Math problem

Lonny wrote:In chapter 13 of SftS as Admiral Henke is leaving Hephaestus she is thinking about the squadron reorganization plan the Janacek Admiralty had put into place.

She's thinking that the reduction of squadron size from 8 ships to 6 ships will require 25% more admirals and staffs for the same number of ships. If you have 3 squadrons of 8 ships for a total of 24 ships and you change to 4 squadrons of 6 ships for a total of 24 ships you go from needing 3 admirals etc. to 4 admirals etc. This is an increase of 33 1/3% rather than 25%.

I don't remember noticing this the first time through. I am reading the E-ARC version. Maybe this was fixed in the final version.

Lonny

Storm from the Shadows wrote:Michelle didn't know whether or not the Admiralty intended to completely scrap the squadron reorganization plan the Janacek Admiralty had put into place. There were some advantages to the six-ship squadron format Janacek had adopted, much though it galled Michelle to admit that anything that ham-fisted idiot had done could possibly have any beneficial consequences. Fortunately for her blood pressure, if not for the Star Kingdom's wellbeing, there weren't very many instances in which she had to. But even though the smaller-sized squadrons offered at least some additional tactical flexibility, they also required twenty-five percent more admirals—and admirals' staffs—for the same number of ships. Personally, Michelle suspected that had been part of the attraction for Janacek and his partisans. After all, it had provided so many more flag slots into which he could plug sycophants, despite the way he'd downsized the fleet. Those of his cronies who hadn't been removed by the Havenites in the course of Operation Thunderbolt (she supposed any cloud had to have at least some silver lining) had been ruthlessly purged by the White Haven Admiralty, yet that had left a tiny problem. Finding that many competent admirals was a not so minor concern in a navy expanding as rapidly and hugely as the present Royal Manticoran Navy. Just as even the new, highly automated designs still needed complete bridge crews, complete engineering officer complements, admirals still needed staffs, and there simply weren't that many experienced staff officers to go around. For example, Michelle herself still didn't have a staff intelligence officer. At the moment, Cynthia Lecter was wearing that hat as well as holding down the chief of staff's slot, which was rather unfair to her. On the other hand, at least she'd spent a tour with ONI two deployments ago, so she knew what she was doing in both slots. And it didn't hurt that Gervais Archer was turning out to be a surprisingly competent assistant intelligence officer.

Lonny wrote:In chapter 13 of SftS as Admiral Henke is leaving Hephaestus she is thinking about the squadron reorganization plan the Janacek Admiralty had put into place.

She's thinking that the reduction of squadron size from 8 ships to 6 ships will require 25% more admirals and staffs for the same number of ships. If you have 3 squadrons of 8 ships for a total of 24 ships and you change to 4 squadrons of 6 ships for a total of 24 ships you go from needing 3 admirals etc. to 4 admirals etc. This is an increase of 33 1/3% rather than 25%.

I don't remember noticing this the first time through. I am reading the E-ARC version. Maybe this was fixed in the final version.

Lonny

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Since this is Henke's insights, not author infodump or omniscient narration, maybe the one who made the math mistake was Mike herself. As you calculated, 24 ships are now 4 squadrons instead of 3, so she calculated that 25% of the squadrons are new and thus 25% of the admirals and staffs were new. It was the wrong math for what she was pondering (inverted result), but an easy one to make because it's related.

munroburton wrote:It's not just the inversion, though. If we look at the Fleet Strengths of 1920pd chart, it says that the RMN has 200 wallers. Pre-Janacek, that splits into 25 8-ship squadrons. After Janacek, it was 33 or 34 6-ship squadrons. Whilst this is a 33% increase, it completely overlooks the presence of Divisional commanders and their staffs.

Of which there are going to be 100, regardless of squadron sizes. The increase from 125 to 134 is only about 8%.