Modelling Fleets

[veltyen]

Translating the RAN into Traveller

Why the RAN?
It is small enough to model effectively, with only 8 or so current ship classes, and only 1 or 2 new designs projected for the near future. Something like the USN or Russian Navy would be somewhat of a mamoth task, and anything smaller would only be a vessel or two and not really give any insight.

How is this useful for Traveller?
Australia roughly translates to a Pop 7 planet with decent but not cutting edge tech level.

Current RAN fleet
Naval
14 Frigates (2 classes)
14 Patrol Boats (2 classes)
6 Submarines
Technical
6 Minehunters
2 Ocean Survey Vessels
4 Coastal Survey Vessels
Transport
2 Heavy Amphibious Transports
1 Heavy Transport
6 Landing Craft
Supply
1 tanker
1 mixed supply
Ones I've missed
Several, probably

So which are jump capable?
I've made that distinction partly on whether the vessels are truely ocean going, and partly on size.

So how big are they?
Arbitrarily I've chosen to equate 5 tonnes to a dTon, mainly because the sizes it produces are manageable.

Conversion
Naval
</font>

• 14 x Frigates
  Mixed 700 and 800 dTon Jump Ships
  Good Detection and Communication
  Mixed Weapons load</font>
• 14 x Patrol SDB's
  Mixed 45 and 55 dTon System Patrol Boats</font>
• 6 x Attack craft
  700 dTon Jump Ships
  Good Stealth and Detection</font>

The line between frigates and the submarines blurs to some extent. The role is still different, the frigate is a generalist craft, the Attack craft (submarines) are a more dedicated ship attack vehicle.

Technical
</font>

• 6 Engineering and Recovery Vessels (minesweepers)
  150 dTon Jump Ship</font>
• 2 Space Survey Vessels
  500 dTon Science Jump Ship</font>
• 4 System Survey Boat
  60 dTon system boat</font>

Minesweepers aren't really a Traveller thing. I was thinking in this case the vessel may be more of a system defense repair/supply/maintenance vessel.

Transport
</font>

• 2 Heavy Amphibious Transports
  Streamlined 1800 dTon transport Jump ship
  Capacity 400 Troops and Vehicles
  Capable of atmospheric landing</font>
• 1 Heavy Transport
  1200dTon Jump ship
  Capacity: 18 MBT + 400 troops</font>
• 6 Landing Craft
  60 dTon Interface landing craft
  36 dTon Carrying Capacity</font>

Supply
</font>

• 1 tanker
  8000 dTon Fuel Tender Jump Ship</font>
• 1 mixed supply
  3600 dTon Mixed Tender Jump Ship</font>

 

[The Oz]

Interesting concept. I would like to know how much such a fleet would cost, and whether the "planet" Australia could afford it.

 

[veltyen]

Proabably, though it would have to be quite high TL to do so easily.

Australia spends 2% GDP on its military, though that is also Army, Air Force, Science Corp and everything else that sits under that umbrella.

2% isn't a bad figure in general, most nations spend approximately that, with some notable exceptions getting up to 4% or more. A lot (read nearly all) goes into soft spending, salaries and supplies in other words. Absolute spending on purchasing vessels would be a quite small poportion.

Crew is an oddity. While the role and weaponry can be matched, Traveller vessels (I'm doing test designs under T20) have far fewer crew then the equivalent wet navy. Case in point, the Anzac frigate, as a wet ship has about 150 crew, as a 800 dTon traveller vessel has a crew of 15 or so.

Aproximate costs: (TL13 - T20 design)
500 MCr Frigate + Attack Craft (20)
50 MCr Patrol Boats + Landing Boats + Survey Boats (24)
100 MCr Engineering Vessels (6)
400 MCr Survey Vessels (2)
1 GCr Troop Transports (including sub vessels)(3)
4 GCr Tanker (1)
2 GCR Mixed Tender (1)

Total Cost
22 GCr or so.

