Roland Peacetime duties

Keith_w wrote:With regard to the Rolands being used for convoy duty but not carrying enough marines for a prize crew, this shouldn't matter since any pirate stupid enough to attach a convoy escorted by a warship carrying 240 missiles will probably not survive long enough to need a prize crew. However, since convoying is usually a wartime activity it is unlikely that there will be any convoys to escort post-war, except as in Honor of the Queen where the real purpose was an official visit to a possible ally.

You still need to be able to deal with the occasional pirate who is smart enough to surrender when you demonstrate that you're faster than him and have longer ranged missiles.
It's not right to provide convoy escorts that are basically required to adopt a routine take no prisoners policy simply because they're insufficiently equipped to deal with them. That's a foreseeable issue that you failed to provide for.
And in a situation where the raiding was done by a privateer or official military unit taking no prisoners would violate several interstellar treaties. (Sure it may be peacetime, as far as you know) but that just means you shouldn't get attacked by official forces; not that you won't.

Jonathan_S wrote:It's not right to provide convoy escorts that are basically required to adopt a routine take no prisoners policy simply because they're insufficiently equipped to deal with them. That's a foreseeable issue that you failed to provide for.

You haven't read the whole thread -- a division (4) of Rolands and a Kammerling or JNTS Freighter configured for a Marine contingent in the convoy would provide more than enough space and personnel for prize crews and/or brig cells has been suggested.

The Kammerling class has "limited ship-to-ship offensive capability" but even a Kammerling's limited offensive capability would be enough for most pirates -- but there aren't a lot of Kammerlings in service or planned.

Of course, the marines and extra naval types needed could ride any freighter in the convoy, but that would cause problems with bringing them home again.

Roland's also have the extra space of a Flag Deck which would go unused in seven-eighths of Rolands -- or thereabouts. There have been numerous discussions of whether and how that space could be adapted for a Marine contingent.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Keith_w wrote:With regard to the Rolands being used for convoy duty but not carrying enough marines for a prize crew, this shouldn't matter since any pirate stupid enough to attach a convoy escorted by a warship carrying 240 missiles will probably not survive long enough to need a prize crew. However, since convoying is usually a wartime activity it is unlikely that there will be any convoys to escort post-war, except as in Honor of the Queen where the real purpose was an official visit to a possible ally.

You still need to be able to deal with the occasional pirate who is smart enough to surrender when you demonstrate that you're faster than him and have longer ranged missiles.
It's not right to provide convoy escorts that are basically required to adopt a routine take no prisoners policy simply because they're insufficiently equipped to deal with them. That's a foreseeable issue that you failed to provide for.
And in a situation where the raiding was done by a privateer or official military unit taking no prisoners would violate several interstellar treaties. (Sure it may be peacetime, as far as you know) but that just means you shouldn't get attacked by official forces; not that you won't.

Yep ... and that means you need Marines for boarding actions and enough crew that you can detach prize crews without crippling your own ship. Also, you probably need a fair amount of brig space or some other means of securing prisoners.*
Rolands fail on all counts.


*Might be able to skate by the keeping prisoners issue with sticking them in cryo most of the time, but that's iffy, and is arguably on dubious ethic and legal grounds.


Rolands are terrible anti-piracy patrollers. They're probably pretty lousy anti-piracy and/or wartime convoy escorts as well - they basically have no ability to pick up people in escape pods as prisoners.
They'd need a legacy ship, some other larger vessel, or a ship dedicated to supporting them in such a role.
Might be able to do convoy escorts with a few Rolands and a Kamerling (or whatever the Marine Support light combatant winds up being) if you don't want to use legacy ships, since they'd need to be operating together for this to work.
The one thing Rolands probably don't need help with in peacetime is checking out potential inbound signatures or anomalies detected by the system defense grav arrays.


IMO, the capabilities of a Roland, in a universal MDM/MSM environment/paradigm aren't any better than a frigate designed for that environment/paradigm using the same tech base. However, due to convention, they'll doubtless remain designated as Destroyers.
I firmly believe that Rolands will be phased out as quickly as possible.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:It's not right to provide convoy escorts that are basically required to adopt a routine take no prisoners policy simply because they're insufficiently equipped to deal with them. That's a foreseeable issue that you failed to provide for.

You haven't read the whole thread -- a division (4) of Rolands and a Kammerling or JNTS Freighter configured for a Marine contingent in the convoy would provide more than enough space and personnel for prize crews and/or brig cells has been suggested.

The Kammerling class has "limited ship-to-ship offensive capability" but even a Kammerling's limited offensive capability would be enough for most pirates -- but there aren't a lot of Kammerlings in service or planned.

Of course, the marines and extra naval types needed could ride any freighter in the convoy, but that would cause problems with bringing them home again.

Roland's also have the extra space of a Flag Deck which would go unused in seven-eighths of Rolands -- or thereabouts. There have been numerous discussions of whether and how that space could be adapted for a Marine contingent.

Using a Kammerling or a legacy ship is a maybe. A modified JNTS ship is improbable (there are better things for JNTS ships to be doing).
And even then, that still only works in a convoy escort mission, as they need to remain together.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:It's not right to provide convoy escorts that are basically required to adopt a routine take no prisoners policy simply because they're insufficiently equipped to deal with them. That's a foreseeable issue that you failed to provide for.

