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I wasn’t sure where to post this, because technically it’s an OOC discussion, but it does have to do with development of the division in the sense of developing the roleplay.
I think it’d be helpful from a roleplay perspective to discuss and have a more solid concept of what the insides of our ships are like and how we conduct ourselves aboard them, both practically and “visually”.
I was having a discussion about this with some of the members a couple weeks back and I really liked a couple of the things they envisioned.
Graybeard pictured our ships being smaller vessels with tighter corridors and many small holds (storage compartments) rather than a large cargo hold. I can definitely agree with that idea as from the exterior of the ship you don’t get the impression that they’re the size of, say, ships in Star Trek. He also mentioned the holds would contain things like our rations, which brings up another point…
Matsiyan pictured our “replicator” technology being something more like a 3D printer (which I called something more like an “advanced fabricator”), which is capable of making things like fabrics and electronics and such. So is our technology advanced enough to have matter rearrangement or would we rely on things more like rations/MRE/Astronaut food (the latter of which I think I like the idea of more than the former).
What I’ve always pictured as far as what our ships are like on the inside is something along the lines of the NX class vessels from “Star Trek: Enterprise”. Technology that’s obviously advanced beyond our modern-day, but not so far as TOS or TNG, and a bit more “industrial”, though with our current technology I suppose there would be a bit more ergonomic flare to the consoles and ship interiors. I do believe the primary colors would be varying shades of gray.
I remember there being some documents that had a cutaway of our ships deck-by-deck that gave some layout, though I think they needed some work still. Those, if anyone still has them, could be a starting point. However, one thing we should consider in the interior layout for the sake of accuracy is the pathways for Damcon teams that we see on the Engineering console.
For the replicator/fabricator, I still envisioned the 3D printing of food items from bulk food “inks” processed on the spot in the machine.
I was picking up the slightly more industrial or military flavour of the surroundings, though I personally am fed up with shades of grey and would be perfectly happy with more colour, though please not to the levels of TOS.
What colors would you have in mind? I’mt not saying -everything- in gray. I’ think it’d be nice to have thinks like accents and furniture cushions and such in other colors… Blues and greens have been proven to be the more calming, centering colors to use psychologically. Yellow has a “Happy” effect as well as being used for caution, and of course red is the color of passion and aggression, and -extreme- caution as well. Lighter beige or cream colors might not be so bad, but feel too “homey” for a military vessel in my opinion.
I love the idea of some kind of food manufacture machine that takes protein strings and carbohydrates to recombine into different foods.
I see ships being more utilitarian than star trek. Simple corridors with some passages with simple mesh grating and walls so you can see conduits and stuff, but proper bulk heads on main decks.
Crew quarters should be comfortable but small, perhaps how they are on a naval vessel, with lower ranks sharing a two bunk cabin, but senior officers doubled up on smaller ships or single quarters on larger ships. Solari started cominy up with such ideas and his posts mention sharing a room with another officer.
My knowledge of colour provides the same interpretations. I am particularly fond of green myself. Blue suggests responsibility and reliability and so I suspect would dominate in high-focus work spaces.
The vision of close quarters and partially closed areas feels very right. The Hunter must have a cabin down near Engineering where a conduit runs through where the upper bunk would be in a normal cabin. That would explain Matsiyan’s “kingdom” as an Ensign in his log.
Sorry it’s taken a bit for me to get back to this!
So, so far we’re envisioning fairly tight spaces, not unlike modern naval vessels and submarines. Not necessarily unlivable quarters, but not roomy by any means. And hallways and corridors being just large enough for say, 2 people to move through. And each ship would have essentially 3 decks (the 2 extra “decks” on the light cruisers and the like would essentially be like Jefferies tubes to access certain components).
I would think that a lighter blue would be a good color to have as the primary plating, wall, and bulkhead color, as any shade of green, save an -extremely- pale one, would feel almost “alien”, though I may have to look at some shades and see what might work. I would think you’d want darker shades of green and blue for certain accents, like seat cushions, bunks, and panel and bulkhead accents. And of course you would have yellow and red for warning signs and such.
I also like the idea of this 3D printer, or fabricator, even more with the use of strings of proteins and carbohydrates to synthesize or fabricate food. Something that should be addressed, however, is transporters. There are several areas in our RP and documentation where we’ve made use of them, particularly for the transport of personnel. So the question is, do we have them, or not? And if we have them, that means we have the ability to convert matter to energy, and then reconvert. And if that’s the case, there’s no saying we couldn’t rearrange and re-sequence that matter into other forms of matter (such as replicators on Star Trek). And if that’s the case, then why would we still use something along the lines of an advanced fabricator when we could just rearrange the matter? Perhaps the transporter uses a decent amount of energy that we couldn’t justify using for everyday things like creating meals and such?
