The books imply that a ship's crew includes a fair number of servitors - we have descriptions of servitors working in the engine rooms and generatorium, servitors wired into the bridge stations, etc. I assume there are probably also servitors used for dumb manual handling (loading cargo), cleaning and other manual tasks alongside their more "natural" crew mates.

I was wondering what portion of a crew people think would be made up of Servitors? I was thinking around 10% of the crew might be servitors, but is this too high? Too low? I'm not basing that number on anything, just pure guess work.

Also, what areas do you see servitors working in? I have already mentioned a few but my ideas are along the lines of:

* Dedicated bridge servitors that operate a lot of the machinery in the bridge, and act almost like semi-organic smart machinery/compurter-aided devices.

* Hundreds and hundreds working in the engine roomes, drive systems, etc. (anywhere the tech-priests hold sway).

* I also think there would be a number of servitors assigned to each senior crew member to do their (really menial) basic tasks.

* Cleaning crew?

* Dedicated scribes and librarium staff

* Gunner's assistants that help load shells, haul equipment.

* Loading crew in the cargo bay

What else do you think?

I'd actually say that servitors don't make up any % of the crew, remember the imperium would just view them as equipment. A servitor on the bridge wired into a console isn't a crew member, he's actually part of the ship. High ranking officers (non-mechanicum) would most likely have no servitors working under them to do menial tasks, they'd have adjutants (or whatever the naval equivalent is), a lower ranking human doing the work, because knowing how to make your caf, bed, what to use to wash your clothes, etc, would be something you'd want someone who can tailor things to your specific tastes to know how to do, and servitors (most) are just not that good. Add to that, most of the hard (and/or deadly labor) is done by humans (as detailed in the books that we can tell really, the couple of BFG novels they had put out and the couple of RT books), it's HUGE teams of humanity who load the guns.

Remember, at the end of the day, 1 pressganged shmuck from a hive world is worth LESS than a servitor in the Imperium of Man (the human needs no alterations, needs no time with a member of the adeptus mechanicus, no lobotomy, no programming, just a guy to point a gun at him and tell him to lift that bail & tote that barge).

Probably varies hugely, from ship to ship. I know the tech-priests on the Rose Tattoo in my campaign have a hundred or so servitors each, under their control, to do all the tasks the lay-technicians can't be trusted with.

Then you might have Rogue Traders who won't trust un-altered humans to be their servants. Maximillan dePledge, a rival they'll be meeting again soon, has a personal retinue of servitors, each of which is a stunning work of artistry as well as cybernetics. Sure, most of his crew are humans, but it's the servitors that wait on him, dress him in the mornings, deliver reports…

IMOO, 5-10% of the crew sounds great at the beginning. This is due to the fact of the " Crew Reclamation Facility" , page 205 RT, which states that dying crew members are turnined into servitors, reducing you loss of crew of population. So, in essence, most servitors do count as part of the crew. What happens to them when you refresh you population at a planet? That's for the GM and PC's to decide. The servitors could still be there and you just get more crew, however, you are slowly getting closer to having nothing but a crew of servitors. Or you could "sell" your worn-out servitors and get new crew members to replace them (because who really wants to replace a brand new servitor when you have ones falling apart?), so your ship is back to 5-10% of the crew being servitors. A simple Acquisition test is all that is needed to replace your crew, so this would suffice to what ever you decide.

Best of luck to you.

I remember in one of the Eisenhorn books, the RT had an entire crew of servitors, he was the only human on board. do i think that is a bit exessive with out a doubt, but im just repeating what the book said.

Into the Storm has rules for a full Servitor crew, so it is entirely possible if that's what you want. They are less effective than living, breathing, thinking voidsmen, but morale is not an issue.

Also you have to think that any cogitator can be replace by a partial servitor, books fotne describe a partial torso with a single arm doing a task… could be jsut wrtting down to pumping endlessly plasma, up to a "console" servitor.

These are not crew but equipement, they can;t move around, they are part of the ship.