Are fleets too Large in Traveller

[rancke]

Well, there was that bit about the starting fleet being ten years' budget that I was considering.

That's the maximum you can maintain on a budget if maintenance costs 10% of new price. If you have fewer ships than that, you can afford to build more. If you have that many, you can't afford to build any more. This would apply no matter how many years individual ships lasted. I don't see any problem with that rule.

I think I like the 40-year bit better, though I still think they'd retire them with some life left to them so that the ships could be more easily used to replace combat losses in wartime. Maybe 30 years, I'll have to ponder it.

There's still plenty of life left in 40 year old ships.


Hans

 

[Ishmael]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is deployment times.

fleets deploy in rotation such that crews are not away from family/loved ones for too long. Being 'at sea' for too long increases feelings of isolation. This can cause psychological issues when returning to shore after a long period of time that may manifest itself in antisocial behaviours. Transition shock when moving between shipboard life and ordinary society. Not paying attention to this sort of thing can allow for increased suicide rates, alcoholism and drug use, as well as making crew retention a bit more difficult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_shock

So, fleets rotate on station with off-station time being one for refit, and training.
This would require at least twice the fleet assets to cover the deployment station constantly; one 'at sea' and one 'in port'. That would mean twice the operations and maintenance costs as well as twice the crew.

Of course, such morale issues might be handled to a small degree ala 'Striker' by paying more money to personnel in return for higher troop quality ( morale and rally stats )
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Oct/15/mn/mn04a.html

 

[rancke]

fleets deploy in rotation such that crews are not away from family/loved ones for too long.

This would be USN fleets you're talking about?

So, fleets rotate on station with off-station time being one for refit, and training.

IN numbered fleets are more like the entire US navy, although the analogy is not exact. (For one thing, numbered fleets have sister fleets from where ships and men can be transferred at need).

Individual ships seem to be able to manage with the annual two-week maintenance. If we take the character generation system at face value, crew serve for a year and is then rotated to another post (unless retained for another year). I don't know how long a US fleet deployment usually lasts, but a full year doesn't sound too bad for someone like me who has read a lot of Age of Sail Naval Warfare fiction.

This would require at least twice the fleet assets to cover the deployment station constantly; one 'at sea' and one 'in port'. That would mean twice the operations and maintenance costs as well as twice the crew.

My calculations are based on three people on the ground for every person aboard a ship. If a full double crew is employed and paid shipboard wages even when they're ashore, the personnel expenses would be 25% higher, not 100%.


Hans

 

[far-trader]

Or perhaps the Imperium uses the more ancient practice of camp followers included in the support fleet.

That might help to explain...

...being able to do the maintainance and repairs on any fleet at any naval base (per the other thread about that) even in those systems where the population is ridiculously low (without having to invent suspender snapping ideas about massive robotic installations or huge transient worker shifts that lie idle until the fleet comes in... IF the fleet comes in).

...why there is no mention of the hardships of multi-parsec deployments for months or years (the families are at most a week or two away, and in peacetime probably in the same system).

...why the fleets might have only a few (relatively) combatant elements given the huge budgets (we can now sink a nearly equal sum or more into the support elements for the civilian employees, their dependents, and the dependents of the naval personnel themselves).

Just a thought

 

[Ishmael]

This would be USN fleets you're talking about?

It is the one I have first hand experience with and it is one of only 3 recognised blue water navies at present. The other 2 , The British Royal Navy and the French Navy have shorter deployment lengths. Green water navies, being concerned more with coastal defence have even shorter deployment lengths with the longest Russian navy deployment in modern times being 4 months.
But the point is that overly long variable length deployments can cause psychological health issues. The long standing jokes of scouts and x-boat pilots being crazy is truer than some might think.
http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2010/09/30/oem.2009.054692.abstract
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2007/August/Pages/Longmilitarydeploymentsmayaffectmentalhealth.aspx
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/militarysupport/deployment/affect
http://www.ehow.com/info_8025161_effects-military-deployment-spouse.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15826223

The first two papers are British; the problem is not unique to the USN or any armed service branch.

Individual ships seem to be able to manage with the annual two-week maintenance. If we take the character generation system at face value, crew serve for a year and is then rotated to another post (unless retained for another year). I don't know how long a US fleet deployment usually lasts, but a full year doesn't sound too bad for someone like me who has read a lot of Age of Sail Naval Warfare fiction.

