Ship's Crew Numbers

[Badenov]

So, are starship crews wildly topheavy (more officers than needed)? I did a design of a 94,000T carrier, and wind up with 128 officers for 795 crew using the Book 5 formulas. What are they in charge of? The 5 per 10,000 tons is the main culprit, 10,000 tons of ship is capable of sitting there without needing an officer to supervise it but I have 48 Officers based on my tonnage. Seven are mentioned by job in the text: CO, XO, Comp O, Comm O, Doc (and eratta adds a small medical department, so does Command also need an additional Doc?), and two Nav O's, but that leaves 41 with no specific job. I have 14 Gunnery Officers for one spinal mount, 5 50-ton bays, and 2 turrets which are ganged into one higher-rating weapon. I have 29 Engineering Officers for a Rating 6 M-Drive and a Rating 3 Jump Drive. And the Service department has 23 officers. What do they all do?

Is the Navy just a place for nobles to put their kids to keep them out of the way? I can see it as a kind of jobs program for nobles.

For comparison, USS Iowa sailed with 151 Officers for 2637 enlisted crew in WW2.

 

[TamsinP]

Naval vessels tend to have 1 officer for every 10-20 enlisted. For instance, the USS Iowa (BB61) had 151 officers and 2637 enlisted; an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 23 officers and 300 enlisted; Virginia-class subs have 15 officers and 120 enlisted.

A carrier will tend to have a higher ratio of officers to enlisted than other ships as a result of fighter pilots being officers.

As for what all the others do, there's a lot of supervision, training, discipline, administration, etc., not to mention watch-keeping duties. Many of them will be operating as juniors to the named positions.

 

[Condottiere]

They're specialists, and need better pay and career prospects.

 

[bookwyrm]

Also, military ships on duty need officers & crew at all hours, so divide the number of officers by the number of shifts that are being used.

I believe Book 5 uses two 12 hour shifts, so 64 officers & 397.5 crew per shift. It's still a lot of officers, and if necessary, using the 'change rules a little to keep it fun' you could lower the officers to 4 or 3 per 10k dtons.

The other reason for so many officers could be losses during space combat. You wouldn't want a lack of leadership in the midst of battle!

One possible reason from Star Trek/Galaxy Quest is that a certain percentage of these officers and the crew under their command have quite a bit of red in their uniforms.

 

[Badenov]

Also, military ships on duty need officers & crew at all hours, so divide the number of officers by the number of shifts that are being used.

I believe Book 5 uses two 12 hour shifts, so 64 officers & 397.5 crew per shift. It's still a lot of officers, and if necessary, using the 'change rules a little to keep it fun' you could lower the officers to 4 or 3 per 10k dtons.

The other reason for so many officers could be losses during space combat. You wouldn't want a lack of leadership in the midst of battle!

One possible reason from Star Trek/Galaxy Quest is that a certain percentage of these officers and the crew under their command have quite a bit of red in their uniforms.

Sections aside, Officer of the Deck and CIC Watch Officer are going to be stood by Command officers (the other watches would be stood by Engineering or Gunnery). If they stand 6 4-hour watches a day for 2 positions, that's 12 watches. There's 48 people, but taking the skipper, XO, and department heads off the watchbill and assuming some of the rest of the 48 command section are new and not yet qualified, say 36 are qualified to stand OOD and/or CICWO, they're standing 12 watches per day with 36 people. That's a very low-impact watch rotation. I guess it is what it is, but it's not like hard work. In RL, officers have regular jobs aside from watchstanding that take their time. Here, we've got a huge group of people with nothing to do except for 4 hours every 3 days. That sounds like a jobs program for nobles' kids.

 

[TamsinP]

One possible reason from Star Trek/Galaxy Quest is that a certain percentage of these officers and the crew under their command have quite a bit of red in their uniforms.

