System Defenses

[Samules]

I'm wondering what kind of defenses the average imperial world would have?
My worlds often have:

3 system defence boats
5 fighters
10 aircraft(speeders w/ 2 laser rifles)
5 tanks (G carriers w/ plasma A cannons)
500 Militia (ablat armor auto rifles)
50 Imperial marines (combat or battle dress depending on tech and plasma gun)

During wartime they have

3 Chamax ships(homebrew 200 ton warship)
1 Levanthian(600 ton ship)
and all things for non wartime

 

[far-trader]

Are those numbers per some population? And are you wondering about Imperial forces or locals?

I'd say it would depend on a great many factors. The value of the world (trade value, strategic value, production value, etc), where it is, how big it is, the population, the starport, bases, tech-level, government type. Lots of things.

Ground based defenses such as missiles, lasers, and other weapons depending on TL and resources. Likewise orbital defenses.

Ships will depend on if your's is a small or large ship TU, or something in between.

It'll be hard to find two people to agree on the details even if they approach it from the same general TU. About the only cannon I can think of would probably be using figures from TCS or Pocket Empires or something like that for a planetary defense budget and then going from there.

 

[robject]

It'll be hard to find two people to agree on the details even if they approach it from the same general TU.

So very true. And the TML has done reams of posts over this topic.

Maybe it's time to recap.

 

[veltyen]

I'm wondering what kind of defenses the average imperial world would have?

Depends on the budget.

At 0.5% GDP, and 40 year terms for naval vessels, the population and TL of a planet change what is available by many orders of magnitude.

GDP is linear with population, and doubles approximately every 2 TL's [1]. So a pop 7 TL 9 system (which seems about right for the craft listed) would have 1/400 of the material available to a pop 9 TL 13 system and 1/8000 of a pop A TL 15 system.

As governments you can ignore interest as such, and just divide the cost of the ships over the 40 year service life, so cost is 1/40 purchase cost + ongoing costs.

[1] Derived from the CIA world factbook and arbitrarily assigned countries TL's according to "feel".

 

[rancke]

I'm wondering what kind of defenses the average imperial world would have?

Depends on what you mean by average. A TL15 high-population world will have system defenses to match an Imperial fleet or two. A TL 8 medium population world will be hard pressed to maintain an SDB.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Depends on the budget.

At 0.5% GDP, and 40 year terms for naval vessels, the population and TL of a planet change what is available by many orders of magnitude.

According to Striker, the average military budget of an Imperial member world is 3% of GWP (some of which will go to the army). Note that this probably means that some worlds (in the interior) spends less and those on the frontier spends more.


Hans

 

[robject]

A TL15 high-population world will have system defenses to match an Imperial fleet or two.

The best we can do is quote numbers based on a particular rules set. The numbers will vary, and depend on assumptions about the Imperium, much like the way a dog's tail is wagged by the owning dog.

 

[Max]

well it varies. I prefer to use a militarization number of 4 front line military members per 10,000 population which is about what Earth@1985 was running. Nothing wrong with using other numbers but that produced a reasonably sized military for the purposes I use it for. This I split into 4 categories : army, wet navy, air force/planetary defense & space navy with different allocations depending on the nature of the planet - an asteroid system could have 0% wet navy, 10% army, 20% 'planetary' defense and 70% space navy while a lower tech Terran type world could have 60% army, 15% wet navy, 25% air force and 0% space navy. Usually it is only necessary to determine the space navy forces for player interaction, and I tend to allocate 25% of the personnel to the space navy to keep it easy (1 squid per 100,000 pop), so a world with a pop of 6 Billion would have a space navy with ships having some 60,000 crew (2 big 10,000 crew monitors and a heap of fighters can soak up a lot of those) while a world with 2 million pop might have 2 x 10 man SDBs.

 

[aramis]

For comparison, the US Army alone was
active Army-780,787 (-13);
Army Reserve-292,080 (-3,055);
Army National Guard-439,952 (+ 179).
http://www.history.army.mil/books/DAHSUM/1985/ch02.htm

Total US Population was estimated at 240 million; This puts the US Army actives alone about 3 per 1000, with another 3 per 1000 in part-time soldiery.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq65-1.htm lists the US Navy at 579,594, another 2.5 per 1000 persons.

I can't find the USAF numbers for 1985; estimate them at about the same as the Navy.

Approximately 1% of the US was in the military in 1985; about 2/3rds of those active duty.

