Author Topic: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA  (Read 24687 times)

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Am I stupid? :doubt: I mean I have the feeling like the GTA and PVN had more ships in the Great war, than the GTVA in the time of FS 2. Is that so? I mean it could be! Lots of ships were destroyed, unusual and disabled. So even, the GTVA had to change their productions of fleets and stuff. Imposible Uncorrect
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Offline AlphaOne

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
A fighting force cand be decimated even if it suffers just 30% losses ! It all depends on where the losses were taken and in what manner. I mean if those 30% represent most of the crews and such or fighterpilots and crews then youre screwed your combat potential has been reduced to less then half.

It all depends on what or rather how the term is used .


For example if you have 1.000 people servicing 10 planes but out of the 10 planes 8 are destroyed but the service crew or men are still there they are of no use therefore your have been decimated even if youre losses are just 8 people.

The same goes the other way around. If you have a destroyer that has what 10.000 people on it but durint the battle 8.000 get killed or injured then you sir can cosnsider your forces decimated. Its a bunch of things that work toghether and depend on the situation.

Petrarch could of been referring that the force the GTVA used to engage the shivans was reduiced in a dramatic manner and therefore it was not able to put even a dent in the enemy. However such a force is in most cases less then half the total force available to you. Even at 40% force projection and 60% losses of the 40% you were still kicked hard in the nuts and you have to fall back to lick your wounds.
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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Let's not turn this thread into word games...

It doesn't matter what "decimated" means in that context, other than the fact that the fleet took a beating by the end of the incurson. Why wouldn't it have? The shivans came back even stronger than before now, plus the civil war experienced by the GTVA before that time, plus the fact that they could still be repairing from the Great War.
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Offline AlphaOne

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
The fact is they were rebuilding after the Great War. I mean designs such as the Deimos,Hattie and Hecate were still being introduced to the fleets while the older classes were phased out when new models were becoming available.

One proof of that is the fact that the Deimos and Sobek were supposed to replace ALL existing cruiser classes and become the backbone of the GTVA armed forces. Yet we know they still had loads of cruisers left . The Sobek did have a head start being built a lot sooner then the Deimos.

The Hattie on the other hand i believe it was younger then the Hecate .


Also lets not forget the fighter designs and bomber designs that were still in process of testing at the time of the second shivan invasion.

So yeah they were about in the middle of all of it.
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Offline Lucika

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
I thought a good pilot was priceless.

Producing an Anubis - 100 credits.
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Finding three ace pilots to fly them - priceless.
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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Producing an Anubis - 100 credits.
Producing an Apollo - 500 credits.
Producing an Erinyes - 3500 credits.
Finding Alpha 1 to fly them - priceless.
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Offline Snail

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
For everything else, there's ship-guardian-threshold.

 
Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Judging from the numbers I saw in game as I progressed through the campaign I always imagined the GTVA fleet numbering somewhere around about 300-400 warships, and maybe a couple thousand fighter/bombers at most. To me the GTVA fleet isn't very big. Look at this cost of the average GTVA warship undoubtedly in the billions of credits. Assuming 1 credit is similar to 1 US dollar constructing a large warship such as the GTD Aquitaine would be similar to the US outputting a super carrier. If that thing gets destroyed it would be a great loss. The GTVA Colossus would have sucked up immense money and resources taking up to 20 years to construct and if you look at the size of Terran-Vasudan holdings (number of systems) a fleet of 300 ships would be about correct. Mind you I didn't add the number of ships that defected to the NTF nor were loss to the Shivans in their initial attack before entering the Nebula. So during the Second Incursion the numbers may be closer to 200 and maybe just over a 1000 fighters/bombers. And I have to crunch the numbers but for game and role playing purposes a more realistic estimate is four ships to every system bringing the number of warships to around 80. But the average GTVA fleet is definitely larger then four warships so in the end I have no idea.

During the Great War the combined strength of the two races should be much smaller when the Shivans arrived with the Lucifer fleet the Terrans and Vasudans were engaged in a 14 year long war so it's safe to assume that a vast majority of their fleet was destroyed in that war. Freespace 1 openly admits by the time the two races signed a cease fire to combat the Shivans that both militaries were financially, militarily, and mentally drained and that both governments were nearly on the verge of collapse.

So in the end my estimate is:

14 Year War: Terrans - Around 30 warships, perhaps several dozen fighter/bombers. Vasudans - 25 warships, perhaps several dozen fighter/bombers (reason for smaller numbers is because the Vasudan paraliament is known for it's Byzantine practices and gross inefficiency so that contributes to things to.)

Great War: At outbreak similar to 14 Year War estimates. At conclusion - Both races probably have a little more then a dozen warships, unknown number of small craft definitely more then a few dozen though not by much.

Reconstruction - Unknown. Both races underwent massive reforms some of which were definitely aimed at the military... Needs more info for a meaningful estimate.

