5FW shipping losses

[Hemdian]

I was flipping through Sector Fleet (MgT) and looking at all the deployments for the Spinward Marches and I noticed this is set circa 1105. I'd like to know the deployments for 1116. Between these two dates there was the 5FW (1107-1112) and I'd be surprised if ship building activity had succeeded in making up all the losses from that war.

So, has anyone (a) done any kind of analysis of 5FW losses, and (b) know what the post-war ship building capacity is? For the second part it's not just a matter of total tonnage capacity, it's the capacity of the large ship shipyards.

(I've not set the MgT prefix as I'd be interested in people's non-MgT thoughts too.)

 

[Whipsnade]

MT's RSB will have the fleet designations and locations you're looking for.

As for shipping losses during the 5FW, I've never seen any real analysis.

As for ship building rates and yard capacities, you're now stepping into the morass that has mired Traveller since the days of HG2 and TCS.

And, throwing in another monkey wrench, what about personnel losses? How quickly can they be made up? In 1945, the USN found that, after counting those hulls on the stocks, it had more ships than it had qualified personnel for.

 

[rancke]

MT's RSB will have the fleet designations and locations you're looking for.

Note that in MgT:The Spinward Marches, the fleet numbers were the 1116 deployments rather than the 1105 deployments. I don't have Sector Fleet, so I don't know if this error was fixed in that.

As for shipping losses during the 5FW, I've never seen any real analysis.

I concur. There's just not enough information. In fact, I don't think there's any information about combat losses in the 5FW, except half a dozen individual ship names scattered around. I remember that the Lioness was destroyed and had been replaced by the Lioness II by 1120 (in the GTU).

As for ship building rates and yard capacities, you're now stepping into the morass that has mired Traveller since the days of HG2 and TCS.

Yes. TCS is pretty much useless for estimating military yard capacity in the Imperium. And there's no way to figure out how much civilian yard capacity (if any) was diverted to military construction post-5FW.

Assuming (and it's only an assumption) that IN ships are replaced during peacetime by new construction in 40 years, a minimum of 2½% of the navy per year is already in the pipeline. More ships would have been laid down as wartime construction and all construction accelerated. Ships laid up in ordinary would have been reactivated and could be kept active until all losses had been replaced. And the IN could have kept ships in service past their planned 40 years (if the plan was 40 years in the first place).

At a guess, and I won't even call it a SWAG, the IN would be up to its numbers in 1116, but some of its ships would still be reactivated reserves.

And, throwing in another monkey wrench, what about personnel losses? How quickly can they be made up? In 1945, the USN found that, after counting those hulls on the stocks, it had more ships than it had qualified personnel for.

That may be less of a problem for the Imperium. Traveller space navies have a much higher ratio of ship to personnel than TL7 wet navies. That is, for each member of the navy, the ships they crew costs 60 to 80 times more than for the USN.


Hans

 

[Hal]

The other issues that surround the Shipyards in ANY of the Traveller Universe systems, is that we as consumers of the game system rules, have NO idea of how much shipyard capacity there is, and how much shipyard capacity is required to engage in any activity of any kind. For instance, if a ship is undergoing its yearly annual maintenance, is it using up any shipyard capacity to enage in that activity? If so, how much shipyard capacity is being utilized in that capacity?

I've noted in the GURPS TRAVELLER rules set, it states that if a crew doesn't have access to a class A or B starport, that the crew can engage in the yearly annual maintenance if it has all of the parts required in its hold, and that it takes 4X the normal maintenance time (ie 8 weeks). This is in addition to the fact, that if a crew desires to do its own maintenance at the class C or better starport, that it takes TWICE the normal time (ie 4 weeks) to do the maintenance.

So, based on the GURPS STARSHIPS rules, it appears that the private crew taking twice as long to do the maintenance is doing so because they perhaps lack the specialized equipment to do the maintenance itself. The implication as well, is that the maintenance doesn't require a starport's facilities per se, but that even at a class D starport, the maintenance can be performed by a normal crew.

In the end analysis - my thoughts are:

What constitutes shipyard capacity? Is it the crew in conjunction with the starport's shipyard? Is it just the crew itself?


