General I don't understand the Patrol Cruiser...

[Ulsyus]

Or just common space for the ship's troops to exercise and train in at the very least, because there's very little of it in the FASA plans otherwise. (This is not uncommon on the early designs...)

Spinward's number crunching shows just how difficult it could be to find space for crew, esp marines, to keep themselves in shape. A gym can be squeezed into a pretty small area though, (we have one set up in a 2.4 x 3.8m space with TV, Pelaton, weights and benches for two, equipment storage and room for two workout sessions at a time - which means there's a bit of unused wasted space when it's not being used). So if a barracks environment was designed with grav-bunks and shared freshers, if you could achieve an increased efficiency with space use in a 4dt stateroom for 4 pers, if you could increase the left over space from 1.6 per two staterooms to 3, then four staterooms would provide an area the size of what I have at home for that exercise area (and I'm certain marines would keep it much cleaner than we do!). Combine the live strength & endurance training with VR scenario sims and holo weapon-ranges (really just a step up from the virtual ranges used in NATO-level militaries today) and you could likely keep a section of marines in fair shape over an extended period of time.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Spinward's number crunching shows just how difficult it could be to find space for crew, esp marines, to keep themselves in shape.

Well ... it depends on how you do up your deck plans.

If you're doing barracks blocks across a central hallway and each stateroom is 2x3 deck squares (so 5x3 per 2 staterooms), then yes ... you're going to have next to nothing left over for common areas.

However, if you're doing each stateroom as 2x2 deck squares with a central hallway between them, you're looking at a 5x2 block of deck squares per 2 staterooms ... which then leaves you 6.6 deck squares of common area "left over" per 2 staterooms. Put enough "barracks" staterooms into the pool for ship's troops and you've got a useful quantity of common area for communal freshers, exercise/training space, mess hall/briefing, leadership office and whatever else you might need.

So it really just depends on how you arrange things and spread the partitions around.

Smaller "closet sized" staterooms will offer more communal area space.
Larger "privacy sized" staterooms will offer less communal area space.

"It's all connected, man..."

 

[Ulsyus]

So it really just depends on how you arrange things and spread the partitions around.

Of course, but there’s plenty of historical examples of how crews have dealt with limited space on ships, maybe we need to think beyond drawing staterooms.

 

[coliver988]

Of course, but there’s plenty of historical examples of how crews have dealt with limited space on ships, maybe we need to think beyond drawing staterooms.

true. I toured a WWII submarine and the crew had bunks in the torpedo room. On top of the torpedoes. Of course, being almost 6' tall (and shrinking in height, darn it old age!), the bunks were too small for me, and I had to duck and go sideways to get through the hatches.

semi-related: stayed 3 days on the adjacent aircraft carrier (Boy Scout trip). While a really amazing experience, one takeaway was that walking on steel decks for 3 days left my legs and feet really sore. Okay, semi-related to the "what color is the rug in your stateroom" thread as rugs would be greatly appreciated by my legs!

 

[kilemall]

Smaller "closet sized" staterooms will offer more communal area space.
Larger "privacy sized" staterooms will offer less communal area space.

"It's all connected, man..."

I’ve gone a level up from that.

A passenger section with all small staterooms and large communal space appeals to more sociable types. A large stateroom only minimal communal space appeals to private or antisocial passengers. So I will tend to align passenger character behavior based on stateroom ship choice.

A wrinkle I have is some ships go large stateroom with hobby facilities, a kitchenette, workout equipment etc then it’s up to passengers to choose to share them. Plays to both types.

Then some ships I will partition into some small some large staterooms. Gets more communal space, then the whole bump passengers through ticket class comes into play. The High Ticket passengers can bump the Mids and can get choice of stateroom.

Could even do something like Steerage tickets, Cr 6000 in CT terms, where they get a small stateroom but no communal access, only communal freshers. Be sure to roll some sort of misery hit for that.

 

[Ulsyus]

Having quite recently travelled and stayed briefly in a cabin approximately 2x3.5m, with a fresher /shower & loo included, plus two fixed single beds, I can say there’s not a lot of space in those things. Staying any length of time on a ship with that style of facilities would require a decent amount of communal space.

 

[Spinward Flow]

in a cabin approximately 2x3.5m

That's 7m² of floor space.
Assuming a 3m deck height (to match our starship deck plans for reference), you're talking about a 2x3.5x3m cabin space, which is a grand total of 21m³ ... or 1.5 tons of starship displacement (not including hallway access).

So this sounds more like a small craft (2 ton) stateroom cabin, rather than a starship (4 ton) stateroom ... so, cramped and barely enough room to turn around in.

 

[Ulsyus]

That’s about it: day-long trips covering 455km. If the beds were bunks and a wall taken out between cabins, & the fresher shared between 8, there would be enough room for the kit soldiers Liugi about nowadays. Then you’d only have to worry about common activity space