Budget for a planetary navy

[rancke]

You're the government of Dinkyworld and you've just decided to buy a 400T Patrol Ship and create a navy to run it.

The patrol ship costs MCr221.04 and has a crew of 18 (Pilot, astrogator, three engineers, medic, four gunners, and eight troops). Two of the four turrets has triple lasers and the other two have triple missile racks.

What is your yearly budget for the new navy going to be?


Hans

 

[navanod]

Are you buying the ship outright or financing it thru BigWorld Bank? Plans to expand your Navy in the future or just run the one cruiser indefinitely? What are the existing port facilities (high, low, both, neither)? Operating solely in one system or using the jump drive?

 

[rancke]

Are you buying the ship outright or financing it thru BigWorld Bank? Plans to expand your Navy in the future or just run the one cruiser indefinitely? What are the existing port facilities (high, low, both, neither)? Operating solely in one system or using the jump drive?

Let's say the government can get the cost of the ship financed the way civilians can finance ships, except it doesn't have to come up with a 20% down payment. That is, instead of borrowing 80% of the ship's cost it borrows 100% (With correspondingly higher monthly payments, of course). The local starport is able to perform annual maintenance at the standard cost, and there's a small munitions industry (servicing starmercs) so the government doesn't have to pay a surcharge for buying offworld. No plans to expand the navy until the tax base has gone up quite a bit.

Is there any costs that would be different whether the ship stays in Dinkyworld System or jumps elsewhere once in a while?


Hans

 

[navanod]

Fuel, unless it skims ALL of it's fuel. 40 tons for the power plant for the month, plus up to 120 tons per jump. Each jump-3 using refined fuel adds up to Cr 60000; if it just stays put, that full tank of fuel lasts 4 months (assuming CT, of course). Buying unrefined fuel drops that to Cr 12000 per jump-3.

 

[navanod]

Quick totals (may still contain errors), per month

Financing 460,500.00
Annual Maint. 18,420.00

Salaries
Pilot 6,000.00
Astrogator 5,000.00
Chief Engineer 4,400.00
2 Engineers 8,000.00
Medic 2,000.00
Chief Gunner 1,100.00
3 Gunners 3,000.00
Troop Leader 550.00 (Sergeant, per Bk 4)
7 Troops 2,100.00 (Privates, per Bk 4)

Life Support (Assumes provisions included)
Single Occupancy (6 total SR) 24,000.00
Double Occupancy (6 total ST) 48,000.00

Ammunition (12 reloads per year total?) 20,000.00
Cr 20,000 per missile, call it 1 per month

Fuel = 3 full tanks per year. Totals
No Jump, Refined 20,000.00, total 623,070.00/month
No Jump, Unrefined 4,000.00, total 607,070.00/month
Skim all fuel (Unrefined, skimmed) 0.00, total 603,070.00/month

Every jump-3 is basically going to cost you a months worth of normal operation. At a bare minimum, not including troop equipment, etc, I get MCr 7.24 if you skim all your fuel. That doesn't include maintenace on the G-carrier, ship's boat, or troop equipment. Also doesn't include berthing fees, software, etc, and I assumed provisions (food) were included in the LS costs. An 'exciting' system would drive the price up quite a bit due to missile reloads and repairs. Offhand, I'd say spend some money, buy a fuel purifier, and skim everything - it will pay for itself in no time. If you've got the cash and can buy it outright, that brings the monthly cost down to Cr. 162,570 per month.

Just taking a rough SWAG at it, it looks like it costs about 3% of the purchase price to operate it per year. I don't know if that would hold true for other ships, though. That's well below TCS's 10% rate, leaving about 7% of the ships maintenance cost for bases, repairs, etc. If it's bought outright, it's about MCr 2 per year to run, which is .88% of the purchase price.

 

[DonM]

Since your question was on the budget for the Dinkyworld Navy, does the Navy have any legal mechanisms for having its own revenue (ie, fees or fines)?

 

[rancke]

Since your question was on the budget for the Dinkyworld Navy, does the Navy have any legal mechanisms for having its own revenue (ie, fees or fines)?

Why Don, that would be a denial of due process!!

Let's not complicate things. Anything like that goes into the planetary treasury and used as the government see fit.


Hans

 

[DonM]

Ok, then let's go a different way...

1. What is the Dinkyworld Government's official reason for starting a navy?

2. Is there public demand on Dinkyworld for a navy?

3. What is Dinkyworld's government like?

These all impact the available budget size.

 

[rancke]

Ok, then let's go a different way...

1. What is the Dinkyworld Government's official reason for starting a navy?

2. Is there public demand on Dinkyworld for a navy?

3. What is Dinkyworld's government like?

These all impact the available budget size.

