Imperial Navy Ship and Shipyard Sizes

[Terry Mixon]

Looking at the number you found, 19.157 billion tons of shipyard capacity, split between 5,000 yards would be 3,831,400. Say some (probably a lot) skew smaller, and you might have numerous 1,000,000 capacity shipyards and a much smaller number of monster 10,000,000 or even bigger ones. Some of the specialty yards might even be smaller, only supporting 500,000 tons of capacity or lower. Maybe even only 100,000 tons.

I'd imagine that the smaller sizes are much more common as the investment in a larger one is, well, large. For every ten 100,000-ton yards, you might have two 1,000,000-ton yards and a fraction of one 10,000,000+ ton yards. The gargantuan Navy yards at a Depot might be 100,000,000 tons in capacity. Who knows?

 

[Terry Mixon]

Tangentially related, I found this article that spells out where the majority of shipbuilding in the Marches likely takes place.

Traveller RPG: Spinward Marches naval shipyards, 1105

Source: Travellermap.com After a recent campaign of Mongoose's edition of Traveller with friends, I've gotten back into reading my collectio...

slightlyintrepid.blogspot.com

 

[Terry Mixon]

Another bit of data that I find interesting from another online source about the number of Population 9+ TL-15 worlds according to travellermap. The poster said this:

---

"Recently I have obtained the TravellerMap UWP data. For the six main nations, plus all the Vargr at once, a count of their tech TL-15 worlds at population 9 or A:

Code:
Allegiance Count
As 3
Hv 28
Im 133
Kk 18
So 1
Va 1
Zh 4

The Imperium has 133 High-Pop worlds at TL-15, and one at TL-16 at 1122 Vincennes/Vincennes/Deneb. I'm not sure I accept the TL-16 rating, as it strongly implies the Imperium will attempt to build its entire navy at Vincennes, no matter how much it has to spend on additional shipyard capacity.

The Hivers and K'Kree are at number 2 and 3 behind the Imperium in position, but the capacities are 21% and 13% of the Imperium;s. The Zhondani, Aslan, Solomani and Vargr are all in terrible distant capacities at 3%, 2%, .7%, and .7% of the Imperium's. Only one of the Vargr's nations has a High-Pop TL-15 world, and the the rest are lower Pops and/or TLs."

---

That would mean that these 134 systems in the Imperium would have the lion's share of the shipyards. I'm inclined to run with that. I'm shocked that the Zhodoni are so far behind. I thought they were a bigger threat.

The link: https://www.travellerrpg.com/threads/shipyards-tl-spending-war.41093/

Later in this same thread, AnotherDilbert (I'll bet its the same one from here) said this:

"E.g. between the four TL-F ports in the Spinward Marches they have a capacity of 36 MDt. With a mean building time of three years and a replacement rate of 40 years, that is means we can keep a fleet of 36/3×40 = 480 MDt or about 2400 battleships, far more than the Imperium maintains in the sector."

---

I wonder where the shipbuilding capacity information came from. I'd surely like to know how the four compare to one another.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Looking at the number you found, 19.157 billion tons of shipyard capacity, split between 5,000 yards would be 3,831,400. Say some (probably a lot) skew smaller, and you might have numerous 1,000,000 capacity shipyards and a much smaller number of monster 10,000,000 or even bigger ones. Some of the specialty yards might even be smaller, only supporting 500,000 tons of capacity or lower. Maybe even only 100,000 tons.

I'd imagine that the smaller sizes are much more common as the investment in a larger one is, well, large. For every ten 100,000-ton yards, you might have two 1,000,000-ton yards and a fraction of one 10,000,000+ ton yards. The gargantuan Navy yards at a Depot might be 100,000,000 tons in capacity. Who knows?

Remember, in order to be a Class-A Starport, the shipyard must be a minimum of 25,000 tons worth of ship. Class-B is minimum of 10,000 tons and Class-C minimum of 200 tons. So that will skew things a bit as well. So that 19.157 Billion tons is not only for jump-capable shipyards, but all of them combined.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Another bit of data that I find interesting from another online source about the number of Population 9+ TL-15 worlds according to travellermap. The poster said this:

---

"Recently I have obtained the TravellerMap UWP data. For the six main nations, plus all the Vargr at once, a count of their tech TL-15 worlds at population 9 or A:

Code:
Allegiance Count
As 3
Hv 28
Im 133
Kk 18
So 1
Va 1
Zh 4

The Imperium has 133 High-Pop worlds at TL-15, and one at TL-16 at 1122 Vincennes/Vincennes/Deneb. I'm not sure I accept the TL-16 rating, as it strongly implies the Imperium will attempt to build its entire navy at Vincennes, no matter how much it has to spend on additional shipyard capacity.

