That's all your threat assessments, capabilities, peacetime duties, economics that the IN has to fulfill. One way to see all these things is forensically through the fleet composition. It seems easier to make canon work, rather than changing canon.
The Compleat Battleship
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That's all your threat assessments, capabilities, peacetime duties, economics that the IN has to fulfill. One way to see all these things is forensically through the fleet composition. It seems easier to make canon work, rather than changing canon.
Naw, that the composition isn't the best one and reflects politics is a far more likely scenario when dealing with humans.
Politics is the total complex of relations between people living in society by definition, so it is part of the sum total of what the IN is. Best is just a value judgement, while it might not seem most efficient for a single task, the IN has many roles to fulfill.
Wow! Brilliant. Yet, you don't understand what I meant by the comment.
Yes I do, I just don't agree that it is all politics, most of the arguments against BB's have the logic failure of just saying a BB vs BR, which is GIGO, because that isn't the fleet composition. This is the same as the Sherman vs Panther on other wargame boards, on paper the Panther seems great, but in reality the Sherman was better.
The argument should be IN fleet versus enemy fleet and how BB's fit in the IN. The BB's like the Tigress do seem to put all eggs in one basket, being a spinal weapon carrier and a regular carrier with 300 hundred fighters. It also is just one package to jump in and out of systems, in wartime a batron is 8 ships and 2400 fighters, that is a lot of force to swarm a planet.
Not according to your comment.
I assuredly do. But with the multi-spinal rule, that would mean a BR squadron with a Lurenti, would only carry seven spinals, while a Tigress Batron, could have 40 spinals plus x number of reduced amount of fighters, not to mention other attached ships. Start throwing in BGG's, Crurons, etc. and I'm not seeing BB's being such a bad investment. A speedboat with an exocet might be able to seriously damage or sink an Aegis, but I wouldn't replace all the Aegis cruisers with speedboats because of it.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Historical anecdote - the French navy once had this idea to take on the RN - build lots of torpedo armed MTBs.
Hence the invention of the Torpedo Boat Destroyer - or Destroyer for short.
Hence the invention of the Torpedo Boat Destroyer - or Destroyer for short.
Yes, that's the question this all boils down to, more or less.
We can get around this by looking at what canon says the Fleets are made up of and inferring rough support capabilities. Mike Wightman and Steve Osmanski have done some of this, I think, and I've tried, as has Hans Rancke.
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The first three frontier wars were successful for the Zhodani. The Imperium doesn't realize it, but the Zhodani don't want to conquer the Spinward Marches. What they want is to deter the Imperium from expanding any further in their direction. Imperial settlers were pushing into Foreven at the time of the First Frontier War.
A few large ships can be justified this way, but not hundreds and thousands. Using them to impress the member worlds (or at least the yokels on the member worlds) can be justified; organizing then in squadrons and putting them in the line of battle can not.
Hans
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Hans, you are incorrect. People being what they are, there is just that sort of need for political reasons as well as military reasons.
I point you to The Great White Fleet of the U.S. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Fleet), The German East Asia Squadron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_East_Asia_Squadron), and the British Eastern Fleet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Fleet).
Yes, when war was declared all of these fleets had other jobs, but most of the time these fleets were on "show the flag" missions. You will note that each of these fleets had a line of battle order.
The Imperium has had meson guns for all its existence. It has had TL15 for a century and TL14 for three centuries before that. It really beggars belief that its naval planners haven't figured out by now that large ships are an extremely poor bargain, and one that would have gotten the Imperium destroyed long ago unless its enemies were all equally dumb.
Hans
Hans
Some parts of canon should be considered more relevant then others, imo. I'm pretty good with business/ecocnomics (I received a 100% on a final in it recently, something my prof said nobody else has done), it's economy is immense, even cut into zones, the way the Chinese do it today. Some addendum to canon could be added to explain things:
1) The Imperium builds BB's the way others build CA's, back to the "this is the way we do things in the Imperium", large and in charge.
2) Supp 9 and other sources like SMC, FFW, JTAS articles, etc.; only cover the Spinward Marches and the fleets in the Marches are kept purposely weak to prevent any Emperors of the Flag civil war type occurances. A Tigress in the Core Fleet may be a BGG carrying multi-spinal super-dreadnaught, but they pull armament and the force field when they send them out to the colonies. This may be well known, just not documented as the Imperium isn't going to advertise the fact.
3) BB's as they stand right now are in fact "Treaty BB's", not that there is a specific treaty, but if the Imperium started building fleets of multi-spinal BGG protected BB's, it will start an arms race with the other polities to catch up.
Then they are doing it very wrong, because the people of the Marches are going to see the Zhodani as the main threat, which will force the Imperium to act in order to keep it's reason for being. The Imperium can also absorb Zhodani worlds, something the Zhodani can't do in turn and the Imperium can also destroy the Zhodani Consulate if it wanted to.
