Hm, and I really thought that the GTVA has every desty ready and armed for combat.
If what you say is true, then it could be too late to prep your capships for battle if the shiv pop out of thin air.
Yeah, I kind of assumed that the Tevs are so paranoid of another Shivan incursion that they have at least one active-duty destroyer/carrier in every system just to hold the line against the Shivans until fast response teams and strategic battlegroups can arrive.
Just basing what we know on how real life navies work (or at least *most* real life navies). The 'war ready' ships will be the ones currently active which is probably as you say: at least one in each system plus reactionary forces. The GTVA economy isn't so stellar (no pun intended) so it's likely not all 24 are currently active ('active' being on patrol or reaction standby), but almost all are probably capable of being deployed at some point. It's just common sense that you don't have your entire military active unless it is during a total war, which isn't the case yet, at least for the Tevs.
Plus rotation means it is impossible to have more than 50-70% of your forces deployed unless it's a dire last stand or some other catastrophic situation. <--Scratch that, not thinking with ships. Personnel will be rotated regularly, but ships probably stay out longer until supplies or repair is needed, just as in WiH.
This is what I mean in a nutshell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_strike_group#Active_Carrier_Strike_GroupsHalf of the USN is ready to go, the rest is on standby or peacetime ops.
It all depends on how much the defence budget allows. In the UK no more than half the army can ever be deployed because it is too criplingly expensive to do so (even before the recession).
