The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.

Aren't the HoS numbers the total number of ships built, as opposed to the number in operation? Many of the ships counted in HoS have long since been destroyed, sent to the breakers, or sold off.

lyonheart wrote:Hi all,

Thanks to all who have responded so far, I hope to return the courtesy in sequence, if that's all right.

In the words of Mr. Spock, it's "fascinating" to see such different reactions to the same post by various posters, and see a little of why they focused on what they chose to respond to.

Relax, it's a given that plot requirements drive the supporting numbers far more than the other way around is I think understood by most if not all fans here, though the numbers can and do affect the story in very significant ways as RFC has emphatically demonstrated on many occasions, and one of many reasons why his work is so popular among his fans.

If we had the numbers for the next ten month's we'd probably see at least another 200 Sag-C's, before getting into how many more dispersed or 'soft' yards were still being constructed, whether or not they had any ships that were completed before OB.

Regarding first war build rates, I pointed out years ago at the bar that commissioning a SD every couple weeks [twice the rate leading up to the war] or so for ten years adds up before the SDP led production surge added another 50-60+ even faster meant the RMN should have had well over 600 wallers of all types before Janacek whittled them down.

For example, the stated 74 Star Knight heavy cruisers are far too few, given their evident loss rate, NTM the notion of no new CA's being built for almost ten years to replace war losses let alone the sheer obsolescence of all the rest [up to 259 or almost 78%] until the Edward Saganami commissioned @ 1913 PD boggles the mind when none of the rest of the RMN's CA's were designed with laserheads in mind, which doesn't fit the early textev, but that's another thread.

My suggested production figures at the bar were an attempt to understand or explain where all those several million extra RMN sailors and marines in HAE were serving since the stated ship figures didn't, but the MWW didn't want to go there for some reason.

One of the fascinating things about the billion tons of new warships is that the total crewmen required is only around 370,000 which could easily be met by ~61 SD crews, barely a quarter of the 230 that survived First Manticore, so where are all those marines no longer aboard so many warships?

L

Lyonheart, about 2 months ago I posted a revelation I had concerning 1st war light ship builds while perusing HoS. It was a simple revelation, but one I have not seen anyone comment on in the last 10 years. Simply, Grayson had purchased new light ships straight from the factory.

We all knew this, it's nothing new, but consider this - those new ships are not included in the RMN build rates.

The 2 dozen or so ships specially built for Grayson in RMN yards are no big deal, but looking at the big picture - The RMN also built ships for Erewhon, Alizon, Zanzibar, and many other Navies - and rebuilt both Alizon and Zanzibar's forces at least once.

Of course we have no hard number on what was built for any of those allies, and some of what the RMN gave away was their oldest, closest to retirement ships. But like Grayson, Erewhon was buying new Star Knights (and probably others).

Given the # of smaller members of the Manticorian Alliance, it is quite possible that the RMN's light unit build rate was 1.5 to 2X what is shown in the RMN portion in HoS.

SWM wrote:Aren't the HoS numbers the total number of ships built, as opposed to the number in operation? Many of the ships counted in HoS have long since been destroyed, sent to the breakers, or sold off.

Most difinitively, the HoS numbers represent the number of ships which entered RMN service. The dispositions of members of the class after they entered RMN service is not given, nor ships which were built in RMN yards and not accepted or entered into RMN service for some reason (ie the rejected Apollo CL builds or Star Knights purchased by Grayson).

Sometimes the text mentions the class dispositions for older ships, but I don't remember any specific mention of the # of class survivors.

Hutch wrote:

fester wrote: Yes, in the pre-Monica timeline when the building plans were being formulated, Sarnow needed light combatants to chase down remnants and create the Manticoran security blanket, but over a three to five year horizon, Manticoran Silesia should be a happy, peaceful backwater as the two major regional powers (SEM and AE) have peacefully split the festering sore and are applying heavy local security forces to dry up the pirate/privateer supply and intelligence chain.
...

Italics mine. Yep, just like Iraq or Afghanistan, or the Balkans (..always some damn-fool thing in the Balkans). Thing is, 3-5 years may be enough to deal with most of the pirate issues, but providing good (non-corrupt, more-or-less democratic) government? Well, maybe be 1922 PD, they'll have learned something from all the mistakes we've made in the past centuries.