You haven't read the whole thread -- a division (4) of Rolands and a Kammerling or JNTS Freighter configured for a Marine contingent in the convoy would provide more than enough space and personnel for prize crews and/or brig cells has been suggested.

The Kammerling class has "limited ship-to-ship offensive capability" but even a Kammerling's limited offensive capability would be enough for most pirates -- but there aren't a lot of Kammerlings in service or planned.

Of course, the marines and extra naval types needed could ride any freighter in the convoy, but that would cause problems with bringing them home again.

Roland's also have the extra space of a Flag Deck which would go unused in seven-eighths of Rolands -- or thereabouts. There have been numerous discussions of whether and how that space could be adapted for a Marine contingent.

Actually I have read the whole thread, and I've no problem teaming Rolands up with other ships to provide the boarding action. My earlier suggestion was mixing them with Avalons or Wolfhounds; but if you've got Kammerlings available that's certainly as many Marines as you'd ever need

But Keith_w's suggestion appeared to be different; that you wouldn't need to support Rolands with other ships because Rolands would leave no survivors. It was that specific thought I was responding to here.

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/69/1

I'm assuming that's in response to my comment about Rolands capability being more consistent with a MDM/MSM paradigm frigate than a destroyer.

I'd say that two of the biggest reasons, IMO, that the Roland's capabilities doesn't match that of a the MDM/MSM paradigm destroyer are:
1) As stated in the Pearl, a destroyer's supposed to police commerce, meaning patrols, stops, and searches - and presumably seizures when warranted. A Roland doesn't really have the crew or Marine capability to do that on its own.
-- As a subset - a Roland doesn't really have much space to put rescued merchant spacers either.
2) A "worthwhile number of MDMs" - a Roland doesn't carry that many, and can't put that many out at a time, even when it's max stacking salvos, and when it's doing that, it can't sustain fire for particularly long.


The Roland is reasonably survivable, at least, as far as it can be - for that matter, I think it's sufficiently survivable that a Roland vs Roland duel would probably shoot both out of Mark-16s to little or no effect.



The Roland is, I think, just a little too specialized as a fleet ops warfighter and scout/screening element to really fulfill the more traditional peacetime destroyer roles. But then, it is also supposedly a mid-war transitional design.


Also, I think that universal MDM/MSM paradigm, or more accurately the swarm of MDM/MSM paradigm that has/is evolved/evolving via the missile pod and heavy salvo stacking further is going to push tonnage inflation on minimum function a fair amount further.
I've also been inclined to think that the minimum baseline combatant for such an environment is going to have, if not require for viability, broadside launchers and some degree of Keyhole 1 capabilities (defensively at least) or some sort of equivalent, which probably means a platform as big as or bigger than a Sag-C.


Which is to say, I don't think Manticore will build any more Rolands, and will move straight to a successor class when they regain the infrastructure to build warships.


All this is, of course, IMO, and YMMV.

Jonathan_S wrote:

blair wrote:I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Most ships are specialized ships. In both the honorverse and most 20th century CE navies most ships in a fleet are one of 5 different ship types. for the Honorverse that is:

1. Unarmed support ships. I.E the fleet train, supply and repair ships. Troop transports are usually but not always in this class.

2. Ship to ship attack ships. SD (& SDP) the argamennon, saganimi-C and roland classes are examples in different tonnage ranges.

3. Defense ships. The Katana is a good example.

4. Specialty ships. The CLAC and shrike are good examples.

5. Multi function ships. designed to to multiple jobs. Prewar manty DD's, CL's, CA's and BC's, along with the Nike class BC are examples.

Pre war, mantycore used the solly definition, and size determined ship type. Under this nomenclature the only major difference between manty DD's and CL's is size. A CL would be 50% bigger and have 50% more weapons.

With manticore changing classifcation to job, a destroyer is a small ship to ship attack ship, a cruiser (CL, CA, BC) is a multi function ship. Such a ship would be roughly 50% bigger for the same ship to ship firepower, this allows for space for the other functions, such as marines.

Under the ship class vs function, a mid sized ship to ship attack ship like the sag-C would need a new classification. Although I don't like either of them, two that I can think of are DA for Destroyer, armored and BL for battleship, light. How about it, can someone think of a better designation?

As the infodump I linked to earlier should have made clear, Manticore is not suddenly changing the rules regarding the destroyer type. As David has indicated in the past, the destroyer may get bigger and badder (such as his post on the notional 300 kton destroyer), but it will remain a generalist.

Kytheros wrote:Using a Kammerling or a legacy ship is a maybe. A modified JNTS ship is improbable (there are better things for JNTS ships to be doing).

Part of a JNTS ship's mission is troop transport; reconfiguring one as a troop/marine transport is trivial.

Kytheros wrote:And even then, that still only works in a convoy escort mission, as they need to remain together.

I thought I was pretty explicit in saying that [b]convoy escort is the only thing Rolands are suited for in peacetime.

Even then, they aren't suited to solo escort duties and should always operate in at least division strength.

Kytheros wrote:I firmly believe that Rolands will be phased out as quickly as possible.

That is probably true; they are referred to in textev as a "transitional design" and there are none currently under construction. There may well be a Havenite CL design that would be readily adaptable to MK-16s that will be built instead. OR Manticore or Grayson will take the lessons learned from after action reports and design something from scratch.