I think the Federation didn't deign to bring it up after as they were ecstatic over the thawing of relations.
As for the Klingons, well... look at the situation now.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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- Sci-Fi
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I think the Federation didn't deign to bring it up after as they were ecstatic over the thawing of relations.
As for the Klingons, well... look at the situation now.
Speaking of the Biophage crisis, I remember that one of the options we were given was Federation-wide recruitment calls.
It makes me wonder if all this notion of Federation '"disadvantage" for replacing crew in wartime isn't overblown. Sure we don't practice conscription, but imagine a Federation-wide call for volunteers to anyone who has ever served aboard a starship in any capacity, whether it be a former cargo hauler captain or a 90- year old retired Starfleet veteran. I bet that if placed on a wartime footing, Starfleet could replace crew faster than you think... at least for a while.
It makes me wonder if all this notion of Federation '"disadvantage" for replacing crew in wartime isn't overblown. Sure we don't practice conscription, but imagine a Federation-wide call for volunteers to anyone who has ever served aboard a starship in any capacity, whether it be a former cargo hauler captain or a 90- year old retired Starfleet veteran. I bet that if placed on a wartime footing, Starfleet could replace crew faster than you think... at least for a while.
- Location
- Earth
It's overblown. I tried calculating the amount of personal Starfleet recruits on a yearly basis, and.. um.. well.. suffice it to say, unless Starfleet has a ridiculous retirement rate, the amount of people we take in every year amounts to a ridiculously tiny portion of the Federation's population. We should literally be taking only the best of the best of the best. So, between retired veterans, civilian spacers, and just doing crash course instruction Starfleet should never really have to worry about crew recruitment during war time. Our limit should be how fast we can build ships.
Of course, in the end it's up to @OneirosTheWriter and I can see why he might play it differently for gameplay reasons.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
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- She/Her
You can also do things like graduating cadets a year two early. It gives you a one time tripling of new manpower.
Part of the problem is that I think it would reduce the quality of existing ships (XP gain reduced) and then your new crews find it harder to crew pre-war designs because thesee ships were designed with a very particular and highly trained skillset in mind. It would probably give new crews a malus until they level /up/ to green.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Hmmyeah, that'd probably help. If nothing else, we could shake out a lot of the academy-trained personnel qualified to serve on our starships but presently doing duty in outposts, shipyards, starbases, and so on, and replace them with the volunteers.
It's entirely possible that Starfleet literally needs the best of the best of the best, sort of like real-life astronaut corps. If you're not in the top one percent of the population for raw aptitude, and you don't have a specific inclination towards being a spacer, you may just not be what Starfleet needs.
That said, I long ago decided not to complain about how we "should" have all the manpower we need for whatever we want, because there may be factors in play I don't know anything about, plus it'd just give Oneiros a headache.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's actually the main Federation bonus: you get all these highly trained people that are a percent of a percent of the population. The best and most motivated of your population one in millions. The worry about "crew loss" is that you loose that edge if you are forced to lower your high standards (Picard. PICARD failed his first entry attempt)
The limiting factor has always been ships instead of crew.
The Cardassian "advantage" of conscription is that it gives you a much "wider" but "shallower" pool of candidates. They never have to worry about running out of crew trained to use their equipment to its expected efficiencies. Of course because the ships themselves are designed to be idiot proof you don't get, for instance, one ship with almost double it's designed specs in some ares just because the crew is that good. There are trade offshow for both systems.
The Cardassians worry about efficiency, the Romulans about loyalty and the Klingons about infighting.
- Location
- Australia
Explorer Corps is a tiny fraction of the starship faring part of Starfleet. The spacefaring part of Starfleet is the tiny teeth to an almighty big tail.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Given that Starfleet seems to operate entire industrial complexes (at least based on what I remember from Oneiros's references in things like shipbuilding), on top of the bases and shipyards, and that the Federation doesn't actually seem to have a military force separate from Starfleet to do things like provide ground security...
I can easily see there being a lot of people in Starfleet's employ who aren't Academy-trained and don't get to ride on the spaceships. Just to fill out the numbers
I can easily see there being a lot of people in Starfleet's employ who aren't Academy-trained and don't get to ride on the spaceships. Just to fill out the numbers
- Location
- Central Standard Time
True.
But how many will there be?
One unit = ~50 people.
The generic Freighter has 3 units. The Colony ship has 4.
I believe Colony Command has 5 colony ships. Theoretically, we could strip colony command of 10 units or so, while retaining half so that existing obligations are met, and there's people to retain knowledge about the hulls.
