How to address the problem of the numbers

[Carlobrand]

Funny thing. This all started as an effort to evaluate the ship registry numbers and whether they were reasonable.

I'm going to approach this from a new angle, on the hypothesis that we can arrive at something useful by drawing intersecting lines. Back a bit, I guesstimated from the GURPS-based Marches trade map that there were on the order of 16,000-17,000 free traders, as many 4-600 dTonners, about 31,000 large freighters of from 2000 dTons to maybe 10,000 dTons, and a bit less than a thousand megafreighters. Total tonnage somewhere between 92 million and maybe 400 million dTons depending on how big the large freighters and megafreighters were. Say 100 to 200 million dTons. I read that as very roughly 13 to 26 million megacredits in products being moved annually at the GURPS rate of Cr10,000 per dTon average value of cargo.

If we accept the premise that trade in the Marches is about an order of magnitude lower - which, in fairness, appears to be a controversial point - then we're saying 10 to 20 million dTons of freighters out there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, canon tells us the IN averages a thousand ships a sector. Say about 700 for the Marches, which has only 11 fleets; we guessed the typical fleet was roughly 8 squadrons of 8 ships each. If we assume those are capital ships, that's maybe 70 million dTons of warship - plus auxiliaries, which we don't have information on.

Someone along the way - can't recall who, can't find the post now - commented that you could get a very rough idea of the merchant fleet by looking at the size of the naval fleet assigned to protect them, the premise presumably being that someone is unlikely to spend a fortune on armed guards to guard a lemonade stand.

So, if you were the Imperium putting out 70 million dTons of warship to protect a sector, spending a million or more megacredits a year in naval construction plus whatever it costs in infrastructure to support that fleet, would you expect the fleet to be guarding 100 million dTons in merchant fleet or 10 million?

 

[aramis]

Funny thing. This all started as an effort to evaluate the ship registry numbers and whether they were reasonable.

I'm going to approach this from a new angle, on the hypothesis that we can arrive at something useful by drawing intersecting lines. Back a bit, I guesstimated from the GURPS-based Marches trade map that there were on the order of 16,000-17,000 free traders, as many 4-600 dTonners, about 31,000 large freighters of from 2000 dTons to maybe 10,000 dTons, and a bit less than a thousand megafreighters. Total tonnage somewhere between 92 million and maybe 400 million dTons depending on how big the large freighters and megafreighters were. Say 100 to 200 million dTons. I read that as very roughly 13 to 26 million megacredits in products being moved annually at the GURPS rate of Cr10,000 per dTon average value of cargo.

If we accept the premise that trade in the Marches is about an order of magnitude lower - which, in fairness, appears to be a controversial point - then we're saying 10 to 20 million dTons of freighters out there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, canon tells us the IN averages a thousand ships a sector. Say about 700 for the Marches, which has only 11 fleets; we guessed the typical fleet was roughly 8 squadrons of 8 ships each. If we assume those are capital ships, that's maybe 70 million dTons of warship - plus auxiliaries, which we don't have information on.

Someone along the way - can't recall who, can't find the post now - commented that you could get a very rough idea of the merchant fleet by looking at the size of the naval fleet assigned to protect them, the premise presumably being that someone is unlikely to spend a fortune on armed guards to guard a lemonade stand.

So, if you were the Imperium putting out 70 million dTons of warship to protect a sector, spending a million or more megacredits a year in naval construction plus whatever it costs in infrastructure to support that fleet, would you expect the fleet to be guarding 100 million dTons in merchant fleet or 10 million?

The question is, what is the tonnage of those ships?
I think your estimate of tonnage probably is about double what the numbers in 5FW imply to me. 4 BatRons, each less than 8 ships of under 500KTd each... (only 2 of those are actually Battleship rons; the other two are battleriders)

a dozen cru rons of 6-12 cruisers, each under 200KTd. Maybe 20MTd, and maybe 200 hulls.

And a destroyer or two per ship of the line... at an average of under 30KTd each...

While some others are claiming that the 1000 ships is only ships of the line — CL, CA, BK and BB — and nothing smaller counts; that's an order of magnitude more big hulls, and almost two in increased tonnage, as they're also usually assuming 2-4 destroyers per ship of the line... plus a bunch of auxiliaries.

