So let's say you have an empty ship. Not a single soul on board. Maybe a lost genestealer or cultist, but they're keeping to themselves deep in the bowels of the ship. The rest of the ship is fully functional and all yours. Where do you start?

How do you build that ecology that forms the workings of great ships? Where do you get the families, the hangers on and the myriad of individuals who will spend probably the rest of their lives working and toiling to keep that great space borne city of gothic edifices and crenelations moving through the void?

Plastic Rat said:

One tows it to a space station and makes an acquisition check......

On a serious vein - you need to go somewhere with significant space travel where one might be able to pick up spacing families for the specialist roles - those discarded from damaged ships that were broken up, those let go for any number of reasons, those families that have been rockbound for a couple of generations but still hold the traditions and hope to escape to the void (poor crew perhaps)....a place with significant population for the mass bodies of unskilled labour for the bulk of the crew. Other ships might supply some units of crew as if they are floating cities they can suffer overpopulation as well as under, some unscrupulous captins may ditch unwanted crew on those pretences. A mechanicus presence might allow for mass servitor acquisition.

THese are all the sorts of things that you can have the players try and find to get decent modifiers to the acquisition roll for the crew.

Given how the rulebook states that players can replace lost crew from any planet they come across, it would seem that only a small fraction of a ship's crew (I'd say 10%) is made up of highly skilled Voidsmen. The rest will all be performing semi-skilled labour which in a different sci-fi setting would be handled by automation, or attending to the needs of the crew itself in supporting roles (cooking, laundry etc).

Of course, these rules doubtless assume that the recruits are going to be placed alongside experienced crew where they'll learn the ropes on the job during the months or years of game time in between space battles. For a starting ship with no crew you'd better make sure a high percentage of them are Voidsmen.

Another thing to note is that there's probably a lot of overlap between living in a Hive-City and keeping the machinery running there and working on a Starship. I'd say that Hive Worlds would also be a good source of Starship Crew, and they're far more likely to have surplus population than other starships and space stations.

My own campaign is starting with the ship, salvaged from a space hulk, undergoing the final refit and being crewed as it sit in orbit around Scintilla. To get the ball rolling I'll give the PCs several misfortunes related to the ship's status and new crew that they'll have to address before it leaves for the Expanse.

If you've got enough pull (ie Profit Factor, which also represents connections) you might also be able to get drafts of trained crewmen from Navy ships or bases. Probably better quality than hive sweepings, dockside loiterers, and pressed crew pulled out of dives and brothels. OTOH there's the risk that the commanders providing the drafts will take the opportunity to unload their own malingerers and screwups on you.

Then agen. Some Rogue traders are little more then legel pirate ships. So getting a ship full of drunks and malcontents does not sound that far off.

However My question is, how much of your ship could you expect to fill with servitors? So if a RT really did not want to have a large crew, possible because they feared mutiny or maybe they expected to sail some place most Emporor-Fearing citizens might frown on, could they run most of the ship with servitors? I know the Space Marines do, but could a RT put together a ship with that many servitors?

The live crew:servitor ratio seems to vary a lot in the fiction. You'd probably have more drones on a ship with a strong contingent of tech-priests and relatively few on one with finance problems, but a lot of it depends on the captain's (or owner's) whims. It's pretty clear that you can't use nothing but servitors for crew - I doubt even those marine strikeships have non-volitional borgs for all of their ratings. Contrariwise, finding a ship with no servitors at all would be almost unheard of, and would probably result in some seriously unhappy crew. Might not be possible at all - they might be needed for some hazardous-environment duties that normal organics can't survive.

So, until FFG says otherwise, set the ratio wherever the DM and RT are comfortable with and call it good. The ship in my campaign runs a live crew of ~20,000 alongside another ~10,000 servitors.