NTF Rebellion - Military might of both species is for all intents and purposes combined. GTVA warships probably around 150, over 1000 fighter/bombers (this estimate assumes the NTF Rebellion split the military's numbers clean in half.

Second Incursion - Around 100 ships, over 1000 fighter/bombers.



Ground forces --

The GTVA ground forces probably consists of a combined army/marine corp that is separated from the navy though there is definitely marines onboard warships as can be seen in the Terran flight deck screen representing the GTD Aquitaine. Considering the Security Council sent in 500,000 marines just to take Cygnus Prime from the NTF which is one fight amongst dozens. And considering the GTVA didn't seem to have too much trouble protecting it's planets from ground attacks. Estimating the number of soldiers you'd need to comfortably hold about two dozen systems, and provide yourself with field armies for foreign deployment as well as local defense armies. I'd say the GTVA army is around about 15-20 million strong.

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
There is a possible inconsistency with the number of ground troops, though. The GTVA decided to evacuate Capella after only 100 000 casualties.

Oh, and...
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Offline Dilmah G

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Blatant disagree with T-V numbers. Operation Thresher yielded 500 pilot casualties at the beginning of FS1, WAY more than a few dozen ships. And remember, the GTA still has other fleets, and traditionally, the GTA/GTVA never engages more than 2-3 fleets in a specific conflict, for all we know there could've been a load of ships waiting in other systems as part of other fleets which would've formed the reserve. In FS2 the GTVA had dozens of fleets, yet only the 3rd and 4th Terran Fleets were deployed against the NTF and the Nebula and the 13th Vasudan Battle Group, the local forces, yet the GTVA held back the rest of their fleets, that's my evidence for you.

As referring to the fleets engaged with the Shivans in the GW, I'd probably agree with you, but fighters man, waaaaaaay more. Did you see the CBanim at the beginning of FS2, look at all the squadrons based on the Bastion in the Great War, that surpasses your few dozen fighters already. Post-Reconstruction you've done a better job IMO, sounds realistic, the combined power of three fleets/battlegroups.

 

Offline Mobius

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Even if the GTVA had a massive fleet it couldn't deploy more than a certain number of warships to a contested system - the logistics would be a serious problem. Resupplying and coordinating large groups would be very difficult... in other words, even if you have who knows how many fleets, you can't fill a system with them.

Apparently, only the Shivans can do that. To some degree.
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Offline NathanP

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Is it any stretch to say that something like a Sobek or Deimos, which encompass substantially more volume, couldn't in turn hold substantially larger crews?

No, but the question is - what does that crew do?
A carrier like Nimitzs needs that much crew and we know why. Pilots usually fly in shifts - ergo a carrier would usually carry 2 if not 3 times more pilots than it has craft on board. Some of the craft are 2-seaters.

so for a Destroyer that normally carries 120-150 combat spacecraft, we have a MINIMUM of 300 pilots. Next we need flight crew...of which you again need quite a few to service the airplanes. and they also work in shifts.

All in all, just on aircraft you'd need A MINIMUM of 1000 people. Note that the Nimitz, with around 80 aircraft, has 2800 personnel listed as pilots and flight crew.
The basic ships crew is roughly 3000 people. For the Enterprise the numbers are 3215/2480. Kitty Hawk 2930/1782 Forrestal - 2900/2279

So a little less than half the ships crew is just there for the aircraft.

So assuming a similar distribution, roughly 4000 crew on a FS destroyer would be there just for the aircraft.

In comparison, crews for combat warships are drasticly smaller - 1500 for the Iowa battleship, which is almost as big as an aircraft carrier. Between 300-100 for other US ships, raging from cruisers to frigates and destroyers.

It leaves me to wonder what do the 6000 on the corvette actually do?
It only has 30 turrets or so, so there's not that much to mantain or control (Iowa has over 100).
So that leaves me to think wether that corvette was a good representative of the standard number. Maybe it was ferrying troops or scientists or refugees?

Given that a corvette is roughly twice the length of the Iowa (ergo, it has more than twice the volume) I can see it having more (around 3000).

But I just don't see what the 6000 would be doing.



And since we're at the matter of fleet numbers, knowing the number of people in the fleet and the number of people on the biggest ship, it's not a stretch to be able to come up with a reasonable fleet estimate. Simple logic dictates that there are more cruisers than corvettes in a fleet and more destroyers than corvettes.
A fleet is highly unlikely to have more than 2 destroyers, given how important they are and how costly and big.

 a carrier would not have 2 to 3 times as many pilots as planes for 2 reasons:
1: each pilot has their own plane - look at any deck photo and the pilots name is on the plane
2: each pilot costs millions to train - there isn't the money to put 200-300 pilots on each carrier.