Fantasy maintenance and fantasy chargen....
One year deployment is a snap if all you, and your family and friends have to do is read about it. The longest I've done is 9 months with 100+ days out of sight of land. Suicide and alcoholism tends to go up. 'Stress fractures' are broken bones in your hand from punching bulkheads out of frustration and stress. Mine ache in cold weather.

My calculations are based on three people on the ground for every person aboard a ship. If a full double crew is employed and paid shipboard wages even when they're ashore, the personnel expenses would be 25% higher, not 100%.

Fine and dandy, but doesn't include the cost of the ship that is sent out while the other is in port for training and refit.

Camp followers are no substitute for family or ordinary social interactions.
Transition shock would still apply.

How is it that some people scoff at using present day navies for comparison/reality-checks, yet think nothing of using age-of-sail navies for the same purpose?

 

[robject]

Ah, thanks for the 1,000 battle-class ships per (typical) sector, Hans.

As mentioned before, that's roughly 63 big non-auxiliary ships per subsector fleet, on the average. Some have more, some have less, and I wouldn't be surprised if the median number is not 63.

re the 154th: I really don't know if the Lurenti is a carrier or an auxiliary. It's not combat-effective, so let's say it doesn't count. I'd be tempted to discount the Sloans, but I am not sure*. Thus say the 154th is either 7 or 14 combat ships.**

I am reluctant to have "too many" of these ships running about, but I think some of that is because I have little grasp of scale, and those old flamewars on the TML about piracy in the Marches haunt me.

So, maybe I would prefer to include ships like the Sloan, after all. But, I could be wrong. Heck, it might just be ships with spines that count -- that's how FFW counters were rated. And yet, I doubt that spines alone should be able to win the day, Eurisko be damned.


* You have to draw the line somewhere. In CT, the maximum ship size for "Book 2" ships was 5,000 tons. After High Guard, the Sloan is listed in Supplement 9. 5,000 tons could be near the tipping point between small starships and fleet-combat starships. I suspect the solution depends on ship purposes in Big Fleet Combat: does the Sloan play a useful enough part? Is it more significant than a fighter wing? And so on.

** 14 combat effective ships per squadron yields about 70 squadrons in 16 subsectors, which is 4.5 squadrons per subsector.

 

[far-trader]

Camp followers are no substitute for family or ordinary social interactions.
Transition shock would still apply.

Camp followers have included families of soldiers, and families of civilian services in the field. I said as much.

How is it that some people scoff at using present day navies for comparison/reality-checks, yet think nothing of using age-of-sail navies for the same purpose?

The distances and communication times involved re: "age of sail" are a closer analogy to Traveller than the modern world with instant video real-time communications (practically) anywhere in the world that a navy is deployed. It has little to do with sail vs nuclear, it is weeks or more out of contact that make the analogy more appropriate.

 

[rancke]

It is the one I have first hand experience with and it is one of only 3 recognised blue water navies at present. The other 2 , The British Royal Navy and the French Navy have shorter deployment lengths. Green water navies, being concerned more with coastal defence have even shorter deployment lengths with the longest Russian navy deployment in modern times being 4 months.

But none of these fleets are all that analogous with a numbered Imperial fleet. They're more like parts of the fleet stationed in other systems than the subsector capital. And if they are stationed in another system, they stay there for months and years, so families can come along and stay on the world while the crewmen is just a shuttle flight away.

The crewmen who experience the same sort of deployment are the patrols, and there's no reason not to suppose that they don't do full year patrol sweeps. Two or three month patrols followed by time spent in port is what I'd expect.

But the point is that overly long variable length deployments can cause psychological health issues. The long standing jokes of scouts and x-boat pilots being crazy is truer than some might think.

Perhaps the IN employ sophisticated ultra-tech methods to alliviate these problems. This is Science Fiction, after all. Or perhaps the IN cares less than the 21st Century USN.

Fantasy maintenance and fantasy chargen....

Science Fiction maintenance and Science Fiction chargen.

One year deployment is a snap if all you, and your family and friends have to do is read about it. The longest I've done is 9 months with 100+ days out of sight of land. Suicide and alcoholism tends to go up. 'Stress fractures' are broken bones in your hand from punching bulkheads out of frustration and stress. Mine ache in cold weather.

I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully I'm not pushing any hot buttons when I suggest that perhaps the IN consider it cheaper to replace broken crewmen than to maintain a duplicate set of ships.

Or as I said above, perhaps there are ultra-tech stress relief solutions available at far future tech levels.

Fine and dandy, but doesn't include the cost of the ship that is sent out while the other is in port for training and refit.

