Seldon's Starcraft 2 and the Space Opera Trillion Credit Squadron

Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun.

Trillion Credit Squadron

Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, using the ship combat rules and slugged it out to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander. The results were very interesting; Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using his AI Program while designing his fleets and won the national contest two years running. 

Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absense, we can use published examples. Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3. 

The compendiums sad Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures. 

Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundred of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships for their relatively few chosen crews. Their ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but merely for destruction. The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.  

Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for the top of the line Battlestars. 

I built a spreadsheet model for buying warships. List out the classes and their prices, pick and choose and compare.

For example, take the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. One point two five million tons, crews of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters, and tens of thousands of tons cargo. Each mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. With crack gun crews, a Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships. Big bad mama-jammers. 

With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants

Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.

A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yeilds 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups.

More to follow!