Imperial Navy Question

[Terry Mixon]

I created 1,200 ton Hornet battle riders with a single large meson bay each for just the purpose. They are taken to battle by a 1,000,000 ton Warmonger battle tender, which can carry 666 of them. I’d imagine they could ruin a fleet’s day.

The descriptions and links to the spreadsheets are in the document I reference in my signature.

 

[ottarrus]

I created 1,200 ton Hornet battle riders with a single large meson bay each for just the purpose. They are taken to battle by a 1,000,000 ton Warmonger battle tender, which can carry 666 of them. I’d imagine they could ruin a fleet’s day.

The descriptions and links to the spreadsheets are in the document I reference in my signature.

But not even the Third Imperium could afford to build it.
Your 'Death Star with shotgun in it' would take the entire GDP of Core Sector. And you'd get ONE massive asset that can control ONE parsec-hex on the map. Sure, it's scary and all, but it's only one asset. For all intents and purposes it's an over-powered Tigress squadron that does exactly the same job at a thousand times the cost in credits and personnel.
Sure, you can dilute your dominating force, dropping off 10 or so battle riders over several systems. But those forces are 'stand and die' tripwire forces. They've nowhere to retreat to and are, in effect, a very strong planetary squadron until the ONE carrier you have comes back to pick them up.

 

[Sigtrygg]

What is the IN budget per year?

 

[Condottiere]

I recall the Navy gets seventy percent of the military budget.

And the military budget is dependent on the current alert/posture.

Times population, technological level, and, I think, trade codes.

 

[Sigtrygg]

What is the IN budget, in MCr., per year?

 

[Terry Mixon]

But not even the Third Imperium could afford to build it.
Your 'Death Star with shotgun in it' would take the entire GDP of Core Sector. And you'd get ONE massive asset that can control ONE parsec-hex on the map. Sure, it's scary and all, but it's only one asset. For all intents and purposes it's an over-powered Tigress squadron that does exactly the same job at a thousand times the cost in credits and personnel.
Sure, you can dilute your dominating force, dropping off 10 or so battle riders over several systems. But those forces are 'stand and die' tripwire forces. They've nowhere to retreat to and are, in effect, a very strong planetary squadron until the ONE carrier you have comes back to pick them up.

The Warmonger is mentioned in high guard, with its tonnage. I didn’t make it up. I only gave it stats. It could carry fewer battle riders, I suppose, but I figured it should dominate. Feel free to downgrade its capabilities, but I think it works as is.

 

[Terry Mixon]

What is the IN budget, in MCr., per year?

I have no idea. Big, I’m sure.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I only ask because of th bold statement that the Imperium can't affort a few of these. I have yet to see how much in the way of MCr the Imperial budget sends to the IN, the IISS, the IA, the IMs...

11,000 worlds, what's the total taxable population or world revenue?

 

[Terry Mixon]

I only ask because of th bold statement that the Imperium can't affort a few of these. I have yet to see how much in the way of MCr the Imperial budget sends to the IN, the IISS, the IA, the IMs...

11,000 worlds, what's the total taxable population or world revenue?

I read somewhere that each sector has 4 (or was it 8?) Tigress dreadnaughts. If so, a sector could have a Warmonger to drop battle riders all over the enemy. In peacetime, it could double as a massive logistics transport do the money isn’t wasted.

 

[Anstett]

It also opens the scary topic of what do system defenses actually look like. Can your swarm of 1000 ton ships actually threaten the important systems? Traveller basically skips the topic other than to suggest some worlds are fortresses.

Earlier in the thread triggered a thought and this resurfaced it.

I think it would be a good strategy to have those swarms of thousands of minimal ton jump ships just for recon purposes. Jump in, quick scan, jump out. The intel gathered would be more valuable than the damage a swarm of ships could do to a battle fleet I would think.

Sort of along the lines of the tulip merchants or stock market, faster information creates faster reactions.

 

[Nelphine]

To be clear.. if I have millions of 1000 ton ships, I simply never fight your fleets. I just go and scorched earth your entire kingdom in one stroke. Your capital fleet never gets destroyed, except if you attack my large system defenses - it just starves because it had no ports to go back to.

And I'm not exaggerating, I literally mean millions. And as per discussion earlier, your capital shops just CAN'T be where they need to be, when I'm hitting every single world at the same time. Sure, you might have a fleet in place, and save one planet.. but you can never leave that planet or my hornets come and scorched earth it.

 

[Condottiere]

1. I doubt even the Imperium knows how much tax revenue they collect.

2. Chances are, that there is an artificial intelligence programme that makes estimates for current and future incomes.

3. There's also no point sending most of it back to the Capital.

4. You probably have provincial quaestors keeping an eye on finances and spending by the sector dukes.

5. The Navy is given an annual budget, and if income doesn't match expenditure, they'll probably figure it out in about a decade later during a cheque reconciliation, and adjust the next ten year planning to reflect either savings or mandatory reduction to repay excess.

 

[Terry Mixon]

But not even the Third Imperium could afford to build it.
Your 'Death Star with shotgun in it' would take the entire GDP of Core Sector. And you'd get ONE massive asset that can control ONE parsec-hex on the map. Sure, it's scary and all, but it's only one asset. For all intents and purposes it's an over-powered Tigress squadron that does exactly the same job at a thousand times the cost in credits and personnel.
Sure, you can dilute your dominating force, dropping off 10 or so battle riders over several systems. But those forces are 'stand and die' tripwire forces. They've nowhere to retreat to and are, in effect, a very strong planetary squadron until the ONE carrier you have comes back to pick them up.

