DropShip & JumpShip Crews & their Ranks

[boilerman]

Anyone know of any canon fluff describing the ranks of DropShip and JumpShip crews? I'm looking for info above and beyond the construction rule requirements of 1 officer per 6 basic crew and gunners.

I am a US Navy veteran so I know how it tends to organize crews first hand. No command I ever served in had 17% ratio of commissioned officers to crew, outside of EOD. I've always assumed most of the officers in BT, on DropShips and JumpShips, are non-commissioned officers like the chiefs in the USN.

Thoughts? Information sources?

[Frabby]

In Far Country (and yes it is canon), Reston Bannin was Master and Commander of his Scout-class JumpShip. Parker Davud meanwhile was the owner and pilot of his Leopard-class DropShip, didn't have a rank, and apparently didn't have crew or they weren't mentioned and didn't survive planetfall.

The Clans are different because of their caste system playing into ranks and roles aboard ships. Jason Schmetzer's Operation Ice Storm has Clan spacer characters.

[Daryk]

Didn't the Star League source book talk about O-3s commanding smaller DropShips?

When I work up ship crews, I generally try to make sure there's enough to man a three-section watch bill (so at least three officers, ideally outside of the Captain, but on the smallest ships, the CO is also a watch stander).

[jklantern]

Some of the different House Books touch on this.  Unfortunately, I don't have them in front of me at the moment.  Typically, each house has a Naval Version of their standard ranks (I think Houses Kurita and Marik are the most consistent with this).

[boilerman]

Thanks for the reminder JKL.   :)
I need to dig those books out of the storage unit one of these days.

Daryk, but does every watch section leader need to be a commissioned officer? I think a senior non-com could qualify. I saw quite a few chiefs qualify as command-duty-officer at the smaller commands I served at.

[Daryk]

It depends.  I was a submarine nuke back in the day, and things like EOOW and OOD had to be commissioned officers, but I've heard of conventional ships qualifying Chiefs as OODs (I have yet to hear of an enlisted TAO, though).  The Manatee I put together has a CO, XO, Chief Engineer and Chief Gunner.  I fluffed the two latter ones  as Chief Petty Officers instead of commissioned officers (since the whole crew is a grand total of 10, and it made the quarters cheaper), so it could work.  Basically, a watch section is one of the three right under the CO plus two of the ratings (there being 5 gunners and one assistant engineer).

[boilerman]

As much as I like using subs as my guide for BT navies everything gets weird when you throw in the nukes. However I think nukes can be a useful guide too. DropShips, JumpShips and WarShips are very high tech machines. My personal opinion is, and we all know what those are worth, that their crews would be trained to a nuke's level of knowledge of their ship, minimum. And the time to train them would be similar, year and a half to 2 years.

I have been playing around with ship's crew organization today with that in mind and I've found I like the 1 commissioned officer to 6 ship's enlisted company. I agree there should be a minimum of commissioned officers aboard, I prefer 2. Basically my structure works out to 2 ratings (BT E3-E6) per chief (BT E7-E9) and 1 commissioned officer per 6 enlisted. Actual ratio of varies between 5 and 6 the way I've organized things.

I think it's worth noting I don't try to breakdown the crew into departments and divisions to try to breakdown the ranks. I just go with total BT crew and gunners lumped together and break them down into 3-person teams and throw in the officers.

BTW, small world Daryk, NNPS 8703.  :)

[Daryk]

Small world indeed!  9401 here, though I'll say my departure from the nuclear community was the end of a short and inglorious career as a nuke.  The rest of the Navy is a bit different.  The surface and aviation communities run with a far higher number of enlisted per officer (despite the make up of aviation squadrons in the latter case; the Air and AIMD Departments on a carrier run with relatively few officers, and are just as necessary to the whole operation as any pilot).

I agree BT spaceships are very complicated machines, but I'll say I think they're designed to be much more "failsafe" and "idiot proof" than most of what we have now.  Admiral Rickover was firmly against digital technology until it could prove itself as reliable (or more so) than analog, so we had decades of muddling through much older and more manpower intensive machinery (steam driven feed pumps, anyone?).

