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Old 04-29-2022, 07:12 AM   #21
Prince Charon
 
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Its s blog post and it says:

So, exactly the same definition that I gave.
OK, then I appear to have missed or misunderstood part of the conversation.
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Old 04-29-2022, 11:19 PM   #22
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Its s blog post and it says:

So, exactly the same definition that I gave.
Well, the problem is that eg. Jonathan Roth (who wrote a PhD thesis and the standard monograph on the logistics of the Roman army) estimates at least one official servant per four soldiers in a Roman army, so only "all tooth" if you weasel out a definition which excludes them. (Roth strongly suspects that the wealthy Romans had enough slaves and hangers-on, and the camp market included enough sutlers and so on, that the true ratio was significantly lower, but he could not find good evidence for the exact number). AFAIK, if you travel wherever the army goes and do hard manual labour like gathering fodder and felling firewood you count as part of the army and not the supporting economy.

The wording in the post seems too vague to be sure why Devereaux said what he did about the Roman army.

Because Devereaux writes so fast, its probably best to think of his essays as university lectures - the details may not all be right (especially when they are tangental to the lecturer's expertise) but they lead you in the right direction.
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Old 04-30-2022, 03:55 PM   #23
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

Years ago in a Traveller game we had a "just add water" mercenary unit. All energy weapons and such because that didn't need a constant source of ammunition. And anti grav vehicles because that didn't depend on tires and such. We needed spare parts and skilled mechanics but not a stream of expendables.
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Old 04-30-2022, 04:24 PM   #24
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

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Originally Posted by Polydamas View Post
Well, the problem is that eg. Jonathan Roth (who wrote a PhD thesis and the standard monograph on the logistics of the Roman army) estimates at least one official servant per four soldiers in a Roman army, so only "all tooth" if you weasel out a definition which excludes them. (Roth strongly suspects that the wealthy Romans had enough slaves and hangers-on, and the camp market included enough sutlers and so on, that the true ratio was significantly lower, but he could not find good evidence for the exact number). AFAIK, if you travel wherever the army goes and do hard manual labour like gathering fodder and felling firewood you count as part of the army and not the supporting economy.

The wording in the post seems too vague to be sure why Devereaux said what he did about the Roman army.

Because Devereaux writes so fast, its probably best to think of his essays as university lectures - the details may not all be right (especially when they are tangental to the lecturer's expertise) but they lead you in the right direction.
Wasn't the inclusion of one servant per four men part of the Marian reforms, intended to rid the army of its huge tail of servants, relatives and other hangers on that had burdened the pre-Marian army?
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Old 05-25-2022, 05:49 PM   #25
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

[QUOTE=Anders;2426949]This was an interesting article about the so-called tooth-to-tail ratio over the millennia. The "tooth" is the troops that do the actual fighting while the "tail" is the people who make sure the teeth get all they need - delivering ammunition and fuel, keeping the vehicles combat-ready, etc. Over the years the ratio of tooth to tail has kept shrinking. The Roman legions were pretty much all tooth, lancers in the 15th century had an 8:1 ratio of tooth to tail. That ratio had reversed by the early 21st century.

Deveraux argues that the teeth will continue to become smaller and the tail larger as technology becomes more complex and more capable. What do you think? Have you thought about this when creating sci-fi universes?[/QUOTE

The problem is that predicting the supply problems of future weapons systems is not possible. For instance missiles of the Honor Harrington sort regularly have to be manufactured and delivered. Beam weapons based on energy that can be resupplied along the way are different. Repair likely will still require a tail as will personal replacement (one could picture future ships having multiple crews allowing the ones off the line to rest and/or train and/or absorb new personal.

It really depends on what weapons system you are using.
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Old 05-27-2022, 03:16 PM   #26
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

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Actually in a big interstellar war (like the Terran-Vilani war) fleets, troops, or even individual planets would be small change. What would matter would be dominance of the infrastructure of entire subsectors. Unless that is done a whole new fleet can be manufactured to replace losses making even a battle of annihilation only a tactical victory.
This assumes a reasonably total war, where the major production resources of the planet are available to the 'owner' if required. If the wars are basically something fought by armies and civil infrastructure is largely left alone (as long as taxes are paid), the local resources a forward base can use might be fairly limited.