 

[rancke]

The best we can do is quote numbers based on a particular rules set. The numbers will vary, and depend on assumptions about the Imperium, much like the way a dog's tail is wagged by the owning dog.

No, I'm quoting numbers based on a particular bit of straight background information. Said information also happens to conform to Real Life figures (peacetime spending of the US during Cold War was, IIRC, 8%), which is nice, in case someone has happened to decanonize that bit of information .


Hans

 

[aramis]

No, I'm quoting numbers based on a particular bit of straight background information. Said information also happens to conform to Real Life figures (peacetime spending of the US during Cold War was, IIRC, 8%), which is nice, in case someone has happened to decanonize that bit of information .


Hans

Problem is at the OTHER end, Hans.

We don't know how much people make in CT, in MT we know it's at least Cr250 times Soc for non-ship-crews; ship crewing is, however, apparently sufficient for even a Duke... MGT has different expenses, and they are non-linear. TNE doesn't discuss it. T4 might have, but I don't recall.

We also don't know the actual "normative" Soc, we can imply it to be somewhere around 7-8... but we can be fairly certain Character Generation is (at least in CT, MT, T4, T20, and MGT) not generating "Normal Population" but at best, normal space-travellers....

So... we have to make assumptions about the GDP. Assumptions based assumptions based upon scant evidence.

 

[rancke]

Problem is at the OTHER end, Hans.

We don't know how much people make in CT, in MT we know it's at least Cr250 times Soc for non-ship-crews; ship crewing is, however, apparently sufficient for even a Duke... MGT has different expenses, and they are non-linear. TNE doesn't discuss it. T4 might have, but I don't recall.

Well, the figures would (or at least ought to) be the same for all versions, since they depend on the setting, not the rules (And, yes, in that context GT is a HUGE problem).

We also don't know the actual "normative" Soc, we can imply it to be somewhere around 7-8... but we can be fairly certain Character Generation is (at least in CT, MT, T4, T20, and MGT) not generating "Normal Population" but at best, normal space-travellers....

So... we have to make assumptions about the GDP. Assumptions based assumptions based upon scant evidence.

What more do we need than the table on p. 38 of Striker 2? It gives us base per capita GNP for each tech level from 5 to 15 (to which one applies the trade modifiers). So, for instance, Trin has a GWP of Cr22,000 (base GNP for TL15) times 1.4 (modifier for Industrial) times 10,000 to 19,000 million (population). That's 308 million megacredits if the population is 10 billion, almost twice that if it's 19 billion. 3% of that is MCr9,240,000. 30% of that goes to the Imperium and up to 40% of the remainder to the Trin army. The remaining 42% goes to the Trin System Navy. That's a naval budget of MCr3,880,800, which (assuming the 10% maintenance figure from TCS is valid) gives Trin system defenses to the tune of 39 trillion credits. That's the equivalent of 2,225 50,000T monitors like the one described in Fighting Ships. Or 107 Tigresses...


Hans

 

[aramis]

Which is why, since the table is the same as in TCS, said table was decanonized.
308E12/1E10=308E2=30.8E3=30KCr/year average product per person... which, BTW, given that the US product per person is about 2x the average income... (38.4E12 http://flagcounter.com/factbook/us, 50,233 income median 2007 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html, and us pop 307e6 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html[/url], that gives a ppp of 99022, and an income ratio of 1.97)... which means the median income of that world should be about KCr15/yr, or under soc 5... meaning soc 4. The expectation should be a PPP increase per TL, making the average soc even lower.

 

[robject]

I'm wondering what kind of defenses the average imperial world would have?
My worlds often have:

3 system defence boats
5 fighters
10 aircraft(speeders w/ 2 laser rifles)
5 tanks (G carriers w/ plasma A cannons)
500 Militia (ablat armor auto rifles)
50 Imperial marines (combat or battle dress depending on tech and plasma gun)

Starport Defense

If you're talking about starport-related defense, then your list seems reasonable. If the planet has invested in a good starport, then it will want those system defence boats and long-range fighters to regulate interstellar traffic, and the rest for "defending" the starport... likely part of this can be seen as an Imperial occupation force, since many starports are extra-territorial and thus considered Imperial territory (?)...


Planetary Defense?

So, if you're talking about planetary defenses, then there will be much, much more ground and air forces. Think military budgets of modern countries, on a planetary scale.

Low tech will still have standing armies equipped and trained as well as possible.