Ahhh, that hoary old chestnut. I seem to recall that someone compared the number of deaths against the number of crew for each shirt colour and statistically it was the yellow-shirts who had the highest kill rate by quite a large margin from red-shirts, who in turn were more prone to death by a less large margin than blue-shirts.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The glory of modern mechanised warfare:

1: Paperwork...
We are not talking about cast-iron battleships here, this is aerospace. Every single bolt, fluid, filter, seal, pump, missile, and structural member is documented, inspected, and replaced at certain intervals. And then some component is recalled, and all the schedules are changed on the fly...
You're doing the maintenance on an F-22 while flying combat missions, in addition to the actual combat missions.

2: Middle management.
Draw an org chart for 1000 people with say 4 reports per "manager", see how many layers of middle management you end up with...
The crew are not muscle, but highly trained technicians, doing specialised necessary task, otherwise they wouldn't be there.
You need middle management to send all the paperwork in the right direction.

3: Function duplication...
You need something like four full watches on a large warship. You are alone in space and will lose people, so you need extra people with the right skill at hand. Even in combat half the meatsacks will be busy with their own maintenance: sleeping, eating, washing, etc.


If you still can't find something for all the crew to do, there is always training, drills, and something that needs repainting or polishing.

 

[TamsinP]

Sections aside, Officer of the Deck and CIC Watch Officer are going to be stood by Command officers (the other watches would be stood by Engineering or Gunnery). If they stand 6 4-hour watches a day for 2 positions, that's 12 watches. There's 48 people, but taking the skipper, XO, and department heads off the watchbill and assuming some of the rest of the 48 command section are new and not yet qualified, say 36 are qualified to stand OOD and/or CICWO, they're standing 12 watches per day with 36 people. That's a very low-impact watch rotation. I guess it is what it is, but it's not like hard work. In RL, officers have regular jobs aside from watchstanding that take their time. Here, we've got a huge group of people with nothing to do except for 4 hours every 3 days. That sounds like a jobs program for nobles' kids.

So, explain the large number of officers on (now extant) battleships and (still going) aircraft carriers. What are they all doing?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So, explain the large number of officers on (now extant) battleships and (still going) aircraft carriers. What are they all doing?

Relaying and detailing orders?

There is a lot of activity between the Captain orders the ship to engage the enemy and gunner #47 fires at threat #142 using pattern Delta.

 

[Condottiere]

Politicking.

 

[Badenov]

So, explain the large number of officers on (now extant) battleships and (still going) aircraft carriers. What are they all doing?

They're not Command secion officers. On carriers, they're mainly pilots. On Battleships, there's turret officers, and a ton of engineering sub-departments that get division officers. Supply is a nightmare on such a large ship, I'm sure. Only a few of these people are standing OOD. There's no 'Command' section on carriers or battleships.

 

[TamsinP]

Relaying and detailing orders?

There is a lot of activity between the Captain orders the ship to engage the enemy and gunner #47 fires at threat #142 using pattern Delta.

Whoops! Forgot to finish what I was writing in that reply to the OP. I was intending to add "Because that is what all those "spare" officers of your Book 5 carrier will be doing."

For a good comparison with the OP's carrier, the Nimitz-class carriers have 203 officers and 3329 enlisted as crew, plus 366 officers and 2114 enlisted in the air wing, plus 20-30 officers and enlisted in the flag group. All that in a ship which works out as a little over 22000 dTons.

 

[bookwyrm]

Another thought about the question of 'what do they do' in the OP, why not put in just the officers you think need to be on that ship, and see if it actually works. Maybe do a 1v1 with 2 ships of 90k dtons, one with officers from RAW and the other with the officers you think would be a better fit and see how it works out. Kind of an extreme way to do it, but why not?

I've never been in the military, but I've read many historical accounts of battles where chain of command is important in some way or another. I've done up a few small military ships, and once rolled up the crew for a 20k dton ship just to see what it looks like. Even I was wondering about the number of officers in the 20k ship. Next time I do that, I should do a break down of just where they actually go, and if it's a fit or not in the Traveller Universe.

 

[Badenov]

... and once rolled up the crew for a 20k dton ship just to see what it looks like. Even I was wondering about the number of officers in the 20k ship. Next time I do that, I should do a break down of just where they actually go, and if it's a fit or not in the Traveller Universe.

