Manpower Breakdown on an Akira

[Cmdr Powers]

Steve, we've come up with a problem during the Star Trek: Vanguard PBEM game: Most sources, including you and Starship Spotter, list the crew of an Akira at 500, but also list this ship as carrying up around 40 fighters. Would the flight crews, logistics, and maintenance personnel come out of the 500 crew or would those folks be in addition to the regular starship crew?

[Steve Long]

Y'know, I don't know if I ever thought about it before. But given the size of the vessel, I expect it needs 500 crew on its own, so the fighter pilots are in addition, and maybe some others. The crew would include most of the maintenance and logistics people, though. Of course, the 500 crew number would thus fluctuate depending on how many fighters were assigned to a given vessel.

Steve Long

[Cmdr Powers]

500 sounds like a big number until you begin to break it down into at least three duty shifts and into all the jobs available on a heavy cruiser.

Our speculation into Aerospace Wing operations led us to consider at least backup crews for fighters (80 people) and at least 3 persons each machine for maintenance (120 people). There's 200 folk right there and we haven't started to count administrative and armaments and flight deck systems.

We decided that you would probably have an 'air wing' of 36 fighters, but that an Akira might not normally embark that many ships for some missions. We gave the Vanguard 12 fighters (a squadron) for its long range mission into the Beta Quadrant, but in retrospect, I wish we had embarked the whole wing after seeing how effective yet fragile the SAF's were in combat.

500 crew for the starship and 200 crew for the air wing? Where do all these people sleep?!

[qerlin]

We've got an Arika as one of the ships in the campaign. Our breakdown was close to this:

Operations: 122 (19 officers, 103 enlisted)
Tactical: 76 (12 officers, 50 enlisted)
Sciences: 50 (30 officers, 20 enlisted)
Engineering: 124 (24 officers, 100 enlisted)
Flight Operations (wing of 48 fighters): 172 (52 officers, 120 enlisted) -- this entails flight crews, shuttlebay operations and dedicated techs.

Our total: 544

I figure this a standard peacetime crew complement

[Cmdr Powers]

Not bad, Qerlin. It looks pretty good here. Can Security/Tactical operate with just 76? And is 124 sufficient for a ship of Akira's complexity? We might end up using your game's figures. Thanks!

[redwood973]

This may be comparing apples to oranges but, as far as tending our 4 shuttles (on a Miranda -class ship) we have:

• One deck officer (Lieut.)
• Two assistant deck officers (Ens.)
• One bosun (Chief Petty Officer)
• One bosun's yeoman (Petty Officer 3d Class)
• Twelve bosun's mates (PO3)
• Six shuttle crewchiefs (PO3)

This works out to be about 5 crewmen for each shuttle. . .

By definition the deck officers assist in the safe, orderly and speedy flow of shuttle traffic by directing and controlling shuttlecraft. They communicate to pilots information regarding traffic and navigation information.

The bosun and his mates operate, maintain and repari shuttle launch/recovery and fuel transger systems. They direct shuttles on the hangar deck and in repair bays before launch and after recovery.

The crewchiefs, supervised by the bosun, perform all operations not done by the bosun and his mates i.e., the actual shuttle engineering and ordnance work.

. . .how this would work for a carrier having 40 fighters to launch, recover and maintain I have no clue (which is o.k. cause in my sick little world those damn ugly things they made for First Contact don't exist ).

[Lancer]

Originally posted by qerlin
We've got an Arika as one of the ships in the campaign. Our breakdown was close to this:

Operations: 122 (19 officers, 103 enlisted)
Tactical: 76 (12 officers, 50 enlisted)
Sciences: 50 (30 officers, 20 enlisted)
Engineering: 124 (24 officers, 100 enlisted)
Flight Operations (wing of 48 fighters): 172 (52 officers, 120 enlisted) -- this entails flight crews, shuttlebay operations and dedicated techs.

Our total: 544

I figure this a standard peacetime crew complement

During peacetime operations I would rather go with the 14% science personnel Steve listed in Spacedock for heavy cruisers, ie. ca. 70-75. These shipy have to fill the traditional cruiser role of operations, even if the Akira is close to a battleship.

