it is not bad but from a ship design consistency/coherence perspective it was all over the place.

X-Rebirth was more an X-series spin-off than a true part of the X-Series, X4 tries to readjust the course bringing with it a more lore-consistent approach to overall ship designs.

[Sao t'Lp]

(S/M) ships in general - crew size is typically very low BUT far from meaningless

Is this true for additional crew on fighters? Do they give a bonus on shield-charge and/or weapon damage or do they repair the ship?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

(S/M) ships in general - crew size is typically very low BUT far from meaningless

Is this true for additional crew on fighters? Do they give a bonus on shield-charge and/or weapon damage or do they repair the ship?

Not sure, but if they give ANY advantage it would be ship repair. However, the rate is likely to be slow unless they are sufficiently skilled in the first place. The main advantage of crew on fighters is claiming bailed smaller ships. I would not be surprised if the primary reason for crew complements on fighters is to do with running taxi missions (passengers occupy crew slots) and claiming the occasional S class ship or boarding/claiming abandoned M class vessels.

If you are expecting crew to give either weapon damage or shield bonuses then I think you are likely to be sorely disappointed with the vanilla X4 in all likely-hood.

[Sao t'Lp]

That's good to know. I figured because I always thought if workforce increases production on stations a similiar bonus must be applied to ships having service crew.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

That's good to know. I figured because I always thought if workforce increases production on stations a similiar bonus must be applied to ships having service crew.

I can not see the logic in your reasoning, production efficiency on stations being increased by population is logical and reasonable (efficiency gains through manual intervention) - increasing shield/weapon effectiveness on ships is not logical by comparison. Ship repair makes sense though, increasing turret accuracy kind of makes sense but only if there were say a gunner/combat skill metric.

As it currently stands, we have boarding, engineering, managers, piloting, and moral skill metrics - the impact of moral aspect is vague at best for any circumstance other than boarding.

[StormMagi]

This seemingly lack of any coherent design philosophy for the ships/stats is the straw that broke the camels back for me.

I disagree that the design philosphy is not coherant - it is just more nuanced than historic X-series games. The devil is in the details, the ships/stats are coherent in approach when you consider ALL the factors including the background lore.

When you look at any well designed game, the available capabilities of gameplay elements are backed up by background game lore. You don't see sub-machine-guns in the Witcher for example, but you do get various magical skills and effects.

In X4, everything is geared around a space based society that was initially heavily dependent on the gate network, that network got pulled out from under them and so they needed to learn to adapt to that scenario. The ship designs we have now are as I would logically expect given the basic lore-based setting we are presented with.

X-Rebirth by comparison was a good game in a standalone fashion but it lacked any solid lore to back up the balance of the ships in it. Some were reasonably well thought out lore wise, but most were less well thought out. It was more an X-series themed tech demo than a well thought through and consistent X-series game - from a lore perspective, it is not bad but from a ship design consistency/coherence perspective it was all over the place.

X-Rebirth was more an X-series spin-off than a true part of the X-Series, X4 tries to readjust the course bringing with it a more lore-consistent approach to overall ship designs.

(Pardon the slightly jumbled paragraph, I wrote this in somewhat of a rush before going to work)
My comment on design philosophy is in relation to "What function is this supposed fulfill that others can't". S class works well, L class is kind of there, XL is why bother when every L class can do the same thing, M class (at least combat ships) are all over the place. A big part of this is coming from what the ships are presented as (which brings expectations to some degree based on X3/TC/AP era ships of the same classification) versus what they actually can do/are. I am well aware of the lore with the gate collapse and society rebuilding. That is why, for one, I didn't expect to see X3 era ships. As for XR, I honestly never played the expansions, so I don't know about any added ships. But it wasn't an X game it was a game set in the X universe to tell a small side story, which I loved despite all the limitations the game had compared to a standard X game. All the base ships were thought out and fit in nicely X lore wise given the scenario we were presented. I see that for some of the ships in X4 but others. At the moment I can't recall anything lore wise explaining the sudden shift to modular engines but then the encyclopedia is what, half empty (but this is a slight tossup, it does make sense on one hand considering how other modules are developing but on the other hand, an engine is the power plant of a ship and is usually designed somewhat to fit that ship, at least for smaller craft with space constraints)? Or the sudden shift to fighters having 2-4 service crew... I could see a co-pilot/radar operator (IE F-14/A-6) but where the hell do they stay... But in terms of the ships themselves, M6's and M7's that handle like M3's but are twice as fast (or even better after modding)? TL's (and large mining ships) that double as full carriers while still hauling cargo? Destroyers that double as full carriers? Just glancing over ship stats from TC/AP, TL's could carry ~10 M3/4/5 avg (which was great for cargo xfer at stations without docking facilities for them), speed/handling had a very steady progression from bigger the ship the slower it moved/handled (which makes sense if you look at mass involved). Yeah, no. It is not nuanced, it is unbalanced and broken. Why bother with S class at all when for about twice the price of a kitted out S class, you get a kitted out M class (Nemesis) that packs way more firepower from M class weapons, has turrets, has 3x-6x (dep on which heavy fighter you choose) the hull/shields but handles like and is as fast as an S class. I haven't seen anything lore wise that would explain this sudden, drastic, change in ship design philosophy. Not to mention M7s, The Osprey is the only somewhat balanced one. I have other, significant issues with ships as well but those are in relation to ship model sizing in relation to function capabilities.

