...But their trade in potted mockswallow tongues could go even farther than their computer parts. ...
Ugh. I don't see why anyone even likes those things.
...That only works if the assets assigned to protect trade isn't a sunk cost. If the naval fleet would be a given size anyway (for protection), you might as well use it to protect your merchant trade too. A second problem is that you don't use squadrons of capital ships to guard merchant traffic, at least not in peacetime; you use smaller ships, and we don't have any figures for smaller ships, except a few pre-HG references. ...
Hmmm, poor word choice on my part. The lemonade stand metaphor was more to indicate the Imperium staking out enough ships to dissuade the Zho (and sundry) from trying to take those worlds and their associated trade into their own empires. My thought is that when the Imperium extends an invitation to some populous world that already has the means to defend its own system against piracy, it's going to weigh costs against benefits. Being protected against hostile neighbors is fine, but in many cases the immediate neighbors lack the resources to be a threat and the big neighbor over the horizon is someone likely to offer much the same deal the Imperium offers (or at least that's the way it looked until the anti-psionic thing persuaded folk that the Zho were out to pluck your deepest secrets from between your ears). In that case, the prime benefit is better interstellar trade, but if the costs eat up the benefits of the trade and start digging into your local tax base, you wonder if the deal is worth taking or if you might be better off staying independent or seeing what deal you can get from the folk over the horizon.
Maybe there is a need for more ships than the interstellar trade could finance, but the pattern of wars in the region doesn't really convince me that there's a need for costs beyond what that would cover.
...FS describes escorts as "small ships of up to 5000 tons" and the Sloan is an example of a 5000T escort. Presumably those 10,000T escorts are few enough to be ignored in a general description. ...
I think consensus is MT's
Fighting Ships isn't a very good source. I will quite happily put it to the side.
A pocket empire surrounded by unfriendly neighbors could have a peacetime budget of 8 or even 10% of GWP. According to Striker, Imperial worlds have an average peacetime military budget of 3%. And the numbers work out at the member worlds collectively having a naval budget twice the size of the Imperium. Since the Imperium seems to have logistical expenses much higher then the member worlds (which makes a lot of sense), this could translate to fleets collectively four times bigger, but we usually ignore that aspect when we discuss figures. ...
Striker is one of those sometimes-canon-sometimes-not things, depending on the subject, but I like it. Yes, average planetary mil budget of 3% with the Impies taking 30% of that, or 0.9% of the GWP. Of the remaining 2.1%, 40% is army (0.84%), which means the planetary "navy" gets 1.16% - and I take it we agree that's not the wet navy? I got nuthin' on logistical expenses, but I always figured the bulk of the planetary navy was SDBs and their half of the planetary defenses costs. With a cruiser squadron costing in the neighborhood of a quarter million megacredits, individual worlds aren't capable of fielding capital ships until they're up in the tens of millions population, and then you're splitting that up among ships, SDBs and planetary defenses.
When you talk about Imperial logistical expenses, you're figuring the need to buy tankers, transports and such?
...Where does it say that the colonial fleet is about the same size as the Imperial fleet? I've been looking for a statement to that effect for over a decade. I'd be really grateful for a reference and/or a quote. ...
Whup, you're right. They say there are 320 numbered reserve fleets, same as the number of IN regular fleets, but they don't say how they're comprised. I just assumed the number of squadrons and ships was the same.
