Colonial troops

[Carlobrand]

Having worked on game design from both ends of the spectrum, from large-scale board games like Fifth Frontier War to individual skirmish games like Traveller, I would be very hesitant to mix the two. The scale is so much different between the games, and game balance is going to dictate what is needed for the large-scale game.

Agreed. From a game standpoint, though, the discussion has two possible applications: 1) background - glimpses the players get in passing as they adventure, which don't have to be terribly precise or specific, we just need a vague idea of what's around; and 2) improvising a large-scale boardgame - for example staging a Solomani Rim War or maybe some small conflict among the nonaligned worlds betweem Imperial and Zhodani space. For the former, it doesn't much matter that the latter is way off, 'cause the players won't know any more about it than the typical civilian would driving on the freeway past the Norfolk Naval Shipyard - he just needs to know there's a lot of ships way over thataway and you're not allowed to get close to them.

With respect to colonial or planetary military forces, as I see it a planetary government is going to maintain them for one or all of three reasons...

There's little question regarding planetary forces. There is some confusion regarding planetary contributions to the Marches joint colonial force - at what tech level planets should begin providing contributions being the topic at issue at the moment, though I think that was mostly settled. Next up is what determines whether a given Colonial unit should be infantry or armored, but I'm pretty certain that's mostly based on the whim of the game designers.

 

[Carlobrand]

Random data

That does not represent a big chunk of the defense budgets of these worlds. ... Furthermore, even without turning to such guesstimates, it would seem blindingly obvious that if a pop 9 world can afford one BatRon and one CruRon, a world with pop A should be able to afford ten of each.

I have an ambitious long-term goal of developing a model of the Marches that supports a High-Guard-based FFW campaign. Canon FFW is an obvious starting point, but it obviously has its limitations as well, so I'm playing around with some IMTU adaptations.

For this purpose, I created an Excel model which could generate numbers either by canon guidelines or by guidelines of my own. In one case, I tried out a model where: pop 8 worlds got 1 cruiser per WTC code number, up to a maximum of 8; pop 9 worlds got 1 Dn per WTC code number, again up to 8, on top of the 8 cruisers; and then pop A worlds got 1 cruiser per WTC code number on top of what the pop 8 and 9 got, again up to 8. So, maximum of two 8-ship cruiser squadrons and 1 8-ship Dn squadron, similar to FFW (although I'm giving serious thought to changing that second cruiser to a troop transport to get some of those 5C colonial troops moved around).

This was on top of the SDBs, which went by order of magnitude: a pop 7 world got 1 to 9 squadrons based on WTC pop number, a pop 8 got 10 to 90, a pop 9 got 100 to 900, a pop A got 1000 to 9000. Squadrons - not individual boats.

(My basic SDB's under 2000 tons and built around a single missile bay, to take advantage of the -2 to hit ships of that size, and it needs about 10 High-guard SDBs to have an impact similar to what one FFW SDB unit shows, so I interpret the FFW numbers as referring to SDB squadrons. Another way to look at it is like this: a cruiser squadron of 4 to 8 ships can have a bombardment rating of 2 to 4, while it would take 20 to 40 FFW SDB factors for the same rating - but 4 to 8 cruisers could have a couple hundred or more missile batteries between them. Ergo, ten SDBs to the factor would yield about the right level of firepower. Very rough, but it works.)

Percentage of GWP invested in the combined force (again, figuring on the TCS model of extending ship cost over a ten year period, and using the Sriker model to calculate GWP) ranged from 0.4 to 1.8%, with variation now resulting from factors such as whether the world was rich or poor, industrial or nonindustrial, etc.

(My best guesstimate is that the Imperium's taking a fifth of a percent of GWP - 0.2% - in taxes to fund the Imperial fleet. They just don't spend much on warmaking in this milieu.)

An unexpected realization was that the SDB order-of-magnitude increases kept everyone in the same rough range of percentages, even though warship squadrons weren't increasing at the same rate. The pop A worlds - those high-tech enough for spacecraft - ranged 0.4% to 1.1% of GDP, while the pop 8 worlds ranged 0.5% to 1.8%. The pop A'ers could of course afford more if they wanted: a 1/10th percent increase in expenditure would buy an entire battle squadron.

