RU, Budgets, and Navies in Pocket Empires

[robject]

FIRST THINGS

RU are potential, influence, get-things-doneability on the Pocket Empire scale.

RU are Strategy Points. RU are not measured in (for example) billions of credits (BCr). It is more likely that they represent the ability to buy task rolls, shift the balance of payoffs, or otherwise affect power relationships on the Pocket Empire scale. A frequent problem is that I tend to want to buy things with RU, and I think that's an incorrect metaphor. For example, I said that a cruiser is 1 RU, as if 1 RU were equal to BCr 20 or BCr 40. But really, what RU buys seems more like strategic moves.



RU is COMPARATIVE STRENGTH
[FONT=arial,helvetica]

Comparative Budgets. RU Resource Units are relative values: they are best understood in comparison to other worlds. Assuming World Alpha produces RU= 100 and World Beta produces RU= 50, one can assume Alpha has an economy twice the size of Beta. Similarly, if Alpha has a naval budget for ship production, Beta probably has a budget equal to half of Alpha’s.

[/FONT]The wording may be technically incorrect, but the sense is at least this clear: Alpha has more power than Beta.

[FONT=arial,helvetica]page 404 says the economic extension allows the calculation of RU's for a world in effect creating a world budget.

So there is a direct link between RU's and the numbers of Battalions and Capital ships deployed by a world.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Good point. Note also that page 404 might be "wrong".


[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]WHAT ABOUT TECH LEVEL?

Two components of RU (Resources and Infrastructure) take TL into account in a very general way: TL 8+ gives Resources a boost, and Importance gets a boost at TL 10+, which in turn boosts Infrastructure. So RU is relatively independent of TL.

That frees us to use TL as (for example) a Target Number for strategic tasks which are mainly technological. For example, battles (which could be opposed tasks, right?)

[/FONT]

RU is ALL ABOUT EMPIRE-BUILDING[FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]

[/FONT][/FONT]Consider three demands of empire: Diplomacy, Economics, War. Consider how we resolve each of these. They are task-driven, but there are different actors for each.

Economics could be a mix of Interpersonals (legislating taxes, for instance) and fleet or squadron actions (tradewar and interdiction). Economics tends to be the most productive -- and both sides of an economic exchange tend to split the benefits, don't they? Ideally they split the benefits 50-50. HOWEVER, the stronger entity will want to spend RU in order to shift political power in their favor. Right? So political power determines the split of economic benefits?

Diplomats might be corporate factors, lobbyists, ambassadors and embassies, agents, and other interesting personalities. They might use Interpersonal tasks straight out of the T5 book. Note that assassination is one of many ways to use a diplomat to get rid of another diplomat -- in essence, you're shifting the political power from one side to the other. Right? In Diplomacy, one side gets the lion's share, and the other side gets a concession. It's seldom just win-lose. And it's typically complex.

War is fought by fleets or squadrons or task forces, but at the end of the fight, it comes down to the two admirals meeting on the deck of a capital ship, surrounded by smoking hulls, for a duel to preserve honor. Or it comes down to a world surrendering on the terms of the intruder. War tends to be win-lose, and so it's the least profitable for both sides. But it does settle an argument.



HYPOTHESES

Hypothesis 1. 150 RU per year can pay for and maintain 1 heavy cruiser, 50 RU for one medium cruiser, and that 25 RU for a light cruiser.

In another thread I got some thoughts about what ships Regina might be fielding. The reason I asked was because I was angling to figure out what a single world can support (buy?) with RU.

Of course, I don't know what percent of RU "goes to building a space navy" -- or if indeed that's the right way to see it. The most interesting use of RU is in balancing a world's needs with it. Maybe the navy gets 5%. Maybe not.

So.

Say we have a remote pocket empire, and the capital world is "like" Regina, because I know that Regina has 6,000 RU. That may have changed in all the rules updates. But let's just say it's 6,000 RU. And say that this Regina-like world uses its budget to pay for and maintain 2 Light CruRons.

So a pocket empire, 6,000 RU. Say 5% is for its navy -- so 300 RU.