Now, there's around 5-10 freighters per member world, with the larger member worlds having more. We can shove recruits from a special non-combat recruiting drive here, and pull some veterans from here. However, we need trade to continue, so I'd say that we can only pull around 1 crew per freighter. That brings it up another 20 or so.
The issue is, we lack hulls to put them in. And we are the Federation. Escort spam is for poor people who can suffer casualties. For the Federation, every loss is a tragedy. This is why we build Explorers and cruisers. We build our ships safer and more durable and more resistant to plot devices, because we care.
Another issue is that not everyone is suited for combat.
(refreshes, sees GM post)
I'd imagine that most people don't want to see combat. Serving in a starship is probably optional, which is why we only get a small Academy class per year. Also, we probably only accept the people that are psychologically sound into regular service on a ship. As for the EC, well, they're all a bit crazy.
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher, who figured out how to use a tractor beam as a tractor-repulsor in his teens, and wound up being selected as the personal student of The Traveler, failed his first entry attempt.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The odd thing is, AlphaDelta, that in some situations, a squadron of escorts is actually likely to take less combat casualties than an explorer of equal total cost. Because while escorts are individually more fragile, they have larger hit point pools total, and can often spread out a lot of damage on their collective defenses before they start taking hits that kill crew members.
I'm tempted to believe that this may have more to do with his extreme youth. Or with something else about his personality, possibly whatever it is that gives him a near-Gaeni tendency to have his science experiments go horribly wrong and almost get people killed.
- Location
- Earth
True but at this point the federation's population should be approaching 100 billion, if it hasn't already passed that point, and
Besides, the easier and simpler explanation is that the Federation council are penny pinching bastards. After all, supposedly only United Earth has gone without money, the rest of them not so much. We could recruit as many people as we want at anytime but the council won't give us the funding to pay them. That's why we have to spend PP to expand recruitment, we have to convince them to cough up the money for all those new paychecks!
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- Location
- California
A reminder of Tom Paris. A man who is a master pilot, commando, medic, historian, story writer, seducer, and once built an engine that goes to infinity.
And Starfleet kicked him out because they weren't impressed with him.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Uh... no. 0.01% of one hundred billion is ten million.
Which sounds like a lot, and it's not a small number, but if you need people operating a lot of permanent bases and facilities and so on on top of the people that crew the spaceships, you can go through a million or more people surprisingly quickly.
The man has chronic ne'er-do-well syndrome written into his personality and he's an insubordinate ass; he's never really a success at anything, until he has literally no choice but to try, and other people have literally no choice but to put up with him.
Some people just fail because of their personality, regardless of their other personal merits, because they simply do not have the ways of being a successful person. And I'm pretty sure Tom Paris is one of them, at least until he gets stuck aboard Voyager.
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Faster? We have no proof that anyone else gets veteran crew ratings, period. I mean when you think about it, having such a great crew that they make your ship that much better is pretty incredible. It might be something achievable only by Starfleet's "best of the best" policies and simply not doable at all for other powers and their standard crews.
In fact, the only time I can recall any indication of a veteran crew for anyone else was in my Pirates omake, where I hinted that Yrillian privateers have Elite crews (because they have been tricking those ships out for over 100 years, 'Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon' style).
- Location
- Earth
I have no words for my mistake. Anyway, that was a deliberately super low number designed to show an example. The point remains the same, and just as pointless given this is a game that must have balance.
- Location
- Central Standard Time
Also, I doubt we have that many people.
At most, 50 billion. Vulcan aren't exactly rabbits, and Andorians have population growth issues. And in any case, population control is in effect to allow for the utopia. At most, Vulcan will have 5 billion, and 10 billion each in Earth, Tellar, Andoria, Amarkia, and Ferasa.
And also, the other organs take their share of our pool. The Member World fleets, infrastructure, and other organizations: Yoyodyne, Catian Frontier Police, Amarkian Gendarmes, Andorian Guard, Vulcan Central Inspectorate, etc.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Honestly, I think if Starfleet were the size it's implied to be in canon (hundreds or thousands of ships, dozens upon dozens of starbases and outposts), there would be no trouble explaining "why would Starfleet have trouble crewing everything?"