And then, when the line was stated, many of us hadn't seen Bk5 yet, and assumed it meant 1000 ships in the ≤10KTd range... maybe 3MTd total.

 

[Carlobrand]

The question is, what is the tonnage of those ships?
I think your estimate of tonnage probably is about double what the numbers in 5FW imply to me. 4 BatRons, each less than 8 ships of under 500KTd each... (only 2 of those are actually Battleship rons; the other two are battleriders)

a dozen cru rons of 6-12 cruisers, each under 200KTd. Maybe 20MTd, and maybe 200 hulls.

And a destroyer or two per ship of the line... at an average of under 30KTd each...

While some others are claiming that the 1000 ships is only ships of the line — CL, CA, BK and BB — and nothing smaller counts; that's an order of magnitude more big hulls, and almost two in increased tonnage, as they're also usually assuming 2-4 destroyers per ship of the line... plus a bunch of auxiliaries.

And then, when the line was stated, many of us hadn't seen Bk5 yet, and assumed it meant 1000 ships in the ≤10KTd range... maybe 3MTd total.

Yes, that's the $64,000 question. The actual wording in MT Rebellion Sourcebook is: "This number includes combat vessels such as cruisers, carriers, battleships, and some escorts; it does not include auxiliaries, support ships, and scouts." In our various discussions when it comes up, we've tended to assume they were counting ships with enough heft to make their presence felt on the battle line - spinal mount ships. And, in keeping with the game's bias toward big ships, we've tended to believe that meant dreadnoughts and cruisers. It didn't help that the various TNS items during the civil war period, and other sources scattered through MT, kept referring to losses of dreadnoughts and cruisers, not battleriders.

My basic assumption was spinal mount and, regarding the "some escorts" bit, large destroyers like the ED-15 out of Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium - a 10,000 dTon destroyer. Me with my High Guard bias, a proper escort is less than 2000 dTons, well armored and built around a single bay weapon, very hard to hit and good at covering a reserve but not something I'd count as a "heft" ship. However, MT works from different assumptions.

My basic assumption was an average 100,000 dT per counted ship: roughly 2 cruisers to a dreadnought. We can thin it, but taking it down an order of magnitude makes for an anemic fleet: 64 ships averaging maybe 10,000 to 15,000 dTons. Battleriders don't help much: the ones in MT Fighting Ships are 30,000 dTons - even if you count the tender as an auxiliary, you still end up with a fleet very heavy in escorts. Of course, the Fighting Ships designs are rather poor and I haven't done much MT ship design, so it might be possible to design more effective riders of much smaller size.

Still, one expects a fleet to have enough heft to be worthy of the name.
The cargo figure for the larger merchant fleet is only about 20 million megacredits annually. That's total volume, not profit, and it's barely adequate to justify the larger fleet. If we assume the trade volume in the Marches is only a tenth of that, a couple million credits, and only a fraction of that is profit, that leaves us with fleets that are mostly small escorts backed by a squadron or two of cruisers or battleriders. There'd be only a few dreadnought squadrons in any given sector. Not untenable but, on the other hand, just as the view of many merchantmen seems to step on some of the hints here and there in canon, the view of few capital ships likewise steps on other canon hints, like the 1122 Traveller news items about Lucan's forces losing four batrons and ten crurons in heavy fighting at Strela. That much loss under the smaller fleet view could represent the strength of an entire sector.

 

[aramis]

MT's FSotSI is so bad, almost no one considers it canon. The designs are not legal; the fluff doesn't match anything else. And it's a bit heavier on the fleet size than anywhere else.

 

[Carlobrand]

MT's FSotSI is so bad, almost no one considers it canon. The designs are not legal; the fluff doesn't match anything else. And it's a bit heavier on the fleet size than anywhere else.

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it too, but I haven't tried my hand at escort design in MT so I'm a little fuzzy on the possibilities there.