Wouldn't bet a lot on it, however.

I agree with you to some degree, that Silesia could always be a pain in the ass, but I think I have a different vision of what that PITA factor would be. After heavy US units went into Iraq and Afghanistan, was there any main force opposition by insurgents using million dollar pieces of equipment? Or was everything being used either improvised, or pick-up truck portable?

There was never an insurgent T-55 battalion in Anbar. There are now heavy ISIS mech forces because the local government's ability to hold onto their equipment and maintain a lid on the level of violence is far worse than the US's ability to do so.

Piracy from what we have been told and from what we have seen in our world is either a low budget littoral operation, or a fairly complex deep water operation with multiple vendors (information, weapons, fuel, crew, prize/booty disposal etc) and multiple spots in the kill chain. Manticore and the Andermani Empire are on friendly terms. They are in the process or already have disrupted multiple elements of the local Silesian pirate support economy (intelligence, fences, resupply most likely), so any pirate that wants to stage in into Silesia has to base their operations much further out in either truly Shell space or inwards towards Solarian space. From what we've been told, most pirates operate very small hyper capable vessels that tend to be overgunned so their legs are probably short for their tonnage, especially once we factor in the comparatively large crews pirate ships need. The SEM and AE partition significantly reduces the pirate threat on the logistics/support side significantly.

Honorverse piracy and commerce raiding is overwhelmingly a N-space activity. And of the high percentage of the N-space activity, most of that will take place within a light minute of the hyper limit sphere. System powers that could routinely and reliably police their hyper limits with useful sensor suites backed by mobile firepower makes piracy very dangerous and therefore unprofitable. A LAC wing backed by 200 missile pods and a battle cruisers' complement of long range drones can easily patrol the hyper limit sphere and swat any pirate flat.

Manticore needed long range light cruisers for the commerce protection role in Silesia for two reasons. The first was that the Silesian government actively enabled piracy in certain sectors at worst, and at best was usually not strong enough to actively roll up the support infrastructure as too many of their elites had hands in the cookie jar. And then when the Silesians actually wanted to control their hyper limits, they did not have the unit counts, unit density or unit capability to do so. So the RMN to bring those capabilities with them all the way from Manticore Binary as they did not have long term basing rights nor repair facilities in Silesia to support their light combatants.

So when the orders for ships that would be launched in Spring 1921 was made ( I am assuming late summer 1920 at the latest even if build times are less than 6 months), the following conditions hold for Silesian light cruiser demand:

1) Local policing forces are in place, loyal, competent and aggressively anti-pirate at the policy level with aggressive rooting out of the lower level cops who are on the take.

2) The hyper limit sphere plus a light minute of all major planets and most of the minor systems are patrolled by locally based Manticoran or Andermani LAC units with 100% FTL sensor coverage backed by some pods.

3) A decent chunk of the SCN was taken in port, and an even larger proportion of the local pirate logistical infrastructure was either taken or dispersed.

4) Local neighboring powers (mainly the AE) don't have an interest in destablizing Silesia.

5) A major fleet base at Sidemore can support local forces far more efficiently than flotilla forces staging out of Manticore Binary.

The intermediate term need for long range independent commerce protection units IN SILESIA has gone down dramatically in summer 1920 compared to 1914PD. There is some need for fire brigade forces, there is some need for hyper escorts in the Selker's Rift, but there is far less need for the point to point hyper space convoys as the N-space emergence is far safer in 1920 threat appreciations than it was in 1914, and it projects to get even safer in 1922 or 1925.

Now if those light cruisers are basing out of Sidemore to ride shotgun on Manty merchant convoys going even deeper into the Verge, that makes sense, but that is a different missin driving the demand for new light cruisers.

Plenty reasonable analysis snipped...

fester wrote:So when the orders for ships that would be launched in Spring 1921 was made ( I am assuming late summer 1920 at the latest even if build times are less than 6 months), the following conditions hold for Silesian light cruiser demand:

1) Local policing forces are in place, loyal, competent and aggressively anti-pirate at the policy level with aggressive rooting out of the lower level cops who are on the take.

