RU, Budgets, and Navies in Pocket Empires

[robject]

As long as you don't try to use them to figure out how many cruisers a world has.

Yes.... and no. I think we can use them to figure out how many squadrons a world can support. But that's not the interesting question.


And... 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.


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.

Diplomats might be ambassadors and embassies, or other interesting personalities. They might use Interpersonal tasks straight out of the T5 book. But there is also assassination.

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.

Economics could be a mix of Interpersonals (legislating taxes, for instance) and fleet or squadron actions (tradewar and interdiction).

 

[Ishmael]

I see things as all economics where diplomacy is just making deals with the opponent and war is forcing deals on the opponent
the use of economic might against an opponent is a matter of who can run their economy better.


How does T5 use these RU's?

 

[robject]

I see things as all economics where diplomacy is just making deals with the opponent and war is forcing deals on the opponent

[...]

How does T5 use these RU's?

Cheers Ishmael.

The way I've heard it is that war is "economics by other means" and economics is "politics by other means".

The T5 core rules are for role-playing, so wargaming aspects -- RU and Battle-Class Ships for examples -- are not defined.

 

[rancke]

Yes.... and no. I think we can use them to figure out how many squadrons a world can support.

Not if you want answers that are not sometimes ridiculous. In this case I'm thinking of low population worlds that will have plenty of RUs because of lucky die rolls but wouldn't have the GWP to support the fleet the RUs would allow.

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.

I'm afraid you're losing me, but I'll make an attempt to keep up.

Diplomats might be ambassadors and embassies, or other interesting personalities. They might use Interpersonal tasks straight out of the T5 book. But there is also assassination.

PUs, excuse me, RUs, appear to be political capital. Sort of. Or political strength. If you expend RUs to perform tasks and become unable to do anything else when you run out, it's capital. If you compare RUs to determine the odds of achieving a task, it's strength. If you do both, it's a horrible mish-mash.

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.

Or a stalemate. Or one world conceeding something to the other.

I don't understand what you're getting at here.

Economics could be a mix of Interpersonals (legislating taxes, for instance) and fleet or squadron actions (tradewar and interdiction).

No, not really. Except for low-population worlds, trade is a very minor part of a world's income. You can interdict a world for decades and provided it has the requisite tech level, it will be able to maintain its fleet up to strength.


Hans

 

[robject]

Not if you want answers that are not sometimes ridiculous. In this case I'm thinking of low population worlds that will have plenty of RUs because of lucky die rolls but wouldn't have the GWP to support the fleet the RUs would allow.

If there are plenty of RUs, then the world has sufficient resources to support whatever it needs to. GWP is subsumed into RU.

[RUs appear to be political capital/strength]

I think they may be more like physical characteristics during combat, or perhaps like Psi points in T4. Strong, yes, but they can be "used" and therefore grow weaker as they are spent. Not a mish-mash at all.

And as for trade and interdictions: Perhaps economic actions aren't as basic as tradewar and embargo. Or perhaps economics don't play into this at all. I don't know. I was providing examples of the kinds of actions that might be interesting from a wargame point of view. I'm sure there are different actions which are more appropriate.

 

[Ishmael]

The T5 core rules are for role-playing, so wargaming aspects -- RU and Battle-Class Ships for examples -- are not defined.

Unless T5 defines how it uses RU's, then any discussion of how to use RU's as defined by T5 is kind of meaningless, imo, at least until Mr.Miller defines it

folks would be better off using them as T4's PE uses them which already covers diplomacy and war....and how many cruisers a world can afford to field...

maybe a simplified form of PE, perhaps
but until then, it seems to me that the T5 way of calc'ing RU's is flawed by how it uses labor and not 10^labor

 

[robject]

Unless T5 defines how it uses RU's, then any discussion of how to use RU's as defined by T5 is kind of meaningless, imo, at least until Mr.Miller defines it

Consider it a thought exercise. After all, T5 defines how to calculate RU. How might that then be used in a wargame?

I note that T5 pins RU pretty tightly to budgets, rather than a strength characteristic:

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.



Anyway, I find that thinking about things -- aloud to people here on COTI -- helps me understand them better.

 

[JFGarber]

A few winters ago I did something very similar to this using the T4 Pocket Empires rules and a spreadsheet to automate world GDP calculations (prepared by a third party--I do not remember who and cannot quickly locate that material for a proper credit.)

My precise numbers varied from those of robject, but the approach was the same. A certain portion of WDP was allocated to defense, and that split among jump, system, COACC, and surface. I randomly determined the "certain portion" based on a die roll, modified by the world's temperament characteristics, and the allocations among the four services were also random within limits.

I then converted from RU (verboten in T5) to MCr and played with fleet compositions to my heart's content.

This method worked for me, in that the granularity was fine enough to develop an internally consistent method method for determining the defense capabilities of a brand new colony of 5,000 sophonts up to worlds of a couple hundred million population. It fell apart above that because the potential fleet sizes began to number in the thousands, and that's not the TU that I was looking for. I didn't really care because all of the planning and play was out in the frontiers.

I provide this long-winded response merely to say that I like this proposed "alternative" method.

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.

 

[rancke]

If there are plenty of RUs, then the world has sufficient resources to support whatever it needs to. GWP is subsumed into RU.

