Build a Fleet!

Weird Harold wrote:It's hard to make a profit when Piracy isn't suppressed.

Didn't seem to bother them too much in Silesia now did it? If it had then there would have been a solution a few hundred years earlier.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:It's hard to make a profit when Piracy isn't suppressed.

Didn't seem to bother them too much in Silesia now did it? If it had then there would have been a solution a few hundred years earlier.

Actually, it DID bother them in Silesia when Piracy wasn't suppressed -- that's the entire premise of Honor Among Enemies:

Honor Among Enemies
Chapter One wrote:"With all due respect, Sir Thomas, the Navy had better make it possible." Hauptman's flat tone was just short of insulting, but he stopped himself, then drew a deep breath. "Excuse me," he said in the voice of one clearly unaccustomed to apologizing. "That was rude and confrontational. Nonetheless, there's also a kernel of truth in it. The war effort depends upon the strength of our economy. The shipping duties, transfer fees, and inventory taxes my colleagues and I pay are already three times what they were at the start of the war, and—" Caparelli opened his mouth, but Hauptman held up a hand. "Please. I'm not complaining about duties and taxes. We're at war with the second largest empire in known space, and someone has to pay the freight. My colleagues and I realize that. But you must realize that if losses continue climbing, we'll have no choice but to cut back or even entirely eliminate our shipping to Silesia. I leave it to you to estimate what that will mean for the Star Kingdom's revenues and war effort."

Relax wrote:
PS. You stated a hypothetical couldn't put 'x' number in military uniform. Your number was absurdly low for even peace time here on earth, let alone more troubled times. My number would be trivially easy to do with Haven's population who has 100X the population of earth does today. So does manticore. They both will also have the imperative, especially in Manticores case, to further increase their Navy due to increased empire size and further wormhole acquisitions whom they will look to either keep outright, or bring more tightly into their sphere of influence. The number in active service compared to support should be even higher in Honor's time as the number of robots used in support is also higher. If you want a modern day example, the M1 Abrams tank supply depot factory is an obvious example. All storage, inventory is robot controlled. It used to require a HUGE workforce to do inventory on tank parts. Now it requires a bare handful. The march of robots will continue overtaking support services that used to be done by human beings.

Look at the US army for example, out of it's 1,000,000+ members in uniform only about 15% are combat arms such as Infantry, Engineers, Artillery, Armoured etc… while the other 85% are support such as Clerks, Supply Techs, Mechanics, technicians of all sorts etc etc etc… so for every combat soldier there are roughly 5.66 soldiers in support not engaging in combat. And contrary to what you have said, the trend is changing in the opposite direction, in 1918 the division was about 50-50 and it has steadily decreased with the increase in technology over the last roughly 100 years.


Wether is is today or 2000 years in to the future, you would still need support trades… you will still need the clerks and supply technicians, you will need the vehicle technicians to fix anything from the pinnace to the shuttle to the ships themselves and if you plan to increase the area of operation you will likely more and widespread support bases as well as a larger fleet train to support your units. This means that for every officer and enlisted on a ship you will likely need 3 or more servicemen on "shore".

So for Manticore to provide hundreds of millions of people to police the galaxy is unrealistic because you would have to convince those hundreds of millions of people to join up or conscript them. The more you take out of Manticore's workforce the weaker their economy gets and the new territories are not a net gain in terms of manpower but are intact a net loss at least in the short term because they will need pickets and garrisons as well as a ton of instructors to man new academies to train them up to an acceptable level.

I will ask this again, if the US government decided to increase their army to 10,000,000 people in order to deploy them on peacekeeping missions all over the world, do you think they will be able to reach that goal without the draft? And do you think that the population of the US would stand behind the government for long if at all once the financial cost becomes available?


The reality is that once the dust settles, there would probably be some sort of peacekeeping/peacemaking/anti-piracy done by the GA but it will most likely extend to those systems outside their territory that they need to maintain open because it is in their national interest.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:Didn't seem to bother them too much in Silesia now did it? If it had then there would have been a solution a few hundred years earlier.

Actually, it DID bother them in Silesia when Piracy wasn't suppressed -- that's the entire premise of Honor Among Enemies:

Indeed and the solution was long sought by the Andermani. Manticore, however, was reluctant to take on the responsibilities of occupying Silesia, though they weren't shy about using battleships to remonstrate Commodore Saganami's death and force the legal abolition and prohibition of slavery.

