Okay. So, I'm running a Cyberpirates campaign a forum over, in SR4A.

I do not have cyberpirates available, as it's on a wounded computer, but I remember vaguely rules for ship crews.

Here's the situation - our crew (7 people, with 8 characters (the Mage is a former PC turned NPC)) has just captured an Aztlan freighter, with crew. Their J wants the enemy crew only secured - not killed.

They also have a yacht (stat base being the H&W Classique III from Arsenal) as their base ship.

Questions the crew just asked me, and that I'm wondering myself:

1. How big of a prize crew would they need for the freighter?

2. Would it, realistically, be possible to slave one of the ships to the other, such that they sail in formation and you don't have to try to crew two ships with 7 people?

3. Can ships in the 2070s run unmanned for short periods?

1. Depends on the required time for their journey, traffic iin their respective shipping lane, in general you need an engineer in the machineroom, preferably with an assistant and at least two watch officers at the bridge. Might even be the case (or GM ruling) the machine-room is fully-automated by 2070 (note the an old ship by 2070 was built around 2030)

2. By 2070, yes

3. Sure, but don't ask me where it's going.

I'd think that a lot of this depends on the pilot of each of the ships. Perhaps you could suggest that they load each ship with a Nautical Mechanic Autosoft so that the ships could self monitor. It'd take a little bit of work off of the crew for just sitting watch. For a skeleton crew it should be sufficient enough to at least let them know when they need to stop and call someone for repairs.

not sure if there is something in errata about ships but for SR I would expect that cargo ships would have no crew at sea. If anyone was onboard I would think it would be security.