Commerce raiding

Relax wrote:All good pts from multiple posters: Here is a BIG addition which hit me in face that no one has brought up.

We are told: Haven was deep in the red and SHORT of funds. THIS IS ENTIRE PREMISE of series. 1st 2 books are prelude to Short uh hem, SHORT Victorious War. What do politicians do when short funds? They cut budgets which do not buy votes. Right? Right? Chop chop.

Navy budget will be pinched. So, Vote buying is "jobs" --> Building new ships. But what gets cut? Training, Live fire exercises, Bonus pay, Maintenance, and ship upgrades. Right?

So, if you are deferring upgrades and maintenance what ships are MOST likely to have deffered maintenance and upgrades? An 100 year old design class that cannot stand in line of battle is what.

Now sir Politician wants a SHORT "victorious" war.
Your older ships have been SHORT sighted with few/no upgrades,
Bonus pay for active operations is in SHORT supply.
Training has been SHORT changed for decades.
Maintenance has been SHORTed

So are 50% of the BB's even available to start the war? Do they even have crews? No really? Do they? 300BB's sounds like a lot, and it is a LOT of a LOT, but we never see them until ~1910, 5 years later after war starts. Relegated to rear areas, and just worn out un upgraded junk with heaps of deferred maintenance.

REMEMBER: OBS, Honor in a CL, from a nation which has $$$ for its navy, Unlike the RHN, DID NOT, uh hem, DID NOT have a full load out of laser head missiles. So what does this say about a class of ships which is an OLD design from the RHN?

Yes, upthread many have pointed out that SOME of the BB's were upgraded to fire newer missiles etc. How many on a naval budget which is SHORT? I mean common, if a CL in the RMN who has $$$ is still rocking 1/3 Contact nukes in its missile load out to start the war what is the RHN doing? Their laser head was behind that of the RMN.

We get laser focused in on the NEW and SHINY, but often forget that navies fight with the OLD, CLUNKY, RUSTY, and OVER the Hill yesterdays "shiny" and bashed junk.

They may be short on funds but they also spent 50 years preparing for war, there is no evidence that the BB's were no upgraded or crewed as they pulled 80 of them for Icarus and every indication was that they couldn't pull more due to political considerations not because they couldn't find, man or equip those ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:

After all, you've got a fair number of unhappy recent conquests.

How many of those conquests had capital ships before they were conquered by Haven?
How many of those conquests had a capital ship that escaped conquest?

How long do you think a BB or a BC would last without shipyard support? How many escaped capital ships could there be? One? or more likely none?

Any one of them might have had warships that escaped the surprise attack that took down their system, or offworld resources to fund buying new warships or hiring mercenaries for some retaliation.

Yeah, because mercenaries would definitely go and piss off the PRH by attacking one of their systems. Any escaped warships would have long since ceased to function without outside support.

The BBs are being used to hold down those recent conquests, as well as defend other of your systems that might be targets for some grudge settling.

How many of those systems are "recent" conquests? And how many would have had warships escape that were powerful enough to threaten RHN heavy cruisers? Even if they had escaped how many would be functioning 5, 10, 15 or 20 years later?

And you'd want those big expensive pacification units to be competent to keep from being destroyed,

Destroyed by what? You make it sound like there are BC's and BB's just flying around the PRH waiting for war.

and to prevent damage to the orbital elements of those system's industries -- which would damage the economies your government is trying to squeeze to fill their depleted coffers.

A destroyer can do that, and if it can't then a light cruiser can do that, and if it can a heavy cruiser can do that and if it can THEN you use a Battleship.

Disappointing your government's monetary expectations by letting said industry get wrecked is NOT going to be good for your carrier or life prospects, not under either the Harris or Pierre administrations! Fear of that should to focus most BB commanders enough to ensure their crew is reasonably competent.

How many of those systems were net contributors to the PRH? How many of them had been conquered and squeezed for all the wealth and left poor and financially a drain?

Similarly you'd want the ground assault units based on the BBs to be able to quickly suppress riot and insurrection before it can wreck too much of the local industry or economy.

Parking a transport with a division of Marines is more effective than tying down a capital ship for political reasons.

Sigs wrote:The Royal Winton was from 1844 and served till 1916, Ad Astra was from 1632 and served until 1913, Samothrace SD is from 1840's.

I won't waste my time with you if you cannot grasp basic concepts of refit and upgrade.

I can. And that's my question: when were those ships last upgraded? In 1844, the RMN still had its 16 Thurston-class battleships built in the 1590s, but rapidly decommissioned them as obsolete designs. At this time, the RMN had not built a single capital-ship since the mid-1650s, much less designed one. We know the RHN and later PRN did design new ships, so I'd expect them to be more current on development techniques than the RHN was. Therefore, the PN knew the writing was on the wall that battleships were obsolete designs.

