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	Archive through December 05, 2021	25		12/06 05:10am

Mike,

That's mentioned in the SFB rules.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 12:02 am: Edit

Yes, but those just get fuel, food, and repairs at the base. They do not belong to or take orders from the base commander.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 12:44 am: Edit

Well, the thing about police boats at BATS / Starbases is they probably aren't stationed there full time, but rather recalled from the surrounding patrol areas if the base is attacked. That said, I did allow in my calculations for one per BATS, two per SB and Minor planet, and four per Major planet, which brought the total force to at least 491 cutters. (FLAG ship count could be 60-75 or more, depending on how many you allow per planet and/or SB.)


I created some maps to help visualize some concepts. First, how well explored is Federation space? As we all know, the Federation Council unilaterally declared the border of the Federation to be 4,750 parsecs from the center of the Primary Member Zone (i.e., the Capital hex) in Y102, much to the annoyance of the neighboring empires (specifically, the Klingons and Kzintis).

In MY opinion, I believe that over the next several years, Star Fleet would have began patrolling and mapping the border regions. Obviously, the central region would also have been well explored. This leaves a "middle ring" that is sparsely explored / patrolled, which would not be filled in until well into or after the General War. Without the War, it would have taken decades to explore and colonize the middle ring.

In this map, the dark blue areas would be, by my estimate, >90% explored. The medium-blue areas about 67% mapped, the lighter blue-grey areas about 33% mapped, and finally the light pale-blue ring "fly over country" is the Wild West of space at <10% explored. If an enemy ship or perhaps a random space monster popped up in a given region, I would say that the odds of a patrolling Star Fleet warship might run into it would be the same percentages.


As we talked about above, the ideal Police Force deployment of one cutter per hex would put a First Response ship 12-24 hours away at High Warp from any given point in Federation Space. However, in MY opinion, such a deployment would be difficult / near impossible to achieve before the General War kicks off. To visulize this, I have created maps of how --I-- see the Police Force being organized over time.

In Y125-Y135, there are three Districts each with four Precincts. The Capital hex is a separate Precinct. The plan is for each precinct to have a Squadron of six to eight cutters plus a FLAG, but initially those roles are filled by auxiliary ships such as Skiffs, modified Free Traders, and Armed Priority Transport Cutter. The four Squadrons in a district combine to form a Wing. Together, all the Wings make up the Force. (Traditional terms "Group" and "Fleet" are not used to avoid confusion with Star Fleet's Battle Group (and later Carrier Group) and of course with Star Fleet itself, respectively.)

In the aftermath of the Second Fed-Kzinti War, the First District was split in two, creating the Fourth District. Civilization began pushing towards the "northeast" (not knowing what awaits them). The total number of Precincts increases from 12 to 18, as more ships are added to the force.

By Y155, the Federation has reopened exploration of the coreward regions, the so-called norther tier, long closed due to the mysterious loss of the Aurora colony. The police force added the Fifth District to support this expansion. They initiate a plan to double the size of the police cutter fleet, but efforts are hampered by the need to re-build the Second District due to the Second Romulan-Federation War.

Contact was made with The Confederation of Gorn in Y157, so by Y160 the Sixth District is created. The number of Precincts are increased from 22 to 30 with a corresponding increase in fleet size.

By Y165, the desired deployment coverage is nearly complete, with a 33% increase in fleet size and number of precincts. Administratively, the Districts are getting unwieldy. Something has to change.

This change is made official in Y167 as the six Districts are reorganized into ten districts. Save for the very northern tier Precincts, the cutter fleet is such to deploy one per hex. The First (Home) District has three Precincts, two of which are in the Capital Zone.

One final adjustment is made in Y168, just in time for the General War. All three Precincts on the First District as collapsed into the Capital Zone. The full one-hex/one-ship deployment is finally realized.


Again, the above is --MY-- take on how the Federation Consolidated Law Enforcement Agency would grow and be organized over the decades.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 12:46 am: Edit

(cross post with SVC due to writing yet another book) GLG

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 05:10 am: Edit

I doubt the border provinces are over 50% explored.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 07:08 am: Edit

Fair enough, SVC. I'll take another look at it after work. Gotta run right now.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 08:58 am: Edit

Just an observation.

Because the Federation doesn’t know what’s been explored in the border provinces does not mean it’s unknown.

Private enterprise is still a factor in the Federation. Private individuals, corporations, mining conglomerates, and by that I mean government owned mining exploration groups sponsored by foreign governments looking for invasion routes...ummm, oops, I mean exploitable natural resources! Yes, that’s right! No I did not say whiskers or Klingon ISS.

Point is, Orion pirates have a vested interest in exploiting planets not known to the federation for safe haven, ship yards, illegal mines, fuel refining plants, even populated worlds to exploit workers (slave labor, slave markets).

Someone may know more than what is posted in the Public Federation data bases.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 12:26 pm: Edit

Okay, been thinking about this. Let's keep the map the same but adjust the percentages: >90% for the Capital hex, dark blue = 65-75%, medium blue = 50%, lighter blue-grey = 25-35%, and pale light blue <10% explore / patrolled.

