I'm still in favour of low crew for this reason, and for simple comparison - The Defiant, even while on combat patrol in "The Adversary", still had less than 50 people aboard. On a similar-sized Miranda, I still think 30-50 people is justifyable - the larger Constellation class bridge as seen on the Stargazer had only 6 crew stations (including the CO), and the battle bridge of the E-D had only six in the first seaason, and five in "BoBWII".

Engineering on the E-D has been seen to be manned by as few as zero people at times on the E-D; granted, this is a super-automated ship, but in terms of engineering support stuff, there's got to be only so much you can do. Point being, with automation being such as it's supposed to be in the TNG era (supposedly so we can do all that personal enlightenment stuff), most of the general ships' systems that would have taken hundreds of people to take care of in TOS would be piece of cake for the computer to do now. And where combat is to last only a matter of minutes or hours, I'd resuce the crew to the bare minimum for what you need.

The only real indication we've seen of late is in "The 37s" from VOY, where Chakotay says they probably wouldn't be able to maintain the ship for very long with less than a hundred people aboard. This is later paritally refuted in "One", when Seven and the Doc mind the ship for a whole month.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Do you REALLY think that the Defiant has the same amount of deckspace as a Miranda? If you do, then I seriously suggest a review of the general deckplans of both, regardless of their canonicity.

The Miranda clearly has at least four if not five times as much volume as a Defiant does. The length of the Miranda is 277.76m and the beam is 173.98m according to the DS9:TM. The length of the Defiant according to the same source is 170.68m. The Miranda is about 11 decks thick whereas the Defiant is 4 decks thick. And the fourth deck of the Defiant holds almost nothing. In a Miranda, according to the interpretations I've seen, almost all of the space given is occupied by something.

Now, the Defiant fits 150 people maximum. It's standard complement is 40. I understand that it's small enough to require relatively few people to run it.

We could start by calculating that using ships of known mass vs. known length/draft/beam - and see if we get a correlation. This would allow us to guesstimate the mass for other vessels of which the size is known.

(or we could just ask Bernd - he's probably got it in that site).

A large chunk of the Miranda's length is taken up by the nacelles. Check out this site:
http://www.ditl.org/

Go to Size Charts --> Federation and choose Miranda and Defiant. It pretty much speaks for itself - size does not dictate crew complement. And I'm quite confident that upgrades to older starships can keep them relatively in line with newer ships in terms of operations.

This in itself speaks volumes about the training that Starfleet crew would have to recieve to operate said ships... Would Harry have known enough to run Ops on a Miranda-class ship, if it needed thirty people to do his equivalent job?

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Not to keep picking on you, Mark. I hope I'm not giving you an inferiority complex. You're probably a lot older and wiser than I am. Or maybe you're not.

ANYWAY. I understand that crews in the days of yore had to recieve much more training to operate systems that have been simplified by 2375. However, Just because the systems have been simplified doesn't mean you need less people to run them, exactly. Remember, the whole crew isn't working around the clock.

Voyager is staffed by 150 crew. That means that at any given time during normal cruise mode, she is only being operated by 37 people. Now of course, this is depicted innacurately on the show, as there are about twenty-five people manning engineering and about twelve on the bridge.

Given a crew complement of 220, a Miranda of 2285 was being run by 55 people per duty-shift. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Fast forward to 2375. I hold the minimum number of people per shift should be at least 40. Therefore, the maximum number of crew would be at least 160.

I don't buy into this "36 running the Brattain" or whatever. That's NINE people running a Miranda, if divided into four duty shifts. Eighteen if all of them work twelve hour days.

*sniff*

I smell me the comings of a Defiant Length argument.

And floggings. Mass floggings.

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"Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind."

-Edward Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire.

Admittedly, I *hate* length arguments, and generally don't participate in them. And no, I'm not gonna get into a Defiant-length thing now. But that's not the point... Anyway, I believe this argument is contingent on exactly *how* advanced upgrades to older starships are, which neither of us know. I'm more optimistic in this respect, as it would be much more in keeping with the established tone of the TNG era stuff. However, I'll concede that it could swing either way.

Also, you're assuming a standard four-shift rotation, where three seemed to be the standard. TNG and DS9 both had three and *then* changed to four (and TNG back to three, I believe). Voyager, AFAIK, only has three as well. Also, I believe the four-shift rotation maximizes crew availability by having everyone have two shifts on duty and two off, rotated and giving some people three shifts off periodically, or two shifts in a row off. This makes more people available during any given shift. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here..? I thought Jellico did this in "Chain of Command" to enable the E-D crew to do more work.

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

Get down, get down! They're bombing! They're bombing!

Oh, well I guess stubborn old me got myself into it anyway.

Not having ever watched an episode of DS9 save for "Trials and Tribble-ations" I don't particularly care about the length of the Defiant. So I won't argue about it.

About engineering, I was exaggerating to make a point. For some reason, it always seems like there are three-thousand people on that set. Regardless of whether they're at red alert or not.

DS9 was on three shift rotation according to the TM, but I'm not sure about starships. AFAIK, the TNG:TM said that the Emterprise crew was broken down into four shifts.

As for the sizes, that site shows the Miranda it its proper size, around 240-250m (the last digit is argueable).

I'd say the Defiant cowlings belie the true habitable volume of the ship much worse than the Miranda engines. The Miranda nacelles are nicely stand-off and leave the habitable hull unobstructed from our view, but the Defiant cowlings are so integrated to the hull that one is easily fooled into thinking that the Defiant habitable hull is as big as the Miranda saucer. Even with a 170m Defiant (shudder), that just isn't true.

Generally, I'd tend to agree with Chakotay on the minimum crew issue - with less than a hundred crew, it's difficult to keep anything the size of an Intrepid or a Miranda afloat. Unless you expect a simple milk run with no repairs and no need to scan, target, fire at or run away from another starship. Which is what the Lantree was obviously counting on (and she apparently had a bridge crew of just three).

How the Br*ttain could get any scientific work done with just 36 crew if it took 26 just to keep the ship running is more difficult to explain. Unless, of course, the ship was not so much performing a scientific mission but rather just running through space with a skeleton crew and keeping the sensors sensing and the computers recording. Perhaps all the 21000- or 31000- registered Mirandas have 220 crew and a 26-person skeleton crew option, and any of these ships can be called on to perform such a skeleton-crewed sensor run between their regular defence duties.

And ten extra people in addition to the skeleton crew could get some real work done, if just seven people can do scientific work AND run the ship aboard Oberth class vessels...

Actually, I'm interested now. Has anyone ever tried to work out shift schedules and patterns, based on what we know of them from eps like "Data's Day?"

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"It strikes me that there are enough episodes of the Simpsons that people could speak entirely in Simpsonese, using references from the show to explain or describe an endless series of situations. Nelson and Apu . . . at Tinagra.

But now I�ve brought Star Trek into it again, haven�t I. Sorry."

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