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

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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by JeffEngel   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:03 pm

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Brigade XO wrote: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.

Given the quality of Silesian Confederacy Navy ships, I suspect they are being scrapped or will be, with the SCN crews in Manticoran Silesia retrained for system defense forces, a possible Silesian Guard force, and/or the RMN.
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.

The wiki and my memory both have it that Marsh is not included in the partition and the Republic of Sidemore remains independent, an ally of Manticore, and presumably on friendly terms with the Andermani Empire. The wiki refers to an infodump for that, but I've not been able to locate the specific one yet.

The partition - I thought it was roughly the eastern portion (nearest Basilisk) to Manticore, western (nearest the AE) to AE. If that's the case, then Marsh is way off on the AE side. (But conveniently more or less on the way toward Silesia from Gregor.) If it's not the case, I beg for correction.
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.
Monica too is out there, and the SEM does have a mutual defense treaty with them now. It's not Monica's idea, and acting on it may be uncomfortable for all parties, but it's another potential demand on the forces out beyond Lynx.

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.

Manticore-B likely does that job well. Gregor-B was used for IAN staging; it's another place that could be used, although you'd want those operations outside the view of "freighters" passing through the terminus. Matapan would be another system beyond the Junction with good relations and relatively limited traffic. Or there's the system with which the "Lynx" terminus is associated - uninhabited, useless, untrafficked, a fair piece away from the terminus for sensors but not far for hypercapable units moving to and fro as needed.

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.

For that matter, military-spec freighters using LAC modules for testing would get those LAC modules tested at the same time.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by kzt   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:11 pm

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n7axw wrote: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

No, the draft constitution was written only 6 months before BoM per the handiest timeline. Given the shipping times and the fact that it isn't SEM territory until after the vote and acceptance by the SEM government, not really enough time. It not lit they will have 20 wings of system defense LACs and the remote bases all ready to ship, they need to be funded, built, crews trained, etc. and somewhere in that process someone kills pretty much every single system defense LAC in the home system.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:29 pm

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kzt wrote:No, the draft constitution was written only 6 months before BoM per the handiest timeline. Given the shipping times and the fact that it isn't SEM territory until after the vote and acceptance by the SEM government, not really enough time. It not lit they will have 20 wings of system defense LACs and the remote bases all ready to ship, they need to be funded, built, crews trained, etc. and somewhere in that process someone kills pretty much every single system defense LAC in the home system.


Just the LACs within 2-3 hours transit [edit} according to the losses in chapter 69 2,806 [edit] of Sphinx plus what 3rd Fleet brought with them(though we don't know how many are destroyed, most seem to have survived). Which is not even close to all of them.

The ones at the junction still there. 3,000+ if I remember correctly. Probably another 4k or so in Manticore orbit, Like number in Gryphon orbit.

Major blow yes around a quarter of the total assigned to the Home System.

Have fun,
T2M

[edit]looked up for the Junction they had 3,500 plus more still launching with metronome precision. So more than what was lost just at the junction survived. <shrug>
Last edited by thinkstoomuch on Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by Theemile   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:35 pm

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Brigade XO wrote: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.
<snip>


I posted a few months ago about the portion of the SC which Manticore received. In HoS there is a map of the EoM territory on pg 155. Ehe Map (representing everything) has all of EoM Silensia ias a small set of dots in a weirdly shaped box. In the box is a Star (presumabedly representing the capitol, Silensia, and at the top most point 3 dots almost on top of each other. Having the SITS shipbooks, I have the SITS map of Silensia - overlaying the two maps and assuming the 3 dots to be the Chalice (Warneke's old home), and the Capitol star to be Silensia, we see that the Confederacy was cut on a SW/NE diagonal, with the RMN getting the South-Eastern half.

There may be a system traded here and there, but roughly, each nation got the following: (the # of systems is in parenthesis)

So the EoM gets The Posnan Sector (9), The Saginaw sector (8), The Hillman sector (4), the Terrance sector (7) and the eastern 1/2 of the Silensian sector (6). The Terrance and Hillman sectors are those closest to Basilisk.

