Carl wrote:@JeffEngal: No one's suggesting on mount weapon crews be dropped, given just how common having weapons connections to central cut by battle damage was in the books where we've got to see that kind of detail it would represent an unacceptable loss of combat power in any kind of actual fight. Even Pirates with much more pressing reasons to drop crew don;t drop that which should tell you something about how important they are. What may be possible is that they've managed via automation to reduce the number of on mount crew.
I'm certainly suggesting reducing or eliminating on mount crews. I know it's a radical suggestion, but I do think it's reasonable and inevitable for cost savings for a unit not intended to slug it out to the end like battlecruisers and wallers.
Weapons fired by on mount crews alone are much less effective, and there isn't often too much time between losing central fire direction and losing the ship or the weapons. So it's a capability that's eating up a lot of personnel, and with them the volume to support them and the money to keep them. If you don't need every last measure of combat capability even while sustaining damage, it's something that you need to consider dropping very seriously. And you don't need that for a warship the duties of which include desperate combat to the bitter end against a peer opponent only as one among many. Navies need too many cruisers to try to build them all as Nike's or Nike-wannabe's.
Pirates are a specifically bad analogy. For one, they don't have a pressing need to reduce excess crew - they need excess crew for prizes, boarding, and keeping captives under control. Having them work as on mount crews is a fine way to keep idle hands from causing trouble. For another, unlike national navies, pirates cannot count on having the money for the good automation of systems, or the access to skilled engineers and specific spare parts to keep it running. Labor-intensive solutions are a lot better for them, not worse.