MT is generally problematic for the CT universe, despite it being CT canon. It paints a picture of a massive IN, one fleet per subsector, something that would need a very GURPS-like trade picture to support or justify. MT offers 11 fleets in the Marches - about 700 ships assuming the ships of the IN are more or less evenly divvied up among its 320 fleets. CT, via Spinward Marches Campaign, has 7 fleets in the Marches - and what is either an understrength fleet or elements of the 214th patrolling the 5-Sisters subsector. Without the MT "thousand ships per sector" reference and the fleet-per-subsector bit, the Marches fleets actually look a lot like the FFW wargame set-up, each fleet consisting more or less of one squadron of 4-8 dreadnoughts and two squadrons of cruisers, totaling about 8 million dTons of warship for the entire Marches. That would be about the right size to defend a 10-million dTon merchant fleet. However, MT's fleet strength seems to imply a much larger - GURPS-like - merchant sector than has been suggested for CT.

 

[salochin999]

Funny thing. This all started as an effort to evaluate the ship registry numbers and whether they were reasonable.

I'm going to approach this from a new angle, on the hypothesis that we can arrive at something useful by drawing intersecting lines.

If the aim is to try and make different systems as compatible to the OTU as possible then I think that's the way to do it. Use CT to figure out logically what the underlying model (or at least parts of the underlying model) are and then use parts of later systems that use actual numbers to fillout the model.

If we accept the premise that trade in the Marches is about an order of magnitude lower - which, in fairness, appears to be a controversial point - then we're saying 10 to 20 million dTons of freighters out there.

I think the answer may depend if you mean trade value or trade volume?

(And possibly not even volume but how that volume is distributed e.g. a million dtons of trade in ten x 100,000 dton ships or a million dtons of trade in 200 x 5K dtons ships).

To me the model in CT points towards:

1) the *volume* of trade is concentrated in the hub-hinterland trade.
2) the *value* of trade is concentrated in the hub-hub trade.

So if this model is correct the mega freighters (if they existed) would more likely be *short distance* J1 ships bringing copper or refrigerated meat from a system adjacent to the hub with the high value trade being plied in many hundreds (or thousands) of 5K J3 ships along the routes between the hubs.

If you imagine it as Venice you have lots of carts and barges and cogs bringing low value, bulk goods short distances to Venice from its hinterland and sleek, fast ships carrying high value, low volume goods long distances.

So a lot of that GURPS description could still work verbatim - all you need to change is the assumption the big ships come from far away.

#

If one does accept the dual hub-hinterland and hub-hub model then you can figure it by:

1) Assign a numerical value to each system.

The value could be the trade numbers from GURPS, some other GDP type calc (didn't TCS have something like that?) or whatever. In my first stab at this I simply added population and TL together and currently I'm just assigning values based on the star port class as currently I'm just looking at what happens when you change the relative values.

(Currently: A=16, B=8, C=4, D=2, E=1).


2) Decide on the cost of distance.

According to Aramis' figures J1 > J2 > J3 so if you accept that basic premise then adjust each system's trade value relative to a potential trade partner taking distance into account.

(Currently: each J1 is a -1, each J2 is -3 and each J3 is -5.)


3) Pick your hubs

If you have used calculated figures then the hubs will be the systems with the largest numbers, in my case as I picked the systems with class A star ports which also had high population and high TL.


4) Draw out each hub's hinterland.

Take the value of a planet, subtract the distance of that planet to a hub and if the result is > 0 then that planet is part of that hub's hinterland.

nb in some case cases some systems will be in range of and contested by two hubs - which makes for interesting plot hooks imo.

5) Figure the hub's total trade.

For each hub-hinterland use the values of each planet minus distance to calculate the trade between the two - that value is added to the hub's total.

6) Use the total trade value for the hub-hub trade.

Say a hub had a value of 16 and six planets in its hinterland that between them generated a total of 12 with the hub then the hub's hub-hub trade would be based on a value of 28.


#

My current version of this looks like

https://gameystuff.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/spinward_canonsp_hh_map.pdf

Using Glisten as an example and assigning systems with B star ports a value of 8 with distance costs of J1: -1, J2: -3, J3: -5) then the final trade values are:

Overnale and Aki are 7 (8 - 1)
Egypt, Mille Falcs and Merctator are 5, 4, 3 respectively
Romar is 2 (8 - 3xJ1 and 1xJ2)
etc

These values apply to the planet and to the hub itself. If the result is > 0 then the system is part of that hub's hinterland.

(In my case the numbers only represent (relative weight - distance) but you can probably see how the same model would work with specific economic values like the GURPS numbers.)

#

Then finally total up all the hubs' totals e.g. Glisten's total is around 112 (including itself).

