Bertil:
> Assuming a static total tonnage in the Imperium, the shipyards must
>divide their space into doing the yearly overhaul and building ships to
>replace those who go away (through age or destruction).
> The yearly overhauls do not require that large a contingent of
>labour, so it can accept a normal 25% vacancy, the breakeven is at 45%
>vacancy. Construction (and repair) on the other hand is very sensitive
>to slumps and the breakeven occurs at around 20% to 25% vacancy, and to
>give the same percentage of profit it need a practically 0% of vacancy.
>This is easily accomplished through building small crafts for sale when
>a vacancy appears. Construction, while riskier, will however give much
>larger profits per ton of shipyard capacity than overhauls.
I'm not sure where you get your vacancy guestimates here, but:
Trin, Rhylanor, Mora, and Glisten can between them, maintain just over
1,000,000,000T of shipping, either merchant or miitary. When the
economy shifts to wartime levels, that will jump to 1,200,000,000T of
shipping. Given TCS rules on repairs, maintenance, whatnot, those yards
could maintain 400,000,000T PLUS of shipping, and repair every one of
them once EVERY year. Given that their military strength starts at no
more than 250,000,000 (which is a reasonable estimate given TCS rules),
then those four worlds, by themselves, could support 150,000,000T of
merchantmen, and keep up with repairs on EVERY ship in their fleets.
Every year. These four worlds, BTW, amount to about 25% of the Imperial
yard space in the Spinward Marches. So the Marches should reasonably be
able to support 600,000,000T of merchant ships, even during normal
wartime. Without bothering to expand capacity beyond normal levels.
And the Spinward Marches is a backwater. The Solomani Rim can support
ten times that level of shipping. Until things have reached the point
that most ships have a useful lifespan of less than two years, the yard
space available shouldn't have any meaningful effect on the available
forces.
BTW, in my TCS game, after seven battles, involving perhaps 5000 ships
total, only two yards in the Islands are full. And neither of them was
involved in the battles. The ships damaged in combat seldom filled the
yards up for more than a week or two, and only one power felt the need
to discontinue his ship-building program while he repaired battle
damage. And in his case, it wasn't that he had so many ships damaged,
he had his yards blown away. And a year later, his yards are still only
operating at half capacity, and are still big enough that he has yard
space available to build ships for his allies...
---Steve