Oh, what the heck . . .

kzt wrote:

PeterZ wrote:One of the things the RMN will need immediately is troop ships. They have a million troops available for deployment in Talbot and little capacity to move them. Many of those small ship owners may well find leasing their ships to the Navy as auxiliaries to be a good idea until things settle down or more lucrative opportunities reveal themselves.

My thought is the tumult caused by Operation Janus only started the process of tossing out OFS. There are still nations that would press for ousting OFS if they knew the SEM is there to back their efforts. Those second echelon revolutions will need much more help and a stronger military presence to manage in a more peaceful fashion. The need for troops and supplies will be significant.

Honorverse freighters are pretty poor choices for troop transport. They have something like 24 million cubic meters of empty cargo space. Empty, as in the Grand Canyon is empty, and empty in that it's vacuum. And it's also zero g. So you'd need to build a habitat inside the vast empty cargo bay. It's fine to transport containerized gear, but not the troops.

I feared as much. However, I am sure having life support modules loaded into the holds is a possibility. Doesn't make for the most comfortable transit and is not optimal, but when the devil drives......

PeterZ wrote:

kzt wrote:Honorverse freighters are pretty poor choices for troop transport. They have something like 24 million cubic meters of empty cargo space. Empty, as in the Grand Canyon is empty, and empty in that it's vacuum. And it's also zero g. So you'd need to build a habitat inside the vast empty cargo bay. It's fine to transport containerized gear, but not the troops.

I feared as much. However, I am sure having life support modules loaded into the holds is a possibility. Doesn't make for the most comfortable transit and is not optimal, but when the devil drives......

However, some bottoms are personel carriers or mixed use ships, so while bulk "freighters" wouldn't work, some ships of the RMMM would be suitable to move troops.

PeterZ wrote:

kzt wrote:Honorverse freighters are pretty poor choices for troop transport. They have something like 24 million cubic meters of empty cargo space. Empty, as in the Grand Canyon is empty, and empty in that it's vacuum. And it's also zero g. So you'd need to build a habitat inside the vast empty cargo bay. It's fine to transport containerized gear, but not the troops.

I feared as much. However, I am sure having life support modules loaded into the holds is a possibility. Doesn't make for the most comfortable transit and is not optimal, but when the devil drives......

The concept isn't really far fetched Peter, similar in principle if not execution to the modification during WWII of Liberty ships, equipping their "break bulk" cargo holds with the facilities necessary to move large numbers of troops around the Pacific Theater and as assault ships in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters.

As you say, not comfortable but would get the job done.

It would be more complex in this case of course, but definitely doable.

Theemile wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
I feared as much. However, I am sure having life support modules loaded into the holds is a possibility. Doesn't make for the most comfortable transit and is not optimal, but when the devil drives......

However, some bottoms are personel carriers or mixed use ships, so while bulk "freighters" wouldn't work, some ships of the RMMM would be suitable to move troops.

Movement of large numbers of troops would put a strain on the life support facilities of even large passenger liners and I doubt that even the Manty lines have a large number of pure passenger liners. I suspect though that mixed use ships designed for both cargo (large holds) and 100 or so passengers in a somewhat enlarged crew area (cargo liner) would be better suited for modification with life support modules in the holds for large numbers of troops.

robert132 wrote:Movement of large numbers of troops would put a strain on the life support facilities of even large passenger liners and I doubt that even the Manty lines have a large number of pure passenger liners. I suspect though that mixed use ships designed for both cargo (large holds) and 100 or so passengers in a somewhat enlarged crew area (cargo liner) would be better suited for modification with life support modules in the holds for large numbers of troops.

They should be able to be manufactured by anyone able to build even crappy starships. So 2-3 of the Talbott sector planets.

robert132 wrote:

PeterZ" quote="kzt wrote:Honorverse freighters are pretty poor choices for troop transport. They have something like 24 million cubic meters of empty cargo space. Empty, as in the Grand Canyon is empty, and empty in that it's vacuum. And it's also zero g. So you'd need to build a habitat inside the vast empty cargo bay. It's fine to transport containerized gear, but not the troops.

I feared as much. However, I am sure having life support modules loaded into the holds is a possibility. Doesn't make for the most comfortable transit and is not optimal, but when the devil drives......

The concept isn't really far fetched Peter, similar in principle if not execution to the modification during WWII of Liberty ships, equipping their "break bulk" cargo holds with the facilities necessary to move large numbers of troops around the Pacific Theater and as assault ships in the Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean theaters.

