Core 2 & High Guard 2 rules check - EW, mssiles, armor

[Anonymous]

traveller background imo has never been too hot on implants, they seem to not want to become cyberpunk. maybe modern gamers are changing this - it will likely depend on your group.

shooting is more than the rifle range. I'm ok on the range with stand to support the gun, but I don't know moving targets, weather, doing it fast, weapon maintenance, and how to shoot from cover, and numerous other things.

 

[Anonymous]

long wartime also brings losses and rapid recruitment, both of which can lower the average crew quality. The wartime recruitment drive for Afghanistan and Iraq at the turn of the millennium brought street gangers into the army, and caused them some problems.

Quite, but not many street thugs became badly trained naval fighter pilots?


I assume a competent Navy has a lot more trained crew than shipboard billets and training organisation continuously training more. The job of the Navy in peacetime is to prepare for war. If the Navy is incapable of training the personnel needed for a major war it can hardly be considered a competent Navy?

google "marianas turkey shoot"

losses are inevitable, and even the best prepared can lose. IJN was very competent at war start but their government forced them into a lengthy war their economy and population could not win.

Japan was much better at the start of the war in skills and gear, but they could not replace stuff fast enough and the US industry caught up. by the time of this battle, Japan had almost no skilled pilots left. their admiral Yamamoto knew this would happen and told the emperor not to start the war in the first place.

 

[phavoc]

High Guard has missile price at 0.35 MCr for the advanced and 0.25 for basic. You're saying this is for 12? on mobile internet can't easily check.

long wartime also brings losses and rapid recruitment, both of which can lower the average crew quality. The wartime recruitment drive for Afghanistan and Iraq at the turn of the millennium brought street gangers into the army, and caused them some problems.

I'd agree that war gets rid of the obviously incompetent so maybe raises 1s to 2s, perhaps not so many 2s become 3s. I suspect the duration of the war matters - is it long or short? if short you don't need to recruit fast.

anyhow i can go with +2 dms for a navy, possibly +3s for an elite unit. if you get a whole boat of +4 they're an instructor corps and too valuable to risk. civvies can vary randomly, most gunners are probably ex-forces but out of practise.

The US military (post-Vietnam) has gone through many changes caused by a few things - a change from a draft to a volunteer service, a gradual increase in the technology of the weapons, and overall social change. I only know tangentially from USN, USAF and USMC, but I spent some time as a recruiter in the 80s for the US Army. My recruiting office was in a major metropolitan area where the average income was quite high. Most kids graduating high school were being pushed to go to college (and many did). But, generally speaking, the Army had a certain number of bodies they needed, thus while they wanted HS diplomas and kids without police records, they accepted a certain percentage because they needed the bodies. For the most part the ASVAB testing self-selected where those recruits could go (and many ended up in the manpower intensive, but fewer high skills needed like infantry, tube artillery, etc). The AF recruiter had it the easiest since they were much smaller and higher tech in general, plus they could afford to be choosier. The Navy was 2nd in that sense, but they, too, had a certain, if lower percentage, of allowed recruits who didn't meet their overall standards. The USMC was always kind of a wild card. They had standards, but then again, Marine boot camp washed out a lot, and everyone was a rifleman first, then whatever else second. So their recruiting was a bit different.

We called the lower-level recruits 'rocks', as in 'dumb as a box of rocks'. These kids weren't the best or brightest, but some jobs just require a body and a Sergeant to act as the brain. Recruiting standards went back up in the 90s and these kids weren't able to join any more because they were not eligible. As the wars came and deployments (and losses) got higher, recruiting standards dropped again. As did age requirements. There were 40+ year old privates being allowed to join up because of the needs of the service. Generally speaking that need for just bodies will probably always be present in any military, draft or volunteer.