So, assuming that a ship has a 40 year lifespan, a TL13 Pop 7 planet needs a capital purchase of 0.5 GCr/year to have an equivalent fleet to above.

If half a billion credits is less then 0.2% of GDP for such a planet then it is very beleivable. Cosidering that is between 5 and 50 Cr per person per year I think it is likely to be beleiveable.

Anyone know how to calculate the GDP of a planet?

 

[veltyen]

In hidsight one displacement tonne = 1 dTon might make a little more sense. It would fix the niggle I have with crew sizing.

For a small ship universe the above seems to fit. For a big ship universe 4000 dTon frigates and 40,000 dTon tankers may fit a little better. The patrol boats become SDB's in the 200-300 dTon range.

The cost, of course, is a lot higher though probably not linearly (I'd estimate about 3-4 times more).

 

[Antony]

Though perhaps of no relevance at all, if you assume the Anzac class frigates were needle configuration starships they would have a displacement of the order of 2,500 dt (3,600 real displacement tons), and between 7,000 and 8,000 dt if Cylinders
Needles seem best

This is done by putting their actual length into the formulas in FF&S1.

Using the same needle configuraton for the O H Perry (Adelaide) class frigates displacement is a little under 4,000 dt, interestingly the Adelaids "real" displacement is listed as 4,100 dt.

This also seems to work for the new Armidale class patrol boats which if assumed needle configuration starships end up with a displacement of around 270 dt, very close to the actual vessels "real" displacement.
This rough guide probably only applies to frigates,destroyers and small fry.

Incidently only 9 patrol boats appear to be incommission with a further 7 decommissioned.

 

[veltyen]

Incidently only 9 patrol boats appear to be incommission with a further 7 decommissioned.

I thought there were 12 currently active, of mixed fremantle and armidale designs, with a goal of having 14 all armidale class in the near future.

Thanks for the FFS calculations. I guess the larger scale does fit a little better.

 

[RainOfSteel]

veltyen,

What's the UWP of the planet in question that is "simulating" Australia?

 

[veltyen]

Assuming an universe with a cutting edge TL of 15.

Factors that need to be addressed.

Isolation. Australia being an island and all, partly why I thought it might make an OK model to base a small semi-independent polities forces on. Land defence becomes less of an issue, as a wet navy can do a reasonable defence by itself.

Decent but not cutting edge tech. In some areas Australia is at the cutting edge, but there is a lack of infrastructure (ie. people) to cover any more then one or two areas in depth, hence a lower overall TL then what could be available.

Mostly defence focused, with only minor aspirations to force projection.

Environmentally arid with excellent natural resources.

Conventional first world politics and economy.

So a UWP would be
B-747-79?-D

Political rating I haven't put in place, partly because I don't have the table to hand. I think the rest are in the right order, but generating from memory, I could be way off

B class starport
7 size (earth-average)
4 Hydrography (slightly arid)
7 Atmosphere (Earthlike)
7 Population (10 million to 100 million)
9 Law level (restrictive)
? Political rating
D Tech level

Personally I feel that unless they effect GDP most of the stats aren't really that important.

As an Imperial Citizen state a majority of the capital ships would be IN auxillaries or even ships donated to the IN freehold, with only some of the vessels being truely colonial forces under command of the local authorities (the patrol boats and survey vessels mostly).

As an independent state all the vessels would be under central command.

 

[RandyT0001]

The US military budget for 2006 was about $442 billion.
Expenditures:
29% operations and maintenance
25% went to personnel (salaries, bonuses, (retirement?))
18% procurement (fuel, bullets, bombs, butter?)
16% research, development, testing and evaluation
9% new equipment (aircraft, ships, BMD, Stryker IAV's, etc.)
4% DOE Defense Activities (helping rid Russia of old nukes?)
3% military construction (new base buildings, etc.?)

(Note: rounded percentages exceed 100% - some overlap must exist)

I think Australia spent about $13 billion for it's military in the same year. If they spent an equal percentage on new equipment then they spent about $1.3 billion on new ships, tanks, aircraft, etc.

