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Hunterindarkness wrote:
On the navy, as was said about 50-70 main capital ships is the average for a sector. some have much, much larger numbers.

That's overstating it:

Each battlefleet consists of 50 to 75 warships of varying size, although in some sectors this will more or less, according to the importance of the sector and the number of enemies it must contend with. As well as these destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and battleships...

p. 86, Battlefleet Gothic rulebook

It is 50 to 75 warships of all sizes, meaning not all are capital ships and are escort sized.

Hunterindarkness wrote:
The correct one is the one you use. I myself use the FFG ship sizes as at lest they are consist.

Actually if you look in the past, you should see that it is actually FFG that has produced inconsistent ship sizes by suddenly giving numbers wildly larger and out of line with existing ones.

The BFG color images in that size chart were made by a member of the BFG list per the BFG list consensus. However since then people have modified the original scale to match their own personal demands of "bigger numbers".

The original scale is on the artist's DeviantArt page:

http://the-first-magelord.deviantart.com/gallery/8686311#/d1cy8r5

This scale is actually remarkably consistent in GW and BL publications by multiple authors over multiple years. In Shadow Point, an average Dictator class cruiser is given a crew size, though it is unclear if attack craft crew are included:

Now, six years later, he was one of the most senior non-commissioned officers amongst a crew of almost thirteen thousand...
p. 62, Shadow Point , by Gordon Rennie

The size of a Retribution battleship is explicitly mentioned is in Dark Disciple:

Admiral Rutger Augustine look out over the vast length of his flagship vessel, the mighty Retribution-class battleship, Hammer of Righteousness...Six kilometres from stern to prow...
p. 31, Dark Disciple

The relatively recent Soul Hunter describes a crew for a grand cruiser, which is larger than a cruiser, more in keeping with Andy Chambers' scale:

Over 25,000 crew called the warship home, even though a sizable chunk of those were slave labourers and servitor wretches...
p. 95-96, Soul Hunter

As shown by these quotes, the scale has been remarkably consistent over many years of BL publications. It wasn't until FFG came along that then people started trying to inflate the size for no apparent reason. It smacks of "It's 40K so things have to be stupidly big...just because". No different really from those that insist Warlord Titans are as tall as mountain ranges based on exaggerated artwork.

A common issue is supposing that just because there is volume that therefore it must have stupendous amounts of crew. However 40K, BL, and FFG themselves have given examples of decks abandoned or that hardly see any crew pass through them. The "black box" machinery produced by the Adeptus Mechanicus appears able to function for hundreds or thousands of years, or be mothballed for centuries (as given by the Imperial Armour Siege of Vraks books), so it isn't a given that the machinery of a starship must have huge numbers of crew for maintenance. Some parts might but some pieces of machinery might chug along quietly in a corner on a deck without need for anyone to supervise anything for years. Also a warship will have large amounts of space given over to redundancy, armor, fuel tanks, storage spaces, and the like. All of these do not need active crew to baby sit.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Yep they have more or less codified size range per ship class. As I said above there is no Official BFG ship sizes, they were never published. The first magelord took a single set of BL book by a single author and used those.. His chart is not official.. It is an example of pick your source and go with it.

Read my posts. There is more than a single source that is consistent with that chart, which was based off of the BFG list consensus back when Andy Chambers was making posts to it.

http://www.wolfedengames.com/battlefleetgothic/crew.htm

The above is a repost of a post he made back then showing his conception for the crew sizes.

The BL books quoted and cited in my previous post span 3 authors and are separated by years in publication date, with Soul Hunter being relatively recent.

Having suddenly inflated transport sizes also plays havoc with the logic of troop transport ships, which are given in Imperial Armour 3 for example as transporting approximately a regiment each. Having inflated crew sizes means transports have much larger crews than their actual cargo of IG troops, which violates the whole principle of a troop transport ship in the first place if the crew outnumber the cargo.

Grey Templar wrote:IN transport ships are usually stated to be bigger then the Battleships accompaning them.

So a transporter could still have a Crew of several hundred thousand, it's cargohold can just carry a few million soldiers.