When the first gulf war came, all the services realized their previous mentality was a bit skewed. Reservists from basic duties turned out to require much more training. Those with higher skill levels that came from longer periods in service suffered less from skill atrophy. Being an infantryman requires usage of tools and activities not normally found in the civilian world (employers take a dim view of ambushes, explosives and other military paraphenalia in the workplace!). We've been seeing this recently with the USN where ships have been colliding with other ships due to poor command, poor training, and a lack of basic seamanship skills. The USN has also been stretched in deployments and training times, and, probably, coupled with a few other things, that have decreased the basic handling skills for ships. The British navy, up to WW2, was considered the best around, but even they had boneheaded activities such as battleships ramming battleships in basic peacetime maneuvers (we'll cut people some slack for wartime). Peacetime accidents are normal for any military force and often expose things the military doesn't like to admit (poor training, poor command, poor lots of things). And you just can't stop stupid.

In general most military personnel are competent in peacetime in doing their duties. But it's a job and not war. Even if you TRAIN for war, you don't train with the mentality of 'crap, I could be deployed to the front tomorrow!" There's also the type of unit/service you are in. The USMC generally has a higher training tempo than the US Army. Plus Marines often get deployed first over the Army to fighting area. The Army, with its uncommon deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, are finding out how different they have had it.

Elite units will always be one step above. But typically these units are populated by much higher level candidates to start with. They are drawn to the challenge and they are already highly skilled. Average line units will have some exceptional people, but for the most part these people will be drawn to the more elite services (Seals, SAS, Spetsnatz, etc). Plus there are some job sets, especially around nuclear weapons, that require a higher level individual - at least in specific job areas.

 

[phavoc]

google "marianas turkey shoot"

losses are inevitable, and even the best prepared can lose. IJN was very competent at war start but their government forced them into a lengthy war their economy and population could not win.

Japan was much better at the start of the war in skills and gear, but they could not replace stuff fast enough and the US industry caught up. by the time of this battle, Japan had almost no skilled pilots left. their admiral Yamamoto knew this would happen and told the emperor not to start the war in the first place.

That's very true. It exposed the structural issues the Japanese military had. In essence they lacked the ability (some would argue desire) to train the next set of replacements. They also suffered from a lack of infrastructure as well as enough population from which to pull replacements. They also suffered from arrogance - they never expected nor planned for this sort of setback so when it happened they simply had no time to build everything they needed from scratch to recover from.

The Germans were the opposite. Even at the peak of their losses on the Eastern Front and setbacks in Africa they maintained a very high level of training and professionalism in their NCO corps. They had a year-long course for a soldier to be trained as an NCO, and were doing this up towards the end of the war. The US had a different mentality, but they also were smart enough to rotate back aces and other experts to pass along their wartime experience to the next set of troops. This is a huge advantage because 'the book' isn't reality. Plus learning from someone who has come back (and survived) battles is just different. It's hard to put into words, but when you are talking to (well, ok, being talked to) a veteran and they are passing along what they experienced and learned, you tend to pay more attention to them than an instructor who hasn't seen combat their self.

Interesting anecdote - during WW1 the Russians had more troops than rifles. By December, 1914, the Russian Army had 6,553,000 men. However, they only had 4,652,000 rifles. Untrained troops were ordered into battle without adequate arms or ammunition. "Untrained troops were ordered into battle without adequate arms or ammunition. And because the Russian Army had about one surgeon for every 10,000 men, many wounded of its soldiers died from wounds that would have been treated on the Western Front. With medical staff spread out across a 500 mile front, the likelihood of any Russian soldier receiving any medical treatment was close to zero".

 

[phavoc]

I respect your experience and I agree. Note that is basically the raw skill ranks I assume.

But I also assume that at least military gunners and pilots have a DEX DM of +1 as about 28% of all young people have according to the characteristic rolls.

Meh. If you only have a quarter-percent of them having that, then the odds are 70% of them won't. Thus the modifier should not be applied.