2) The hyper limit sphere plus a light minute of all major planets and most of the minor systems are patrolled by locally based Manticoran or Andermani LAC units with 100% FTL sensor coverage backed by some pods.

3) A decent chunk of the SCN was taken in port, and an even larger proportion of the local pirate logistical infrastructure was either taken or dispersed.

4) Local neighboring powers (mainly the AE) don't have an interest in destablizing Silesia.

5) A major fleet base at Sidemore can support local forces far more efficiently than flotilla forces staging out of Manticore Binary.

Regarding the really pretty critical (2) - The Silesian Partition occurred in 1920 PD - rather, it was agreed to between the two powers and making it happen in Silesia began. I think that it's too optimistic to suppose, surprised by Thunderbolt, suffering from a loss of Grendelsbane and every system defense force they had in occupied Havenite systems and fleet bases, that the RMN had the resources to send over healthy LAC groups and system defense pod packages right away to 30 Silesian systems, or even a large fraction of that.

For that matter, I think we have to regard the effective rule of law in the area of (1) as a still a work in progress in late 1922. I'm sure there are no small number of honest men and women in Silesia both coming out of the woodwork and already known and just now able to serve a government that will back up principles, and I'm sure that the pirates are getting their legs cut out from under them both directly and with all their local support getting arrested, honest, or out of there. But in two years, it's not going to be all settled by any means, and the 1921-1922 build orders can reasonably have put as much emphasis on the tried-and-true light cruiser for making Silesia work as on LAC and system defense pod arrangements.

fester wrote:I agree with you to some degree, that Silesia could always be a pain in the ass, but I think I have a different vision of what that PITA factor would be. After heavy US units went into Iraq and Afghanistan, was there any main force opposition by insurgents using million dollar pieces of equipment? Or was everything being used either improvised, or pick-up truck portable?

Also note that Manticore has made it very clear it intends to stay in Silesia permanently (and a large part of its government is a hereditary aristocracy with prolong, and so rather more resistant to momentary whims of the electorate than a presidential republic). And as far as we know, there are no significant religious factions in Silesia claiming Manticore is the Great Satan.

JeffEngel wrote:Regarding the really pretty critical (2) - The Silesian Partition occurred in 1920 PD - rather, it was agreed to between the two powers and making it happen in Silesia began. I think that it's too optimistic to suppose, surprised by Thunderbolt, suffering from a loss of Grendelsbane and every system defense force they had in occupied Havenite systems and fleet bases, that the RMN had the resources to send over healthy LAC groups and system defense pod packages right away to 30 Silesian systems, or even a large fraction of that.

There are pretty damn long lead times for squadrons of LACs for system defense of remote systems, particularly given the enormous LAC losses at BoM and the previous disasters.

IIRC, they lost something over 5000 LACs (and most of the crews) and a dozen carriers. Plus the LACs needed for equipping new construction.

I've never quite figured out how they were supposed to have come up with something like 40 LAC wings given the losses. I know if I was in charge of the RMN, system defense of Talbott is going to be pretty damn far down my list of priorities, after LACs for my fleet units, AND after the system defense of the home system.

kzt wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Regarding the really pretty critical (2) - The Silesian Partition occurred in 1920 PD - rather, it was agreed to between the two powers and making it happen in Silesia began. I think that it's too optimistic to suppose, surprised by Thunderbolt, suffering from a loss of Grendelsbane and every system defense force they had in occupied Havenite systems and fleet bases, that the RMN had the resources to send over healthy LAC groups and system defense pod packages right away to 30 Silesian systems, or even a large fraction of that.

There are pretty damn long lead times for squadrons of LACs for system defense of remote systems, particularly given the enormous LAC losses at BoM and the previous disasters.

IIRC, they lost something over 5000 LACs (and most of the crews) and a dozen carriers. Plus the LACs needed for equipping new construction.

I've never quite figured out how they were supposed to have come up with something like 40 LAC wings given the losses. I know if I was in charge of the RMN, system defense of Talbott is going to be pretty damn far down my list of priorities, after LACs for my fleet units, AND after the system defense of the home system.