This is incorrect. Imperial transports for the most part small escort size vessel as shown by the BFG rulebook, thus much smaller than batteships. The occasional very large ship doesn't change the norm.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of transport ships participated in the Gothic War. The vast majority were chartered merchantmen pressed into service to move war materials to systems under blockade, while many others were Imperial Navy support vessels used to resupply the fleet and form temporary repair bases in isolated systems. The crews of these small vessels...
p. 114, "Imperial transport" BFG rulebook

Note the use of the word small. The ship size in the stats entry is also given as Escort, with 1 Hit worth of damage capacity (An Imperial battleship has 12). Also if we look to Imperial Armour 3, we see the 17th Tallarn Regiment ends up being embarked on 3 transport ships, which carried no other cargo (Imperial Armour 3, p. 45). We are also given the size of this regiment at 10,684 men (Imperial Armour 3, p. 256). That comes out to about 3,561 men per ship. Now even if there were some variable about of consumable supplies included with them on the ship, the situation is still broadly similar if we look at the 89th Tallarn infantry regiment in Imperial Armour 3, embarked on 2 transports (Imperial Armour 3, p. 45). If it were the same size that still only comes out to about 5,342 men on each ship. If we switch to the 12th Tallarn Armoured Regiment, it is spread across another 2 transports, and numbers 4,039 men (Imperial Armour 3, p. 261). That is 2,019 men + tanks per ship.

All of these are consistent with smaller ship sizes.

Anfauglir wrote:
The point isn't about who the ship belongs to, but about what makes a transport ship economically efficient/viable. A bus has 1 driver and 20 passengers, on a plane it's roughly 1 cabin crew to every 50 passengers, Chimera APC has 2-3 crew and 12 passengers, in WWII the American transport ship American Legion had a crew of just under 700 and a troop capacity of over 1500. Moral of the story is: the IN aren't going to fill their troop transports with Navy crew, it'll be filled with actual troops instead (IG).

Bingo. Right there is encapsulated the whole logic of having a transport in the first place, whether that be a bus, a plane, or ship. The whole purpose is to transport large numbers of men or cargo in a more efficient manner. Having the number of crew or drivers or whatever be vastly larger than the number of people carried makes no logical sense in terms of the meeting the objective and purpose of a transport design. It is not about money but simply that the whole point of having transports of any sort in the first place is to be able to move large numbers of people or cargo with less effort and staff. 1 crew transporting 100 makes sense. 1:10 makes sense. Even 1:2. But 2:1 or 10:1? No, that doesn't make sense then. It would be as nonsensical as being asked to believe a doctor to patient ratio in a hospital of 10 doctors per patient, when the reality is more like 1 doctor per 30 patients or more.

Hunterindarkness wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Hunterindarkness wrote:Yep they have more or less codified size range per ship class. As I said above there is no Official BFG ship sizes, they were never published. The first magelord took a single set of BL book by a single author and used those.. His chart is not official.. It is an example of pick your source and go with it.

Read my posts. There is more than a single source that is consistent with that chart, which was based off of the BFG list consensus back when Andy Chambers was making posts to it.

I have. I Know for a Fact BFG does not give size. I also Know for a fact that BL ship size are all over the place. You just said it was cherry picked from three books. Sorry man the same sizes are not official and not back up by BFG. They like everything else are fan based guessed picking a few sources while ingoing everything else. I am not saying smaller ships are bad, but they are not more "Official" because they are in three BL books then the 30km long escort.

Soulhunter also put a cruiser at having a crew of 100'000 if it is the same Book about SM's as I think it is.

First, can you quote and cite these claims of your now multiple mention of this 30km escort? Also quote the precise part from Soul Hunter of this supposed large crew size, because the same author has already been cited by me as using a scale consistent with Andy Chambers' given scale.

The number and consistency within sources like BL novels do matter. When the inflated or aberrant mentions are the vast minority or even just a one off outlier, then the conclusion would be the author did not do their research. It would be much the same as if one day some BL author wrote of bolters shooting laser beams. The conclusion people would make in such a case would be the author did not read about bolters and wrote something completely out of whack with the existing background, and rather than conclude that 40K bolters shoot lasers, people would simply conclude the author made mistakes and got things wrong.

The scale was given by BFG's developer. BL novels have also agreed with that spatial scale as given by Andy Chambers, as demonstrated by the novel Warriors of Ultramar's description of a nova cannon firing and its range. The scale given by the designer of BFG, GW's canonical system of space warfare, holds more weight than just any random scale spouted off by a fan or a single BL writer.

