Star Trek Constitution Class Crew

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

First off, you’re unequivocally off for security and academics. Forty and forty are eighty, not sixty. Assuming you meant to split the figure fifty/fifty, there should be 30 security personnel and 30 academics

The values of 30/30 were based on a total crew of 340. I scaled 30/30 up to 40/40 for a total crew of 430.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Second, I’m presuming Constitution-class ships refer to TOS period ships, so some of your breakdown doesn’t really work. In TOS, there are three branches on ship that we have seen, denoted by the colour of their shirts/dresses: command/line (gold, or in some episodes, green), engineering/security (red) and medical/science (blue). Aside from the principal function we associate engineering with, engineering was also responsible for the transporters (Chief O’Brien), communications (Lt. Uhura and Yeoman Rand), electrical and mechanical engineering (food replicator repair, etc.), and presumably rank-and-file security.

I should have made clear early on what departments I'm using in my campaign:

• Command: pilot and operate the offensive and defensive systems of starships and auxiliary spacecraft. The Command Department ultimately prepares officers to become starship captains.
  
• Engineering: maintain and repair the ship’s systems, including power reactors and FTL drives.
• Operators: operate the ship’s (primarily) internal systems, e.g. communications, sensors, transporters.
• Security: protect Federation personnel and assets, and conduct criminal investigations.
  
• Academics: research in physical and life sciences using state-of-the-art equipment. (The social sciences are under the purview of the Counseling Department.)
• Counseling: safeguard the mental health of Starfleet personnel, facilitate sensitive negations, and initiate first contact with alien cultures. This department also conducts social sciences research; and makes use of and develops psionic abilities.
• Medical: safeguard the physical health of Starfleet personnel, conduct medical research, and engage in forensic pathology.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Security may not necessarily have been a full-time slot on Constitution-class ships. We see Lt. Sulu is Chief of Security on the Enterprise but his primary duty is ship’s navigator. Chief of Security would appear to be a secondary duty. It isn’t too big a stretch to assume that security itself is a secondary duty. While most rank-and-file appear to be drawn from engineering, they presumably go about their primary duty until security is needed. This allows two observations. First, people probably rotate in and out of security on an annual, seasonal or even monthly basis. Second, given that it is a secondary duty and most of security are “redshirts” [drawn from engineering], it suggests that engineering is probably the largest department on the ship. While security could be drawn from engineering and line (and possibly non-medical science), it might be drawn solely from engineering because “they have people to spare” for security duty.

While I don't disagree, from a role-playing standpoint, I want a dedicated department for players you want to kick butt and take names. Also, I think the U.S. Navy has a dedicated security jobs, which makes having them on Constitution-class starships not unreasonable.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Counselling isn’t a separate thing on a Constitution-class ship. In a few episodes, we see that Dr. McCoy is not only a surgeon but that he administers and evaluates psychological/psychiatric testing and can and has relieved Captain Kirk of his command on psychiatric grounds.

You are correct. I concede that a dedicated Counseling/Social Sciences Dept. is not canon.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Academics probably refers to full-time scientist/scholars but is likely to be a relatively small portion of the academics and marines complement. Most of the time, Capt. Kirk was dependent on hobbyists in the crew for specific expertise on historical/arts matters, suggesting that there weren’t many professional scholars in those areas. On the other hand, Mr. Spock seems to have headed his own, admittedly small, science department.

No doubt there are dedicated scientist/researchers. I mean, all the blue shirts can't be Medical. The questions is how many are scientist/scholars? There are 14 lab/research rooms on the Constitution-class ship I'm using.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Marines aren’t something that would be picked up and dropped off on an as needed basis and we don’t seem to see the Enterprise running with vacancies. Even at forty, marines would make up 10% of the crew, so every tenth person we see should be a marine. Either Marines are assigned to one of the three departments and we don’t visually recognize them as Marines, or they have their own section of the ship, “Marine country” and we’ve never seen anyone need to go there.

I've decided that Marines are not part of the Security Dept. They are full-blown military troops that are generally not seen on starships except in times of war. I'm willing to be talked out of this.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Weapons systems usually appear to be operated by command/line personnel, though the loaders for photon torpedoes might be from engineering (Wrath of Khan).