So, were the ships updated after the 1840s? Even in an 1840 refit, how much effort would the PRN have put into upgrading an obsolete design? Given the competition for yard space to build the 412 SDs we know they had, I wouldn't be surprised if it was "not much."

They must have had a lot of yard space if they built 374 Triumphant-class BBs between 1823 and 1850. It would be more likely if the 374 BBs they still had by 1905 were a mix of different classes, some of them even older. I think the text does not say there were all one class; we only have semi-canon information on this, but if we accept it, then they were all Triumphants.

Im fairly certain that BC's use lighter missiles than BB's, DN's and SD's. We have 24 BB's destroy 1 SD and cripple 5 others even after being tricked into getting too close and not using their missile advantage and this guy is arguing BC's would take BB's on.

Which generation of missiles? Were the missile tubes on the BBs updated to fire a new generation of laserheads, or were they still equipped with boom-or-bust nukes? The advent of laserhead is even more recent, to around the 1870s, so I really doubt those ships were updated with new tubes. The question then is if the missiles can use all three modes. If not, then the BBs would be at disadvantage compared to the BCs firing laserheads, even if their boom-or-bust nukes were capital-grade.

We're told (again in semi-canon) that the SDs, DNs, and BBs all fired the same missiles. In this case, the BBs would be firing laserheads. The RMN missiles would still be of superior quality, but the BBs would make up for it with brute force. The BCs would have to rely on their better ECM and point defence.

BC's do NOT fire the same missiles as SD's

I never said they did. I'm saying that the BC would be firing the RMN's state-of-the-art BC laserhead shipkiller.

At this stage, BC missiles aren't designed to take on wallers, but they are very good at what they do.

Taking on BC's, CA's, CL's and DD's?

Killing ships. They're designed to take on those above, yes, but you fight the war with the weapons you have, not the ones you wish you had. I wouldn't want to fight a BB with a BC, but if I had to, I'd want to have the best missiles possible. Those would be the RMN's.

So every once in a while the Navy in question would pull their ships and refit them one at a time, improve their electronics, weapons, engines etc... make them better than they were when they went in. A ship built in 1820's or 1830's wouldn't have the same weapon and electronics load out in 1905 because they would have had 1,2,3,4 or 5 refits in the 75 years between construction and start of war. You don't build a ship and do nothing with it for the next three quarters of a century.

Yes, a Navy should do that. The question is whether the PN did that, to ships whose design was obsolete and which they'd been delegating to rear-area patrol.

We know the SLN badly neglected their SDs. By the 1920s, they still had generations of their SDs equipped with autocannons for point defence, not PDLCs. Yes, that's institutional arrogance in the SLN's part, because they never foresaw needing the ships in a short timeframe. Their plans were that they'd have time to update the ships as they came out of mothballs.

So how much is it of a leap to thing the PN did not update much their BBs, because they never expected to need them in front-line action?

There are capital ship missiles and BC/CA missiles, both are missiles just different power. A BB is still a BB with more armour than a BC and bigger more capable missiles.

A Triumphant-class BB will fire missiles better than a Sultan-class BC. My question is how a Havenite capital-grade missile compares to an RMN BC-grade missile? Especially when it comes to pen-aids, ECM, sensors, power budget, etc. We know the RMN missile will be qualitatively superior in each of those categories. I don't think it would be enough to overcome the brute force that a much bigger missile brings to the table.

But given that the BB probably has a sidewall of only similar quality as the BCs the RMN missiles was designed to fight, it would make the BB's day a bad one. It still has a much stronger armour... but again was this armour designed for laserheads' x-ray lasers? Or was it designed to survive a contact nuke?

Are you really trying to say that a ship that has a mass of 800,000 tons is more capable than 4,500,000 battleship?

No, I'm not. I am saying that the BC could give the unaware BB commander a very bad day. Depending on how all those factors above played out, the BC could win the day.

Remember that story about an RMN Star Knight-class CA fighting a PN battlecruiser, and a non-obsolete design at that. It was crewed by morons who didn't know how to fight their ship, but doesn't that also describe the situation of the post-purge PN?

Sigs wrote:They may be short on funds but they also spent 50 years preparing for war, there is no evidence that the BB's were no upgraded or crewed as they pulled 80 of them for Icarus and every indication was that they couldn't pull more due to political considerations not because they couldn't find, man or equip those ships.

There's also no evidence that they were upgraded. And the fact that there were no BB designs for 80 years would indicate that they knew the ship type was obsolete.

tlb wrote:If there is a major disadvantage because Manticore can launch Alpha strikes using their pods, which Haven cannot equal; then Haven should be more cautious, until they have similar pods. Adding more targets when being overwhelmed by a massive missile strike, does not seem like winning strategy; even if Manticore is also losing ships.

