Crew Calcualtor Version 6

Posts

• Starship1405172 Posts: 22Member

  April 2013 #2

  

  Most awesome tool for figuring out all these pesky details! I have often hoped for a similar tool for figuring out how long it would take a spacecraft of a given size, thrust, weight, etc., to make landfall and achieve orbit (i.e., how long did it take the Nostromo to make landfall and return to orbit? Thanks for the work involved in giving us these spreadsheets!
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  April 2013 #3

  

  Thanks, that is one of the reasons I created this.
  
  As for a calculator to figure out to time to orbit and to make landfall, that would be more difficult as the design would have to be taken into account more to factor in drag forces, but it would be an interesting exercise.
• Saquist0 Posts: 0Member

  April 2013 #4

  This is a dramatic recreation of the tool. I really like the color code system and totals menu jumps right out at you. You just can't miss it or miss understand anything.
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  April 2013 #5

  

  Thanks, that was the point of the redesign more than anything, to make it easier to use.
• SebastianP171 Posts: 0Member

  May 2013 #6

  

  Not sure I understand how the fire control mini calculator works - my ships, being based on WW2 ships, have fire control turrets that are separate from the gun turrets (a battleship normally has six main turrets, with four dedicated fire control directors; twenty secondary turrets with eight fire control directors; thirty to forty medium AA turrets with their own individual director, and between 80 to 150 light AA guns with an on-mount director.) A *major* portion of the ship's crew are involved in the operation of the guns. I've pretty much been going with the same size crews as the original WW2 ships each of mine is based on, despite them being three times the length and maybe thirty-ish times the mass.
  
  Clues, please?
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  May 2013 #7

  

  Ok, then the question is this:
  How many crew per director?
  How many crew per turret?
  Example: A heavy/main turret has 10 gunners (IIRC my WW2 BB turrets), plus 4 directors per turret with 2 crew each right? So each main/hvy turret has a dedicated crew of 10+4x2=18.
  
  Or if the directors are per turret type, then add that into the blank spaces i.e.:
  FC Directors: 2x(4+8+40)... = 104 FC Directors total x number of shifts.
  
  Does that make sense?
• spacefighter1 Posts: 0Member

  May 2013 #8

  Knight26 wrote: »

  Ok, then the question is this:
  How many crew per director?
  How many crew per turret?

  you may also wish to note that if turrets must be manned for very long periods of time you should have a few shifts to work in them, multiply the number of crew needed by 3 or 4(the number of shifts). this is certainly the case with engineering crews. another way to help would be consider what functions on each gun must be controlled or what manual work is needed, multiply by number of guns in a turret and add a few extra to manage the whole turret(including fire controllers for that turret who are elsewhere on the ship). then multiply by the number of turrets. how many crew you need really does depend on your level of automation, considering your WW2 style design i am thinking it will not be highly automated? maybe for some of the lightest turrets give them automated targeting and simply requiring human verification to fire(too much risk of hitting your own craft otherwise), if your tech level allows that. it would save on crew and automated targeting would be faster than a human. hope i helped.
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  May 2013 #9

  

  SF have you ever even used or played with the crew calculator?
  
  If not please do not attempt to offer others on this thread advice on a tool you have never used. Everything you have described is already on there, shifts, the ability change the crew number per turret, and add the fire control directors, etc...
  
  If you want to troll on your own threads go ahead, but this thread is to help people using the crew calculator or to make requests for help and additions, not whatever you're doing here.
• SebastianP171 Posts: 0Member

  May 2013 #10

  

  Thanks for the reply. I think a better name for the "Fire controller" section would be "Gunners" or "gunnery crew", that would be a little more intuitive for people like me who think "fire controlmen" are the people who decide where to shoot, not the guys manning the guns...
  
  According to the crew figures I found for the real world Iowa, she required 900 gunnery and fire control crew for one shift during WW2, and 450-odd gunnery crew for one shift in the 1980s. That's out of 2700 and 1800 respectively, so I figure there were two shifts of gunnery crews and 900 other personnel aboard, or something like that.
  
  So, using a mass of 1.2 million tons, 1 FTL engine, 4 STL engines, 8 reactors, 4 shield generators, and double the number of mounts, half the number of crew per mount, and 2 shifts, my Iowa-class battleship comes out to 3098 crew, which is 400 more than the original, but still in the ballpark, if you account for the addition of food production facilities.
  
  (BTW, what counts as a factory? I added one as the original ship had a large machine shop, but they also had carpenters, tailors, bookbinders, cobblers and other things.)
  
