History Main / CrewOfOne

* The Protoss Carrier in ''{{Starcraft}}'' is, as the name implies, an aircraft carrier that can carry eight additional fighters inside, all helmed and controlled apparently by ONE Protoss. With his mind, no less.
** The Interceptors are supposedly mostly autonomous robot vehicles which receive targeting information and group launch/recall orders from their carrier (and manufacturing factory), making this a bit more plausible.
** Also, It seems to this troper that the Protoss are KNOWN for their mindpower...

** The film sort of [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on this with what confronts Striker when he first enters the cockpit: a slow pan across a literally endless array of dials, levers, switches and knobs.
** The Boeing 707 seen ([[JustPlaneWrong but not heard]]) in the movie can be flown for a short time with a crew of one (the pilot). For longer flights, you need a flight engineer to keep an eye on the airplane's mechanical systems, and if you want to reach your destination, you add a third: the navigator. Modern jetliners only need a crew of one, and are almost to the point where a crew of zero would work.

* Anne McAffrey's TheShipThatWon could technically run with just the shellperson controlling it - just one person. However, these ships are usually paired with a normal human, resulting in a crew of two.

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<<|VehicleTropes|>>

* Train can run with a Crew of One, it's called DOO (Driver?Only Operation)

* While you can't ''quite'' pilot a battleship or aircraft carrier by yourself in the ''{{Battlefield}}'' series, you can instantaneously hop between its different five or eight stations with a keypress to come remarkably close.

** Some vehicles (such as the BTR-60 in Battlefield Vietnam) were in fact kinda useless without two people, one to drive and one to shoot. Other vehicles, such as the helicopters in Battlefield Vietname and Battlefield 2 became significantly more effective with a second crewman to fire more guns, but didn't necessarily require them. But the tanks were pretty much always one-crew killing machine.

* Train can run with a Crew of One, it?s called DOO (Driver?Only Operation)
** Real?Life Subversion: [[http://tfl.gov.uk/dlr Docklands Light Railway]] runs trains with a crew of nought.

->'''Blackadder''': I was under the impression that it was common maritime practice for a ship to have a crew."
->'''[[CloudCuckooLander Rum]]''': Opinion is divided on the subject. All the other captains say it is, I say it isn't."

* In ''{{Mass Effect 2}}'', the Cerberus-built Normandy includes an AI that could theoretically take over pretty much every aspect of running the ship, apart from helming it, and allow it to be run by a crew of one. Cerberus intentionally made the AI unable to do so, [[spoiler:at least without overriding its safety constraints which you have to do late on in the game]].

* ''Mercenaries'' (The game, not PrivateMilitaryContractors)

* In ''XXX 2: State Of The Union'': Darius' single handed operation of the tank stretches believability, it does look more awkward than his pursuers (fully staffed tanks) but it is his first time.

* Rambo does this in ''Rambo III''. He's apparently able to drive, fire and load a Soviet tank with his head sticking out the front hatch.

* Despite the above quote, this trope is brilliantly subverted in ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean''. Jack and Will only manage to pilot the Interceptor ''after'' Norrington and his men set the sails. Even then, Jack admits that he can't sail it by himself.

** It's assumed by the EVE-Online community that even capsuleer ships have some crew (1-6 for frigates, thousands for a battleship) but they're invisible because [[CrapsackWorld Life is Cheap]] in the Eve 'verse.

* In [[PlayerVersusPlayer Wintergrasp]] in WorldOfWarcraft the [[FragileSpeedster Catapults]] have space for only one driver/gunner. The [[TheMario Demolishers]] also has a driver/gunner but have space for two passengers who can fire their own ranged weapons (bows, guns, etc.) from their seats. The [[MightyGlacier Siege Engines]] have a ram controlled by the driver, a turret-mounted cannon that requires a separate gunner and two passenger spots. Similar vehicles exist on the Isle of Conquest, Ulduar and other in-game locations.

* The Protoss Carrier in {{Starcraft}} is, as the name implies, an aircraft carrier that can carry eight additional fighters inside, all helmed and controlled apparently by ONE Protoss. With his mind, no less.

* The Protoss Carrier in Starcraft is, as the name implies, an aircraft carrier that can carry eight additional fighters inside, all helmed and controlled apparently by ONE Protoss. With his mind, no less.

->'''[[CloudCuckooLander Rum]]''': Opinion is divided on the subject. All the other captains say it is, I say it isn't."

Take the typical tank, for example. If you're in the driver's seat, you have limited visibility and you can't load or fire the main gun. If you're in the commanders seat, you can see all around you, but you can't drive, shoot or load the gun. If you're in the loader's seat, you can't see well or drive (you might not even be able to shoot the main gun).

This can be justified in certain SpeculativeFiction settings by omnipresent computers and simple AI. One might say the ideal number of people for any given vehicle is ''one'': one human to handle the tactics and the moral decisions, and computers to handle the rest of the more mechanical tasks like navigation. The limiting factors, of course, are the amount of multitasking still left to the pilot, and how long the pilot can function at that level.

