Researching Imperial/subsector/colonial Navies

[Hal]

Better way to build a budget - you just had to use those words didn't ya

Based on what I've since learned - Chris Thrash was correct in his assessment - the budget for Lunion should be higher - not as I've set it up. Chances are good that it will be between three to five times higher - I have to recompute the GDP of every planet and work from there. Meanwhile, I'm mulling over the counters that Sigg Oddra provided. I'm going to have to try and figure out what constitutes an "offensive" factor for a counter, a bombardment factor, and a defensive factor. I was very surprised to see some jump 1 fleets in the Fifth Frontier war, along with a few Jump 2's.
I was taken aback at the notion that the Regina squadrons contained Jump 1 cruisers! Granted, some of the squadrons were required to move at the slowest speed of its members thus permitting Jump-2 ships to be intermixed with the Jump-1 ships, but even so!

I guess the next step is to cross reference all the major shipyards per subsector to see which ones were likely the originators of the squadrons in FFW. I noted that there is a fleet set up sheet where you place all the ship counters in the correct fleet box - and then move only the fleet counters themselves on the mapboard. Those fleet designations do NOT match the fleet designations for MegaTraveller's REBELLION. As I look at the THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN - with its rendering of the Fifth Frontier war in a brief historical vlew doesn't tell me much - and even seems to be somewhat contradictory in nature to what the FFW boardgame depicts (note: This is after a cursory glance, not a week's in depth analysis

But rest assured, I will try and create some guidelines for myself in budgets. Why do you think I'm trying to figure out the costs of things - so we can tell the game designes "ok, the naval elements cost this much, and the ground forces elements are estimated to have cost this much - and to get this much of a force mix, someone had to spend XYZ GigaCredits - which is roughly 4% of the GDP of the entire Sector.

Why do you think I started out small with Lunion?

 

[Hal]

Oh, before I forget? The Trillion Credit Squadron assumes that everyone pays an average of 500 credits per person. Just for a heads up?

Striker rules - which are from the time period of Classic Traveller assumes that Per Capita Income is TL-4 all times 2000. A tech level 10 world has a per capita income of 12,000 credits per year. On such a world, a 500 Cr per person naval tax works out to a 4.2% of the GDP for the planet - just on naval spending alone. If I might suggest? Make the head tax for the navy equal .01 x (TL-4)*2000. This will represent roughly 1/3rd of 3% of the planet's Gross Domestic Product - and is strictly in line with Striker. TCS is over inflated in what amount of money a world has to spend on its defenses.

(Note: in reality? The Imperium has to pay for its ground forces, its planetary defense forces, along with its naval forces. Throw into the mix the fact that such a government would have to pay for bases, food, expendibles (missiles and sandcasters along with parts for preventative maintenance) - not to mention unexpected costs such as repairs - accidents, pensions, etc - not to mention research and development etc - and you can see where giving the Navy such a big portion of the budget and allowing her to spend it all on the ships is kinda too much

BUT - this is YOUR budget for your fun - not mine

For all I know, all this skull sweat is just going to make me nuttier than I already am

 

[BetterThanLife]

Now comes the question of rules too. I was going through TA7 and noticed a "Strike Monitor." Standard wisdom has a Battlerrider massing 30Ktons. The standard Battle tender carries 6 of them. (At least in the fluff as there are no canon battle tenders actually laid out in any of the Suplements and the only riders are in TA7 and FSOTSI. Conventional wisdom aslo has the BattleTender being dispersed structure for fastest launch of the riders. Now comes the fun part. The TL13 Battlerider in TA7 is approximately 5 times the cost of the 5000T strike monitor.

If you increase the cost of the carried squadron by 20% for the same size you now are carrying 36 5000 ton Strike Monitors instead of 6 Battleriders. OK so 5000T ships vs. 30000t ships, no contest. These are riders, no jump fuel no jump drive. The 5000T Strike Monitor has a Spinal Meson mount. (And coincidentally the same armor level and still manages Man-5 and Agility-5.) Or 36 Spinal Meson mounts vs. 6 Spinal Meson Mounts. Throw one of these carriers at a BatRon and it will make Pearl Harbor's Battleship row on 8 December 1941 look like a minor clean up operation. Especially in T20.