Did the RMN have the ability to launch massive alpha strikes in every system? Or was this limited to some systems initially?

The RHN wouldn't be able to equal alpha strikes even when they got pods because a defended that had 10,000 pods will beat an attacker with a limited pods. A defender well stocked with pods has a more impressive spray and pray than an attacker with pods even in the SD(P) era.

Sigs wrote:How many of those conquests had capital ships before they were conquered by Haven?
How many of those conquests had a capital ship that escaped conquest?

How long do you think a BB or a BC would last without shipyard support? How many escaped capital ships could there be? One? or more likely none?

Not a lot, true. But there were some because this was a prosperous sector. When the RHN was fielding battlecruisers back in the 1530s, the RMN also had battlecruisers and Casca was buying surplus RHN heavy cruisers.

I agree that ships need yards to keep them alive. But there would be plenty of yards available in the sector that could give them shelter, for a while. It might be a risky proposition to give shelter to a navy in exile, but it could happen.

Then there are mercenaries, who bring their own ships.

Either way, the point is that the Legislaturalists thought they needed the BBs for protection. If none of the captured systems even had BCs, why would they dedicate BBs for this?

Yeah, because mercenaries would definitely go and piss off the PRH by attacking one of their systems. Any escaped warships would have long since ceased to function without outside support.

Mercenaries would do as paid. If the system is weakly defended, they could come and smash the PN picket, opening the way for whatever the system government wanted to do. The mercenaries are not going to stick around to see how the PN reacts.

How many of those systems are "recent" conquests? And how many would have had warships escape that were powerful enough to threaten RHN heavy cruisers? Even if they had escaped how many would be functioning 5, 10, 15 or 20 years later?

That's a good question. So please tell us why you think the PN needed those BBs for rear-area protection, if they could have got away with CAs?

How many of those systems were net contributors to the PRH? How many of them had been conquered and squeezed for all the wealth and left poor and financially a drain?

The most recent conquests would be net contributors, while the older ones would not be. Politically the PN had to protect all of them equally and they were probably not given much of a choice.

Even if that is not militarily a good decision.

Please stop arguing that the PN had those ships available for the tactic you're suggesting, because all evidence points to their not being available. I might agree that they were tied down for unsound reasons, but Amos Parnell probably knew better than to fight this.

Sigs wrote:Did the RMN have the ability to launch massive alpha strikes in every system? Or was this limited to some systems initially?

In all systems, even those that they'd just recently arrived on. Toll of Honor shows Sixth Fleet arriving with towed pods for an alpha launch, so we know they could do this.

For a system they're defending, they'd have even more pods. They still needed to tow them into battle, unlike the later Battle of Spindle or Battle of Beowulf when they fired from the planet's orbit.

The limit would be logistics: have pods been distributed to those systems?

Relax wrote:The first Havenite war reminds me of Russ-Ukrain current war. IF Haven had simply gotten ALL its fleet repaired, upgraded trained for one big push to Manticore to begin with it ~probably would have been over. Same goes for the Ruskies... If they had bothered to just get their Gear together to begin with for certain everything East of Dnipro would be Russian. But no, they brought it online piecemeal. So did the Havenites.

Putin wanted a SHORT Victorious War. Abject corruption for decades of not repairing, maintaining, etc bites their arses. Will they eventually win? Maybe, but their reserves of tanks/apc/artillery is nearly empty.

Maybe send Putin SVW as a "gift". Maybe he likes space opera...gg

EDIT:
PS: Speaking of lack of maintenance from deferred funds and bad economics... USN Pearl Harbor. Or USN Spanish American so called 'war'--> read up on that hilarity of pure unadulturated hopeless "seamanship" and "gunner". Why did majority of those BB's sink at Pearl? Seals on all the hatches were bad. Bad training on the FEW seals which were ~ok as hadn't been out to sea etc. Why? Great Depression Economics. The GD was so bad the USA never had ANY tanks(not WWI hand me downs or 1 or 2 off test dummies) at beginning of the war. Did not have a single mechanized platoon let alone division or Brigade. People give the UK crap for being unprepared, at least they HAD tank designs and a production line. Ocean crossings makes great neighbor fencing. Back then the USN did have money out of any branch, but even they could not keep their seals maintaned. Was it better to have good carrier doctrine, practice, (some aircraft) than BB seals? Yes. Did they know this at the time? Maybe(I doubt it institutionally at the highest levels though).

I don't think we can compare the PRH to Russia. The initial offensive wasn't beaten back because the PRN was not capable or prepared, the offensive was beaten back because they got too fancy, went in a dozen different directions and fell in love with their genius. If the initial offensive had focused on one target without giving a heads up to the RMN and trying to maneuver them.