The issue of inflating ship crews has numerous knock on effects that are not adequately addressed. Besides the above nonsensical situation of vast crew outnumbering their cargo on a transport ship, there is the issue of the performance of the crews in boarding actions. Eldar ships are not described as overflowing with crew, yet they perform equally well in boarding actions, point for point. Either then Eldar ships also then have to be changed to be swarming with Eldar, which is at odds with what is known about the Eldar way of things and their status as a less numerous "dying" race, or we are then asked to believe Eldar Corsairs can outfight many many times their own numbers. This is also inconsistent because we see in Imperial Armour 11 that Eldar Corsairs are about on par with Guardians with comparable weaponry, and thus roughly about equal to Imperial Guardsmen, and are shown as performing on par with such. This is not consistent with dramatic overperformance and being able to consistently outfight many times their own numbers.

People keep trying to bring up real world ships as examples. However there are key differences between today and 40K. The 40K universe has technology that somehow can last centuries in mothball storage and yet still work fine if activated (see Imperial Armour Siege of Vraks series), and ships that last for centuries or millenia. There is no indication of a need for the level of massive and regular maintenance that modern day equipment requires, certainly not undertaken by crew anyway given the Adeptus Mechanicus hoarding of technology. The STC system use in the Imperium has led to durable and advanced technology being used without being understood. Why should modern maintenance requirements therefore be used as any sort of guideline as to what is "reasonable" for a crew size? As I already mentioned earlier in this thread, both BL and FFG have background describing how it is possible for whole decks to be quiet, abandoned, forgotten about, or have stoaways or other people hiding out on them.

Finally there seems to be the mistake of using volume and then concluding therefore there must be huge crews. Modern day super freighters or LNG carriers have tiny crews despite being huge ships. One of the largest iron ore carriers ever built for example, the Vale Brasil, is 362m in length and has a total crew of 33. Cargo storage containers or gas tanks don't need huge crews to baby sit them. Reactor space, armored bulkheads, storage spaces, torpedo silos etc... are all areas that might be in use but not require anyone to actually be there or supervise anything on a regular basis. Simply having volume doesn't equate to a need to fill that volume with flesh and crew. Crew are needed for tasks to be done. While some tasks within a ship, especially combat related tasks on a warship, might require high manpower, there can equally be all sorts of minor tasks that are handled by black box machinery that does not need anyone to supervise, save perhaps by a Tech-Priest once in awhile.

Really the only purpose for having vast crew seems to be to achieve the GRIMDARK theme of having a flying ghetto in space. However as described above, just suddenly upping the crew size starts creating other conflicts and issues that are more difficult to resolve. It is analogous to accepting a claim that bolters fire lasers. It creates more conflicts with the background than it solves.

Hunterindarkness wrote:The Source I am looking at says "Wolf Pack" by Gordon Rennie has the 30km escort( To be honest I am hoping that is a typo as that is stupid, buts its BL so eh). And yes if official a scale world hold more weight, but it is not so it does not. Due to GW so called "Management " style it is all official from the BL. Any Chambers gave an 'Well in my game" statement, which sadly is not an official one. BFG has no official scale, none. the BL has no official scale, yes they have some small ships and some say they are large and some go off with cutter size warp ships and one is as official as they other,

Yes that was a typo. Gordon Rennie even commented on that in the past on the BFG list. Apparently from what I recall, he said it was a change the editor made without consultation with Gordon, because the editor wanted BIG ships for no reason other than they be BIG. That's again the whole fetish of demanding everything 40K = stupidly big. There are no other such contradictions in Gordon Rennie's works.

Andy Chambers as the developer of the BFG system, carries much more weight than a random gamer reeling off his own interpretation. Just because you don't care for what he says doesn't mean it is valid to just dismiss him.

Now I agree taking BL novels for scale is shoddy, but the fact remains before FFG's you had nothing official. Maybe they had official guidelines people were supposed to use, maybe they did not. What they did allow to happen was BL writers to use no set scale. Sure a few went with an unofficial scale but just as many if not more did not. You simply an not sit and say well this BL book is official, but these which totally contradict it is not. If it was just one or two, you might be able to say that. But the truth is the ones that agree are the minority. And that is not a good thing, but that is what we have.

You haven't shown "as many". You have shown 1. I have demonstrated 3, and can demonstrate a 4th if it comes to talking about spatial scale. 3:1, means the ones that conform remain the majority. You keep spouting off "many". I see no quotes and no citations other than that one naming of that short story. One does not constitute many, any more than if one BL author saying bolters shoot lasers might make that suddenly the case. If you have "many", produce some evidence with quotes please.