Traveller warships are much more expensive than current warships and consequently far lower percentage of the population serves aboard, and hence the crews can be much more select than currently. I don't see much problem with the Navy (and Marines) being selective and only recruiting in the top third of the population. The Army may well be much less selective.

The USN has $1 billion dollar destroyers, and $12 billion dollar carriers. Without having a clue as to what the military budget (or economy) of the Imperium is, I think it's safe to say the US economy would be comparable to the Imperial one. There's are many arguments to be made about this, but again, we have nothing to go by so let's stick with something we have have data on. And as such even the US military is constrained in peacetime with a budget. I don't see Imperial warships being more expensive than the current crop of ones.

As far as crew selection and elitism goes, that trend does not follow historical trends for military service - war or peacetime. While militaries WANT to recruit in the upper 1/3rd, they can't match the money or freedom private sector work offers. That assumption works well on paper but not in reality.

My assumptions may be based on Swedish tradition where military service is generally long time since the system with short time enlistment was abandoned in the 17th century.

Again, I consider all shipboard personnel more like current combat pilots than current mass-recruited naval ratings. The advantage of highly skilled crew is to great not to be vigorously pursued.

I dunno. About .4% of the US population is in the military. I don't see the Imperium being much different. Sure the population base is bigger, but so too is the area it needs to patrol. The current numbers the US are probably more standard than other western nations. And I don't see the Imperium as modeled after Russia, China or other more militaristic nations.

Modeling naval personnel to pilots is a bad example. It's not at all comparable. Pilots spend years being trained, naval personnel do not.

I don't know much about the Swedish military. It's much different than other Western nations (and it's much smaller based upon a very homogeneous population with soldiers who don't deploy to warzones outside the country). I do know they had scrapped their draft and went to all volunteer, but that failed and they've since re-instituted mandatory service. During the all-volunteer days something like 50% of the recruits dropped out during basic. Volunteers in the US get benefits you don't normally get in civil service (Swedish things are different, so comparisons are difficult).

I don't believe non-visible augments such as skill augment or wafer jacks that clearly makes you better at your job and are mandatory for your career (warship deployment) will be all that unpopular. It's not at all like replacing a functioning limb with a prosthetic.

(shrug) I dunno. Getting stuff stuck in your body, even if it's not visible, unless it's the norm in society isn't going to be tolerated by people you are drawing from that society. Again I think this is one of those things that sounds great and makes sense on paper but does not translate well to reality. Unless cybernetics are well accepted by society (in any form), it's highly unlikely people are going to let the government jack them up (some obviously will do it gleefully, just not the majority).

 

[DickTurpin]

Re: Implants/Agumentations for Navy personnel. I will point out that in Traveller 2nd Ed. character generation Implants are not a possible muster out benefit for either the Navy nor the Marines. Unless they are taking back the cyberware when you leave the service, I expect that they do not use them. The Army does apparently use implants since ex-Army often muster out with them.

 

[paltrysum]

A TL-13 wafer jack costs Cr15,000. The Skill Augmentation augment is a whopping Cr150,000. That's Cr165,000 per person. Let's take a look at Mongoose's Ghalalk-class cruiser for an example of personnel requirements: 385. Even if you only install those items in 80% of the ship's personnel, you're still looking at a figure of about MCr53. You could dial it back to just wafer jacks and the cost drops to MCr4.85, but that does not include the Expert software.

I should think that highly specialized crews might have such augments, but I don't see them being standard. It's also a loss after the sailor musters out. You could surgically remove the augments, but to what end? To reinstall it into someone else? Why not, I guess, but it all just sounds sort of an improbable investment in employees who more often than not muster out after 1–3 terms.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The USN has $1 billion dollar destroyers, and $12 billion dollar carriers.

The Imperium has destroyers costing GCr 1.5 ≈ 6 billion dollars requiring ~100 crew and half a trillion dollar battleships with ~2000 crew.

A supercarrier for G$ 12 with 5000 crew is M$ 2.4 / crew member.
A Traveller battleship for G$ 500 with 2000 crew is M$ 250 / crew member.

