Traveller warships are WWII navy, but without a major piece
- Thread starter Garyius2003
- Start date
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
True. That is why you must build power plants greater than the MD (or JD) to power weapons, screens or computers. That is why certain craft can only mount fewer lasers than turret tonnage would allow. Only EXTRA energy points can be used for agility; Ergo; an agility zero ship has nothing left over from it's power plant to perform extraordinary movements. It's all been used by the Drives and energy consuming systems.
To get agility you must build (power plants) bigger, yet again.
In the following example ">" means "allows". "+" is cumulative.
P6 > MD6 & JD6 + Pn(x) > Comp, Screens & Weapons + Pn
> Agility y.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Bingo!
This is exactly correct.
Exactly
This one I'm leaving alone due to mixing to many rules systems to assure an accurate response. I think we could both confuse the other.
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SoCar_37
SOC-5
I strongly disagree with your disagreement. I work at a shipyard producing naval vessels and there is no way you could just increase output as easily as you think. Between training welders, shipfitters, electricians, foremen, quality inspectors, etc. and getting equipment and parts, you can't expand output very much. (You know it takes 2 weeks just to train an apprentice painter?) You also have to have the experienced workers to train the new hires. That doesn't include the infrastructure like building ways that doesn't exist anymore.
Respectfully,
SoCar37
Study history and the expansion during WW2. It actually happened that production was increased MANY times over what we are talking about, in a short time.
About 10 fold improvement in capacity in a matter of about 2 months... and the quality suffered badly. The last 2 of the "liberty ships" era destroyers ceased operation about a decade ago (USCGC Storres & a sister ship) - both had major issues and multiple refits; both were barely seaworthy. Some preward ships are STILL in service - in other countries.
I'm talking mil ships. Cargo ships were literally slapped together. Initially to keep Britain from starving due to U-boats decimating their merchant marine.
My point stands and you didn't counter it.
But that is as much as saying a ship with no agility may not move regardless its MD rating. A ship with MD 6 may accelerate 6 G, regardless its agility.
Otherwise, most merchant ships (agility 0) and some military ones could not even move from one planet to another (unless we asume energy agility is used regularly when not in combat, but I guess it's not the case).
And just accelerate is a violent manoeuver?
I always assumed that the MD was already powered by the fact of having the PP number equal or superior to it, not needing EPs specifically for it for just accelerate, only for agility (so making those violent menoeuvers).
I don't understand what do you mean here. A ship with manoeuver 6 cannot exceed manoeuver 6, but a ship with agility 6 may breack off as if it had agility 8 if it's break off is screened by others, if that's what you mean.
Then where's the problem?
Here you accept (or that's what I understand) that a ship with MD 6 will catch (or breack of from) a ship with MD 5 regardless their respective agilities, as it runs faster, regardless their respecitve ability to turn, as a Me 262 could catch (or breack off) a Spitfire as it was faster, even while the Spitfire was far more agile.
Let's not forget that according to the TCS rules as written, you can leave your shipyard capacity unused for months and years and then start building or reparing ships with a moment's notice. So those rules are possibly not 100% realistic to begin with.
The notion that I'm propounding is that if a world has a budget that will allow it to maintain a fleet of a given size, then it will already have the peacetime military shipyard capacity to maintain the entire fleet in addition to building peacetime replacements. And the shipyards will have some slack that would enable them to temporarily expand that capacity a bit by working double shifts.
I don't think that shipyards would be able to start building or repairing unexpected ships from day to day (beyond the "spare" capacity that working double shifts would provide), but I believe they would be able to expand their capacity in a month or two.
Hans
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Most large to medium shipyards in the US work round the clock three shifts with skeleton crews on weekends. It costs to much to shut down and many functions simply need to maintain a temperature constant or assembly line production. (Newport News Shipbuilding shuts down ONLY between Christmas and New years, mandatory time off for most employees.)
Also, most yards are operating at nowhere near capacities, but, those potential capacities are still way to small for a protracted wartime production.
The yards are overstaffed for current needs but nowhere nearly staffed for a serious ramp-up in building. SoCar_37 is quite right that it would take a long time to train a full spectrum of yard employees. In some capacities many years.
The US government "subsidizes" yards by allowing some built in inefficiency for that very reason. If a ramp-up were suddenly required there is some ready ability to increase production capacity. If a huge need arose, those 3 shifts would absorb new personnel and train "on the job". In that case production would be both ineffective, and of lower quality, for some length of time.