If one has the Credits, why not? The Imperium has all the Credits they ever want, they control their currency. If you can build BB's the way others build CA's and still out number their CA's, then part of it is psychological warfare, don't mess with us or our dreadnaughts will swarm your puny worlds; eg deterence.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
As an example I refer you to the entire cold war arms race. People are what they are, and that is terrified of being #2 in something like this.
The Imperium is only about two to three times bigger than its two chief enemies. It can't afford to fight under a six to one disadvantage in hardware, especially if it spends so little that its enemies can outspend it by a factor two or more.
The people of the Marches can't force the Emperor to do anything. The Consulate is larger than the Solomani Confederation was when the Rim War started and the Imperium couldn't even conquer them.
Apparently the Imperium doesn't print money gratuiously. (Bravo!) Maybe because it realizes that it doesn't work in the long run.
But they can't. The Imperium isn't that much bigger than its enemies and it's spending a lot less than it could.
Hans
Who are it's enemies? The only ones I can see are mostly the Hiver's, with the Solomani running a distant second. Otherwise, you have to state a metric, economically is the most important.
Couldn't or didn't conquer the Solomani. The size of the Consulate isn't that important; it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. The Imperium depends on goodwill, it's not the Emperor, but the Archdukes and lower nobles who would pay if something goes wrong.
Gratuiously? There's the whole M1/M2/M3 thing, and it's a fiat currency, how things work in the long run are based on a very unstable foundation: human beings. Politics are as much at work as monetary policy, inflation is tied more to supply and demand, not debt. This ties into the goodwill I mentioned earlier, the Imperium has a real desire to maintain confidence in the Imperial system, because consumer confidence is tied into it as well.
It spends as much as it feels it needs to, which says a lot about it's military situation. Once again, bigger is a funny term, economically? It's not the size of the population that determines the size of the economy, but it is your economy that decides the potency of your military (including size). The Imperium can spend all the Credit's in known space, they own them.
My first thought on reading your previous statement, was maybe the Imperium could steamroller the Zhodani, but only at the cost of stripping combat assets across the Imperium, leaving you vulnerable elsewhere.
Elsewhere includes Hivers, K'kree, Solimani, Julian Protectorate, Aslan tribes, Vargr raiders, pirates, opportunists, rebelling worlds and sub-sectors. And that not including all the minor races under the yoke of Imperial oppression.
& the Zhodani have demonstrated in several wars that they have more fight whilst the Imperium is riddled with internal political squabbles.
I can name several countries today that believe & do pre-emptive strikes in the name of keeping the peace. The Zhodani are no differant and I doubt they actually want Imperial citizens with their unhappy deceitful minds, constantly keeping secrets and looking to take advantage of others.
Hmmm, I would check your text books.
Increase the supply of money (and/or credit availability) & you get inflation. You should also take into account Imperial inflation (ImpCr, not referring to member worlds) would appear to be so low as to be negligible.
Its politics that determines how much of that economy is spent on the Navy. And that is decided by a very wealthy chap sitting in capital who wants/needs to be surrounded by big toys and resents upstart Imperial Admirals with more toys than he has. The biggest threat to Imperial stability is from within.
Does that translate into invading more worlds or polities? I doubt it. The last few wars have been started by outside interests, not by the Imperium.
I feel the thread derailing....
The Imperium is a diverse, multi-cultural entity, minor races are unlikely to be under a yoke of oppression, at least not that I see in canon.
Aggression doesn't equal the size of the fight, the Zho's just don't have the sinews for war. Their society is broken, culturally monolithic with no opportunity for it's subjects. For example: if you can hypnotize chickens, you live like a God, but if you are a military genius and can design a new meson accellerator on the back of a napkin, you're nobody and live in a hovel.
Not necessarily, you want some inflation, and you need to increase the money supply to help with economic expansion. Economics has moved on since Betton Woods.
Which taken literally is worse then inflation.
Which could of course also translate into building giant fleets of BB's for both deterence and prestige.
The major cost would being building the fleet to do it, then that fleet would become the primary threat.
The Imperium is a diverse, multi-cultural entity, minor races are unlikely to be under a yoke of oppression, at least not that I see in canon.
Aggression doesn't equal the size of the fight, the Zho's just don't have the sinews for war. Their society is broken, culturally monolithic with no opportunity for it's subjects. For example: if you can hypnotize chickens, you live like a God, but if you are a military genius and can design a new meson accellerator on the back of a napkin, you're nobody and live in a hovel.
Doesn't matter what they want, there is no way people would accept the Zho yoke, not without a massive genocide of 50% of the conquered population and that would just delay the inevitable erruption.
Can't, just sold it back.
Not necessarily, you want some inflation, and you need to increase the money supply to help with economic expansion. Economics has moved on since Betton Woods.
Which taken literally is worse then inflation.
Which could of course also translate into building giant fleets of BB's for both deterence and prestige.
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