military budgets

[rancke]

The tech level mistake was a typo caused by being distracted by the Devils Vs Lightning Hockey game.

And does that mean you don't want to be made aware of any mistake, or just mistakes caused by being distracted?

The tables I used in an attempt to follow established methods for generating GWP had the per_capita already changed by tech-based exchange rates...funny thing though.... they're wrong.
100 credits at tech 10 have the purchasing power of 54.54 Crimps based on that table yet the other exchange table only shows it to have a the purchasing power of 50. Can this be evidence that the Imperium is rigged currency exchanges to siphon funds off the top?

I don't understand the issue. Is it relevant? Otherwise I suggest you start another thread to discuss it, hopefully with a more lucid exposition of the problem.

As far as the issue mentioned for Elites, etc.
You'd say it was moot as you feel ground forces' rules should not be used with naval forces. There are no rules that handle crew quality in this fashion for the navy, so don't worry about it.

Before I expend any time on explaining, I have to ask: Do you really not understand the difference between this example and the example you allude to, or are you just trying to be funny?

There is no direct correlation being ship price and crew size.

I never said there was a direct correlation, just a correlation. There's a difference.

Crew size is affect by component sizes and component tech levels, not cost.
Ship price is also affected by component size and tech.

Exactly.

This indirect link is useless to base anything on and keep any sliver of accuracy on.

Depends on the level of accuracy you're aiming for. For small navies it will be more accurate to count crew slots (note, however, that the moment you establish the size of the groundbased personnel by simply multiplying the number of crew slots by some number, you're introducing inaccuracies into the figure), but for bigger navies, using an average is both necessary and accurate enough for the purpose of estimating the size of an entire navy.


Hans

 

[Ishmael]

In that case, let me suggest you add a step: determining the size of the total personnel based on how many are needed to fulfil the functions the organization has to fulfil and then calculating personnel cost from that.

No, the budget process is iterative with allocations changing as conditions change. Also, the budget and its allocations are what determine equipment and crew availability, not vie versa.... at least in the real world.
My example gave less-than-ideal numbers for a space navy, because I did not bother working the numbers through to ensure this example gave the best results possible. That was not my purpose. In an actual game ( which includes a strategic game along the lines of the Islands Campaign, and not just making background setting fluff ), I would work towards ideal allocation rates knowing that they will shift upwards and downwards by small amounts as conditions change within the campaign.

But you can't just pull figures out of thn air. The numer of people your hire is not just related to how much it costs to pay them, it is also related to how much it costs to outfit them. Barring politically motivated distortions (e.g. makework), an organization is not going to hire people it doesn't have work for.

And if the organization doesn't have the work, then it'd be negligent if it didn't adjust the personnel allocation downwards in the next budget cycle. While I do not envision that budget cycles will be short in the Imperium or other TU due to administrative concerns/bureaucracies, you could make the budget cycle as short as you like, I suppose. My experience with government and bureaucracies suggest that anything quicker than one cycle per quarter is pushing it, but thats another topic.

And if I had, it would demonstrate what I've been arguing all along, that in a Traveller space navy, the contribution of personnel cost to the budget is minuscule, and nowhere near the contribution of personnel cost to the USN budget.

If you still think this is about comparing the US Navy budget to a space navy's budget, then you've fallen behind and need to work to catch up. This is about building the framework to run budgets for any organization along the same lines as they are run in the real world. The method is what matters, not the individual numbers. You seem to be hung up on the individual numbers now. Individual numbers are easily changeable.

Actually, I feel vindicated in my position in that you have only argued about the numbers which are so easily changed, and not the suggested budget procedure itself.

 

[Ishmael]

And does that mean you don't want to be made aware of any mistake, or just mistakes caused by being distracted?

not at all, just providing an explanation so that there could be no misunderstandings arisen from the mistake itself.

I don't understand the issue. Is it relevant? Otherwise I suggest you start another thread to discuss it, hopefully with a more lucid exposition of the problem.

As it shows a flaw in rules for determining GWP, which the various budgets are derived from, it could be relevant. But more to the point, it gives an example of how internally-consistent the OTU, or any TU that uses those rules as published will be.... that is to say, how internally-inconsistent they are.

Before I expend any time on explaining, I have to ask: Do you really not understand the difference between this example and the example you allude to, or are you just trying to be funny?

<shrug>
The point was irrelevant to the discussion. I really don't see why you made it, to be honest. I was also being a bit sarcastic, because you had already stated your position that naval forces and ground forces are different enough to warrant the continued use of separate rules for personnel, so why did you bother?
Perhaps I should have used different terms to describe the various levels of crew quality? The main point is that the more money you spend on each crewmember, the higher the quality of the overall crew; picked troops cost more than conscripts after all.

