Merchant Marine Sizes

[The Rock Doctor]

I have a vague recollection about discussing the size of each nation's merchant marine - but I think it happened at the old board.  Anybody recall or have a link to the discussion?

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Talk about cans of worms .... :)
http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=156.msg1584#msg1584

And the last time P3D had ideas for mercantile shipping he had to run for cover from the dung hurling :)
http://www.navalism.org/index.php?topic=871.0

Borys

[The Rock Doctor]

Aha...I think some is missing, but it's a starting point.  Thanks.

[P3D]

I am working on some simple quantification of merchant marine. Currently it is just having some 'general' merchant vessel types.

Also some port loading/unloading capacity to get some rough ideas on the speed of loading and unloading troops and supplies.

As I hinted, there will be some rule updates - tech changes, and streamlining rules.

[miketr]

I have done a little looking into historic situation with respect the Merchant Marine...

In this time period the average sized steam vessel is going to be around 500 tons.  Germany in 1912 had  4,675 motorized ships displacing 2,903,570 tons out of its two biggest ports (total size of there merchantmarine was around 5 million tons). 

The United States had an even larger number of motorized ships in 1912 12,452 for a tonnage of 4,900,000.  The US number I know counts anything that floats on the seas, rivers or cannals and the German number is for salt water traffic only.

Now the average sized ship carrying out long distant trade is going to be something else, in WW1 U Boats sank 4,837ships for a total tonnage of 14,687,231.  Such ships had an average displacement of 3,000 tons, almost exactly. 

The difference between the two sizes (500 tons vs. 3,000 tons) is that the smaller size counts anything on the water with a motar and the later is going to be mostly long distance trade; the U Boats didn't waste too many torps or shells on fishermen.  Fishing boats and coastal craft pad numbers but at the same time there going to be grossly small ships.  Also we are still going to have a good number of out right sailling vessels running around in this time period and those things are going to be fairly small.

The total size of of the world wide Merchant Marine in 1914 was 43,144,000 gross

The question for the game is as follows then.

1) How large is the N3 world economy compared to the real worlds?
2) Do we want to look at anything that floats or only long distance trade?

Answer those two questions and it should be a straight forward math question to generate merchant marine size for the player nations.

Michael

[Ithekro]

 :-\

I don't want to think about what it took to move an army of 144,000 cavarlymen (and their horses and equipment) along with about the 144,000 infantrymen (and their equipment) from the North American West Coast to Centeral America by sea.

[miketr]

A better questoin is what did it take to move a 2 million man AEF to Europe?

Michael

[P3D]

A better questoin is what did it take to move a 2 million man AEF to Europe?

Well, most of the liners produced by UK, France and Germany in 25 years?

I determined N2 merchant marine sizes based on this link:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/balance_of_power_in_1914.htm

N-verse player nations would fall somewhere between 500,000t and 4,000,000t.

On individual ships:
The average size might be only 600t (whatever ton stands for in the context), but larger vessels would take up a larger percentage of the total capacity.

For the sake of simplicity, based on Japanese merchant type, I was thinking about two generic freighter type:

1/ Generic coastal tramp steamer:
1,000t light, 1000NRT/1000t,
65m(L)x10m(W)x5m(D), Speed: 6kts, 8kts max

2/ Generic oceangoing steamer:
5,000t light, 5000NRT/5000t, 120x15x8m, 8000nm@9kts, 13kts max, 3000HP

We could cut the displacement of the smaller ship to half, although long-distance traffic is much more abundant in N-verse, so I think WWII-ish sizes are more relevant.

And Generic Passenger ships:
1000t, 500 px (coastal)
5,000t, 13kts, 1000 passengers
10,000t, 13kts, 2000 passengers

[Borys]

Ahoj!
It was the "Vaterland" which did it :)
It carried 10 or 12 thousand troops on each voyage.
And there were other passanger liners, not much smaller, also involved. And these ships were fast enough to make a round trip (with loading/unloading) in 20 days.
In a year a liner - of 5000 capacity - brought over 100,000 troops.

Equipment went by freighter, though.
I support the generics.
Borys

[maddox]

I opted for a France that has a limited merchant marine.
But France has the largest liner in existence, with a UKN sistership.

To make a long rant very short. If France wants to move a corps, it will lose mercantile income. And will have to pay outsiders to fill in the gaps.

[Ithekro]

If I remember correctly I plotted out the move of the Rohirrim Army over the course of a year.  In some respects using the AEF as a reference for time at least.  I also recall that things were fairly tight industrially with everything on war-footing.  Construction almost came to a halt, especially when the ships in reserve had to be refitted to enter service once more.

[The Rock Doctor]

Generally generic shipping is fine with me.

Mike's info is useful and similar to what I was finding in my own poking-about; however, I couldn't find much to indicate the typical composition of a merchant marine so far as freighters vs liners vs colliers/tankers is concerned.

[Carthaginian]

Generic shipping is fine with me, though I support the opportunity to build any ship we can sim with SS.
I did 'build' my merchants with SS, and came up with some pretty decent stuff that ran fairly close to the suggested ships.

EDIT: My ships did have faster speeds, though; the range was a bit lower, however, because they were mostly intended for interstate trade rather than trans-Atlantic.

[miketr]

Assuming that our total shipping size is close to WW1 historic (43 million tons) but divided evenly amoung the players we are looking at something like the following Merchant Marines.


Baltic Confederation....................5.95%    2,556,720
Bavaria.................................2.46%    1,059,693
Confederate States of America...........5.12%    2,203,489
Deutsches Kaiserreich Brandenburg.......5.63%    2,422,156
French Republic.........................9.94%    4,272,414
Gran Colombia...........................5.98%    2,573,541
Hapsburg Empire.........................4.93%    2,119,387
Iberian Empire..........................3.69%    1,587,858
Italy...................................2.89%    1,244,719
Japan...................................3.77%    1,621,499
Kiev....................................3.31%    1,423,017
Middle Kingdom..........................11.23%   4,827,492
Moscovy.................................5.09%    2,186,669
New Switzerland.........................5.98%    2,573,541
Orange Republic.........................5.75%    2,472,618
Rohan...................................7.16%    3,078,157
The Netherlands.........................4.81%    2,068,925
United Norman Kingdom...................6.30%    2,708,105



Michael

[P3D]

We are going by more or less the numbers what were in the old forum.