Crew Accommodations on Star Wars Vessels



Back in January I wrote about how in the Star Wars universe, hyperspace travel seems more akin to an airplane trip than a trip by ship. You are typically not talking a journey of days - several hours most likely, with a worst-case trip being akin to a trip from say New York City to Tokyo. A direct flight would be around 14 hours, something with connecting flights would be perhaps a day and a half.

What does this mean for starships in a galaxy far, far away? If you look at deck plans of such starships you will often see a lot of crew accommodations. In many cases, I'd argue they are unnecessary or, at the very least. more than is required. If you are, for example, a light freighter captain, you are something akin to a truck driver. A bunk or two is reasonable - you might have an overnight trip or you might find yourself in a very crowded spaceport or you might just need to save a few credits. But a large portion of your ship dedicated to crew accommodations cuts into your cargo space. Now for a journey of days or weeks, as you might find in science fiction settings like Traveller, The Expanse, or Firefly, that's something you will likely need. You and your crew are going to practically live on your ship for long periods of time.

That's not to say that some ships wouldn't need good crew accommodations in the Star Wars universe. A naval vessel such a Star Destroyer spends a lot of its time on patrol in a given system; the crew of such a ship will be living on their ships for months at time. Similarly, a ship that spends a lot away from civilization needs good accommodations and a royal starship or yacht likely would as well.

I think, for example, that the blueprints of the Millennium Falcon do a good job portraying a ship that's primary focus is cargo carrying, albeit tricked out to be a bit of a combat monster and able to run blockades. Below is a set of plans that I believe originally appeared in Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Gamer magazine and has been reused in various forms since:


As can be seen, there's not a lot of space dedicated solely for the crew - a bunkroom and a small lounge area within the main hold.

Variations of this have been published in various forms, with the assumption the Falcon is rather tricked out. There's one version with no crew accommodations at all aside from a pair of bunks in the main hold and a small bathroom attached. Another version replaces the bulk of the hold space with passenger bunkrooms. And a compromise, considered the "stock" version is rather similar to the Falcon, focused mainly on freight but having a single bunkroom (and a more sensible corridor arrangement):

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