The point isn't about the percentage, but rather the idea that there's this large 'fly over country" zone that, even five or six decades after the UFP was formed, is still pretty much uncharted.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 05:42 pm: Edit

Garth, the percentages might be right, I wouldn’t know.

But, there are going to be parts of that ‘fly over country’ that will be known extremely well.

Any hex with an On map symbol BattleStation, Star Base, Major or minor world, for just four examples.

At a guess, there will likely be some Federation presence, such as unpublished Major or Minor worlds (per) F&E, or per SFB, or Prime Directive or even a notation in any Captains Log. Then there are units and bases too small to be reflected on theF&E map, that do exist in SFB, things like civilian bases, base stations, colonies too small to be part of F&E but significant in the aggregate.

We know from existing published data, that “there are about 1,000 useful places” in each hex on the F&E map. What we don’t know is in detail which are known and which are unknown. We do have one data point in captains logs that in Federation space, over 180,000 places have a data record. The rest are un researched or undocumented.

Nor do we know if the data is proportional per hex or skewed to certain hexes.

Lots of questions.

By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 06:02 pm: Edit

Nobody has mentioned that prior to the introduction of the police cutter the Federal Police used warp-refitted frigates and destroyers seconded from the old "National" fleets. I think some of those were still in service as late as Y135.

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 09:09 pm: Edit

I suspect that most of those border provinces have been mapped, with ships checking to ensure the the Empire across the border is not setting up bases, mapped does not equal surveyed.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 09:33 pm: Edit

Adm:

Good point, but not complete.

Mapping establishes the situation at the time as far as stellar conditions. If the location is surveyed, It may remain as is, or it will change continually over time as sentient beings come and go...or settle and develop.

The only way to know for sure is to visit and revisit such locations over time to verify that hostile actors (enemies, pirates, rebels etc) are not present, and as such do not represent a clear and present danger.

In context of the system as established by ADB (the 1,000 useful places standard that has been in place for the Star fleet universe for some years now), this represents a big unknown factor. Depending on various factors, the ‘fly over country’ thing Garth talked about can vary greatly between hexes.

Hexes next to national borders may be very well surveyed and mapped, say 90% that Garth suggested earlier) while interior federation hexes(ignoring home world hexes for the moment) might be less. Possibly a lot less. The Fed Express article (and this is memory, so might not be correct to three sgnificant decimal places) was an average figure for the whole Federation, not an exact number in all cases. That means while some hexes might be mapped and surveyed to 90% other hexes will not.

Just how bad it is, we do not know, and might not be able to ever know.

Keeps things interesting!

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 10:35 pm: Edit

There is a good article in Gurps Federation about the deployment of the Federation Space Police. pg 104-5 of the Revised edition.

(R2.138) National Guard Survey Cruiser. "...a great deal of Federation space that was not completely surveyed, and the Vespucci spent most of its time in the region of space between the Federation capital and Gorn space."

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Monday, December 06, 2021 - 10:42 pm: Edit

As for being assigned to a SB/BATS I would assume that the local shore base for the police is collocated on the base. I think we have stories about the precinct commander (Police Admirals) being collocated with the fleet commanders on the border Starbases.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, December 07, 2021 - 12:05 am: Edit

ADM said "mapped does not equal surveyed". Yes, exactly. Mapping from a distance where star systems are and perhaps marking which appear to have planets is not the same as sending a ship to said planets to see who might be living there.

This map of known space tends to support my theories presented above. Notice that a lot of the colonies and other 'interesting' planets are located along the border zone, but the so-called middle ring is sparse.


Jeff: Regarding hexes with planets or bases being well mapped, I would suggest that the immediate 50 to 100 parsecs (125,000 - 1,000,000 cubic parsecs) around said planet/base would be mapped, but that's less than one-percent of the entire 500 parsec hex (125,000,000 cubic parsecs).


Ryan: Thanks for the reference. I'll check it out later. And yes, I made sure that there was a Starbase in each Police District, where the HQ would be located.


Garth L. Getgen

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, December 07, 2021 - 07:00 am: Edit

Another thought on the one per hex police ship count. Not all are out at the same time, some will be down for maintenance, some will have been destroyed by pirates, space monsters, or accidents. Some will be moving from low priority areas, to higher priority areas that have lost their POL to any of the above causes. Furthermore, most of these units are doing police work, when the Klingons/Romulans/Kzinti etc. come pouring across the border lone POLs will simply disappear when two or three F5s/E4s show up.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, December 07, 2021 - 05:18 pm: Edit

ADM: oh, yes, absolutely. However, police boats do have one advantage to help them escape and survive the invasion: better acceleration. Remember that the smaller ship accelerate quicker than the larger ship. Granted, their top speed is slightly lower, but they can make a run for it and hopefully get out of sensor range, then change course and/or find a good hiding place before being spotted, they just may live to run another day.


Garth L. Getgen