How much capacity is really OUT there to begin with in the form of shipping tonnage? It is one thing to speculate on how many military hulls there are out there at any give time, along with any scout services hulls, x-boat hulls, tugs and other civilian service hulls - not to mention actual transport hulls out there for commercial traffic.

 

[Carlobrand]

...I've noted in the GURPS TRAVELLER rules set, it states that if a crew doesn't have access to a class A or B starport, that the crew can engage in the yearly annual maintenance if it has all of the parts required in its hold, and that it takes 4X the normal maintenance time (ie 8 weeks). This is in addition to the fact, that if a crew desires to do its own maintenance at the class C or better starport, that it takes TWICE the normal time (ie 4 weeks) to do the maintenance. ...

That can give us a rough estimate of the manpower needs per ship. I wonder if the intent is that the port crew participates with the ship crew in the maintenance operation at those A/Bs or if it's just the port crew doing it.

However, you're right that - lacking numbers on total fleet and nonfleet tonnage across the Marches - it's pretty well impossible to figure what the actual capacity is.

 

[Hal]

With regards to the manpower needs, the question arises in my mind as:

A & B ports get the job done in 2 weeks - no hint of manpower that is thrown at the problem.

A & B ports, where the normal crew handles the maintenance, the cost of the materials to do the maintenance with, is 5x the normal cost of maintenance done by the starport itself. Why this should be, I can't say. If a player asked me why, I'd probably suggest that the cost includes rental fees for specialized equipment to get the job done. The problem with that particular rational is that the fee is included even if the job is done at a class D or E starport. So, if it were to be deemed "rental costs", it falls short of being a good explanation. What makes it worse is - should a crew engage in doing its own annual maintenance next year, would they be able to do it for normal costs because they already have paid the costs associated with getting specialized tools etc.

So, I don't know exactly how to get the current rules to perform outside of the box so to speak, and make it seem entirely rational.

For what it is worth, I created a fictional company that was involved in upgrading the starport at Ianic so that it wasn't a frontier installation. It was using GURPS rules, where any world that was of water percentage less than 40%, made it illegal to engage in wilderness refueling from on world. This required that the world engage in gas giant refueling or it required that some company do the skimming, bring the fuel to the main world, and sell it. Doing the math, the company could not make ends meet selling unrefined fuel. As a consequence of this, I had it refine the fuel during the roughly 3 day journey from the gas giant to the main world using maneuver 4 drives. Even then, it could barely survive profitably if it didn't sell all of the fuel it skimmed. Long story short - I also included the fact that it took 2 months a year to perform maintenance on those tankers that plied the space lanes between the gas giant and the main world.

In the end? For my own traveler Universe - starports that engage in maintenance, will use up a number of "space port modules" equal to constructing the ship in question - in a time period that would take 1 year to do. Said grouping of modules would be able to perform maintenance for 26 said starships (as there 52 weeks in a year, and 2 weeks per maintenance that is performed). This is why the Universe doesn't keep on building tons and tons of starships non-stop. Once you have capacity built, you then need to devote starport capacity towards maintenance of already built starships.

As an offshoot of this, maintenance schedules are TIGHT. Starship captains have to plan in advance to have their ships put through the maintenance, and if they miss their scheduled window - they have to wait a few weeks for an opening to become available.

 

[rancke]

However, you're right that - lacking numbers on total fleet and nonfleet tonnage across the Marches - it's pretty well impossible to figure what the actual capacity is.

Ship tonnage can be guesstimated. Civilian shipyard capacity can be guesstimated. (Though in both cases a lot of unprovable assumptions are required). But military shipyard capacity is completely without any foundation on which to base guesstimates.


Hans

 

[Selandia]

Beside new building and maintenance, lets not forget repairs. War usually yield combat damages. Unlike building and maintenance, that can be "pipelined" through project management years in advance (detailed maintenance schedule come along with any new ship) damages repair are nearly always impromptu custom job

have fun

Selandia

 

[McPerth]

I was flipping through Sector Fleet (MgT) and looking at all the deployments for the Spinward Marches and I noticed this is set circa 1105. I'd like to know the deployments for 1116. Between these two dates there was the 5FW (1107-1112) and I'd be surprised if ship building activity had succeeded in making up all the losses from that war.