Also, do we have any kind of holographic technology? I don’t get the impression our technology’s quite there, or at least not focused in that direction. More practical and utilitarian.
As far as living quarters I’d say we’d want 2 people per quarters, with bunks and perhaps a desk with chair and a utilitarian airmore for each of them, about 3m x 3m x 2.5m? Maybe a tad more? Captain’s Quarters would obviously be larger. Perhaps an extra meter or so in length and width?
We also have to think about what all facilities we have on board, what kind of equipment each facility would house, and how much space would be needed in each facility to house that equipment. The areas I can think of off the top of my head:
Galley (with kitchen and replicators/food fabricators)
Medical Bay (with basic visit rooms as well as surgical areas and very small bio labs)
Shuttle Bay (BARE minimum of 1 shuttle, but given size of our ships, no more than 2)
Armory (with small, practical firing range)
Engineering (potentially huge area compared to others on the ship)
Science Lab (optional, perhaps combined with Medical)
Ready Room (optional)
Cargo Holds (multiple throughout the ship, not in just 1 or 2 bays)
Communications/Stellar Cartography/Data Processing lab (a combined area for all of the above, basically a multi-function room with multiple computers and displays for reviewing various forms of data and information)
Transporter or Teleporter room (if we do indeed have such things)A lot to consider, but things I think that should be thought about. Maybe when we’ve narrowed down more information a workable ship schematic/deck layout can be put together. The more solid ideas we have about our lifestyle and ship environments, the more consistent our RP can be! 🙂
Would all crew share quarters? Would anyone but the captain have their own quarters? If not not, we have to determine who shares wi the whom.
That in itself could lead to all sorts of hilarious and interesting rp. Also leading to different crew members bonding through proximity… Or the opposite.
I think the idea of 2 crewmen to each quarters (aside from perhaps higher ranking ones), would be not only practical from a space-aboard-ship standpoint, but also from an RP perspective. As you said, having crewmen “bunk up” would give some great opportunities! Complaints about the other’s use of space or messiness. Or even some food that they bring aboard that might be offensive to the nostrils! Or maybe if they’re pals they could throw in some inside jokes about a prank they pulled. 😛
I’ve been thinking about this too, especially with how they would intersect with the new Collated Duties. It occurred to me that TSN ships only have 5 life pods, right? I think that’s how many the Hawk dropped a couple shifts ago, but maybe it varies by size. I would imagine that each life pod wouldn’t hold more than a dozen people, otherwise they’d be way too big to be effective. I would imagine that even waiting for all 12 people to board their assigned pod before launching would be absolutely harrowing in an emergency. This makes me think that at max, TSN ships hold a crew of 60 people, making it pretty small compared to Star Trek standards. Even the NX-class held 83, according to Memory Alpha.
I am struggling to remember my academy training but doesn’t each cluster of ejected pods use ultra low power local networking to elect one of them to serve as the high powered beacon for that group? If I recall they rotate the role between them to minimise power drain. This also has the benefit that each cluster shows up as a single “pod” on tactical overviews and avoids clutter. Otherwise they would look as dense as a fleet of Arvonian fighters. Those larger pods may be the ones for larger shipboard spaces like the bridge or the mess hall, or the station safety systems.
That makes much more sense, perhaps what our sensors indicate as one pod actually represents a cluster of 3-5 pods each.
I could see our smaller ships consisting of just under 100 crew, and larger crews perhaps double that.
According to the Vessel Database, scout class ships have a crew complement of 60-80 and light cruisers have 80-100, so that fits with that so far. There are no crew complements for the other ship classes.
120-160 is max size for dreadnought if I recall correctly (these are based off discussions with Mike S and bouncing around ideas). Of course, bigger class ships will have larger crews, though not much larger – leviatan is up to 190 personnel for example. I want to stick with smaller crew sizes as massive crews in space make no sense. The life support systems needed to enable massive crews would be huge, expensive and need huge ships along with it. I don’t view us as bridge officers on city sized ships – it wouldn’t match with the maneouvrability and combat capabilities of the ships we run, or the size of the bridge crew.
I recall talking about sharing a bunk room too when Solari was writing his logs. More senior officers (Lt. And Lt. Cdr) would likely share a room, particularly on smaller ships. Captain would have their own and a small office. XOs on larger ships would have theor own, but may share with another officer of the same rank on a smaller ship.
I envision junior officers (Lt. Jr down to cadet) could have 2 or even 4 to a room.
Any enlisted would have to share at least 4 to a room I reckon.
Part of me thinks these are quite conservative though. With 80 personnel, you’d need about 15 to 20 rooms. This number could be reduce to 10 to 15 if you put more personnel per room.
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