Now suppose that 300 RU can buy 2 Light CruRons, or 150 RU per CruRon. Assuming 6 light cruisers, that's 25 RU for a light cruiser. If it's 3 medium cruisers, then 50 RU for a medium cruiser. And, assuming 1 heavy cruiser, then that's about 150 RU.

That's where I'm going with this -- trying to guesstimate some benchmarks, perhaps to destroy later when the numbers prove unworkable.


WHAT DO YOU BUY WITH RU? (more hypothesizing)

[FONT=arial,helvetica]As long as you don't try to use them to figure out how many cruisers a world has. For that you really ought to use percentages of GWP or PE-style RUs.[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica](Despite Hans' quote above, I think RUs *do* in fact inform us of how many cruisers a world *could* have. War power is in economic tension with trade power and political power, perhaps.)

[/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica][FONT=arial,helvetica]I think RU gives you advantage, sometimes overwhelmingly so, but I think there are subtleties that numbers can't measure -- leadership, a veteran team, and opportunity.

[/FONT]
Inside Battles. Various competing interests within the world in question. Balkanized worlds thus are simply at one extreme end of a continuum.

Coalition Forming. External coalitions are needed to push an agenda on the empire level. As smaller coalitions merge into larger ones, the stakes get higher. At this level, it doesn't matter what the agenda is: the struggle is over who is in charge of a coalition.

Diplomacy. Once coalition building stops, then you have to wrestle your opponents to the floor. One option is to use Diplomacy: use bargaining and favor-currying and string-pulling to trade off items on agendas to get some of what you want.

Economics. When diplomacy fails, fall back on an economic struggle. Force your opponents to yield via interstellar industry and trade. Price controls, taxation, tradewar, whatever.

War. When diplomacy and economics fails, war is expensive and dangerous.





[/FONT]

 

[robject]

Potentially Alternate View

Supposing a navy gets 5% of the overall budget.

and

42% is operations and maintenance
25% is personnel
16% is procurement
10% is research
6% is construction, housing, defense-related activities, etc.


Further, assume 6,000 RU for the world budget, then the navy gets 300 RU.

From there, procurement gets 48 RU.

If procurement includes ongoing payments, then those 48 RU would pay for those 2 light CruRons. If I assume 6 light cruisers per squadron (i.e. 12 light cruisers total), then one light cruiser would cost 4 RU per year.

 

[pendragonman]

I suppose one of the activities should be to find out what RU pays for...and what 1 RU represents in wealth :CoW:

 

[Matt123]

I like where you are going with this, it offers a lot of potential for detail minded people and tough decision making regards defence versus research, exploitation and sophont quality of life.

Its been a while since I used T4 PE, but one approach might be to declare n RUs can support y Cruisers including all support and assuming set proportions for the categories you mention. This will likely be sufficient for most gamers but allow others to perhaps create house rules expanding on how changes in these proportions may affect military and economic performance.

Example house rules might say reduce the procurement budget and increase say fleet officer training. Or perhaps adopt a system navy that can ignore navigation schools in favour of procuring more fighters or SDBs. Thinking about that, the 'standard' set proportions could be established for Interstellar (first rate) Navies, Colonial (second rate) Navies and System defence.

 

[rancke]

Are these the Pocket Empires RUs that work or the T5 RU that don't work? (Or did the T5 RUs get fixed?)


Hans

 

[robject]

These are T5 RUs.

 

[rancke]

These are T5 RUs.

Surely you remember the discussion about them? They are (or were) not proportional to population size, which gives (for example) a world with 10 billion people only 11% more RUs than a world with 1 billion. Similar silly results for other pairs of worlds with different population levels.


Hans

 

[robject]

Its been a while since I used T4 PE, but one approach might be to declare n RUs can support y Cruisers including all support and assuming set proportions for the categories you mention. This will likely be sufficient for most gamers but allow others to perhaps create house rules expanding on how changes in these proportions may affect military and economic performance.

And that is exactly the purpose of RU in T5: rather than tie it directly to a value in MCr, it's tied directly to "things you can do with them".

It's lighter than T4.