Between Thunderbolt, IAN participation, Apollo development, BoM, Monica, Oyster Bay, the end of the Second Havenite War, and the formation of the GA, I can well imagine that planning is suffering all kinds of whiplash. Before OB particularly, it may be that the production systems for small, hyper-incapable platforms (pods, LAC's) were so streamlined that it was just a matter of shipping the results around and finding the small crews for them. The planning for the small crews may even assume the beginnings of participation from Silesian, Talbott, and San Martino subjects.

It occurred to me that Talbott may actually be ahead of Silesia for system defense LAC groups and/or pods. Talbott's so much more spread out than Silesia is and is nearer to powers that may get adventurous (League, Mesa, proxies of one or both). Hypercapable warships running the rounds between Silesian systems are between systems for very short periods of time, and the frequent passage of ships in the area will mean that reports can get to reaction forces quickly. By contrast, a Talbott system is quite a haul from another on average, and the traffic through them is much less rapid. Defenses for them may well want to assume that they will be on their own for many weeks, and will not necessarily be able to yell for help immediately.

So the Talbott LAC group promises may have assumed that Silesia was already served primarily by light cruisers and destroyers - and would continue to be for some time, at least for a large part - with LAC assignments there a lower priority than Talbott.

That still leaves it remarkable - to put it most mildly - that they could be spared away from the Haven front though. Even if the production lines were set up more or less independent of what you would use for building wallers, and even if the crews are small per unit of military effectiveness, the front is hungry for those crews for the heavy units it needs badly, and the CLAC's for 8th and 3rd Fleets are feeding at the very same trough.

For what is worth, and I am not sure how we determine that, the Janecek Admiralty emphasized LAC production the entire period it was in control. Obviously that means a lot of LACS.

What that means for availablity in our current time frame is not clear, although kzt's point about how severely they have been trimmed back seems very cogent.

I think most of the LACs designated to Talbot were delivered prior to BOM.

Don

Silesia will continue to need ships but, unless Kingsford and the Alignment both decide to actually send commerce raiders there, there should be a deminishing number of problems with hyper-capable raiding activity. Silesia also had a couple of yards that were building up to CA sized warships for either the Confederacy, the local SDFs or both which should be able to at least maintain any of those local built ships and probably and SL produced material that was in the local inventories. Those SL or variant ships could be much older ships bought used well before the recent problems. Given the change of ownership/government to the IAE and SEM, any of the former Confed or local SDF forces SHOULD make the transition to both effective anti-piracy forces as part of their duties and probably will develop some officers and crews who are much more agressive and become very much better at doing those jobs.
Sidemore has not -that I can remember- been addressed as to wether or not it has been included in the Partition (which would have been on the SEM side) nor if it might have also asked-even at the time of the Partition or later if not included- about joining SEM. They are still a major fleet base, have a population that has very strong pro-Manticore sentiment and their government was already comparable with what the SEM is using both at home and in Talbot and Silesia.

Talbott, on the other had, is on a close boarder area with the SL and other entities, has that relativly long distance set of systems and has at least one non-SEM system in there. There are systems close to but not in Talbot that are either Independent or Protectorates. That is the place that is going to need more of the modern ships and weapons systems, particularly as that is where the blows are most likely to fall given the relative closeness both to SL and the OFS areas plus local problem systems outside the quadrant like Saltash.

As yet we have NOT seen what has alreadyy been set up outside Manticore - and probably San Martin- as far as training for naval personnel for SEM or the more localy targeted Quadrant Guard for Talbot. I don't think we have been shown what the actual LAC production was up to Oyster Bay and where the LACs and the crews were being trained. If I were going to be training hundreds of LAC crews at a time, I would want that training well away from the major traffic lanes in the Manticore system and the major stations as well.

Amoung other things getting all those LAC crews IN TRAINING in and out of the wedge exclusions zones around the three major and who knows how many lesser facilities in plantary obits would be a real challenge. It is "possible" that one or more retired CLACs (battle damage and not worth repairing for combat operations etc but still brought home) are being used somewhere in-system as the training locations which would give very real practice. Since that type of ship would still probably be capable of moving around in system, they would not likely have been a target in Oyster Bay.