That in itself indicates massive "rounding errors". 14 different worlds would be in 14 different political situations and wouldn't have the exact same spending patterns.

I'd consider applying that for non-aligned worlds, Vargr space, maybe the Sword Worlders. I figure the Imperial will governs defense of Imperial space, so the Imperium sets the rules on what contributions systems need to make, not the local world. There's that bit about the Imperium balancing defense needs against the risk of a local world rebelling and its space forces siding against the Imperium; wouldn't want another Ilelish Revolt.

(Also makes play a lot more manageable.)

It also occurs to me that by setting demands low and bringing in reinforcements from distant quarters when needed, the Imperium allows local worlds to spend a greater percentage of their GWP on growth and internal ;needs than could be managed by a small polity that had to worry about aggressive neighbors - which leaves Imperial citizens (or maybe the despot who rules them) with more of their wealth left in their wallets than might be true of Sword Worlders or Darrians. Could be one bonus of Imperial membership.

(Makes things a bit more balanced for folk like the Sword Worlders, too. They can compensate to some extent for the Imperium's larger size by spending more. They're not in FFW/SMC - I'm seeing about 0.4% there - but they could. That gives me some potential to make the Sword Worlders a bit more equal to the task, perhaps enough to offset the forces GDW felt compelled to remove from Vilis and Rhylanor.)

 

[rancke]

I have an ambitious long-term goal of developing a model of the Marches that supports a High-Guard-based FFW campaign. Canon FFW is an obvious starting point, but it obviously has its limitations as well, so I'm playing around with some IMTU adaptations.

Oh, your own TU! That's different. Outside of the IMTU board and the various version boards I normally assume the OTU as the basis for discussion. No offense, but I'm not really interested in Imperiums that don't spend enough money to fit my ideas of what is plausible. (Which can be a bit of a problem even for the OTU, but at least MT managed to raise the numbers to something near the minimum that I find somewhat plausible. )

Percentage of GWP invested in the combined force (again, figuring on the TCS model of extending ship cost over a ten year period, and using the Sriker model to calculate GWP) ranged from 0.4 to 1.8%, with variation now resulting from factors such as whether the world was rich or poor, industrial or nonindustrial, etc.

I'm all for consolidating TCS a Striker into one system. I've done so myself by assuming that the Cr500 figure in TCS represents a simplification and is "actually" the navy share (around 60%) of 10% of GWP (since TCS deals with pocket empires surrounded by other unfriendly and hostile pocket empires).

(My best guesstimate is that the Imperium's taking a fifth of a percent of GWP - 0.2% - in taxes to fund the Imperial fleet. They just don't spend much on warmaking in this milieu.)

Striker says 30% of an average of 3% of GWP, i.e. 0.9%. (However, since I believe that worlds in a border region like the Marches would tend to spend more than the average, the defense budgets of worlds in the Marches would average more than 3%.)

I'd consider applying that for non-aligned worlds, Vargr space, maybe the Sword Worlders. I figure the Imperial will governs defense of Imperial space, so the Imperium sets the rules on what contributions systems need to make, not the local world.

This is directly contrary to what Striker implies. It also makes sense to me that the traditional membership treaties allows the member worlds to judge for themselves what their defensive needs are. Don't forget that originally Cleon I faced the prospect of having to coax a lot of worlds into joining up. Balance is achieved by the Imperium raking off 30% of whatever the member world decides to spend on its military. (The 1% minimum defense expenditure could be a result of a clause in the membership treaties).

There's that bit about the Imperium balancing defense needs against the risk of a local world rebelling and its space forces siding against the Imperium; wouldn't want another Ilelish Revolt.

What bit is that?

I'd say the Imperium is guarding against another Ilelish Revolt by subdividing into subsector-sized duchies and by having sector rulers being merely first among equals rather than of a higher noble rank than subsector rulers.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

Remember, the Batrons, SDB's, etc. only represent less than 10% of the military budgets considering tooth to tail (starships must be intensely complex machines to maintain), R&D and othe various and sundry military expenditures.

 

[mike wightman]

Crew costs, repair and maintenance of ships and bases, r&d, construction costs for new ships and bases, intelligence, medical facilities, legal department, transport costs, fuel...

anyone want to add more to what else has to come out of the Imperial Navy budget?

