Older aircraft carrier are smaller than those of today - even thought the number of aircraft they carry didn't change much (60-70, and today we have 70-80).
The Iowa itself was the biggest battleship the US had, almost the size of a carrier. 276 meters in length, that is a LOT. And yes, carrier have a lot of volume and mass. They kinda have to since internal hangars require a LOT Of space. All that hull and structural support, plus all the equipment and supplies, and aircraft - of course a carrier is gonna have a huge tonnage, even a small one.
And it entered service 30 years before the Nimitz-class carrier, which was 23% longer and 133% wider in maximum dimension; even using the waterline dimensions for the Nimitz, it's still more than 17% longer and nearly 24% wider, which puts the minimum difference in bounding area at about 44% more area for the Nimitz-class. Meanwhile, the type of fleet carrier that entered service at the same time as the Iowa-class battleship, the Essex-class, had a crew complement which was comparable to that of the Iowa, whether you use my numbers from Wikipedia or your numbers from wherever the hell you got yours. ~2800 men on an Iowa is not significantly different from 2600, 2170 + 870 (~9% more total personnel), 2170 + 870 + 160 (~15% more total personnel), or 3100 (~11% more total personnel) on an Essex, when the Essexes were up to ~36% wider (but ~16% narrower at the waterline) and ~2% shorter than the Iowas were. The Essex-class carriers are far more comparable in size to the Iowa-class battleships than the Nimitz-class carriers are, they're far more comparable in terms of the era in which the ships were actually both modern capital ships, they're far more comparable in time of introduction and service, and they show little significant difference in crew size. There is little evidence within Starsector that the ships of each era are of significantly different scales; in fact, the vast majority of Starsector's ships within any given class are very similar in scale and especially sprite bounding area.
If the argument were over the degree of logistical support that Astrals require as opposed to Onslaughts, then your comparison of the Nimitz-class carriers to the ~40% smaller and ~30 years older Iowa-class battleships might be appropriate (though even that is debatable; the sprite sizes of Starsector vessels make it seem likely that the size of any given type of ship has remained roughly constant throughout the entire period for which we have example vessels, whereas real-world modern naval vessels have been growing in size for more than a century, with plenty of examples of capital ships roughly doubling the size of ships in the same category and two decades older, and this growth in scale hasn't been restricted to capital ships - modern US Navy destroyers are comparable in size to WWII-era cruisers, and if you want to go back far enough they're also comparable in size to capital ships such as the 1906 HMS Dreadnought). However, the argument is over the degree of logistical support all of Starsector's carriers require to all of Starsector's other ships, including those vessels which are of the same design era or generation, and there's no way in hell that I'll buy that Astrals are to Paragons what Nimitzes are to Iowas. As far as size goes, the sprite bounding area for the Astral is only 17% greater than that for the Paragon, whereas the bounding area for the footprint of a Nimitz is ~69% greater than the bounding area for the footprint of an Iowa, which suggests that the Nimitzes are relatively much larger compared to the Iowas than the Astrals are to the Paragons; the mass attribute listed in ship_data.csv also supports this conclusion, as while the displacement of the Nimitz-class carriers roughly doubles that of the Iowa-class battleships, the mass of the Paragon-class battleships is listed as 3500 to the Astral-class carriers' 3000. As far as time of introduction goes, Astrals and Paragons appear to be of the same design generation, with each ship having many of the features characteristic of the late high-tech period, such as highly-efficient shield generators with deep flux reserves and excellent venting for the armament, relatively thin armor and weak hulls for ships of their class, and somewhat better speed and maneuverability than older ships in the same class (not that there's that much to compare against, as the Onslaught is the only battleship to compare the Paragon against and the Astral is the only carrier at the capital level). As far as crew levels go, the Astral-class shows little difference between itself and the other heavy capital ships in terms of capacity in combination with significantly lower levels of required crew even if a significant fighter group's requirements are added to that of the carrier, with 50 less crew required than is necessary for the capital ships with the next-smallest minimum crew (both of which are battlecruisers), and 100 or more fewer crew required than either of the battleships; the minimum difference of 50 crew is sufficient for 8 wings of Tridents and Piranhas and Warthogs, or 25 wings of Thunders and Longbows, either of which seems to me an ample fighter group for an Astral's six flight decks.
All of this suggests that if you're looking for real-world capital ships which are analogous to Starsector's capital ships, you should be looking no later than the end of the second world war for your examples, as the Astral and the Paragon appear to be contemporary designs built on a very similar scale, similar to the USS Essex and the USS Iowa, or the HMS Ark Royal and the HMS King George V, or the HMS Courageous and the HMS Hood, or the USS Yorktown and the USS North Carolina, all of which are examples of ships built at about the same time, all of which are of about the same size by bounding rectangle when compared to the other class in the pair, and all of which have similar crew requirements to the other class in the pair. The USS Nimitz and the USS Iowa are very much not contemporary designs and are very much not built on a similar scale, and, as might be expected, have very different crew requirements.
You are honestly telling me that ship size is the only crew indicator? That purpose, equipment and other factors are irrelevant?
You DO realize that the biggest tankers in the world, bigger than Nimitz in length, have a crew of roughly 40 people?
