[GZG] FTverse colinies

[Тимофей Потапенко <potapenkoteo@xxxxxxx>]

The FT-universe colonies
I'd like to start this kind of topic: Who has got any ideas about the population and economic power
of human colonies at the other stars in FT-universe? And what about strength of their navies?

Here is my impression. 
FTL flights started in Tuffley-verse in the year 2069. In 2165 (roughly after a hundreed years of 
expansion) nations had enough fleets to start a full scale war, where hundreeds of ships took part.
So, the question is: How really big were those colonies? 
I made this kind of estimation: in assumption that the cost and technical possibility of moving
people among stars are about the same as they were in 1880-1890s of moving people from Europe
to America, we can conclude, that it was possible to move about 40000 colonists in a year from the
Solar system to a distant star. Than, if we consider that in best circumstanses (best climate, 
social care, enough living space etc) the "natural" population growth would be 6% a year, we can say 
that the "ideal" colony would have about 20 mln population after a century of fastest development.
NAC's capital world Albion was founded in 2099, so, it's population can't be bigger than 8-10 million.

Now, New Israel started their state in 2096, and they have only three systems. To the moment of 
2194 the oldest of their worlds had only a hundreed years history, so, it cuoldn't have more than
20 million population. Let's add 10 million for each of the other main systems and, say, 3 million
more for "numerous outposts". It makes 43 million population in general at most. Than, let's take
there navy. They have 25 cruisers, 7 battleships, 3 superdreadnoughts, 1 carrier. Plus some amount
smaller fighting ships. But numbers of those "escorts" couldn't be bigger, than in IJN Navy (about 
5 star systems, territories on Earth, 44 Scouts, 25 Strikeboats, 22 Corvettes, 63 frigates, 32 destroyers,
44 cruisers, 5 battlecruisers, 4 battleships, 6 dreadnoughts, 28 carriers).
And it's hard to me to understand how could New Israel Navy (supported with 43 million population)
be compared with, say ESU navy, supported with at least 2,000 million population and this 
type of industrial power.
But, until now we talked mostly about big powers. But what about little state, consisted with only 
one star system, with not an ideal climate, populated, say, 50-40 years before, and the colonisation
hadn't had a powerfull sponsor who could move dozens of thousand colonists. I suppose the 
population of such an independent colony would be, somehow 1-3 million. But if they have enough
industry, technologies and infrastructure, they can afford a small navy. How big can it be?
My idea is like that. In the late 17th century Sweden was a very industrial developed country. 
And it was a European great power, so it had to spend much resourses for the navy. But it
had only one million population, so, we can use Sweden as a model for an industrial developed
but low populated colony.
Well, Swedish navy of that time consisted of 29-30 fighting ships. Among them there were:
2 battleships, 7-8 frigates (at that time frigate-class was an analog of cruiser-class in Tuffley
verse), 20 others.
So, that's my impression of the smaller power navy: 1-2 "First Class" ships: battlecruisers 
or battleships, or one "white elefant"-dreadnought; 5-10 cruisers of all types; up to 8 destroyers;
up to 20 lighter classes scouts, strikeboats, corvettes, frigates. Non-FTL in-system ships 
are also included into this amount.
I think "first classes" should be ships of big power design, bought at "secondary market",
the same should be most of the cruisers (but some could be "lokally build"), and about one
half of escorts.

Any ideas?   


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