 

[rancke]

And that is exactly the purpose of RU in T5: rather than tie it directly to a value in MCr, it's tied directly to "things you can do with them".

The problem is that it doesn't work. It produces inconsistent results. It's a Really Bad Idea.

For example, a world similar to Regina (880 RU) except that its population level is one would produce 110 RUs. That 70 people producing enough surplus to afford 12.5% of what Regina's 700 million people can afford.

Then we have Regina's lookalike that is identical in every way except that it's balkanized into ten nations with 70 million people each. Each of those ten nations will produce a surplus of 770 RUs or a total surplus of 7700 RUs.


Hans

 

[Matt123]

The problem is that it doesn't work. It produces inconsistent results. It's a Really Bad Idea.

Sounds more like you are criticising the implementation of the idea, rather than the idea itself...

 

[DonM]

Where are people getting the 880 RU figure for Regina from? The current T5 calculation is significantly different. Let's see if this works...

Spin	3124	MORA	AA99AC7-F	Hi In 	Cs 		 	{ 5 }	(F9H+5)	[AF5F]	BEF	NS	 	112	ImDd	F0 V	L	9	11,475
Spin	1910	Regina	A788899-C	Ri 	Pa Ph An Cp 	(Amindii)2 Varg0 Asla0 	Sa	{ 4 }	(D7E+5)	[9C6D]	BcCeF	NS	 	703	ImDd	F7 V BD M3 V	C	8	6,370

This shows that Mora's RU is 11,475, and Regina's is 6,370.

 

[Ishmael]

Mora has only twice the economic output despite having 100 times the population of Regina (not to mention 3 tech level advantage over Regina)?
high unemployment?

 

[robject]

The problem is that we try to buy things with RU, and that's an incorrect metaphor. For example, I said that a cruiser is 1 RU, as if 1 RU were equal to BCr 20 or BCr 40.

But, as Matt123 noted, implementation matters.

RU are potential, influence, get-things-doneability on the Pocket Empire scale.

RU are not BCr. It is more likely that they represent the ability to buy task rolls on the Pocket Empire scale.


Now. Suppose Mora had twice the resources to attempt the same number of tasks as Regina. Wouldn't that represent a more significant advantage than just having twice the cash?



What I do know is that RU are also used for comparison. Mora at twice the RU as Regina may mean it gets two task rolls for every one of Regina's when they argue over policy, budget allocations, fleet allocations, defenses, economic incentives, building programs... The implication is that we have fights based on coalitions of worlds.


So consider a situation where two worlds are in conflict. Opposed task rolls are adjusted based on the ratio of RU to RU.

 

[rancke]

Sounds more like you are criticising the implementation of the idea, rather than the idea itself...

You mean the idea of idea of ignoring how much the world produces in total and instead looking at how much it has left over for the military and similar expenses? Sure, I like that idea fine. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that It doesn't bother me, because to be frank, I don't see the advantage. Instead of figuring out what percentage of the production that is available for the military, you figure out how much is used for everything else and subtract that from the total. It six of one and half a dozen of the other, seems to me.

Note that I've forgotten what formula TPTB wound up with after the old discussion (and I haven't taken the time to track it down), so I may be making a mistake here.

Perhaps someone would be kind enough to post the current T5 formula for RUs and save me the bother?


Hans

 

[rancke]

The problem is that we try to buy things with RU, and that's an incorrect metaphor. For example, I said that a cruiser is 1 RU, as if 1 RU were equal to BCr 20 or BCr 40.

But, as Matt123 noted, implementation matters.

RU are potential, influence, get-things-doneability on the Pocket Empire scale.

So RUs do not denote resources, except that there's a very tenuous correlation?

RU are not BCr. It is more likely that they represent the ability to buy task rolls on the Pocket Empire scale.

Now we're getting something. What's a task roll and what does buying one represent?

Now. Suppose Mora had twice the resources to attempt the same number of tasks as Regina. Wouldn't that represent a more significant advantage than just having twice the cash?

Yes, but it seems to me possibly not a more significant advantage than having 14 times the cash.


Hans

 

[robject]

Yes, but it seems to me possibly not a more significant advantage than having 14 times the cash.