So, has anyone (a) done any kind of analysis of 5FW losses, and (b) know what the post-war ship building capacity is? For the second part it's not just a matter of total tonnage capacity, it's the capacity of the large ship shipyards.

(I've not set the MgT prefix as I'd be interested in people's non-MgT thoughts too.)

Don't forget SM is one of the hot frontiers of the Imperium, so I guess some reserves from quiter parts would have also ben transferred there until losses are fully made up, so, if looking only 1116 SM fleet, I guess some of the forces are there on this basis, so its fleet have been reinforced at expense of quiter sectors.

Probably, should we look at the entire IN, losses would not yet have been fully replaced after those 6 years, but the unreplaced losses would be difficult to see and probably on the quiter sectors (or the ones seen as such, as son there will be no such quiter sectors in Imperium by 1116...)

Beside new building and maintenance, lets not forget repairs. War usually yield combat damages. Unlike building and maintenance, that can be "pipelined" through project management years in advance (detailed maintenance schedule come along with any new ship) damages repair are nearly always impromptu custom job

have fun

Selandia

This is also an important point. If you accept HG represents Traveller space combat, most ships are crippled but repairable, and, while as long as the war lasts there can be other priorities (though I guess a battleship with its fuel tanks shattered will be high on this, as it can be easily repaired for the gain you'll have) or personnel losses might preclude to bring all repaired ships back in line, I guess 5 years after the war most of the damaged ships will be back in service.

 

[Carlobrand]

Ship tonnage can be guesstimated. Civilian shipyard capacity can be guesstimated. (Though in both cases a lot of unprovable assumptions are required). But military shipyard capacity is completely without any foundation on which to base guesstimates.


Hans

A thought occurs. One could "reverse engineer" an estimate by coming up with an estimate of the sector's gross product and then guesstimating how much of that can be tapped by the Imperial government for fleet business. Still very rough - as I recall, in previous discussions the community guesstimates varied by an order of magnitude or two.

...This is also an important point. If you accept HG represents Traveller space combat, most ships are crippled but repairable, and, while as long as the war lasts there can be other priorities (though I guess a battleship with its fuel tanks shattered will be high on this, as it can be easily repaired for the gain you'll have) or personnel losses might preclude to bring all repaired ships back in line, I guess 5 years after the war most of the damaged ships will be back in service.

Those ships that were struck by a spinal meson or two are going to be questionable. A Zho dreadnought's Q mount on average logs about 4 1/2 jump drive hits, 3 1/2 power plant hits, trashes the fuel tank 85% of the time, delivers a bit under 9 hits to screens and 3 to computers. If the Imperial fleet was forced to withdraw (as happened a lot in the early phase), the 85% with the shattered tanks were unable to retreat with the fleet or retreat to the outer system; they were scuttled or captured. Those that could be repaired by the Zho either made their way to Zho space where they could be studied or got repaired and joined the Zho fleet only to get shot at by the Imperials when they returned for round 2. And if they couldn't be repaired, I'd have salvaged whatever I could and then steered them into the local sun to keep them from being recovered by the Imperials.

Even the Zho cruiser H-mount will trash fuel tanks on a successful hit 2/3 of the time. In a duel of ships of the line, it really comes down to whether or not you took a hit from a spinal meson and whether your side won. If your side lost and withdrew, your cripples are mostly lost.

 

[Selandia]

Indeed, even if ships don't sink in space, constructive total losses will be quite frequent in HG2. Nonetheless, the issue remains, whatever the answer. As long as some ships are salvagables you will have to ponder the issue of "should I use this yard to repair or built?"

While new building can be standard product, hull repairs are custom jobs requiring specialised personnel. No "trained monkey job". Systems and sub systems can be "repaired" by assembly or sub assembly substitution (with diagnostic ...etc), but the workers used are a solid notch abose the assembly line workers that produced the assemblies as components. Its the best yards that will have to be used for repairs.

Or put it another way, even if you can figure building capability of the sector, some of the best of your yards capability will not be available for building unless you give up repairs.