Traveller spaceships are much more expensive than current wet ships.

Hence for a similar budget the Imperium use MUCH less crew then current navies.

As far as crew selection and elitism goes, that trend does not follow historical trends for military service - war or peacetime. While militaries WANT to recruit in the upper 1/3rd, they can't match the money or freedom private sector work offers. That assumption works well on paper but not in reality.

Neither the US nor Sweden has any major problems recruiting fighter pilots as far as I know, despite high requirements and lower salaries.

Mass-recruiting in the top third is not possible, but the Imperial Navy does not need even remotely as many hot bodies as the USN per million population.

I dunno. About .4% of the US population is in the military. I don't see the Imperium being much different. Sure the population base is bigger, but so too is the area it needs to patrol. The current numbers the US are probably more standard than other western nations.

The US has no hostile neighbours. If you had a few million Russian or Chinese soldiers on your borders, you would have a lot more soldiers...

The Anglo-Saxon mindset is very different from the continental European or Asian mindset. In Europe you have an army constantly prepared. Britain and the US have tiny armies and expect to hide behind their navies while they start to think about building armies, safe in assured naval superiority (since everyone else has to maintain large armies).

The Imperium has no assured naval superiority. It has a superior navy to any competitor alone, but any war on several fronts is a lethal threat. It is much more like Imperial Germany before WWI. It can defeat any neighbour alone, but against a grand alliance it has severe problems.

Imperial Germany had a population of about 65 million and could mobilise about 4 million trained and equipped men in a week or two, with an additional 4 million possible. This is about European standard for the 20th century.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think Britain or the US is representative of neither other Western nations nor the Imperium.

Even Sweden, after practically disbanding the Army, has more than 0.4% of the pop in military service.

Modeling naval personnel to pilots is a bad example. It's not at all comparable. Pilots spend years being trained, naval personnel do not.

If, as in my example above, each crew member handles equipment worth more than a F-22, then each crew member is comparable to an F-22 pilot. It makes absolutely no sense to drag an unsuitable recruit straight from boot camp into a bay and hope that he hits something sometimes.

I don't know much about the Swedish military.

Sweden used a standard conscript-reserve system (similar to Germany) in the 20th century with large volunteer (unpaid) services. Foreign service (e.g. UN peace-keepers) were recruited for the mission from the pool of trained reserves. The Army was about 500 000 men with another 100 000 volunteer Home Guards (up to almost a million in 1945).

Most men were called up and trained for a year, then placed in a field unit that was immediately demobbed. The field unit was recalled for exercises occasionally, but with greater intervals as the years went by. Reservists remained in the same units for one or two decades with the people and equipment they trained with originally. Officers and before 1960 or so NCOs were professionals with permanent careers. So, even conscripts formally served in the same units for a long time. Only conscripts unsuitable for frontline duty served a slightly longer time (~1.5 years) and were then demobbed permanently into the emergency reserve. Serving for just a few years was never an option.

This century the defence policy is based purely on wishful thinking. A professional army was introduced mostly to save costs, hence the soldiers were woefully underpaid and the total numbers is a joke. The Navy and Airforce works decently as far as I know, but the Navy is tiny.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

A TL-13 wafer jack costs Cr15,000. The Skill Augmentation augment is a whopping Cr150,000. That's Cr165,000 per person. Let's take a look at Mongoose's Ghalalk-class cruiser for an example of personnel requirements: 385. Even if you only install those items in 80% of the ship's personnel, you're still looking at a figure of about MCr53.

MCr 53 to jack up the crew of a MCr 30 000 warship is completely trivial. Note that the Command Bridge costs MCr 468 for a much smaller advantage.

I would gladly pay much more to upgrade the weapons of the ship to Accurate or Long Range for a similar advantage.

This is, in my opinion, the best argument for augmenting the crews: It's a very cheap way to get a DM +1 or two.