Certainly the ship's role is a factor in its crew size, and that factor can potentially be significant. However, comparing modern cargo ships to modern warships instead of comparing one type of modern warship to another type of (vaguely) modern warship is taking this to a ridiculous extreme, as cargo ships do not typically have even remotely the same purpose as warships and as such have very different requirements for the amount and type of equipment, and relatedly the size of the crew, required to serve adequately in their designed role. Comparing cargo ships to warships to estimate crew requirements based on ship size is like comparing eighteen wheelers to main battle tanks to estimate crew requirements based on vehicle mass - it's entirely by luck if you arrive at vaguely the correct number, as the types of vehicles being compared are entirely unrelated.
Beyond that, the difference in crew size between the Nimitz-class carriers and the Iowa-class battleships is roughly the same as the difference between two types of battleships whose dimensions differ by similar degrees. As such, ~100% more men on a carrier ~70% larger than the battleship whose crew you're comparing against is not a particularly unexpected result - you see similar increases in crew sizes when comparing types of battleships with similar disparities in size. As soon as you come up with a rational explanation for why I should pay attention to your example of two ships which are not even remotely contemporary designs and which are not particularly similar in size to one another rather than my examples of contemporary designs with similar dimensions, I'll listen. Until then, though, I regard your argument as being based on a flawed analogy.
I'm not sure where you get your numbers.
All of my numbers came from Wikipedia's pages on the ship or ship class mentioned.
Older aircraft carrier are smaller than those of today - even thought the number of aircraft they carry didn't change much (60-70, and today we have 70-80).
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Midway has a 4,104 complement, Essex has 2,170 (ship), 870 (air wing), 160 (flag) = 3000+, Forrestal has 4378, Wasp (small carrier) has 2,167
Oh, look at the Nimitz:
Ship's company: 3,200, Air wing: 2,480
I bolded for a comparison with the older carrier. So even tough the number of aircraft carrier barely increased, the number of air crew required skyrocketed!
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You also do realize that modern aircraft like the F-22 spend more time in maintainance then in the air?
Would you mind providing a reason for why I should care that modern aircraft carriers carry ~30 men per aircraft while WWII-era carriers carried ~10 men per aircraft, or that modern aircraft spend significantly more time being maintained than WWII-era aircraft do, or that modern aircraft are typically significantly larger than WWII-era aircraft are, when Starsector is based on the WWII-era warships and aircraft, when Starsector's fighters appear for the most part to be the same size over all eras by sprite bounding area (okay, fine, the Xyphos is a bit large at ~15% larger than the Gladius and ~50% larger than the Broadsword, but the Wasp is only 65% the size of the Talon and the Dagger is only 87% the size of the Piranha; if you classify the Xyphos, Wasp, Longbow, Dagger, and Trident as high-tech, the Gladius, Thunder, Warthog, and Piranha as midline, and the Broadsword, Mining Pod, and Talon as low-tech, the average midline fighter sprite bounding area is 1058, the average high-tech fighter sprite bounding area is 1037, and the average low-tech fighter sprite bounding area is 810, and if you shift the Piranha to low-tech the midline average increases to 1071 and the low-tech average increases to 865, so it's not at all clear that the high-tech fighters are in any way as significantly larger than the midline fighters as modern fighters are relative to WWII-era fighters), or when it's not at all clear that the discrepancy in the age of the designs of the Astral and Paragon is at all similar to the discrepancy in the age of the designs of the Nimitz and Iowa (as I said earlier, visual cues and ship statistics suggest that the Astral and Paragon designs are contemporaries of one another, whereas the designs of the Nimitz and Iowa are separated by 30 years, a power plant of a type which didn't exist at the time the first was designed but which had been used in a preceding design at the time the latter was designed, and a significantly different fleet doctrine).
Beyond that, the Astral is the oldest (and only) known capital ship which is a dedicated carrier; the next newest dedicated carrier design known in the in-universe history of Starsector is classed as a cruiser, and the only other dedicated carriers are both classed as destroyers, which suggests that the Astral was the first carrier designed to serve as the centerpiece of a major fleet in the Starsector universe in much the same way that a Paragon or an Odyssey might serve as a centerpiece of a major fleet. The other carriers all appear to be intended for secondary roles, providing fighter cover and scouting for the more traditional heavy warships which form the main part of the fleet or serving as convoy escorts while more valuable warships are employed elsewhere. This is not at all dissimilar to the situation in the late-interwar period and WWII, where carriers were just starting to be the centerpieces of fleets while the more traditional heavy warships shifted towards becoming escorts. Earlier carriers had been viewed as support units for more traditional heavy warships, but by the end of the second world war it would be the heavy warships which were the support units for carriers, and this, it seems, is about where things stand in Starsector - prior to the Collapse, naval doctrine was shifting to a carrier-centric model from a battleship-centric model, and as technological development appears to have, for the most part, frozen since then in the universe of Starsector, or at least in the region of the universe covered by the game, naval doctrine is stuck in something not terribly dissimilar to late-interwar and WWII-era real-world naval doctrine, where some favor the battleship as the primary capital ship, others favor the carrier, and others favor whatever they have or can afford to build. The Essex-class and Iowa-class are of such an era, whereas the Nimitz-class came during an era in which the carrier had clearly won.
Please, enlighten me as to why I should acknowledge your analogy as the superior analogy when, as far as I can tell, everything about the carriers of Starsector favors my own analogy more than yours.