These combined values are then used as the basis of the hub-hub trade. For example if there were J1 jumps the whole way Glisten's trade could extend 111 parsecs by this very simple model.


#

It's just an experiment so not intended as definitive but even as an experiment this generates some interesting *geography*:

1) You can see straight away where the pocket empires would be if the Imperium collapsed.

2) In some places there are two or more hubs or almost-hubs close together or two sections of hinterland separated by a J3. These situations lend themselves to some past history imo that could be used e.g.

a) these pocket empires were the pocket empires of the past before the Imperium took over and so there might be lingering desire for independence for example a political group who still toast the old kings of Regina

b) past wars between Mora, Fornice and Palique over got to be boss hub or perhaps one of Fornice or Palique was the top dog before being conquered by the Imperium who built up Mora as a counter weight: "Fornice will rise again!" sort of thing.

c) possibly something similar between Lunion and Strouden.

d) there's a cluster of B star ports between Rhylanor and Lunion which would have been outside Rhylanor's influence before J3 and are at the edge of it anyway which make me think of maybe some kind of Swiss style confederation of those systems in the past.

e) Vilis should be the capital in Vilis but isn't

#

Secondly the (IMTU) Imperium's roman roads - chains of J3 space stations between the hub systems that exists over the top of the hub-hinterland trade routes.

https://gameystuff.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/spinward_canonsp_j3_map.pdf


As mentioned above the hubs in this model, Glisten, Regina, Mora etc will have very high combined trade values supporting long distance trade between the hubs.

A chain of J3 truck stops would facilitate that as most of the time there won't be a chain of J1 systems directly from one hub to the next.

(I don't know if this idea goes against the canon but it would make sense of the 1000cr rule.)

#

Last thought if a system needed large food shipments they might have to subsidize them like the Roman grain shipments from Egypt - so a subsidized million dton J1 grain freighter that does one trip a year to an adjacent system and back and is used as an in-system freighter the rest of the time?

 

[Carlobrand]

...
I think the answer may depend if you mean trade value or trade volume? ...

Ummm, okay.

I meant 10 to 20 million dTons of freighters, just as I said. For CT, 1600-1700 free traders, as many 4-600 dTonners, about 3100 large freighters of from 2000 dTons to maybe 10,000 dTons, and a bit less than a thousand megafreighters. Basic premise is starting from GURPS Far Trader, then factoring in the higher shipping costs in the CT universe, and assuming the freighters are Book-2 designs, since those are permitted in CT canon and are the most cost-effective merchantmen. That means the freighters top out at 5000 dTons aside from maybe a TL15 luxury liner that does cargo on the side, so for CT most of the megafreighters become four times as many 5000 dTon Hercules freighters (Traveller Adventure) and variations on that theme.

I'm not sure where you're drawing the rest of that from. I'm trying to calculate from the existing rules systems to get a feel for the size of the merchant fleet. It looks like you're trying to propose a new system to map out trade routes, unless I'm misunderstanding.

 

[salochin999]

It paints a picture of a massive IN, one fleet per subsector, something that would need a very GURPS-like trade picture to support or justify. MT offers 11 fleets in the Marches - about 700 ships assuming the ships of the IN are more or less evenly divvied up among its 320 fleets. CT, via Spinward Marches Campaign, has 7 fleets in the Marches

The cargo figure for the larger merchant fleet is only about 20 million megacredits annually. That's total volume, not profit, and it's barely adequate to justify the larger fleet.

What size fleet could Glisten, Trin, Mora, Vilis, Lunion, Porozlo, Efate, Jewell (and maybe Strouden, Palique, Fornice also) each support individually if they were pocket empires?

I have some vague memory of some figures on this from something I read, can't remember what though (TCS maybe?)

 

[salochin999]

Ummm, okay.

I meant 10 to 20 million dTons of freighters

Yes, what I mean is 10 million dtons of freighters can be 100 x 100,000 dtons or 2000 x 5K dtons. (volume)

and/ or

10 million dtons carrying cargo average value 2000 = 5 million dtons carrying cargo average value 4000 (value)

so you can achieve the same game effect with either volume or value.

(I don't have GURPS so I am guessing a bit at what it says specifically.)