Also, if we're talking Traveller a lot of worlds in useful places (choke points back when J-2 or J-3 was the cap, for example) are terrible for use as bases, with low populations, no tech base, a terrible starport, and so on. While you definitely want to hold them, it's not because of the planet, but because of where it is.
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Old 05-31-2022, 07:09 AM   #27
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

[QUOTE=Rupert;2432542]This assumes a reasonably total war, where the major production resources of the planet are available to the 'owner' if required. If the wars are basically something fought by armies and civil infrastructure is largely left alone (as long as taxes are paid), the local resources a forward base can use might be fairly limited.

Also, if we're talking Traveller a lot of worlds in useful places (choke points back when J-2 or J-3 was the cap, for example) are terrible for use as bases, with low populations, no tech base, a terrible starport, and so on. While you definitely want to hold them, it's not because of the planet, but because of where it is.[/QUOTE

It only takes one substantial base a subsector back from the battle area to supply a fleet on campaign.
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Old 06-07-2022, 07:09 AM   #28
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

One thing none of us seemed to have considered is how easy it is to transport money (by comparison obviously). This is not a permanent solution but buying up all the munitions and all the condottieri in an area in a short time changes the dynamic. Not to mention the options of engaging in economic warfare, buying treason, etc.
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Old 06-07-2022, 06:05 PM   #29
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Default Re: Sci Fi - the teeth and the tail

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Originally Posted by Anders View Post
This was an interesting article about the so-called tooth-to-tail ratio over the millennia. The "tooth" is the troops that do the actual fighting while the "tail" is the people who make sure the teeth get all they need - delivering ammunition and fuel, keeping the vehicles combat-ready, etc. Over the years the ratio of tooth to tail has kept shrinking. The Roman legions were pretty much all tooth, lancers in the 15th century had an 8:1 ratio of tooth to tail. That ratio had reversed by the early 21st century.

Deveraux argues that the teeth will continue to become smaller and the tail larger as technology becomes more complex and more capable. What do you think? Have you thought about this when creating sci-fi universes?
I suspect that the tail may actually shrink once you are dealing with space forces.

For all that ship classes are named as if they were vessels in a surface navy, they're far more like an all-submarine fleet. If a ship can't effect repairs itself, it's unlikely that any other ship in their company can effect the repairs for them. The only option is likely to tow it to a drydock (which probably isn't "tail") for repairs.

There may be a few ships that can carry larger components for repairs, but there are going to be limits on what can be carried. If a component takes up half of a ship's volume, you can only carry one spare if you devote the other half of the ship's volume to repair components, and doing that means you can't carry anything else, including mission critical items like crew and armaments, never mind ammunition. So, even if no component takes up that much volume, there is a limit on how big a component can be and still have a replacement carried.

You could supply really big components by stuffing them into a big enough freighter but really big freighters are going to be slow unless you put big engines in them. If they're to slow to keep up with your fleet's movements, by definition, they're no longer part of the "tail" because they won't be part of the front-line. If you do put a big enough engine in them, they either become too small to carry really big components for your biggest ships, or they become big, worthwhile targets for the enemy.

If your fleet has to be self-maintaining, the logistic problem changes. You'll want the most reliable components you can lay your hands on and you'll want to standardize the smallest parts so that they can be used across as many components and sub-components as possible. The biggest volume/most expensive/least replaceable component will determine the lifespan of the vessel. When it goes, the salvage ship will be along to strip out anything that's still got a usable lifespan, but the salvage ship won't be "tail", either.

Some things will be strictly routine maintenance. You can replace parts in the monitoring consoles to keep your reactor running, but if anything in the core starts to give, the only thing you can do is abandon ship, or possibly jettison the reactor.

Ammunition probably won't be an issue if the armament is beam weapons, but if you're providing firearm ammunition, you'll need one or more means of connecting the ammunition ship to the warship and then you'll have the problem of being able to offload the ammunition in the quantities needed quickly. You may be looking at corridors the size of six-lane highways with ammunition being carried by tractor-trailer sized vehicles, loading and off-loading the ammo with cranes, if the distances to the magazines/weapon bays are great enough.

Finally, space-borne planetary forces will have two choices: either be armies and carry all the tail they need with them; or be marines, with most of their support being in space. Both options will be limiting, but I would suspect that the marine option will be used for invasion forces, while the army option will be used for garrisoning friendly planets.
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