Weird Harold wrote:
Actually, it DID bother them in Silesia when Piracy wasn't suppressed -- that's the entire premise of Honor Among Enemies:

Honor Among Enemies
Chapter One wrote:"With all due respect, Sir Thomas, the Navy had better make it possible." Hauptman's flat tone was just short of insulting, but he stopped himself, then drew a deep breath. "Excuse me," he said in the voice of one clearly unaccustomed to apologizing. "That was rude and confrontational. Nonetheless, there's also a kernel of truth in it. The war effort depends upon the strength of our economy. The shipping duties, transfer fees, and inventory taxes my colleagues and I pay are already three times what they were at the start of the war, and—" Caparelli opened his mouth, but Hauptman held up a hand. "Please. I'm not complaining about duties and taxes. We're at war with the second largest empire in known space, and someone has to pay the freight. My colleagues and I realize that. But you must realize that if losses continue climbing, we'll have no choice but to cut back or even entirely eliminate our shipping to Silesia. I leave it to you to estimate what that will mean for the Star Kingdom's revenues and war effort."

It didn't bother them enough to solve it once and for all until their back was against the wall. They would go in, kill some pirates and go home leaving some ships to continue to do anti-piracy, they did not stamp out piracy in Silesia once and for all until they were up against a wall and Silesia was relatively small compared to the League.

Many of the Core and shell systems will remain largely intact and form new nations/alliances and will therefore be able to protect themselves and their space, the GA will work on keeping their lines with those nations open but most likely will not commit to patrol the thousands of other systems formerly occupied by the League simply because of the financial strain and the strain on their manpower, it is relatively easy to convince 8,000,000 Americans or 1,000,000 Canadians to join the military if the situation looks bad enough, not so easy to convince people to join the military and make all sorts of sacrifices now without an emergency.

munroburton wrote:
Indeed and the solution was long sought by the Andermani. Manticore, however, was reluctant to take on the responsibilities of occupying Silesia, though they weren't shy about using battleships to remonstrate Commodore Saganami's death and force the legal abolition and prohibition of slavery.

Thats because the solution is costly because they would either have to give Silesia to the Andermani, split it with them or occupy it themselves which would see them stretched over 60+ systems trying to picket all of them and provide security for all those worlds.

1:200 is in the USA military as a super power being a world policeman. It used to be much higher during the cold war. In China 1: 600 is in the military without being a world policeman. This is under active service. Total active service today is over 2% of the worlds population. By and large under long standing peace conditions. Without a major war(s) in recent memory. When one adds in all of the paramilitary oragizations and reserves, total population is around 5-6% out of 7 Billion.

Manticore: Old Kingdom: ~7+ Billion Silesia is another 40 planets with over 2 Billion each for a tidy 80 Billion. TQ is another 20ish planets with another Billion plus-Billion.

Total For Manticore alone is roughly 100 Billion.

Haven has 150 Planets with even larger populations for a total of around 3-500 Billion people.

War is very recent: Intersteller police work is increasing under this scenario. Both yours and mine.

Number of spacers per ship just reduced by a factor of around 4:1 leaving plenty for logistics work.

So, lets not even argue the stated 15% active verses 85% support at the moment. Lets just take it at face value that these numbers are true in 2000 years. Oh, bother, why not calculate the numbers as given in the books:

If Manticore without a draft is more than able to place 30 million in uniform when the old star kingdom with a population of 3 Billion in the 1st havenite war, or 1/100, 1% then with a new population of 100 Billion, putting a Billion in uniform should also not be a problem. Now lets factor in the stated 15% active 85% support and then factor in the 4:1 reduction in crew size.

1st Havenite War: 30,000,000 in Military service. Includes army(garrisoning lots of ex havenite planets, around 10,000,000 if I recall correctly.) Sorry this is from memory of SVW through HAE, so not completely accurate: here goes. Feel more than free to correct my numbers. How many were in the Transporation side? I do not know. I completely forget, so, fighting ship totals will be high.

1 SDP:6000
1 BC: 2500
1 CA: 1100
1 DD: 400
4 SHIPS/10,000 active and ratio of support would be roughly 60,000 if ~85%. Total 4 Ships, Round up(edited) ~70,000 to keep things easy.

20,000,000/70,000 = 285 ships.

From HoS, Manticore has only built a total of ~3000 ships in its entire existence. At height of 1st Havenite war, total number of ships possible is around 1900 ships. Minus destroyed is around 1800-1700. Call it 1500 to be safe.

1500:285(300) = 5X as many as projected by 85%(1 in 7) number. So, ACTUAL, support personnel per ACTIVE member, lets calculate.

20,000,000/1500 = 13,333 per ship average ship is ~2500 2500/13,333 or 1 in 6 is active. If one states that the number of small ships is much greater than large ships(it is and was) this drops back into the 1 in 7 (85%) support personnel range.

So, 85% support is ~~~ used in the Honorverse. IF we want to quibble 5% either direction have at it. Going forward, will use the 85% number.

