Shipping Losses

[Antony]

While following various discussions a thought struck me in relation to my Banners game. Specifically the old planetary navy of the planet Alston. Pre virus Alstons shipyards (based on TCS) had a capacity of 9,200,000 dt
T4s Imperial Squadrons would give Alston 150 SDB squadrons and upto 3 starship squadrons (say 3 cruiser squadrons). Granted that this is a mix and match system, but no matter how you look at it pre virus Alston would have had a great deal of shipping, shipping that no longer exists.

Basically virus cost Alston close to a million tons of warship (assuming armoured cruiser class vessels) and probably tens of millions of tons in civilian shipping

I have roughly worked out what happened to the cruiser squadrons, but was wondering if people have given the losses much thought in their PEs?

For example 3 cruiser squadrons each containing 4 60,000dt cruisers plus escorts were they all totally vaporised, vampired etc. What a treasure trove even one damaged vessel would make!

 

[shield]

For imperial campaigns most of the warships got smashed in the fighting. there is a quote in one of the MT books saying that at the end of the war only about 50-90 imperial fleets remained and most of those were under-strength (not sure it applied to the marches).

As for the merchant marine, they got trashed by the fighting, or the black war strikes, or the hard times pirates, raiders etc. Some got transfered back to the safes, and some like mega-corp freighters with partial streamlined hulls, no scoops or purification plants and inadequate weapons, probably got mothballed at strategic systems until things got better.

Your banners campaign is obviously different with little final war effects. I guess that anything in orbit either delibeately rammed the planet, overloaded its own power plant or just died and eventually crashed. Anything refuelling probably just crashed. I imagine those heading out-system just kept on going taking their crews to a slow death in deeps space.

Some may have been formed into refugee fleets to flee the virus and just disappeared (like dulinor's corination fleet after they were infected). They could be anywhere in J36 assuming a misjump.

My PE found a refugee fleet (25 x 20ktn transports) in the oort cloud of one world, where the refugees made it to and disembarked before virus hit them. The PE has managed to get 5 of them working so far.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Antony]

I like the idea of the refugee ships. Partly that is how I envisaged survivors from Virian Belt escaping, probably to Alston whose population grew by two billion in the virus period.