But we're playing "Chibi Starfleet," basically, so it seems like we have disproprtionately tiny crew numbers compared to planetary populations. Thing is, the "Chibi Starfleet" conceit is necessary in order for the game to be manageable; things would be totally out of control if we had hundreds upon hundreds of ships. So I'd rather not complain about how easy it "should be" for us to find crew, since the only reason that argument is even valid is a direct consequence of a game mechanic without which the game would be unplayable
But we're playing "Chibi Starfleet," basically, so it seems like we have disproprtionately tiny crew numbers compared to planetary populations. Thing is, the "Chibi Starfleet" conceit is necessary in order for the game to be manageable; things would be totally out of control if we had hundreds upon hundreds of ships. So I'd rather not complain about how easy it "should be" for us to find crew, since the only reason that argument is even valid is a direct consequence of a game mechanic without which the game would be unplayable
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
Oh jeeze an attack on Paris would piss off the Federation to the point were the Klingons and the Romulans would be hiding
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- Location
- Earth
The Federation now consists of 8 member species, with two more set to join for a total of 10. Quite frankly, given how long it's been since WWIII I'll eat my hat if humanity isn't closer to at least 15 billion on it's own, let alone the other races who have had warp travel for longer. I was probably understating the number majorly when I said 100 billion, it really should be higher!
Basically, this. I mean, it's not like the strains my SOD after all.
Actually, the main (and only) thing in this quest that does strain my SOD is how two different races managed to both remain undetected in the Romulan Neutral Zone despite the fact that the entire area should have been mapped and scanned thoroughly by both the Federation and the Romulans. That neither of us picked up on their existence is the biggest plot hole in the whole Quest, at least in my opinion. Though, it's a pretty minor one also.
This has long been my assumption. If you consider all the intensely hard shit that would be going on in a Federation vessel BEFORE you even add on the sci-fi weirdness, it is not surprising you'd probably have at least astronaut training levels. All the advanced math, operating high-energy and high technology systems at peak condition, the mental fortitude to deal with the fact you're in a can of air in a totally hostile and mostly empty void.
It's actually why I don't think it's weird Starfleet has mostly officers. People like to draw easy comparison to IRL navies, and maybe that's more relevant in TNG era where the ships are more like cruise liners. But I think Roddenberry was looking at astronauts and pilots, and astronauts historically would more than qualify for officer status, if they weren't ones already. Hence, the USS Enterprise has mostly officers onboard.
I've actually started to flip from the general fan consensus and started to assume there's probably almost equal amounts of Officers and Enlisted in Starfleet, if not more officers. Enlisted probably are pretty specialized and even then probably hold a bachelor's equivilent from SFA or tons of work experience. I'd also suspect Security might have more enlisted because it can be more traditionally "military."
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So the vast majority of Star Fleet serves on stations, construction yards, non-combat vessels and ground side then.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[sighs]
World War III was about 250 years ago in our timeline; 200 years in the TOS era. It knocked back the population of Earth pretty damn hard- the immediate shooting killed at least 600 million and realistically starvation and radiation and so on would have killed more. Furthermore, given that World War III was fought with biological, chemical, and radioactive weapons, genetic damage is likely, especially in the early years after the crisis.
To go from that baseline to a population of "at least 15 billion," I strongly suspect you'd need population to roughly double every hundred years, at least. You need about 2.5 children per woman for that entire 100-year timespan to get a population doubling. Since you need each of four 25-year generations to be about 1.19 times larger than the last, which means an extra 0.4 children being born per woman over and above the 2.1 or so required to maintain replacement rate. So, again, 2.5.
Do we have indications that the AVERAGE Earthling woman from World War III, up through the ENT and TOS era, and on into TBG, is having two or three children?
You are being grossly 'optimistic' about how rapidly humans breed, and I suggest you start researching sauces that go well with hats.
Actually no, that's kind of the point. The Romulan Neutral Zone is, canonically, so POORLY mapped that the Iconian homeworld was there unbeknownst to the galaxy. So poorly mapped that the Borg could have a cube running around in the area literally ripping settlements out of the ground and assimilating them for a year or more, before anything more than abortive random unsuccessful investigations could take place.
Because it's the one place nobody's allowed to go, you see. Starfleet can't explore there. The Romulans (who have cloaks) could, but they are massively reclusive and the Neutral Zone was their idea in the first place precisely because they hate the whole idea of actually going out and poking things.
Meanwhile, both sides have plenty of sensors watching the neutral zone, but when they detected warp drive signatures they just assumed it was the other side's ships poking around illicitly, but didn't want to investigate too hard for fear of provoking confrontation. Violations of the Neutral Zone can easily blow up into war scares.
Furthermore, neither the Kadeshi nor the Sotaw actually did that much warp traveling, on account of how their spacecraft tend to have warp drives only on the big motherships while smaller craft are fabricated on the spot.
I'm not at all surprised that civilizations in the Neutral Zone could escape attention, given the canonical facts that:
1) It's poorly surveyed,
2) Both sides are predisposed to blame any unexpected events in or near the Zone on the other side,
3) Neither of those species had much in the way of active deep space exploration going on.
Leslie: "I'm with you, buddy. Do you have any idea how many different jobs they had me doing?
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