Erls wrote:After the current war with both the Sollys are Malign is complete (from an official, Centrist perspective), how will the manpower staffing of the RMN change compared to the HotQ era RMN. Here are my thoughts:
1- The RMN will increase manpower on ships to roughly 25% above minimum requirements. This will be both for safety (having additional trained crew is good) as well as to keep more sailors up to date and active. This would allow for a near instant transfer of roughly 25% of the fleet to ships that were in a floating reserve (mothballed) if the need be. That, basically, would allow for somewhere around a 20% boost in total hulls without needing to call up any reserves (accounting for some positions being harder to easily transfer).
Specifically, I could see the RMN increasing the staff size of Flag Officers to allow for more mid-grade officers to rotate between different jobs. Additionally, I could see the creation of an additional Assistant Officer for ships of the wall, specifically for the T.O., E.W.O., and X.O. That would allow for those three areas (traditional path to command plus E.W.) to add 3 junior grade officers per SD, increasing the number of trained and active officers in those areas in times of need. You need another squad of BCs re-activated? Rotate everyone up 1 level throughout the fleet and you're still fully staffed on each ship.
2- The RMN should create an 'active reserve.' This would be composed of two different types of assignment. One assignment would be people permanently stationed as stewards for reserve naval vessels, who partake in all official Home Fleet training assignments and rotate in for short duration with HF as needed. The second assignment would be merchant spacers (or other employment for officers) who have to fulfill 1 tour of active duty per every 10 T-years in order to keep them up to speed on new technology. Members of the first group are on full pay but don't accrue seniority except for time spent on official exercises, while members of the second get 25% pay while on merchant cruises (and no accrual of seniority and full pay while active). These groups will keep another large contingent of personnel more up to date than the full reserve so that they only require minimal refresher training when called up. Additionally, it would be very enticing to officers with other potential jobs/duties to sign up for 1 tour of duty every 10 T-years to keep 'active' while supplementing their income.
3- I could see the RMN requiring that reserve spacers undergo periodic and more extensive refreshers (1 month every couple T-years) to keep them more up to date. That time could be spent on HF ships while the normal crew are on scheduled leave to more integrate them into the fleet and increase normal crew leaves.
Thoughts?
It seems to me that the question is a bit of cart before the horse in that we need to see what the boundaries look like and what remains of the Mesan Alignment... we know that Albrecht Detweiler has been chomping at the bit and reacting to the injuries to his pride when he made some of his decisions to jump the time line (for example moving the attack on Mantacore home system) and we know there are quite a few planets governed by Alpha line but we don't know how advanced any of their industrial bases are as individual and how much they are interdependent on each other. If many of them are somewhere closer to Grayson or Mantacore than say Mesa or Torch then there will still be a lot of small fires that have to be stomped out.
Also the hidden system/base (at the other end of the Torch wormhole?) will need to be dealt with before anyone could relax.
I think (hope) that the Audubon Ballroom turns the trick on locating the hidden system before the Leonard Detweiler class of ships are launched but regardless, the Star Empire and the Grand Alliance will have plenty of underdeveloped systems that are within the umbrella of its' protection and many under-educated people who need to be brought up to standards so, I can see that as a core responsibility in the near future. Training of navy personnel will only provide a fraction of the population. There will need to be people that can use other high tech industrial capacity and medical as well.
The trend in Grayson and Mantacore ships crew demands will make the task even more interesting because, the need to train people will out weigh the number of slots that have to be filled.
As a direct result of the sneak attack by MAN... Mantacore needs to rebuild much of its' own space based industry and would likely separate civilian from military shipping in the new construction and the gap in trained personnel will permit bringing some of the new citizens into Home system for OTJ training and to identify the people that should lead the efforts in their home systems.
There is also a point of diminishing returns when too many people are waiting for the same wrench ((more likely space suits)so to speak) so while there could be 100,000 people in Talbot Quadrant that need to be trained, there could only be 10,000 wrenches available in Mantacore system (at least till more wrenches can me provided) so they cannot simply throw bodies at the problem. This bottle neck in the process would likely take a decade or three to fully overcome then, the reverse would be true in that there would be too many wrenches that no one needs. So a "soft landing" will need to be designed into the process. This same model transfers to the navy and, even if the SLN and Frontier Fleet are neutralized, these other issues will have to be brought under control before the full potential can be realized. Let's just hope no one finds the opportunity to assassinate Prichard or Thiesman in a bid for the bad old days.
One thing I have seen derail success time and again is that aspect of human nature that says "If I can't have it... no one can"