With JumpShips and DropShips, I agree it's a losing proposition to go too far with departments and divisions.  When the crew is that small, it doesn't make much sense.  But once you get to WarShip size, it starts to make sense again.

Oh, and on the training track: if you look at AToW, page 73, you'll see that "Basic Training(Naval)" is 6 months, and "Advanced Training" (which includes "Ship's Crew") is another 18, so two years before anyone sees a ship at all, and if they want to be Engineers, "Technician/Aerospace" adds another year.  Overall, I think TPTB got this part largely right. :)

[Nightlord01]

Our patrol boats can have Leading Seamen(E5), Petty Officers(E6) and Chief Petty Officers (E8) as OOWs, provided they have their bridge nav ticket. OOD isn't really a concept they cover as they tend to hand the keys over when they get alongside, but all of our shore establishments have senior sailors as OODs. Our Survey Motor Launches don't even have a commissioned officer on board.

In the RAN, the only real reason we have commissioned officers in charge of a boat or ship is accountability. Many of our sailors are as well or better educated as their commissioned counterparts. I once asked why we even have the divided advancement scheme anymore, copped more flak for that one question than you'd believe. The most reasonable answer came from, of all things, an Army infantry officer, who claimed that the division is important due to the length of the promotion cycle and still desiring youth in our officer ranks.

As a side note: Don't ever challenge the requirement for officers, they get pretty defensive about it. >.<

[Nebfer]

per the house handbooks

The Fed Suns field manual mentions that Lt Colonels command Dropships, Colonels command Squadrons or jumpships, Leftenant Generals command multiple squadrons of dropships, a jumpship squadron or as the 2ic of warships and Major Generals serve as warship captains.

The FWL handbook mentions that their Major (Force Commander, or simply Commander for naval use) equivalent are common Dropship & Jumpship commanders as well. With Captains (Lt. Colonel) being Ship commanders (I.e. warships and likely a number of "lesser ships").
Colonels (Commodore) are fleet commanders.

The Lyran Handbook has naval units being similar to their Davion counter parts. Colonel (captain) being the ship commander, and Leutnant General being squadron leaders (or warship executive officers), with Hauptmann General being warship commanders

Laio warship captains are Colonels, Lt. Colonel is mentioned to be the highest obtainable for dropship & jumpship officers

The Kurita handbook makes no mention of naval commanders outside that a Colonel is per the navy a captain, as per the SLDF (a contradiction)

Speaking of the SLDF
Captains (O3) are Dropship commanders, Majors Jumpships and Destroyers, Colonels commands major warships or flotillas

For the smaller houses
the Magistracy it's Majors being ship commanders and Colonels being squadron commanders
Taurian navy it's Colonels being ship commanders and the next rank up (comptroller) is "squadron" commander
Space Rome dose not say (though the 3058 FM, mentions Dropships are Centurions and Legatus are Jumpships, Lieutenant and Major respectively)

Mercenary's go with dropship and jumpship Captain = Colonel

By in large with most B-tech ships (of the non warship type) having only a few dozen crew, it seems most of these ships are way over ranked, which puts the actual SLDF as actually being fare more realistic in this regards, as putting a colonel equivalent in charge of 24ish men is a bit overkill.

The Avenger has 3 officers and 12 men, it's kinda hard to believe that one of these guys is going to be a Colonel... One can see a pair of Lieutenants and a Captain... or the 5 Officers and 25 Enlisted men with 14 other Bay Crew (ignoring the 28 Marines) of the Achilles, of which a quartet of Lieutenants (perhaps with an Ensign in tow) and said Captain, or the 8 Officers and 34 Enlisted of an Overlord, here you can see perhaps a Major with a Captain or two (one of which likely is the XO) and a bunch of Lieutenants and perhaps an Ensign or two to top it off. One can see sort of a loose out line of the departments with 5ish junior officers being the heads leaving the 3 more senior officers for other tasks, the Gunners and a Officer being the gunnery department, an officer and a number of EN being the Bridge department (navigation), an Engineering department, the other two departments revolving around the cargo bay, basic maintenance, supply, medical and messing needs... Though for most of the other ships with smaller crews departments do get a bit difficult to deal with...

