In CBT, Combat Vehicles or CV's have one crew member per fifteen tons. This can get really weird once one starts thinking about crew positions in real world fighting vehicles.
In the WW1 era, the first armored vehicles often had very large (British Mark series, German A7V, etc.) or very small (Whippet, FT-17, etc.) crews. The commander and at least one driver were and still are the only constants; gunners, loaders, a radio operator if the vehicle had a radio, a mechanic running the engines, a second driver, et al, were all highly variable depending on the design. In the smaller tanks, the commander and gunner were often the only two crew members, and the commander did multiple duty as a gunner, loader, and so on.
As armor evolved in the Inter-War and World War 2 eras, tank crews stabilized into crews of three to five, depending on the nation and design. Commander, driver, gunner, loader, and radio operator were the traditional five positions in American tanks; some countries had their own configurations (German tanks generally didn't have radio operators, and Soviet T-34's didn't have gunners). It was generally realized (outside France) that having more people (two or three) in the turret was good; it improved situational awareness by having more eyes in the periscopes, and eased the workload by simple division. Commanders became more free to focus on being commanders as gunners and loaders fully took over those duties. Due to the size and complexity of radios in the pre-transistor era, many vehicles still had separate radio operators at least through the Korean War era and into the early Cold War. SPG's usually had extra loaders, due to the size of the shells and separate loading of shell and charge.
Progressing through the Cold War to today, AFV's now almost universally have a crew of three (commander, driver, gunner, with an autoloader) or four (human loader instead of autoloader) and the driver is usually the only one not in the turret. SPG's may or may not still have the extra loaders depending on their level of technology; the latest autoloading SPG's like the PzH 2000 don't need them. Modern radios, networking, displays, and other technologies, have made the specialist radio operator virtually extinct. Unmanned turrets and armored "crew capsules" are being tried with on new designs to afford greater protection for the crew, usually in conjunction with autoloaders and greater automation to minimize the number of crew. A fine example of this trend is Russia's new T-14 Armata MBT; it has only two crewmen, a driver and multitasking commander, who sit in an armored capsule surrounded by electronics; the turret is unmanned.
Now, even allowing for the fact that technology went backwards for a while during the various darker ages of the CBT universe, it seems that based on real trends, the state of vehicle crews in the CBT canon doesn't make sense. Crew size in canon is purely based on the size of the vehicle -- not history, roles, or anything else.
In small to midsized vehicles, at least up to 45 tons, it's easy to think in believable terms of real world armor crews. That little 20-ton light tank has a driver and commander, who multitasks as a gunner and handles most things not having to do with driving. That 45-ton medium tank has a commander, gunner, and driver. CBT futuresque automation, sensors, networks and so forth enable these smaller crews to multitask efficiently.
Once we hit fifty tons and add that fourth crew member, now things get tricky. That fourth guy is probably not a loader; most CBT weapons are either energy based or autoloading. This becomes even trickier once we hit >60 tons for the fifth crew member, and >75 tons for the sixth. Anything >90 tons has seven crew on board! What are all these guys doing?
In some cases, it can be easy to rationalize the extra crew. My custom Mangonel SPG design weighs 70 tons, so it has a crew of five. It has the following crew:
- Commander. The MFIC of the vehicle as a whole.
- Driver. Sitting up front, slightly nervous as he stands by for "scoot" orders.
- Main Gunner. The guy having all the fun, actually laying and firing the artillery.
- Secondary Gunner. I need to come up with a better name for this position. He is up in the Mangonel's small self-defense cupola turret, watching the outgoing fire and keeping an eye out for trouble, such as rear area raiders or incoming fire. If he can see where outgoing shells land, he can visually direct fire. He is bored, and hopes to stay that way.
- Plotter. This guy is down in the Mangonel's fighting compartment. He has an electronic map table in front of him and is networked with the battery and spotters out in the field. He coordinates with the commander and gunner to put fire support where and when it's needed.
In regular tanks, however, the extra positions can be harder to rationalize. One solution I have used is the "system operator", a position sort of like the tank mechanics of old, or an aircraft's flight engineer. CBT tanks are more mechanically and electronically complex than real tanks today, so he eases the load on other crew members by keeping an eye on all the various loading systems, the cooling system for the fusion reactor, shifting the gears with a hammer like in old Soviet tanks, or whatever. One could similarly rationalize a "sensor operator" or equivalent position in heavily electronic vehicles, like a C3 command unit or multi-sensored scout, harkening back a bit to the old-fashioned radio operators. But even then, that still leaves extra people in the larger vehicles.
I think that should stir the pot enough for now. Let's hear some thoughts, people...
_________________ Be careful what you wish for. I might let you have it.
Last edited by Shades of Grey on Fri Sep 30, 2016 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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