That's because I'm assuming there won't be a duplicate ship. I think crew replacement and training take place

Camp followers are no substitute for family or ordinary social interactions.
Transition shock would still apply.

How is it that some people scoff at using present day navies for comparison/reality-checks, yet think nothing of using age-of-sail navies for the same purpose?

I haven't heard anyone scoffing. As for Age of Sail navies and fleets, command and control issues are more alike than those of modern navies, so it makes sense to consider similar solutions to similar problems. And they do prove that long-term deployment is possible. I don't think any of the soldiers and sailors that the British sent to the far side of the Earth were back in anywhere near one year.


Hans

 

[rancke]

re the 154th: I really don't know if the Lurenti is a carrier or an auxiliary. It's not combat-effective, so let's say it doesn't count. I'd be tempted to discount the Sloans, but I am not sure*. Thus say the 154th is either 7 or 14 combat ships.**

It's a carrier and according to the definition, carriers are combat vessels (While riders are not). A carrier is very combat-effective. The Lurenti, for example, brings seven spinals to the battle where a cruiser or a battleship only brings one.

As you point out, if you count the Sloans, the squadron would have 14 ships, which is way over the average. And the entire squadron costs a lot less than the average figure I came up with. 320 fleets full of squadrons like the 154th would run to a cost MUCH lower than the figure I came up with.

Also, I have a vague notion that somewhere I've seen that squadrons are supposed to be composed of main ships of the same class (But I can't remember where, so could be wrong). So those 'some escorts' we're talking about would be deployed in their own right (Another reason why I think those escorts are atypically large).

I am reluctant to have "too many" of these ships running about, but I think some of that is because I have little grasp of scale, and those old flamewars on the TML about piracy in the Marches haunt me.

So, maybe I would prefer to include ships like the Sloan, after all. But, I could be wrong. Heck, it might just be ships with spines that count -- that's how FFW counters were rated. And yet, I doubt that spines alone should be able to win the day, Eurisko be damned.

For purpose of keeping ships out of the way of enterprising PCs, bigger is definitely better. No one sends cruisers on patrol to backwater systems whereas a couple of Sloans or Chrysanthemums is much easier to do without for a bit.


Hans

 

[Ishmael]

Camp followers have included families of soldiers, and families of civilian services in the field. I said as much.

okay
so the camp followers are on the ships then?
If they are at a base, then they are no different from the families/society in that they are nowhere near the ships while the ships are deployed on station and my original argument stands.

The distances and communication times involved re: "age of sail" are a closer analogy to Traveller than the modern world with instant video real-time communications (practically) anywhere in the world that a navy is deployed. It has little to do with sail vs nuclear, it is weeks or more out of contact that make the analogy more appropriate.

sail vs nuclear was never brought up... the effects of long deployments were and I just assumed that human nature is the Trav universe is very much like human nature in our modern times. But maybe most people don't care to think about the darker psychological implications of things within the game.

"During the Age of Sail, shore leave was often abused by the members of the crew, who took it as a prime opportunity to drink in excess, indulge in other pleasures denied to them aboard the solely masculine ships, and desert. Many captains were forced to take on new members of the crew to replace the ones lost due to shore leave."

 

[far-trader]

okay
so the camp followers are on the ships then?

Yep, again I thought I was clear, the Traveller naval 'camp followers', 'service brats', whatever you call them I'm proposing only as an option, make up their own 'fleet' of non-combatant ships. Mobile PX, housing, recreation, etc. Everything one would find in a typical modern base town.

Also deals with the shore leave abuses and such I think.

sail vs nuclear was never brought up...

I was unclear in making the s-v-n as a simple tag for the differences between age-of-sail and age-of-nuclear. Perhaps age-of-satellite or age-of-radio would have been better but neither of those are modes of power like sails are.

I've made my meanings clearer I hope

 

[rancke]

so the camp followers are on the ships then?

I got the impression that Dan was suggesting "appartment ships" that followed the warships around.

If they are at a base, then they are no different from the families/society in that they are nowhere near the ships while the ships are deployed on station and my original argument stands.

Yes, they're very much different. The station that the IN ships are deployed to is the equivalent of a present-day home fleet. In peacetime those batrons and crurons are not gallivanting around. They're stationed at the subsector capital or at some of the secondary bases, and the families would be housed groundside, a shuttle flight from the cremembers.