 

[Carlobrand]

Oh, your own TU! That's different. Outside of the IMTU board and the various version boards I normally assume the OTU as the basis for discussion. No offense, but I'm not really interested in Imperiums that don't spend enough money to fit my ideas of what is plausible. (Which can be a bit of a problem even for the OTU, but at least MT managed to raise the numbers to something near the minimum that I find somewhat plausible. )

Is fine, but for the basic questions of canon that underly it, I'm likely to get the best answers here. Once that's done, I'll present results there. And the plausibilty question might be open to debate; see below.

I'm all for consolidating TCS a Striker into one system. I've done so myself by assuming that the Cr500 figure in TCS represents a simplification and is "actually" the navy share (around 60%) of 10% of GWP (since TCS deals with pocket empires surrounded by other unfriendly and hostile pocket empires).

I figure so too, but the only thing in canon with sufficient detail is a game that was clearly simplified to make it playable, which means anything we come up with is either similarly simplified or an IMTU product.

I recall that Cr500 bit, thought it was a bit random. The only thing I'm taking from TCS is that piece that says the fleet represents ten years' budget. Then I figure out how many ships are out there, make an estimate of total value, divide by ten (ten year budget) and compare that with the worlds' GWP to guesstimate the percent of GWP being applied.

Then I toss the number out here to see what people think about it.

Striker says 30% of an average of 3% of GWP, i.e. 0.9%. (However, since I believe that worlds in a border region like the Marches would tend to spend more than the average, the defense budgets of worlds in the Marches would average more than 3%.)

I'd forgotten about that 30% of 3% bit. That gives me a canon reference to base better Imperial calculations off of. Thanks!

Actually, there's quite a bit there when I examine it closely. Average 3%, 30% of that to the Imperium, 40% to troops, leaves 30% for local system defense forces. Nets 0.9% of GWP for the Imperium, 1.2% for planetary and colonial troops, 0.9% for SDBs and colonial ships, figure a chunk for infrastructure but I'm already estimating on the high side by figuring MCr1 per ship ton (they appear to run toward about 3/4 of that). The current Colonial navy average is 0.84% of GWP (based on that Striker-inspired GWP calculation and a guestimate of the total cost of colonial ships and SDBs in the Marches, and ranging from a low of 0.2% to a high of 1.8%), so it would appear that part of FFW is working roughly to Striker canon.

Unexpected. We could still argue for more, but whether by luck or intent, the game designers seemed to put that one in the right ballpark. However, the Imperial fleet still comes in very low, even factoring for a couple of fleets being off-board covering the other borders with the Sword Worlds.

An interesting bit is the part that says the vacuum worlds average only 6% for planetary troops, rather than 40%. That doubles the funds available for local system defense and colonial navy forces - which is as it should be for a vacuum world. I'll have to consider factoring that in.

This is directly contrary to what Striker implies. It also makes sense to me that the traditional membership treaties allows the member worlds to judge for themselves what their defensive needs are. ...

How so? The "different worlds ... different political situations" bit is a TCS thing, where they introduce a budget modifier based on government type and whether or not there's currently a war on. Striker simply offers a range of 1 to 15 percent and says 3% is average; it doesn't offer specifics beyond a statement that percentages vary with level of tensions.

Also strikes me that a government that conducted the Pacification Campaigns of its early history and nuked a large area of a planet as an abject lesson to others on the price of rebellion might not be as liberal as we think on those membership treaties.

What bit is that?

An idea I proposed earlier in the thread as a possible explanation for why the big pop-A worlds don't host entire fleets of their own.

I'd say the Imperium is guarding against another Ilelish Revolt by subdividing into subsector-sized duchies and by having sector rulers being merely first among equals rather than of a higher noble rank than subsector rulers.

Interesting assertion, but speculative.

Library Data, N-Z: "The domains of the Imperium had their origin in the pacification campaigns in the early days of the Imperium. Once the willing systems were integrated into the Imperium, it became necessary to force membership on additional systems as the empire expanded. As the campaigns drew to a close, the Emperor Artemsus divided his map into six rough areas. After reserving the four sectors comprising Sylea to himself, he sketched out five adjacent areas, labeled them domains, and appointed archdukes over them. To each archduke, he assigned the continuing pacification of the domain's many systems, and their integration into the Imperium. ... Following the Civil War, the emperors were understandably concerned about individuals
with power approaching their own, and moved to lessen the importance
of the archdukes in the Imperial government."

