>From: [email removed] (Steven M Bonneville)
>>On Deep Space Stations:
>>It's possible they don't often make much economic sense. (Maybe I'll do
>>a quick analysis sometime.) But they might make very good military
>>sense, as a refueling depot. All you need are the hulls for holding
>Believe me, they make enormous military sense! Deep space stations
>(particularly mine) altered the entire strategic picture of the
>Islands War in Steve's TCS game. The use of deep space stations would
>have changed the entire course of the Fifth Frontier War, if the Zhos
>or the Imperials had used them...
>[...] The war changes to one of fortifying and
>defending bodies of strategic interest, like home worlds and major
>colonies. [...] Otherwise, your
>planet better have massive orbital fortifications and/or planetary
>defenses, or it is a sitting duck for the first fleet to pop out of
>jump-space at the 100-diameter limit
>I've rationalized the use of deep space stations in the Islands, and
>lack of their use by the Imperium by deciding that it is a very
>difficult navigational task to jump to and from deep space points.
>The Island nations had a good supply of such skilled navigators
>because the Island worlds are so scattered that merchant ships and
>many military vessels *must* use multiple deep-space jumps to get
>anywhere. Most of the Imperial worlds are close enough together that
>Imperial ships can jump from world to world, and thus the necessary
>skill to be a ship's navigator isn't as high, and deep-space jumping
>is not a standard part of basic Imperial navigator training. I
>also venture to add that Impy merchants consider deep-space jumping
>as risky a practice as burning unrefined fuel in your jump drive, and
>discourage it. So do their insurers. Someone else can explain why
>the Imperial Navy and Zho Navy don't do it very often...
OK, let me propose why the Impies and Zhos don't use 'em: it's a
*political* decision.
Suppose deep-space refueling stations are common. Then, worlds which
are 6-12 parsecs in from the border become vulnerable to attack without
warning. They would thus want some defensive elements stationed full-
time in their system. This would probably at least quadruple the fleet
elements that would have to be deployed to provide "border coverage" for
all these "non-border" systems.
Can the Navy support all these requests? I don't think this is likely.
You run the risk of being spread too thin. So what is the enterprising
World Leader to do? Build a big system fleet or lots of planetary
defense fortifications.
However, how are a planet's big system defense fleets and large planetary
defense batteries perceived by its Larger Political Entity (Imperium or Con-
sulate)? I think they do not like them at all. First I'll give some
Traveller facts and then I'll do some interpretation.
Fact 1: Planetary defense forts are not covered in Traveller literature. The
closest thing is "planetary defense battalions" from the boardgame "Invasion:
Earth", which are not that effective.
Fact 2: System defense boats are the accepted mechanism for system defense.
But, the quantities for these seem very low. I think a Traveller News
Service brief from the JTAS "War" issue read something like "the ten heavy
SDBs in the Regina system were sent to defend the system gas giant, which
would be the first priority of an attacking fleet." This seems like a
very small number for a world at the edge of the Imperium.
Interpretation: The Larger Political Entity (Imperium or Consulate) does
not allow large system defense forces. This would give too much power
to the individual worlds. By taking responsibility for defense of the
whole LPE, the LPE Navy can be used for "showing the flag" and other semi-
coercive means of keeping the member worlds in line. This will allow the
member worlds to exist together more peacefully, since they can't easily
have internal military disputes. (Also makes single-world rebellions
difficult.)
To summarize Cynthia, deep-space refueling implies the need to fortify
planetary bodies. Given the need to enforce internal cohesion, however,
the Imperium and Consulate have decided to not allow large (autonomous)
planetary defenses. Thus, they both did not use deep space refueling
stations during the Frontier Wars.
I would assume large planetary defenses (and fuel dumps) would be much
more prevalent in Trillion Credit Squadron games, which have much smaller
(probably single-system) political entities.
Comments are appreciated...
- -----
Chuck Hamilton [email removed]
"Crew or frozen watch casualties are replaced free at any naval base."
- Trillion Credit Squadron, p. 35