Fleet Action Aftermath

[sfchbryan]

Hmm, an interesting thought about TCS and crewing.

The TCS revenue generation mechanism suggests that different government types have different abilities/limits to funding a war machine in war or peacetime.

Perhaps the same percentage could apply to how many of it's population it could convert per year OR support to naval crewing?

So a Rich pop 6 planet may be able to build ships 'above it's weight' but is chronically short of people to crew them, thus the ships have to be built a certain way.

The Traveller Police can say what they like about decanonizing - TCS was never replaced with anything. The reality is that TCS and such (Imperial Navy Handbook) is all we have to work with.

Figure a Max of 10% of your population going into your military (This is what the US DoD defines as Total Mobilization). I'd say no more than 1% will actually be on a ship. The other 9% will be spread out to Naval, System Defense Forces, Ground Forces, Nautical Force Command, COACC, and their respective training establishments.

That addresses how many people you can get into uniform. The other issue is how your training pipeline changes in wartime. It gets faster at the basic level, but slower at higher levels. Advanced training is either abbreviated or eliminated entirely.

And there is the issues of building up the training pipeline to take those civilians and turning them into military types. Most peacetime militaries are not structured to take in that many civilians - they will lack facilities, uniforms, housing, etc.

It would take a year or longer just to build up the pipeline - there are no facility fairies to wave a wand and have bases appear. Especially when a large portion of the training pipeline takes place at Depots - Another reason that they are such high value targets - take one out and not only have you destroyed a construction and logistical nexus, you have also wiped out a good portion of the training facilities in a sector.

 

[kilemall]

The TCS government modifiers figures work well enough IMO, if you apply it the way I'm proposing, as ratios of the total population.

Looking over that, the GMs are in a range of .5 to 1.5, and have a peace/war rate.

So let's say a government type can have 1.0 Peace/1.5 War- a planet of 100 million would have crewing of 1 million in peacetime, and could train up 1.5 million per year for war.

I don't know that you get that much play value out of that mechanic, other then whatever strategic, surrender/recovery/POW policy or ship design decisions one makes as a consequence. Arguably crewing is already 'baked in' to the fleet build limits since the budget is driven by population.

If you are an empire though, could have consequences in that the richer higher tech planets fund the fleet, but the manning comes from lower tech large pop planets.

Could be such planets are strategic targets because taking them ruins the enemy demographics for crewing- example the loss of the Anatolian plains for the long term effect on the Byzantine Empire's forces.

 

[Carlobrand]

I put my damage calculator in the File Library, if you want to try it. Not pretty, but it seems to work OK.

 

[Carlobrand]

I would guess the likelihood of scuttling a ship would be directly proportional to ship value. A first rate dreadnought? You have to activate the self-destruct. A TL 10 SDB? Take it, with compliments.

"No, seriously, I'll pay you to take it." :rofl:

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Absolutely vital is to kill the computer. Utterly kill it.

Absolutely agree. It must be automatic, in case no-one is left conscious to press the self destruct.

 

[McPerth]

Good points all, but:

1. if I'm an admiral, I don't want this thing coming back and shooting at me,

And sure Age of Sail aldmirals didn't want their ships comiing back under enemy's flag, but that was a usual fact...

2. a big reason for scuttling modern ships is to deny intelligence that might be gained from the ship: coding machines, code books, important papers, computers that might contain sensitive information. That and the things are navigation hazards, but that's not an issue here since we're expecting the enemy to board and salvage.

Yes, every effort would be made to take off the wounded - just as we do now. Unless someone's about to say there are no conventions in the far future preventing people from shooting up lifeboats, there should be time to get anyone off except those unfortunates trapped in wreckage. Hey, war's an ugly thing.

Absolutely vital is to kill the computer. Utterly kill it. Thermite, micronuke, whatever it takes. There can be absolutely no chance remaining of the enemy drawing actionable intelligence from the computer. Might be a good idea to do that to any part of the bridge that might harbor usable intelligence as well, including command centers and chart rooms, or whatever future equivalent there might be. Very useful is to slag the drives, or at least the jump drive. Also useful is to slag the spinal weapon. If it needs to be done in such a way that the crew can still shelter aboard for rescue, fine, but it needs to be done. Short of a nuke big enough to gut the ship, it'd be difficult to prevent the enemy from repairing the ship, but the longer it takes them, the better - especially if they end up having to use lower tech replacements to do it.

And probably it would be accepted to kill the computer and the intelligence infromation before surrundering the ship, if it is not taken by boarding, as an agreement to reduce the carnage in those battles (you surrund the ship and are allowed to kill the computer, if we have to board it, any intellingece posible will be taken).

After all, it was historically quite usual to allow surrundering defenders of a fortress to burn intelligence information before surrundering...

Yes, every effort would be made to take off the wounded - just as we do now. Unless someone's about to say there are no conventions in the far future preventing people from shooting up lifeboats, there should be time to get anyone off except those unfortunates trapped in wreckage. Hey, war's an ugly thing.

