new/old dead horse, futher beating requested

An SD can ignore a cruiser. It can absorb cruiser scale missile fire for roughly forever without being significantly damaged. This assumes that it doesn't roll against it or turn on the SDs CMs and PDLCs. A cruiser cannot ignore capital ship missiles that are fired in numbers that approximate the total number of PDLCs and CM launchers it has. Much less can it ignore a SD graser.

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n7axw wrote:

Zakharra wrote:I'm kind of wondering if the idea of (basically) using old SDs as orbital defense would just make a bad situation worse.

OK, so we have this massive ex-warship with a skeleton crew and arguably dubious maintenance/support in orbit. Why do I say dubious for that last? VERGE world, usually with limited means to start with.

Suggesting to me that such a monstrosity may be ALL that a lot of worlds can afford, even if the damn thing is a gift. Forget getting a few LACs or any orbital hardware or even hiring a security / pirate-hunter ship when things get tough, because a big chunk of your budget and manpower will be sucked up just keeping this thing in a stable orbit.

If I was a particularly clever and ambitious pirate leader, rather than shying away from this thing, I might consider other possibilities. Skeleton crew (even if well-trained and properly looked after) means very limited capabilities and (definitely) limited maintenance.

So our SD is probably an extremely easy target if the attacker (a) has a clue, and (b) can get reasonable surprise. Get a boarding /sabotage party on board either via one of the supply shuttles or via orbital insertion. Destroy / cripple the brute outright, or even capture it. The crew might disable the systems before the pirates grab control, but it is probably that world's sole defense.

From the pirate point of view, this SD is something extra to loot. The systems are not state-of-the-art, but I am sure there would be stuff there a pirate group would happily pry off and make good use of, or just haul away in hopes of sale to other parties. A capital ship graser or two, for example?


You're making several assumptions; that they will all have a skeleton crew and be poorly maintained. since the basic idea is to have them be used as training aids, this means they will have more than a skeleton crew and will be receiving proper maintenance. Why would they have a skeleton crew on an SD anyways when its duty is to provide security for a planet/system? That seems more than a little counter-productive unless you're running a big shell game and bluffing like crazy. And even then if you go long enough, bluffs will be called. If the ships are being used as has been suggested, as training ships, they'd have most of the crew they need. They might have an inexperienced crew, but a skeleton crew? Doubttful unless the ship is just being moved from one system to another.

Also, any raiders aren't going to have state of the art ships The only systems out there with ships better than the SLN ships are the GA ships and the IAN and some of the MAlign warships (but they won't do any system raiding until they are ready to come out in the open). The raiders ships will be very very likely no better than the SLN so there goes any advantage there and SLN SDs can throw bigger missile salvos than thing smaller than them. Aside from the GA/IAN ships.

Sollie SDs just as well have signs declaring "white elephant sale" hanging from the wedge as far as any defensive purposes are concerned. They are too slow to catch raiders or pirates. And given that, the bluff value goes to zero. All you have to do is locate the thing and stay outside its envelop of fire. Far better to acquire BCs and smaller that are not bluffing if you need a system defense force.

Don

I can't imagine a system having just one SD and no other warships. if a system is valuable to have one SD, it should have other warships too. Also as some have pointed out, SDs are built to take punishment that BBs and BC and smaller ships can't take. Unless said raiders are armed with SEM/GA missiles, there's nothing any raider or pirate has that is a threat. This is something I think a lot of people are missing, any raiders or pirates in the Talbott sector are going to have ships no better than the SLN had. Most pirates in fact are going to have worse ships. Raiders might have equal, but unless they are getting their weapons and ships from some place like the MAlign, those raiders and/or pirates won't be in any position to overpower an SD. Remember that a single SD is or was, capable of standing against the assault of numerous lesser warships. Unless a crapload of BCs jump the SD and are willing to take a LOT of losses, they are just dead ships when engaging a SD, even a Solly one.

On this subject why in the hell would the RMN deploy obsolete SLN SD's when they have a number of there own SD's that are not a manpower intensive. IIRC a SLN Scientist class has a crew of 6500 while a Samothrace class has a crew of 5500 a King William class has a crew of 4900 and the Gryphon class has a crew of 4500. So in other words you can crew 4 Gryphons or crew 3 Scientist

saber964 wrote:On this subject why in the hell would the RMN deploy obsolete SLN SD's when they have a number of there own SD's that are not a manpower intensive. IIRC a SLN Scientist class has a crew of 6500 while a Samothrace class has a crew of 5500 a King William class has a crew of 4900 and the Gryphon class has a crew of 4500. So in other words you can crew 4 Gryphons or crew 3 Scientist

I can't grasp why anyone would deploy an SD singleton at all. They are not intended to be used that way. They are designed for the wall as has already been noted. To be sure, if you get into the things weapons envelop, you're in trouble, but any cruiser size vessel should be able to stay out of its way. It is certainly too slow and cumbersome to pursue.