 Jumpships are similarly crewed, with even the largest ships only having 30 base crew 5 of whom are officers.

It's only when you get to warships do you see more than 10 officers any any given time on these ships.

Though personally I feel that in many cases the ship crews are often to small, particularly when faced with their requirements like a lack of crew for combat ships (I.e. Damage control) or technical crews for supporting fighters and or shuttles, given that we now have notional rules that indicate these ships carry 7-15 tons of coms gear, one could justify the required crews be added to the crew lists, and perhaps at lest a single mess, medical and tech teams, would go a fair way of adding crew mass to these ships.

[boilerman]

Thank you everyone for your input and thank you Nebfer for compiling the info from the FMs. That was exactly the thing I didn't want to do myself.

Nightlord brings up a good point. As Daryk points out in BT it's about 2 1/2 years of training before a crewman sees a ship, regardless of type. In my opinion it's pushing things to the point where you ask why there is a distinction between enlisted and commissioned officers. I'm inclined to stick with the distinction to show career paths.

The info Nebfer collected shows there's much more of a range of ranks commanding ships than I would've have expected.  I can believe O5/Lieutenant Colonels and O6/Colonels commanding WarShips, they are valuable, prestigious assets but I cannot believe an O5 is going to command a DropShip with a crew of 10 to 20. I'm comfortable with O3s commanding the majority of the DropShips out there with crews up to 20, maybe 25. I can imagine a very valuable unit, such as an Overlord to be commanded by an experienced DropShip officer, an O4. But by the time an officer in the DropShip branch makes O5 I'd except them to be commanding DropShip squadrons, say about 4 to 7 vessels. Heck I would be OK with an O4 commanding a division of 2 or 3 smaller DropShips.

To clarify I am using the O ranks rather than titles because lieutenant and captain confuses many that don't understand the difference between army and navy ranks.

I've be playing around with a spreadsheet to breakdown crews into ranks, I'll share it here eventually. Of course it's just my opinion of how things should work but I am rethinking the rank ratios:

1. Ratings (E3 to E6), are the rank and file. Distribution would be top heavy because these people are the techs not leaders and their rank would reflect their tech abilities, not leadership skills.

2. Chiefs (E7 to E9 ) ratio 1 chief (all ranks) per between 2 to 3 ratings. About three E7's per one E8 and about the same ration for E8's to E9's.

Pretty arbitrary I know.

Still working on officers but I think the lowest commissioned officer rank normally seen in the fleet would be O2. O1's have just gotten out of their officer training and are spending a year or two in school to learn how to handle a ship. They're promoted to O2 once they are finished with this schooling. I doubt an O2 is going to command a DropShip but I can easily see them as XO's. O3's normally command DropShips up to about 5,000 tons. DropShips above 5,000 tons and/or with crew greater than 25 I'd expect O4's to be the most common CO rank.

For JumpShips I see O4's commanding most. They would be a mix of experienced DropShip commanders with additional training in hyperspace navigation and career JumpShip officers trained as hyperspace navigators and KF drive engineers from the beginning that have worked their way up the ranks.

Again, just my opinion.

[boilerman]

So what's the largest DropShip crew in the canon?

[Daryk]

O1s and O2s could "command" Small Craft...

As far as largest crew, my guess would be the Behemoth; Sarna says their crew is 50.

[Vition2]

So what's the largest DropShip crew in the canon?

I don't think there's even really a contest, the Castrum wins pretty handily with 110 (20 officers, 20 gunners, 70 additional crew).

[boilerman]

I don't think there's even really a contest, the Castrum wins pretty handily with 110 (20 officers, 20 gunners, 70 additional crew).

And I thought doing crews up to 100 was overkill.   ;D

[boilerman]

O1s and O2s could "command" Small Craft...

They could. And I would say chiefs could too. I'm working on a crew breakdown for small craft too assuming a chief could be in charge of smaller small craft crews, 6 or so.

[Nightlord01]

O1s and O2s could "command" Small Craft...

As far as largest crew, my guess would be the Behemoth; Sarna says their crew is 50.

As a professional sailor HELL NO! O1/2's are trainees, not command officers. You do not want them commanding anything, they can barely tie their shoelaces! Their job is to learn the ship and complete their training, not make decisions based on non-existent experience.