As you say, not comfortable but would get the job done.

It would be more complex in this case of course, but definitely doable.[/quote]


Try the Queens during WWII, they normally carried 2500 passengers and 1100 crew, but as troop ships they could carry 15-17,000 troops that's the manpower for one infantry division. IIRC the Atlas class liners carried 5,000 passengers plus crew with additional life support they could probably handle upwards of 15-20,000 troops.

robert132 wrote:

Theemile wrote:
However, some bottoms are personel carriers or mixed use ships, so while bulk "freighters" wouldn't work, some ships of the RMMM would be suitable to move troops.

Movement of large numbers of troops would put a strain on the life support facilities of even large passenger liners and I doubt that even the Manty lines have a large number of pure passenger liners. I suspect though that mixed use ships designed for both cargo (large holds) and 100 or so passengers in a somewhat enlarged crew area (cargo liner) would be better suited for modification with life support modules in the holds for large numbers of troops.

In SITS there is a "standard" people mover listed - The Pegasus is a 250 kton design and carries 5000 passengers in addition to a large crew. Hauptman's Atlas class liners, seen in HAE, carried several thousand passengers in complete luxury, in addition to a heavy CA/light BC armament

Both the Longstop and Roughneck designs (the 2 freighter designs Honor captured at Cerberus) carried 50k and 20k individuals respectively. The RMN has the Roark's Drift (20k) and Guadacannal (~50k) personnel carriers as well. The SLN put together lift for the ~500 k Marines to invade Manticore effortlessly, without anyone noticing.

Large people haulers exist and are common, but not every freighter hull is a people hauler.

The liners being used for troop transport in WW II got a bit retrofitted to sleep all those troops and be able to feed them. Air was free. "Enviornmental" elements like waste (human and packaging) ended up going in the ocean as was common at the time thought I believe they took some pains to sink the packaging and other stuff that would float to keep from leaving trails for U-boats to discover. Toilets just flushed into the ocean. It also didn't take that long for a sucessfull trans-atlantic high speed run.

Starships are going to be a vastly different proposition. You have to bring everything with you and/or resupply at the end of the voyage. A purpose built troop-transport would be set up to cover the needs of crew and troop contingents plus be able to handle the at least the processing & storage if not the recycling of everything used in the voyage. We know Manticore and Haven and OFS has troop transports. You can surmise that the Aldermand and probably Grayson have them. There also were probably a number in for former Silesian Confederation Navy which may or many not be avialable for Manticore (or the Aldermani) to use depending on the what was where in the systems that were split between Manticore and the Aldermani.

You probablly could make a case for Troop Transport modules to be fabricated and shipped- with troops and supplies- using civilian freighters IF said freighters had sufficent power and infrastructure capability to add selfcontained modules in the holds and provide power to them along with commuications and enough management and monitoring to know if there were developing problems. You are also going to have to provide for ways to embark/disembark the troops, particularly at places without a nice large and equiped space station to handle them offloading then taking them down to the surface.


There are challanges, of course. The military designed troop transports tend to have enhanced particle shielding, military grade nodes, higher speed (amoung other things, keep up with military convoys) better communcations and sensors and perhaps at least some level of defensive weapons suites. They aren't designed to fight but they should be designed to at least try to stop weapons aimed at them while they run away as fast as possible.

Haven has said military transports they could probably lend Manticore, they would be better than anything SLN or forer ConFed Navy had. There have got to be a few SLN military transports in stock now- not convereted but capable of better than civilian speeed and to take sizable numbers of troops. The transports that accompanied Filerta would work, provided they were captured. Otherwise you are going to need a lot of civilian ships to carry not that many troops and their initial (if not more) logistics supplies for whatever planitary situation they are going to. The weapons, and other supplies are actualy easier than the troops, "just" package them in standard interstellar shipping containers and land them at need.

Hi XO,

Always good to read your posts, albeit life has kept me from doing that for several month's.

I hope I can go back and catch up, but for now I would keep in mind that life support modules fitted into freighters are relatively common in the diaspora's 20th century, since colonization has if anything been increasing ever faster in the Warshawski hyperspace era for the past 5+ centuries; so lots of star systems build life support modules of all sizes, all the time, which are vastly cheaper to rent than a relatively scarce passenger liner for a possible couple of years [ie, the trip back] to where it's common for troops, including OFS mercenaries like Monica's, Gendarmes, etc generally travel in freighters so equipped.

We also know the Jason and other 'cryo' colonization slow boats carried 50,to ~100,000 persons plus all their equipment; yet are rather small by current standards, so I wonder if today's freighters could carry a million or two persons (maybe in cryo), if it was ever necessary.

