Starship size
- Thread starter parmasson
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And how often does the fleet stay at zero, once it's been reduced to zero? Sure, it's an imperfect simulation to assume that the 10% figure includes infrastructure, but it seems well within the level of detail of the simulation, and conquest presumably results in gaining infrastructure anyway.
Circular logic: you're assuming that infrastructure costs are included in the 10% maintenance figure and therefore negligible, when that is the question.</font>[/QUOTE]Not so. In fact, I'm assuming that they're comparable to the cost of maintaining the ships alone. What I'm also assuming is that Cr500 per capita is already a lot for a population to spend on its navy (Though that's more a fact than an assumption). Consequently either infrastructure costs are not included in the Cr500 but negligible or they're included in the Cr500. I assume the second.
As an aside, if you were to claim that infrastructure costs were fairly small (say, an additional Cr100), then I wouldn't mind going along with that. For reasons of my own I would like the total peacetime military expenditure of a government with a government code of 1.0 to be equivalent to 10% of GWP[*], and for that purpose Cr500 is just a tad too low.
[*] That would make the highest possible wartime budget 15%, which would neatly dovetail with Striker.
It's a gross over-simplification that ignores the effects that campaigns have on infrastructure and base support. </font>[/QUOTE]Just as TCS does, you mean?
What does any of that prove except that the TCS model isn't all that detailed?
It's a lot less inaccurate than your assumption, which provides the pocket empires with fleets that are totally oversized.
How so, without imposing your assumptions on it?</font>[/QUOTE]By imposing your assumptions on it. You're saying that infrastructure costs are significant. You're saying the naval budget that we know of isn't being used to support it. This means that either the total naval budget is much higher -- a possibility that I reject because it would lead to peacetime budgets that are unreasonably high -- or half the naval budget we know of is actually being used to pay for infrastructure maintenance. Which would mean that the calculated fleet sizes are massively wrong.
But not considering how much it costs and where the money to pay for it is to come from is a fatal flaw in your model.
You are making the extraordinary claim that fleet maintenance does not (cannot) represent just what it appears to do. The burden of proof is yours: where are your revised figures, including the factors you've neglected so far?</font>[/QUOTE]I don't accept the burden of proof. I haven't neglected them. I've claimed they don't amount to more than 2% of the original cost of the ships. I do so not because I have worked out a detailed analysis of how many missiles a ship expends each year during peacetime. I admit (no, I state) that I haven't. I do so because I claim that using 7% to pay for this would leave nothing over from the only naval budget that we know of for maintaining the bases. You are the one who claims (by implication) that the budget is larger than what the canonical evidence says. If you want to substantiate that, you're the one that has to prove, not only that 10% is a reasonable figure, but that 5% is an unreasonable one.
I have shown you mine: I claim that your model will give excessively high naval budgets.
What fleet sizes are those? The fleet sizes depicted in FFW and other canon sources are entirely consistent with the budget percentages in Striker and the 10% fleet maintenance figure -- as I've already demonstrated in considerable detail. </font>[/QUOTE]But all through this discussion you've insisted that the 10% fleet maintenance figure is wrong, because you've insisted that 10% is only enough to maintain the ships themselves. If you're right in you assumption that infrastructure maintenance cost roughly the same, you're insisting on spending 20% per year (And if you say that infrastructure costs are 2%, then you're saying that the true cost is 12%. In any event, by insisting that 10% is only enough to pay for the ships alone, you're saying that a navy costs more than 10% to maintain. It's all very well to blithely say that you're ignoring infrastructure costs, but it's arrant nonsense to do so. You can't dissasociate the two. Either infrastructure costs are included in the 10% or they not. You can't have them included when it suits you and excluded when it suits you. So which is it?
The statement "10+X > 10 for X > 0" is also trivially true, yet it's what you seem to be trying to deny.
Chris, what you seem to be saying is so silly that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding you, but I can't for the life of me spot where I'm going wrong.
It is a straw man because you are answering your own objections, not mine.</font>[/QUOTE]What?!? I'm objecting to what I perceive as a flaw in your model. How can that be a straw man? It directly addresses your argument.
The available naval budget pays for two things: Ship construction, for which there are extensive rules, and fleet maintenance, for which there is only one, extremely simple, rule. Your assumption, that this one extremely simple rule only covers ship maintenance and not bases and logistics, is only an assumption, not the incntrovertible fact you treat it as (Nor is it a whole set of "extensive rules"). My assumption that it does cover bases and logistics is also just an assumption. The difference is that your assumption entails big discrepancies in the overall picture while my assumption entail small discrepancies.
Hans
Chris,
I've had a long look at your analysis, and it looks like I may have to revise my ideas. It's an impressive piece of work and you've even answered my biggest objection by pointing out that by taking population multiplier into account, the result approaches the fleet sizes from Rebellion Sourcebook. (I have a few quibbles, but that's all they are, mere quibbles (Like the fact that I can't figure out which FFW counters are supposed to represent the Tigress squadron(s).))
I still don't see where all the money is supposed to go to, but I did an estimate of how much it would cost to empty all the missile racks on a Tigress just once. Depending on just how much a practice missile costs, it could well run into 5 or 600 MCr. Do that 40 or 50 times and you would have used up that 7%. Indeed, fire a salvo of nuclear missiles and you'd have used up not just the ship's but the entire squadron's budget for years to come.
Of course, my gut instinct tells me that under those circumstances, no navy would allow its captains to fire off even one full missile salvo per year, but I have to admit that it is possible to use that much money.