Depends on the level of accuracy you're aiming for. For small navies it will be more accurate to count crew slots (note, however, that the moment you establish the size of the groundbased personnel by simply multiplying the number of crew slots by some number, you're introducing inaccuracies into the figure), but for bigger navies, using an average is both necessary and accurate enough for the purpose of estimating the size of an entire navy.

I am aiming for more accuracy than the current TCS rules can provide. The method for determining support personnel in an organization was taken from TNE's World Tamer book and I'll continue to use it because the total us navy manpower minus deployed crew gives a similar figure, so I know it can pass at least one reality check... the 3:1 ratio is good enough for me.

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For cost of operations and maintenance, tech level should be figured in somewhere. I mean, more advanced equipment is both more efficient and more reliable, I'd think.
How about this?

O&M costs = equipment_cost/tech_level

this would give the usual 10% number for tech 10 stuff with higher tech goods costing less to operate and maintain, while lower tech equipment costs more.
Otherwise, navies would be encouraged to use the lowest tech equipment possible that gets the job done in order to keep O&M costs down, despite the idea that higher tech equipment would be cheaper to operate and break down less often.

This idea could also be used with TCS

 

[Starviking]

Which means that the investment you need to get one crew slot is 0.55 million if your navy is composed entirely of Type 23 frigates and 5.26 million if your navy is composed of Type 45 destroyers. So in the first example, relative personnel costs are about ten times more important than in the second case, even though they be roughly the same in absolute terms.

I wouldn't say 10 times more important - the ratio would be ten times more than in the case of the Type 45.

Nonsens. In a navy with 19 Type 23 frigates you'd have (almost) the same number of crew (and support personnel) as you'd have in a navy of 18 Type 45 Destroyers. And those two sets of personnel would cost exactly the same in absolute terms to recruit, since they're practically indentical in size. But in the first case the cost of the ships will be almost ten time lower than in the second case. Which means that personel cost will be almost ten time greater in relative terms than in the second case. Say that total personnel cost was 150 million. In the first case the personnel cost would be 7.9% of the total cost of the fleet; in the second case the personnel cost would be 0.83% of the total cost of the fleet.

What is the point of this comparison? Sure, the Type 23s will be cheaper to procure than a 'crew-equivalent' number of Type 45s. Crew costs relative to the Type 23s will be higher - however absolute crew costs are not defined by the ships - which I think was implied by your original assertion Re the Ford Class Carriers.

At the end of the day you have to crew your ships and you have to pay them a wage that is attractive enough to induce them to sign up. There may be a correlation between ship tonnage and crew numbers (though probably a stronger correlation between ship complexity and crew numbers) - but these cannot be used to derive any useful crew costs. If I had used the Type 23 to derive costs for crew it would have been ten times lower than that for the Type 45.

 

[rancke]

What is the point of this comparison? Sure, the Type 23s will be cheaper to procure than a 'crew-equivalent' number of Type 45s. Crew costs relative to the Type 23s will be higher - however absolute crew costs are not defined by the ships - which I think was implied by your original assertion Re the Ford Class Carriers.

Absolute crew costs are not defined with any high accuracy by the ships in navies so small that the composition is apt to be skewed. For navies big enough to be composed of a broad spectrum of different ships, it can provide a useful way to gauge them. For a Traveller space navy this is especially true in cases where there are lots of combat vessels (i.e. big ships). I'd need to do a more thorough analysis, but I'm pretty sure that if I came up with a figure of, say, one crew slot per MCr80 worth of ship, I'd be closer to the "truth" than a factor 2.

That wasn't the point I was trying to make originally, though. The point that I was trying to make was that in a Traveller space navy (I suppose I should add the qualifier 'of any decent size'), crew costs would be small enough to be negligble compared to equipment cost.

At the end of the day you have to crew your ships and you have to pay them a wage that is attractive enough to induce them to sign up.

At the end of the day, if my crew costs are less than 1% of the total budget, they're smaller than the inaccuracy imposed by other factors.

There may be a correlation between ship tonnage and crew numbers (though probably a stronger correlation between ship complexity and crew numbers)

I don't have any way to measure the average ship complexity of a navy. I do have a way of gauging the size of a navy.

- but these cannot be used to derive any useful crew costs. If I had used the Type 23 to derive costs for crew it would have been ten times lower than that for the Type 45.

And if you have a navy composed exclusively of one kind of ship, you could figure the number of crew slots directly instead of having to make do with an average. But an average will usually work anyway.


