Re: [GZG] FTverse colinies

My feeling is that there are several parallel things going on. This
email has grown into an unreadable monster because the problem gets
more and more fascinating the more I think about it, so here's the
executive summary.

* I love the idea of looking at these questions in the first place.
* I think that productivity is NOT tightly coupled to population or
size.
* Your population numbers depend on your universe's approach to
habitability.
* Naval composition is shaped to its mission rather than just its size.

Let's say that, broadly speaking, your population times your
productivity is your GDP (I'm talking generalities here). That GDP is
spent on a number of things (government/administration, commerce,
industry, agriculture, etc). Some of this stuff, like
commerce/industry, is an investment in higher GDP next year. Some are
overhead to maintaining a population. Some are boondoggles that don't
buy you anything. You'd be stunned how much is lost to inefficiencies
like inventory costs.

First, industrial capacity is only very loosely correlated to
production. Productivity relates to technology, infrastructure,
organizational efficiency, natural advantages like resources, morale,
education, cultural factors and more. OECD did a study of labor
productivity (that is, GDP per hour worked) and found that the
variability even among industrialized nations can be nearly an order
of magnitude. (http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL)
Or look at GDP per capita, which varies by MANY orders of magnitude.
So population is only a useful proxy for productivity if you have
nothing else to go on. Even moreso for GDP per square kilometer. I
calculated some numbers for the middle east using wikipedia's figures,
and it varies from 36 thousand $/km^2 for Yemen to 21 MILLION $/km for
Bahrain. The numbers will probably be closer planet-vs-planet, since
you colonize ideal sites first, but I think even then size simply
won't matter.

Still looking at the Middle East in general (since you mentioned NI).
Three star systems is PLENTY, depending on what's in the system. A
couple resource-rich worlds of above-average habitability, a good
asteroid belt or three, resource-rich lunar atmospheres, etc. can
drastically boost productivity. I haven't run my own population
numbers, but yours sound good. World birth rates on Earth are leveling
off so we can assume the homeworld population will be roughly 12
billion (UN estimate). However, unless we have way more colonies than
I'd think make sense, the entire off-world human population would
scarcely fill a single planet.

Big earthside empires like the ESU may have a gigantic population, but
much of their resources will be tied up in maintaining that
population. It's their industrial footprint in orbit (and the
asteroids, etc) that will actually make it to the shipyards to build
their navy. Especially when you consider that even big ships are
relatively small compared to modern vessels. It's their complexity and
the fact that you're climbing up and down a gravity well to build them
that make them so pricey.

RESULT: The differences in productivity between sprawling
multi-stellar empires and single well-developed colonies are
surprisingly small. The other elements of productivity will be what's
important. NI, Japan, or Free Cal-Tex would be fools to take on a big
empire like the ESU or FSE, but those empires should think twice
before moving against these smaller players. It might also help to
explain (along with long latency and expense in transport and
communication) the Balkanization of the Tuffleyverse.

***********************************

This is also going to vary strongly by game universe. In the Rare
Earth scenario, you have a scenario like in Bruce Sterling's
Schizmatrix: mostly free fall habitats and few non-ideological motives
to expand into new systems while your own system is still mostly
unexploited.

One of the requirements to habitability is having life already that
has converted the naturally organics-rich atmosphere to have a nice
balance of oxygen and co2, fix some of the dissolved
organics/salts/minerals, etc. We have to assume that if we're
colonizing planets that terraforming is cheap/fast, or that the life
we encounter is sufficiently biocompatible (or bio-INcompatible) that
we can supplant it. Is this a safe assumption? Possibly, if most
worlds linger in the prokaryotic phase.

If terraforming is hard/expensive, then you have far fewer colonies
that are utterly dependent on their home culture and expend almost all
their production simply keeping their population alive.

If not, then after a detailed science survey you can send a couple
colony ships and be done with it. You could even build and launch a
fleet on spec; the colonists stay in cold sleep and you simply keep
exploring systems until you find a world suitable for colonization,
much like some strategy games for the PC. It argues that the Great
Powers are NOT exporting population to pre-existing colonies as you
assumed, instead they're using those people for the land rush of
grabbing habitable worlds. Except for colonies like Albion, which have
strategic/political importance, your colonies would be mostly
self-supporting (and self-defending starting late in the Xeno War when
defenses against the Kra'Vak are pulled back to defend Earth).

***********************************

I think you make a really good point about purchasing capital ships on
the open market. If you're only going to have one, the build/buy
decision is pretty clear. Except that some cultures will build their
ships anyway. The Israelis (both current and future) have no
confidence that even their military allies will actually come to their
defense; they work on the assumption that they'll be betrayed and/or
abandoned and so try to make their military as autonomous as possible.
It's likely they'll build their own ships unless the economics are
totally untenable.

It also might drive some decisions about ship design. Consider this:
the FSE's reliance on salvo missiles is all fine and well, but
requires a strong supply line. Is this a tactical, strategic or
political decision? Tactically, it's great vs the FSE's human
opponents. Strategically, it gives your ships shorter "legs" and
requires more expensive supply ships. Politically, it keeps your
admirals on a short leash and encourages them to be more conservative
(ie NAC and NSL captains don't constantly have to ask themselves , "Do
I blow my missile inventory on a fleet engagement now or avoid combat
and keep my powder dry?"). Most importantly for what you're talking
about, you keep your client states on a short leash, too, if they buy
their navies from you.

As for fleet composition: I think it depends on the mission you
envision for your navy. Who's your most likely opponent? The outer
colonies are most worried about raiders, not invasion fleets. So
they'll deploy greater numbers of smaller patrol boats. The great
powers, or countries most worried about fighting a great power, will
have a more top-heavy line of battle, loaded with battleships. What
kind of country are you defending? If you're a single colony, with no
interest in or capability for expansion, then you'll load up on system
ships rather than bothering with FTL. If you orbit a small red sun, it
might even make sense to use FTL for in-system maneuver (build up a
head of speed outbound, then hop to the other side of the system so
you're suddenly INbound on a pursuit vector). If you're making good
use of your asteroids, lots of small ships to defend all the little
habitats you have. If you've focused on the planet, a couple big ships
that stay parked in orbit.

In the case of NI (for example) you have three systems, so FTL is
required. Your principal threats are all major naval powers. So even
though you're small, you load up on whatever has the best bang for the
buck among the heavy-weight ships. Build if at all possible, buy if
absolutely necessary. That leaves you with a smaller budget for
defense vs raids, so you buy cost-effective, very fast cruisers in the
destroyer - light cruiser range to deal with raids and piracy. You
maximize their time out of spacedock by minimizing consumables like
missiles. They have to be fast because they each have to defend a
larger volume of space, and also to withdraw if confronted with a raid
of middleweight ships from a great power. Remember that production
cost is directly proportional to points value. They'll try to optimize
for the missions they expect to run.

That's only a guess, but it illustrates the point.

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 4:15 AM, Тимофей Потапенко
<potapenkoteo@mail.ru> wrote:
>
>  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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-- 
Robert Mayberry
(678) 984-5113
Robert.Mayberry@gmail.com
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