Your TCS Navy is Too Damn Big: Striker vs. TCS vs. NATO
Striker vs. TCS vs. NATO
-or- Your TCS Navy is Too Damn Big
Suddenly NATO is relevant again, reminds me of 1981.
I’m working on a campaign in the Gateway Quadrant circa 1004,
and I want to pull together some baseline navies for the multitude of pocket
empires that QLI and DGP left behind, which survive into the Travellermap.
I’m looking for gameplay, not Keynesian Economic Models,
i.e. a modicum of inputs and a range of outputs to be tailored by the referee
to fit the game you want. Let’s start
with a comparison of Trillion Credit Squadron (TCS) and Striker.
Striker presented a Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Model, renamed GWP for Gross World Product.
It went like this:
Citizen Income determined by Tech Level x Trade
Modifiers (TRAD) x Referee Military Budget (MILBUD) x Branch Allocation (BRALLOC)
in CR x Population.
Furthermore a lower TL world, could purchase higher TL equipment
at a premium determined by the Exchange Rate (FOREX) between planets, determined
by the Starport and Tech Level.
Striker, a game unto itself, was designed for miniature
combat, at the fireteam - squad - platoon - company level, and the players had to pay for the salary and equipment of individual
soldiers, and then calculate maintenance for the equipment. Sounds like spreadsheet fun up to maybe Battalion
level. I LOVE STRIKER. But not to build a Brigade or Regiment or
World Army on a planet with a population greater 1,000,000. Here’s an example of the budget process for the
independent world of Saga’s End:
·
Saga's End (2209); Tri Empire; Glimmerdrift: B571845-9 He Ph Pi
KM - 914 17 { 2 } (F7B+1) [6A37]
TL 9 = 10,000 CR GWP Per Person x No TRAD = 1 x 3% MILBUD x
BRALLOC Navy 45% = 135 Cr Per Person for the navy LESS the shared expenses with the Army
for Planetary Defense and COAAC, Per Striker.
Trillion Credit Squadron was a game, when
combined with LBB05 High Guard, designed to simulate HUGE naval battles between
belligerent Pocket Empires or perhaps the Imperium and Zhodani. I LOVE TCS. It didn’t care about armies, or much about
planetary defenses, those were just targets for Ortilley, after the real battles
were fought around the local gas giant. There
was no “economic model”, just a Per Person Naval Tax that each citizen paid of
500 Cr. Observant readers will note that the TCS Naval tax is ~ 3x - 4x the Striker Naval Budget. The only variable in TCS was the government
type and the state of hostilities: War or Peace. A TL 9 planet had the same local funding PP as a TL 14 world. Using Saga’s End produces the following budget
per person:
500 Cr x 0.85 Democracy at Peace = 325 Cr per person for the
navy or 946 Cr per person during WAR (x1.45). From
that you can interpolate a MILBUD ~ 850 Cr per person, assuming a 45%
allocation to the Navy. If 850 Cr = 3%
of GWP, interpolate the GWP ~ 28,333 per person, REGARDLESS OF TL.
Both systems provide differing details on calculating maintenance. Since I’m going a different
route, I’m not going to delve into that discrepancy.
I’ve enjoyed both games, but they’re not compatible, as
written, with OTU. Each has a bias – build
your own Fleet(s) or build your own Platoon(s).
I prefer the Striker model for its broader “wholistic” approach,
with caveats. It also provides viable data
to compare with a real world TL 8 NATO model.
I’m going to use NATO data to recalculate and reduce the budget.
The NATO model is limited by the lack of extra TL
comparisons. How much more expensive is a
starship compared to US Navy destroyer? I’m going to assume that the cost ratio of a
TL8 Battle Tank Battalion to a TL 8 Destroyer is relatively equivalent to the
ratio between a TL9 Grav Tank Battalion and a TL9 Starship Destoyer. I expect this will challenged in the comments.
The NATO budget model shows a consistent MILBUD of 2.3% to 3.2%
of GWP without the United States. The budget is broken down as follows:
Equipment, Personnel, Infrastructure, Other.
I’m not a finance guy, so I am interpreting Equipment as new weapons;
Personnel as salaries, housing, non-combat support staff, pensions and training; Infrastructure
as bases and maintenance of said bases; Other as R&D, New Systems Testing, Black
Ops, equipment maintenance and expendables like ammunition and med kits.
|
Budget
|
Equipment |
Personnel |
Infrastructure |
Other |
|
United States |
26.50% |
38.60% |
1.40% |
33.50% |
|
NATO High |
25% |
75% |
9.30% |
40% |
|
NATO Low |
9% |
35% |
0.80% |
11% |
When working out a military profile of an independent world or member of a Pocket Empire, I’m not concerned about the staffing cost, bases cost or other. I just want to approximate how many 10k warships that world has to patrol nearby planets and roughly how many SDBs they can afford.
Whichever sytem you use, the naval budget should not be allocated 100% to starship construction and mainenance. Only a maximum of about 25% is used to acquire ships, tanks, etc. each year.
Supported by the above data, the overall naval naval budget, and therefore the size of the navy, should be reduced by ~ 75%, when using either the TCS or Striker calculations. As an added bonus, you don't need to track support and maintenance seperately, it's part of the 75% not allocated to capital expenses, Only ~ 25% percent of the budget goes to new weapons, be it star-destroyers or grav tanks.
This allows the referee to shrink your fleet size by ~75%,
for those of us who believe the Navy is Too Damn Big.
Back at Saga’s End, using the Striker Budget Method, the Naval budget ~ 34 per person or 30.4 BN, vs 325 BN per TCS.
Striker = 900 mm x 10,000 x 1 x 3% x 45% x 25% =
TCS = 900 mm x 500 x 0.85 x 3% x 25% =
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