Hans

 

[Garyius2003]

The upside for the 3I is crew are given rooms. Most ship assignments will be sweeps interchanged with periods as a station ship. The PCs will be stationed in long term patrols in the CE, but most folks will be in cruisers or destroyers, go out two or three jumps, poke around for a few days in each system, and jump home to orbit. Having family brought out to the base or station is very doable. I assume there is immerse entertainment that relieves stress.

 

[pendragonman]

okay
so the camp followers are on the ships then?
If they are at a base, then they are no different from the families/society in that they are nowhere near the ships while the ships are deployed on station and my original argument stands.

"During the Age of Sail, shore leave was often abused by the members of the crew, who took it as a prime opportunity to drink in excess, indulge in other pleasures denied to them aboard the solely masculine ships, and desert. Many captains were forced to take on new members of the crew to replace the ones lost due to shore leave."

What if the SHIPS are the only thing from another part of the Imperium and the CREW is actually made up of people actually FROM the subsector the ships are deployed in, with perhaps the exception of the highest ranks?

It would certainly explain why you can be anywhere in the Imperium and attend a Military Academy. Perhaps it is the ACADEMY training is local and not the all cadets travel to Capitol to attend academy?

Or perhaps that Age of Sail quote is correct. Perhaps the ratings on Imperial ships tend to behave in a similar manner, and so local impressing is required for ratings?

 

[Ishmael]

I got the impression that Dan was suggesting "appartment ships" that followed the warships around.

that makes little sense to me, honestly. Do these camp followers crew such ships, or does the IN simply provide them with cruise and cargo ships. More IN assets just to carry camp followers around?

Yes, they're very much different. The station that the IN ships are deployed to is the equivalent of a present-day home fleet. In peacetime those batrons and crurons are not gallivanting around. They're stationed at the subsector capital or at some of the secondary bases, and the families would be housed groundside, a shuttle flight from the cremembers.

That is not really how Imperial Squadrons describes things.
Besides, being stationed somewhere is usually not really the same as being deployed there.
For example, I was stationed out of San Diego but I was deployed on Gonzo Station in the Straits of Hormuz.
Its the length of deployment away from the base that they're stationed that I am talking about. In modern times where travel is not a serious issue, deployments are limited in length.
Age of Sail is not a good comparison as travel times force deployments to be very long and the families are pretty much screwed over in just about every way according to "Daily Life in the Age of Sail" by James M. and Dorothy Denneen Volo.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Daily-Life-in-the-Age-of-Sail/Dorothy-Denneen-Volo/e/9780313310263

 

[aramis]

I got the impression that Dan was suggesting "appartment ships" that followed the warships around.



Yes, they're very much different. The station that the IN ships are deployed to is the equivalent of a present-day home fleet. In peacetime those batrons and crurons are not gallivanting around. They're stationed at the subsector capital or at some of the secondary bases, and the families would be housed groundside, a shuttle flight from the cremembers.


Hans

Are they? or are they out patrolling half the time? Non GT sources seem rather fuzzy about the matter.

 

[far-trader]

More IN assets just to carry camp followers around?

You said and experienced it yourself, it counters stress and demoralization of extended absence from family and 'normal' life. Seems a small price to pay for maintaining a loyal, dedicated, healthy naval force.

I'm sure the civilians could find enough people in their ranks to operate the flotilla, or assign retired IN assets. Emperor knows there are enough of them trying to live on a meager pittance of a pension who would jump at the chance.

 

[Timerover51]

You said and experienced it yourself, it counters stress and demoralization of extended absence from family and 'normal' life. Seems a small price to pay for maintaining a loyal, dedicated, healthy naval force.

I'm sure the civilians could find enough people in their ranks to operate the flotilla, or assign retired IN assets. Emperor knows there are enough of them trying to live on a meager pittance of a pension who would jump at the chance.

Ah yes, an updated Japanese Army Comfort Girls. Marvelous.

 

[far-trader]

Ah yes, an updated Japanese Army Comfort Girls. Marvelous.

That's all you got from that? I didn't even mention that aspect of camp followers for that reason. Aren't you the one morally outraged at such suggestions? Maybe actually read the posts ok.

You're fast wearing out your welcome with such remarks. Or is that really why you're here? You're coming off as a troll in a couple recent posts and I'm beginning to wonder at your motivation for participating in the forum.

 

[Carlobrand]

Are they? or are they out patrolling half the time? Non GT sources seem rather fuzzy about the matter.

Given the way they fight battles, I'd have them running lots of fleet maneuvers and target exercises, the occasional show-the-flag mission to impress and intimidate, the odd specialty mission that only a cruiser or battlewagon can perform, and leave the patrolling to the destroyers and escorts.