A modern US navy destroyer has about 220 crew, a tico class cruiser has about 300.

My guess would be as follows:-
3-4 destroyers
6-8 corvettes
10-12 cruisers
per fleet

we can suppose that there is more than one destroyer per fleet by the cut scene in retail where the orion and sobek jump to deal with the shivans - tBTVA are not going to leave a system without a destroyer in the middle of this rebellion

This doesn't include ships used to guard installations etc - mostly Leviathan class cruisers, the other thing we don't know is how many fleets there are :confused:

An iowa may have had over 100 turrets - but they all had to be loaded by hand - something that i dare say has been sorted by 2367

 

Offline Mobius

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
I'm afraid your assumptions about pilots are a big bogus.

First of all, you don't know how expensive training a pilot is. Also, looks like you completely missed the point in presence of a destroyer in a given system or sector... destroyers have 10,000 crewmen, why would 200-300 pilots make the difference?

It has been discussed how ships need reserves so that their effectiveness isn't compromised following a fierce attack. What if pilots come back to the destroyer wounded? I hard believe no one would be ready to replace them. Don't forget that some pilots might be sharing the same spacecraft - in theory, an old Angel could have been used by fighters pilots and by recon pilots. Same for the Lokis used by the NTF, which served multiple purposes.

Not to mention new equipment - whenever a destroyer gets a shipment of new spacecraft, the pilots to fly them are already there. The 64th Raptors was already on the Aquitaine when the destroyer received a complement of Artemis bombers.

Finally, there's a bad proportion in your average fleet arrangement. 3-4 destroyers, 6-8 corvette and 10-12 cruisers? Although the number of cruisers may work to some extent, the number of destroyers is insanely high and the number of corvettes is out of proportion.
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Offline Blue Lion

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Since pilots in FS2 can decide their ship some times, I would say pilots aren't assigned a ship really.

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
That can get really impractical if a pilot is disabled for non-combat reasons, or if the mission calls for a different set of parameters (or get a new pilot).  I don't really get it, aside from bomber crews of the olden days naming the bombers.  Now it doesn't really warrant it.

 

Offline NathanP

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
I'm afraid your assumptions about pilots are a big bogus.

First of all, you don't know how expensive training a pilot is. Also, looks like you completely missed the point in presence of a destroyer in a given system or sector... destroyers have 10,000 crewmen, why would 200-300 pilots make the difference?

It has been discussed how ships need reserves so that their effectiveness isn't compromised following a fierce attack. What if pilots come back to the destroyer wounded? I hard believe no one would be ready to replace them. Don't forget that some pilots might be sharing the same spacecraft - in theory, an old Angel could have been used by fighters pilots and by recon pilots. Same for the Lokis used by the NTF, which served multiple purposes.

Not to mention new equipment - whenever a destroyer gets a shipment of new spacecraft, the pilots to fly them are already there. The 64th Raptors was already on the Aquitaine when the destroyer received a complement of Artemis bombers.

Finally, there's a bad proportion in your average fleet arrangement. 3-4 destroyers, 6-8 corvette and 10-12 cruisers? Although the number of cruisers may work to some extent, the number of destroyers is insanely high and the number of corvettes is out of proportion.


My comments were made in response to somebody dragging the us navy carriers into this discussion and are thus not bogus.

It costs £10m to train an RAF pilot to combat readiness as stated here:- http://www.armedforces.co.uk/raf/listings/l0015.html ( can't find a cost for a us navy pilot but when i do i'll edit the post.)

Pilots do have there own airplanes as shown here:- http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=70267 look below the cockpit and you will see the pilots name and rank

I do get the point of a destroyer showing up in system - its like a US carrier turning up in a trouble spot today - they take the matter seriously, its called gunboat diplomacy - send in something small and see what happens - if get gets smacked about call in progressively bigger and more ships until the situation is resolved, navies have been doing it for centuries.

Wartime reserves are mobilised then posted to their ship - they are not there all the time

My estimate of a fleet size was  only a guess just like everybody elses here but i don't appreciate your "insanely high" comment - last time someone posted 3-4 destoyers you went uhm - perhaps you need to relax and chillout - this is supposed to be a light hearted discussion :nod:

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
I like the carrier metaphor. People tend to get upset about the 'small scale' of Freespace battles, with a few dozen fighters at most, or a bare wing of fighters defending a destroyer -- but that's larger than most air engagements today, which generally involve at most a few pairs of aircraft.

  

Offline Mobius

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
NathanP: Simulators are advanced enough in FreeSpace to significantly reduce the amount of money needed to train pilots.
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Offline Scotty

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
I claim [Citation Needed].

 

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Re: Total strength of GTA, PVE and GTVA
Simulators do most part of the job.

Are you aware of how much money spent to traing pilots is used for fuel? Effective simulators significantly reduce the number of "real " flights.
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