Maybe this stems from the fact I got into X right before Terran Conflict release where all this had been ironed out in X3 already.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

XL is why bother when every L class can do the same thing,

That is actually false reasoning - there are 2 main XL ships and both have unique capabilities.

Builders - these are required to build/refit station modules

Carriers - these may not carry more ships than the only ship that can be considered even close to being equivalent (the Odysseus) but they do have internal launch docks for S sized vessels and a relatively vast number of surface docks (at least double the surface dock capacity). In addition, they have a highest baseline missile capacity and cargo capacity comparable to all but the largest L freighter, while also being the most heavily shielded ships in the game.

No L sized ships can not do all the same things as XL sized ships, and technically the reverse is true too (XL size ships can not do everything L size ships can do).

The S, M, L, XL descriminator is not a true ship class descriminator (i.e. not directly comparable to M1-M7 classifications from X3 and prior) - it is merely a ship size descriminator

X4 is closer to (but not identical to) X2 than X3 in terms of relative ship capabilities and general combat balance. IMO - X3 balance was not ideal.

[StormMagi]

XL is why bother when every L class can do the same thing,

That is actually false reasoning - there are 2 main XL ships and both have unique capabilities.

Builders - these are required to build/refit station modules

Carriers - these may not carry more ships than the only ship that can be considered even close to being equivalent (the Odysseus) but they do have internal launch docks for S sized vessels and a relatively vast number of surface docks (at least double the surface dock capacity). In addition, they have a highest baseline missile capacity and cargo capacity comparable to all but the largest L freighter, while also being the most heavily shielded ships in the game.

No L sized ships can not do all the same things as XL sized ships, and technically the reverse is true too (XL size ships can not do everything L size ships can do).

The S, M, L, XL descriminator is not a true ship class descriminator (i.e. not directly comparable to M1-M7 classifications from X3 and prior) - it is merely a ship size descriminator

X4 is closer to (but not identical to) X2 than X3 in terms of relative ship capabilities and general combat balance. IMO - X3 balance was not ideal.

I was ignoring the build ships as those are specialized ships for a singular purpose in X4 and their isn't really anything to say about them (at least on this somewhat off topic branch). As for Carriers, the number docks is the only advantage they have over L class in terms of the carrier role, one could argue hp as well but carriers don't appear to be designed to be slugging it out toe to toe anymore so I am skipping that debate. Sure they have a high missile capacity but (and I admit haven't really played more than 1-2 hours with carriers before I busted that game and had to restart), is that really even effective? The number of times I have seen or fired missiles and watched the vast majority of them not even hit the target makes me skeptical of their use.

I admit I am generalizing my arguments a bit, but my point in why bother with XL because L can do the same is in reference to bringing a vast amount of fighters to a battlefield, rather than straight up slugfest capability, Sure XL can launch/recover faster, but when you can build two(?) destroyers for the price of one carrier and carry double the number of fighters, I honestly don't see a point to bother with carriers. As for the L freighters/miners, they have two launch bays so launch time same as destroyers, but they cost ~1/5 the price of a destroyer. Send some ships to screen them while they launch and then have them retreat.

I do realize that the S/M/L/XL is just a ship size marker, but when EVERY L class ship can carry 40 S class (or more), matching carriers...

I am not familiar with X2 balance, I own it due to an Egosoft bundle, but the closest I got was a mod importing X2 ships into TC. X3 balance could have been better, that I do agree, but the defined ship roles were there and the ships fit those roles. X4, at least for combat ships, that is not all there with current ship behavior stats.