 

[paltrysum]

MCr 53 to jack up the crew of a MCr 30 000 warship is completely trivial. Note that the Command Bridge costs MCr 468 for a much smaller advantage.

I would gladly pay much more to upgrade the weapons of the ship to Accurate or Long Range for a similar advantage.

This is, in my opinion, the best argument for augmenting the crews: It's a very cheap way to get a DM +1 or two.

Your game, your rules. The Naval Campaign Sourcebook does not say anything about augments so it's really up to the individual referee.

 

[Anonymous]

Sweden ... This century the defence policy is based purely on wishful thinking. A professional army was introduced mostly to save costs, hence the soldiers were woefully underpaid and the total numbers is a joke. The Navy and Airforce works decently as far as I know, but the Navy is tiny.

Conscripiton isn't just a budgetary decision. Social factors, ethics, and military effectiveness all come into it.

The Swedish military is interesting for its specialisation and has shown some ability to perform well in their unique environment.

Their navy may be tiny but it's very different from the typical Western European pattern - they have only a handful of submarines and stealth ships, but over 100 armored, infantry-carrying speedboats. Not very good in the open sea, but you don't want to sail up a fjord and start something. A while ago in an exercise one of their subs embarassed a US carrier that came too close to whereever it is the submarines hide - although this probably won't happen again.

 

[phavoc]

The Imperium has destroyers costing GCr 1.5 ≈ 6 billion dollars requiring ~100 crew and half a trillion dollar battleships with ~2000 crew.

A supercarrier for G$ 12 with 5000 crew is M$ 2.4 / crew member.
A Traveller battleship for G$ 500 with 2000 crew is M$ 250 / crew member.

Traveller spaceships are much more expensive than current wet ships.

Hence for a similar budget the Imperium use MUCH less crew then current navies.

Sure, but it's all about equivalency. Traveller ships last for many decades, if not a century. Plus there's the issue of the cost of a Ford is based on reality (err, defense industry pricing..) and the Traveller costs are made up. I'll take reality for Cr1 please Alex. Thus our Traveller model is based on pure fantasy. If we are trying to compare a real economy to a fake economy we have to accept that we can only use facts from one and apply them to the fake one.

Crew of the Ford is 2,600, with flight crew 4,300 (the air wing essentially doubles the cost of the ship). The new Ford class has more automation and reduced the crew by 600. I would say they are pretty close. The crew of an Iowa class battleship was 2,700 during Korean war. It was very manually operated ship. That would be a closer analogy than the carrier. And if you think about it, for the technology and size, one should see a much smaller crew for Traveller don't you think?

Neither the US nor Sweden has any major problems recruiting fighter pilots as far as I know, despite high requirements and lower salaries.

Mass-recruiting in the top third is not possible, but the Imperial Navy does not need even remotely as many hot bodies as the USN per million population.

Umm, you missed the entire point here. Fighter pilots <> naval crew. And you are very wrong about the pilot issue. The US military is facing a pilot shortfall of around 2,000 pilots. I dunno what Swedish air force is like.

Nobody has a clue what the manpower requirements are for the IN. What are you assuming to make your statement? I was using real-world data from the worlds largest economy and most powerful military.

The US has no hostile neighbours. If you had a few million Russian or Chinese soldiers on your borders, you would have a lot more soldiers...

The Anglo-Saxon mindset is very different from the continental European or Asian mindset. In Europe you have an army constantly prepared. Britain and the US have tiny armies and expect to hide behind their navies while they start to think about building armies, safe in assured naval superiority (since everyone else has to maintain large armies).

The Imperium has no assured naval superiority. It has a superior navy to any competitor alone, but any war on several fronts is a lethal threat. It is much more like Imperial Germany before WWI. It can defeat any neighbour alone, but against a grand alliance it has severe problems.