The budget size is whatever the disinterested military advisor they asked about it told them was necessary to keep one (count them: one) patrol ship functioning adequately. My question was meant to get people discussing what that might be. Navanod made a good start. I had planned to wait a bit more before replying so that others had a chance to weigh in too.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Financing involves paying a bank about triple the cost of the ship, so I'll change that assumption a bit:

Someone (perhaps the Imperium) donated a spanking new Patrol Ship to Dinkyworld. They've decided to start laying aside money to buy a new one in 40 years. So part of the budget is MCr5.525 per year set aside for that purpose.


Hans

 

[DonM]

So we have the ship part of the budget mostly taken care of. You've got personnel, spare parts/maintenance, and ammo. Or is the government opposed to live fire exercises?

What personnel other than the crew of the patrol ship is needed by the Dinkyworld Navy?

 

[aramis]

So we have the ship part of the budget mostly taken care of. You've got personnel, spare parts/maintenance, and ammo. Or is the government opposed to live fire exercises?

What personnel other than the crew of the patrol ship is needed by the Dinkyworld Navy?

You need at least two crews, or you wind up with serious morale issues... So you've got Crew A in flight, and B on leave and training (3 & 3).

You need a payroll staff. Say, 1 per 120 crew. So we need 1 guy for 2 patrol ships (assuming type T).

Permanent Party Medical staff for crewmen & their dependents. Call that 2 dependents per crewman, a medic per 120... so 1 for the whole shebang, counting dependents.

 

[navanod]

On the other hand...

A few other SWAGs -

Ship Boat + G-carrier Maintenance = Cr 1500 per month
Troop equipment (Combat armor, laser rifle, extra power pack)= Cr 200,000 total to purchase. Cr 200 per month for maintenance, using same rules as the ship. I'd call it Cr 1000 per month for troop maintenance, with some set aside to purchase replacement gear.

The only other personell I could see are a few desk jockies at the port - recruiting office, government liason, that kind of thing. A couple hundred credits a month for office space and equipment (pretty much negligible compared to the other costs).

Another option would be to pay a second crew and keep them on standby for emergencies (the whole crew caught the Denebian Measeles from that Free Trader? Better call in the standby crew).


There's probably some other sources of revenue, however. The Navy/Government would have the power to levy fines and taxes, which would offset some of the expenses. If smuggling is a problem, what do they do with the contraband? Destroy it? Sell it offworld? Keep it for their own use?

How about the occasional pirate ship your boys in blue shoot up and board? The captain and crew go to prison for quite a while, but is the ship confiscated like they do with RICO cases today in the US? I know here in South Dakota, poached animals are kept, the meat given to homeless shelters, and the trophy mounted in displays they haul around to promote the Turn In Poachers program.

Contraband and captured ships could go a long way toward expanding your Navy - either keep the captured ship or sell if off at auction and use the proceeds for funding. Same goes with that pirate base they built in the outer system - raid it, arrest everyone, take it over and use it for monitoring station/rescue base if you have need, sell it to whoever might be interested if you don't.

Hmmm...the more I think about it, the more I think there might be a good short campaign to be had there. You wouldn't want to drag it out too long, but some interesting things could be done.

 

[Major B]

You need at least two crews, or you wind up with serious morale issues...

Agree. I'd budget for at least three personnel for every crew position. This allows for the two crews that are serving in rotation and the rest are doing one or more of the following:

- in professional development schools (longer schools like staff college or basic/advanced branch courses)
- in the training pipeline to get qualified (flight or astrogation schools or MOS-producing courses)
- detailed to planning staffs or higher headquarters
- in transit between assignments
- on convalescent leave
- etc.

 

[aramis]

Major B's post reminded me...

Recruiters and recruiting office staffers. Probably 1 recruiter per 2000 personnel, round up... but about 10-30 support staff per recruiter. Or, going the other way, 1 recruiting staffer per 100 troops, round up, and 5% of them are recruiters proper, also rounded up.

http://www.usarec.army.mil/aboutus.html notes 9000 recruiting staff for the US Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces cites 548000 total US Army personnel.
Which means the US Army is about 1:60, of which 400 of the 9000 are actually recruiters. 22 support per recruiter, 1 recruiter per 1370.

Let's see: Type T: 10 crew, 8 troops = 18 personell
3 crews, per Major B's suggestion: 54. This allows a 17 week patrol, 17 week leave and light duty, 17 week training-on-base schedule (51 weeks)
this means about 100 dependents.
1 payroll staffer.
1 recruiter
1 medic
1 steward for the dependents

Housing for all of them.
For reference, a standard singlewide mobile home (aka trailer home) is about 8 tons displacement, and about $70K new... If we call a habitable planet's housing costing KCr1 per ton, and a 4 Td stateroom fine if one has outside to go to... we're looking about KCr600 for the above personnel list, plus workspaces for the training crew and office crew (call that another 4td for second shift and base personell: maybe 25 of them, counting maintenance crew for the base and the PP engineer for the base)...
Hostile environment, I'd say KCr10 per Td for grounded boxes, and 8td per quarters space, not 4td, which adds another maintenance guy, too...

