Building the BSDF into the Beowulf Space Navy

munroburton wrote:In the end, you just have to make a few Californias and give a handful of members a comparatively gross number of delegates and the populations to justify them. We're talking about the 40 or 50 very heavily populated planets(less than 3% of the total!) in the League having 50 delegates - and probably about 50 billion people - each to skim 2,000 or 2,500 delegates off the 10k to get the remaining ~830's average down near to what Beowulf had.

The passage from SftS makes it sound like the largest populations are in the region of 30 billion. So if each delegate is apportioned for every roughly two-thirds of a billion, those 30-billion people systems would get 50 delegates and Beowulf's 6 billion would warrant it 9.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The passage from SftS makes it sound like the largest populations are in the region of 30 billion. So if each delegate is apportioned for every roughly two-thirds of a billion, those 30-billion people systems would get 50 delegates and Beowulf's 6 billion would warrant it 9.

Yes, that probably does it.

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:Oh and I only recently realised that there is a second inhabited planet in Beowulf's system, called Cassandra. Not sure if it has its own delegation or is bundled up into the Republic of Beowulf's. Not sure if it's counted among the 1784 either - if it is, many of the assumptions above start breaking.

IIRC, polities were admitted to the SL. These could be a single planet, a multi-planet system, or even a multi-system government. I don't think that multiple SL members in a single system has ever been mentioned.

I have a recollection there was some mention that the SL later decided they didn't want multi-system member states, but it's vague.

I agree, no multiple members in single systems have been mentioned. The Crown of Slaves quote of 1784 specifically refers to planets, though. I added the Cassandra caveat because it may mean the total number of delegations isn't, after all, 1784. Only RFC actually knows how many multi-planet systems(and no-planet systems like Yildun) are seeded throughout the League.

There are references to multi-system polities within the League, but not many. They may have predated the League and been grandfathered in. The power of the member-state veto should be worth more than any number of additional delegates, at least on matters it applied to.

The League doesn't so much have a merchant marine as it has a very large collection of member systems who may or may not be flagged in their home systems but are operating under licenses to trade in the League. We don't really know other than drawing from situations like the Lacoon I & II where once II was engaged, no SL ships were allowed to transit wormholes controlled by RMN.
How to take this? Well, the European Union has a collection of sovereign countries within it, many of which have their own merchant shipping- owned by individual citizens or compaies of those countries (yes you may be a citizen of the EU but you still are still French or German or Monaco citizen and if you own and operate a commercial ship (freight or passenger etc) you sail under the country's flag....unless you are looking to avoid various taxes and fees and requirements and then you flag with Liberia or Panama etc.
So, saying something is a SL merchant vessel means that it is flagged by a SL member system. That probably includes those under the control/"protection" of OFS. There are lot of non-League systems which would have at least a few merchant ships flagged there and then there are the Transtellars which operate shipping fleets. Where they are flagged would depend on the benefits of being or not being under a league members direct rules.
Paperwork.....that and whatever the rules/laws of a give system/country are for international (or in our case interstellar) shipping.

From what we have been shown, the League was vastly overbalanced in terms of SDs vs the class of ships typicaly needed for commerce protection. The SLN had evolved into a more or less two tier navy from various perspectives. One side was a sledgehammer (the SD and support groups) as a way to maintain peace within the League and be a political instrument.
The other was FF and that had evolved to be a tool of OFS which effectively meant that pirates and other commerce raiders (outside the League) were very much competition to OFS and it's client regimes and to be delt with as such rather than normal criminals.

Of course, no OFS controlled system could have an SDF (FF took care of that) but apparently Battle Fleet didn't do much in the way of dealing with anything overt within the sphere of the League Member area since systems like Beowulf felt the need to create their own commerce protection and local defense (they did have that wormhole connection to the Manticore Junction to keep safe and certainly were not going to let the League get their fingers into that). FF wasn't patrolling non-League controlled areas so much as being a tool to step in and enforce or create a situation where OFS was taking over. It is not clear how much piracy happened within the areas under general jurisdiction of OFS/FF. What is clear would be that there were lots of places where it could be iffy to go to and while pirates might be kept out of the interior of systems, getting from place to place could be a challange. So Beowulf has SDF with a lot of below-the-wall ships that are running commerce protection and diplomatic stuff, at least in Non-League areas.

munroburton wrote:I agree, no multiple members in single systems have been mentioned. The Crown of Slaves quote of 1784 specifically refers to planets, though. I added the Cassandra caveat because it may mean the total number of delegations isn't, after all, 1784. Only RFC actually knows how many multi-planet systems(and no-planet systems like Yildun) are seeded throughout the League.

There are references to multi-system polities within the League, but not many. They may have predated the League and been grandfathered in. The power of the member-state veto should be worth more than any number of additional delegates, at least on matters it applied to.

It's unlikely. Otherwise, you start needing to admit stations too. There are probably habitats in the older systems with populations larger than most Shell planets. A single McKendree cylinder could have a population of 270 billion (since no system is said to have such a large population, there mustn't be such a McKendree cylinder nor as densely populated as NYC, but it's easily possible to have habitats with a population of 1 billion).

Or maybe you need to admit sub-planetary national divisions too, if they haven't unified to a single planetary administration.

This is a conjecture and there may be exceptions. Only RFC would know.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It's unlikely. Otherwise, you start needing to admit stations too. There are probably habitats in the older systems with populations larger than most Shell planets. A single McKendree cylinder could have a population of 270 billion (since no system is said to have such a large population, there mustn't be such a McKendree cylinder nor as densely populated as NYC, but it's easily possible to have habitats with a population of 1 billion).

Or maybe you need to admit sub-planetary national divisions too, if they haven't unified to a single planetary administration.

This is a conjecture and there may be exceptions. Only RFC would know.

I do not think Honorverse stations are that heavily populated yet, but they collectively do provide substantial chunks. For example, Manticore-B has a belter population of 300 million, which would be enough for half a Solarian delegate if we're remotely accurate.

So why not admit large enough station-only systems, or at least count their populations towards a member's total?

I'm not entirely clear on the relationship between Yildun and the League - it does not seem to be a full member in its own right, being more like a system-wide company town slash offshore manufacturing/tax haven. My guess, based on the closeness of Technodyne with the SLN, is that Yildun might be formally considered an extension or adjunct of the Sol system in some way.

As for fragmentary states being permitted to join, that seems doubtful. There are almost certainly minimum thresholds of some kind, thresholds which OFS used to justify denying full membership status to their Protectorates.

munroburton wrote:So why not admit large enough station-only systems, or at least count their populations towards a member's total?

I'm not entirely clear on the relationship between Yildun and the League - it does not seem to be a full member in its own right, being more like a system-wide company town slash offshore manufacturing/tax haven. My guess, based on the closeness of Technodyne with the SLN, is that Yildun might be formally considered an extension or adjunct of the Sol system in some way.

As for fragmentary states being permitted to join, that seems doubtful. There are almost certainly minimum thresholds of some kind, thresholds which OFS used to justify denying full membership status to their Protectorates.

Station-only systems, sure. I see no problem in that. Yildun would be such a system, if it wanted to be part of the League.

The question is whether to accept the stations of a system as a separate member from the planets of the same system. That doesn't seem to be accepted.

Brigade XO wrote:The League doesn't so much have a merchant marine as it has a very large collection of member systems who may or may not be flagged in their home systems but are operating under licenses to trade in the League.

From what we have been shown, the League was vastly overbalanced in terms of SDs vs the class of ships typicaly needed for commerce protection.

I used to agree with you on this point regarding SD top heavy bloat... until UH came out and the SLN has 4000 BC... At which point, who needs DD's???? Why bother if you only have 1800 core system and a couple thousand protectorates. Of course in same UH, we are told the SLN has FAR more DD's than BC's...

Pretty sure my eyes did not go cross eyes when reading that part in UH... I do remembering reading those passages several times because I literally could not believe it...

Relax wrote:I used to agree with you on this point regarding SD top heavy bloat... until UH came out and the SLN has 4000 BC... At which point, who needs DD's???? Why bother if you only have 1800 core system and a couple thousand protectorates. Of course in same UH, we are told the SLN has FAR more DD's than BC's...

Pretty sure my eyes did not go cross eyes when reading that part in UH... I do remembering reading those passages several times because I literally could not believe it...

The SKM used to have something between 250 and 400 DDs for two systems (Manticore and Basilisk).

Relax wrote:I used to agree with you on this point regarding SD top heavy bloat... until UH came out and the SLN has 4000 BC... At which point, who needs DD's???? Why bother if you only have 1800 core system and a couple thousand protectorates. Of course in same UH, we are told the SLN has FAR more DD's than BC's...

Pretty sure my eyes did not go cross eyes when reading that part in UH... I do remembering reading those passages several times because I literally could not believe it...

Well, the RMN, pre-war, as a 3 planet polity, had 199 BCs[1]. It doesn't seem overburdened with BCs for 900 times more systems to have 20 times more BCs. Especially since many of them were employed beyond that 1800 system core.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Five T-months ago, Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet between them had four thousand four hundred and twelve in active commission and four hundred and sixty undergoing routine overhaul,”
[snip]we were at least twenty percent understrength for our peacetime missions in the Verge and Fringe.
[snip]
Since that time, we’ve lost in excess of four hundred of those ships—and their crews

And with the SLN having over 10,000 SDs (admittedly about 8,000 of them in the Reserve) 4,000 active commission BCs both sounds like a lot relative to the active commission SDs but not a lot relative to everything the SLN might need lighter units to do. And the wiki does claims the SLN only had about 9,000 units total below the wall; seemingly making BCs about 44% of their below the wall combatants!

For comparison, pre-war, in the RMN the 199 BCs only made up about 15% of the 1312 below the wall combatants; (despite the RMN having a BC focused doctrine!).

So yeah, it seems they were having to deploy BCs on CL and DD missions due to being dramatically short of the later. (And that makes some sense; we're told that Battle Fleet has very few ships lighter than a BC, and during war expects to pull those light screening and scout forces from Frontier Fleet. But Frontier Fleet presumably isn't being given enough DDs and CLs to do its day to day missions and also supply all the missing screening elements for BF)


[1] If the wiki is to be believed; I couldn't quickly find the RFC fleet strength posting. Though based on the HoS numbers having 199 BCs pre-war implies that nearly all 118 of the old Redoubtable-class BCs must have still been in service, as there were only 86 Homers built to date, and the first Reliants were only just starting to enter service when the war started.

Jonathan_S wrote:[1] If the wiki is to be believed; I couldn't quickly find the RFC fleet strength posting. Though based on the HoS numbers having 199 BCs pre-war implies that nearly all 118 of the old Redoubtable-class BCs must have still been in service, as there were only 86 Homers built to date, and the first Reliants were only just starting to enter service when the war started.

Thanks for reminding us that that existed! Link:

Fleet Strengths as of 1905PD

Fleet Strengths as of 1920PD

So the RMN had 485 DDs before the first war and another ~300 of both CL and CAs, which is what it mostly used for commerce protection. Since that's what the League should have been focusing on, I'd indeed say they were understrength.

The SL has 1800x more systems than the old SKM and 1000x more population. But the metric we should be looking at is commerce participation. The RMN was 1/20th the size of the SLN in BCs, but between 1/10th and 1/8th below that, does this mean the RMMS was about 1/10th the size of ALL the SL merchant marine?