Hi guys -
All this talk about naval forces etc set me thinking, so I
decided to do an analysis of the class A starports in the Domain
ca 1120. The original list had some 95 starports, which I broke
down by tech level. This gave me the following info:
TL No of Stpts Total Cap %Cap
G 1 12.0 MTons %8
F 9 47.5 %31
E 11 3.5 %3
D 10 26.5 %17
C 14 31.0 %20
B 22 25.0 %16
A 12 8.0 %5
9 11 .004 <%.01
8 4 .3 <%.5
Total Cap=Total Shipbuilding capacity in millions of displacement
tonnes, per the TCS guidelines (peacetime)
%Cap=Percentage of total capacity for this category (may not =100
due to rounding)
In other words, the majority of the class A starports are TL12 or
less (%64), but the bulk of the shipbuilding capacity is at TL13
or greater (%59). In fact, over 1/3 of the shipbuilding capacity
of the Domain is TL15 or above! I don't know about anyone else,
but this suprised me - it hardly jiibes with the "rude frontier"
image that people sometimes have about the Domain. It does
however explain how the Domain could survive at a high tech level:
it actually has a strong, high tech industrial base.
I did some more analysis of these worlds, sorting out those worlds
that have significant shipbuilding capacity (1 million tons +) to
get the following list:
World Capacity %Total Min Maj
Vicennes 12 8 3k 60
Magash 8 5 2k 40
Glisten 8.8 6 2.2k 44
Rhylanor 7.2 5 1.8k 36
Mora 12 8 3k 60
Trin 11.5 8 2.8k 58
Pallique 3 2 .75k 15
Efate 7.2 5 1.8k 36
Lunion 8.8 6 2.2k 44
Strouden 9.9 7 2.5k 50
Jewell 6.9 5 1.7k 35
Fornice 22 15 5.5k 110
Perrior 3 2 .75k 15
Porozlo 20 14 5.0k 100
Marz 1.1 1 .3k 6
Vilis 6.8 5 1.7k 34
Capacity=Total Shipbuilding capacity in millions of displacement
tonnes, per the TCS guidelines (peacetime)
%Total=Percentage of total capacity for this category (may not
=100 due to rounding)
Min=Minor Combatants (ca 1000tons)
Maj=Major Combatants (ca 50000tons)
These figures are taken from the TCS budget info posted by Ken
Hagler, with the total atarport capacity figured as follows %25
devoted to minor combatants (avg 1000 T), 25% major combatants
(avg 50000 T), and %50 allocated to civil ship construction.
This gives an annual construction rate of almost 750 major ships/
year, with nearly 60 million tons at TL15+. This translates into
300 major combatants *PER YEAR*..
What this seems to imply is that the MT figure of 1000 ships per
sector is a limit imposed by Imperial Policy, not by the
limitations on planetary economies. The actual number of ships
would be determined by a number of factors:
1. Basic nature of the interstellar government (i.e.,
militaristic alla The Sword Worlds, or pacfistic, or somewhere in
between).
2. The budget of the interstellar government for maintenance.
As a quick rule of thumb, I would allow 1/2 of the TCS budget for
the planet to be used for maintenance, the rest going to upgrading
and new ships.
3. The current political situation - a government at war, or on
the brink of war, would allocate more resources to weapon
building.
4. Other more pressing uses for shipbuilding capacity,
(exploration services such as the Zho Core expeditions, patrol
services such as the Quarentine, orcommercial use)
5. The useful life of a starship - the longer they last the
easier it is to maintain a larger fleet.
I think this may shed some light on the continuing discussion
about the Sword Worlds. The Sword Worlds will have to spend a
fairly large portion of their planetary budgets on the maintenance
of their fleets, and will thus be operating on a sort of "cold
war" budget (sound familiar?). This might be the mechanism behind
the proposed "boom-bust" cycles. The converse would be true for
the Imperium (and Domain). A much smaller portion of the whole
economy would be devoted to military ends, and a larger portion
would be available for development purposes, both public and
private. This would keep the econonmic development on a more even
keel, and could be the reason that the "boom-bust" is not seen in
the Imperium. With it's isolation and the burden of maintaining
the Quarentine, the Regency might start to experiance the same
kind of effect. Perhaps this is the "overheating" mentioned in
TNE.
As for using the PoT formulae (which I like conceptually), the
figures that were posted last week were wrong...the thing that was
missed was the population multiplier. On a Pop 8 world, the
multiplier is .2, at Pop 9 it is .03, and at Pop A it is .004! In
other words, a world whose population is an order of magnitude
higher than another will not necessarily have a corrispondingly
large space force. In practice, this gives worlds like Efate,
with a Pop of 9, a fleet of major combattants in the teens (I
don't have the figures in front of me now, sorry)
I think the PoT figures work great for the Wilds, where there
shouldn't be too many worlds with huge relic fleets (otherwise
what makes the RC any better?) I bet you could modify the
formulae pretty easily, but I prefer to leave the ref room to make
some decisions about absolute fleet sizes, while having guidlines
of the maximum possible numbers of ship.
Ok...so there's my two centicredits worth...
Wes Esser
[email removed]