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by Hal:
Hey Hemdian? Just out of curiosity, the 214th fleet isn't showing any troop carriers for its 275 Battalions. Got any takes on that?

Oops, you right, that doesn't make sense. In the 5FW boardgame there is a troop capacity based on squadron type ... and one such squadron was detailed in The Spinward Marches Campaign. But the latter forgot about the troops and I just replicated the error in my 214th Fleet write-up.

I'm going to have to revise my work accordingly. Can anyone remind me what those troop capacities were?

Regards PLST

 

[PBI]

Originally posted by Hemdian:

I'm going to have to revise my work accordingly. Can anyone remind me what those troop capacities were?

Regards PLST

Battle squadron = 20
Cruiser squadron = factors equal to defence factor
Assault squadron = 6C

 

[Hal]

In most of the write ups I've seen of capital ships for CT - there is no room to carry troops. Does this mean that each capital ship squadron has assigned to it some extra troop transports?

I seem to recall that a 20 value equals a regiment - no?

**edit** Or is that a corp? Dang it... IIRC isn't working at the moment

 

[Hal]

Hmmm - I'm going to have to mull that over. A GT 10 (TT 12 or 13) Cruiser has to increase its armored hull size (and thus cost) in order to transport its share of approximately 10,000 men? (assuming that one BE = 500 men) when operating in a CruRon?

The other question is this: If each successive generation of warships is based on either its predecessor or lessons learned from its predecessor - does this mean that the ships listed in Suppliment #9 are clean breaks from their predecessors? Carrying 10,000 men plus their gear plus enough food for say - 1 months worth of planetary operations is going to be one HELL of a hit on internal volumn. On top of that, most of the ships listed in FFW show that CruRons are only partially streamlined as a whole. These Cruisers if they land at a planet will have to go somewhat slower than fully streamlined ships as they bring in their loaded troops. Something seems wrong with this picture. But... As I've said before, my gut feelings can be off. I'm going to try my hand at High Guard ship design of this philosophy first and see what it gives me. I will use 8dtons per infantryman in the BE. At 500 men per BE, that works out to an allocation of 4,000 dtons per BE equivalent.

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by PBI:
Battle squadron = 20
Cruiser squadron = factors equal to defence factor
Assault squadron = 6C

Thanks.

My initial review of the 214th Fleet's troops shows this is completely bogus. I'd allocated far more troops than it could carry even by 5FW-BG standards! I'm probably going to change it thus:

Each batron will have a division-sized troop transport attached. BR123 will carry the 2012th Lift Armored Cavalry Division, BR504 will carry the 3513th Lift Armored Infantry Division.

There will be a Marine regiment-sized troop transport attached to CR358. This carry the 3277th Lift Marine Regiment.

There will be 2 half-regiment-sized troop transports attached to CR501 and another attached to CR502. The 88th Lift Infantry Brigade will be split between these.

There will be three old tech half-regiment-sized troop transport attached to CR2510. These are empty at present.

Summary 1 (Troops carried by 214th Fleet)
- 2012th Lift Armored Cavalry Division (TL15)
- 3513th Lift Armored Infantry Division (TL14)
- 88th Lift Infantry Brigade (TL15)
- 3277th Lift Marine Regiment (TL15)

Summary 2 (New ships needed)
- Division-sized troop transport x2
- Marine regiment-sized troop transport x1
- Half-regiment-sized troop transports x3
- Old tech half-regiment-sized troop transports x2

Regards PLST

 

[BetterThanLife]

Now that is a supp I don't have. Is it in the reprints? (And which version of Traveller is it?)

I forgot to count FSOTSI too. If you count the BZ from FSOTSI then there are three tenders.

It is a cross between a tender and a Drednaught. I guess my head wasn't screwed on right when I made that comment. The FSOTSI ships all seem so far off the rest of the capital ships in Traveller I tend to forget about it.