I imagine that some crew will sign on as indentured, for a 5 or 10 year haul, bring their families, and hopefully eventually when the contract ends, they are able to relocate to a new colony or whereever they wish with a little Geld in their pockets for a new life. If I were a Hiver with a basic knowledge of tech use or whatever, and I was offered the opportunity to leave the hive, earn money, and restart elsewhere (granted I hated Hive life), I would take it. Indentured Servitude was effective on Earth, so it makes sense that it would work in 40k.

I think that when the vessels go from Navy control to private control, it is pretty much like changing a town from one Overlord to a new Overlord: life goes on, perhaps with minor changes, but if all is well, then a new Rogue Trader wont likely change the way of life of his crew.

I like to think that many skilled crew, with families on board, are training their kids to do their job, and if they are really bright, they can go to train with Tech-Priests or wherever they fit well on the ship. Master and Apprentice is fitting.

Here is a ratio I was playing with=

1 percent of the crew are Officer types, each of these being responsible for roughly 100 crew members. These are the Voidsmen. They will have the privilege of larger quarters, a family on board, etc. The Tech-Priests would be another 1 percent, so roughly 200-300 of these running about, and each Tech-Priest has 1-6 servitors making him more efficient. The rest of the crew are ratings, working hard and trying to either shop potential or just fighting hard and staying drunk.

Now of the 1 percent who are Voidsmen, 1 out of every 10 is a senior Voidsman, with greater duties and more command powers.

The Command Group are of course the Players.

Argoden said:

Actually according to the Eisenhorn novels you can. The RT that he travels with for most of the trilogy, Tobias Maxilla, has no human crew on his vessel, only servitors.

Incidentally in the book Rogue star the RT laments the fact that his fortunes have sunk so low that he cannot afford a fully human bridge crew so he has to have servitors at some station instead. so maybe servitor numbers can be affected by Profit Factor?

DW

Plastic Rat said:

Well you see, if you think of the hiver girl as a flower, and think of the hiver boy as a bee. And one day WHEN THEY ARE MARRIED AND OVER THE AGE OF 21! they might feel a little extra special towards another, and they might start hugging and kissing and then... Well like I said the hiver girl is like this flower.. And...

[long, strained and barely understandable lecture filled with awkward and strange euphemisms follows for a few hours]

...And THAT's where crew members come from!

(Im sorry, I just couldn't help myself. )

Varnias Tybalt said:

"W'as a flower Pa? An a bee too, w'asdat?"

Argoden said:

Actually they wouldn't. They would simply slap a mechanicus purity seal on certain pieces of machinery that are not allowed to be broken by anyone other than a techpriest. So if said Rogue Trader was to run into trouble with these particular components, he'd have to return to a forge world and have the problem fixed... Or jury-rig the problem himself and risk the wrath of the mechanicus if they ever discover that he broke one of their seals and tampered with holy technology.

GalagaGalaxian said:

Well, it's kinda like a fly, but it's got yellow stripes, boy. And it flys from flower to flower, and somehow, it goin in makes that flower turn to fruit and that fruit grows to be new plants with new flowers. Now, go ask the preacher 'bout flowers...

Varnias Tybalt said:

Wow, strict. In my sector its only Age 18...and some backworld planets even allow 16! Almost heresy!

Kaiohx said:

Yeah, I was kinda trying to mimic the neurotic conservative christian parent stereotype (always uncomfortable when it comes to talk about sex, especially when children are present, insisting on marriage before sex at all times etc. etc.)

In my Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader world, legal age of conscent is not even an issue on most planets. While a few more or less civilized worlds might take such vice issues seriously and enforce laws about them, the majority simply don't care at all. Considering the fact that they are a part of society where the extermination of an entire planets population is a viable tactic, such "petty" issues as individual **** or what we would call statutory **** is pretty much left up to the individual citizens themselves to avenge and try to prohibit and not something that the ruling government or even the local kind of police force would care about.

Anything else would simply not be grimdark enough...