  I *am* kind of curious though as to how the sample destroyer of 44 thousand tons manages to squeeze in 3300 crew, though, considering the original Iowa was about that size and had 600 less crew, while having a substantially less hostile environment and much easier life support requirements to deal with. And an "air wing" consisting of three sea planes and half a dozen boats, rather than thirty shuttlecraft and nearly forty fighters and attack craft...
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  May 2013 #11

  

  So what kind of numbers is it giving, just the stuff in the Totals box? Or better post a screens shot like the one uptop of the mini-calcs and totals box. I can give it a quick sanity check for you.
• SebastianP171 Posts: 0Member

  May 2013 #12

  

  OK. For ref, my input settings:
  
  1.2 million ton mass, 8 reactors, 4 engines, 4 shield generators, 1 FTL engine, 1 hangar/flight deck, 4 sensor arrays, 1 cargo hold, 1 onboard factory, 8 tractor beams, 38 decks.
  
  Ship has FTL, Onboard Farm, Botanical Bay, Robots and Recreational facilities, and is a command ship.
  
  Air wing is one squadron of 4 each of shuttles, light dropships, heavy dropships and light fighters, with stock crew settings.
  
  120 single-man, 40 six man, twenty 13-man and six 47-man gun turrets; plus 8 four-man and 4 six-man fire control turrets, all with two shifts each.
  
  No troops, no further manual inputs.
  
  The totals are:
  2962 just crew, 136 air wing, 0 troops (3098 total); of which 297 are officers, 2747 are enlisted, and 21 are civilian staff.
  
  This looks perfectly sane to me.
  
  Or, if you were referring to the destroyer, the input values are all stock (what was on the sheet you uploaded). Output is:
  
  1165 just crew, 491 air wing, 1571 troops, 3227 total crew, of which 676 are officers, 2480 are enlisted, and 24 civilians.
  
  The only thing I find curious about that is the ship mass of 44 thousand tons - 3227 crew is a lot for an oceangoing ship of that mass, let alone a space ship, especially when a huge amount of space will be needed for the 69 embarked spacecraft and 240 ground vehicles. It's actually straight up comparable to a Wasp-class LHD, but that doesn't have sixteen gun emplacements and two torpedo launchers, nor does it need to be totally self sufficient on air and water, or fit huge space thrusters and FTL engines. Adding another zero to the mass only increases the crew by 33 people, though, and gives a bit more than twice the the length, weight and height of the Wasp to work with...
  .9
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  May 2013 #13

  

  That sounds good given the turret gunner numbers, I forgot how many crew those big BB guns used to take. As for comparing it to modern ships, the numbers of earlist version were based on actual wet navy ship numbers, they have since changed, and this assumes a tech level able to support such numbers, otherwise the list becomes a list of jobs, and some people will then fill multiple roles. Comparison to wet navy ships does fail to take into account that if traditional wet navy ships operated in true 24hr shifts as depicted on here then their crew numbers would grow significantly too. As it is mdern ships, for the most part, operate min mannng night watches except under combat conditions.
  
  Also I agree on dropping gunnery shifts down to two, with a "night watch" for most applications. Just remember that off shifts crews will usually make up your damage control parties during combat.
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  February 2015 #14

  

  We're back:
  
  While commenting on Rob's Cole Class Destroyer Thread he brought up a good point about automation. The current crew calculators do not take much automation into account. So I am going to get started on a v7 that incorporates automation to certain fields. I am debating a more manual v7B that but will see how the automated version works first. The question is, what what positions can we automate and should I do it by levels of automation: i.e. zero, low, medium, and high automation. Incorporating that could get really tricky. I would appreciate any help with creating an automations list:
  
  Each level of automation would include all the automation of the previous levels.
  
  Low Auto:
  Farmers
  Chefs
  Cooks
  Janitorial
  Servers
  
  Med Auto:
  Factory Operators
  Maintenance
  Cargo Handling
  
  High Auto:
  Fire Controllers/gunnery crews
  Flight Deck Crew
  Launch Control
  AC Mechanics
• Saquist0 Posts: 0Member

  February 2015 #15

  Good idea. I need numbers on my Enigma Class and I wasn't sure how much automation would effect the numbers.
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  February 2015 #16

  

  SO I am trying to make v7 as automatic as possible, so that users don't have to delve into the main portion at all unless they want to override one of the calculated numbers.
  
  Right now the manual inputs int he main portion are for:
  Chaplains: This is easy to fix, just a question up in the top about number of faiths practiced onboard.
  Personal Trainers: I can make this number dependent on crew numbers.
  Factory Operators: This one is very dependent on the size and function of the factory, but I can maybe change it to have the factory question include the size.
  Transient Personnel: This one really varies for ship types, I could maybe make it a function of the total crew numbers, but it really is more a function of the design.
• Knight26186 Posts: 832Member

  February 2015 #17

  

  ALmost ready to take v7 live. The starbase tab is giving me some issues, but that will be resolved soon.