It's extremely feasible. One of the discrepancies we used to argue about was that the canonical Imperial Navy described in Rebellion Sourcebook seemed to be quite a bit smaller than what should be possible to support with the naval budget that Striker implied for the Imperium.Originally posted by Jim Fetters:
I guess the big question for me (which I will readily admit is based on a lot of unknowns on my part), is this: Is the existence of a "Big Ship Universe" with fleets as detailed in "Fighting Ships" economically feasible?
RebS says about 1,000 combat vessels (cruisers and above) per sector. If you interpret that as 1000 combat vessels per 16 subesectors, you get an average of 62.5 per regular fleet. This excludes IN auxiliaries, subsector navies, and planetary navies.I am trying to get a handle on how many types of the different squadrons are available in the Imperial Navy (for example, how many BatRons in a subsector fleet).
What supplement? Supplement 9 implies that squadrons tend to be eight ships of the same class plus support vessels (Though four and six ship squadrons no doubt occur on occasion).According to the same supplement, the typical Battle Squadron consists of four battlships. Assuming that means one Dreadnaught and three light battleships,
There are 15 trillion people in the Imperium. Assume an average per capita Gross Product of 10,000 credits (this is set low), the total GP of the Imperium is 150,000 trillion credits, or 150,000,000,000 Megacredits. Imperial worlds have an average military spending of 3% of GP, or 4,500,000,000 Megacredits. Of this, 30% goes to the Imperium = 1,350,000,000 Megacredits. Note that this is specifically for military expenditure. If the Imperium also gets something to run its bureaucracy, that will be over and above this money.that makes a cost of 7 Trillion credits and 33,200 crewmembers per squadron on the Imperial level (interestingly, the crew requirements for the dreadnaught equal the total of the three smaller battleships) just for the battleships!
Seeing how this is just for one BatRon, not even taking into consideration the other types of squadrons in the fleets (or event the support ships in the squadron), can this work? The more I look at this, the more it seems that these > 100,000 ton vessels would be extremely rare - similar to Firefly, where the big navy ships were an occasional encounter.
A Tigress costs a little over a third of a trillion credits from new. Call it three trillion credits for an eight ship squadron. But you don't need to buy a new set every year. TrillionCredit Squadron says that it costs 10% of the original cost per year to maintain a starship. Analysis of Real World figures suggests that this isn't a bad figure (a little on the high side, but not bad). So a squadron of the biggest dreadnaughts the Imperium fields at the moment will cost it less than half a trillion credits per year to maintain.Originally posted by Jim Fetters:
According to the same supplement, the typical Battle Squadron consists of four battlships. Assuming that means one Dreadnaught and three light battleships, that makes a cost of 7 Trillion credits and 33,200 crewmembers per squadron on the Imperial level (interestingly, the crew requirements for the dreadnaught equal the total of the three smaller battleships) just for the battleships!
You'll have to make some assumptions to answer that. The assumptions I use are:Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
A couple of questions I'd always wanted answered are:
how much does the IN spend on wages,
That's quite true, and I must confess that I've never done the figures. But I think there is room in the budget for ordnance too.and
how much does it spend on ordnance?
Battery rounds of nuclear missiles are expensive.
Actually, it costs 10% per year to maintain and operate a starship, including costs such as maintaining facilities; TCS just gives the total cost of the navy as 10% of the ship costs, which includes all sorts of things that not only aren't maintenance costs, they aren't even operating costs.Originally posted by rancke:
TrillionCredit Squadron says that it costs 10% of the original cost per year to maintain a starship. Analysis of Real World figures suggests that this isn't a bad figure (a little on the high side, but not bad).
Actually, it costs 10% per year to maintain and operate a starship, including costs such as maintaining facilities; TCS just gives the total cost of the navy as 10% of the ship costs, which includes all sorts of things that not only aren't maintenance costs, they aren't even operating costs.Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
TrillionCredit Squadron says that it costs 10% of the original cost per year to maintain a starship. Analysis of Real World figures suggests that this isn't a bad figure (a little on the high side, but not bad).
Actually, it costs 10% per year to maintain and operate a starship, including costs such as maintaining facilities; TCS just gives the total cost of the navy as 10% of the ship costs, which includes all sorts of things that not only aren't maintenance costs, they aren't even operating costs.</font>[/QUOTE]Well, yes, that's what I meant. Everything you need to run a navy capable of owning that number of ships, down to recruitment posters and pensions...Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
TrillionCredit Squadron says that it costs 10% of the original cost per year to maintain a starship. Analysis of Real World figures suggests that this isn't a bad figure (a little on the high side, but not bad).
One major cost that I include in that 10% figure is peacetime replacement. Spend a quarter of the budget each year on building new ships and you can replace the whole navy in 40 years. But yes, 10% is a very high figure.Of course, the maintenance cost on merchant ships in Traveller is 0.5%/year, and the total operating cost is typically under 1%/year; it's not clear why military ships would be that much more expensive (you can reasonably argue that the problem is the merchant ships, not the warships).
Cha-ching! That is a great-gob of firepower.Imperial Military Spending
After applying exchange rates, the revenues available to support Imperial military spending range from 320 to 4,700 billion credits, averaging around 950 billion credits per subsector