I am just wondering why 40k ships need so many people. What are they doing all day long? Do they "belong" to the ship? If yes, are there also women on a ship or do they recruit the new guys from a spaceport or planet? I am planning a story that takes place on a ship and i just cant imagine what so many people should be doing there...

Is it maybe like a modern US aircraft carrier? They have many canteens and even a bowling alley for entertainment.

Levyten

Well I guess in terms of entertainment they probably have gambling houses, bars, and other dark and grim forms of entertainment.

I imagine a lot of the "recreational" spaces on the ship are in fact chapels and cathedrals.

Actually now I think of it, that's probably more apt for imperial navy vessels: with Rogue Traders, could be anything! Imperial society as a whole seems keen on gladitorial contests, so maybe miniature versions of those where ship rats are fought against each other while crewmen drunk on below-decks moonshine and bet on the outcome...dice games, games of chance, dancing hornpipes, scrimshawing... stabbing each other with improvised weapons, rum, the lash...the other one...

Most of the crew on a ship are indentured serfs who labour all die, sleep for a few hours then labour some more until they die. They do all the dangerous jobs, maintaining the ship and providing the physical strength needed to work some of the technology. They are the human fuel of void ships, and they must be replenished occasionally. It's possible to earn your way out of this hellish existence, becoming trusted crew who perform less lethal and more sensetive maintenance which may require some understanding of void faring to accomplish. Some become leaders of the work crews, ensuring that the masses of indentured hands never rebel and do their work. Above this you have petty-officers of various ranks and classifications until you reach the full officer ranks, the men and women who run the show. Above this all you have the captain and his immediate subordinates. Or, in the case of a Rogue Trader crew, the PCs.

This is how the novel Relentless presents it, at least.

I've seen pictures of ragged mobs of crewman in the hundreds walking on giant treadmills. It might have been in a Battlefleet Gothic book. It seemed to me that human/slave power replaced technology in mundane tasks.

Being on a ship and part of a military organization I would think their few hours of down time would be less pleasant than their hive worker serf equivalents.

I should be noted that all of these images are from Navy ships. As with anything 40k things differ from ship to ship. Some ships crews might be serfs, while others freemen able to leave at any port. (Of course given most ports leaving the ship isn't somethig most crew would do.) Many 40k ships are flying cities. With people born, living and dying never leaving the ship.

The ships have few automated type things aboard. The great cannons must have there great doors raised by man power, and then the cannons rolled into place by manpower, Everything aboard a ship is very mechanical with human power supplying what would normally be an electric motor or such. And since a ship is huge, this all requires huge amounts of muscle power. Usually pressed ganged into place or in the form of serfs.

To quote a famous farm boy from a far away galaxy...

"What a piece of junk!"

What do 20,000 people do on a ship? Whatever the ship wants.

I guess it really depends on what there is to do. The lowest ratings probably eat work excreate and sleep. those higher up might get rations of alcohol and can have the odd minor party. Those who are officers might have access to bars, brothels or gaming dens. people like the players have free reign (mostly) and can do whatever they like, though worshiping the gods of chaos might be frowned upon as might feeding your pet genestealer.

Also those people who arent slaves/serfs may be even less likely to leave the ship cuse probably the only people who WANT to be ratings is most likely criminals

A Nimitz class super carrier, which is a mere 332 meters long, has a crew of more than 5,000. Given the huge size of 40K ships and the fact that many of them have low levels of automation, the crew sizes could actually be higher. The number of crew just involved in routine maintenance and monitoring of equipment is staggering.

Malkavianmadman said:

Or were serfs, or living in a really bad area...

Judging by the fluff, one could venture to say that the majority of the "crew" are actually "civilians". Especially on a ship that size. Naturally it varies from ship to ship, but using Gaunt's novels for example, I'd expect there to be a sizable civilian population of families etc. providing all sorts of services etc. just like the hangers-on that follow Imperial Guard regiments around.

Example: You were born, raised and educated in the lower holds and worked your way up from scrubbing the loo on Monday morning to a Rating on the Gunnery Crew. Showing you had promise and potential you advanced to petty officer status....

Whereas your brother, yearning to go landside, joined an Imperial Guard Regiment that the ship happened to be transporting to a battle zone back in M41.021....

Dalnor Surloc said:

There are different classifications of Ratings. I expect the "parolees" get the most hazardous jobs like cleaning the insides of the plasma reactors, whereas the "volunteers" get better jobs (and advancement opportunities) like Gunnery Crew, Medicae Crew etc.

Read 'Relentless.' That is the best BL book on "ordinary" shipboard life. Its also a fun read.

Another thing to mention is that Ross has stated a number of times that a major influence on Rogue Trader is the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books. These are classic "golden age of sail" books.