#

The condensed version of my long post was is that the GURPS level of trade *by value* can still exist but the model that works for how it is shipped is the opposite of the original assumption (at least mine) that the valuable long distance trade would be carried by the biggest ships.

What Aramis' data says is more or less the opposite i.e. that the valuable long distance trade would only be carried by smaller (5K) ships.

So long distance trade can have exactly the same value as GURPS if you want it to but be carried by a larger number of smaller ships.

Short distance trade is where the big freighters *might* appear (if subsidized by the planetary govt. or owned by the shipper).

#

just as I said. For CT, 1600-1700 free traders, as many 4-600 dTonners, about 3100 large freighters of from 2000 dTons to maybe 10,000 dTons, and a bit less than a thousand megafreighters.

The descriptions posted here

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=33530&page=9


"Blue/major routes: "A dozen mega-freighters and as many as 100 smaller ships regularly travel this route. There can be as many as 50 ships per day entering or leaving port."

could possibly work verbatim if you replaced "major route" with "major hub" and assume the big ships are *local* and only some of the smaller ships are long distance traders from other hubs.

 

[aramis]

What size fleet could Glisten, Trin, Mora, Vilis, Lunion, Porozlo, Efate, Jewell (and maybe Strouden, Palique, Fornice also) each support individually if they were pocket empires?

I have some vague memory of some figures on this from something I read, can't remember what though (TCS maybe?)

Using a rate of about 1/23 cost per annum for hull and maintenance, we can see that the probable operational support cost is probably 1/10 the hull costs per year in budget terms.

If we use some worldbank.org real world data, the combined military budget is between 0.1% and 5% of GDP.

We can expect the GWP to be on the order of Cr2200 per person, so Cr2.2 to Cr110 per person... note that the costs for the merchant marine tend to run similar ranges of GDP, but the data is hard to find easily. So, a world of a Billion people would run a military budget of between GCr2.2 and GCr110...

Of which 30-70% will be naval; GCr0.7 to GCr77 per billion people. So, a pop 9 is between GCr70 and GCr770 in hulls-in-space.

 

[Carlobrand]

What size fleet could Glisten, Trin, Mora, Vilis, Lunion, Porozlo, Efate, Jewell (and maybe Strouden, Palique, Fornice also) each support individually if they were pocket empires?

I have some vague memory of some figures on this from something I read, can't remember what though (TCS maybe?)

What, each one? You mean war fleets or merchant fleets?

TCS does have rules for that, but TCS also has the tech level modifier that reduces the value of the world's tax base. That feature is non-canon outside of the TCS wargame. I can tell you what the worlds would have if you were playing TCS but not what they might have in an alternate history CT setting in which they were pocket empires.

Mora and Trin each have 10 billion people and are TL15, so there's no debating tech level credit devaluations with them. Imperial pop of the Marches is around 256 billion. Presumably they could each afford a navy somewhere between 4% and 8% the size of the Imperial sector fleet, assuming the fleet is funded entirely by the Marches, depending on if and to what extent you count the devaluation thing in for figuring the IN's Marches budget, and if those worlds fund it at the same tax rate - which is a big if. So, say anything from about 300,000 aggregate dTons of warship to 6 million, depending on your view of the merchant fleet size and some of the other variables.

The latter figure has Mora or Trin spending about a hundred billion credits annually for ship construction, or ten credits a head, and that's assuming they're limiting the warfleet to what can be paid for by the interstellar trade. If they're in an imperialistic expansion mood, or resisting an aggressively expansionist neighbor, it could be ten or a hundred times as much. U.S. Navy budget amounts to something in the vicinity of $500 per person, for example - which by coincidence (or probably by design) is the amount TCS uses.

They might be willing to dig deeper into their pockets than they do as an Imperial subject, given that their competition is a lot closer at hand and are more likely to pursue their destruction as a competitor than to pursue conquest.

 

[salochin999]

What, each one? You mean war fleets or merchant fleets?

TCS does have rules for that, but TCS also has the tech level modifier that reduces the value of the world's tax base. That feature is non-canon outside of the TCS wargame. I can tell you what the worlds would have if you were playing TCS but not what they might have in an alternate history CT setting in which they were pocket empires.