The Hivers and K'Kree are at number 2 and 3 behind the Imperium in position, but the capacities are 21% and 13% of the Imperium;s. The Zhondani, Aslan, Solomani and Vargr are all in terrible distant capacities at 3%, 2%, .7%, and .7% of the Imperium's. Only one of the Vargr's nations has a High-Pop TL-15 world, and the the rest are lower Pops and/or TLs."

---

That would mean that these 134 systems in the Imperium would have the lion's share of the shipyards. I'm inclined to run with that. I'm shocked that the Zhodoni are so far behind. I thought they were a bigger threat.

The link: https://www.travellerrpg.com/threads/shipyards-tl-spending-war.41093/

Aslan are TL-14 max, so that is not a surprise. Just like the Imperium is TL-15 max. There are exceptions but they are few.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Remember, in order to be a Class-A Starport, the shipyard must be a minimum of 25,000 tons worth of ship. Class-B is minimum of 10,000 tons and Class-C minimum of 200 tons. So that will skew things a bit as well. So that 19.157 Billion tons is not only for jump-capable shipyards, but all of them combined.

Gotcha. I added some more information to the post I made (I think it was that one) that listed 36Mtons as the four big yard capacities combined in the Marches. Not sure of the source.

 

[Vormaerin]

Keep in mind that the majority of that ship construction capacity is likely going to merchant shipping. Especially if you envision your 3I having large numbers of capital ship size commercial vessels plying the spacelanes.

 

[Terry Mixon]

In another online post, someone said Mora had a 10 million dTON capacity. That fits with the 36 million dton capacity for the four big yards another post mentioned, so there must be a source somewhere. Lacking that information, if Mora can build 10,000,000 tons, say Trin and Rhylanor have 9,000,000 tons each, and Glisten comes in at 8,000,000, that would give me something to work with.

I still want to know the source and have reached out to AnotherDilbert to see if he could help us out.

Auxiliaries - Drydocks

how's this for a general rule. drydocks represent a percentage of an existing shipyard, deployed, at a cost. for example the mora shipyard has a 10,000,000 dton capacity. for that yard to build and support a 1,000,000 dton drydock reduces the mora shipyard capacity by x2, meaning now it has a...

www.travellerrpg.com

 

[Vormaerin]

There's 40 odd years of fanzines, mailing lists, forums, and whatnot to produce all these numbers. There're various conflicting books like Trillion Credit Squadron, Pocket Empires, and the like that create shipyard values suited for their specific purpose.

And the conception of the Imperium has changed over time. The Kinunir used to be a badass warship and "pride of the fleet". Now its barely a coast guard cutter in military terms.

Lots of fans have put a lot of thought into making up numbers that work for them and publishing it in places and often that stuff ends up treated as semi-official. And if those numbers are useful to you, that's amazingly helpful. Traveller's long tail of fan content is awesome.

My experience is that most fan constructs overestimate efficiency and rational optimization in systems. What is objectively best when you have a hard set of game rules to go by is very different from how anything would actually work once politics, less objective rating systems, and the all the rest get involved. One of the things I like about the latest War Fleets book is how the author incorporates that kind of thing into the stories of various ships.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

In CT TCS there was an easy way to determine the size of the local shipyard:

where GM is:


Example: Mora has a population of 10 billion and a Government type C, so has a shipyard capacity if C = 10 000 000 000 × 1.2 / 1000 = 12 000 000 Dt in peacetime.

 

[MasterGwydion]

In another online post, someone said Mora had a 10 million dTON capacity. That fits with the 36 million dton capacity for the four big yards another post mentioned, so there must be a source somewhere. Lacking that information, if Mora can build 10,000,000 tons, say Trin and Rhylanor have 9,000,000 tons each, and Glisten comes in at 8,000,000, that would give me something to work with.

I still want to know the source and have reached out to AnotherDilbert to see if he could help us out.

Auxiliaries - Drydocks

how's this for a general rule. drydocks represent a percentage of an existing shipyard, deployed, at a cost. for example the mora shipyard has a 10,000,000 dton capacity. for that yard to build and support a 1,000,000 dton drydock reduces the mora shipyard capacity by x2, meaning now it has a...

www.travellerrpg.com

In this usage Drydocks would be for maintenance and refits. Not sure this applies anymore since Annual Maintenace no longer requires a shipyard, as of SOM. (Technically, aren't all docks in space dry? lolz)

 

[Micky]

the Imperial Navy sourcebook really gave out some great useful information on construction of Imperial Navy ships. Very akin to real life. The navy just rides them and fights upon them, they don't build them. The Industrial Military Complex is alive and well in the far future and still bidding and bribing for government money and contracts as it does today haha. The book went into a great amount into the procurement process. Read like something you'd see in play today.