So this is what led to the question for me. I had a new ship and tried to work out what the crew actually did day to day. Without the boated Command section, it seems almost reasonable. For the Command section, I would use the listed 'minimum personnel' plus the department heads. That seems reasonable to me. I can imagine the Command section don't get 4-ton staterooms, either, but they have 2-ton staterooms like everyone else and a 2-ton office space where they manage stuff.

Departments on RL ships not in HG: Operations, Deck. I'm equating Service with the supply department, though it seems to leak into Repair, Engineering and Gunnery are both standard departments. Any Marine det on board is obviously also separate.

The glory of modern mechanised warfare:

1: Paperwork...
We are not talking about cast-iron battleships here, this is aerospace. Every single bolt, fluid, filter, seal, pump, missile, and structural member is documented, inspected, and replaced at certain intervals. And then some component is recalled, and all the schedules are changed on the fly...
You're doing the maintenance on an F-22 while flying combat missions, in addition to the actual combat missions.

I am assuming this is pretty automated. It was somewhat automated in the 1990's, by 5100, they ought to have this worked out.

2: Middle management.
Draw an org chart for 1000 people with say 4 reports per "manager", see how many layers of middle management you end up with...
The crew are not muscle, but highly trained technicians, doing specialised necessary task, otherwise they wouldn't be there.
You need middle management to send all the paperwork in the right direction.

See above about automating paperwork. I'm not sure what '4 reports per manager' even means, but HG says for 10 engineers, you need an officer. That works out for me. It's the 50-officer command section I'm asking about.

3: Function duplication...
You need something like four full watches on a large warship. You are alone in space and will lose people, so you need extra people with the right skill at hand. Even in combat half the meatsacks will be busy with their own maintenance: sleeping, eating, washing, etc.

No one's doing any of that (sleeping, eating, washing, any other sort of maintenance) in combat. In combat, you're 100% in combat. I deployed on a FFG and a DD and both were in 2 watch sections underway.

We were told if a drill went on for more than 6-8 hours, they would send us a bag lunch from the galley, though it never happened, but regardless, we just toughed it out. Even bathroom breaks require special coordination because you have to break the sealed structural integrity of the ship to get from your battle station to the head.

If you still can't find something for all the crew to do, there is always training, drills, and something that needs repainting or polishing.

I'm assuming the bloat section is part of a special training cadre that runs drills all the time (on our ship, it was a collateral duty). Officers don't paint or polish.

 

[Condottiere]

You can always freeze dry one, or more, watches.

 

[Rupert]

So, are starship crews wildly topheavy (more officers than needed)? I did a design of a 94,000T carrier, and wind up with 128 officers for 795 crew using the Book 5 formulas. What are they in charge of? The 5 per 10,000 tons is the main culprit, 10,000 tons of ship is capable of sitting there without needing an officer to supervise it but I have 48 Officers based on my tonnage. Seven are mentioned by job in the text: CO, XO, Comp O, Comm O, Doc (and eratta adds a small medical department, so does Command also need an additional Doc?), and two Nav O's, but that leaves 41 with no specific job. I have 14 Gunnery Officers for one spinal mount, 5 50-ton bays, and 2 turrets which are ganged into one higher-rating weapon. I have 29 Engineering Officers for a Rating 6 M-Drive and a Rating 3 Jump Drive. And the Service department has 23 officers. What do they all do?

Is the Navy just a place for nobles to put their kids to keep them out of the way? I can see it as a kind of jobs program for nobles.

For comparison, USS Iowa sailed with 151 Officers for 2637 enlisted crew in WW2.

I don't think a WWII battleship with all those AA guns that needed manning but not much in the way of command is a good comparison.

The ratio you give (128 officers for 795 crew) is either at the high end of normal (if by 'crew' you mean non-officers), or into 'a bit bloated' (if you mean '128 officers out of a total of 795'). Some of the un-assigned would be junior officers that are actually unnecessary (most of the time(, but need ship-time to learn their craft. Some will be there for redundancy, and to command damage control crews.