A potential conflict/problem of using Australia as a temple for a planet's military is that in our modern world Australia's military is interconnected to the Western powers and depends upon the US, the UK, Germany, etc. for most of it's R&D of new weapon systems. I doubt that Australia spends 16% of it's military budget on R&D like the US does but I think that a planet would spend a similar percentage of it's budget on R&D (or to procure advanced TL goods and training of personnel to use it).

Another point I would like to raise is the fact that in Traveller the military budget is split between the ground forces of the Army and the space based Navy. How does one decide how much goes to the Army and how much goes to the (system) Navy? It would be very difficult to have enough of an Army from a population of 20 million that could defend a world from invasion. By the same token even if one spent all 13 billion just for the Navy you can't buy enough to properly and completely defend the world from invasion considering the cost of ships capable of such. A problem I think.

IMO

 

[sid6.7]

Originally posted by veltyen:

Anyone know how to calculate the GDP of a planet?

you could use my cheesy tool here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Gal24/

its more for kingdoms but you can adjust...

loosely based on this webpage here:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/2space.htm

and here:
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

earths GDP which is roughly tech 6/7?
is about: 40-60 trillion or 9,000 per person

miltary spending is 1.2 trillion so
about 2%...

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by veltyen:
So a UWP would be
B-747-79?-D

I gave Gov 2, Democracy, as it will not matter.

I gave a population multiplier of 5.

---------------------

I did not compute the trade codes and their consequent trade multipliers.

Very unofficially, I come up with a GWP of Cr3,350,000,000,000.

 

[veltyen]

Randy,

Australia's budget is online at http://www.budget.gov.au if it does interest you.
Capital purchase is far higher then the US (at about 30% of costs vs 12%) with a matching reduction in spending elsewhere. Research for example only comes in at 2.5% of budget. That said, costs are broken down differently, so it's hard to say where the actual changes are. Hey, they're publicly published military figures there is a good chance they don't match reality anyway.

The thing about interconnected technology is that the same could be said of all countries. As such they are all an equally bad examples to use.

I have to agree with you though. A planet with 20 million people at TL7 isn't going to be able to defend itself in space.

(Randy Tyler)
It would be very difficult to have enough of an Army from a population of 20 million that could defend a world from invasion.

Randy, this seems to be a non-sensical statement. The population of the planet doesn't matter for two reasons.
1.The smaller the population is, the less you need to protect.
2.If the invasion doesn't care about destroying that population, then the size of the army doesn't matter at all, they just pound everything flat and move in.


Sid,

My own notes from trying to calculate meaningful GDPs had TL5-8 as the current spread to try to take into account population.

The orginal took probes of TL2 (sub saharan africa) TL5 (india) TL6 (china) TL7 (russia) and TL8 (usa, japan) and tried to fit the reported GDP vs population.

Battering the figures enough came out to a x2/2TL GDP growth as a "near enough" result.

So that would mean a TL13 "australia" appropriate for the above fleet would have a GDP of
Current TL7 au = 150GCr
TL13 au = 1200 GCr (8 times higher)

For a military budget of 24 GCr/year.

Naval capital purchase of 0.5 GCr (small ship) is very doable.

Even the "big ship" is only around 2.2 GCr/year and still very much doable (though a lot tighter).

 

[Hal]

In partial answer to the questions raised on how to determine who gets what when it comes to allocating funds...

If you have access to STRIKER rules for vehicle construction, or you have at least some idea of vehicular costs - you will discover that those battalions are NOT cheap. An armored battalion (if I remember correctly) with 44 Intrepid tanks (Using GURPS rules) was 800+ Mcr. This did not include other various equipment costs such as maintenance tools, spare parts, toilet paper, filtration canteens etc. Nor did it include the prices of munitions or personal side arms etc.

Astrin Grav APC's (in various forms such as command apc, ambulances, standard fighting APC, etc) came in at about 1/4 of that price - again, excluding munitions costs, artillery costs etc. Note this does NOT include training costs etc.