Hans

 

[Drew]

Even if the relationship numbers differ, there is unquestionable *A* relationship between crew expenses and maintainence expenses.
The USS Gerald R.Ford cost $5.6 billion for research and development and detailed design. The first ship of the class will cost $8.1 billion, assuming no budget overruns. This gives an account for the importance or the Research/Development part of the budget, and the actual building shows the importance of allocating monies to the Appropriations part of a budget.
Once you take into account that the Tigress is 25 times the size of this carrier, the manpower cost differences can be largely explained due to the Tigress being at least 7 tech levels higher with much greater automation. The fact that the biggest point of this carrier is the cost savings due to lower manpower requirements should give an indication of how personnel costs affect operations and maintainence.



Real-world military budgets for the US armed forces ( navy/marines, army and air force ) are all broken down into Ops/Maintenance, Personnel, Appropriations, Research, and military construction which shows that such an idea is not dependent on any particular service branch....
AND this is basically how Striker breaks down military budgets where it assumes maintainence cost is 10% purchase price, which just happens to be what TCS says is the maintainence cost for ship hardware.

What you advocate is that there are different rules for different services which leads to inconstancies which get worse as tech levels rise and army AFV's become more and more like Orbital Fighters in their capability. You have not given arguments that are near good enough to support the idea of multiple rules when one rule can cover the bases, thus simplifying things.

While I understand your idea that manpower costs are absorbed into the 10% assumption, I feel that it is misplaced and valid less as tech levels go down and cheaper ships are built. If you have huge expensive ships with smallish crews, then its simpler to set your personnel budget to be smaller and give the difference to the O&M budget. The budget allocations don't have to be the same as with the US Navy as percentages of the total, but each area should have money allocated to it else how do you know what sort of troops you can field, or what sort of damage you can afford to repair/replace?

This is probably a useless post due to the age of the forum, but even though we imply a $5.6b cost for a Ford Class Carrier, the calculations do not include the air arm as well as any and all support vessel costs.

 

[Dragoner]

I generally give a 90-10 logistical footprint cost to fielded a piece of equipment, so like 5bn price, is part of a 50bn total. It's similar to the army spends more on bullets, than rifles.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm I don’t have an inclination to delve into this especially with the participants gone one way or another but a few random thoughts arise….

I always assumed that much of the IN and armies and especially mercs come from low tech worlds where 4000 CrImp pensions go a long way. Risking your life for Cr 1200 plus bonus is going to sound good only to backplanet dwellers or thrill seekers or the desperate.

I’d be a bit itchy about using Striker for army generation, it’s more about relatively small merc units winning on a budget.

TCS is about generating demolition derby environments for High Guard battles.

The economic implications outside of their force/scenario generation roles are fun to contemplate and work through as a consequences of rules and effects on interstellar society, but I don’t know that I would ascribe vigorously to any of it if it doesn’t generate fun for your players.

Not buying the crew slot drives costing argument, putting in high expense per ton equipment does. More accurately, the nature of your opposition and preferred response drives your cost.

If one did go that direction, the frozen watch is going to double crew costs.

The TCS economics has population impinging quite a bit on how much fleet you can build anyway so it’s going to be proportionate to what can be manned, not sure there is a big point to a specific parameter.

 

[Condottiere]

There are lots of reasons people join mercenary and paramilitary groups; it's usually up to the guy in charge of recruitment to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The more highly skilled mercenaries are going to be charging and salarying a lot more per head.

 

[aramis]

Hmm I don’t have an inclination to delve into this especially with the participants gone one way or another but a few random thoughts arise….

I always assumed that much of the IN and armies and especially mercs come from low tech worlds where 4000 CrImp pensions go a long way. Risking your life for Cr 1200 plus bonus is going to sound good only to backplanet dwellers or thrill seekers or the desperate.

Shades of Bill the Galactic Hero and Sten. And of the CoDoVerse (Niven, Pournelle, & Niven)

I’d be a bit itchy about using Striker for army generation, it’s more about relatively small merc units winning on a budget.

Striker is explicitly about company to regimental levels; the stand is a fireteam, and the squad is pretty much the basic maneuver unit.
It's also agnostic about government vs mercenary; most of the combat envisaged will be government vs mercs or government vs government.

Keep in mind: most of the GDW staff were veterans. Marc & Frank both. (Interesting to see what's on Wikipedia - it notes that Marc and Frank were college roommates...) Striker has a reality to it that is lacking in many other games... but that also makes it much harder to play than many of its peers... Esp. W40K:RT .

