I would be curious to see how. My basis for this is the knowledge that the expensive costs of building Traveller capital ships is expensive but would be dwarfed by logistics and staffing (recruiting, training, housing, bases, etc). I would think the number of fleets and ships we see even across the Spinward Marches would be so large as to beggar all polities. Esp, as you said, there are the IN, the INR, and 'Colonials', and the local System Navies all drawing money out of polities. 

Further, though such situations of armed camps exist, they tend in the modern world to be much less common because it is cost effective for all enemies and rivals to each-and-all reduce force levels to give those monies to other internal projects. If one isn't actively fighting on a large scale, a large scale military is an expense, not a benefit. Bean counters and greedy politicians would eventually see ways to reduce costs. That's one of the main advantages of international arms treaties and alliances - to reduce individual polity costs and allow force reductions so the money can go to building economies. 

That's a whole other set of threads though. My spreadsheet probably does not have enough cells or large enough numbers to track such economics. 

TomB



On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 11:51 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
Yes, but no alteration/adjustment is really necessary.

All the dialog that transpired way back then pretty much confirmed that a 'large-ship IN/much smaller-ship mercantile' could work.

It all just depends on what sort of TU you would like to have.

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On Thursday, October 1, 2020, 12:35:45 AM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


They borrowed the Children of the Marches from the UK funding some escorts by city and I think one or two were all the school kids putting together some monies they raised. 

What was less clear was whether that was more 'political/morale theater' or actual accounting fact. I tended to think the former and I put the Children of the Marches in the same vein (they raised a small %, the Imperial paid the rest, but they gave all the credit to the kids). 

That said, if the cost structure doesn't support the large IN, you can just lower some of the hull sizes or numbers. Presumably if one polity can't afford a particular force structure, other polities probably can't either. 

There was a time where a 400-800 dTon escort, sdb, or patrol cruiser was 'a big ship'. 

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 11:51 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
Some years back there were a number of discussions (some rather heated) discussing the ways that a 'large naval ships' & 'much smaller merchant ships' template could work w/i the 3I. When CT HG came out, I just figured, "Well, the IN needs monsters cuz' that's what is militarily necessary while the merchant fleets don't cuz' smaller ships do the job the best". As far as the the question of adequate revenue goes, there are a myriad of ways for the 3I to generate revenue. One that I proposed was a sort of 'membership fee' similar to what International Orgs like the UN charge their members here on earth. After all, why shouldn't the protection afforded to every member system by the 3I be paid for directly? There some others, & one guy, a historian from the UK who, I believe, is no longer on-list, pointed out that the Royal Navy was financed during the 'Age of Sail' with a level of taxation that some were arguing was too low to sustain the IN. And then there's the documented (one of the AZH cruisers, 'Children of the Marches' was originally financed by  the sector gov) ability of the subsector/sector govs to levy taxes. I've always figured that that was how the 'Colonial' (a separate & distinct 'subsector navy' in CT HG) naval squadrons & ground forces were financed. The 5thFw boardgame clearly indicates that the 'colonials' are separate from the 'regulars' altho they come under 'regular' command in time of war or other emergency, such as the concentration of both 'colonial' & 'regular' forces in a single system, combating the IneGivar, at the beginning of the 5thFw.

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On Wednesday, September 30, 2020, 06:27:00 PM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


It's almost like the map is not like the maps we're used to that call out the most major centers by population, but they instead identify systems by mainworld which could have the highest pop, could be the lowest pop, could possibly have different TLs in the system and maybe not be the highest (didn't check, but could be), or maybe for political or diplomatic regions... in other words, good for knowing what the official ports are (for importing/trade if everything has to go to the Starport of the mainworld) but not very useful as a trade / commercial Atlas or as a representation of population in systems (for human geography and for looking at total economic value of systems). 

The more you look at things like that, the more the 'Interstellar trade is small and high value luxury items' model makes some sense. That sort of an old, shattered, balkanized, rebuilt, re-balkanized sort of setting would tend to focus more on political importance or other strange notions for map making than on populations or even trade-related things. Of course, the Imperial Fleets and the cost of them says 'large trade' and 'big, well organized systems all over' and would probably fit better with maps that were about trade and sophont populations.

Never let it be said ye olde game doesn't have some sort of contradictory points in its construction.

TomB

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 1:13 PM Thomas RUX <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote:
Hi Phil,
On 09/30/2020 2:02 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

Something just occurred to me;

Do any of the various schemes for generating detailed systems offer the possibility of a lo-POP 'mainworld' where the 'official' starport is located and also other worlds w/ larger or even much, much larger POP's?If the scheme for generating detailed systems
Making a quick check of the schemes for generating detailed systems the ones that generate the starport prior to the main world's population appears to be capable of creating a lo-pop main world with the official star port and other worlds with a higher population in my opinion.

Tom Rux

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