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Can you help with this: as far as I understand, Tau Hammerheads have three crew members: 1 pilot, 1 co-pilot and 1 commander. I've also read that Stormsurges have two crew members and that these are veteran Hammerheads crewmen. The way it's written it seems that the whole crew is transferred but obviously that cannot be, so which crew members are transferred then?

This is all speculation, but the stormsurge is only crewed by two firewarriors. So I would assume it is the co-pilot/gunner and the commander. In some of the fluff, at least devilfishes have been piloted by air caste members, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that the hammerhead is also piloted by one. A second crew member is hardly necessary for piloting and would probably be manning the guns. So this crew member would easily shift to manning the guns on the stormsurge. Piloting a stormsurge is hardly very hard, so the commander from the hammerhead could probably perform this while commanding the fight and staying linked to command.

I'd imagine a logical system of promotion would be that when a crew becomes veteran enough, the gunner and commander moves to a ballistic suit, which hardly needs a separate pilot, the former pilot instead becomes a new tank commander and gets two new crew members for his tank.

It probably works like real life- crew don't get promoted together. Every new Hammerhead crewman starts as co-pilot, promotes to pilot, then promotes to commander.