 

[kilemall]

Shades of Bill the Galactic Hero and Sten. And of the CoDoVerse (Niven, Pournelle, & Niven)

Striker is explicitly about company to regimental levels; the stand is a fireteam, and the squad is pretty much the basic maneuver unit.
It's also agnostic about government vs mercenary; most of the combat envisaged will be government vs mercs or government vs government.

Keep in mind: most of the GDW staff were veterans. Marc & Frank both. (Interesting to see what's on Wikipedia - it notes that Marc and Frank were college roommates...) Striker has a reality to it that is lacking in many other games... but that also makes it much harder to play than many of its peers... Esp. W40K:RT .

The role play aspect of limited comms and command attention and keeping units cohesive in the face of losses and confusion is a gold standard that I think challenged the minis and wargame worlds to do better then just base morale checks.

 

[Condottiere]

Regimental is still a relatable experience.

Cohesion requires both training and motivation.

 

[kilemall]

Cohesion requires both training and motivation.

Striker covers that in troop quality and leadership span of control, almost role playing with time action limits imposed for lower training levels.

I’m under the impression the modern games have these features more regularly but was an eye opener aspect of this game for the 80s.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm working my way through Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought, and training is a major adjustment to hit probability, so military effectiveness.

As I recall from Warhammer, casualties received in that round of combat is a major deficit in determining whether that round was won, subject to moral panic if it crosses a certain threshold.

 

[aramis]

Regimental is still a relatable experience.

Cohesion requires both training and motivation.

Regimental in Striker is a nightmare of order writing...

 

[kilemall]

Regimental in Striker is a nightmare of order writing...

And now the players know WHY there is an Admin skill.....

 

[Grav_Moped]

And now the players know WHY there is an Admin skill.....

Because Forward Observer skill doesn't include doing the paperwork?

 

[Condottiere]

1. Soviet regiments were more like brigades; combined arms, usually lopsided.

2. Falkenberg's (sans Stirling) was a regimental combat team.

3. On paper, single battalion regiment could be a thousand personnel.

4. A U.S. Army battalion includes the battalion commander (lieutenant colonel), executive officer (major), command sergeant major (CSM), headquarters staff, and usually three to five companies, with a total of 300 to 1,000[31] (but typically 500 to 600) soldiers.[32]

5. Players could probably keep track of a hundred to two hundred non player characters, which is basically a company.

 

[Drew]

Regimental in Striker is a nightmare of order writing...

That is why there are staff members. In a Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT) you have staff members writing the support annexes for things like fire support, air support (embedded Air Force), and a huge logistics team for maintenance, fuel and ammunition. I would disagree it is an Admin skill but more of like Tactics. Every officer is trained at least one if not two levels (Captains are trained for Battalions/Brigades), Majors are trained for Brigade and Divisional operations. At every level of officer training you wrote operation orders to the point where you could do it your sleep. Since I was old school; CAS3 integrated all the various MOS skill sets went into writing Brigade/Regimental orders. CGS&C were for divisional and Corps operations. The concept of the Commander's intention was used as a baseline. You had the tissue overlays for the maps. Love to see how the new computers and software now integrates into a more seamless flow of information. The integration of GPS was a god send, so units and the command knew exactly where every unit was.

As a Separate Brigade Officers in a Combat Support Battalion for a Heavy Brigade; I used pre planned packages for ammunition as part of the push package then went out nightly. As a Brigade Class III; I planned a minimum of 96 hours out for fuel (got that job along with the Class V). It was a nightmare, since I had only 9 5000 gallon tankers and had to support then the MOGAS, Diesel and Aviation fuels. You could never use one tanker for multiple fuels especially for the aviators. They got a little twitchy about gas for their birds instead of JP4. The single integration of JP8 made it far easier.

 

[aramis]

That is why there are staff members.

I think you missed my point. In a 2player game, you're writing orders to the platoon level... and resolving them at the fireteam level.
The default Traveller setting regiment is...

(base, in this context, refers to one item on the map)
Fireteam: 4 men, 1 base.
Squad 2-3 teams or small to medium vehicle. Any vehicle with less than 12 crew is a squad and a single base. Demounted crews become 1 base per four crew.
Section 2 squads, includes an NCO who may be part of one of the teams, or may be an independent base. A vehicle with 13-24 crew should be a section.
Platoon 2-5 squads plus a command team of 1-6 figures on one or two bases. if 4-5 squads, may be organized into 2 sections;
Company 2-5 platoons, plus command group of 1-10 persons, which may be a team, section or even a squad, and includes the company CO and 1Sgt.
Bn = 2-5 co, and command group of 8-30 beings.
The regiment isn't defined in striker, but would be 2-5 Bn... plus a command company.

Running a regimental conflict would be alot of admin for the players, not the characters. All orders are to be written in Striker.