I'm quite sure some conventions are in force (though it's not explicited in OTU, see this thread), but, as in Age of Sail, they may well include the provisions for such surrundering the ships once they are combat killed. Most of those convenitons are directed to avoid further carnage, even regulating the surrundering terms. After all, those conventions, even if not as written as the Geneva one today, were already as traditions in Age of Sail.

Maybe I'll assign the job to the marines. They like blowing things up.

Though me, I'd still favor getting everyone off that you can and then setting off a nuke. It'd be just my luck that some fool captain would download orders to his hand-comp to study later, then forget the thing in his haste to get off the ship.

Again, this will depend on the traditions and "rules of war" applied. It's quite posible that if you so scuttle your ship, the enemy feels no compulsion to recue your people (after all, if they blow up their survival means, they show little interest in surviving).

As I already pointed in the thread I quoted about using captured ships, in the Chaco war, wher water was a prime need and lorries in short supply, the Paraguayans once threatened some surrundering Bolivians that if they destroyed their lorry pool, no Paraguayan lorry would be used to carry water for them.

 

[Condottiere]

It was kinda hard to sink a wooden ship, though you could throw a torch into the powder magazine.

The British didn't tend to lose too many man'o'wars, and the French ones weren't built to last.

 

[McPerth]

It was kinda hard to sink a wooden ship, though you could throw a torch into the powder magazine.

The British didn't tend to lose too many man'o'wars, and the French ones weren't built to last.

And the British fleet included many recomissioned captured ships (mostly former French and Spanish)...

 

[whartung]

An entirely different thing is that I say it is not consistent with the rules expected to have created this setting, and this seems to me quite odd, and no "dupe slap" will change this view (though some good reasoning might).

This is Whipsnade's point. There were no "rules" used to create the setting. The closest thing we have to any rules creating any setting is "The Great Game" that laid out the basic astrography of T:2300. Everything else was made up out of whole cloth to fit a creative narrative. Any expectation of consistency is misplaced.

The Traveller Police can say what they like about decanonizing - TCS was never replaced with anything. The reality is that TCS and such (Imperial Navy Handbook) is all we have to work with.

Not true, we also have Pocket Empires and, maybe, Imperial Squadrons (which I have not seen) from T4.

You can say "But those are from T4", and that's fine, but it's nonsense. They're both economic systems that can be used to drive fleet compositions. An economics model is an economic model, whether from TCS, GT:Far Trader, or PE. And they all take in to account the concept of TL (which is the primary driver and distinguishing component of the Traveller Universe), so in that sense they're pretty much interchangeable across Traveller versions.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

An entirely different thing is that I say it is not consistent with the rules expected to have created this setting, and this seems to me quite odd, and no "dupe slap" will change this view (though some good reasoning might).

This is Whipsnade's point. There were no "rules" used to create the setting. The closest thing we have to any rules creating any setting is "The Great Game" that laid out the basic astrography of T:2300. Everything else was made up out of whole cloth to fit a creative narrative. Any expectation of consistency is misplaced.

I think I understand what McPerth is saying and I agree with him in principle.

First we have a well-established rule system, Traveller, then a setting is written for that rule system, the Rebellion, that is inconsistent with rule system for which it is intended to be used with. It's just sloppy.

 

[McPerth]

Not true, we also have Pocket Empires and, maybe, Imperial Squadrons (which I have not seen) from T4.

As I don't know any of them, do they have repair times for ships, that is what I used here from TCS?

I think I understand what McPerth is saying and I agree with him in principle.

First we have a well-established rule system, Traveller, then a setting is written for that rule system, the Rebellion, that is inconsistent with rule system for which it is intended to be used with. It's just sloppy.

Right, and, more pertinent to this thread (at least to Garnfellow quesions, or what I did understand he asks): if you intend to use HG and its losses for such a game, don't expect results comparable to FFW or Rebellion settings.

 

[mike wightman]

The 3I was not written using the CT rules as written.
Ships were designed that did not used the rules as written - Kinunir, Gazelle, X-boat.

MT was not even designed by GDW - the folks at DGP did it and they had a very limited knowledge of ships.

The battles of the rebellion can no more be modelled by HG than the battles of the FFW can be.

 

[Silverhawk]

Will other posters be able to finally convince you of the truth you do not want to hear from me?

I'll add my thoughts now. I think that on certain level the DGP people thought that the wargames (Imperium, FFW, etc.) were closer linked to the setting for CT than they truly are. The vast majority of the published materials to me seemed for a very high level of play. Epic missions as opposed to the CT adventures that were 'local' in nature.

As for the rules should allow one to repeat/recreate history in my experience that is never truly the case. There is always some exception that cannot be taken into account.

I've played historical games where despite the rule structure attempting to construct play as happened in fact once play started and an unforeseen result occurred a completely different result occurred.

An example would be a successful defense of Crete by the British against the Germans. Wasn't pretty but was firmly within the rules of the game.

The rules and the setting are mutually supporting. A setting without rules is just an idea that may prove unworkable. Rules without a setting are just rules with no flavor.