FSOTSI ships are organized in 4-5 ship squadrons. CT has squadrons being 4-8 with 8 being full strength squadrons. (Supp 9 and several other sources.)

Originally posted by thrash:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bhoins:
...there are no canon battle tenders actually laid out in any of the Suplements...

I guess that depends on whether you consider Spinward Marches Campaign a supplement: the 154th Battle Rider Squadron is detailed, with High Guard statistics for both riders and tender.
</font>[/QUOTE]

 

[Hal]

Unfortunately Bhoins, THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN is one of the MegaTraveller suppliments, not the Classic Traveller Suppliments. Until Marc Miller starts reprinting those, you're going to have to try and get a copy off the internet via Ebay or something else. The nice thing is that it has not only MegaTraveller Stats for the ships - it also has High Guard Stats for the Ships. Alas - there are errors in the pricing of the High Guard versions.

 

[Hal]

By the by - BatRon 154 is detailed to the extent that one can perhaps guess at what various numbers represent on the Counters. BatRon 154 is the Battle Carrier, 7 Battle Riders, 200 fighters, and I believe, 7 Sloan class DD's (DE's?)

That at least gives us a starting point

The counter's stats?

B4-US-6-2-8.

 

[BetterThanLife]

And this is news? Have you ever seen a game product, especially a RPG product that wasn't full of errors and ommissions? I think it is because the publishers don't understand and therefore don't have decent editors. After all the people who write these know what they want and know how it is supposed to work, so if things aren't written they might miss it, other things seem self evident ot the people that wrote the rules butthose of us reading them don't know the intention.

FASA produced some ships that appear in quite a bit of Traveller Artwork from GDW that can't be built under High Guard. Though you can get close with most of them. The Lucifer, and Valor Classes come to mind on the IN side and the Zhditz on the Zhodani side. (The Valor is in the picture with the SEH in the Rebellion Sourcebook.) I remember a picture of a Zhditz in the crosshairs in one of the books. They were in Adventure Class ships and were designed either under an edition of Highguard I have never seen or someone misread something in the rules when designing them. (The set includes an 800 ton corsair and a 500T SDB both with missile bays and a full complement of turrets.)

Originally posted by Hal:
Unfortunately Bhoins, THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN is one of the MegaTraveller suppliments, not the Classic Traveller Suppliments. Until Marc Miller starts reprinting those, you're going to have to try and get a copy off the internet via Ebay or something else. The nice thing is that it has not only MegaTraveller Stats for the ships - it also has High Guard Stats for the Ships. Alas - there are errors in the pricing of the High Guard versions.

 

[mike wightman]

In the history of the 154th battle Rider Squadron section of The SMC it says that the squadron always receives new ships at a Depot system.
This, and other stuff I've read about Depots, suggests to me that all major leading edge regular Naval ships are actually assembled/built in Depot systems.

Cruisers and older design BR and BB can be buil tat any shipyard with the plans.

 

[mike wightman]

And for more canonical Battle Riders, the TBE game Battle Rider has counters for the TL15 Triumph class tender which carries 4 Gallant class Battle Riders, and the TL14 Cleon class tender which carries 6 Admiral class Battle Riders.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Hey I already said ooops.

It has been a while with some of this material for me.

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
And for more canonical Battle Riders, the TBE game Battle Rider has counters for the TL15 Triumph class tender which carries 4 Gallant class Battle Riders, and the TL14 Cleon class tender which carries 6 Admmiral class Battle Riders.

 

[Hal]

If I had my wish(s)?

I'd like to figure out how much it costs to have a fleet of system defense boats as listed in FFW. I'd also like to see a FULL TO&E for all those counters.

Failing that? Two CruRon TO&E's plus Two BatRon TO&E's.

If we do a TO&E utilizing Battle Rider - we'd have to have a method for converting TNE to CT etc. To date, I'm not sure this has been done - has it?

By the by - I've done a revised preliminary sector wide Domestic product for Lunion...

150,572,738.39 MCr

Hope that helps anyone else - Come Tuesday Night I should have my webpages updated to reflect this value.

 

[kliner]

TL 10

You don't still need those ships do you?