Why build large passenger vessels at all?

[Geschosskopf]

Some of the mods I use have parts that work better if you have a lot of kerbs in them.  Also, as others have said, if you're exploring a multi-moon gas giant system and want to do so in a reasonable time, it's best to do this in parallel with separate crews going to each moon instead of dragging the same crew to each moon in turn.

[magnemoe]

On 26.1.2018 at 8:23 PM, The Aziz said:

200 sure is ridiculous, but 30 is good. Why? Let's say you plan doing multipurpose Jool-5 mission. So there should be at least 3 Kerbals per surface base (pilot, engineer & scientist) assuming you have full blown base and maybe a rover, that makes already 15, plus 3 on every orbital station around the moons and Jool itself. There goes another 18. And maybe two (pilot and engineer) as the main crew of the ship that goes there. That makes it 30, solely for gameplay reasons.

200 is for the challenge, 30 kind of make sense, I had ran an 18 kerbal shuttle the grinding route, Mun orbit, Minmus, out of solar system. and back to LKO.
An combination of tourists and leveling kerbals for later missions. 

And I always play with life support, bases outside of kerbin SOI should have an closed life support system with greenhouses. 
My standard is 4 man bases, two scientists one engineer and one pilot granted pilot tend to spend most of his time in greenhouse but he has been useful from time to time. 
Larger bases as in Minmus and Pol as default will have more. 

[Guest]

Basically roleplay for realism. I've never used an explicit passenger vessel despite prototyping a number of winged shuttles, but I do like large capital ships designed for long missions. These are often nuclear powered, with extensive life support, docked craft, etc. This means a multitude of specialisations would realistically be required, more than simply pilot/engineer/scientist. So I come up with a list based on the available systems.

Captain, first officer, astrogator, sensor/comms operator, pilot(s depending on docked craft), medic, various technicians for powerplant, radiators, engines, life support, etc.

That gives me at least 10 people, and that's just for the ship, not the mission. An extensive science team adequately able to cover all specialisations (surface, weather, radio, plasma, even a specialist low-gravity rover driver to take them to different sites) could be equally as large, and even the smallest ISRU operation is basically an entire colony in itself. Some things on the other hand are very simple, or even remotely operated, like a RTG-powered fuel tanker. Just set it up and shoot it off; the people on each end of its journey are already there to handle the rest.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Guest