I'm trying to understand the relative costs of providing PPV vs using police to reduce unrest.
According to the
updated police mechanics:
Occupation
Required Occupation Strength = ((Determination + Militancy + Xenophobia) / 300) * Population Amount * Political Status Occupation Modifier.
Political Status Occupation Modifier = Slave Colony 1.5, Conquered 1.0, Occupied 0.75, Subjugated 0.25, All Others 0
Actual Occupation Strength is the sum of the individual element occupations strengths.
Element Occupation Strength = (SQRT(Size) * Units * Morale) / 10000
Reduction in Unrest
Police Strength = Actual Occupation Strength - Required Occupation Strength
Effective Population Size = ((Determination + Militancy + Xenophobia) / 300) * Population Amount
Police Modifier = Police Strength / Effective Population Size
Unrest points are reduced by 100 * Police Modifier per year
I have a simple police formation with one element containing 83 size-3 police units
The units cost 0.06BP each. These are the most basic infantry, which should be the most cost-effective unit possible for police purposes.
The cost of one formation is 4.98BP (rounded to 5 in the UI).
The occupation strength of one formation would be SQRT(3) * 83 / 10000 = 0.014.
A 10M+ population requires PPV. If no PPV is provided, the population generates 25 unrest points per year.
To provide sufficient police to reduce that unrest, I need a police modifier of 0.25.
That means that for each 1M of effective population I would need 0.25/0.014 = ~17.9 of these formations, at a total cost of ~89BP (plus 8.9BP per year in maintenance costs).
That seems outrageous compared to the cost of providing PPV.
I can easily provide 7.5 PPV on an engineless fighter for less than 50 BP (plus 30 BP for half a maintenance facility, plus less than 12.5 MSP per year for upkeep).
So, the cost of PPV per 1M effective population would be 80/7.5 = ~10.67BP, plus ~1.67 MSP per year.
That's using a reasonably functional ship design that can also fulfill other minor sentinel roles. It has a fire control and a sensor, 120-month deployment time, 10t of eng spaces (giving an AFR of 10%), and 2 armor. You could instead get 9 PPV for the same size and cost by just jamming 60 launchers on there.
And the cost per ton of maintenance facility support decreases as your tech improves.
The cost ratio between police and PPV is more than 8:1.
Is that by design?
If the costs were roughly 1:1, I would still prefer to provide PPV.
PPV ships in orbit provide incidental value as actual warships (at worst they provide AMM against an initial salvo), whereas these police forces on the surface will provide nearly zero value as actual combatants.
More importantly, ships provide PPV to an entire system. Police forces work only at one population.
Of course, police forces are needed if you actually need occupation strength, rather than just police strength.
And police forces will reduce unrest from other sources, like overcrowding. PPV ships won't help with that.
But for the purposes of reducing unrest from lack of protection, police are far more expensive than just providing the required protection.
Am I misunderstanding the police strength math?
Am I overlooking something else?
Or is this just a case of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure? (Notwithstanding the 8:1 ratio being half optimal in that case.)