Well, we’ve had crews with all cadets and a couple of senior officer instructors, as well as cadets distributed amongst crew. We moved away from the cadet crews as some were already experienced players and just needed to figure out how the TSN worked. It was also something of a chore for the instructors. We ended up having cadets dismissed an hour early so we could have all experienced officers and crews. Its something that never sat right for me, so the practice was scrapped.
As for a sixth ship, we have had one before, and even looked at the possibilitu of a seventh. The numbers over the summer period drop though, and ultimately the crew have to disband. We have data for a whole year now on attendance figures (just how many were present at the beginning of the shift +- a couple). 35-40 is our expected peak, bit around April numbers will start to decline again.