I don't completely disagree with you but there are nuances to consider.

(S/M) ships in general - crew size is typically very low BUT far from meaningless
(L) Freighters - crew size typically comparable to physical ship size, the bigger the ship the more crew required. These are notionally civilian type vessels so crew complement is more based on doing a job as efficiently/quickly as possible.
(L) Destroyers - crew size typically low but still comparable to physical ship size, as this is notionally a front line combat the designers would naturally want to keep crew complement as small as possible.
(XL) Carriers - crew size typically comparable to larger freighters but the ship is probably bigger, as with destroyers being a combat vessel the designers would naturally want to keep crew complements as small as possible but there are practical considerations.
(XL) Builder - crew size comparable with primary function, a notionally civilian vessel that has one singular purpose - to build stations, crew complement is exceptionally large for the size of vessel. This could be more for self-defence reasons than anything else. When building stations, they are stationary targets that could be boarded with relative ease.

Where numbers of crew are concerned for own ships - due to the lack of crew training station/module facilities the more crew you have of a low skill the quicker/better they will operate. Boarding would result in some low skilled marines dying but those that survive will be at least slightly stronger. In the context of the Destroyers/Carriers you will want as many skilled people as possible but often have to settle for lower skill crew. The freighters can probably be considered vessels that double up as crew trainers for your combat ships.

Personally, I use my operating (S/M) ships as my primary source for station managers for my build projects. Occasionally, I might promote a skilled pilot of a smaller ship to be a captain of a larger vessel. My patrolling destroyers/carriers train up their crews slowly but that it will do for now. My front-line personal destroyers/carriers I try to crew with the best I can find in my fleet but crew management is a bit lacking at the moment so I keep my crew transfer stints to a minimum.

I would have to disagree for L/XL on crew. If we pull from modern day ships, cargo container ship has a crew of ~30, while the USS Iowa (since destroyers are X's battleships) has a crew of ~2,800. There are a lot more things to do on a combat ship, while cargo is relatively automated. My question stems from the fact that any bonus to "repair" doesn't seem to change past the maximum number of repair drones/crew to man those drones. Destroyers and freighters/miners both have 10 drones, but past the first 10 crew I haven't seen any benefit. For freighters there is an extreme excess of crew, while destroyers there seems to be a distinct lack (even if you take 1 crew per turret into consideration).

M class, the same thing holds true. I haven't been able to determine any bonus to behavior other than number of crew available to control drones (1 crew per drone).

S class is...rather debatable.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I would have to disagree for L/XL on crew. If we pull from modern day ships, cargo container ship has a crew of ~30, while the USS Iowa (since destroyers are X's battleships) has a crew of ~2,800. There are a lot more things to do on a combat ship, while cargo is relatively automated.

That is based on a huge number of assumptions that may not apply in this case. We are talking about a mostly fictional setting, not the real world. In the context of X4, the crew are not present for the role/roles you seem to think they are. I believe you are using false equivalence logic trying to equate current real world sea going vessels with the space faring vessels of the X-Series.

Yes - modern Panamax and similar cargo vessels may have relatively small crew complements for their size but the same can not be said about Cruise ships. In the X4, the distinction between ship types is more vague but that does not make the designs illogical. Smaller crew complements on military ships versus civilian ships actually makes more sense in the context of space craft - smaller crews means lower risk of life, smaller demands for supplies, and more room for weapon systems and supporting equipment.

My question stems from the fact that any bonus to "repair" doesn't seem to change past the maximum number of repair drones/crew to man those drones.

After boarding at least a few destroyers whose repair drones I have destroyed I think I have a reasonable basis for saying that the effect of having more repair crew to repair a given ship is not limited to the number of drones. Drones seem to accelerate the process but do not appear to be required for it. I have trained up a fair number of engineer crewmen this way.

[GCU Grey Area]

Why bother with S class at all when for about twice the price of a kitted out S class, you get a kitted out M class (Nemesis) that packs way more firepower from M class weapons, has turrets, has 3x-6x (dep on which heavy fighter you choose) the hull/shields but handles like and is as fast as an S class.