Have fun

Selandia

 

[McPerth]

Those ships that were struck by a spinal meson or two are going to be questionable. A Zho dreadnought's Q mount on average logs about 4 1/2 jump drive hits, 3 1/2 power plant hits, trashes the fuel tank 85% of the time, delivers a bit under 9 hits to screens and 3 to computers. If the Imperial fleet was forced to withdraw (as happened a lot in the early phase), the 85% with the shattered tanks were unable to retreat with the fleet or retreat to the outer system; they were scuttled or captured. Those that could be repaired by the Zho either made their way to Zho space where they could be studied or got repaired and joined the Zho fleet only to get shot at by the Imperials when they returned for round 2. And if they couldn't be repaired, I'd have salvaged whatever I could and then steered them into the local sun to keep them from being recovered by the Imperials.

Even the Zho cruiser H-mount will trash fuel tanks on a successful hit 2/3 of the time. In a duel of ships of the line, it really comes down to whether or not you took a hit from a spinal meson and whether your side won. If your side lost and withdrew, your cripples are mostly lost.

And, according to TCS (AFAIK the only supplemet talking about such repairs), how will it take to repair it?

Regardless how many damaged systems a ship has, it can be repaired in a small fraction of the time taken to build one anew, and even those crippled by a critical (unless vaporized, off course) can be repaired in a few weeks for a small perecentage of what is needed to build it.

So, you're right most of the losses will come from scuttling the crippled ships when you have to retreat, but if you hold the "battlefield", most your losses could be repaired with time (and 5-6 years are quite some time for that), and even if you retreat, unless it is a rout, I guess some of them might be recovered by tenders and taken to the rearguard for latter salvage/repair.

Off course, as told in many other threads, I see it as one of the main flaws of HG when used as campaign, as most traveller background (best example is Rebellion), talks about huge shipping losses that cannot be recovered, while if using HG/MT rules (and most of it in the Rebellion, where ships are similar, if not identical, in both sides, and so easier to repair/salvage) most this lost shipping will be recovered soon just with repairs (new builds aside).

Indeed, even if ships don't sink in space, constructive total losses will be quite frequent in HG2. Nonetheless, the issue remains, whatever the answer. As long as some ships are salvagables you will have to ponder the issue of "should I use this yard to repair or built?"

While new building can be standard product, hull repairs are custom jobs requiring specialised personnel. No "trained monkey job". Systems and sub systems can be "repaired" by assembly or sub assembly substitution (with diagnostic ...etc), but the workers used are a solid notch abose the assembly line workers that produced the assemblies as components. Its the best yards that will have to be used for repairs.

Or put it another way, even if you can figure building capability of the sector, some of the best of your yards capability will not be available for building unless you give up repairs.

Once again we must remember SM is a critical hot frontier for the 3I. As you say, most shipyards busy with repairs won't be able to build new shipping, but those new hulls may be built elsewhere in the Imperium, while local shipyards being dedicated to repairs, as the same hull that hight be worth repaireing might not be so worth taking far to repair.

 

[HG_B]

Beside new building and maintenance, lets not forget repairs. War usually yield combat damages. Unlike building and maintenance, that can be "pipelined" through project management years in advance (detailed maintenance schedule come along with any new ship) damages repair are nearly always impromptu custom job

have fun

Selandia

In WW2 some VERY extensive carrier repair jobs were done in Hawaii. There were no Carrier construction ship yards there if I remember correctly. Turn around time was fast too.

 

[McPerth]

In WW2 some VERY extensive carrier repair jobs were done in Hawaii. There were no Carrier construction ship yards there if I remember correctly. Turn around time was fast too.

If we use WWII as an example, US ended it with far more tonnage (both in combat and freight fleets) that it begin it, even though it had huge losses in both of them...

 

[Carlobrand]

...So, you're right most of the losses will come from scuttling the crippled ships when you have to retreat, but if you hold the "battlefield", most your losses could be repaired with time (and 5-6 years are quite some time for that), and even if you retreat, unless it is a rout, I guess some of them might be recovered by tenders and taken to the rearguard for latter salvage/repair...