I think you're falling into the trap of treating planets as homogenous things when they're actually going to be very much as it is here on Earth: some people have it good, some people have it really, really bad. Not everyone speaks the same way, even if in THEORY it's all "Low Gothic" and in any case, I'll bet many of them speak Low Gothic when dealing with government and the like but whatever their local cant is for everything else, etc, etc.

My point is, statutory **** probably exists, with a variety of definitions and ages, EVEN ON THE SAME PLANET. Overall, of course, your point stands - the Imperium couldn't give a toss about such things, as a whole, it has bigger problems and if a single planet gets to be problematic it's nothing an orbitting cruiser can't solve.

A dedicated port like port Wander is always well stock with potential crew and higher chances of getting a decently trained one. If that doesn't float your boat, undred-undred teef is a good place to look for skill mechanics and arms men. The planet of Zyth is also a good one as well as port footfall. other than that hired hands are easy to come by if you got the thrones.

The thing that makes the situation from the opening post special is that their is ABSOLUTELY NO CREW left.

Ratings? Could be rather easy to get.
Voidsmen? Okay, here you need a port
Servitors? Hive World could help you out alot (on the assumption that ALL Hive Worlds are centers of high Industry).
Officers? Strike pacts with noble families with a navy tradition; deals with Merchant Magnates or similiar things.

But "the devil is in the details". What about those very special specialist? Those who are actually into the the arcane lores like REAL Stellar Navigations and Chard Reading, the NAVIGATORS with their Warp-Powers, the weapon crew LEADERS who are going to coordinate fire and all the Technomants keeping the ship systems running? And all this other Techno-Arcane Professions us members of the 21st century will never-ever think about. Me believes that even refuelling will not work without a ceremon

While an OP stated that a Tech-Priest could simply slap a seal on something and it will work as long as it does not break down & no-one tempers with it... I say machines need OPERATING. While a lot of the stuff could be staffed with Technomants from "the ground", other systems might be that clearly void-specific that ones only chances will be

- young members of families from different ships (to be kidnappend or haggled over with another Lord-Captain)
- an acadamy which will only be present on a forgeworld or other world with an actual "ship yard"

Of course, one can always strike up a "prize crew" from his own..but I think with a prize crew the ship will not be able to perform long distance travell (or combat) without disaster going to strike with a matter of days (there is a reason why you need MORE men in the long run...otherwise, everyone would run with "prize crews" to have a better profit)...

My theory is generally that only about 8-10% of the list FFG numbers are live humans. The rest are servitors. This reduces the resources required to run something like a cruiser or even a frigate to something reasonable that could feasibly stay alone in space for six months to a year.

BaronIveagh said:

Of course, the books says differently, but that's fine

My servitor numbers generally depend on which part of the crew/ship it is. The warp/plasma drive and the main generator would have lots of servitors, as would the damage/maintenance crew and the gunners, whilst other areas of the ship would have fewer, due to the job being doable by crewmen.

Which book, Millardson?

BFG Armada states that there are only a few hundred people (specifically stating to include all living humans, and no servitors, and even differentiates between marines and 'regular' chapter serfs [who cook and clean and etc etc]), grand total, on a space marine battle barge. A ship, I might point out, as large as a IN battleship [in book directly compared to the Emperor class)....

...you really like to provoke me on this issue, don't you?

In this case the book refers to the ONLY book that is really of importance to us. The RT Rulebook. Ignore that book if you like, it is your game, but every discussion here will assume that book to be one that truly matters.

Sister Callidia said:

Indeed. The RT Rulebook suggests that the crew figures for the hulls consist entirely of crewmen, rather than servitors, and the (usually) 100 for Crew in the stats covers the efficiency/redundancy of the crew, which would be why the servitor reclamation plant reduces the loss of Crew Rating.

Also, if the crew figures did count servitors too, what servitors would count? Would only the full-body servitors count, or would the gun-operating servitors that consist of a brain, eyes, and then mostly machinery count too? Servitors come in all shapes and sizes, so which ones would count under the crew figures?