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

I’d suggest a breakdown of:
Crew Complement: 430
Command: 44 – slightly more than 1 in 10, with 22 on alpha shift and 11 each on beta and gamma shift.
Engineering: 212 – 3/4 of what is left over after assigning command, medical, marines, academics then adjusted to be divisible by four; with 106 on alpha shift and 53 each on beta and gamma shift
Line: 72 – from 1/4 of what is left over after assigning command, medical, marines, academics then adjusted to be divisible by four. With 36 on alpha shift and 18 each on beta and gamma shift
Academics: 20 – 1/3 of Starfleet Museum figure
Marines: 40 - (which makes them roughly a full platoon in strength) from Starfleet Museum.
Medical: 42 – organized into six teams of seven personnel. Team breakdown is: 1 physician, 2 nurses and 4 medical assistants. Two teams on duty during alpha shift, one team each on beta and gamma shifts and one team out of rotation (on call).
(Security: 69 – security is a secondary duty lasting three months, drawn from line and engineering only, with one third of the personnel rotating out each month. Personnel can expect to draw duty once a year. Unlike other duties, security has 23 members available on each of the three shifts.)

You've offered the largest Medical staff yet. I see you as well have lumped Engineering and Line into whatever is left after the others have been assigned. Those numbers are large enough I may not worry about breaking them down into individual jobs.

[Johan Larson]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

How about: within the Sciences Division there are three departments: Medical, Natural, and Social?

Sounds good to me.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Consider calling [Counseling Dept.] something other than Counseling to reflect its broader role. Maybe "Psychology" or "Social Science".

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

How about: within the Sciences Division there are three departments: Medical, Natural, and Social?

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Sounds good to me.

Or is Life, Physical, Social a better break down?

EDIT: No, a Medical Department is too well established in canon.

So, I might go Medical, Physical, Social?

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

The values of 30/30 were based on a total crew of 340. I scaled 30/30 up to 40/40 for a total crew of 430.

Okay, although I thought I remembered a crew of 400 or thereabouts being mentioned in some episodes of TOS.

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I should have made clear early on what departments I'm using in my campaign:
• Command: pilot and operate the offensive and defensive systems of starships and auxiliary spacecraft. The Command Department ultimately prepares officers to become starship captains.
• Engineering: maintain and repair the ship’s systems, including power reactors and FTL drives.
• Operators: operate the ship’s (primarily) internal systems, e.g. communications, sensors, transporters.
• Security: protect Federation personnel and assets, and conduct criminal investigations.
• Academics: research in physical and life sciences using state-of-the-art equipment. (The social sciences are under the purview of the Counseling Department.)
• Counseling: safeguard the mental health of Starfleet personnel, facilitate sensitive negations, and initiate first contact with alien cultures. This department also conducts social sciences research; and makes use of and develops psionic abilities.
• Medical: safeguard the physical health of Starfleet personnel, conduct medical research, and engage in forensic pathology.

Okay, that clears up differences in terminology, though I’d still stick with the three colour scheme, in which case: Command is gold/green; Engineering, Operators and Security are red; and Academics, Counseling and Medical are blue.

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

While I don't disagree, from a role-playing standpoint, I want a dedicated department for players you want to kick butt and take names. Also, I think the U.S. Navy has a dedicated security jobs, which makes having them on Constitution-class starships not unreasonable.

Fair enough, although an article or two in Stardate/Starlog magazine for FASA’s Star Trek RPG suggest that the Star Trek universe (or at least Starfleet, as portrayed) isn’t a place well-suited for butt-kickers.
<snip>

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

No doubt there are dedicated scientist/researchers. I mean, all the blue shirts can't be Medical. The questions is: how many are scientist/scholars? There are 14 lab/research rooms on the Constitution-class ship I'm using.

No doubt at all, after all Mr. Spock is: a) clearly a blue shirt and b) clearly not medical personnel. I’d suggest that the labs are equipped for particular types of research and therefore aren’t always in use by the relevant specialists. In that case, the number of labs are not really indicative of how many researchers/scientists/scholars are used. On the other hand, we have seen Dr. McCoy using a medical lab once or twice on the show and they are fairly cramped, suggesting that you might squeeze five or six people in for a progress report but that standard manning runs two or three persons. E.g., Dr. McCoy, Nurse Chapel, and in one episode, the other doctor, whose name escapes me (Dr. Mugabi?), as well. The science labs are probably just as cramped and some of your 14 labs might be medical rather than science labs. I went with 20 blue-shirted scientists as we don’t see many of them on the show, suggesting the department is rather small. As well, that was what was left over after setting the minimum Marine strength at a full platoon. You could go to forty, if you have eighty rather than sixty joint slots to fill.

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I've decided that Marines are not part of the Security Dept. They are full-blown military troops that are generally not seen on starships except in times of war. I'm willing to be talked out of this.