Still, fabrication facilities would have to be build for nearly everything going into a ship. All those ancillary industries are in the same position. (Electronics, Weapons, Engines, Motors, Pumps, Generators, Heating Cooling and Refrigeration, Galley equipment, Piping, Wire, Hull material, Raw material production and Transportation [It was about 3 YEARS during a WW2 buildup before the US had enough Transport Ships to mount the D Day invasion. Even then the Pacific Theater was starved for hulls.] etc.)
No countries economy is geared to a rapid increase, therefore Earth isn't, and by extrapolation Few, if any, Traveller Worlds are.
Hans is certainly correct in his position that IF there is a current long-term need, it IS being met (plus or minus some fluctuations).
Ultra-tech manufacturing methods may have solved some or all of these problems.
OK, now you're confusing me. Do they have some slack or not?
Very well, I'm not so well informed that I'm going to insist on anything (other than that the TCS rules are grossly simplified to the point of being flat out not true to real life
).So how about looking at some real world figures? Anybody know how fast production increased in various countries at the beginning of WWII and by how much?
That tells us nothing except that it's possible to man and pay for more ships than you can build.
A reasonable argument, but not very useful. It doesn't tell us how fast a plausibly non-rapid expansion would be.
Hans
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
There is some slack, just not enough for more than say a 10% increase in the short term. Long term would take several years.
Very well, I'm not so well informed that I'm going to insist on an ything (other than that the TCS rules are grossly simplified to the point of being flat out not true to real life
Very true, but it did make a playable game.
Another poster linked some data below
Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably depends on how many more and how quickly. Historically (Sail Era) the British navy NEVER sailed with a full ships company and way to many of those were not even sailors.
To many variables including things like taxable tax base, social will to endure privation and rationing, available resources, the list goes on. During WW1 the US put all of it's Shipping Industry AND Railroads under national control. This lasted for several years after the war. Without it mobilization would have been impossible.
I believe we are in more agreement that not. I'm just kicking a few of the obstacles out there.
That's about what I've always assumed. Well, two years, not several.
And nothing wrong with dodgy reality game rules if they improve the game[*]. Unless you start basing your world-building on those rules, that is.
[*] Mind you, in roleplaying games dodgy reality rules may be detrimental to willing suspension of disbelief.
Traveller starships have a <size of crew> to <price of ship> ratio that is an order of magnitude less than the ratio of modern day ships. I did some calculations once (Or was it one to two orders of magnitude? I forget. The number 1:80 flutters around in the back of my mind). And while I never did any calculations for Age of Sail ships, I'm prepared to bet that modern ships have a much smaller ratio than AoS ships.
Hans
You obviously didn't pay much attention to what I wrote. I was speaking of military shipping- The USCGC Storres was a destroyer built in a libertyship yard... Not a liberty ship herself, but built in the expanded yards in 1942 (for the Navy - she was transferred to the USCGC after the war).
The liberty ships expansion of the civil yards (almost 20:1) was directly paralleled with a near simultaneous 10x in destroyer capacity. (Or so we read in our Navy JROTC texts. ) And we went from two Cruiser slips and a BB slip to 5 CVL slips practically overnight, and then, a few months later, converted a minor repair yard into a reconstruction facility capable of major overhauls, including refloating the 20 ships sunk in its harbor. 71.9 years ago... January 1943.
And there are a LOT of small civil repair yards capable of hull repair that could, just by providing raw materials and architects, begin construction from the ground up. Seward, Dutch Harbor, Juneau, Kenai - each could be building a destroyer within the month, IF the plans and materials (especially the electronics and weapons) were delivered. Yeah, each would take 3-4 months to construct one, working with lots of unskilled and semi-skilled help, but they have a core of highly skilled repair techs who can do MAJOR hull repairs. And that's just one coastal state. None of them build new because it's much cheaper to buy from the Koreans or from the Seattle yards... But the Seward Small Boat Repair facility DOES do some custom construction. (Seward would have a nightmare of a time supplying enough materials for construction but it could be building up to a 5000 short ton 350x80' in the dry hangar - yeah, I said Hangar - they crane the ship out, and roll it into a hangar on rails.)
There is a surprisingly large skill base left - but it is, due to economics, restricted to repair, refit, and maintenance, rather than new construction.
Hi,
that's what I was thinking of and that was at TL5 or 6, I'm reasonably sure there aren't any people working in TL12 ship yards on this site, but I see 5 kt or greater ships being constructed in space anyway, like the Death Star Mk 2 in star Wars
Thanks
David.
But to my thinking a 50 year career is not bad for a ship and most WW2 era ships would have needed constant refits as technology changed anyway. I'm pretty sure the selling of ships to other countries is the basis of Traveller's Sub-sector (Colonial) and Planetary fleets.
Thanks
David