Imperial Germany had a population of about 65 million and could mobilise about 4 million trained and equipped men in a week or two, with an additional 4 million possible. This is about European standard for the 20th century.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think Britain or the US is representative of neither other Western nations nor the Imperium.

Even Sweden, after practically disbanding the Army, has more than 0.4% of the pop in military service.

Well, you may want to go back and check your math. At the height of WW2 the US had 9% of it's population in uniform, and was fighting a war on two fronts and around the globe. Germany had around 30% in uniform, and nobody knows what Russia's true figures were. The IJN and IJA are harder to figure (they were at war since early 30s in China). I'd estimate around 6-8% of the population was in uniform, so close the US numbers.

We aren't talking wartime military, we are talking peacetime. Wartime when you are invading your neighbors is going to definitely skew the numbers. Had the big-bad Canadians and the sneaky Mexicans attacked the US, yes, the US would have had to spend six months to a year crushing them both, and perhaps add 1% to the overall military size to do so. Technology and overwhelming firepower are wonderful.

If, as in my example above, each crew member handles equipment worth more than a F-22, then each crew member is comparable to an F-22 pilot. It makes absolutely no sense to drag an unsuitable recruit straight from boot camp into a bay and hope that he hits something sometimes.

Yea, but the prices in Traveller are made up. It's more realistic to use an M-1 for a Trepida grav tank. If we are talking F-22, then the Imperium (using equivalency) could not afford enough fighters for it's entirety. The US was able to only afford 300.

Sweden used a standard conscript-reserve system (similar to Germany) in the 20th century with large volunteer (unpaid) services. Foreign service (e.g. UN peace-keepers) were recruited for the mission from the pool of trained reserves. The Army was about 500 000 men with another 100 000 volunteer Home Guards (up to almost a million in 1945).

Most men were called up and trained for a year, then placed in a field unit that was immediately demobbed. The field unit was recalled for exercises occasionally, but with greater intervals as the years went by. Reservists remained in the same units for one or two decades with the people and equipment they trained with originally. Officers and before 1960 or so NCOs were professionals with permanent careers. So, even conscripts formally served in the same units for a long time. Only conscripts unsuitable for frontline duty served a slightly longer time (~1.5 years) and were then demobbed permanently into the emergency reserve. Serving for just a few years was never an option.

This century the defence policy is based purely on wishful thinking. A professional army was introduced mostly to save costs, hence the soldiers were woefully underpaid and the total numbers is a joke. The Navy and Airforce works decently as far as I know, but the Navy is tiny.

According to Wikipedia (good enough for this), Sweden's active personnel is 22,500 for a population of 10,000,000 (that's .225%). Reserves are slightly larger at 34,500 (bumps it up to .57%, so slightly higher than the US). Percentage of GDP spent on military is 1.24% in 2015 (much less than US which spends around 6% or more).

Didn't Sweden follow a military model similar to Sweden during WW2, where all men of age were drafted and served a period, and then were reduced to reserve status afterwards? Assuming they ran around 500,000 men (with a WW2 population of around 6 million) that would have given them an 8.3% amount of men in uniform. Not at all shabby.

 

[phavoc]

A TL-13 wafer jack costs Cr15,000. The Skill Augmentation augment is a whopping Cr150,000. That's Cr165,000 per person. Let's take a look at Mongoose's Ghalalk-class cruiser for an example of personnel requirements: 385. Even if you only install those items in 80% of the ship's personnel, you're still looking at a figure of about MCr53.

MCr 53 to jack up the crew of a MCr 30 000 warship is completely trivial. Note that the Command Bridge costs MCr 468 for a much smaller advantage.

I would gladly pay much more to upgrade the weapons of the ship to Accurate or Long Range for a similar advantage.

This is, in my opinion, the best argument for augmenting the crews: It's a very cheap way to get a DM +1 or two.

From a pure accounting perspective, it very much is. But the idea remains that it's not consistent with human behavior (or, as others have cited, not consistent with how the military and mustered out military personnel work).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Swedish military is interesting for its specialisation and has shown some ability to perform well in their unique environment.

