Re: (FT) Point Value for Hulls

Bif Smith wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Robert Blair <pellinoire@yahoo.com>
> To: <gzg-l@scotch.csua.berkeley.edu>
> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 12:33 PM
> Subject: Re: (FT) Point Value for Hulls
>
> > If you are going to vary point cost based on mass them
> > the bigger the ship is the LESS you should pay per
> > point of mass.
> >
> > Smaller hulls are more expensive to build per tonne
> > than larger hulls - economies of scale. One large ship
> > is much cheaper to build and operate, especially
> > operate, than any number of smaller ships carring the
> > same aggregate mass of cargo.
> >
> > The battle line wins again!
> >
> > Michael
> >
> This is something that I have been thinking about since the FB design
rules
> came out. The first is the crewing costs and therefore the running
costs of
> civilian ships and freighters. I may have missed something, but the
crewing
> requirments of ships (all ships, not just millatary) is based on their
hull
> size/mass. This should be altered to a lower figure for civilians of a
mass
> figure plus something. What I`m trying to say is their should be some
> advantage (in crewing costs at least) to running large civilian ships.
The
> other thing about large ships is they should cost more to build in the
first
> place due to the longer construction times and the interest on the
capitol
> to build them. This would be a way a capitol ship would cost more than
a
> escort. I leave better minds than mine to work out the figures <G>.

The interest on the capital is not a real cost, but an opportunity cost,
and
affects all warship costs equally; unless, the money to build the
warships is
borrowed (but very few campaign rules allow for deficit spending). 
Looking at
how warships are built gives a skewed impression of how they could be
built.
Warships tend to be built as slow as possible, so as to preserve a surge
capacity by maintaining the largest number of shipyards that the budget
will
allow.	An american supercarrier costs more per tonne than any other
warship
because the americans have to ensure that the shipyard will still have a
pool of
skilled labor for the next time that the USN needs a supercarrier.  If
the USN
could go to any manufacturer of large ships, the supercarrier would cost
less,
and be ready sooner (except nobody builds large steamships anymore, and
carriers
need the steam).

So lets look at wartime construction, according to Jane's Fighting Ships
of
WWII, the Allen M. Sumner class of destroyers cost $8,000,000 each,
without
armament, and displaced 2200 tonnes (~$3600/tonne).  The USS Alaska has
its cost
officially estimated at $74,000,000 (~$3000/tonne).  Both classes
started
construction at the same time.	The Alaska needed only 7 men per 100
tonnes,
compared to the Sumner's 15.  The HMS King George V was only slightly
more than
six times the cost of a tribal class destroyer, laid down the previous
year, but
was 19 times as massive.  Wet navy ships get cheaper as they get larger,
due to
economies of scale and the fact that large ships need less power per
tonne to
travel as fast as smaller ships.  Space navies do not enjoy the same
economies
as it takes just as much power per tonne to accelerate a spacecraft at a
given
rate, regardless of size, so the cost formulas in FB1&2 are a reasonable
estimate of cost versus size.

To accurately represent real size distributions, you need a campaign
system.
One schema I was studying was to divide the cost of ship construction
into a
yard cost and a material cost.	Shipyards had a yard cost that was
proportional
to the maximum ship material it could assemble in a campaign turn.  The
cost of
a ship was its material cost plus (yard cost times turns of
construction).
Shipyards had the additional parameter of slip size, which determined
the
largest ship that it could assemble.  Shipyards are expensive, and any
shipyard
not building a ship (not having its yard cost paid) closes down
permenently.
Combined with a maximum useful life for ships, I imagine that it would
prevent
"god fleets" of the largest vessels from accumulating; unless, the owner
pays
through the nose.

I suspect that auxillaries only have crewfactors for every 20 mass that
is not