The Pacification Campaigns were from 76 through 120.
The Ilelish Revolt ran from 418 through 435.
The (first) Civil War ended 622.

I see no evidence for significant change to Imperial administrative structure following the Ilelish Revolt. There's nothing suggesting the use of subsectors and subsector dukes started after the revolt. Canon says the Emperor reduced the power of the Archdukes following the Civil War of 604-622, two centuries after the Revolt.

The nature of the Imperial strategic response to the Ilelish Revolt - a slow and deliberate tightening of a ring around the rebelling worlds - suggests on the one hand that the rebelling worlds had enough force to cause some damage to Imperial forces but on the other that the rebel forces were never strong enough to try to defeat the ringing Imperial forces in detail by concentrating against any one point of the blockade. Instead, the Imperium felt comfortable with a ring strategy, calling in forces from far and wide and then dispersing them in a ring. This suggests that, even then, large worlds were not being permitted to raise and support large numbers of jump-capable colonial warships, for the Imperium felt confident that its forces at any one point of a ring enveloping six subsectors were sufficient to contain a rebel attack.

 

[mike wightman]

I have an ambitious long-term goal of developing a model of the Marches that supports a High-Guard-based FFW campaign. Canon FFW is an obvious starting point, but it obviously has its limitations as well, so I'm playing around with some IMTU adaptations.

I've long wanted to do the same sort of thing but the other way round sort of.

My holy grail of a ship simulation system for Traveller is a way to combine HG designs into squadrons and have squadron counters - a bit more detailed than the FFW/IE counters.

I want to be able to move these around a strategic map and be able to play out a tactical game on a system map (which includes some sort of maneuvering - the big thing lacking in HG combat IMHO is tactical movement).

HG to me becomes far to unwieldy for combat resolution once you have more than 10 ships per side.

Quite a few years ago a the Oz and I were bouncing ideas around about how to unpick the combat factors on the FFW/IE counters, it was good fun.

 

[rancke]

I recall that Cr500 bit, thought it was a bit random. The only thing I'm taking from TCS is that piece that says the fleet represents ten years' budget.

I think the government modifies are useful too.

Average 3%, 30% of that to the Imperium, 40% to troops, leaves 30% for local system defense forces. Nets 0.9% of GWP for the Imperium, 1.2% for planetary and colonial troops, 0.9% for SDBs and colonial ships...

No, it's 70% for the planetary forces split in whatever way suits the planet. For most worlds it averages 40% for the army and 60% for the navy. So it's 30% (0.9% of GWP) for the Imperium, 60% of 70% (1.26% of GWP) for the planetary navy, and 40% of 70% (0.86% of GWP) for the planetary army. For a world with vaccum or trace atmosphere the army's cut averages only 6%.

One thing we don't know is how the Imperium's cut is split between the subsector navies and the regular forces, nor how the money is split between the various Imperial services.

I tend to use a 50/50 split between the duchies and the regular forces, but I have absolutely no support for that. (In keeping with my general principle of making individual duchies highly configurable, I say that the split can vary due to historical factors.)

Based on the assumption that the Imperium's military needs would be more analogous to those of a vacuum world than to most worlds, I've used to go with 10% for the Imperial Army and 90% for the Imperial Navy and Marines (separate budgets in "reality" but easier to deal with together for gross calculations), but fairly recently I had a discussion that caused me to revise that figure to 15%. Unfortunately, it's long enough ago that I've forgotten who it was and what he said.

The duchies will split their share according to the tasks they have to perform, filling in the crack between the regular forces and the planetary forces.

...figure a chunk for infrastructure but I'm already estimating on the high side by figuring MCr1 per ship ton (they appear to run toward about 3/4 of that). The current Colonial navy average is 0.84% of GWP (based on that Striker-inspired GWP calculation and a guestimate of the total cost of colonial ships and SDBs in the Marches, and ranging from a low of 0.2% to a high of 1.8%), so it would appear that part of FFW is working roughly to Striker canon.