4:1 ratio in active ship service compared to 1st Havenite war

SDP: 6000: 1500
BC: 2500: 750 and as low as 350 GSN BCP
CA: 1100: 370
DD: 400: 80
~ 4 ships 10,000:2700 close enough to the 4:1 reduction to be a meahhh number. Then add in far more DD's/CL's and LAC's than larger ships and the 4:1 number looks quite conservative. So, 2700 active equals 16,000 support or a total of roughly 20,000 to be conservative.

Lets look at our dear darlings: Manticore 100 Billion population. Average EARTH population in military uniform is ~2% or applied to Manticores case this results in 2 Billion in service(Oh wait, did I already state this a Billion in service should not be a problem... Oh wait I did.) 1st Havenite war only had 1% in service in a MAJOR drag out death war, half of what Earth has under ~PEACE! So, Honorverse military expenditures in a drag out death knell war do not even align with earth PEACE conditions!

But I digress, Lets drop Manticores 1% in military service in a drag down fight to less than 1%. Lets just chop it in half for S&G's. 0.5%. Still leaves 500 MILLION dudes and dudettes in military service under the new Manticoran Empire... Or exactly what USA is currently at under ~peace conditions post Cold War by 20 years, or roughly what this whole thread is roughly about.

500,000,000 (0.15) = 75,000,000 active personnel.

Number of ships with 75M = 75M/20,000 = 3750 ships.

3750:
800 SDP
200 CLAC
750 BC
500 CA
1500 DD/CL

Since I rounded upwards dramatically I am assuming this excessive rounding error covers local LAC defense...

If we used historical earth numbers(today) for active duty in PEACE time conditions, the number of ships would quadrupple.

Mind if I give two alternate scenarios for you guys when it comes to building a navy?

1st one: You are a middleweight member of the Manticorian Alliance. You have a decent amount of resources for a verge star nation, but lack the capability to build ships of the wall organically and would find purchasing and supporting a single wall of battle to take roughly 70% of your practical naval budget over 10 years. You foresee a war with the People's Republic of Haven sometime in the next decade or two, and your star system is positioned such that a military assault is likley.

2nd Theoretical Position: You are the Asgard Association, a small multi system nation who's primary natural resource is the Asgard Wormhole Junction. Your military goals are to maintain the security of Asgard and Mitgard while simultaneously deterring (and if necessary resisting) aggression of your largest trading partner and military threat the Andermani Empire. You are aware that the Andermani just joined the Manticorian alliance, and are certain to gain access to the latest Manty Technology, rendering your current small wall of battle little more than target practice.

blackjack217 wrote:Mind if I give two alternate scenarios for you guys when it comes to building a navy?

1st one: You are a middleweight member of the Manticorian Alliance. You have a decent amount of resources for a verge star nation, but lack the capability to build ships of the wall organically and would find purchasing and supporting a single wall of battle to take roughly 70% of your practical naval budget over 10 years. You foresee a war with the People's Republic of Haven sometime in the next decade or two, and your star system is positioned such that a military assault is likley.

2nd Theoretical Position: You are the Asgard Association, a small multi system nation who's primary natural resource is the Asgard Wormhole Junction. Your military goals are to maintain the security of Asgard and Mitgard while simultaneously deterring (and if necessary resisting) aggression of your largest trading partner and military threat the Andermani Empire. You are aware that the Andermani just joined the Manticorian alliance, and are certain to gain access to the latest Manty Technology, rendering your current small wall of battle little more than target practice.

For #1 it is time to throw the eridani edict out the window and pray, maybe evacuate your population outside of the human sphere (or somewhere people won't expect) because you will never win a real war.
For #2 prepare an alternate and hidden base (a bolthole) and make it clear that if they attack they will not like the econamic consequences as DN divisions knock out escorts and DDs kill merchant ships in convoys, do not engage directly and tie up as many forces as possible with commerce raiding and the occasional raid on lightly defended systems, your economy will never stand up to them in a frontal fight and the worst you could do to them is give them a black eye. Possibly you could try to directly threaten the manticorian wormwhole juncture if they do attack by throwing a small moon with a hyper generator into it and find out what happens if it passes it's tonnage limit, generally scorched earth tactics bacause you can not win a slugging match no matter what.

BrigadeΔ wrote:For #1 it is time to throw the eridani edict out the window and pray, maybe evacuate your population outside of the human sphere (or somewhere people won't expect) because you will never win a real war.

Er, you don't have to? You're a member of the Manticorian Alliance, its the Manty's job to fight the Peeps, its your job to keep your system intact and generally act as a minor ally.
Your #2 seems likewise extreme. You want to be a credible deterrent to an expansionist nation that you have a decent relationship with, and one that historically tends to absorb those who are weak, or who directly threaten them. Why in the world are you picking a fight with the Manty's, who certainly wouldn't back the Andies in a war of conquest anyway?