: Would a research team of this size be too small or too big? I'm working on a story that revolves around a research team in a remote setting. They would have supplies so they don't have to

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Vostok Station in Antarctica has winter staff of about 20 people, and they typically stay there for a little less than a year. Acclimatization to local conditions may last up to 2 month, which dictates typically long duration of visits.

Generally, a group of 10 or less people will be definitely suffering from "cabin fever", and even large groups would not enjoy staying mostly indoors for the whole year.

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Just as a comparison, Canadian Forces Station Alert. Of the 60-odd personnel on station, only about 6 are there for the stations primary function (communication interception and monitoring). The remaining personnel are for food services, vehicle maintenance, building and service maintenance, airfield maintenace, housekeeping, running the power plant, and administrative support, or the weather observatory.

The weather station at Eureka, on the other hand, has 8 staff (6 Meteorlogical Service of Canada, 2 contractors).

Note that in both cases, people don't stay there for a full year at a time: CFS Alert has the military personnel on 6 month deployments, with some on 3 month rotations. Eureka has a rotation every few months. And neither is out of contact, with flights at least every few weeks.

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I am a research scientist, and I have worked on teams ranging from two (I suppose the smallest group that could be called a team, although I have done solo research as well), to fifty six, if you include support personnel; and that included a few dozen PhDs. The team at the Large Hadron Collider has literally hundreds of PhDs on board.

For the purposes of realism, your group size can be anything. As far as for fictional purposes, many stories are set in large companies, it is okay if your MC does not have much personal interaction with everybody on the team.

In a way, you might want a "more is better" approach, if there are only eight people in your story, you will be expected to provide details, interactions and personality for all of them. If there are twenty-eight, you have variety when you need it, but the reader doesn't expect a full character profile for all twenty-eight of them, and you can have "circles" of interactions. Innermost, medium, distant from MC, but then your innermost circle can be perhaps four or five people the MC works with every day, the mid-range circle is people he works with once a week, the outermost circle is people the MC knows but converses or interacts with less than once a week, the computer technician, communications, security, supplies, transportation, etc.

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I have research buddies that go to Antarctica on a regular basis, and the research trips are usually shorter (maybe two weeks) and have more people ... because the cost of getting there is relatively high and if you have a research vessel already heading there you will try to get the biggest team your grant can afford. You will also try to save money by sharing transportation with another research group from another institution, the costs are split between grants. There are as often as not a range of mentorships on these trips - Head PI's, post docs (doing a lot of the work), students (learning) and tech support (grunts.) Then there's the people that transport them (research vessels, but for you could be something else.)

So my sense is this is too few people, but I would buy in if it was set up well.

I am mostly concerned (have far greater concern) by the presence of military and communications. That smacks of puppets that you the author need, rather than what makes sense.

What is the security for? If the location is remote and presumably hostile, then they will be safe from any human danger. Communications doesn't make much sense either. They have computers, are a small group, I don't see needing a communications person. Personally, these are the two oddball features to me.

(incidentally, The doctor should be able to double up on research help and the computer guy can as well (everything is data driven these days.) I don't think a group like this would take dead weight along, and a doctor and computer guy would be dead weight unless they multitask.)

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