That 10% of cost figure for maintenance from TCS covers everything except for battle losses. That includes peacetime replacement. Even with that, the MT force levels require one to assume that half the budget is nevertheless spend on bases and logistics (Justifiable in that TCS covers pocket empires with much smaller logistic chains than the Imperium might have). IIRC Chris Thrash calculated that the MT figures are about five times higher than what FFW implies. Which actually fits fairly neatly with the population modifier not being taken into account in FFW.

How so? The "different worlds ... different political situations" bit is a TCS thing, where they introduce a budget modifier based on government type and whether or not there's currently a war on. Striker simply offers a range of 1 to 15 percent and says 3% is average; it doesn't offer specifics beyond a statement that percentages vary with level of tensions.

But that very range leaves plenty of room for differences.

Two obvious possible differences are

a) Border world vs. core world. A world lying next to the Great Reft with several sectors between itself and the closest non-Imperial world may well feel easy about only spending 1% of GWP. A world that has been within striking distance of Vargr worlds for centuries might feel more comfortable spending 5% or more.

b) Balkanized world vs. unified world. A balkanized world could quite likely have an aggregate military spending just as high as a pocket empire.

The goverment tables from TCS is another possible source. Who says the same differences in spending policies don't apply to Imperial worlds?

Also strikes me that a government that conducted the Pacification Campaigns of its early history and nuked a large area of a planet as an abject lesson to others on the price of rebellion might not be as liberal as we think on those membership treaties.

You're right. It might not. But then again, it might. It's not a discussion I think is likely to be resolved. I'd say that either view can be argued.

The Pacification Campaigns were from 76 through 120.
The Ilelish Revolt ran from 418 through 435.
The (first) Civil War ended 622.

I see no evidence for significant change to Imperial administrative structure following the Ilelish Revolt. There's nothing suggesting the use of subsectors and subsector dukes started after the revolt. Canon says the Emperor reduced the power of the Archdukes following the Civil War of 604-622, two centuries after the Revolt.

I didn't mean that the Imperium changed anything as a result of the Ilelish Revolt. I meant that the Ilelish Revolt was a special case, arising from the existence of a cultural region that encompassed a number of subsectors, and that the already-existing partition into duchies were enough to make another revolt of the same magnitude unlikely.

BTW, strictly speaking canon says that a piece of viewpoint writing in the Classic Era says that the Emperor reduced the power of the Archdukes following the Civil War.

This suggests that, even then, large worlds were not being permitted to raise and support large numbers of jump-capable colonial warships, for the Imperium felt confident that its forces at any one point of a ring enveloping six subsectors were sufficient to contain a rebel attack.

Or it suggests that the Ilelish worlds were already supporting all the ships they could, so that the Emperor felt confident that giving them a decade to build new ships would not change the balance of power sufficiently to matter. Also that the Ilelish worlds were so well defended that a swift attack was out of the question, even with overwhelming forces.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

I think the government modifies are useful too.

I'm setting up my Excel application to model it both ways: as purely FFW canon, and as based on information drawn from other canon sources. I'll add in an option for possible government modifiers. It's not how I see the Imperium, but it's definitely a valid view of it.

No, it's 70% for the planetary forces split in whatever way suits the planet. For most worlds it averages 40% for the army and 60% for the navy. So it's 30% (0.9% of GWP) for the Imperium, 60% of 70% (1.26% of GWP) for the planetary navy, and 40% of 70% (0.86% of GWP) for the planetary army. For a world with vaccum or trace atmosphere the army's cut averages only 6%.

Striker Book 2, Rule 73, B. Military Spending: "...The total military budget must be divided between the army and the navy. The proportion allocated to the army averages 40% on most worlds, but averages only 6% on worlds with vacuum or trace atmospheres. Planetary defenses are jointly funded by the army and navy; the referee must decide what effect this will have on the army budget. On Imperial worlds, roughly 30% of the total military budget goes to the lmperium for maintenance of the Imperial military."

I'm still reading this as the army gets 40% of the total, and either:
1) the remaining 60% is all for the local space navy on independent worlds, or
2) the Imperium gets 30% of the total, leaving only 30% of that pie for the local space navy.

