David Johnson:
> Let's assume a `subsector government' of 5 (feudal technocracy).
> The Sword Worlds population (c1120) is approximately 30 billion.
> These parameters give:
> Budget: cr500 x .95 x 30,000,000,000 = 14,240 Gcr
> Capacity: (30,000,000,000 x .95)/1000 = 28.5 Mt
This is pretty accurate, but quite misleading. Based on what you
wrote here:
> Now I don't have much idea how to convert this to ships and squadrons
> but just using the tonnage figure and an estimate of 50,000 tons per
> `capital' ship gives 570 ships! No wonder the Imperium hasn't
> conducted a pacification campaign against the Sword Worlds!
_You_ misunderstood the significance of these numbers, at least.
The budget is an annual budget, and the capacity is shipyard capacity.
Since TCS requires 10% of ship cost as annual maintenance, to all
intents, the _value_ of the SW Navy is 10 times the annual budget, or
TCr142.4.
The shipyard capacity has some bearing on Navy size, but, in my
experience, not much. The only world in any of my TCS games that _ever_
operated its shipyard at capacity was one doing a lot of contract work
for other players (due to its higher TL). Most of the worlds seldom
operated at more than 20% capacity.
However, a good guideline for Fleet size is 1 ton of ship for
KCr750. This results in a Sword Worlds' Fleet of about 190,000,000 tons,
or 3800 ships in the 50,000T range.
Note that this thumbrule can vary quite a lot, depending on TL, but
it works reasonably well from TL11-15.
> Either you *TCS* wonks have to help me out here or we need to begin to
> accept that the *TCS* rules just aren't compatible with the naval
> forces that appeared in *5FW*. (And start arguing about which to
> throw out? :-)
The two sets of rules are completely incompatible. I have, however,
always assumed that the FFW fleets are a simplification of the reality
it pretends to model for ease of play. Who wants to play a game with
10,000 pieces, after all?
---Steve