O3 is at least a competent officer, fully trained and should be ticketed for what they need, as an added bonus, there's more O3's around than any other officer rank so that's the floor I'd fall to. Mind you, the RAN requires at least an O4 to take up command of a major asset, which is a very broad category meaning anything worth over X amount of money, which would include any overnight vessel.

An E8 is not going to be the CO unless there's some serious changes, as they don't have the governmental blessing to be accountable for a major asset. The reason for officers in the modern military is as much accountability as anything else, things are divided up into areas of responsibility, and you need a certain rank to take responsibility at various levels. O4 is generally considered the minimum rank for this command, Army is the same, with sub-units being commanded by a Major (O4).

E6-10 are mostly responsible for training up the E2-5, ensuring they are properly trained and resourced to perform their task, as well as dealing with the immense amount of admin military members generate. They are not a tactical decision maker, they have experience built up over years and this gives them influence, but that's as far as it stretches. I hope this makes sense, navies tend to be very hide bound and stratified, all of it laid down by government in a far stricter way than armies, although not as strict as air forces.

[Daryk]

BT Small Craft have pretty short leashes for the most part, which is why I put "command" in quotes...

[boilerman]

In my opinion there is plenty of precedent for an O1, O2 being in charge of a small craft in BT.
The tug that supported my ship in the Med wasn't exactly an ocean going tug but not your typical harbor tug either. I saw it make a few transits around the Med to support us. A senior chief was in charge.
The entire US Army fleet, such as it is, of large landing craft, around 1100 tons loaded, are commanded by warrant officers. They use the for theater operations mostly but their range is over 6000 nm loaded. LCMs they ain't.

[Daryk]

In my opinion there is plenty of precedent for an O1, O2 being in charge of a small craft in BT.
The tug that supported my ship in the Med wasn't exactly an ocean going tug but not your typical harbor tug either. I saw it make a few transits around the Med to support us. A senior chief was in charge.
The entire US Army fleet, such as it is, of large landing craft, around 1100 tons loaded, are commanded by warrant officers. They use the for theater operations mostly but their range is over 6000 nm loaded. LCMs they ain't.

And the Army heavily recruits Navy Boatswain's Mates to be those Warrants...

[guardiandashi]

It would actually make sense for small craft to be "commanded" by a e5 or higher with an O3 or higher having overall command of a "squadron" of small craft, if you consider the small craft to be "boats"

[Nightlord01]

In my opinion there is plenty of precedent for an O1, O2 being in charge of a small craft in BT.
The tug that supported my ship in the Med wasn't exactly an ocean going tug but not your typical harbor tug either. I saw it make a few transits around the Med to support us. A senior chief was in charge.
The entire US Army fleet, such as it is, of large landing craft, around 1100 tons loaded, are commanded by warrant officers. They use the for theater operations mostly but their range is over 6000 nm loaded. LCMs they ain't.

1100 tons????

That's huge! No way they can get that in a well deck, what did they use them to transport?

[Sharpnel]

For those interested here is the wiki page for the US Army fleet  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_United_States_Army

[boilerman]

1100 tons????

That's huge! No way they can get that in a well deck, what did they use them to transport?

That's my point, they're legit high endurance, ocean going vessels the US Army is handing over to warrant officers. They haul vehicles and equipment of all types.

[BrokenMnemonic]

One thing to ponder when looking at the ranks for officers aboard actual spacecraft - be they DropShips, JumpShips or WarShips - is that the captain posts are command posts; in most first world militaries, there are far more officers at Major or higher rank than are called for by the number of command posts, because so many officers spend a large part of their careers as staff officers within headquarters and support organizations of various types. There are a lot of career Majors and half colonels out there, who had a command post and will then see out the rest of their careers doing staff jobs. For every Major who commands a DropShip, I'd expect to see a significant multiple of that serving on the ground somewhere - if you look at the Federated Suns, just think how many staff jobs are involved between the planetary militias, PDZ HQs, Combat Region HQs, March HQs, the various support organizations, garrison postings, liaison postings within significant defence industries/academic institutes and the like.