Planetary Army General Staff would like to point out that the Planetary Navy budget was intended to address off-world threats and that a portion of that, and not the Army budget, should therefore be applied to helping the Imperium keep threats off-world. Planetary Navy Admiralty, of course, objects strenuously to being expected to shoulder the entire burden and points out that Imperial support potentially includes the use of Imperial Army forces to aid the planetary army. Both sides are marshalling political support for their view.

One thing we don't know is how the Imperium's cut is split between the subsector navies and the regular forces, nor how the money is split between the various Imperial services.

I tend to use a 50/50 split between the duchies and the regular forces, but I have absolutely no support for that. (In keeping with my general principle of making individual duchies highly configurable, I say that the split can vary due to historical factors.).

Split the 30% Imperial contribution between the duchies and the Imperials? The FFW model of colonial squadrons popping up in orbit around high-pop worlds implies those worlds are funding the ships out of their own budgets, and the colonial troops are based on local troop strengths, so I take those to be coming out of the local army budget. I figure the high noble for that world controls that world's colonial forces administratively in the name of the subsector duke, who can apply them in peacetime to address subsector needs, until the Imperium calls them up for war.

I'm having a devil of a time modeling planetary/colonial army forces. The table out of MT:Rebellion Sourcebook/JTAS 10 models the FFW pattern pretty exactly, but the Striker model of Cr10,000/20,000/30,000 per troop breaks down under that model, with some low-pop/low-tech worlds funding troops in excess of the world's total GWP while high tech worlds spend tiny fractions of a percent.

After considering that per-person GWP correlates with average income on that world, and that it is problematic at the very least for a private to earn 4 or 5 times the average per-person income on a low tech world while earning a third of the average income on high tech worlds, I'm playing with making the military cost proportional to per-person GWP. Figuring Striker modeled from our present-day military, I took TL 8 as the balance point, then proportioned down from that for low tech and up from that for high tech, which means both that the local infantryman on every world earns the same pay in real local terms and that the problem of worlds paying more than they make is - mostly - eliminated: that table has certain Pop 3 worlds putting 10% of their population under arms, which eliminating elderly and children from service means militia-level military involvement and some pretty steep expenditures. I'm still playing with it.

Based on the assumption that the Imperium's military needs would be more analogous to those of a vacuum world than to most worlds, I've used to go with 10% for the Imperial Army and 90% for the Imperial Navy and Marines (separate budgets in "reality" but easier to deal with together for gross calculations), but fairly recently I had a discussion that caused me to revise that figure to 15%. Unfortunately, it's long enough ago that I've forgotten who it was and what he said.

I'm not up to that point yet. I'll look at that for when I get to modeling the Imperial side of things

That 10% of cost figure for maintenance from TCS covers everything except for battle losses. That includes peacetime replacement. Even with that, the MT force levels require one to assume that half the budget is nevertheless spend on bases and logistics (Justifiable in that TCS covers pocket empires with much smaller logistic chains than the Imperium might have). IIRC Chris Thrash calculated that the MT figures are about five times higher than what FFW implies. Which actually fits fairly neatly with the population modifier not being taken into account in FFW.

MT force levels?

 

[aramis]

Carlo: MegaTraveller included expected force levels in a sourcebook

 

[rancke]

Striker Book 2, Rule 73, B. Military Spending: "...The total military budget must be divided between the army and the navy. The proportion allocated to the army averages 40% on most worlds, but averages only 6% on worlds with vacuum or trace atmospheres. Planetary defenses are jointly funded by the army and navy; the referee must decide what effect this will have on the army budget.

On Imperial worlds, roughly 30% of the total military budget goes to the lmperium for maintenance of the Imperial military."

Not quite. you're omitting the paragraph divison that I've added above.

I'm still reading this as the army gets 40% of the total, and either:
1) the remaining 60% is all for the local space navy on independent worlds, or
2) the Imperium gets 30% of the total, leaving only 30% of that pie for the local space navy.

The text is quite explicit. The proportion that the army gets is 40%. That's 40% of whatever the budget is, not 40 percentage points of the budget.

After that, the next paragraph mentions that for Imperial worlds, the budget is reduced by 30% that goes to the Imperium.

Planetary Army General Staff would like to point out that the Planetary Navy budget was intended to address off-world threats and that a portion of that, and not the Army budget, should therefore be applied to helping the Imperium keep threats off-world. Planetary Navy Admiralty, of course, objects strenuously to being expected to shoulder the entire burden and points out that Imperial support potentially includes the use of Imperial Army forces to aid the planetary army. Both sides are marshalling political support for their view.

