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[Elmund Egivand]

A hound is a bout the size of a 747 Jetliner if I recall.

Plenty of space.


As for a capsuleer decanting and running around a ship, or commanding a ship from a bridge, they certainly can do these things, but they 'why' is likely your only limiting factor.

You forgot the part where they replace most of the passenger seats with electronics and torpedo bays. Or the bomb stockpile. Or the giant reactor and gargantuan fuel tanks for the thrusters. It's actually alot more cramped despite being the size of a 747.

Also.

Considering that everything is properly connected on the new Manticore, I could imagine the crew running around the torpedo bays. However, the Slasher and the Breacher bridges aren't even connected properly to the rest of the ship! This means to fix anything the crew has to space walk all the time.

Look closer. I just realized you were talking about the Breacher, not the Hound. I imagine those ships use some sort of cramped 'jeffries tubes'. A crawlspace tunnel that you worm your way through to get to and from the bridge or something. vOv This is why we need moar remodels!

There's a hallway connecting the bridge to the fuselage/body of the Hound. There's even an airlock on it. Also keep in mind that 'cockpit' windows are usually ground to ceiling window-walls, sometimes multiple stories tall. It's not a single seat fighter plane. None of them are. They're giant viewing balconies.

It's easy to lose a sense of scale and assume these are smaller than they really are, especially with those 'cockpits' throwing you off. You need to remember the actual dimensions of the vessel in question. The Hound is huge.

Thing is it isn't really all that much larger than a 747 dimension-wise, so the 'bridge' shouldn't be that large either. I can imagine someone sticking around as the maintenance guy or fire support guy, but I can't imagine there needs to be any command crew who had any reason being on the bridge. The capsule took that over already.

That solves your concern then. There is nobody in the bridge at all, so there's no need for them to be spacewalking to and from it.

You got me right there.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

Reppy used to put her mining ships on automatic and go stretch her legs when she got bored (ie, most of the time).  Slightly different topic, but thought I'd mention it.

[Morwen Lagann]

Reppy used to put her mining ships on automatic and go stretch her legs when she got bored (ie, most of the time).  Slightly different topic, but thought I'd mention it.

Reppy was also known for flying unorthodox mining ships.

Like Vigilants.

[Kasuko]

Reppy used to put her mining ships on automatic and go stretch her legs when she got bored (ie, most of the time).  Slightly different topic, but thought I'd mention it.

Reppy was also known for flying unorthodox mining ships.

Like Vigilants.

[Silas Vitalia]

A mining ship could possibly be an example for a capsuleer 'decant' scenario. 

Empty system in deep space, hours of mining, maybe stretch those legs a bit and get a meal with the crew.

*alarms* time to pod up and see what's up.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

Reppy used to put her mining ships on automatic and go stretch her legs when she got bored (ie, most of the time).  Slightly different topic, but thought I'd mention it.

Reppy was also known for flying unorthodox mining ships.

Like Vigilants.

I will continually be known as such so long as you keep reminding people

[Anslol]

...so uh, where do you mine?

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

Don't get your hopes up, dear boy.  I literally took the thing out once with mining lasers before putting it to combat duty, as it was a moment of silly prior to getting my mining apocalypse up and ready.  I use proper mining barges now

[Esna Pitoojee]

When discussing crew, keep in mind that the crew might not actually be getting up and wandering around the ship. In a vessel that small, they might all be strapped into anti-G couches in a central cockpit area and expected to remain there or close nearby for the duration of the flight, more akin to a super-sized aircraft than a lightly-crewed naval vessel. Given that the original frigates evolved "up" from Caldari single-crew fighters, this seems far more likely than if they had evolved "down" from larger, more complicated vessels.

In fact, when you look at modern military aircraft, up to 5 crew might not be to far off. The B-52 requires 5, being an older aircraft; even more modern designs such as the Tu-160 or B-1B still need four crew to function.

[Elmund Egivand]

When discussing crew, keep in mind that the crew might not actually be getting up and wandering around the ship. In a vessel that small, they might all be strapped into anti-G couches in a central cockpit area and expected to remain there or close nearby for the duration of the flight, more akin to a super-sized aircraft than a lightly-crewed naval vessel. Given that the original frigates evolved "up" from Caldari single-crew fighters, this seems far more likely than if they had evolved "down" from larger, more complicated vessels.

In fact, when you look at modern military aircraft, up to 5 crew might not be to far off. The B-52 requires 5, being an older aircraft; even more modern designs such as the Tu-160 or B-1B still need four crew to function.

Though gunnery, navigation and command's already dealt with by the capsuleer. What's the other crew supposed to do but run around fixing things and kick a few out-of-place modules back into their places?

[Merdaneth]

In fact, when you look at modern military aircraft, up to 5 crew might not be to far off. The B-52 requires 5, being an older aircraft; even more modern designs such as the Tu-160 or B-1B still need four crew to function.

Because the crew actually perform different tasks, and because it is useful to have a backup. In capsuleer ships, both function are redundant. I would love for my crew to scan down a hostile while I'm performing combat operations, but alas, no can do.