Their navy may be tiny but it's very different from the typical Western European pattern - they have only a handful of submarines and stealth ships, but over 100 armored, infantry-carrying speedboats. Not very good in the open sea, but you don't want to sail up a fjord and start something.

Exactly how good Swedish forces are is difficult to assess. The last time we formally went to war and fully mobilised the enemy was called Napoleon. One of my ancestors was wounded defeating Napoleon at Leipzig (1813).

As a small nation with major neighbours we fight with very different assumptions than major powers. We always assume that we are fighting with numerical inferiority without air superiority. E.g. we don't have fixed airbases intended to survive the start of the war, but thousands of small provisional "airbases" consisting of a fairly straight piece of road, hence all combat aircraft are STOL and can be rearmed and refuelled in the field.

We have no delusions about being able to keep the Baltic cleared of enemy (read Russian) forces or even denying access, but simply want to be able to sink invasion transports hence small, fast, hide-able missile ships and submarines. All Swedish combat aircraft have a primary requirement to launch air-to-sea missiles (Rb-15). By tradition we have fairly large special forces ("jägare") intended to operate behind enemy lines hence the speedboat-landing craft (Strb 90).

I don't think we have anything like the German problem with unserviceable equipment.
Some special forces are reputedly good and have served with NATO missions in Afghanistan and Africa.


BTW Sweden does not have fjords, that is Norway...

A while ago in an exercise one of their subs embarassed a US carrier that came too close to whereever it is the submarines hide - although this probably won't happen again.

That was a year-long deployment of a Swedish sub (and some others, Dutch?) to train the USN in coastal warfare which it had ignored for decades. It was for a very good reason, since a Chinese sub had surfaced in the middle of a carrier group without having been detected by the escort.

The Baltic is, from what I have heard, a submariners dream with frequent shifts in salinity which separates the water into layers whose boundaries reflect sound and hence sonar, making it possible to hide quite close to the enemy.

 

[Anonymous]

I mean I've sailed up fjords in Sweden, but not with any navy. What do you call them instead?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I mean I've sailed up fjords in Sweden, but not with any navy. What do you call them instead?

Sweden and Finland has älvar, Norway (and colonies) has fjords. The rest of the world has floder (rivers).

Älv is flat with rapids:

Fjord implies high mountains:

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Thus our Traveller model is based on pure fantasy. If we are trying to compare a real economy to a fake economy we have to accept that we can only use facts from one and apply them to the fake one.

Quite, but I'm not sure current carriers say much more about 53rd century spacecraft than a few thousand years old classic triremes.

Crew of the Ford is 2,600, with flight crew 4,300 (the air wing essentially doubles the cost of the ship). The new Ford class has more automation and reduced the crew by 600. I would say they are pretty close. The crew of an Iowa class battleship was 2,700 during Korean war. It was very manually operated ship. That would be a closer analogy than the carrier. And if you think about it, for the technology and size, one should see a much smaller crew for Traveller don't you think?

Regalskeppet Wasa, at 1200 ton and 64 guns a large warship in the 17th century, had a crew of ~450.

At roughly 400 Dt it has a much larger crew than a comparably sized Traveller spacecraft, yes.

Umm, you missed the entire point here. Fighter pilots <> naval crew.

But my point is that when spacecraft crew are as few as fighter pilots currently, and training them well gives an enormous advantage, all spacecraft crew will be as well-trained as fighter pilots are currently. I didn't miss your point, I disagree with it completely.

Perhaps a better comparison is current spacecraft crew, astronauts?

And you are very wrong about the pilot issue. The US military is facing a pilot shortfall of around 2,000 pilots.

OK. I thought that was more about retention, not recruiting.

Nobody has a clue what the manpower requirements are for the IN. What are you assuming to make your statement?