Concentrating a massive force for one attack on 2nd Fleet, crush it and in 1 afternoon the RMN loses 1/4 of their active wallers.

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:We don't need to assume. Jaynes gives us the stats on the Triumphant-class
[snip]
Missiles (broadside) 30

Seems those numbers were Retconned heavily by the book Flag in Exile Ch 31. Flag in Exile says the Triumph class BB had only 30% the missile power of her SD's. Oh yea and 15% of her energy armament.

[snip]

SO, 30% the missile broadside would be 12 missile tubes. Not 30. Not sure how he squares the 15% of Broadside energy as that would be ~2 Graser&Lasers broadside, something even CA's have more of(true, smaller but...)

Circling back to this, while looking for something else the search pulled up the missile combat scene of the BBs against Honor's SDs and the following caught my eye

Flag In Exile wrote:"Jesus Christ!" Shannon Foraker gasped, and a small, numb corner of Citizen Commander Caslet's brain observed that she'd just spoken for him. One instant, the situation had been well in hand; five minutes later, fourteen hundred missiles erupted from the Allied "battlecruisers." Havenite missiles answered almost instantly, but all twenty-four battleships between them could produce only seven hundred missiles in reply

That appears to be describing a single broadside salvo. So 700 missiles from 24 battleships would average 29.17 missiles per BB. That's 20 missiles short of the 30 tubes per BB that Jayne's lists, but 4 more than if they'd all had 29. Maybe it's rounded for narrative reasons? Maybe the Peeps had about 3% of tubes fail to launch in time? But in either case if this was a single salvo of 700 missiles that seems very hard to square with the other statement from the same book of them having 30% the missile power of the SDs.

Sigs wrote:

Finally, consider the laserhead: those didn't exist in the 1820s yet.

REFIT

It's trivial to swap out for better missiles (assuming you kept the critical dimensions the same) it's pretty easy to swap out for a newer mark of missile tube.

But it's very difficult to swap out a ship's armor, it's integrally bonded to the hull and additional armor is buried deep within the hull. So no refit is going to pull and replace a ship's armor -- it'd take longer and cost nearly as much as just building a modern ship. So a ship is going to carry the same armor design it was built with until it's scraped. And there are real differences in materials and arrangement between armor designed primarily to resist nukes and armor designed primarily to resist laser heads. (Now SDs and DNs also had to worry about energy range engagement so they'd also carry armor to help against broadside lasers and grasers; which put out way more power than any laserhead. But the BBs being such a missile oriented design would logically focus their armor on the missile threat (as it then existed))

That doesn't make old armor useless; it's still vastly better than no armor at all. It simply means that a given amount of armor on a ship designed and built before laserheads will provide less protection against them than that same given amount of modern armor would.


But still, I agree that they're going to be tougher targets than even a modern BC. And even with the known missile edge the RMN had over the Peeps (largely in ECM and penetration aids) I don't think a 0.8 mton BC can win a fight against a 4.5 mton BB.
In fact we know of at least one case where 3 of them failed

Echoes of Honor wrote:Everyone knew battleships couldn't fight proper ships of the wall and that battlecruisers were even more outclassed by battleships than battleships were by superdreadnoughts. Fortunately, ships of the wall usually couldn't catch battleships, and battleships usually couldn't catch battlecruisers. Unfortunately for the Royal Manticoran Navy, that rule didn't always hold true. It especially didn't hold true when the battleship's captain had the nerve to take her own impellers off-line and just sit there like a hole in space until the Manties were actually in extreme missile range. Hall had that kind of nerve, and less than a month after Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville blew out the Adler System picket, she had neatly ambushed a trio of raiding Manty battlecruisers. They hadn't had the remotest suspicion she was even there until they'd built vectors which gave them no choice, even with their superior acceleration rates, but to come into her engagement range.
RMN battlecruisers were tough customers, especially given the superiority of the Star Kingdom's EW and missiles. Many Republican officers would have hesitated to engage three of them at once, even if she did out-mass them by almost two-to-one. That, in fact, had been Citizen Commander Young's earnest recommendation. Hall hadn't taken it, however . . . and she'd blown two of her enemies right out of space. The third had gotten away, but with enough damage to keep her out of action for months, whereas Schaumberg's repairs had required only five weeks of yard time.

I'd want 5-6 BCs (or better yet a full 8 ship BatCruRon), or a load of towed pods, before taking 1st war BCs up against a Triumphant.


And yet, if you were designing a new 4.5 mton BB in, say, 1904 designed around the laserhead threat, it'd be an even nastier customer than a refitted Triumphant -- and not just because it's armor material and distribution would better match the laserhead threat environment (though that would definitely help). (And that'd be even more true if you were designing it in 1907 or 1908 after you had wartime experience to inform the design)