You have also completely failed to address the issue of what happens when a random author or writer or publisher makes a complete outlier of a statement that is at odds with the existing background. As I already mentioned previously, the reaction of people would probably be "they screwed up by not doing their research" and write it off as a mistake and ignore it. They don't then go around bending over backwards trying to rationalize how bolters were actually firing lasers all this time, because the contradictions and knock-on effects of such a thing would wreck too many other pieces of background. This is the case with sudden inflation of crew numbers for human ships. See my previous post for some of the contradictions caused in interactions with other ships.

The 40K RPGs, for all their atmospheric background, do not have a good record when it comes to numbers. One only need look at the Calixis Sector's populations for planets. Their sector capital planet doesn't even meet the population definitions of a hive world according to the 3rd edition 40K rulebook, and is far below that of a "typical" hive world as given in the 5th edition rulebook. Essentially the RPG's when it comes to numbers, have a history of being unreliable when compared to GW's official published works.

"I cannot be everywhere, Warrant. There are ten thousand men aboard the Relentless."

http://www.richard-williams.com/relentless-notes.php

From the author of the BL novel Relentless depicting the story of a captain of a cruiser. I do not have an exact page numbe because I do not have immediate access to the paper copy of that book at the moment. Nonetheless, that makes 4 sources in conforming with Andy Chambers' scale. While 10,000 might be a little on the low side for the 1500-2000 per damage point scale, it is within ~16% which is far closer than FFG's numbers which are several hundred percent larger.

Hunterindarkness wrote:As I said if I get time I'll look them up but GW numbers are not that small.

Page 127 of 5e rulebook- Troopship Emperor's Faithful, crew size 200,000, passengers 5 million.

We are not dicussing potential outliers but the actual standard bread and butter ships. As shown in one of my previous posts, the capacities shown for standard Imperial transports, such as those used during the Gothic War or during the Taros campaign was only in the range of a few thousand troops carried.

Also that is a mention in the 40K rulebook timeline precisely because it was a notable event, presumably due to the large numbers that fell victim. That doesn't mean that it should be taken to mean it is a standard troop ship any more than the Titanic was a "standard" liner in its day. Sure there may be some mass conveyers that are larger than battleships, and I'm sure the transports used to transport an entire Titan Legion would be pretty huge as well, but that doesn't mean they are the standard sort of transport that is encountered and destroyed or captured in normal engagements. The extremely large rare ships are more the exception to the rule.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Yet I just gave two examples that contradict your small ship ones.GW does not seem to use that scale. The thing is the new books seem to use the larger scale, while the older books seem to use any scale they felt like.

The example from the rulebook is not a contradiction per se, because it is not about an existing ship class that we already know about, and it is not even in an existing size class since BFG only goes up to "battleship" size scale in terms of its ships, and then there is a jump to the "Defence" class sized Ork Space Hulk. Introducing a new never before seen ship class in a size class of its own isn't the same thing as contradicting information about an existing class such as claiming a Lunar has many tens of thousands of men compared to an estimate of 12,000-16,000 according to Andy Chambers' scale. That would be a contradiction.

I have already explained in my previous post that the existence of a few outlier ships, remarkable for their bigness does not by itself overturn the standard ship scale, which is what BFG deals with, not one of a kind unique ships.

Regardless, the number of sources conforming to Andy Chambers' scale still outnumber anything you have been able to produce.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Sigh dude, I am not near my books. If you really think BL's ship size is constant and abide by some dudes house rule I do not know what to tell you. BL is the worst place you should look to defend your argument as they are not consist.

You ruled out one from the Rulebook as you did not like it. You ignored the one form a HH book as "It was just 1 vs 4" sorry man you can keep chanting "Andy Chambers" all day long. That does not make it an official scale no matter how much you want it to be.

When you claim there is a majority, you have to show it. You have at absolute most shown 2, and 1 of those is debateable. I have shown 4 sources, 5 if you count the Imperial Armour books, and can show a 6th if it comes to spatial scale. Your claims of a "majority" of sources hasn't been shown true yet as the totals still add up to 5:2 at best for your case, and 6:1 at worst. Having less than half is hardly a majority.