Agreed: if you can hold the field, you should be able to repair your cripples, most likely all of them, given the time. TCS is controversial canon for this, but if it takes you 5 years to build a ship, then you can almost certainly replace most of the damage in less time and have a strong incentive to do so unless the ship is obsolescent or otherwise no longer desirable. A limiting factor is that the fleet is normally scattered but damage is occurring where the fleet is concentrated, so some bottlenecking will occur, especially as the jump drive tends to take a lot of hits. You're likely to see a lot of ships repaired just enough to jump out and then sent elsewhere to address the rest of their damage. There are likely some tenders big enough to take on a dreadnought, but they aren't cheap and I figure the fleet will spend more on fighting ships than on ships to transport crippled fighting ships, so those tenders are likely to be busy transporting ships from sites where there's no capacity to repair the jump drive at all.

Another limiting factor is tech level and the question of what the naval bases can actually do: big difference between popping in a replacement turret and popping in a new jump drive, and canon generally says starports have to do the repair work. If the naval base repair capabilities are limited, and we hold to the rule about tech level, then the most seriously damaged ships are going to have to make their way to Mora, Trin, Glisten or Rhylanor for repair. The question then is what kind of capacity do those four yards have and how long will it take for them to work through all the backlog. Me, I'd say anyplace capable of handling the equipment's tech level can handle minor repairs of that equipment (that makes 6 TL13 Imperial A-ports available for minor jump drive repair), and anyplace capable of handling the armor can handle most major repairs (which opens up the yards at TL14 Pallique and Tenalphi/Lunion for TL14 and down) - or else the ships are designed so armor panels can be readily removed to access major systems for repair or replacement.

However, only the four TL15 yards can handle the power plant repairs, and that's a mighty bottleneck. If we view the power plants as several distinct plants to minimize combat effects, there could be ships patrolling underpowered with damaged plants for years to come. Might be worthwhile to cannibalize and retire some of the cripples to relieve the backlog and get as many ships as possible to fighting trim as quickly as possible, or at least to cannibalize the hulks and leave them with only enough power to limp their way to Rhylanor et al for a determination of their fate.

 

[HG_B]

However, only the four TL15 yards can handle the power plant repairs, and that's a mighty bottleneck.

You can toss that idea into the shredder. The TL (what the local econ can produce) of a planet where the Navy plops down a base has nothing to do with the TL of the repair facilities at the base.

If that was the case our old base at Subic Bay could not have repaired TL 7 jet engines at the base because the Philippines was a couple TL's lower.

No, you just decide what level of repair the Imp. Navy needs at a particular base and ignore the planetary TL.

 

[mike wightman]

Yup, every IN base is a TL15 facility with refuelling and repair facilities.

This came up a while back, discussing what exactly an IN base consists of; the repair and replacements rules in FFW make interesting reading.

 

[Selandia]

Once again we must remember SM is a critical hot frontier for the 3I. As you say, most shipyards busy with repairs won't be able to build new shipping, but those new hulls may be built elsewhere in the Imperium, while local shipyards being dedicated to repairs, as the same hull that hight be worth repaireing might not be so worth taking far to repair.

agreed

It just make it even more difficult to figure building capability that could be dedicated to the SM front since you have to figure the overall supply/demand of 3I

 

[Selandia]

If we use WWII as an example, US ended it with far more tonnage (both in combat and freight fleets) that it begin it, even though it had huge losses in both of them...

thanks to mass production and the new "Kaiser" yards (Liberty ships). That raise another question: I am using my industrial capacity to produce ships now or to produce yards that will produce ships in a year (or two)?

@ HG_B As to the fact that extensive repairs were made in Pearl, it shows that USN would rather repair than build in that foward area. Had the USN wanted to build, they certainly could have setted-up a building yard there. It made IMHO a good choice as to uses of assets.

have fun

Selandia

 

[HG_B]

@ HG_B As to the fact that extensive repairs were made in Pearl, it shows that USN would rather repair than build in that foward area. Had the USN wanted to build, they certainly could have setted-up a building yard there. It made IMHO a good choice as to uses of assets.

You missed my point ENTIRELY. The point was about the ability to make serious & MAJOR repairs to warships outside of ship yards.