Sometimes I take the liberty of applying real life to the game. In modern naval life it is assumed that you have a 1/3 spread of forces, basically needing three ships to keep one on station. I see little reason why this should be any different in Traveller.
Because the modern naval life you speak of presumably is the US Navy, whose ships has to sail for weeks or even months to get on station all over the world and more months or weeks sail to back again, then spend months in refit (Does this "1/3 spread" also apply to navies that doesn't cover the entire world?) As against that, Traveller SDBs can get from the starport to the 100 diameter limit in six hours and only require two weeks of maintenance per year. Even Traveller starships can deploy to any place within 8 parsecs in three weeks, making them available 5/6th of their time.
That is one interpretation of the book, another is that it does include quite a number of escorts either as part of the squadrons or as independent squadrons with ships like Chrysanthemum and FerDeLance (That only work in a fleet anyway since they can't self-refuel).
"This number includes combat vessels such as cruisers, carriers, battleships, and some escorts" [
Rebellion Sourcebook, p. 27]. This implies that some escorts are combat vessels and some escorts are not. If the difference between escorts that are combat vessels and escorts that aren't isn't the size, what is it? To argue that the term 'combat vessels', which includes cruisers, carriers, and battleships, all ship types of 20,000T and upwards, also includes ships of far lesser tonnage is IMO fallacious.
Me: SDBs are just as effective at countering pirates as ships are.
Only within their home system.
I never said otherwise. What's your point?
Me: TL 8- systems are able to buy ships/boats from any shipyard in their subsector. Any world with a decent population can have starships or high-tech SDBs. Whether they want to pay for them would depend, among other factors, on how big a problem pirates generally are.
And that is where we always leave the OTU. Roleplaying material says nothing about that (Even COAAC is vague) and the only budget numbers are from the FFW WARGAME. So here each GM interprets this as he likes.
High Guard expressly state that planetary navies may procure ships from anywhere within the borders of their subsector, so that's certainly part of the OTU. The best budget numbers we have are from
Striker. Sadly, Marc Miller apparently decanonized those figures without providing a substitute, but that just means we have to turn to real life to help us guesstimate budgets. Since Real Life shows us that the
Striker figures are eminently plausible, I'm sticking to them. Once we have those budgets, we have canonical figures for how much ships cost, allowing us to guesstimate reasonable force levels.
I can't see a non-spacefaring nation finance it's own SDB fleet and pay costly specialists from off-world for maintenance. Planetary defence against raiders can be done with locally produced PAD missiles (Basically TL7 technology that exists IRL in the form of Sparten, Sprint, Galosh and Gazelle, tech that thanks to TNE is canon) that keeps the money at home, something the politicos like.
Why not? There are plenty of Real World examples of less capable nations buying expensive military hardware and paying costly specialists from other countries for maintenance. As I said before, it would depend on whether or not they perceived a need for such costly imports. Ubiquitous piracy would certainly tend to make people perceive a need for defense, don't you think?
Depends on the empty system and again on the interpretation of forces since the OTU says little about defense of those. Btw "Empty" for me includes those worlds with a population in the three-digit range that I simply can't see as having any space force.
If by three-digit you mean population level 3-, I agree completely. Though TD15 mentions that Walston, with a population of 3,700, has two patrol ships and a dozen deep space fighters. The only way I can get that to work is to assume that the Imperium donated them all and also subsidizes the crews heavily.
I can see the empty systems along a J1/J2 route being frequented often enough for a pirate to lurk around and live nicely by grabbing the passing ships.
You can see it, but is it true? Jump-1 and jump-2 traffic that doesn't make a profit on every jump is usually not competitive with jump-3 and jump-4 traffic. That is to say, any jump-4 ship can ship cheaper (and faster) than a jump-2 ship that has to make two jumps to complete a delivery. So you'd really only find regular jump-1 and jump-2 traffic along routes where there is enough trade for the ship to conduct business in every system alone the route. Which implies a certain minimum population size for every system.
Since the gas giants are the ONLY target in such a system just lurking there means the prey actually comes to you while the giant's atmosphere can be used to hide from the occasional patrol.
Well, as I said in another post, gas giant refueling is really uneconomic and won't be used unless there is no alternative. I'm curious, though. How come the pirate can spot the merchant but the patrol ship can't spot the pirate?
Not that pirates lurking in empty systems really bother me. I'm not sure they actually make sense, but there is enough doubt for me to give the pirates the benefit of the doubt ("enough doubt" being "any doubt at all").
Hans