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

are we assuming that maintainance ground crews are in fact civvies being hired as and when needed (i.e. the free trader model)? if so, why wouldn't the government be able to negoicate a discount, based on the fact they are going to be regular, repeat customers? (a the ship isn't going anywhere, so it would be getting every servicing at the same port).

also, why did the Dinkyworld Admirality decided for a Jump capable ship, over a SDB? clearly, they are planning to use that jump capability, or else they could have either gotten a more powerful ship, or a smaller, cheaper ship with the same combat potential. if they were given that ship by the Imperial navy, then its understandable.

Edit: i think it might be preferable to seperate the costs of running the Patrol Ship Dinkyworld form the costs of the Dinkyworld Navy as a whole, if only to make the follow up questions (i.e. how much extra does it cost to add a second ship?) eaiser.


Point the forth: does the Dinkyworld Navy have any High command staff (i.e. commadores, Admirails, etc)? and would thier pay be counting in this budgeting exercise? if you have three full crews, plus one or two supernumeries, then you are going to need someone in nominal command.

 

[rancke]

For many years I've mostly worked with naval organizations in extremely broad strokes. I've used modified Striker rules to figure out budgets and the maintenance rule from TCS to figure out fleet sizes. I've used a rule of thumb that every crew slot meant three more groundside slots. All very broad rules.

My motive for starting this thread was to see what happens when you go into details, and as I wasn't about to examine the Imperial Navy or the Duchy of Regina Navy, or even the Regina System Defense Force at the individual member level, so I made up an example of a very small navy. A very, very small navy. Just to keep things managable.

I made it a non-canonical navy to avoid discussions about whether the Forboldn government wouldn't rather have four 100T SDBs or a patrol vessel without a jump drive or two squadrons of fighters and a refitted cargo ship.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Are we assuming that maintainance ground crews are in fact civvies being hired as and when needed (i.e. the free trader model)? if so, why wouldn't the government be able to negociate a discount, based on the fact they are going to be regular, repeat customers? (a the ship isn't going anywhere, so it would be getting every servicing at the same port).

No special deals and no graft and corruption. Just the straight cost of an annual maintenance. That gives us a benchmark.

Edit: i think it might be preferable to seperate the costs of running the Patrol Ship Dinkyworld form the costs of the Dinkyworld Navy as a whole, if only to make the follow up questions (i.e. how much extra does it cost to add a second ship?) eaiser.

The only benchmark we have at the moment, and a pretty crude one it is, is 10% of original puchaces cost of the ship pays for all maintenance and logistics for a year. This is the figure the Finance Minister puts in his budget proposal on the "Navy, Total:" line.

Point the forth: does the Dinkyworld Navy have any High command staff (i.e. commadores, Admirails, etc)? and would thier pay be counting in this budgeting exercise? if you have three full crews, plus one or two supernumeries, then you are going to need someone in nominal command.

Certainly there has to be someone in command. And he needs a staff. It's quite possible that personnel costs for a very, very small navy will weigh proportionally heavier than personnel costs for larger armies.


Hans

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

ok, i understand that, though i feel that "would Dinkyworld be better get better value for money doing X instead of Y?" is revelant to a budgeting thread. I'll accept that you don't want to go into that and I'll place it aside, though.

well, for a single ship, it makes more sense to use exisiting civvie contractors to maintian it than it does to premenantly hire them yourself (though, if you expend the navy, I'm sure the costs would rapidly favour getting your own ground crews). This assumes, of course, that thier is a existing civvie repair and maintiance industry to use, however.

Certainly there has to be someone in command. And he needs a staff. It's quite possible that personnel costs for a very, very small navy will weigh proportionally heavier than personnel costs for larger armies.

for a the real world birtish armed forces, 60% of the budget is on wages. for a modern, prefessional force, skilled labour is THE major cost.

however, for a force of, what, 60 odd people? i think we can have just a Commodore (or whatever title he likes), plus a Aide to do his paperwork.

honestly, for a navy this size, i would expect the equipment costs to be proportionally heavier the personnel costs.

 

[rancke]

for a the real world birtish armed forces, 60% of the budget is on eages. for a modern, prefessional force, skilled labour is THE major cost.

Yes, but for a 21st Century modern, professional navy, the relative cost of hardware is MUCH lower than for a Traveller-type space navy. Take our sample patrol ship, for instance. It costs MCr221 and has a crew of 18. That's MCr12.3 per crewman. Per capita GNP for a TL15 world is between Cr22,000 and Cr30,000. Call it Cr25,000. That's about 490 times per capita income. Compare that to modern day ships and you come up with figures that are an order of magnitude lower.

(A ship like the Tigress costs MCr89.4 per crewman.)


Hans