I imagine a crew being useful for all kinds of maintenance and repairs: the sort capsuleer ships require when out for longer periods. If I'm exiting a station to fight on the undock, I'll be sure to tell most crew to not board the ship. It'll hold together for a few minutes without their attention. You can run an IRL cruiser for a few hours with just a couple of people too, but a mission of any lenght will require a lot more people. Maintenance, docking, shifts for different parts of the day, people that take care of people who do the maintenance, mission planning staff, backups etc.

At least, I assuming the pod commands don't end up translated into regular language on terminals and have crew actually running to and fro to execute the thought commands of the capsuleer.

Does anybody know the crew complement and their specific task with modern naval ships?

I think the EVE universe would be more believable if the official sources would state that ships required less crew to function.

[Etienne Saissore]

I always have a hard time believing that you need a minimum of three crew members to fly a capsule-fitted frigate. Just look at the damned Slasher! The only place you could possibly have crew walking around is the bridge! How about the Hound? Same deal! I can't imagine there's even crawling space towards the gunnery compartments! This implies that the only crew you need are bridge bunnies and capsules are supposed to replace that!

Maybe we have misunderstood what is meant by "crew". Maybe they're just brains in a vat.

[Graelyn]

When discussing crew, keep in mind that the crew might not actually be getting up and wandering around the ship. In a vessel that small, they might all be strapped into anti-G couches in a central cockpit area and expected to remain there or close nearby for the duration of the flight, more akin to a super-sized aircraft than a lightly-crewed naval vessel.

Yup.
The novels, as much as we pick at them, all agree that everyone on a starship needs quick access to a stasis-like area for them to protect themselves from the physiologically pulverizing effects of warp travel. Every time. Drem Valate's SoE crew in TBL had to get pumped full of chemicals and be put into a groggy state for every warp and stargate usage, and even using an acceleration gate was an 'oh shit let's get ready this is gonna fucking suck' moment.

I would imagine that for most duty stations on a small ship, that stasis/escape pod and the stuff that crewman needs to attend to are rarely but a few meters apart. It would also account for the high survivability of a ship explosion; most people get out because they're already either in their pods already or a couple of seconds away from one at all times.

TBL in particular (Though Hjalti and TonyG both agree on this stuff throughout their books) show frigates that contain all the crew in one room, and people only walk around and 'do' stuff when nothing's going on. When action is kicks up, they're all in the little pods, sometimes performing complex tasks from the safety of them. When you look at our ships, and all the crazy maneuvers and constant align-warp-hop craziness that space combat in EVE requires, in my mind, I see my crew as more like this...

...than anything else. Walking and physically working the ship can wait until we orbit some rocks.

This would also explain why no one seems in any particular hurry to extinguish that fucking fire that's been gutting my Tormentor for the last 20 minutes...

[Desiderya]

I'll note that it was written before the model redesign. Stealth bombers are significantly larger than their former T1 models, and the fluff about how tight it is in there would make more sense for the old models than it would for the new.

Torpedo launcher are huge (and sunk into the hull), cargo (ammo) space is likely a big part of the ship, too.
:Edit
Re: Crew
It's a bit difficult, because the majority of ship uses are not extended ( no stop at a station for a few hours ) by any means, so it seems to be a bit excessive to put a couple of hundred guys and gals on a ship into stasis pods just 'because'. In the same line it would be remarkably cheap to say "See, I fitted this ship for combat and just veered out on a 2 minute cruise - of course it was empty!". PF states that there's a minimum amount of crew for basic duty, which means flying an 'empty ship from a to b', or whatever the quote on the panel was. It's also stated that the crew only does minor maintenance works. But it's still safe to assume that you don't need 500 janitors on a battlecruiser at all times. When I envision the work done by the crew 'Damage Control' is what comes to mind. The majority will be done automatically - decisions fused by the capsuleers commands and automatic expert systems - but when things explode it is safe to assume that there'll be a lot of confusion and minor damages throughout the whole ship, which is a pretty complex piece of machinery, which is usually code for "Does not react well to being shot at". Depending on how we envision damage penetrating the shields and especially the armor to happen there might be quite some manual work to be done to keep things in control. Security is also not a dirty work.

But yes, generally speaking, there's a lot of incoherence regarding the actual jobs of those hordes of people on those ships, especially since 100% of what the crew does/would have to do is not covered by or hinted at by the game mechanics, which additionally have the ship work in a way that makes it possible for one person with two hands to operate it perfectly all the time until it explodes in a true on/off fashion.

Regarding Graelyn's warp speed thing: I would gently discard some of the aspects from the novel, because at least those incidents in TEA were talking about a) a shuttle with civilian passengers and b) an old ship. But even then, I would reduce it to the need of 'reinforced' areas in the ship that the crew'd have to get to. I'm less thinking of those stasis/escape pods but more specifically shielded / stabilized areas that make warp transfer bearable for those working there, ideally coinciding with the location of escape pods.

[Anslol]

For all our tech, people need to be in pods just to warp? I feel like that's...wrong? I know the books said it and all but I can't help but picture the ridiculous scene of a thousand people sprinting for pods as I bounce from safe spot to safe spot...then wait 5 minutes...then warp again (like a dick).