Mora and Trin each have 10 billion people and are TL15, so there's no debating tech level credit devaluations with them. Imperial pop of the Marches is around 256 billion. Presumably they could each afford a navy somewhere between 4% and 8% the size of the Imperial sector fleet, assuming the fleet is funded entirely by the Marches, depending on if and to what extent you count the devaluation thing in for figuring the IN's Marches budget, and if those worlds fund it at the same tax rate - which is a big if. So, say anything from about 300,000 aggregate dTons of warship to 6 million, depending on your view of the merchant fleet size and some of the other variables.

The latter figure has Mora or Trin spending about a hundred billion credits annually for ship construction, or ten credits a head, and that's assuming they're limiting the warfleet to what can be paid for by the interstellar trade. If they're in an imperialistic expansion mood, or resisting an aggressively expansionist neighbor, it could be ten or a hundred times as much. U.S. Navy budget amounts to something in the vicinity of $500 per person, for example - which by coincidence (or probably by design) is the amount TCS uses.

They might be willing to dig deeper into their pockets than they do as an Imperial subject, given that their competition is a lot closer at hand and are more likely to pursue their destruction as a competitor than to pursue conquest.

(naval)

What I mean is if those systems could support a fleet of X size on their own (more if you include their hinterland) then once they've been incorporated into the Imperium they could still support that size of fleet - in keeping with the feudal theme.

Plus extra from the Imperium itself as it's the frontier.

 

[rancke]

So it depends what you want really. If you want dense trade then add the two trade values together If you prefer hub and spoke trade with a few Coruscants and lots of backwaters then use the smaller of the two in both directions.

What I want are ballpark figures that fit with the system being used by TPTB to generate trade routes in the OTU. I'm OK with challenging TPTB when they the results they get are demonstrably too implausible to work (I do that myself all the time), but I don't see the point of going against the OTU when both versions are acceptable.

That's not to say that I object to others discussing such things, but then I'd appreciate a heads up about the non-canon nature of the discussion. Saves times for everybody involved. I can ignore the discussion or limit my contributions and the rest are spared my canonista interjections.

Well that's the thing. I agree it's an artifact in reality however treating it as if there was a reason leads to interesting conclusions as the effect of a floor on cargo pricing given Aramis' data is an artificial subsidy for J3 ships over longer distances. So all you need is a reason for the Imperium to deliberately weight the rules in favor of J3 ships over long distances - and I can think of lots of those.

No, you also need a way to explain how the Imperium enforces such a regulation and still remain the relatively remote entity described in CT material. As far as I am concerned, you can have remoteness or you can have excessively heavy enforcement; you can't have both.

(Incidentally, HG already favor J3 ships over long distances naturally).

I agree the trade rules as they are flawed but the main point stands that the people shipping cargo are effectively following the speculative trade rules with a 1000cr a jump overhead.

But if the speculative trade rules are deliberately constructed to fit a free trader campaign, using them to figure out regular trade will produce results that just don't fit. Take the base value of stuff in the trade table. If your tramp ship drop into a system and pick up a generic load of textile, having a generic base value for it makes sense. If you're a regular trader buying zilk on Regina and planning to ship it to Vland, a base value of Cr3000 is just plain inapplicable. Free traders planning to bum around until they find a buyer for their six dT of Brand X textiles are just not on the same tables as megacorporations planning to ship six thousand dT of name brand shimmersilk 50 parsecs.

Looking at the prices and DMs on the trade table shows you how CT trade would work i.e. the distances particular commodities can be profitably transported are determined by a combination of base price and the purchase and resale DMs on the source and destination planets (and merchant skills) ...

No, it shows you how CT tramp trade works.

For example if a planet only sold meat, textiles and computers then the meat part of their total trade might drop off after one jump, the textile part after three jumps while the computer part carried on for much longer i.e. the cheaper goods drop off soonest hence the volume of trade dropping faster than the value.

But their trade in potted mockswallow tongues could go even farther than their computer parts.

Well with only 66 commodity slots there's bound to be some compression - but the slot on the trade goods table labeled "Textiles" has a base value of 3000cr.

Wich is fine for a tramp trader who plans to sell his haul in a couple jumps but has no connection whatsoever to regular trade with worlds a sector away.


Hans

 

[rancke]

As for rest of the argument over systems and such -- the systems are built on varying assumptions. We don't have to accept GURPS assumptions when we play or discuss CT, any more than we should use CT ship designs when we are playing MT, TNE or GURPS.

