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Author Topic: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do  (Read 13391 times)

Taizo Puckett

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #15 on: March 24, 2015, 04:55:05 PM »

put dedicated pilots on fighters

Honestly, now this looks more like a punishment, than a career. :-\
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shingekinolinus

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #16 on: March 24, 2015, 05:56:37 PM »

the issue isn't really that you cannot dump excess crew, it's that so many crewmen survive the destruction of their ships.

You're right, the disadvantages of having excess crew sometimes outweigh the advantages.

Lore wise, ships have cryo-sleep devices, which means they should be able to keep non-essential crew cryonically frozen for long periods of time.
So why not put them in cargo?
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Histidine

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #17 on: March 24, 2015, 06:19:21 PM »

"Only skeleton crew dies" is obviously a problem, but this topic wouldn't exist if excess crew didn't cause a burn speed penalty.
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Tartiflette

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #18 on: March 24, 2015, 08:20:19 PM »

@Aeson
I was trying to provide real historical examples, not theoretical ones, to your argument... No need to take that as an attack.
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CopperCoyote

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #19 on: March 24, 2015, 09:38:20 PM »

"Only skeleton crew dies" is obviously a problem, but this topic wouldn't exist if excess crew didn't cause a burn speed penalty.

I think if they still ate through supplies like mad, but didn't decrease your burnspeed that'd be fine. I'd like to imagine they're making tiny impromptu shelters to drag the crew along with them. Crew and lifesupport is heavy, but i feel like it's still not as much as cargo.
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TheHengeProphet

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #20 on: March 24, 2015, 09:45:36 PM »

I believe there can be a simple fix for this: Give ships different capacity thresholds.

Currently we have the minimum operating quantity, and the maximum optimal quantity.  What we need is the absolute maximum threshold, which I figure would be around triple the maximum optimal capacity, beyond which more crew CANNOT be crammed.  You can only fit so many sardines in a can, no matter how hard you try.

There should also be a hullmod to increase crew capacity.  Something like (Refugee holds) or somesuch.

This can open to a new opportunity for missions as well:
<*Disaster* on _; refugees seek new homes!>
<_ is seeking workers/farmers to bolster its declining population.>
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Tartiflette

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #21 on: March 25, 2015, 02:18:16 AM »

The simplest, though not that elegant, solution is to remove the crew capacity: the crew take place in the cargo hold as everything else, and get "destroyed" the same way. Then you can never go over capacity. I disagree that too many crew survives, on the contrary I find it inconsistent that most of your crew survive if you loose a battle, but you can only find a couple of survivors when you win (2 or 3 survivors for a fleet worth of enemies defeated? While the game make a clear mention of the presence of escape pods? Really?). I'd rather have the larger amount survive in both case, provided there is a solution to avoid overcapacity.

Anyway this already has been discussed here and Alex said he was thinking about a "cryo-pod" mechanic that could convert crew in cargo, like a human mothballing.
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Blaze

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #22 on: March 25, 2015, 02:33:16 PM »

Or you know, remove the fact that holding more crew than your ships can carry inexplicably makes your engine shut down.
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TheHengeProphet

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #23 on: March 25, 2015, 07:28:13 PM »

Or you know, remove the fact that holding more crew than your ships can carry inexplicably makes your engine shut down.

Hey, if you have enough people that you're storing them in the reactor, I'm pretty sure you would want your engines shut down.  It's a lot harder to clean up after people when they're reduced to cellular sludge.  ;)

After going around selling people off like cattle, I've been left wanting a system not unlike Mount & Blade, where you go around to places and try to recruit folks.  It would feed you a number of people who would like to join, and you could choose how many to hire.  Developing a reputation for getting your crews killed?  You get less willing hires!  But hey, that's probably a discussion for elsewhere.

I still think there needs to be a maximum capacity, because ships can really only hold so many, and you should never have so many people your engines cannot operate.
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Megas

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #24 on: March 26, 2015, 07:14:34 AM »

Make maximum personnel (crew, marines, etc.) the hard limit, instead of a soft limit, since we cannot dispose of them.
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Jazwana

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #25 on: March 28, 2015, 01:13:45 PM »

If this isn't a case of The Cold Equations I don't know what is.
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Aeson

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #26 on: March 28, 2015, 06:04:24 PM »