Following up, four Tigress dreadnaughts cost a bit more than one Warmonger with its full load of Hornets. As the big ship isn’t a combatant, it’s not going to be in the scrum, but I’d be surprised if four Tigresses could hold off 666 Hornets and their large meson bays. If you want to take a system, they make more sense. If you want to defend a system, they make more sense. Just saying.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I'm not sure they'd lose the war either. The navy fielding swarms of <1000 ton ships would have to have overwhelming numerical superiority every time they had contact with the enemy. The attrition math would have to be in their favor even when they faced system defense fleets and system defenses. If they would lose battles, an offensive capital ship fleet could cut through their defenses and systematically destroy every high value target (industrial centers, shipyards, etc.). The swarm fleets would have to either group up to have the attrition math in their favor or disperse into smaller fleets to attack many lightly defended targets. risking their attritional superiority.

It becomes a contest of resources and industrial capacity. The navy fielding the <1000 ton ship swarm fleets would have to have such an industrial and resource advantage that they could build numerous-enough swarm fleets that they could either take down fleets with capital ships + escorts or attack in so many places at once that they can do enough damage to end the war before the capital ship fleets could stop them.

If the two navies have roughly equal industrial capacity and resources, it would be something like pitting 10,000 infantry against 8,000 infantry with a strong artillery component. Or, 10 million <1000 ton ships against 8 million <1000 ships + a capital ship group with each <1000 ton ship fleet. It would be dicey at best.

In Traveller, it would all depend on how the space combat rules work out the attrition math.

Why not just build like 1 million of these?

System Defense Brick class Defense Drone - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

Or a 100,000 of them on one of @Terry Mixon 's Battle Tenders? Add an UNREP system and extra missile storage and you are good to go.

 

[phavoc]

Attrition attacks where you lose actual people are not all that popular with the people who get attrited.. I think you'll find historically that in order to get such things you need zealots. And zealotry seems to decline the more advanced the citizenry gets. MOST people (and soldiers, at least the ones I served with) happen to like living. Going out in a blaze of glory or suicide runs seems to be a popular concept in fiction but doesn't seem to play out as much in real life.

For a lot of these discussions we just have tables of made-up weapons with no actual data from combat to argue against. So if we truly want to evaluate it we'd need to have real-world data to match against the theoretical/fantasy data. There are many, many books out there that outline what-if scenarios, tech and weaponry that never got built because ultimately it proved to be impractical.

There is also the human factor. Using real-world examples, if your 'navy' consists of 30' patrol boats with outboard motors and a guy or two with a machinegun, it's not really much of a navy. Advanced weapons and ships are expensive to build and maintain. Factor in the costs associated with real training (that means firing your expensive weapons as well), and a modern fighting force gets smaller and smaller due to costs. Sure, it's cheap and you can make swarms of these. But you also can't project power beyond your coastline, and all these gnats have no inherent defenses against weapons that can take them out from afar. Swarm tactics can only get you so far.

Traveller also has some peculiarities to it as well. According to the rules planets only own out to the 100D limit. Governments are at the planetary level rather than the system (which in my mind is silly - system governments make far more sense than strictly planetary ones). A planetary government would have no real need for jump-capable warships, thus that tonnage an invader has to pay just to get to your system can be devoted to heavier armor, bigger drives and more weapons. That's one of the reasons for the battlerider concept. Couple that with the fact that the defenders won't retreat from their own home system in the face of an invasion.

Mix all this together and you get a much more odd dynamic within which these discussions would take place.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Traveller also has some peculiarities to it as well. According to the rules planets only own out to the 100D limit. Governments are at the planetary level rather than the system (which in my mind is silly - system governments make far more sense than strictly planetary ones). A planetary government would have no real need for jump-capable warships, thus that tonnage an invader has to pay just to get to your system can be devoted to heavier armor, bigger drives and more weapons. That's one of the reasons for the battlerider concept. Couple that with the fact that the defenders won't retreat from their own home system in the face of an invasion.

Except in Traveller, unless you are looking at J-4+ ships. System ships can have just a many hardpoints and just as much armor as SDBs. I see this written over and over again in the fluff, but it does not seem to hold up mechanically.

 

[Vormaerin]

It seems to me that the intent of that "Imperium rules space" statement is to prevent the peculiarities of a local world from interfering with trade and travel in the system. As long as you are in space or at the Imperial starport, you are not subject to local customs duties and contraband laws, only Imperial ones. But, then, the corollary that the planetary government rules the planet seems to be on the wane in official sources with ever more emphasis on the Imperial nobles.

It was probably modeled on national vs international waters. Just with the Imperium instead of international treaties. So the US controls Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, but not all the ocean in between. So the Terran World Government might control Mars, Titan, Ganymede, and Europa but Terran law is not applicable in deep space. But there probably is a treaty or other legal framework delineating what role local forces have in law enforcement. And it will probably vary depending on how f'ed up the local government is.

 

[Sigtrygg]

It's a soundbite, a fiction.

It makes the Imperium sound like a distant, benevolent, hands off authority.

It has already been proven that there is sufficient reference to the Imperium having authority over every member world; it grants, it allows, it takes away.
Mess with the Imperial free trade model - the high population TL15 worlds hoover up all the wealth - or threaten the Imperial peace and you find out exactly how much has been granted and allowed...

oh, and keep paying your taxes and providing warm bodies for the Imperial war machine.

 

[Vormaerin]

Sure, there's always the tension between local government and national government. So that has to be resolved one way or another. But it is mainly a gameplay statement, imho. "No, you don't have to think about that planet's actual government and laws just because your PCs are passing through the system and refueling at the starport".

Unless you want to.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Precisely, Imperial rules are obeyed...