No, but if we're playing in a particular setting then we are required to stick to the setting descriptions.

We are not required to have Rebellion and Virus in GURPS Traveller, after all,

Indeed not. We're required to NOT have Rebellion and Virus in the GTU. But, once again, there's a difference between a rules set and a setting. If I write an adventure meant for GT rules but set in the post-1116 OTU, I do need to have the Rebellion and Virus. If I write an adventure set in the GTU and meant for my house rules, I do need to stick to the GTU setting descriptions (which, prior to the Rebellion, are (supposedly) identical to the OTU setting descriptions), whereas any adventure set in my own TU can be run using CT, MT, TNE, T4, T20, GT, MgT, T5, my house rules, Basic Roleplaying, Savage Worlds, or any of scores of other roleplaying rules sets.

(Of course, there are rules systems that won't work; see below).

Sure, it has to make sense. It has to make sense based on the built-in assumptions of the system being used. With any luck, this will result in sufficient dovetailing to be deemed "Close enough for jazz."

Other way round. The built-in assumptions of the system being used have to make sense based on the setting it is being used in. When they don't (as is, alas, a common, all too often unrecognized, occurrence in Traveller), problems arise.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Ccanon tells us the IN averages a thousand ships a sector.

well, I myself would go along with 'canon says', but anyone who distinguishes between CT canon and other canon would say 'MT canon says'.

Say about 700 for the Marches, which has only 11 fleets; we guessed the typical fleet was roughly 8 squadrons of 8 ships each. If we assume those are capital ships, that's maybe 70 million dTons of warship - plus auxiliaries, which we don't have information on.

No guess. Canon say the typical fleet has 8-10 squadrons (though it also specifically mentions one fleet that only has three squadrons. You'd need 18 10-squadron fleets to restore the average, so presumably either fleets below 8 squadrons would be rare or fleets with 16 or 18 squadrons also exists).

Someone along the way - can't recall who, can't find the post now - commented that you could get a very rough idea of the merchant fleet by looking at the size of the naval fleet assigned to protect them, the premise presumably being that someone is unlikely to spend a fortune on armed guards to guard a lemonade stand.

That only works if the assets assigned to protect trade isn't a sunk cost. If the naval fleet would be a given size anyway (for protection), you might as well use it to protect your merchant trade too. A second problem is that you don't use squadrons of capital ships to guard merchant traffic, at least not in peacetime; you use smaller ships, and we don't have any figures for smaller ships, except a few pre-HG references.


Hans

 

[rancke]

The question is, what is the tonnage of those ships?
I think your estimate of tonnage probably is about double what the numbers in 5FW imply to me. 4 BatRons, each less than 8 ships of under 500KTd each... (only 2 of those are actually Battleship rons; the other two are battleriders)

a dozen cru rons of 6-12 cruisers, each under 200KTd. Maybe 20MTd, and maybe 200 hulls.

And a destroyer or two per ship of the line... at an average of under 30KTd each...

These are all from a period where the population multiplier (not having been thought up yet) is effectively 1 in all cases, thus underestimating all ship and troop figures by a factor of up to 9.


Hans

 

[salochin999]

@rancke

What I want are ballpark figures that fit with the system being used by TPTB to generate trade routes in the OTU. I'm OK with challenging TPTB when they the results they get are demonstrably too implausible to work (I do that myself all the time), but I don't see the point of going against the OTU when both versions are acceptable.

Either can work with the OTU because there is no direct correlation between the total *volume* of trade and the total *value* of trade.

That's not to say that I object to others discussing such things, but then I'd appreciate a heads up about the non-canon nature of the discussion. Saves times for everybody involved. I can ignore the discussion or limit my contributions and the rest are spared my canonista interjections.

The discussion is about fitting the data to canon. My point was that if a canon number is 100 but canon doesn't specify if it's made up of 10x10 or 5x20 or 2x50 then you can choose which you prefer.

No, you also need a way to explain how the Imperium enforces such a regulation and still remain the relatively remote entity described in CT material. As far as I am concerned, you can have remoteness or you can have excessively heavy enforcement; you can't have both.

You'd need enforcing it to be in the interests of the sub-sector Dukes.