Good question. For me the reason to use S ships in my fleet (rather than M) was because I needed chaff to distract the nasty ship-melting guns Xenon capitals have in 2.0b from poking holes in my destroyers - particularly the Xenon I which should never be approached without a fighter screen (IMO). S ships work much better in this role because they're significantly smaller & Xenon turrets sometimes miss them. In contrast, M ships are flying coffins in this role - tried them, result was carnage (& not in a good way). Only have a handful of them in the fleet, I fly one (Peregrine Vanguard) & I use Osprey Sentinels as auxiliary anti-fighter turret batteries aboard my carrier.

why bother with XL because L can do the same is in reference to bringing a vast amount of fighters to a battlefield, rather than straight up slugfest capability, Sure XL can launch/recover faster, but when you can build two(?) destroyers for the price of one carrier and carry double the number of fighters, I honestly don't see a point to bother with carriers.

Launch speed makes a difference. My destroyers (Phoenix Vanguards) only have a pair of docks each. Would take considerably longer to deploy all my fighters if I was relying on them alone rather than my carrier. Difference is I want all my fighters to hit the enemy as a big mob, not a couple at a time nicely spaced out like ducks in a row at a shooting gallery. If I was to use the destroyer docks launching fighters would of necessity be a 2-stage process - launch & assemble at a rally point, wait for everyone to get there, then give the attack order. It's just so much more convenient to use a carrier instead. Destroyer docks pretty much only get used for occasional crew transfers in my game.

M class, the same thing holds true. I haven't been able to determine any bonus to behavior other than number of crew available to control drones (1 crew per drone).

M class don't need drones to make repairs. My Peregrine can't even carry drones, yet the 4 service crew aboard are capable of repairing the hull up to 96%. Very useful considering how much flak it takes whenever I go near a Xenon capital - I try to get clear when the shields are getting a bit low, but don't always manage it fast enough to avoid losing bits of the hull.

[pref]

After boarding at least a few destroyers whose repair drones I have destroyed I think I have a reasonable basis for saying that the effect of having more repair crew to repair a given ship is not limited to the number of drones. Drones seem to accelerate the process but do not appear to be required for it. I have trained up a fair number of engineer crewmen this way.

Yes count and skills both matter.
I got somehow extremely lucky and hired a 5* service crew somehow upon ship purchase.
Putting the guy on the nemesis resulted in noticeable better repair times. Without crew repairs were slow or nonexistent, can't remember now. With 1 unskilled guy it was definitely slower then with the new skilled one.

[StormMagi]

I would have to disagree for L/XL on crew. If we pull from modern day ships, cargo container ship has a crew of ~30, while the USS Iowa (since destroyers are X's battleships) has a crew of ~2,800. There are a lot more things to do on a combat ship, while cargo is relatively automated.

That is based on a huge number of assumptions that may not apply in this case. We are talking about a mostly fictional setting, not the real world. In the context of X4, the crew are not present for the role/roles you seem to think they are. I believe you are using false equivalence logic trying to equate current real world sea going vessels with the space faring vessels of the X-Series.

Yes - modern Panamax and similar cargo vessels may have relatively small crew complements for their size but the same can not be said about Cruise ships. In the X4, the distinction between ship types is more vague but that does not make the designs illogical. Smaller crew complements on military ships versus civilian ships actually makes more sense in the context of space craft - smaller crews means lower risk of life, smaller demands for supplies, and more room for weapon systems and supporting equipment.

My question stems from the fact that any bonus to "repair" doesn't seem to change past the maximum number of repair drones/crew to man those drones.

After boarding at least a few destroyers whose repair drones I have destroyed I think I have a reasonable basis for saying that the effect of having more repair crew to repair a given ship is not limited to the number of drones. Drones seem to accelerate the process but do not appear to be required for it. I have trained up a fair number of engineer crewmen this way.

Cruise ships aren't cargo ships though, they aren't hauling products around. People require far more upkeep than inert stacked inert boxes, especially if your ship is a floating amusement park.

At the same time, there is a relevant correlation. How big of a crew is needed when a cargo ship is a giant box with engines to move smaller boxes from point A to B? Especially when the boxes are loaded/unloaded via cargo drone. To me that illustrates a highly automated ship with minimal crew to leave maximum room for cargo, even if we assume 1 crew per turret as well. Having 200 crew is also unrealistic given current overall sizes of ships, unless we enlarge the actual cargo ship size by maybe 10x or so (given X's mismatch of scale, although X4 seems to have gone off the deep end with that).

I disagree on the civilian vs military crew levels, civilian ships aren't typically exposed to firefights were multiple/rapid damage control teams are needed, the drones on the outside can't repair internal systems that get damaged.