[Nebfer]

Thank you everyone for your input and thank you Nebfer for compiling the info from the FMs. That was exactly the thing I didn't want to do myself.

Nightlord brings up a good point. As Daryk points out in BT it's about 2 1/2 years of training before a crewman sees a ship, regardless of type. In my opinion it's pushing things to the point where you ask why there is a distinction between enlisted and commissioned officers. I'm inclined to stick with the distinction to show career paths.

The info Nebfer collected shows there's much more of a range of ranks commanding ships than I would've have expected.  I can believe O5/Lieutenant Colonels and O6/Colonels commanding WarShips, they are valuable, prestigious assets but I cannot believe an O5 is going to command a DropShip with a crew of 10 to 20. I'm comfortable with O3s commanding the majority of the DropShips out there with crews up to 20, maybe 25. I can imagine a very valuable unit, such as an Overlord to be commanded by an experienced DropShip officer, an O4. But by the time an officer in the DropShip branch makes O5 I'd except them to be commanding DropShip squadrons, say about 4 to 7 vessels. Heck I would be OK with an O4 commanding a division of 2 or 3 smaller DropShips.

To clarify I am using the O ranks rather than titles because lieutenant and captain confuses many that don't understand the difference between army and navy ranks.

I contemplated on what rank system to use, I went with land ranks for expediency, though I did not think about the basic O series..
I also feel that with most of these ships that only have under 40 crew that a O4 or O5 let alone O6 is simply to high, and likely a symptom of the writer going with how it's done in the real world, ignoring the fact that most warships are in the 70 to 400 crew range, and are perhaps some what over ranked (In ww2 most Destroyers where commanded by a Lt. Commander (O4), post war they set it to Commander (O5)).

Overlords with it's 8 officers are some of the few Dropships that could conceivably be commanded by an O4 with out to much of a problem on crew size, As I listed in my other post I could conceive a O4, with a pair of O3s, and 3 or 4 O2s and one or two O1s being it's officers, when you have fewer officers it gets harder to justify having higher than O3, though it's doable.


A list of crews of most dropships officers/Enlisted
Avenger 3/12
Claymore 3/12
Leopard 2/7
Fury 2/6
Gazelle 2/8
Kuan Ti 5/20
Lung Wang 3/8
Intruder 5/25
Union 3/11
Hamilcar 6/30
Seeker 4/16
Nagumo 5/24
Achilles 5/25
Condor 4/20
Okinawa 5/5 (yes 5 Enlisted! all are gunners)
Hannibal 7/33
Triumph 3/12
Fortress 7/35
Hercules 5/23
Overlord 8/35
Vengeance 3/9
Excalibur 9/41
Rose 8/39

Behemoth 9/44 ()

Merlin 2/9
Overloard A3 8/54 (methinks this is an error, HMA has it at 9/45, as one needs ~11 officers for 54 crew and gunners, unless you can have 6 crew per officer?)
Nekohono'o 18/24 (an interesting officer ratio)
Conquistador 5/16 (15 are gunners)

Interdictor 5/22
Arondight 8/32
Taihou 4/19
Lung Wang P2 4/14
Vengeance DC PWS  7/27 (possibly 33, not sure if the 6 NCSS crew are counted as crew or bay)
Aurora 1/5
Castrum 20/90
Seleucus 5/16
Trutzburg 7/30
Gorgon 3/7
Duat 4/14

--Clan--
Broadsword 2/6
Confederate 2/8
Noruff 3/9 (8 of the En are gunners...)
Sassanid 5/25
Union-C 3/11
Carrier 4/13 (11 gunners)
Lion 9/40 (SLDF) 9/41 Clan (2 extra gunners, one less "crew")
Miraborg 7/33
Overlord-C 8/35
Titan 7/31

Arcadia 3/11
Mercer 4/16
Outpost 3/15

Isegrim 5/21
Aesir 9/37
Vanir 9/53 (again should be 11 officers)
Nagasawa 3/10


It seems that quite often their was a tendency to simply just use the minimum base crew. Even so most of these crews I would think are a bit to small, particularly for a military ship, even dealing with high levels of automation (in modern terms even the Leopards should be having at lest 20ish crew, most modern ships are going around 10-20 crew per kiloton of ship, with older ones (designed before the ~mid 90s) being around 30-40, with WW2 being closer to 70-100 crew per kiloton).