But if the speculative trade rules are deliberately constructed to fit a free trader campaign, using them to figure out regular trade will produce results that just doesn't fit.

Yes but the point is the model. The model is buy as low as possible, add shipping costs, sell as high as possible at the other end.

Therefore as the base value of the goods limits the range of profitability it also limits the distance. If the maximum possible profit on a commodity in the OTU according to the trading rules is 4100cr then the maximum distance it can be traded profitably is four jumps

The purchase and resale DMs modify the above.

This tells you only high value goods would be traded long distance and also that certain combinations of goods, source world and destination world with particularly favorable DMs e.g. textiles between agricultural worlds and something worlds (forget which) could exist at longer distances than you'd expect given the base value of the goods.

But their trade in potted mockswallow tongues could go even farther than their computer parts.

Yes if the base value was higher - because profitable trading distance using the trading rules is determined by the base value.

Wich is fine for a tramp trader who plans to sell his haul in a couple jumps but has no connection whatsoever to regular trade with worlds a sector away.

It has every connection. Whatever rules you came up with would follow the same pattern - some kind of roll to decide the buy low and sell high based on whatever.

The maximum difference between those rolls applied as a percentage of the base value gives you the maximum profit.

The maximum profit gives you the maximum range goods of that base value can be sold at a profit.

You could make the range infinite if you made the base value vary with distance but if the base value is fixed then the range is fixed by whatever the shipping costs are.

 

[rancke]

Yes, that's the $64,000 question. The actual wording in MT Rebellion Sourcebook is: "This number includes combat vessels such as cruisers, carriers, battleships, and some escorts; it does not include auxiliaries, support ships, and scouts." In our various discussions when it comes up, we've tended to assume they were counting ships with enough heft to make their presence felt on the battle line - spinal mount ships.

And, I suggest, a few rare experimental combattant designs big enough to carry spinals but not doing so, thus accounting for that annoying '...and some escorts' bit.

My basic assumption was spinal mount and, regarding the "some escorts" bit, large destroyers like the ED-15 out of Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium - a 10,000 dTon destroyer. Me with my High Guard bias, a proper escort is less than 2000 dTons, well armored and built around a single bay weapon, very hard to hit and good at covering a reserve but not something I'd count as a "heft" ship. However, MT works from different assumptions.

FS describes escorts as "small ships of up to 5000 tons"
and the Sloan is an example of a 5000T escort. Presumably those 10,000T escorts are few enough to be ignored in a general description.

My basic assumption was an average 100,000 dT per counted ship: roughly 2 cruisers to a dreadnought.

My assumption is an average of 300,000T for battleships and, IIRC, 55,000T for cruisers (the average of the samples of each to be found in FS). Also, a ratio of one BatRon to three CruRons.

We can thin it, but taking it down an order of magnitude makes for an anemic fleet: 64 ships averaging maybe 10,000 to 15,000 dTons. Battleriders don't help much: the ones in MT Fighting Ships are 30,000 dTons - even if you count the tender as an auxiliary, you still end up with a fleet very heavy in escorts. Of course, the Fighting Ships designs are rather poor and I haven't done much MT ship design, so it might be possible to design more effective riders of much smaller size.

I strongly suspect that whoever wrote the text meant for one battletender PLUS its complement of light cruiser-sized riders to be the equivalent of one battleship. Tenders aren't even mentioned separately. It's rather unfortunate that the combat system makes half a dozen riders slam dunk winners over a single battleship.

MT's FSotSI is so bad, almost no one considers it canon. The designs are not legal; the fluff doesn't match anything else. And it's a bit heavier on the fleet size than anywhere else.

I thought its squadrons were only half the size implied by RbS?




Hans

 

[rancke]

What size fleet could Glisten, Trin, Mora, Vilis, Lunion, Porozlo, Efate, Jewell (and maybe Strouden, Palique, Fornice also) each support individually if they were pocket empires?

The high-population worlds can support much bigger fleets from their own production alone. No interstellar trade at all is necessary. And even GURPS interstellar trade figures are quite small compared to gross world products.


Hans

 

[salochin999]

The high-population worlds can support much bigger fleets from their own production alone. No interstellar trade at all is necessary. And even GURPS interstellar trade figures are quite small compared to gross world products.


Hans

Yeah that's what I was thinking.