The same goes for destroyers, while I wouldn't expect a crew in the thousands, I would expect at least a crew and half/double crew for combat ships (including marines). Yes you want to keep crew to a minimum and many things are automated, but I would expect a service crew of at least 40 (1 full crew + half a crew for shifts/replace combat losses etc) or so plus around 20 marines for boarding/antiboarding (not that the ai even tries to board us). But since destroyers also can dock 40 S ships, I would also expect at least another 20-30 crew for service/maintenance of those (not that, given the actual sizes of things in X4, there is any place to store them in the volume of the ship).

Interesting on the destroyer training, when I was experimenting in 1.6, I got no repairs done at all.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

How big of a crew is needed when a cargo ship is a giant box with engines to move smaller boxes from point A to B? Especially when the boxes are loaded/unloaded via cargo drone. To me that illustrates a highly automated ship with minimal crew to leave maximum room for cargo, even if we assume 1 crew per turret as well.

This is part of the fundamental flaw in your overall reasoning - Cargo may be transferred to/from a ship using drones BUT that does not necessarily mean that the whole process is automated. You are also not comparing like for like using sea going vessels as an equivalance. The point I was making was emphasised by the Panamax/Cruise Ship comparison - different role fits in the same environment with different roles for the crew.

If you are going to use any examples from the real world for crew sizes you might want to consider submarines as a closer equivalent than surface vessels. Such vessels can have crew sizes of 100-150 and that is despite their relatively small physical size (Typhoon class: 175m long with 23m beam and a 12m draught with a surface displacement of up to ~24k metric tonnes submerged displacement of up to ~48k metric tonnes). Compare such vessels with the space craft in X4 and the scale and crew capacities are not that unbelievable. The smallest station module is bigger than 200m x 200m x 200m by my estimation based on my station planning endeavours and the smallest L size ship seems bigger than that.

In X4, service crews have one role and one role only, own ship repair. In addition to service crews we also have marines (aka boarding crews) which serve really only one role from the player's perspective - boarding other vessels. Further more, unlike X2/X3 we do not have distinct TP type vessels in X4 at this time and ALL ships essentially can operate in that role using any spare crew space - which is yet another element to consider.

Overall, though - as pref has already highlighted - crew skill level and quantity do impact speed of repairs. The typical baseline service crew are sloth like in their repairs and the game does not make it clear what specific activities any given crew are engaging in at any given time. There is obviously a priority list wrt what service crews concentrate on first and I have noted things repairing to at least some degree in a notional order but it does tend to take a long time and docking the ship being repaired does seem to disrupt service crew driven repairs.

[Baconnaise]

I would have to disagree for L/XL on crew. If we pull from modern day ships, cargo container ship has a crew of ~30, while the USS Iowa (since destroyers are X's battleships) has a crew of ~2,800. There are a lot more things to do on a combat ship, while cargo is relatively automated.

That is based on a huge number of assumptions that may not apply in this case. We are talking about a mostly fictional setting, not the real world. In the context of X4, the crew are not present for the role/roles you seem to think they are. I believe you are using false equivalence logic trying to equate current real world sea going vessels with the space faring vessels of the X-Series.

Yes - modern Panamax and similar cargo vessels may have relatively small crew complements for their size but the same can not be said about Cruise ships. In the X4, the distinction between ship types is more vague but that does not make the designs illogical. Smaller crew complements on military ships versus civilian ships actually makes more sense in the context of space craft - smaller crews means lower risk of life, smaller demands for supplies, and more room for weapon systems and supporting equipment.

I think you proved his point on the differing crew sizes between the ship roles. It was a good parallel pointing to modern cargo ships. The last bit about more space for more equipment seems to grasp at straws and makes little sense. If that was the case why wouldn't that also apply for industrial/cargo as well? Nonsense.

[Socratatus]

A tad off-topic but also relevent: This is why i hate Sci-fi fantasy debates unless they have well-known and strict world rules in that fantasy universe. Our only reference base with non strict fantasy is reality, which is a good reference, but then someone will always say something like, "This is fantasy, anything goes!" An argument I hate, because in good fantasies with good rules anything actually doesn`t go.

But even in scifi worlds with good set rules, someone will come along with some personal hangup and rewrite the rules often throwing everything we know out with the bathwater, ie Star Wars or even Star Trek these days.

[StormMagi]

O_o Where the hell did the reply I posted yesterday go... I had spent ~30 minutes doing a bunch of rough size calculations that I posted...