Justification for the Cabira
I've estimated the Cabira as costing the Alliance 50 billion credits apiece. That's a lot, over six and a half times more expensive then their current Frigate and the same price as a light cruiser. However despite the really high price there are plenty of reasons for them to switch over to it.
First off is it's a lot more versatile. Right now the Alliance uses a wolfpack doctrine for it's ships with a single cruiser leading four to six frigates. Each wolfpack costs between 80b and 95b credits. A single Cabira could very likely replace an entire wolfpack. The overall lower price means the Alliance could up their patrol fleets size by an effective 60% which would help reduce the strain of protecting it's overstretched borders.
There is also the reduction in the operating costs to consider. If we assume a ship on patrol duty consumes 15% of it's cost in repairs/maintenance a year then a flotilla of four frigates and a cruiser would require on average 12b in maintenance/repairs. However it's not just the ship that costs money, it's also the crew. Using the 250k per soldier figure from earlier the 200 crewmen would require 50m in pay/supplies/other. Bringing the total for the flotilla up to 12,050m.
The Cabira by comparison probably has 15 people on it for ~4m and a maintenance cost of 7.5b for a total yearly upkeep of 7,504. Therefore for the same operating budget the Alliance could field 60% more ships which fits with the decrease in relative capital expenditure.
So from a cost effectiveness perspective the Cabira is significantly preferable to the current Crusier/Frigates Flotilla.
Of course there are going to be some limitations of only having one ship verses 5 but the Cabira has enough advantages to outweigh them.
The US used 4,184.5 billion kWh of electricity in 2007. At an average cost of .1188 dollers per kWh that's $497,118,600,000 or 3.3% of the 2007 GDP of 14,990,000,000,000.
3.3% of the Alliance's 637 trillion GDP is 21 trillion credits. Of the Citadel's 8,000 trillion GDP that's 264 trillion credits.
Even if we only reach 10% market penetration, which we'll easily exceed, we'd still be looking at tens of trillions of credits. And that's using modern standards. I'd expect that energy is a significantly larger portion of the GDP in the future.
I've estimated the Cabira as costing the Alliance 50 billion credits apiece. That's a lot, over six and a half times more expensive then their current Frigate and the same price as a light cruiser. However despite the really high price there are plenty of reasons for them to switch over to it.
First off is it's a lot more versatile. Right now the Alliance uses a wolfpack doctrine for it's ships with a single cruiser leading four to six frigates. Each wolfpack costs between 80b and 95b credits. A single Cabira could very likely replace an entire wolfpack. The overall lower price means the Alliance could up their patrol fleets size by an effective 60% which would help reduce the strain of protecting it's overstretched borders.
There is also the reduction in the operating costs to consider. If we assume a ship on patrol duty consumes 15% of it's cost in repairs/maintenance a year then a flotilla of four frigates and a cruiser would require on average 12b in maintenance/repairs. However it's not just the ship that costs money, it's also the crew. Using the 250k per soldier figure from earlier the 200 crewmen would require 50m in pay/supplies/other. Bringing the total for the flotilla up to 12,050m.
The Cabira by comparison probably has 15 people on it for ~4m and a maintenance cost of 7.5b for a total yearly upkeep of 7,504. Therefore for the same operating budget the Alliance could field 60% more ships which fits with the decrease in relative capital expenditure.
So from a cost effectiveness perspective the Cabira is significantly preferable to the current Crusier/Frigates Flotilla.
Of course there are going to be some limitations of only having one ship verses 5 but the Cabira has enough advantages to outweigh them.
The US used 4,184.5 billion kWh of electricity in 2007. At an average cost of .1188 dollers per kWh that's $497,118,600,000 or 3.3% of the 2007 GDP of 14,990,000,000,000.
3.3% of the Alliance's 637 trillion GDP is 21 trillion credits. Of the Citadel's 8,000 trillion GDP that's 264 trillion credits.
Even if we only reach 10% market penetration, which we'll easily exceed, we'd still be looking at tens of trillions of credits. And that's using modern standards. I'd expect that energy is a significantly larger portion of the GDP in the future.