The navy does not, for the most part, build its own ships. Most are constructed by corporate or megacorporate yards and turned over to the navy with due ceremony.

It is rumored that some vessels are so secret that they are constructed where even the regular navy will not come into contact with them, in concealed or disguised shipyards located in otherwise uninteresting systems.

Like the Tigress...

The Tigress dreadnought is constructed at only five yards in the whole of Imperial space, all located far from the borders and subject to tight security.

 

[Geir]

I am sure there is a way to use the Travellermap to figure this out, but that is beyond My abilities.

Well I tried "https://travellermap.com/api/search?q=uwp:a* alleg:im*
And the count came back as 160, but I don't have a lot of confidence that I did it right.

 

[AndrewW]

In this usage Drydocks would be for maintenance and refits. Not sure this applies anymore since Annual Maintenace no longer requires a shipyard, as of SOM. (Technically, aren't all docks in space dry? lolz)

Dolphins might have wetdocks.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Using the calculations from Trillion Credit Squadron (which might not be best for everyone, but is at least a set consistent calculations) (also, thanks AnotherDilbert!) I get the following: Mora (12,000,000 dtons peacetime, 15,000,000 dtons wartime), Trin (11,500,000 dtons peacetime, 12,000,000 dtons wartime), Glisten (1,150,000 dtons peacetime, 1,200,000 dtons wartime), and Rhylanor (900,000 dtons peacetime, 1,200,000 dtons wartime).

That runs with the population numbers based on the base pop code. They should probably be higher, so I may use the World Builder's Handbook to bump them to another decimal place and recompute.

For the four major high-tech construction systems, that's a combined 25,550,000 dtons in peace and 28,900,000 dtons in war.

Augmenting the population numbers, Traveller Wiki has Glisten and Rhylanor at 8 billion people. That would change the numbers to:

Mora (12,000,000 dtons peacetime, 15,000,000 dtons wartime), Trin (11,500,000 dtons peacetime, 12,000,000 dtons wartime), Glisten (8,800,00 dtons peacetime, 9,600,000 dtons wartime), and Rhylanor (7,200,000 dtons peacetime, 9,600,000 dtons wartime) for a total of 39,500,000 in peacetime and 46,200,000 in wartime. That is good enough for me.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Using the calculations from Trillion Credit Squadron (which might not be best for everyone, but is at least a set consistent calculations) (also, thanks AnotherDilbert!) I get the following: Mora (12,000,000 dtons peacetime, 15,000,000 dtons wartime), Trin (11,500,000 dtons peacetime, 12,000,000 dtons wartime), Glisten (9,900,000 dtons peacetime, 10,800,000 dtons wartime), and Rhylanor (8,100,000 dtons peacetime, 10,800,000 dtons wartime).

For the four major high-tech construction systems, that's a combined 41,500,000 dtons in peace and 48,600,000 dtons in war. Maybe not the right answer for everyone, but good enough for me. Thanks everyone.

Also consider that most of these numbers are built around an 8-hour workday, since that is what most sophonts in Charted Space seem to use. (No idea why). So, triple the number of workers and work 24 hours a day. That should give you triple the output.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Also consider that most of these numbers are built around an 8-hour workday, since that is what most sophonts in Charted Space seem to use. (No idea why). So, triple the number of workers and work 24 hours a day. That should give you triple the output.

Are we sure these don't already take that into account? It seems they should as no shipyard would be giving numbers based around a 9-5 workday.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Are we sure these don't already take that into account? It seems they should as no shipyard would be giving numbers based around a 9-5 workday.

In real life, you'd be correct, but almost everything in Traveller is set up around PCs, and PCs only work 8 hours a day. It lists a crew requirement, same for Manufacturing Plants, Fuel Refineries, and Mineral Refineries. It is also why in Robots it states how many hours a day they can be worked. Mining Robots work 20 hours per day. Mining Drones work 8 hours per day because a sophont has to pilot them. If you have 3 Drone Operators working in shifts you can get up to 20 hours a day with the rest lost in travel time.

So, that is My take on it anyhow. Geir might have more to say on this with better information.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Well I tried "https://travellermap.com/api/search?q=uwp:a* alleg:im*
And the count came back as 160, but I don't have a lot of confidence that I did it right.

I imported the Spinward Marches sector data to a spreadsheet and ran it. Of the 439 systems, A=54, B=116, C=122, D=40, E=93, and X=14.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I imported the Spinward Marches sector data to a spreadsheet and ran it. Of the 439 systems, A=54, B=116, C=122, D=40, E=93, and X=14.

292 Shipyards of varying sizes.