In that setting, "civilian" vessels (like whalers, for example) always have a much smaller crew than warships. Warships needed large crews to soak up casualties and man the guns on both sides of the vessel at the same time.

I don;t know how this works with Rogue Trader...but perhaps the circa 20,000 crew for a Rogue Trader's sword class frigate is smaller than the crew of a Naval Rogue Trader.

15 answers in less than a day! Awesome! The answers are very inspiring and helped me a lot!

Someone could make a VISA card add: RT book, 37$, RT community: priceless

Most 40k capital ships are in fact small cities, meaning that beside the obvious roles you'll indeed have a bunch of civilians. Look at the Misericorde from the DH Core book - it's got a rather strange own form of society.

I lean towards the ships being self-contained cities, since some of them rarely reach port, and are often in areas where there are no ports. Not to mention the strangeness of the warp and time dilation there.

Also, each piece of machinery, even door seals/locks, might have several master technicians and their 2 or 3 apprentice/servants. A ship might have thousands of doors, and even if only 1% are in need of repair at a time, that is still a sizable number.

The pics from BG books showing thousands of men moving stuff around always disturbed me, and seemed stupid. Cant they have servitors doing all that? In the pic I saw, it looked like several thousand men pushing or pulling something around, and if a warship has several of these guns, plus missiles, that would be way too many people. I think those pics should go the way of the Zoats, or even be considered pics from chaos ships.

I lean towards the ships being self-contained cities, since some of them rarely reach port, and are often in areas where there are no ports. Not to mention the strangeness of the warp and time dilation there.

Also, each piece of machinery, even door seals/locks, might have several master technicians and their 2 or 3 apprentice/servants. A ship might have thousands of doors, and even if only 1% are in need of repair at a time, that is still a sizable number.

The pics from BG books showing thousands of men moving stuff around always disturbed me, and seemed stupid. Cant they have servitors doing all that? In the pic I saw, it looked like several thousand men pushing or pulling something around, and if a warship has several of these guns, plus missiles, that would be way too many people. I think those pics should go the way of the Zoats, or even be considered pics from chaos ships.

I get the feeling that Missiricord is a bit of an exception to the general rule. Most ships will have enormous populations but wouldn't be as self contained. To be self contained, a lot of their realestate would have to be turned over to some method of food generation, realestate that could be used to earn a profit for the owners of the sip. I would think, of they are in any way like a "city" then it would be like a hive and dependent on outside influxes of food, water, and men.

As for man power vs servitor power, I'm sure there are some sips that rely more on servitors then man power, but they would have to be a rich ship or a mechanicus ship. Lets face it, servitors are more expensive then men. Servitors have to be augmented and mind-wiped by a tech-priest (and they don't work for peanuts) and, if the augmentics aren't on hand salvaged from a previous model (unlikely given the kinds of accidents that can claim an indentured slaves life on a sip) the augmentics would have to be crafted and obtained. In the end, it's far easer to create a human then it is to create a machine or a servitor and far cheaper and it's a hell of a lot easer to get a man ten it is to get a servitor.

Besides tat, i like the feel of Mortal Fuel. It calls back to the age of sail with an extra coating of grimdark which 40k invented. If you try to look too deeply into it or explain it all in rational terms, it will all fall apart. That's because 40k and it's societies aren't rational, they're incredibly insane -and that's part of the big draw for me. If it was rational it would be just another boring vanilla space opera.

Oh, and I would second the recomendation of te book Relentless. For the most part, I can not stand BL books; they're either pure marry-sue crap or present a setting which just dosn't feel like 40k. Relentless, owever, was neither, and riviting good read untill the end were it felt like te editors told the autor to make it more like the other books... wasn't so good but up untill te end,. a great read. The end wasn't too bad, just not as good as the build up to it.

They play tabletop RPG games of people in the 21st century doing boring mundane norma life stuff... Regular World 2000.

Mazinkaiser said:

Dear lord, that's dangerous! What if they roleplayed characters in RW 2k playing characters in RT playing characters in RW 2k playing characters in RT playing characters in RW 2k playing characters in RT playing characters in RW 2k... the universe could asplode!

Roleplaying for Chaos.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Indeed, some ships are crewed entirely by servitors. This, of course, has its pros and cons. Rogue Star mentions at one point that one of the ships had to 'resort' to using aging Servitors in place of "live" crew due to the Rogue Traders decline in fortunes. In Eisenhorn, the Rogue Trader that Eisenhorn frequently uses for transport has a ship entirely crewed by (albeit well-maintained and expensive) Servitors.

I get the impression that Servitors deliver consistent, but extremely mediocre performance. For example, a thousand Preachers and Commissars couldn't get a Servitor to reload that Macro Cannon any faster than it already does. On the plus side, Servitors would be immune to negative morale effects.