My biggest stumbling block is still that I don't see how a world can afford to spend Cr500 per capita on their ships alone and a comparable sum on everything else ("the overhead"
. But it occurs to me that it may not have to. I've always believed that TCS' rules should be interpreted as applying to small pocket empires surrounded by other pocket empires, and it seems to me that logistics would be considerably less complicated for a world with only one big base (and maybe one or two secondary bases a few parsecs away). Compared to the logisitcs of an IN fleet, which has half a dozen bases spread out over 30 worlds (and in some cases has to import its technological needs from outside the subsector). Not to mention inefficiency, bureaucracy, and outright theft and corruption).
So maybe the overhead for a small pocket empire isn't comparable to the cost of maintaining the ships alone? If 'everything' else is only Cr100 or Cr150 per capita, we end up with a peacetime budget that is high (10%), but not crippling.
I had some things I could reply to individual points in your latest post, but since I've decided to change my mind about the big issue, it hardly seems worth the bother to go into them.
Hans
PS. I would still like to get a better notion of what all that money is actually used for.
I've had a long look at your analysis, and it looks like I may have to revise my ideas. It's an impressive piece of work and you've even answered my biggest objection by pointing out that by taking population multiplier into account, the result approaches the fleet sizes from Rebellion Sourcebook. (I have a few quibbles, but that's all they are, mere quibbles (Like the fact that I can't figure out which FFW counters are supposed to represent the Tigress squadron(s).))
I still don't see where all the money is supposed to go to, but I did an estimate of how much it would cost to empty all the missile racks on a Tigress just once. Depending on just how much a practice missile costs, it could well run into 5 or 600 MCr. Do that 40 or 50 times and you would have used up that 7%. Indeed, fire a salvo of nuclear missiles and you'd have used up not just the ship's but the entire squadron's budget for years to come.
Of course, my gut instinct tells me that under those circumstances, no navy would allow its captains to fire off even one full missile salvo per year, but I have to admit that it is possible to use that much money.
My biggest stumbling block is still that I don't see how a world can afford to spend Cr500 per capita on their ships alone and a comparable sum on everything else ("the overhead"
. But it occurs to me that it may not have to. I've always believed that TCS' rules should be interpreted as applying to small pocket empires surrounded by other pocket empires, and it seems to me that logistics would be considerably less complicated for a world with only one big base (and maybe one or two secondary bases a few parsecs away). Compared to the logisitcs of an IN fleet, which has half a dozen bases spread out over 30 worlds (and in some cases has to import its technological needs from outside the subsector). Not to mention inefficiency, bureaucracy, and outright theft and corruption).So maybe the overhead for a small pocket empire isn't comparable to the cost of maintaining the ships alone? If 'everything' else is only Cr100 or Cr150 per capita, we end up with a peacetime budget that is high (10%), but not crippling.
I had some things I could reply to individual points in your latest post, but since I've decided to change my mind about the big issue, it hardly seems worth the bother to go into them.
Hans
PS. I would still like to get a better notion of what all that money is actually used for.
rancke, thrash...
You guys are going about this all wrong.
This debate should have spun out into a series of well crafted flaming insults, sarcasm, and mockery. You're supposed hammer on things like typos on minor mistakes and pretend not to notice each other's strong arguments.
Sheesh. This is the internet for crying out loud!
Now.... What is it we're agreeing on? That Striker had it right all along? Is this for real?
This can't be real. This is some kind of trick from the machine civilization. It's just another form of control I tell you...!
You guys are going about this all wrong.
This debate should have spun out into a series of well crafted flaming insults, sarcasm, and mockery. You're supposed hammer on things like typos on minor mistakes and pretend not to notice each other's strong arguments.
Sheesh. This is the internet for crying out loud!
Now.... What is it we're agreeing on? That Striker had it right all along? Is this for real?
This can't be real. This is some kind of trick from the machine civilization. It's just another form of control I tell you...!
Plankowner
SOC-13
Jeffr0 is right, don't you two know how to conduct a FLAME WAR???
All this back and forth with logical arguments that don't get personal is disgusting. Act like 3-year-olds for God's Sake!
Actually, I have read both of your arguements with great interest. It sounds like you are coming to a consensus. Obviously, neither Striker nor TCS are perfect and both were designed without detailed, multi-stellar economic models, but with playability and at least a surface level of reality in mind.
I have played both Striker campaigns and TCS campaigns (many decades ago). Separately, the economics work within the context of their setting, but I never tried to combine them, nor did I try to extend the model across a large Imperium. GOOD LUCK.
I'm afraid that you will run into the same kind of problems that people are running into trying to make sense of the economic model for starships.
Seriously, I like that you have been able to keep your debate civilized and interesting.
I hope you get to a solution!
All this back and forth with logical arguments that don't get personal is disgusting. Act like 3-year-olds for God's Sake!
Actually, I have read both of your arguements with great interest. It sounds like you are coming to a consensus. Obviously, neither Striker nor TCS are perfect and both were designed without detailed, multi-stellar economic models, but with playability and at least a surface level of reality in mind.
I have played both Striker campaigns and TCS campaigns (many decades ago). Separately, the economics work within the context of their setting, but I never tried to combine them, nor did I try to extend the model across a large Imperium. GOOD LUCK.
I'm afraid that you will run into the same kind of problems that people are running into trying to make sense of the economic model for starships.
Seriously, I like that you have been able to keep your debate civilized and interesting.
I hope you get to a solution!
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