In other words, perhaps results should stack.

 

[rancke]

Mora has only twice the economic output despite having 100 times the population of Regina (not to mention 3 tech level advantage over Regina)?

Well, it's only 14 times the population. The TL difference would increase that, of course. Each Moranian would average a per capita income about a third greater than each Reginan and the credits they earn are worth about 43% more.


Hans

 

[robject]

Now we're getting something. What's a task roll and what does buying one represent?

That's the question I'd like to hear brainstorms on.

I think some of this is empire-building, consisting of:

Inside Battles. Various competing interests within the world in question. Balkanized worlds thus are simply at one extreme end of a continuum.

Coalition Forming. External coalitions are needed to push an agenda on the empire level. As smaller coalitions merge into larger ones, the stakes get higher. At this level, it doesn't matter what the agenda is: the struggle is over who is in charge of a coalition.

Diplomacy. Once coalition building stops, then you have to wrestle your opponents to the floor. One option is to use Diplomacy: use bargaining and favor-currying and string-pulling to trade off items on agendas to get some of what you want.

Economics. When diplomacy fails, fall back on an economic struggle. Force your opponents to yield via interstellar industry and trade. Price controls, taxation, tradewar, whatever.

War. When diplomacy and economics fails, war is expensive and dangerous.

 

[rancke]

I dug around and found this about the definition of RUs:

From T5, p.427-428:

Resource Units = R * L * I * E

R=Resources
L=Labor
I= Infrastructure
E=Efficiency

If any value = 0, use 1 (to avoid multiplying by zero).
Resource units can be negative: a world can be a net drain for Resource Units.

Resources (= 2D; if Mainworld TL= 8+, then plus GG and Belts),

Labor (= Population minus 1)

Infrastructure (usually = 2D + Importance)

Efficiencies (generated by Flux): Address legal, cultural, and social norms which may increase or reduce overall economic strength. Negative Efficiencies (Inefficiencies) are bad; a positive value for Efficiencies is preferable.

Hans and Don went over this several times a few months ago. The outcome of that was Don and Marc agreed the negative efficiency didn't turn the whole RU calculation to a negative number.

The official result of a negative efficiency is the multiplier is now a fraction. Specifically: -1 eff = multiplier of 0.9, -2 eff = 0.8, -3 eff = 0.7, -4 eff = 0.6, -5 eff = 0.5. These are the values used for the Trade Map data calculation of the RUs as shown in the wiki.

This is official errata from DonM and Marc.

So as far as I can tell, the current definition of RU is:

Resource Units = R * L * I * E

R=Resources
L=Labor
I= Infrastructure
E=Efficiency

If any value = 0, use 1 (to avoid multiplying by zero).

Resources (= 2D; if Mainworld TL= 8+, then plus GG and Belts),

Labor (= Population minus 1)

Infrastructure (usually = 2D + Importance)

Efficiencies (generated by Flux): Address legal, cultural, and social norms which may increase or reduce overall economic strength. -1 eff = multiplier of 0.9, -2 eff = 0.8, -3 eff = 0.7, -4 eff = 0.6, -5 eff = 0.5. Eff 0 = multiplier of 1; Eff 1-5 = multiplier of 1-5.


If this is correct, RUs denote the natural riches of the system (R) modified by the order of magnitude of the labor available to exploit them (L), the political power gained from the importance of the world (I), and the efficiency by which those advantages are exploited (E).

Now, personally I'd be happier if they were called PP (political power) or PU (political units) or something like that and, say, Influence instead of Infrastructure, but I can see how they might work for a wargame (although I'm a little vague on just how).

As long as you don't try to use them to figure out how many cruisers a world has. For that you really ought to use percentages of GWP or PE-style RUs.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Mind you, for universe-building purposes you're going to have to account for why this world has an Influence (excuse me, Infrastructure) of 2 and that pretty much identical one has one of 12. Or why that Importance 0 world has an Influ... Infrastructure of 12 (0+12) while that Importance 5 world only has one of 7 (5+2). And "because I rolled a 12 on 2D" isn't going to be good enough.


Hans