I really, really don’t think they should be left off ship. First, they are going to require dedicated spaces for personnel and equipment on board ship, so it isn’t like not having them on board actually frees up any space to use for someone or something else. Second, they need to train for their war mission in time of peace. They may be able to practice groundside tactics somewhere else but ship routine and layout need to be second nature to them and the way to do that is to have them on board ship.

Time of war is not the time to have the conversation:
Cmdr: Take a squad to the bridge.
Sgt.: Yes, sir! Sir, just where is the bridge and how do I get to it from here?

Though we don’t see it anywhere onscreen, it’s also useful to know, “stay to the centre of the corridor here, or you’ll bark your shins on the projections from the walls.”

<snip>

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

You've offered the largest Medical staff yet. I see you as well have lumped Engineering and Line into whatever is left after the others have been assigned. Those numbers are large enough I may not worry about breaking them down into individual jobs.

Well that’s really the only option in this situation, isn’t it? Deal with the hard/reasonably hard numbers first and guess about the leftovers. As for having a large medical section, I suppose but I noticed that everyone was talking about physicians and seemingly ignoring the rest of an implied medical staff (nurses and medical assistants). In terms of physicians, it's not really all that big, seven physicians/surgeons spread over three shifts. There’s probably some redundancy against battlefield casualties but I wouldn’t even begin to call it vastly over-supplied.

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Consider calling [Counseling Dept.] something other than Counseling to reflect its broader role. Maybe "Psychology" or "Social Science".

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

How about: within the Sciences Division there are three departments: Medical, Natural, and Social?

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Sounds good to me.

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

Or is Life, Physical, Social a better break down?

EDIT: No, a Medical Department is too well established in canon.

So, I might go Medical, Physical, Social?

I’d suggest three sections: Planetology (Geology)/Space Sciences (Astronomy); Life Sciences (Botany/Zoology) and Chemistry/Physics with everyone having good Mathematics and Computer skills.

As for Social Sciences (Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and, possibly, Archaeology), I’d suggest that based on some conversations among the bridge crew, for example, when discussing the sudden appearance of firearms in a deviation from Earth’s developmental pattern (I don’t recall the episode exactly, it might have been the one with the Klingons or it might have been Capt. Tracey and the Yenghees.), that Command is the Social Sciences section. Not canonical, but according to Mr. Chekov’s story in the novel [i]Kobayashi Maru[i], he had actually had some anthropology courses (though it isn’t clear if that’s what his degree course was actually in).

[ak_aramis]

the 70 total officers listed on the SF Museum site would be across ALL 3 divisions.

It looks like you're going over that... And that would be a VERY high rate even for NOAA ships... about the rate of the heaviest NOAA ships.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

the 70 total officers listed on the SF Museum site would be across ALL 3 divisions.

It looks like you're going over that... And that would be a VERY high rate even for NOAA ships... about the rate of the heaviest NOAA ships.

I not sure where you're getting "70" from. That Starfleet has vastly more officers compared to enlisted than 20th/21st century navies is an established part of Star Trek cannon (I thought).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I've decided that Marines are not part of the Security Dept. They are full-blown military troops that are generally not seen on starships except in times of war. I'm willing to be talked out of this.

.

Please don't be talked out of this. Maybe you could go so far as to abandon the concept. I've never seen any canon justification for "Starfleet Marines".

The closest anybody ever came on screen was the "MACOs" from the 3rd season of Enterprise and that was more like a SEAL team than a unit of Marines.

[adm]

What were the ground troops called in the DS9 episode with the cloaked ground mines?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Please don't be talked out of this. Maybe you could go so far as to abandon the concept. I've never seen any canon justification for "Starfleet Marines".

There's some stuff in the Dominion War, like that guy in the foxhole in "Nor the Battle to the Strong" and the guys in "Siege of AR-558". Obviously that's nearly a century later, and during the most intense conflict the Federation has seen since the Klingon War.

The closest anybody ever came on screen was the "MACOs" from the 3rd season of Enterprise and that was more like a SEAL team than a unit of Marines.

Which according to From Beyond, at least, were disbanded after the formation of the UFP.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I've decided that Marines are not part of the Security Dept. They are full-blown military troops that are generally not seen on starships except in times of war. I'm willing to be talked out of this.

.

There is ample evidence that Constitution class ships do not contain ground troops as such and there's no reason to expect them to. If the Federation ships carried "marines" then the security guys we actually see would be redundant. There may be a service or more than one of troops who in wartime specialize in beaming in to capture planetary targets, but I expect that they belong to member planets and not Starfleet as such.