We have rough estimates of Imperial GDP and population and good estimates of cost and crew of spaceships. That gives much lower percentage of the Imperial population serving aboard warships than current wet navies.

I was using real-world data from the worlds largest economy and most powerful military.

Sure, but we could just as well use numbers from the ~50 battleships of Home Fleet or the ~300 quinqueremes of Roman fleet 256 BC. Neither would say much about the spacecraft of a 53rd century multi-sector Imperium.

We aren't talking wartime military, we are talking peacetime. Wartime when you are invading your neighbors is going to definitely skew the numbers.

My point is that with powerful neighbours there is very little difference. The difference between peacetime army and wartime army is a week or so.

Had the big-bad Canadians and the sneaky Mexicans attacked the US, yes, the US would have had to spend six months to a year crushing them both, and perhaps add 1% to the overall military size to do so. Technology and overwhelming firepower are wonderful.

If the Canadians had the ~4 million German or French army in 1914 or 1939 or the ~20 million Soviet army of the 80s they would have been able to conquer the US in a few weeks. The US would have had no time to start to build an army.

But obviously had you had such powerful neighbours you would have had a much stronger army. Which was my point, I think.

The US has a very small army (for a major power) since it has such a favourable geo-strategic position. Few other major powers have had that luxury. The Imperium does not enjoy that luxury. It is not a normal situation for a major power, with a different mindset that the rest of us consider quite strange.

Yea, but the prices in Traveller are made up. It's more realistic to use an M-1 for a Trepida grav tank. If we are talking F-22, then the Imperium (using equivalency) could not afford enough fighters for it's entirety. The US was able to only afford 300.

Yes, Traveller is entirely made up. But that fantasy is what this forum is dedicated to? The Imperium has about 18 trillion inhabitants, about 50 000 times the US population. It could afford quite a few low tech jets.

Germany could only produce about 1400 Me-262 jets. What does this say about the Imperium?

According to Wikipedia (good enough for this), Sweden's active personnel is 22,500 for a population of 10,000,000 (that's .225%). Reserves are slightly larger at 34,500 (bumps it up to .57%, so slightly higher than the US).

That is a bit inflated compared to reality. I included reserves as most of the reserves are Home Guards that traditionally train more often in small groups. All of them have been in uniform recently and can be mobilised quickly.

Didn't Sweden follow a military model similar to Sweden during WW2,

Um, yes? But I suspect that is not what you mean.

where all men of age were drafted and served a period, and then were reduced to reserve status afterwards? Assuming they ran around 500,000 men (with a WW2 population of around 6 million) that would have given them an 8.3% amount of men in uniform. Not at all shabby.

I don't think the Army mobilised more than about 300 000 at the same time during WWII. The Army alone was larger than 500 000 in 1945, but only partially mobilised. Total forces were larger.

A specific wrinkle of the Swedish system was that the Army almost only conscripted for training not active service. Only on mobilisation were active units formed. As such the active standing army was close to zero during the Cold War, but reasonable amounts could be mobilised quickly. Hence counting how many are in uniform on a specific day says next to nothing about the strength of the Swedish Army since about 1650.

 

[Anonymous]

I mean I've sailed up fjords in Sweden, but not with any navy. What do you call them instead?

Sweden and Finland has älvar, Norway (and colonies) has fjords. The rest of the world has floder (rivers).
Älv is flat with rapids:
Fjord implies high mountains:

Didn't see anything with mountains that high as the photo, but there's certainly some we saw north of Harnosand.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Didn't see anything with mountains that high as the photo, but there's certainly some we saw north of Harnosand.

Härnösand? That would be Ångermanälven. By definition an älv.

Höga Kusten is rocky for the Swedish coastline, but nothing like Norway.


Note that the difference between å, ä and a, and ö and o, is not an accent; they are different letters in Nordic languages.

 

[baithammer]

The flip side is with ships having large crews and being very expensive, there would be a serious constraint on outlay for personnel outside of specialist requirements.