Another thing is Flight Operations: With 48 fighters you need 96 pilots / RIOs at least if you want to field all fighters at once. That leaves you with 76 ops and tech personnel (less if you have backup flight crews). In the end that would be about 1 dedicated tech per fighter. That seems a rather low number IMHO.

[Cmdr Powers]

You make some good points, Lancer.

We would certainly like to keep with Steve's estimates of crew breakdown, but the carrier concept would seem to call for something a bit different.

The Akira definitely has to fill the role of Heavy Cruiser, but all those small craft change the way the crew operates. My guess is that equivalent modern ship might be one of those Russian 'Anti-Submarine' Moskva or K-something classes (its late...).

Starship Spotter calls for 40 fighters in an Akira class. This would mean 80 pilot/RIO crew, but you might have half again as many crew for replacement purposes, bringing that up to 120. Allowing for 2 techs per bird and you've got your 200 crew just for flying and tending fighters.

Also, Redwood, I think the Akira is pretty (pretty complicated too) and apparently so do a lot of other folks, but its certainly your game to do with as you please!

[Lancer]

One way to keep the Akira as a carrier and still have it fill the cruiser role would be to have an Airwing that doesn't entirely consist of fighters, but throws some Talons and Runabouts in the mix as well.
Say 24-36 fighters, 3-4 Runabouts and 2 Talons as a standard auxiliary craft complement. That would still be more than enough fighters to make a big difference in a fight but OTOH would give you a lot of flexibility for conducting peacetime operations.

[Cmdr Powers]

Which is pretty much what we did in the Star Trek: Vanguard PBEM game. The Vanguard carried 12 fighters, a Talon, and a Danube class onboard in addition to 8 or so shuttlecraft. A pretty variable loadout. We lost the Talon in that first Akira vs D'Deridex action, along with 4 fighters, and we're about to use the Danube class (USS Colorado) for an Away Mission.

[Robbert Raets]

Do you really need so many techs/engineers to maintain the fighters? Wouldn't Starfleet expect their pilots to be able to repair & ship-shape the fighter(s) themselves?

[Lancer]

I am no expert on todays aricraft carrier operations, but AFAIK the duty time the pilots don't spend flying would be more filled with administrative work, than repair and maintenance.

This would include things like assisting the LSO (Landing Signal Officer), spending time on the bridge to get 1st hand experience how the fighter operations interrelate to the rest of the ships tactical and strategic operations, doing paperwork, etc.

[Steve Long]

All very interesting points!

One additional factor I'll throw into the mix, re: administrative and logistical matters. As the TNGTM notes, Starfleet's real genius is not in creating warp drives or photon torpedoes, it's in administrative and personnel type matters -- its capacity to keep hundreds or thousands of highly intelligent, highly motivated people working as close to peak efficiency as possible without becoming bored, burning out, or what have you. Thus, they need a lot less people to do any given job than we would today, I'd say. Between replicators, super-computers, and on and on and on, I think they probably keep admin and logistical problems minimized. For example, except perhaps in times of war/heavy fighter use, I agree with the notion that fighter pilots can probably do the upkeep/maintenance/repairs on their own fighters.

Besides, it's no fun to game admin and logistical problems.

Steve Long

[Cmdr Powers]

Besides, fighter pilots like to hang it out. That is they love to party! Seriously, according to the book Fast Movers, combat pilots would encounter such stress that many of them would deal this by the antics you see in some of the movies like Flight of the Intruder. And this was tolerated by their superiors who had 'been there'.

Now what does this have to do with Trek? These are still figher pilots. The mark of a good fighter pilot is that he/she gets involved in his machine- how it works, who fixes it, etc. I can see Starfleet greatly encouraging its small craft pilots to work on their ships ala Steve above. This would lead to much happier pilots and tech crews and bleed off some of that tension!

Okay, less techies, more tech work for pilots!

[Phantom]

Just out of curiousity where does it say that the Akira is a carrier? Let alone a thru-deck cruiser?

Is it canon or is it fan based?