If it were me, and you want a useful rule of thumb to use for your military costs?

Assume roughly 1.5 Billion credits per Armored Battalion, and roughly .75 Billion Credits per infantry battalion that your hypothetical planet/nation utilizes.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the prices for a single modern Frigate in real life is in billions of dollars, whereas in Traveller, a comparable vessel would be in the hundreds of million.

One thing that TRAVELLER never attempted to detail was what goes into the cost of starports, military housing, training costs, and so forth. In a way, that is a shame if you're trying to build a "reasonable" Traveller universe wargame/simulationist campaign. A lot of people have suggested "But that is all included in that 10% maintenance cost for vessels" rule. Frankly, I just don't agree with that.

Think about it - simulators cost money to buy and train personnel on. Colleges cost money to staff and/or provide training materials for. Those local yocals whose educational standards lag behind the general populace are going to need educational upgrades or work in low training required jobs. Factor in retirement funds that have to be paid out, medical care to keep your soldiers in fighting trim, dependent costs (ie, spouses and children), security costs, rental fees of land if neccessary, maintenance costs of the bases themselves, etc - and you might wonder why these costs are all lumped in on the 10% of the fleet ship costs. As many will tell you who have been there - maintaining older equipment tends to cost more as time goes on, and very few governments can afford to provide brand new gear for everyone. As troopies move on out into the civilian sector, newbies are trained and given old second hand equipment and told "Who cares if it is not the best, shut up and soldier, Soldier!" etc.

You know, I wonder what the stats on a military base look like overall? I mean, imagine approaching a naval installation with a 5,000 dton destroyer and slugging it out with the base. What would the result be? Clearly, those "bases" have to have weapon systems such as spinal mounts or bays or turrets much as you'd find on a ship. What does it cost to build a base?

As a final thought: Most bases are not going to store just enough ordinance to fight a single battle that lasts at most, a couple of days. Imagine being the commander of a missle frigate and being told "Um, ever since we've gone to the ON TIME delivery system, we've only kept enough ordinance to fight for 3 days. You'll have to wait until we can accept delivery of a new batch of missiles for your ship - say, 3 weeks?" So, you take it from there and determine how much ordinance your navy is stockpiling, or your army for that matter! Once you start allocating funds towards "Support" stuff versus "front line combat units", you'll soon see that the number of front line units is not just a matter of finding out how much budget you have and dividing that value by the cost of a ship or tank or what have you. The cost should be something uses a portion or percentage of all available funds, but is considerably less.

Thus? If your GDP is 1,000 MCr (just pulling numbers out of thin air here), and you allocate an 80/20 split between army/navy - and you figure out that bases, support costs, ordinance stockpiling, etc - takes up 30% of the general budget - then, deduct that from the budget, THEN consider how many front line units you can buy/maintain.

 

[Hal]

Oh, I almost forgot:

Striker rules for cost per year per person are:

10,000 cr per year Militia (general cost)
x2 for conscripts
x3 for long term professionals
x5 for handpicked elites

So a battalion of 3,000 long term professionals are going to cost you 88.5 MCr per year (exclusive of equipment maintenance and munitions costs!).

 

[veltyen]

I wasn't going to go to Army and Air Force (COAC) in any detail mainly becuase of the discontinuity between systems.

Going with a similar conversion to the Naval one.

40,000 military personel (20,000 Army, 10,000 COAC, 10,000 Navy)
40,000 civilian support personel

Army
60 MBT (Intrepid)
250 IFV (Astrin)
1000 IMV (G-Carrier)
20 Attack Sled (Helicopter equivalent)
40 Transport Sled (Helicopter equivalent)
60 Light artillery pieces (laser)
20 Heavy artillery pieces (missile)

Coac
70 Interceptors (20 dTon Fighters)
20 Heavy Interceptor/Bombers (30 dTon Fighters)
10 Medium Transport (shuttles)
5 Heavy Transport (400 dTon spaceships)

Of course with any translation it does break down when transferred between tech levels.