Utterly Mad

Well, size wise, it's part of the requirement for a warp system to work. Population-wise, it's simply a transcription from the sourcebook I have. I'd actually adjusted that down from there. I can wiggle it to whereever, but really, most starwars ships would be sized on par with system ships in this universe. Starwars is also a little more high-tech than FTL (and startrek is far ahead of either of them in many ways) - there is not a lot of automation in this universe for the simple reason that life is alot cheaper than tech. You want your massive cannon reloaded, you better have a couple hundred guys who can push, pry, and run the equipment. That's not to say there aren't smaller ships, but the warpships we're dealing with are supposed to be enormous and ridiculous.

There's also some gameplay and thematic reasons for this, but they'll either become apparent once things start up, or I've done my job poorly.

If you're saying more weapons, the there's kind of a multi-fold answer:

For one, weapons are definately abstracted. A macro battery might have a dozen guns, each firing a shell the size of a small house. That's just a single battery, mind you.

Two, the Venator has 70 something odd guns, but from a quick google, it looks like only 10 of them are actually built to hurt other ships (not counting the four torpedo tubes) - the rest are smaller weapons designed to keep fighters away. This is represent by a turret rating in FTL - you can assume that even the smallest ship will have a hundred + turrets. This is the other reason for large crews - if your enemy has a hundred turrets, and you want to board them, you'll want at least a hundred shuttles, ideally with more than just a handful of dudes on each one.

Thirdly, weapons in this galaxy are far more dangerous than Starwars weapons. The macrocannon is a relatively small gun - those mass drivers are generally the length of the whole ship. It always struck me as really odd that the empire even bothered building a deathstar. When you have the technology to build a hyperdrive, it would be simpler, cheaper, and easier to just strap it to a big rock and throw it at a planet at the speed of light.

And finally, I've gone for a little more of a "reality" aspect for this. Obviously, there's alot of fake science in there, but the way stuff works in this universe is simply different from most other sci-fi stuff (Warhammer 40k is likely the closest analog, mostly because that's where some of the core rules come from). I actually chopped a bunch of mechanics out of this - there was a heat mechanic and a beam refraction mechanic at one point, but they're no fun to keep track of. Anyway, think more "Age of Sail in Space" than traditional sci-fi.

Anyway, I have no issue changing stuff around, and appreciate the input. I'm gonna wait and see how everyone else feels before worrying too much about this stuff though, majority will rule.