Mike already has her 1.25 million Talbot Quadrant Guard troops, because the Grand Alliance could find the shipping with life support modules so quickly.

Given the size of current freighters, the problem is more one of of how many troops etc should one risk in a single hull since the volume is theoretically enough for 100-200,000 given air/water/food recycling etc, plus remembering the Kamerling 'system control cruiser' carries a short marine battalion (3 companies or ~525 persons) in a hull of 276.25 KT, the largest number in the smallest modern hull yet mentioned, although the Broadsword managed a reinforced battalion (5 companies) on a 268.5 KT hull, but they're apparently almost 50 years old.

Since the largest freighters etc are 30+ times that tonnage, 16-30,000 may be the maximum that navies choose to currently risk in a single hull, since House of Steel didn't include many other details of marine or army interstellar troop transports.

Since hyperspace provides plenty of power through the Beta nodes, if not more than the ship can use, the transport ships' fusion plants are really only needed for the few hours needed to get into hyper, then on to the new planet, besides orbital loading and unloading, and since no mention of any ship straining to meet power requirements beyond its capabilities has ever been mentioned, your concern hasn't yet surfaced in the textev.

Although RFC could so describe some lame SLN ship class or design that is that bad.

I didn't mean to kibitz so much, but this writing bug is so addictive.

All the very best,


Lyonheart



[quote="Brigade XO"]The liners being used for troop transport in WW II got a bit retrofitted to sleep all those troops and be able to feed them. Air was free. "Enviornmental" elements like waste (human and packaging) ended up going in the ocean as was common at the time thought I believe they took some pains to sink the packaging and other stuff that would float to keep from leaving trails for U-boats to discover. Toilets just flushed into the ocean. It also didn't take that long for a sucessfull trans-atlantic high speed run.

Starships are going to be a vastly different proposition. You have to bring everything with you and/or resupply at the end of the voyage. A purpose built troop-transport would be set up to cover the needs of crew and troop contingents plus be able to handle the at least the processing & storage if not the recycling of everything used in the voyage. We know Manticore and Haven and OFS has troop transports. You can surmise that the Aldermand and probably Grayson have them. There also were probably a number in for former Silesian Confederation Navy which may or many not be avialable for Manticore (or the Aldermani) to use depending on the what was where in the systems that were split between Manticore and the Aldermani.

You probablly could make a case for Troop Transport modules to be fabricated and shipped- with troops and supplies- using civilian freighters IF said freighters had sufficent power and infrastructure capability to add selfcontained modules in the holds and provide power to them along with commuications and enough management and monitoring to know if there were developing problems. You are also going to have to provide for ways to embark/disembark the troops, particularly at places without a nice large and equiped space station to handle them offloading then taking them down to the surface.


There are challanges, of course. The military designed troop transports tend to have enhanced particle shielding, military grade nodes, higher speed (amoung other things, keep up with military convoys) better communcations and sensors and perhaps at least some level of defensive weapons suites. They aren't designed to fight but they should be designed to at least try to stop weapons aimed at them while they run away as fast as possible.

Haven has said military transports they could probably lend Manticore, they would be better than anything SLN or forer ConFed Navy had. There have got to be a few SLN military transports in stock now- not convereted but capable of better than civilian speeed and to take sizable numbers of troops. The transports that accompanied Filerta would work, provided they were captured. Otherwise you are going to need a lot of civilian ships to carry not that many troops and their initial (if not more) logistics supplies for whatever planitary situation they are going to. The weapons, and other supplies are actualy easier than the troops, "just" package them in standard interstellar shipping containers and land them at need.[/quote]

Given Lyonheart and Brigade XO's comments, adding hulls capable of carrying troops is not an insurmountable problem.

This might well be important in UH as the RF and the SL attempt to gather star systems into their sphere's of influence. Operation Janus suggests to me that the RF will focus on using chaos in the Verge to secure the Protectorates and Shell worlds, while the SL focusses on keeping the Core worlds together. That means the Grand Alliance will see all sorts of fires all around the Verge, not just in those areas near SEM nodes, like Maya and Talbot.

That sort wide spread chaos will require the GA to spread itself pretty thin across the Verge. The GA will need to move troops, deploy light naval units and establish nodal defenses all around the galaxy. That sounds like Mike's and Lester's new job, while Honor and Thomas slip their naval fist into a mailed gauntlet that will KO whatever the MA or RF decides to send their way.