Support
Introduction
"An army marches on its stomach" - Napoleon Bonaparte
There are a number of limiting factors for the size of a nation's military forces.
Draft
Contrary to pre-singularity predictions, humans still have a place on the battlefield. On the Rim a well-trained regular is much cheaper than a combat drone and in the Core sophisticated training, excellent equipment and institutional bias keeps men on the front lines. Only in the Expanse are humans replaced in any significant number by machines or bioroids, and even then humans still dominate.
A nation has a default draft pool equal to 1% of its population during peacetime. While this may seem low, outside of an active war the percent of people interested in joining the military - and the amount of budget available - is often rather limited. During times of tension this may go up, and during outright war it increases to 10% as recruiting drives and mass mobilization bring vastly greater number of candidates into the arms of recruiters. Nations with the Bioroid Lovers advantage can construct 1000 manpower worth of bioroids for 1 WU.
Specific exceptions override general rules:
- All Infantry Battalions require 1000 manpower
- All vehicular Battalions require 500 manpower
- All Aerospace Flights require 100 manpower
- All Aerospace Craft require 50 manpower
- All Ships require Base Cost x 5 in manpower
- Skimmers do not take manpower
- Mobile Gun Forts require 50 manpower
- Landships and Mobile Armors require Base Cost x 5 in manpower
- Orbital Defenses require half the draft of an equivalent-sized ship
- Automation halves manpower requirements; full AI eliminates it
Note that the draft requirements do not necessarily mean every person is on the front line. It also includes those doing maintenance, logistics, etc, particularly in the case of aircraft. It does not even have to count as exactly 1 person per point of manpower, though these values should be an approximate baseline.
Upkeep
It is an inconvenient fact of warfare that weapons - particularly complex ones - require maintenance. From replacement wiring to armor patch kits to entire missiles, supplies and consumables can make up a significant part of a nation's military outlay.
During peacetime, a military must pay a unit's upkeep once per year in January; failure to do so will result in enforced idleness until the upkeep is paid. This covers general maintenance, expenditures during training, etc. Note that a state's first upkeep payment is automatically paid for - assuming no conflict, a nation will not need to pay upkeep until it's second year.
Wartime requires vastly greater material outlay, requiring a state to pay monthly for units involved in active combat. Oftentimes a large supply stockpile will be a boon going into a war.
Supplies are built at 2 points per IP, or 3 points per IP if the state is Logicians.
Each unit of supplies requires 250 cargo space.
Each unit of He3 requires 100 cargo space.
Units that are of higher tech level than the user (ie, TL4 ships in a TL3 nation's navy) require 50% more supplies unless they are supplied with appropriate TL supplies. The inverse does not apply, and higher-TL supplies used for lower-TL units act at a 1:1 ratio.
A power with unfettered access to their Patron and relation of Allied or better does not suffer this effect, as any small, critical components are acquired or supplied as necessary.
Stealth
+2 or more stealth represents some form of active cloak and as such increases fuel demands by +50%. If the cloak unit has a Monopole Core it also increases the upkeep multiplier to x4 for ships and x3 for non-ships, as they will be operating at high output for long periods of time.