The world can't be sure that the Imperial forces will be on hand and not somewhere else. The place where membership in the Imperium affects the budget is in the overall tension, allowing a smaller overall military budget. The planetary army no longer have to prepare for invasion from the neighboring world, allowing the budget to be reduced from the 8 or 10% pocket empires have to pay to 2.1%. Which is a gain even if they have to hand over an additional 0.9% to the Imperium.

If the Imperium wasn't there, the average spending would be a good deal more than 3%.

Split the 30% Imperial contribution between the duchies and the Imperials? The FFW model of colonial squadrons popping up in orbit around high-pop worlds implies those worlds are funding the ships out of their own budgets, and the colonial troops are based on local troop strengths, so I take those to be coming out of the local army budget.

I think that FFW doesn't distinguish between regular and duchy (subsector) forces. It doesn't matter for the big picture; whichever way they're split they add up to the same amount.

MT force levels?

As described in Rebellion Sourcebook. 1000 combat vessels per sector. (Though I assume that that figure is for a sector with a full 16 subsectors, so I tend to make it 62.5 per subsector, which is very close to an avaerge of 9 squadrons of an average of 7 ships.


Hans

 

[mike wightman]

I love how the folks at GDW could take something really easy to understand and make it almost incomprehensible.

So the army gets 40% of GDP military budget and the navy gets 60%.

No problem.

On Imperial worlds 30% of GDP military spending goes to the imperium.

This leaves 70% to be split 40-60. So if we are talking about 100RU - the Imperium gets 30, the planetary army gets 28 and the navy 42.

 

[Carlobrand]

...The text is quite explicit.

It is indeed.:devil:

...As described in Rebellion Sourcebook. 1000 combat vessels per sector. (Though I assume that that figure is for a sector with a full 16 subsectors, so I tend to make it 62.5 per subsector, which is very close to an avaerge of 9 squadrons of an average of 7 ships.

Whoa! I've got that book, too. Never noticed that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Much of my MT stuff is rather recent acquisitions; I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. It's been a major effort just figuring out the player's and referee's manuals. Rebellion Sourcebook spends so much time talking about the rebellion - which ain't happenin' out my way, no way, no how - that I haven't given it much attention. I see I may have to reconsider that.

"This number includes combat vessels such as cruisers, carriers, battleships, and some escorts; it does not include auxiliaries, support ships, and scouts"

Oh, holy ...

Yeah, I guess that's about right. My best guesstimate of total Marches Imperial GDP is MCr 3.68x10^9, ergo an annual Imperial military budget of MCr 36.8 million and a potential fleet totaling 368 million dTons. Probably nowhere near that, since some of that cash goes to the Army and some pays for infrastructure, but still more than enough to support a thousand warships - er, 750 warships? - plus an unknown number of auxiliaries: 100-125 squadrons, of which a bit over half responded to the Zhodani thrust in the coreward end of the sector ...

... looks like it should have been more like 2/3, with only the 213th and 214th not involved in the coreward fighting, unless those two were overstrength for some reason. Is okay, we know they made some adjustments for the boardgame. Now I have some more solid figures to work with.

Thing I'm having trouble buying into is that the Imperium had only 2 Imperial batrons and 6 crurons (and scattered Colonial warship squadrons) initially deployed in the corward half of the Marches, while the Zhos, who ostensibly are only doing this to keep the threatening Imperium in check, have 30-some Consulate warship squadrons assembled (and Colonial warship squadrons). Really, how threatening is an opponent who keeps most of his forces months away from your shared border? And, Imperial intelligence sucks - how hard is it to send a long-range scout into neigboring systems close enough to be a threat and then monitor for ship movements from the remote security of the outer regions? They should at least have had a week's warning of the build-up. Makes the game more challenging, yes, but it also gives the impression that a whole lot of Imperials were fundamentally incompetent at the outset.

Incidentally, there's this JTAS.net site that has a heck of a lot of info on Marches fleet deployments. How canon are they? Deployments don't match SMC or the Rebellion Sourcebook, and the site has the look of something that was never completed, but there's some interesting info there.