There are a number of us who believe that there are noncombat uses to which they could be put. But envisioning a combat role for these vessels is not only beating a dead horse, it's grinding the poor nag into horseburger.

Don

saber964 wrote:On this subject why in the hell would the RMN deploy obsolete SLN SD's when they have a number of there own SD's that are not a manpower intensive. IIRC a SLN Scientist class has a crew of 6500 while a Samothrace class has a crew of 5500 a King William class has a crew of 4900 and the Gryphon class has a crew of 4500. So in other words you can crew 4 Gryphons or crew 3 Scientist

One of the reasons why is because the SEM and GA needs to use all of its SDs for current operations. They can't really spare them. Although most of us have been as n7axw points out, envisioning the SLN SDs used in non combat roles, not combat ones, but half a squadron of them around a planet should give any raiders significant pause.

Zakharra wrote:
One of the reasons why is because the SEM and GA needs to use all of its SDs for current operations. They can't really spare them. Although most of us have been as n7axw points out, envisioning the SLN SDs used in non combat roles, not combat ones, but half a squadron of them around a planet should give any raiders significant pause.

Zakharra, you are missing one very important plot point - the GA IS doing fine without them.

The GA IS doing fine without the ~250 Manty SDs and DNs in the reserve. The GA IS doing fine without the ~300 Havenite SDs recently retired.

Seeing the RMN reserves can kick the butts of the Ex-SLN SDs and the Havenite reserves can kick the butts of the Ex-SLN SDs, doesn't it make sense that the GA will make use of their own retired ships before they even begin contemplating using the ex-SLN ships?

And more importantly - despite everthing that has happened - they have zero plans of using ANY of their deactivated tube SDs.

So why do they need the Ex-SLN units?

saber964 wrote:On this subject why in the hell would the RMN deploy obsolete SLN SD's when they have a number of there own SD's that are not a manpower intensive. IIRC a SLN Scientist class has a crew of 6500 while a Samothrace class has a crew of 5500 a King William class has a crew of 4900 and the Gryphon class has a crew of 4500. So in other words you can crew 4 Gryphons or crew 3 Scientist

Because you don't give out ships that contain your current sensors, targeting systems, missiles, and defensive electronics to anyone who isn't 100% on your side. Everything that an SLN SD has is obsolete. Much is 100+ year old tech. They have no ability to threaten a GA system, nor can you sell it to the SLN for enough money to buy your own pleasure planet.

However they are perfectly capable of killing most any non-GA threat short of a BC squadron with a death wish.

saber964 wrote:On this subject why in the hell would the RMN deploy obsolete SLN SD's when they have a number of there own SD's that are not a manpower intensive. IIRC a SLN Scientist class has a crew of 6500 while a Samothrace class has a crew of 5500 a King William class has a crew of 4900 and the Gryphon class has a crew of 4500. So in other words you can crew 4 Gryphons or crew 3 Scientist

**I missed part of the meaning of your response on the first response.

The RMN should NOT deploy their old ships to unknowns, though giving them to Beowulf and perhaps her colonies might not be a bad idea.

The SL ships, on the other hand, they would be given away as goodwill gestures to unknowns, as a way of simply trying to reduce/prevent chaos.

They might provide a training team, probably from Beowolf who has naval personnel who are actually trained on those specific type ships, but the crews will be locally provided.

As Thunder of God proved, even a backwards neobarb world can provide a small number of dedicated spacers capable of at least going through the motions of fighting a ship.

Long term maintenance is a different story. In a few years the ship may be useless without proper maintenance, depending on how it's used.

But, honestly, when the SL falls and the interstellar neighborhood goes to hell... When the people in the next system over with a bit better heavy industry then you are starving, but you are barely scraping by, you don't give a fuck about next year. If you don't protect yourself now, your people are going to suffer.

That's something a lot of people are missing here - beggars can't be choosers.

Manticore and Haven give Beowulf second-line mothballed ships as an upgrade. SL ships get parceled out to verge worlds with hyper generators stripped after delivery. Beowulf sends training crews around to help get the basics in place.

Five years later all those ships are pretty much dead mass, but have been incorporated into orbital infrastructure. An armored core for your space station isn't a bad idea. Ask the people who were in the space stations during Oyster Bay. Oh, wait.

n7axw wrote:
I can't grasp why anyone would deploy an SD singleton at all. They are not intended to be used that way. They are designed for the wall as has already been noted. To be sure, if you get into the things weapons envelop, you're in trouble, but any cruiser size vessel should be able to stay out of its way.

This is the entire point! If an SD is sitting in orbit above your homeworld, and a raider squadron of BC's and freighters from a not-so-friendly neighbor comes-a-calling, looking to steal your just-harvested crops or your new orbital mineral processing modules, they CAN'T raid you AND stay out of the engagement envelope of the SD. Energy range of an SD is roughly 1.5x the distance from Old Earth to it's Moon, even if you don't consider missiles at all!