This doesn't become true no matter how many times you say it. Since Labor is not proportional to the size of the population then it's not proportional to GWP (since GWP IS proportional to the size of the population).

I deleted my response to the rest of your post because of a too often forgotten resolve to try not to rain on other people's parades. If you want to work out a way to use RUs in war games, go for it, and I wish you the best of luck. But when you try to apply them to setting-building, you're trying to square the circle.


Hans

 

[JFGarber]

I think they may be more like physical characteristics during combat, or perhaps like Psi points in T4. Strong, yes, but they can be "used" and therefore grow weaker as they are spent. Not a mish-mash at all.

Perhaps there is a certain roll for a world to receive a BatRon, say 50 or better on a 3d6. And to receive a pair of SDB's the roll is a 3 or better on 3d6. RU's can be allocated before the roll as modifiers, and are removed from the pool after allocation, regardless of the results of the subsequent roll. Every roll requires 1 RU perhaps?

One significant shortfall of this method, from my perspective, is that I have no idea how to address worlds with fractional RU. IMTU there are worlds that are important to the storyline where the total defense budget is government subsidy of a handful of free traders (essentially a militia).

 

[Ishmael]

I provide this long-winded response merely to say that I like this proposed "alternative" method.

here is an old discussion of a similar/same method
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=20618
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I just don't understand the usefulness of T5's method of figuring RU's
it uses labor in a way that makes me scratch my head and go 'huh?"
infrastructure follows from a world's importance? ( I use PE infrastructure as the tech level of local manufacturing capability, myself )

I just don't get it and don't see any usefulness in it as it stands now; PE is better and I feel T5 should go in that direction once something is actually done with RU's in it.

 

[rancke]

I note that T5 pins RU pretty tightly to budgets, rather than a strength characteristic:

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.

And that's utter nonsense. Because why? Because RUs are not proportional to GWP, which is a unit used to measure economies. So if Alpha produces 100 RUs and Beta produces 50 RUs, it might be because Alpha has twice the economy of Beta. But it may also be because they have the same economies but Alpha is twice as good at exploiting its political advantages or some other non-economic reason.

And if Alpha has twice the RUs of Beta because Alpha has a population of 9 billion (Labor = 8) and Beta has a population of 100,000 (Labor = 4), then it most definitely and beyond any dispute is not because Alpha's economy is only twice that of Beta.

So when T5 pins RUs pretty tightly to budgets, it's because the writer made a mistake.


Hans

 

[robject]

If you want to work out a way to use RUs in war games, go for it, and I wish you the best of luck. But when you try to apply them to setting-building, you're trying to square the circle.

Granted, Hans, and thank you for your consideration. We juggle multiple masses in variable gravity, and that's the way it is.

 

[robject]

And if Alpha has twice the RUs of Beta because Alpha has a population of 9 billion (Labor = 8) and Beta has a population of 100,000 (Labor = 4), then it most definitely and beyond any dispute is not because Alpha's economy is only twice that of Beta.

Nomenclature, perhaps, in this case. T5s multiplicands show where a high labor pool can yet have few RU. Maybe this is "disposable" RU then?

 

[rancke]

Nomenclature, perhaps, in this case. T5s multiplicands show where a high labor pool can yet have few RU. Maybe this is "disposable" RU then?

But not to the tune of the orders of magnitude involved here, surely?!? Alpha's economy should be somewhere around 90,000 times the size of Beta's.

I'm going to repeat that: Ninety thousand times bigger!

Just what sort of non-economic factors do you imagine could possibly compensate for that sort of discrepancy¹?

¹ And magic doesn't count. I suppose that you could use an Ancient artifact, but I do hope you're not going to go that way. ​

Hans

 

[robject]

¹ And magic doesn't count. I suppose that you could use an Ancient artifact, but I do hope you're not going to go that way. ​

DANGIT!! That Primordials' city was my ace in the hole!

 

[mike wightman]

Is a RU from Imperium the same as a RU from Dark Nebula?

Is a heavy cruiser at TL10 the same as a heavy cruiser at TL20?

 

[robject]

(1) Is a RU from Imperium the same as a RU from Dark Nebula?

(2) Is a heavy cruiser at TL10 the same as a heavy cruiser at TL20?

(1) I don't know.

(2) It sounds like a rhetorical question, but... no, the terms are far too mushy. "Heavy" itself is meaningless except in terms of the boardgames, where it is used as a differentiator with "Light".

But if it helps, just for the sake of this discussion, we can use "heavy cruiser" as shorthand for a 100,000 ton fighting ship of any TL. Just agree that it might not apply outside of this discussion. In fact that was the way I was thinking, even though it's not necessarily correct:

Light Cruiser 30kt
Medium Cruiser 60kt
Heavy Cruiser 100kt
Battleship 200kt
Dreadnought 500kt



NOW you've done it. You've got me thinking about TL 20.

 

[Original_Carl]

Just what sort of non-economic factors do you imagine could possibly compensate for that sort of discrepancy

Tech Level should be factored into RU calculation. That would go a long way to adding utility to the number by factoring in the technological differences between worlds.

 

[rancke]

Tech Level should be factored into RU calculation. That would go a long way to adding utility to the number by factoring in the technological differences between worlds.

It would also bring them a little bit closer to GWPs since tech level is factored into GWP calculation. :devil:


Hans