Dave's insanity: if -I- were to write the Orestes naval treaty...

[Dave Baughman]

DISCLAIMER: This is purely my ruminations and in no way is intended to influence the actual in-game treaty. I'm sharing this in public purely to give folks an insight into my thoughts on possible ways to regulate warship fleets in-game.


...I would base it closely on the real Washington treaty, and probably go nuts in the process.


Defining limits:

The Washington treaty limited Battleships to 35,000 tons, Heavy carriers to 33,000 tons, and Fleet carriers to 27,000 tons. What would this mean for FGC? Lets assume we keep the "standard tonnage" compromise and thus exclude cargo from the ships' total tonnage.

We'd want our 35,000 ton Battleship to restrict construction of Leviathans. This way the people who already have them could write themselves a special exemption and suspend new production while freezing out everyone else. The Lev is the only class with a "fighting weight" over 2,000,000 tons. So...

"35,000 ton Battleship" = "2,000,000 ton Battleship"

We want to limit construction of Theras and Potemkins, but the ND would want to be able to back-door Conquerors in so we need to get a definition of "27,000 tons" that's above 735,000 but below 880,000. Lets try the "straight mathematical approach" first.

(2 MT / 35) * 27 = 1.5 MT. Way too much.

what about (2 MT^-35)^27? 72,576 -- way too little.

What was actually want is a solution where 35 = 27 * 2.6, give or take. Obviously, this requires some Math Ninjitsu (actually, there's an easier way, but I don't want to take the cheap cop-out).

What about a geometrically-doubling progression? In this setup, 2,000,000 = 34,359,738,368 while "27" = 134,217,728 - no way.

So we want 27 to be a not quite a third of 35, which is tough, because it isn't. But what if both numbers were artificially high? Say 35 actually equals 13 and 27 actually equals 5 and both numbers have been arbitrarily increase by 22. Suddenly, if 2,000,000 tons actually equals 13 kilotons but is symbolically represented by "35 kilotons," then the equally mythical "27 kilotons" equals "5 kilotons". If 13 kilotons = 2,000,000 BT tons, then 5 kilotons = 769,000 BT tons give or take.

Now the question is, what does this make the "33 kiloton" heavy carriers weight? The answer is: 1,692,000 BTT give or take. That allows for pretty much any modern hull, with the SLDF McKenna just scraping in. Perfect.

So, now knowing what our definitions are (specifically, 1 "real life ton" = 153.85 "BattleTech tons"), lets look at the provisions in the treaty.


The real WNT set the following tiers:

Tier 1: 525,000 tons of Battleships + 135,000 tons of Carriers
Tier 2: 315,000 tons of Battleships + 81,000 tons of Carriers
Tier 3: 175,000 tons of Battleships + 60,000 tons of Carriers


BTW, lets define a Carrier as "a WarShip that derives more than 50% of its FP from fighers and dropships." Yes, this means that most of the optimized ships in FGC currently meet this definintion and thus would be out of compliance. That's the idea. We'll address jumpships and ground-based fighters later and separately. Fuck it, these numbers are actually pretty generous. They can pay for their carrier jumpships out of their carrier pool.

Also, lets come right out and exclude Corvettes from these rules. Their mass to FP ratio is poor and tying them into these restrictions creates a disincentive to build and use them. Surveillance ships too and, in fact, lets say any ship with a "fighting weight" under 350,000 tons that doesn't meet the definition of a Carrier (i.e. sorry, no loophole for the Sammy).

In BT weight (note, all references are to "fighting weight" not total mass):

Tier 1: 80,000,000 tons of traditional combatants, 20,000,000 tons of carriers (no more than two of which can exceed 750,000 tons)
Tier 2: 48,000,000 tons of traditional combatants, 12,000,000 tons of carriers (" " ")
Tier 3: 26,000,000 tons of traditional combatants, 9,000,000 tons of cariers (" " ")

If we assume a target ratio of 1 battleship:1.5 battlecruisers:2 cruisers:5 frigates (lets ignore destroyers for a moment), lets make a hypothetical FWL Tier 1 fleet using the following designs:

Battleship: Atreus (FW 933,365)
Battlecruiser: Black Lion (FW 741,459.5)
Cruiser: Agamemnon (FW 729,242)
Frigate: Eagle (FW 556,025)

That gives us an idealized "tier 1" fleet of... 12 Battleships, 18 Battlecruisers, 24 Heavy Cruisers, and 60 Frigates. That's not too shabby at all. Of course, the actual size would vary due to mixing classes and stuff. Notice though that it comes out very close to the "100 ship tier 1 fleet" envisioned in the player-written draft.

[chaosxtreme]

Very interesting.