I've be playing around with a spreadsheet to breakdown crews into ranks, I'll share it here eventually. Of course it's just my opinion of how things should work but I am rethinking the rank ratios:

1. Ratings (E3 to E6), are the rank and file. Distribution would be top heavy because these people are the techs not leaders and their rank would reflect their tech abilities, not leadership skills.

2. Chiefs (E7 to E9 ) ratio 1 chief (all ranks) per between 2 to 3 ratings. About three E7's per one E8 and about the same ration for E8's to E9's.

Pretty arbitrary I know.

Still working on officers but I think the lowest commissioned officer rank normally seen in the fleet would be O2. O1's have just gotten out of their officer training and are spending a year or two in school to learn how to handle a ship. They're promoted to O2 once they are finished with this schooling. I doubt an O2 is going to command a DropShip but I can easily see them as XO's. O3's normally command DropShips up to about 5,000 tons. DropShips above 5,000 tons and/or with crew greater than 25 I'd expect O4's to be the most common CO rank.

For JumpShips I see O4's commanding most. They would be a mix of experienced DropShip commanders with additional training in hyperspace navigation and career JumpShip officers trained as hyperspace navigators and KF drive engineers from the beginning that have worked their way up the ranks.

Again, just my opinion.

I have no problems having small craft being piloted by senior NCOs as long as squadron leaders are officers.

Most Mechwariors are generally NCOs, though less info is available on what ranks are Fighter pilots, The battle of Luthien has the DCMS all be officers typically a Fighter Lance being a Tai-i leading a Chu-i (that's O3 & O2), Wolf Dragoons has one officer (a O2), leading a Warrant officer, the WD source book is largely the same but dose not indicate that the "non officer" is a Warrant or NCO.

Battle of Coventry has one officer leading 3 non officers in a flight, it dose seem that the Lyrans are running one officer to one non officer, 1st Lance is a Captain, other two Lances are Lts. (though sometimes their using a four ship lance...).
However theirs little that I know of that deals with fighter pilot ranks in relation to their orgs. But it dose seem that some factions go with all officers for their fighter units while others seem to go with some of them being NCOs/WOs (I would bet the Davions are just like the Lyrans, and Laio is like the Kuritans).

[boilerman]

For anyone that might be interested the attached workbook lists the crew breakdowns I've been talking about. The file is 97-2003 excel format. Crews from 4 to 125 are listed.

[Kidd]

Interesting topic. I worked this out for a Union-class some time back, sorted by role more than by rank as I'm not too sure about that, wonder if anyone can critique it:

Union-class - 3 officers, 11 enlisted, of which 6 gunners

Commander
Lieutenant (XO)
Lieutenant (engineer)

Bosun
Bosun's mate/helmsman
Engineer's mate
Radar/sensor tech
Communications tech
Loadmaster
5 gunners

[DoctorMonkey]

I'm a bit late to this and while I cannot comment on this from any sort of military experience, I currently work on a unit that mostly skips two major grades of doctor so we have Consultants (Lt Col equivalent in the military roughly) and House Officers (Lt equivalent in the military roughly) as we are not a large training unit


I could see a smaller DropShip or JumpShip having an "old man" captain and senior chief but a gaggle of youngling junior officers there to learn more than lead

[Hairbear541]

evening gents , being an old blue jacket i thought i'd way in for a word or two . i was on one of the small boys ..ie destroyer -destroyer escort or smaller with full sea keeping ability and speed . we were 310 ft x 45 ft w/288 crew and just a little over 1900 tn   . some depts were hot racking because of being over allowance . had a newly minted cwo who tuck over one of the bridge watch slots , knew his stuff about ship handling . my div chief didn't to much like him for the simple reason that he would teach us still wet behind the ears ems what the real reason our duties were for . not just route following a chiefs dictates or one of his dragoons . if memory serves me right we only had 8 officer  , 1 cwo , 3 maybe 4 chiefs pos , about 12 junior pos and the rest of us were lowly ems ,