Costing a Subsector Fleet

[Mithras]

Hi, I've been through past threads, and I've read alot, but I'm still very confused! Can anyone help me?

I have a subsector sized polity with 20-25 worlds. I want to start building ships, but I want to be restricted by budget, not just hull size. I can build everything together and make it all work together.

How do I calculate the money I have to play with kitting out the Navy from scratch, in raw funds to spend on hardware, not training, wages, R&D, uniforms, etc??

Secondly, how about the planetary defences: Naval defences that is? I want to build small insystem defence fleets for the bigger systems.

I've looked at Striker, and TCS but they seem to overlap yet say different things.....
??

 

[pendragonman]

Use TCS to get your annual Naval Budget. Use 8-10 years of this budget to build your subsector fleet. I think TCS says that a portion of this fleet would be build at 1 tech level lower than maximum.

Out of this initial budget would come the "ground" based fighter groups, deep undermountain meson weapons, etc. Orbital defense platforms would come from this too.

As to troop strength (army, marine ground units) not sure how you'd do this.

 

[rancke]

I would suggest the opposite. Use Striker to get the naval budget, as it is more nuanced than TCS -- a bit more complicated, but not too complicated. Then use the "10 times annual budget" rule from TCS to determine the size of the fleet. That's the way I do it.


Hans

 

[Mithras]

Is the '10 times rule' used to simulate spending 10 years of taxes to buy your ships, rather than 1 years worth of taxes?

Makes sense.

TCS is great for an independant world, but how about an imperium, how does the subsector fleet get built??

Or do I just add up all that tax revenue and use it for my space navy?

Thanks!

I would suggest the opposite. Use Striker to get the naval budget, as it is more nuanced than TCS -- a bit more complicated, but not too complicated. Then use the "10 times annual budget" rule from TCS to determine the size of the fleet. That's the way I do it.


Hans

 

[Mithras]

Ah yes I see Striker is a little clearer, plus there are rules for imperial tax. I'll try some budgets and see what happens.

 

[pendragonman]

Page 32 of TCS gives you a relative value chart to help you lump all your money together. Once you have it lumped, the 10 year rule is for generating your fleet at hand when "game time" starts. Be careful though, you can outbuild your annual revenue and make it tough to pay your maintenance. Maintenance includes everything but battle repairs and refits/upgrades. It is the maintenance budget that pays your sailors.

 

[whartung]

Don't know if it's relevant, but if you're spending 10 years worth of budget on a fleet, shouldn't you consider whether you have 10 years worth of ship yard capacity to actually build it?

As I recall, TCS had capacity limits for shipyards, doesn't it? You can't build the entire fleet in a year I don't think.

At a minimum it will give you a better idea of how to distribute the TL of the fleet. If you've only got one TL 15 world, hard to imagine it build out the entire fleet in 10 years. I could be wrong, but it's worth consideration.

 

[Matt123]

The 10 year spend is intended to represent the legacy that is your existing fleet. Hence the requirement to build 20% at 1 tech lower to help give it that "feel".

The annual budget is more correctly spent on maintaining that fleet. Maintenance costs 10% of a ships build cost. 1 years maintenance budget can support 10x that in ships.

You can build more ships than you can support with your maintenance budget and a portion of your maintenance budget needs to be put aside for repairs to battle damage, else your fleet becomes 2nd rate after a few encounters.

 

[Matt123]

On the level you are looking at, like Hans I'd use Striker to establish budgets and adopt HG/TCS rules after that. Don't try & extend Striker or TCS across the Imperium tho', others have tried & it doesn't work.

For a (IMHO) very good read and overview of Fleet structure, purpose, missions and ship types, look for Grand Fleet by Martin Dougherty of Avenger Enterprises. I don't think its canon material, but its full of good stuff at this scale that is well worth adopting.

 

[Icosahedron]

I found T4's Pocket Empires to be more enlightening than the other books, though it's more complex - you need a spreadsheet as well as a calculator if you don't want to tear your hair out (and you still might).

I figure that the major constraint on your fleet isn't the past, but the present - you can spread your shipbuilding over generations to offset shipyard constraints and initial purchase constraints (assuming you're not setting up a new colony), so the big question is what can you afford to maintain with your annual budget? After a period of time, anything you can't afford will have been sold or scrapped.

 

[Mithras]

I have them both, I will give them a read. Thanks for the input!

For a (IMHO) very good read and overview of Fleet structure, purpose, missions and ship types, look for Grand Fleet by Martin Dougherty of Avenger Enterprises. I don't think its canon material, but its full of good stuff at this scale that is well worth adopting.

 

[Mithras]

How can you overspend? 10 years (10x) of your available funds is there for the fleet, and 10% of that (maintenance) is your annual available fleet revenue ...

 

[pendragonman]

How can you overspend? 10 years (10x) of your available funds is there for the fleet, and 10% of that (maintenance) is your annual available fleet revenue ...

There are construction discounts to the cost of purchase for buying more than one of a type. That can cause you issues with your maintenance budget as there are no discounts there.

 

[dean]

You can count on losing some percentage of the fleet to war losses, training losses, and maintenance failures. Plus you can always mothball some of them. Say, the entire amount that has to be built at the lower tech level : )

Not sure that it's in the 20% range, but...

 

[Mithras]

I may not get into that level of detail. I just want a figureto spend under ...

And my total of over Cr22,000 billion blows me away. I can't spend that! I want a small ship singlesubsector universe, but that budget is huge! The biggest ship I intend to build is a 5000 ton carrier using Mongoose Traveller rules.

