On Thu, Jan 03, 2019 at 05:55:43PM -0800, Greg Nokes wrote:
> I’d love for some non-economic reason for a small ship/CT77
> universe. But at the scale of the imperium I’m not sure it really
> makes sense.
>
> Even if you hand-wave jump drive as the limiter it makes attacking
> impossible, as I will just build a huge station or monitor, and your
> small ship attack force will die a quick death.
>
> So convince me! :)

As I see it, fleets in Traveller are effectively unable to force
engagements with other fleets.  If any major power decided to send a
fleet to Capital, the first thing that the Imperium would know would
be the detection of a massive number of jump flashes in the system.
If they wanted the planet destroyed, it would be.  Then they could
leave before engaging any defenders.

So large military fleets are effective weapons of mutually assured
destruction, not just ordinary power projection.  One possible
consequence would be universal treaties limiting the sizes and
compositions of military fleets, at least those in open use.

You may build huge non-jump stations and monitors, but what are you
getting for your expenditure?  If someone breaks the treaties, you
still can't defeat a large fleet.  It does mean that you can defeat a
small one, but you can't make them stay long enough to be engaged, and
can't really limit destruction should they choose to directly launch
attacks against civilian settlements or facilities before leaving.

Your best chance of actually defeating a treaty-abiding fleet is to
openly display a small to moderate military capability (enough to
frighten away rabble like raiders), while having a larger secret
reserve than they expect, and deploying it after they've committed.

So that's what you see: relatively small numbers of ships in modest
numbers, typically small enough to not threaten destruction of any
high-pop world.  Behind the scenes there may be larger reserves of
system defences, and there may even be some huge secret jump-capable
fleets where nobody will ever see them.

- Tim