* Parodied in the climax of ''TheSimpsons'' episode "New Kids on The Bleech", where pop band manager/Navy Lieutenant L.T. Smash single-handedly hijacks an ''aircraft carrier''. Well...almost single-handedly:

-->'''Nelson''':How should I know? Just keep loading missiles. ''[loads one into a launcher]''

* The Protoss Carrier in Starcraft is, as the name implies, an aircraft carrier that can carry eight additional fighters inside, all helmed and controlled apparently by ONE Protoss. With his mind, no less.

* Maybe it's more justified than this troper realizes, but it always struck me as odd that in ''OnePiece'' a caravel, and later a brigantine sloop, could be properly crewed by 4 or 8 people respectively.
** Granted that the crew is highly adaptable (and most of the time are hanging around doing nothing) and in times of high tension are shown to be running around like mad. Seems more of a 'minimum crew requirement'.

* {{Blackadder}} II features the batshit insane Cpt. Rum, who runs a ship without a crew. Granted, he usually cons passengers by 'sailing 'round and 'round the Isle of Wight 'til everyone gets dizzy' then sailing home.

** Oddly, it's not allowed when driving the smaller vehicles. That missile launcher on your converted pickup will sit there and look adorable until you convince an ally to crew the bloody thing. And at least they make you run up and drop a grenade in a tank's crew hatch before 'borrowing' the whole thing.

* JamesBond Goldeneye does this with a tank in the second level, not to mention a similar tank in the original film. Plus numerous other vehicles throughout the series.

* Rambo does this in ''Rambo III''. He's apparently able to drive, fire and load a Soviet tank with his head sticking out the front hatch.

** Though supposedly not artificially intelligent, one Bolo mk III demonstrates the ability to operate entirely without human control. Most Bolo stories feature mk XV or higher units that have no real need of human crew, though almost all marks are intended to carry a commander.

* Many old arcade shooters, when the player gets a tank, would let him crew it himself. ''Front Line'' and ''IkariWarriors'' come to mind.

* Every vehicle in ''BattleZone'', most of which are hovertanks of one form or another. The player can even snipe the driver of an enemy tank, run over and jump in.
* Averted in the old Sony online shooter ''Infantry''. All the large vehicles required a driver and a gunner for each weapon the vehicle had. IIRC this meant that the hovertank required 4 players to be fully effective: one driver, one main gunner and two machine gunners.
* Space Marine tanks in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' have very small crew sizes: typically just a driver/commander and a single gunner, with advanced "machine spirits" taking care of jobs that would normally go to other crewmen. (Chaos Space Marine vehicles are much the same, but instead of machine spirits, they have ''daemons''.) The Imperial Guard, who possess more men and less impressive technology than the Marines, have tanks with more conventional crew sizes.

** This can be surmised by the fact the control console is hexagonal indicating 6 duty stations.

* Several vehicles in the ''StarWars: Battlefront'' games have multiple crew slots. The Assault Gunship has five: pilot, copilot, left, right & tail gunners. Only a pilot is required to drive and fire the main weapons, but a solo operator can switch rapidly from slot to slot if he wants to.

** The Boeing 707 seen ([[JustPlaneWrong but not heard]]) in the movie can be flown for a short time with a crew of one (the pilot). For longer flights, you need a flight engineer to keep an eye on the airplane's mechanical systems, and if you want to reach your destination, you add a third: the navigator. Modern jetliners only need a crew of one, and are almost to the point where a crew of zero would work.

** In X-2: The Threat, this is very obvious by the lack of crewmen at your bridge's seats.
** At the same time, Not only is the player controlling their ''own'' ship, but also the many many ships of their empire at the same time. (although these too are computer controlled, the "living" NPC pilots aren't much smarter than your AI-controlled ships)

** However, the minimum crew size in a turreted vehicle is still three, because the only crewman who can realistically be replaced is the loader. And most western armies have avoided autoloaders because a good human loader is much more reliable, faster and more flexible. An autoloader can't help change a track, pull maintenance, stand guard, or sub for another crewman, either. He also serves as an extra pair of eyes to watch your back when he isn't loading.
** Furthermore, reducing the crew to just one is probably inadvisable simply for morale reasons.

* Spacecraft in ''{{Eve Online}}'' can be controlled by a single person, assuming that said single person is a 'capsuleer', or 'pod pilot' and the ship is designed to accept a pod. Otherwise it takes a full crew to fly a ship. Only a small fraction of humanity has the potential to be pod pilots, and those people are considered a valuable resource, to the point that capsuleers are assured access to clones and that no empire can lay claim to them.

* Anne McAffrey's TheShipThatWon could technically run with just the shellperson controlling it - just one person. However, these ships are usually paired with a normal human, resulting in a crew of two.

*Parodied in the climax of the Simpsons episode "New Kids on The Bleech", where pop band manager/Navy Lieutenant L.T. Smash single-handedly hijacks an ''aircraft carrier''. Well...almost single-handedly:

* Many old arcade shooters, when the player gets a tank, would let him crew it himself. ''Front Line'' and ''Ikari Warriors'' come to mind.