I disagree that too many crew survives, on the contrary I find it inconsistent that most of your crew survive if you loose a battle, but you can only find a couple of survivors when you win (2 or 3 survivors for a fleet worth of enemies defeated? While the game make a clear mention of the presence of escape pods? Really?)
The presence of escape pods by no means indicates a high likelihood of surviving the disabling of a ship. Ships in Starsector appear to explode when disabled, and even though the explosion isn't (usually) sufficiently powerful to obliterate the vessel, this by no means indicates that the vessel's crew survived the detonation. The flash indicating that a ship is disabled is typically much larger and much brighter than that given off by a Reaper torpedo detonating, indicating that the explosion is probably much more powerful; additionally, this explosion is likely internal (e.g. a magazine explosion or a catastrophic reactor failure), and so the crew is potentially less well protected against it than against weapons, which (mostly) detonate externally on the ship's hull.

Some historical references for how much of the crew survives when the ship explodes:
Spoiler
USS Maine, armored cruiser or second-rate pre-dreadnought battleship, which exploded in the harbor in Havana in 1898. Of the crew of 355, 253 either died in the explosion or drowned before being rescued and 8 others died due to injuries or shock. Of the survivors, 16 were uninjured.

HMS Bulwark, pre-dreadnought battleship, destroyed by an internal explosion at Sheerness in 1914. 14 survivors, 736 dead; two of the survivors later succumbed to injuries in the hospital.

HMS Incincible, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 6 members of the crew survived, 1026 officers and men died.

HMS Queen Mary, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 18 survivors, 1266 crew and officers died.

HMS Indefatigable, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 2 survivors out of a crew of 1019.

HMS Vanguard, battleship, sunk by internal explosion at Scapa Flow in 1917. 2 survivors and about 804 dead.

HMS Hood, battleship or battlecruiser depending on who you ask, sunk by the Bismark in 1941. 3 survivors out of 1418 men.

HMS Barham, battleship, torpedoed and exploded in the Mediterranean in 1941. 841 of a crew of about 1184 perished.

USS Arizona, battleship, sunk at Pearl Harbor. 1177 crewmen died on board it.

HMS Avenger, escort carrier, torpedoed and suffered explosion of the bomb magazine in 1942. 12 survivors out of a crew of 550.

Mutsu, Japanese battleship, sunk in harbor by a magazine explosion in 1943. 1121 of 1474 people aboard the ship died.

Roma, Italian battleship, sunk by magazine explosion caused by a German missile in 1943. 596 survivors out of 1849 crew and officers.

USS Liscome Bay, escort carrier, torpedoed and sunk by magazine explosion in 1943. 272 survivors out of 916 crew.

Yamato, Japanese battleship, sunk by carrier-borne aircraft in 1945 and suffered a magazine explosion while sinking. About 3055 out of 3332 crew and officers perished.

Numbers pulled from the Wikipedia pages on the respective ships, or from the Wikipedia page on largest artificial non-nuclear explosions.
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While the degree to which the crew is protected against explosions, internal or external, may (and probably has) improved by the time of Starsector, the power of the explosions against which the crew must be protected would also have increased. I do not see the mention of the presence of escape pods as sufficient justification for the claim that significant fractions of the crew should survive the sudden, violent explosions that disable Starsector ships. Additionally, since Starsector's ships keep fighting as well as they can up until the explosion, it's not particularly likely that the commanding officer of the vessel gives the order to abandon ship any significant amount of time before the ship explodes, and timely evacuation tends to be one of the best ways to mitigate losses to massive explosions, regardless of how well the ship was compartmentalized to protect the crew.

Furthermore, when the game lists the number of crew recovered, it's listing the number of people pulled from the wrecks and escape pods who either already serve in your fleet or who are willing to serve in your fleet that you're willing to enlist (and if we're treating this as a typical military situation under modern rules, then you don't enlist rescued enemies into your crews under normal circumstances). Maybe if and when the game includes some kind of prisoner mechanic we'll see larger numbers of people rescued when we win battles.

I'd like to imagine they're making tiny impromptu shelters to drag the crew along with them. Crew and lifesupport is heavy, but i feel like it's still not as much as cargo.
For what it's worth, I'd imagine that impromptu shelters would be more likely to impose a speed restriction than cargo would be. You're (hopefully) at least as concerned for the safety of the personnel in the impromptu shelters as you would be for the cargo, which means that you'd want to take care to avoid causing stresses to the structure supporting the shelters and connecting them to the ship, and to the components and power lines and equipment keeping them livable. Much of the cargo in the game is also of things which tend to be less delicate than people are. Having to keep personnel in impromptu shelters connected in some manner to the ship is thus a fairly good reason to restrict the ship's maximum acceleration, and if you require that the ship be able to complete a given maneuver (e.g. a standard course correction to avoid an asteroid) in a given amount of time, then that restriction on acceleration also restricts the ship's maximum speed.

