Setting aside the math for a moment
CT's description of pilot needs is questionable in MT.
1) Sufficient compute power probably means a single pilot can pilot any vessel.
2) If this is so, having more than one pilot becomes about other factors. In planes and on ship bridges, there is one person really flying/driving the vehicle, and the others are either double checking things, are on hand in case the main pilot has a serious medical issue or gets otherwise injured (in warplanes or warships), and they are also maybe assisting (offloading comms with traffic control, spotting of other traffic, etc).
3) It's also possible in the civilian world that the *legal* requirements for a particular crew role are NOT the same as the *technical* requirements. Liners especially should have a higher requirement in most areas including pilots (based on the value we place on human life).
4) The breakpoints are a bit bizarre in TCS. They wanted to allow single pilots for the small ships, but they could have heart attacks, etc still. So one figures that multiple pilots should be not uncommon even on smaller ships. Or, flipping the other way, enough computer power should be able to have the ship fly itself (needing zero pilots).
Also, we put a breakpoint at 500 tons, then 20K tons, then... no more? They jumped from 1 at 499 tons to 2 up to 19,999 tons, and then 3 beyond? No increase for the really huge battleships and carriers? Or a 'dread planet roberts'?
I think this whole thing was thought out, but not as deeply as it should have been.
Any crew requirements will have two flavours:
a) technically/functionally required (impacted by technology and ship design)
b) legally/for insurance/etc required (larger than the tech requirements in most cases, impacted by redundancy, safety, etc)
Note that if I was using a skeleton crew for a transit mission (no weapons, screens, no cargo, no ships troops, no flight crew, etc), you'd probably be able to calculate the actual minimum number of crew to safely operate the vessel. The actual number you could get away with in a crisis may actually be less than that because people might do multiple jobs or some jobs like maintenance or repair may get skipped in a bad situation.
Another thing the game doesn't quite cover well:
We know that having a medic present during cold sleep recovery gives a better chance of survival. We know the math for dying. Are military cold sleep berths better? Do they offer better chances of survival? If not, then you want a medic there so having a fair number of medics aboard seems required if you need to wake large numbers of crew quickly. That may not be a use case they consider (rather replacing a few combat losses between engagements). Do the formulas include a fudge factor for frozen watch losses (not combat losses, just failure to survive cold sleep)?
I'm not disagreeing with any of the math or rules discussion in this thread, but the formulas in question are perhaps a bit questionable from the outset due to some of the points above.
CT's description of pilot needs is questionable in MT.
1) Sufficient compute power probably means a single pilot can pilot any vessel.
2) If this is so, having more than one pilot becomes about other factors. In planes and on ship bridges, there is one person really flying/driving the vehicle, and the others are either double checking things, are on hand in case the main pilot has a serious medical issue or gets otherwise injured (in warplanes or warships), and they are also maybe assisting (offloading comms with traffic control, spotting of other traffic, etc).
3) It's also possible in the civilian world that the *legal* requirements for a particular crew role are NOT the same as the *technical* requirements. Liners especially should have a higher requirement in most areas including pilots (based on the value we place on human life).
4) The breakpoints are a bit bizarre in TCS. They wanted to allow single pilots for the small ships, but they could have heart attacks, etc still. So one figures that multiple pilots should be not uncommon even on smaller ships. Or, flipping the other way, enough computer power should be able to have the ship fly itself (needing zero pilots).
Also, we put a breakpoint at 500 tons, then 20K tons, then... no more? They jumped from 1 at 499 tons to 2 up to 19,999 tons, and then 3 beyond? No increase for the really huge battleships and carriers? Or a 'dread planet roberts'?
I think this whole thing was thought out, but not as deeply as it should have been.
Any crew requirements will have two flavours:
a) technically/functionally required (impacted by technology and ship design)
b) legally/for insurance/etc required (larger than the tech requirements in most cases, impacted by redundancy, safety, etc)
Note that if I was using a skeleton crew for a transit mission (no weapons, screens, no cargo, no ships troops, no flight crew, etc), you'd probably be able to calculate the actual minimum number of crew to safely operate the vessel. The actual number you could get away with in a crisis may actually be less than that because people might do multiple jobs or some jobs like maintenance or repair may get skipped in a bad situation.
Another thing the game doesn't quite cover well:
We know that having a medic present during cold sleep recovery gives a better chance of survival. We know the math for dying. Are military cold sleep berths better? Do they offer better chances of survival? If not, then you want a medic there so having a fair number of medics aboard seems required if you need to wake large numbers of crew quickly. That may not be a use case they consider (rather replacing a few combat losses between engagements). Do the formulas include a fudge factor for frozen watch losses (not combat losses, just failure to survive cold sleep)?
I'm not disagreeing with any of the math or rules discussion in this thread, but the formulas in question are perhaps a bit questionable from the outset due to some of the points above.
