Forum:Taxes
I turned my basement upside down last night trying to find the box full of Little Black Books that've been in storage *somewhere* for the past 20-odd years.
Bupkes.
And I really needed to find Trillion Credit Squadron.
So I'll throw out what I'm trying to accomplish, and then my question.
Goal: To start putting together *rough* orders of battle for the Caledonian fleet, as well as some of the neighboring states (Duncinae, the Khan Worlds, Douglass, etc)
Issue: When I calculate the naval budget for the Principality overall, I get an absolutely insane amount of money; 15.5 Trillion credits. I'm assuming that's an annual figure, and that the Principality will therefore have (after deducting a rough 30% for things like payroll, maintenance, R&D, expendibles and so forth) 10 TCr/year, which over ten years adds up to 100 TCr in ships floating about. Given that over the course of ten years you can spend about half on new construction and half on maintaining existing construction (assuming a ten year service life), that adds up to a LOT of ships. Thousands and thousands.
Question 1: Do I have the math basically correct?
Question 2: If someone has time to explain it, how - roughly - does one divide tax revenues among tech levels. For example - in the Principality of Caledonia, there are 31 billion citizens - but only 1.7B live on TL12 worlds, 8B on TL11, and well over 20B (and their immense revenues) live on TL9 systems. It seems unlikely that all of that money would go into building a uniformly TL12 fleet. While I realize this is probably explained in TCS, I can't find a copy at hand at the moment - so could someone sum up how one accounts for this in a nutshell?
Thanks!
Mitchberg (talk) 11:03, 16 September 2013 (EDT)
- This is mostly correct. According to the strict TCS rules (which I don't have in front of me) the Principality should have a total 155 TCr in ships. Maintaining these ships requires their entire 15.5 TCr annual naval budget. For the wargame rules, you are required to spend 20% (31 TCr) on older (read TL-11) designs, but you can spend additional budget to upgrade them to TL-12 standards. Also for the wargame rules you can spend 10% (1.55TCr) on new ships, assuming you retire an equivalent amount of old ships in the same year.
- The exact tax transference fees depends on both the TL of the world and the port type. That is transferring from TL9/portA world is better than from a TL9/PortC world. I'll have to dig out the chart when I get home, but having the (short) list of Naval construction facilities worlds for transferring the budget to for maintenance and new construction would be useful. Using the 30% as a rough calculation is probably high.
- Finally, if (when?) the Principality get into a shooting war, there is the issue of repairing and/or replacing the battle damage. Again, there is a chart (not in front of me) for calculation of repair/construction time based upon tonnage and/or cost. You can decrease construction time by spending more money, all of this comes from the annual 15.5 TCr pool. The TCS rules use a 1 week turn, but a 1 month (4 week) construction phase, and the budget refreshes every 12 months (48 weeks).
- Tjoneslo (talk) 12:40, 16 September 2013 (EDT)
- Thanks. I appreciate this. Unfortunately, of all the notes I took re this milieu when I was in college, the ORBAT was the book that disappeared. Blah.
I pulled the stats for the worlds listed as members of the Principality from the Reaver's Deep sector data. I select all the worlds with pop-8 or more and calculated the population, local budget, and total budget for the Prinipality.
| World | UWP | Base Budget (BCr) | Transfer Budget (BCr) | Construction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cuillin | B648AA9-9 | 12000 | 9176.47 | -- |
| Rob Roy | B6469BA-B | 4400 | 3882.35 | -- |
| Rutherglen | B7788CA-A | 180 | 148.23 | -- |
| Caithness | A666888-B | 55 | 51.76 | -- |
| Budwick | C887874-8 | 360 | 232.94 | -- |
| Stirling | A957865-C | 120 | 120 | 240,000 |
| Caledon | A8688A5-C | 420 | 420 | 840,000 |
| Douglass | AA978CA-C | 480 | 480 | 960,000 |
- Annual Budget: 14,511.76BCr
- Total Shipyard Capacity: 2,040,000 tons
There are only three worlds in the Principality with the port and technology to build and repair their fleet: Stirling, Caledon, and Douglass. These three worlds have a star port capacity of 2,040,000 tons. The primary budget is supplied by Cuillin and Rob Roy, with the remaining worlds supplying an effective rounding error amounts of money.
- Quibble: "assuming a ten year service life"
- That's too short, by at least factor of ten. Even present day warships have service lives measured in decades. I believe Mongoose's "Sector Fleet" (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpgs/traveller/sector-fleet.html ) addresses this in terms of working warships, reserve fleets (where older warships may linger for centuries more), &tc.
- Renmerc465 (talk) 13:52, 14 January 2014 (EST) -->
- Even Trillion Credit Squadron and Book 5 do not assume a 10 year life span for ships. In fact, according to many of the CT rules, there is no real upper limit on the lifespan of a warship. The Book 1 rules on character generation (and in many of the following rules) sort of imply that 40-50 years for tramp trader starships is "old", but still usable. As long as you are willing to pay for the maintenance. Tjoneslo (talk) 21:20, 14 January 2014 (EST)