svenhauke wrote:i rmember this one scene where 4 havenite BC emerged in front of a Manti SD out of hyperspace
there was a communications officer in comand on the SD and a helmsman
and the computer identified the enemy BC and with a quick command the commander attacked destroyed and evaded the enemys BC
so basicly you need 2 people to fight a SD
of course thats not how you fight well, but you can fight and kill 4 enemy BC with 2 people on a SD
so forget crews
with minimal engeneering you can propably keep a SD going 10 years before its totally useless, especially if you just have it sitting in orbit
so forget spares
if you think a verge systwem is friendly
you got a choice to defend it
put in mantipower
or give it enough power to defend from frontier fleet
8 useless Solly SD will defend any verge system planet from pirates and frontier fleet and are not threat to manticore
its much more difficult to find verge systems that are worth to give 8 sd
but if you want to protect them from frontier fleet which got BC max, SD are it
remember, its solly tech against solly tech and capital missiles are longer ranged, so solly SD allways wins against solly BC
"it only takes 2 people to fight"?!!!
I assume you are talking about people above and beyond simply operating the ship. But you are neglecting the hundreds of people running the generators which power the weapons, the dozens of people running the sensors which detected, analyzed, and plotted the enemy ships, and the hundreds of people who made sure those weapons and sensors were working this morning. And if the combat had taken more than a few seconds, you would also need the people running ECM, the people running tactics, and all the weapons and sensors (and associated people) that weren't used in that extraordinarily brief encounter. And don't forget that you need at least three or more likely four shifts of these people. And that's assuming that you skimp and try to go without damage control, live weapons crews, backup command center, and combat medical support.
On a Solarian superdreadnought, there is probably 2000 people whose primary duty is combat-related, rather than maintaining and operating the ship itself. I doubt you could cut that number to one-third and still be able to conduct an actual combat; I think it would be more like one-half.
Honor Harrington, in her escape from Cerberus, cut the ship crews to a bare minimum (and maybe a little below!). She had NO combat-related stations manned. I forget the actual number, but I seem to recall that she still needed at least 35% of the nominal crew size just to keep the thing moving and the people alive--without any ability to fire weapons.