BaronIveagh said:

Hate to admit it but Millardson is right on this one. The best book for the fluff on spaceship personnel composition is the novel 'Relentless' which has descriptions of life above and below decks on a Imperial light cruiser. Its light on exact numbers but in it the one of the officers says that if ever there is a mutiny all the officer class are outnumbered 100 to one. But the other striking bit is that near all the backbreaking work is done by indentured workers in multiple shifts that are about at 100 strong and for which there are about 5 overseers. The macrocannons in the novel were all crewed by flesh an blood men (no numbers- just a lot) and in all fairness the ships prostitutes were actually more prominent in the novel than the servitors. The servitors were mentioned in two aspects: on the bridge when they were attached to the logic engines cart-astras and auspex and vox controls and such like crunching numbers that a normal human would be unable to do, and deep in the bowels of the ship helping the mechanicumk priests as well as the magos as well as in the cargo areas acting as heavy servitors.In the novel they are attacked and boarded by Dark elves slavers, sometimes numbers of crew enslaved were given. As anal as I was I actually dusted off the book and with a calculator in hand and made a quick summary of the crew.

I calculated that around 50 % were indentured workers, thouse are the grunts grinding the cogs, keeping the engines running and even doing things (its all in the book!) like sifting through the **** and piss to see what they can recycle. The Officers are near negligeable and are about 1% of the crew. That leaves about 49% which in the book included:

Armsmen, Gunners, Catering, Bridge, Mechanicum Personnel, Mistresses, Gastromos, The navigators retinue, the Purgatory (prison) guards and Artificiers (skilled workers with a tech level that allowed maintenace) and of course servitors. Problem is that it gave no numbers so its all a bit of a guess.

I get what you are saying about the spacemarine vessels, as I remember reading that bit in Battlefleet Gothc, but I think it was written in because some bright spark at GW realised that the 20.000 men on a battlebarge can't all be marines doing menial work and sifting through **** and piss, so they stuck in the bit being done by chapter serfs (Space marines wannabes that couldn't shoots straight and couldnt past the tests,but are as hard imperial guard) and the whole 'hard wired servitors thing' kind of makes sense because like most marine kit a lot of it tends to be more automated, moreso than that of the navy or the imperial guard, or given over to a simple machine spirit. They cant afford to waste the numbers on clearing **** and piss. Even the Serfs are probably better trained than navy crew and you cant waste them or else whos going to hammer out the kinks in Brother Marines armour? Certainly not the marine he has less than 4 hours sleep and is training the rest of the time, (unless hes a space wolf in which case hes drinking)

Does this mean that you cant have a ship that isn't 90% servitor controlled...of course not !its 40K and you could put it down to the perculiarity of the ship (hey it could be a decommissioned Astartes Ship!), but to quote another novel 'Rogue Star' by Andy Hoare, who wrote the fluff for Rogue Trader RPG, the Trader Lucien Gerrit bemoans that more and more of his shipis being replaced by servitors, and while they do a splendid job number crunching only flesh and blood crew can react to a situation properly, which tends to imply that most of the ships are crewed by men.

I would love to be smug about this all but I cant..GW is nortoriously slack with the fluff, as Relentless puts the Light Cruisers crew at about 10 000, while in the RT book its is much more ...its 22000 for a frigate alone. Even I with my calculator cant make up that difference in figures...

Yeah, Blue Book (the Battlefleet Gothic Rulebook, for those not in the know) says it takes 40 men to manually load and operate a macro-cannon, FFG says 200. *sigh*

So, which cannon is canon?

BTW: Relentless is a Lunar class. If it has 10k men on board, that would pretty much match Andy Chamber's numbers.

... then again, with Deathwatch coming out, our little arguments about crew sizes will seem like a skinned knee compared to the apocalyptic fury of Space Marine fans if FFG gets the also frequently self contradicting Space Marine fluff and do what they will with it.

On the up side, I'll get to laugh my ass off when Millardson tells the SM crowd thier codices are wrong and GW supports FFGs decision to make Dark Angels one of the traitor legions.