Piracy and Sword Worlds

Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed] writes:
> I've been toying with making the price of yearly maintenance higher the
> older the ship is while making the risks of an inadequately maintained
> ships less. The result should be that established corporations would
> get rid of their ships after 30 or 40 years because they became too
> expensive to maintain. Thus lots of cheap but old ships on the market.

I like this idea; do you have any specific numbers?

Here is a possibility to play with:

Age of ShipOverhaul cost(delta)
 0 to  9 years00.10%-na-
10 to 19 years  00.11%00.01%
20 to 29 years00.13%00.02%
30 to 39 years00.16%00.03%
40 to 49 years00.20%00.04%
50 to 59 years00.25%00.05%
60 to 69 years00.31%00.06%
70 to 79 years00.38%00.07%
80 to 89 years00.46%00.08%
90 to 99 years00.55%00.09%
 . . . well, you get the idea . . .

By the time the ship has turned 40, it's maintainance cost has doubled
and the cost will double again in less than 30 years.

> The problem with fleet sizes I still can't quite see how to overcome.
> More star systems and less high-population planets is what's needed here.

Probably the only real fix for this is to change the formula for
shipyard capacity and tax revenues; change from a linear system to a
non-linear one, so that high population worlds pay and produce less per
person than less populous worlds.


Rob Dean [email removed] writes:
> However, as I recall, the question cannot really be answered "authoritatively"
,
> since the Hard Times book deosn't show a category for subsectors in the
> Spinward MArches outside the Imperium.  Ah well.

Presumably, if the "light behind the claw" scenario is being used, then
things should be approximately the same as the pre-Rebellion Spinward
Marches.  The Darrians and the Sword Worlds balance each other in a sort
of microcosm of the Deneb/Zhodani balance.

[email removed]
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Science-Fiction Adventure
                                                         in the Far Future

Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed] writes:

> I've been toying with making the price of yearly maintenance higher the
> older the ship is while making the risks of an inadequately maintained
> ships less. The result should be that established corporations would
> get rid of their ships after 30 or 40 years because they became too
> expensive to maintain. Thus lots of cheap but old ships on the market.

This is an idea that keeps coming back to me, too.  Has anyone tried putting
some rules together yet?  It makes good sense, and I really think that some
such rule ought to be part of the core for TNE, especially considering that
their background will be full of wretched flying wrecks, judging from the
way that they have described it so far.  Something like a a doubling of
of maintenance cost each ten years maybe?  With extra age "awarded" to a
ship repaired after extensive battle damage?  (Rather like old Twilight:
2000 in that regard).

> The problem with fleet sizes I still can't quite see how to overcome.
> More star systems and less high-population planets is what's needed here.

Given that transportation is not free, the tendency is going to be for most
good systems to eventually end up as high population worlds.  I always have
a hard time explaining why a world that has been settled for a thousand years
isn't full....

Rob Dean

Derek Wildstar writes:
>Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed]writes:
>>I've been toying with making the price of yearly maintenance higher the
>>older the ship is while making the risks of an inadequately maintained
>>ships less. The result should be that established corporations would
>>get rid of their ships after 30 or 40 years because they became too
>>expensive to maintain. Thus lots of cheap but old ships on the market.
>
>I like this idea; do you have any specific numbers?
>
>Here is a possibility to play with:
>
>Age of Ship   Overhaul cost   (delta)
> 0 to  9 years        00.10%          -na-
>10 to 19 years  00.11%                00.01%
>20 to 29 years        00.13%          00.02%
>30 to 39 years        00.16%          00.03%
>40 to 49 years        00.20%          00.04%
>50 to 59 years        00.25%          00.05%
>60 to 69 years        00.31%          00.06%
>70 to 79 years        00.38%          00.07%
>80 to 89 years        00.46%          00.08%
>90 to 99 years        00.55%          00.09%
> . . . well, you get the idea . . .
>
>By the time the ship has turned 40, it's maintainance cost has doubled
>and the cost will double again in less than 30 years.

The figures I've been thinking of is 100 hours for a yearly maintenance
of a new ship. That works out as 12.5 8-hour days which, with one day
of the week off, is very close to the standard two weeks (this also gives
you the option of getting it done faster if you're willing to pay for it).
I'd then increase this by 1 hour per year the ship is old. I'd also
introduce an 'overhaul' which takes longer and costs more, but reduces the
effective age of a ship. On the macro level (fleets) I'd use one extra day
per 8 years of age.

>>The problem with fleet sizes I still can't quite see how to overcome.
>>More star systems and less high-population planets is what's needed here.
>
>Probably the only real fix for this is to change the formula for
>shipyard capacity and tax revenues; change from a linear system to a
>non-linear one, so that high population worlds pay and produce less per
>person than less populous worlds.

Here's my suggestion for this:

Argument: The more people a society consists of, the higher the proportion of
non-contributing members. By contributing members I mean anyone in a primary
or secondary occupation. I don't mean to imply that people in tertiary occu-
pations dosen't work, but they all live one way or another on whatever wealth
the primary and secondary occupations creates. The amount of money that a
planet can afford [1] to spend on naval forces is therefor modified by a
factor that depends on the size of the population:

    Factor = 1/(2 to the power of (8 - log (population))).

This factor is 1 for a population of 100 million, 1/2 for one of 1 billion
and 1/4 for one of 10 billion. It will be 2 for a population of 10 million
and go on doubling every time the population level goes down by one.
(Obviously there is a limit to this. I ignore any world with a population
less than 100.000. Such will tend to be colonies and outposts and thus go
on the parent planet's budget anyway.)

Note that you can provide another explanation for this if you don't like
mine. Perhaps people on a low-population world is just willing to use more
money on the military than people on a high-pop world, because they feel
less secure.

In a federation all planets will want the other planets to pay proportionally
the same as themselves, so the budget must be tuned to the ones who can pay
the least per citizen. Fortunately these will constitute a majority, so they
will be able to ensure that. (I ignore the possibility that the majority will
force the minority to pay disproportionally much). So (using TCS figures)
Planet Big, with population 1 billion, can't pay more than 250 Cr/citizen.
30% of this goes to the federation, so Planet Big pays 75 Cr/citizen to the
federation fleet. They retain 175 Cr/citizen for their own planetary
defenses. Planet Medium, with population 100 million, can afford to use 500
Cr/citizen, but they still only pay 75 Cr/citizen to the federation. They
retain 425 Cr/citizen for their own planetary defenses. (Incidentally, they
don't _need_ to use all the 425 Cr left over on defense. If they're near an
unfriendly border they propably will, if they feel secure they may give
their citizens a tax break or use the money for other purposes).

Note that if you multiply the population by 10 you multiply the naval
budget by 5, so a high-pop world will still be considerably stronger
than a low-pop world.


[1] Actually "are willing to spend". This is what the government can get
    their taxpayers to pony up with without them growing resentful. And
    we're talking peacetime. In wartime all bets are off. A society will
    willingly spend much more than they can afford in such circumstances,
    witness how WWII more or less ruined Britain even though they won.

- ---

      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir