       TRAVELLER Digest 65

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Naval budgets by rancke@diku.dk

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Date: Sun, 9 Oct 1994 19:32:03 +0100 (MET)
From: rancke@diku.dk
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Naval budgets
Message-ID: <199410091832.AA29812@embla.diku.dk>

Nicholas James writes:
>I was always convinced that the budgets in TCS were too high, and that the 
>guidelines given in Striker were more realistic [...]
>
>Striker says that the per capita GNP for a world of average tech level 
>(B/C) is Cr15,000. It also says that military spending will average 3% 
>of GNP, or Cr450 per person.
>[The military budget has to be spread between Navy, Army, Planetary Defence 
>Forces, COACC, Marines, Scouts and other government para-military 
>organisations, and the wet Navy]

Isn't Army, Air Force (COACC), and the wet Navy together the Planetary
Defense Forces?

>Once you have taken out the PDF funding, the Navy should be lucky to get 
>a third of the budget: Cr150.

So far, so good.

>Of the naval budget, at least a third will go on administration, pensions, 
>intelligence, communications, R&D and construction and maintenance of naval 
>bases &

Afraid not. The reason why TCS maintenance is so expensive is that it
includes administration, salaries, pensions, communication and ground 
installations. I think you have to allot the full Cr150 to the Navy (R&D 
seems to be non-existent in the Imperium).

>I imagine that after every ten years service, a ship is either scrapped, 
>mothballed, given to a client state or the reserve service, or else it 
>undergoes a refit of the Star-Trek-The-Motion-Picture-comes-out-looking-
>like-a-different-ship-altogether variety, which is pretty much the same 
>as building a new vessel.

TCS does not have any rules for replacement of ships as they wear out. I
forget wether I've seen it somewhere or made it up myself, but I usually
assume that a ship has a useful life of 50 years on the average. That 
means that 2 of the 10%/year maintenance actually goes to replacement
ships. 

Also recall that Striker allows the military budget to rise to 15% in times
of war. 


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     rancke@diku.dk
------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir

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End of TRAVELLER Digest 65
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