Note that some of the earlier rule sets assumed that 'command' was one per six other crew, determined before medical, stewards, and a few other things, so probably about 12-14% of the total, and this is in the same general range.

One thing to check is how it looks for a civilian bulk hauler of the same size. I find those to be the ships that have the most bloat, in both crew and in officers, in most rule sets.

 

[atpollard]

There are 168 hours in a week.

Assuming a 40 hour "on-duty" work week, that equates to 4.2 "shifts" per work week. So each JOB on a ship has 4 people on duty 42 hours per week or 5 people on duty 34 hours per week (plus the overlap at shift change in either case).

That will account for a large percentage of those crew numbers and provide surplus crew for "damage control" or to cover mass casualties in combat.

THEREFORE:
"94,000T carrier ... with 128 officers for 795 crew using the Book 5 formulas" = 26-32 Officers and 159-199 Crew on duty at any given moment.

 

[casquilho]

I notice there is one answer that is being ignored here, the author/designer did not know and thus just picked a ratio that sounded good to them. No real basis for fact or reality. Then years later, some poor souls on a forum try and rationalize their choice when, in fact, there is no reality linked to their choice.

 

[TamsinP]

One thing to check is how it looks for a civilian bulk hauler of the same size. I find those to be the ships that have the most bloat, in both crew and in officers, in most rule sets.

And then compare those to the typical crewing requirements of modern cargo ships:
Master
Deck Department - Chief/1st Mate/Officer, 2nd Mate/Officer, 3rd Mate/Officer, 3 x nav watch rating, 2-3 x general rating
Steward's Department - Ship's Cook, Assistant Steward
Engineering Department - Chief Engineer, 2nd Engineer, 3rd Engineer, 4th Engineer, 4-6 engine ratings

So, that's 8 officers and 11-14 ratings. On larger ships, the Chief/1st Mate/Officer might not be a watch-stander, and they will have an extra 2nd/3rd Mate/Officer; they will typically have more general ratings as well. Reefer and larger container ships will often have Electro-Technical Officers and ratings added to the Engineering Department. Tankers will usually have additional general ratings to deal with firefighting.

Looking at the 2020 World Fleet Staqtistics from Equasis, the average size of bulk carriers works out at about 10,000 dTons. Try designing a basic cargo ship (M1, J1) and compare the Book 5 crew with the "typical" crew I've posted above - I suspect that it will be much higher all round..

 

[Badenov]

And then compare those to the typical crewing requirements of modern cargo ships:
Master
Deck Department - Chief/1st Mate/Officer, 2nd Mate/Officer, 3rd Mate/Officer, 3 x nav watch rating, 2-3 x general rating
Steward's Department - Ship's Cook, Assistant Steward
Engineering Department - Chief Engineer, 2nd Engineer, 3rd Engineer, 4th Engineer, 4-6 engine ratings

So, that's 8 officers and 11-14 ratings. On larger ships, the Chief/1st Mate/Officer might not be a watch-stander, and they will have an extra 2nd/3rd Mate/Officer; they will typically have more general ratings as well. Reefer and larger container ships will often have Electro-Technical Officers and ratings added to the Engineering Department. Tankers will usually have additional general ratings to deal with firefighting.

Looking at the 2020 World Fleet Staqtistics from Equasis, the average size of bulk carriers works out at about 10,000 dTons. Try designing a basic cargo ship (M1, J1) and compare the Book 5 crew with the "typical" crew I've posted above - I suspect that it will be much higher all round..

So this one was different when I encountered the situation in RL (in 1994-ish). I had a GF on an AO back in the day, and a tech school friend who showed me around the T-AO he was on when we stumbled across each other in port. They were very similar ships, both oilers, and nearly the same size, but the T-AO had a mostly civilian crew with a few military people for the few pieces of military-specific gear they had aboard. The T-AO was crewed as described above, with civilian staterooms for everyone, automated everything, and modern firefighting gear. The AO had what I would think of as a full military crew, with the old 1940's era firefighting gear like we had on my destroyer, which wikipedia tells me was finally phased out in 2001.