I think the TCS figures assume a High Guard spend, don't they? But when I see a typical subsector fleet laid out in Grand Fleet, there is no way that it cost anything like that figure. Perhaps if I build space stations, and usethat pool to build navies for the important worlds as well, I might spend it in my small ship universe ... but Striker already has had me create fundsfor world armies and planetary navies.

What should I do? Slash the figure manually, or look for some loop hole of figure adjustment? I want to make hard choices on my builds and my purchase choices.

Thanks!

 

[pendragonman]

If your wanting to stay with a small-ship universe, try dropping a zero or two.

22 trillion credits spends quick if you are building Tigress BatRons (500 ktons each), but would take forever if the biggest you are building is 5 ktons.

However, if you want a small ship universe subsector navy, try 220 billion credits. Then you can build some defensive platforms and a pretty good small ship fleet.

 

[Matt123]

TCS budgets assume a single world "Empire" & gives you around a couple trillion credits for a Pop 9 world. Which gives a great game against similar nearby empires.

The Imperium however relies on taxes from Imperial worlds, which means that it has both far more funds to play with and far less ships than you would expect if you merely totaled all the TCS budgets.

The Imperial strategy in Grand Fleet is to hold hard hitting fleets of very large capital ships in reserve as a reaction force, relying on subsector and planetary navies to bear the brunt of initial combat. At other times the Imperial navy has forward deployed its capital ships. But essentially what I'm getting at here is that on an Imperial scale you can do far more with a lot less by concentrating your capital ships and investing in Patrol/Escort/Destroyer assets (which a single world is far less likely to need).

I would consider that your Sub-sector government is taxing the worlds it protects to the tune of maybe 30% of its Naval budget. That lowers your Sub-sector budget to around 7 Trillion credits. Meantime your subject worlds will no doubt reduce thier own spend (all governments are tight when they think someone else will come to the rescue...) by significant amounts.

When forming your Sub-sector fleet, consider that most heavy assets are unlikely to be seen (occasional PR trips aside) and the Patrol and other light assets conduct the day to day activities seen within the Sub-sector (say a 90/10 or 80/20 split between spend on Capital Ships vs Small ships, cutting the small ship budget to around 0.7 TCr to 1.4 TCr. In effect you have the small ship universe, just don't piss off the Sub-sector navy...


PS. to change the figures to get a budget closer to your liking, change;
- the TCS government modifier
- the tax rate for the Sub-sector navy
- The spend made by "protected" worlds on thier own self defence (eg in RL New Zealand no longer has a combat air force, why? 'cause we have big mates...)
- the split between capital ships and patrol/escort/destroyer assets

 

[rancke]

I may not get into that level of detail. I just want a figureto spend under ...

And my total of over Cr22,000 billion blows me away. I can't spend that! I want a small ship single subsector universe, but that budget is huge! The biggest ship I intend to build is a 5000 ton carrier using Mongoose Traveller rules.

This is an old, old problem. Basically it boils down to the fact that billions of people can afford a lot of ships. The only way to avoid that is to make ships more expensive, which runs up against the desire to have small groups of itinerant player characters flying around in affordable starships.

If you want small fleets, you either have to have small populations or swallow a camel and believe that people who're threatened by their neighbors can't bring themselves to spend more than a fraction of one percent of their production on their fleet.

I think the TCS figures assume a High Guard spend, don't they? But when I see a typical subsector fleet laid out in Grand Fleet, there is no way that it cost anything like that figure.

I haven't read Grand Fleet, but it sounds like it ignores anything that has happened since GDW realized that worlds with population sizes 8 and up could afford an awful lot of ships.

A typical 3rd Imperium fleet has 8-10 squadrons of major ships (cruisers, carriers, and dreadnaughts) PLUS an unspecified number of auxiliary vessels (escorts, tankers, couriers, etc.). And that represents 0.9% (30% of 3%) of GWP. The planetary navies would add about the same again AND pay for their armies on top of that.

And lets not overlook that the Imperium's average 3% of GWP spent on its military is on the low side, probably due to it being so very big. A subsector-sized polity with similar-sized rival polities for neighbors might easily spend more than that -- it would depend on how threatened it feels.

What should I do? Slash the figure manually, or look for some loop hole of figure adjustment? I want to make hard choices on my builds and my purchase choices.

If you want a plausible setup that results in small ship fleets, slash population figures.


Hans

 

[Matt123]

I haven't read Grand Fleet, but it sounds like it ignores anything that has happened since GDW realized that worlds with population sizes 8 and up could afford an awful lot of ships.

FWIW it bases its figures on canon statements, not budgets. Canon statements like...

A typical 3rd Imperium fleet has 8-10 squadrons of major ships (cruisers, carriers, and dreadnaughts) PLUS an unspecified number of auxiliary vessels (escorts, tankers, couriers, etc.).

If you want a plausible setup that results in small ship fleets, slash population figures.

That works to & would lead to more of a frontier setting (Serenity like).

 

[whartung]

What none of these consider is the scope of the threat. If a "at peace" world can produce huge fleets, then an "uppity", more militarized Bad Guy world can produce huger fleets upon which to make your "at peace" world no longer "at peace".

As contrast, consider Sheriff Andy Taylor and Barney Fife in the small community of Mayberry. The sheriffs department is not necessarily a representation of the communities budget, rather more a representation of the communities need for law enforcement.

Often we hear the anecdote "we don't really have a crack homicide forensics department here, we don't see this very much".

So, clearly, you have "as much money as you want". Now, rather than using that as a limitation, consider the threat that you're protecting and preparing for, and then you can go from there. If piracy is the problem, and "not enough ships", then "buy more ships" for piracy duty. If the evil Pomegranate Patriarch is massing on the spinward border, then prepare against that.