@Aeson
I was trying to provide real historical examples, not theoretical ones, to your argument... No need to take that as an attack.
Sorry.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #27 on: March 28, 2015, 09:38:52 PM »

Why do people think that we are hauling these people on the outside of the ship? You guys DO realize that the cargo hold could be an impromptu shelter BEFORE having to strap them to the outside of the ship.
And hell, who the HELL would want to live in that anyways?
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Aeson

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #28 on: March 28, 2015, 10:15:49 PM »

Why do people think that we are hauling these people on the outside of the ship? You guys DO realize that the cargo hold could be an impromptu shelter BEFORE having to strap them to the outside of the ship.
I was responding to a comment that mentioned 'tiny impromptu shelters.' I don't think that most cargo holds would qualify as 'tiny' impromptu shelters, so I assumed that the comment referred to shelters assembled outside the ship. I agree with you that it's more likely that you put the passengers beyond standard capacity in the cargo hold(s) first if you can.

There's also this:
As absurd as it is, yes, I can easily fit over 50,000 people into my little frigate...somehow...at a drain of over 5000 supplies per day

At that point, they're really not in the frigate. We're talking hastily-welded-together temporary "habitats" not really all that suited for providing life support. Of course, if you don't have the supplies, then it's not even that, which is reflected in how quickly you'll lose this extra crew.
Which is from here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8472.msg144500#msg144500

Hastily assembled temporary habitats don't really sound like a bunch of racks/sleeping bags/etc in the cargo hold(s) and enough patchwork done to the cargo hold that it can hold an atmosphere, heat, and maybe artificial gravity (it probably already had inertial compensation, though, so that shouldn't be an issue). Though it's not clear at what point the hastily assembled temporary habitats come into play.

Quote
And hell, who the HELL would want to live in that anyways?
Depends on the alternatives. If the options are "live in this escape pod or cargo container or whatever that we've duct taped to the side of the ship for the week or so it takes us to get to port" or "drift in this debris field in the hopes that someone will pick you up and let you on their ship before your life support runs out," I think I'd take the escape pod or cargo container or whatever duct taped to the side of the ship unless I was very, very confident that there'd actually be someone else passing by soon enough to rescue me who'd be willing to stop and pick me up, and especially who also wouldn't, say, sell me into slavery or hold me for ransom or harvest my organs.

If you're floating in the middle of the ocean, you take the lifelines you're offered unless you're a) stupid, b) confident that taking the lifeline won't actually improve your situation, or c) feel strongly that someone else who's with you should take the lifeline first.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: why discarding crew members may be the logical thing to do
« Reply #29 on: March 28, 2015, 10:58:53 PM »

Quote
And hell, who the HELL would want to live in that anyways?
Depends on the alternatives. If the options are "live in this escape pod or cargo container or whatever that we've duct taped to the side of the ship for the week or so it takes us to get to port" or "drift in this debris field in the hopes that someone will pick you up and let you on their ship before your life support runs out," I think I'd take the escape pod or cargo container or whatever duct taped to the side of the ship unless I was very, very confident that there'd actually be someone else passing by soon enough to rescue me who'd be willing to stop and pick me up, and especially who also wouldn't, say, sell me into slavery or hold me for ransom or harvest my organs.

If you're floating in the middle of the ocean, you take the lifelines you're offered unless you're a) stupid, b) confident that taking the lifeline won't actually improve your situation, or c) feel strongly that someone else who's with you should take the lifeline first.
Big difference in space and the ocean my friend. I wouldn't have to worry about getting shot off in that kind of situation where you would have "hab shelters" as most likely the boat would have sunk or been unable to handle so much weight.  Not to mention how bad one ship would look like to its home country's people if they fired on another ship that was rescuing people
Another thing is Life support. How are these grossly overloaded ships able to sustain life support for all of these people? WHERE is the air coming from?! How are the ships cleaning the air fast enough to sustain them?
And another thing: how can an exterior "hab shelter" be safe at all to travel in? with how quickly these things have to be built, they aren't going to be armored. That means a single piece of rock or scrap could puncture and either kill the occupant(s) directly or indirectly
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