Also your original statement was:

The chart , while cool simply does not line up with the majority of the BL stuff

If you restrict to BL sources since that was your original statement, your line from the rulebook is invalid. The totals then would be 5:1, even if we ignore the Imperial Armour sources. Still not a majority of BL sources. One short story vs. 5 books, one of which was the same author and who claimed the short story change was an error made by an editor without his knowledge.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Eh keeping chanting a dudes name does not make something official either. And type o or not the 30km escort, while stupid was changed by GW so is official that makes 3 so far. and 1 of those are not debatable, you simply dislike it.

Since when have I chanted any name? It is a simple fact that the developer of a game system's notes on scale are always going to be weighed more than a random gamer's, just as Jes Goodwin's opinions on the Eldar and Dark Eldar will count for more than any random gamer's.

If you claim a "majority of BL sources" you have to prove it instead of just trying to claim it and expect others to take it as truth. You haven't been able to provide such evidence so far. Majority means just that, that there be over half. That has not been the case, and so far your claim looks like it is exaggerated.

"Wolf Pack" is 1 not 3. You haven't been able to give any other BL sources other than that one. 1 vs. 4 (Dark Disciple, Relentless, Shadow Point, Soul Hunter) for crew, and a further 5th is available for spatial scale.

If you include other sources other than just BL, then you have at absolute most 2 (Wolf Pack, the rulebook timeline entry which is debateable), vs. 4 BL books, 1 Imperial Armour book for crew, with a further BL book for spatial scale. You have produced 0 other quotes from any other sources other than those 2, and even then there is a quote from only 1 strictly speaking. Go through the thread and count your quotes or rather the lack thereof.

Hunterindarkness wrote: Whatever man, I do not put stock in BL stuff, but I have used 1 from the book I have on hand. I also have found some on the wiki's but I really do not trust a wiki if I can't double check the source. When I get home and have time to comb though my books I'll give ya some quotes.

Correct, wikis are not valid sources because they are paraphrasings from the original and thus errors can be introduced.

The reason I say the majority is that BL from the research I have done have no scale for their books. I spent weeks hunting down ship sizes and that was the one constant was they had no constant.

Of those 4 books how many are the same class of ship? How many match each other, not just kinda vaguely match, but match?

Relentless portrays I believe a Lunar class. Shadow Point a Dictator class cruiser. Soul Hunter an Avenger class grand cruiser. Dark Disciple mentions a Retribution class battleship.

Strictly speaking none are the exact same ship class, however 2 of those are of the same size class, and we know from the BFG rulebook that Dictator classes were originally rebuilt Lunar classes with added flight decks and flight crew.

The sources giving nearly 13,000 for the Dictator (which may or may not include flight crew), versus 10,000 given for the Lunar is not a particularly outlandish difference for 2 similar sized cruisers, one of which has additional fighters and bombers which would increase the count.

Given how ships within a class even within the BFG rulebook can start to differ from each other due to things like refits, it is not reasonable to expect an exact literal match to the last man in crew size.

Also if ya count wolfpack I have 3 not 2.Flight of the Eisenstein, wolfpack and the 5eGW book, that does not count because its GW I guess.

No quotes given for Flight of the Eisenstein. Until a quote is produced, it can hardly be counted.

The classic "I have evidence but I can't be bothered" excuse when asked to present evidence followed by simple chanting of "You're wrong" is the all too common response of those that have insufficient or no evidence to back up their points. Usually then the next tactic is resorting to ad hominem attacks at the affront of being asked to back up claims with evidence. The already presented evidence has already been shown to be predominantly showing the opposite of your claim of a majority, outnumbering your provided evidence about 2:1. With no quotable direct evidence, you have no proof and without proof you have no grounds to expect anyone to take your statements seriously. If you don't "care enough" to show evidence, then you shouldn't care that your conclusion is incorrect. If you truly had the evidence, then it shouldn't be that hard to present it. It is the responsibility of those making the claim to present the evidence, and not the responsibility of the audience to find your own evidence for you. Perhaps you have so much trouble and need to spend so much time because the evidence isn't as abundant as you claim it is?

If an outlier BL author should write bolters shooting laser beams, we don't then go and say there is inconsistency about whether bolters shoot bolts or laser beams. We say the BL author didn't do their research. The same holds for the minority of BL inconsistencies with regard to ship size. As shown already by the earlier presented quotes, there has been a remarkable amount of consistency by different authors over the years, more in keeping with Andy Chambers' scale, than FFG's suddenly inflated numbers.