Middling tech will have tried-and-true defenses (ground armor, appropriate aircraft equipped with occasional high-tech missiles as far as the budget and importability allows) and a sophisticated armed forces. There will also be missiles and nukes.

High tech will have plenty of grav tanks and gravitic fighters. There will be ground-based defense emplacements, as well -- i.e. heavy missile bays. Probably will be a satellite defense screen as well. And nukes -- the common denominator for destruction -- will be deployed liberally.

 

[veltyen]

Middling tech will have tried-and-true defenses (ground armor, appropriate aircraft equipped with occasional high-tech missiles as far as the budget and importability allows) and a sophisticated armed forces. There will also be missiles and nukes.

TL7 allows lasers.

Anti-space laser tanks - while expensive - are a worthwhile thing to have. Both for true anti-space work, as well as giving a moment of pause to anyone thinking of landing. Coupled with a radar network (a separate radar network hopefully) and you also have the makings of a ground based anti-missile system.

Low TL does not mean that the citizens are unaware of external threats.

 

[rancke]

Which is why, since the table is the same as in TCS, said table was decanonized.

Oh, is that why it was decanonized? How do you know that?

308E12/1E10=308E2=30.8E3=30KCr/year average product per person... which, BTW, given that the US product per person is about 2x the average income... (38.4E12 http://flagcounter.com/factbook/us, 50,233 income median 2007 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html, and us pop 307e6 http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html[/url], that gives a ppp of 99022, and an income ratio of 1.97)

I'm unable to follow your argument. Could you perhaps elucidate?

... which means the median income of that world should be about KCr15/yr, or under soc 5... meaning soc 4. The expectation should be a PPP increase per TL, making the average soc even lower.

I don't know if your're exposing a true contradiction, because I can't make heads or tails of your argument, but assuming for a moment that you are, what makes you think the rule about cost of living is the one that's valid and the per capita income is the one that's broken?


Hans

 

[robject]

I don't know if your're exposing a true contradiction, because I can't make heads or tails of your argument, but assuming for a moment that you are, what makes you think the rule about cost of living is the one that's valid and the per capita income is the one that's broken?

I smell a new discussion... or, rather, one of the same old ones.

 

[aramis]

Oh, is that why it was decanonized? How do you know that?


I'm unable to follow your argument. Could you perhaps elucidate?


I don't know if your're exposing a true contradiction, because I can't make heads or tails of your argument, but assuming for a moment that you are, what makes you think the rule about cost of living is the one that's valid and the per capita income is the one that's broken?


Hans

Really quite simple: The per person domestic product is unreasonably LOW on those tables. They are therefore bogus.

Even given the established $3:Cr1, rather than the more reasonable $5:Cr1, it puts the GDP at about TL8 levels!

 

[flykiller]

3 system defence boats
5 fighters
10 aircraft(speeders w/ 2 laser rifles)
5 tanks (G carriers w/ plasma A cannons)
500 Militia (ablat armor auto rifles)
50 Imperial marines (combat or battle dress depending on tech and plasma gun)

During wartime they have

3 Chamax ships(homebrew 200 ton warship)
1 Levanthian(600 ton ship)
and all things for non wartime

wouldn't even slow down a troop transport imtu. might be a sufficient close-in police force for a low-traffic system of no strategic importance and with no moons or gas giants.

might want to consider "system defense" from several angles.

1) local police, search-and-rescue, customs, and/or inspection activities by local forces
2) local police, search-and-rescue, customs, and/or inspection activities by imperial forces
3) local starport defense by local forces
4) local starport defense by imperial forces
5) system defense by local forces
6) system defense by imperial forces

this provides a flexible approach to what each circumstance requires. for example mora may have hundreds of its own ships and thousands of its own men dedicated to starport ops, while quar may have a few of its own sdb's but also be the homeport for several imperial battle groups.

 

[rancke]

Really quite simple: The per person domestic product is unreasonably LOW on those tables. They are therefore bogus.

Sounds to me like you believe that we DO know how much people make in the OTU. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to state that the figures of the table were too low.

You may be right. As I can't follow your reasoning, I can't tell. You're sure it's not the per capita income of the US that's unusually high?

Even given the established $3:Cr1, rather than the more reasonable $5:Cr1, it puts the GDP at about TL8 levels!

So the figure is off by a factor 3? I've always believed that the value of the credit was realistic because it was based on a real life situation, namely 1 credit = 1 1979 US dollar.


Hans