The Sachsen sector (5), the Breslau sector (11), the Carlton sector (6), the Tumult sector (5) and the western 1/2 of the Silensian Sector (3) go to the Andermani. Sachsen and Breslau are the sectors closest to the Andermani Empire (and Gregor)

Sidemore (an independent state) is quite a distance West of the western-most Manticorian holding, tucked in a notch outside of the Sachsen and Breslau sectors, so is in the Andie sphere of influence, and poorly sited to directly support RMN operations in Silensia.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by fester   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:42 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:Plenty reasonable analysis snipped...

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.


But at the time when the decision was made to lay down the Avalon class in bucket loads, the Silesian sector demands were projected as needing lots of hulls now, and maybe over the next year or two, but by Plan Submission Date + 2 years, the projected force demand for Silesia is mostly in-system patrol and control forces, sensors and fire brigades with minimal convoy escort capacity for the Rift and other odd N-space areas.

Light cruisers should be generational assets. Since the RMN knows it is going through a massive technological revolution, it may accept that the Avalons are merely frontline units for a decade or more instead of thirty to fifty years, but they don't build a decade lifespan unit to bridge a 12 to 18 month declining problem.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by JeffEngel   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:01 pm

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fester wrote:
JeffEngel wrote:Plenty reasonable analysis snipped...

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.


But at the time when the decision was made to lay down the Avalon class in bucket loads, the Silesian sector demands were projected as needing lots of hulls now, and maybe over the next year or two, but by Plan Submission Date + 2 years, the projected force demand for Silesia is mostly in-system patrol and control forces, sensors and fire brigades with minimal convoy escort capacity for the Rift and other odd N-space areas.

Light cruisers should be generational assets. Since the RMN knows it is going through a massive technological revolution, it may accept that the Avalons are merely frontline units for a decade or more instead of thirty to fifty years, but they don't build a decade lifespan unit to bridge a 12 to 18 month declining problem.

I think it's evidence that the RMN isn't looking at Silesian commitments quite that way - that they built so many Avalons, even knowing that their missiles were already dated, because they really did expect to be conducting Silesian (and possibly Talbott) security in large part with light cruisers over that decade.

It's consistent with their traditional doctrine in Silesia and distant stations. Maybe assuming lots of LAC groups and system defense missile pods in an area that's a "protectorate" with some systems essentially occupied and others awaiting plebiscites and constitutional settlements was too much for some members of the government and/or admiralty. Maybe they are worried that relatively fixed assets in Silesia, without travelling RMN crews, are too vulnerable to having critical hardware go missing and end up in enemy hands. (Or Andermani ones, outside of and beyond the scope of their current friendly relations.)

I think there are mistakes being made there - there will be better arrangements to make for local and trade security in Silesia and Talbott, and the Avalon and Wolfhound are just too dated by their missile tubes. (Unless BuWeaps is secretly about to unveil a DDM the size of those extended range single drive missiles - hmmm.) But erring on the conservative side is something the RMN is known to do and may have happened here.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by kzt   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:41 pm

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thinkstoomuch wrote:[edit]looked up for the Junction they had 3,500 plus more still launching with metronome precision. So more than what was lost just at the junction survived. <shrug>

That was the junction, not the system defense force for Manticore A.
As with many of David's numbers for AAC, the RMN LAC counts don't really hold together.


Total LAC numbers

Chapter 64 "Five to six thousand"
"We're scrambling every LAC we've got," Caparelli said. "We should be able to get five or six thousand of them to you by the time you engage."

Chapter 65 "over two thousand"
'Home Fleet's LAC screen had suffered massive losses of its own, mostly from MDMs which had lost their original targets and taken whatever they could find in exchange. Despite that, over two thousand of them survived, and they were driving hard to get into their own range of Second Fleet.'

Chapter 66 2500 in this chapter at start, 200 left at end.
'Six hundred of the Alliance LACs were killed ..
'The screen killed another three hundred,...
'There were "only" sixteen hundred Allied LACs left..
"It looks like only about two hundred of their LACs got away," his chief of staff said. "The wall's energy weapons managed to nail most of the others as they crossed our vector."

Chapter 69
"two thousand eight hundred and six LACs, destroyed" was the final number.

So where did the other 2500 to 9500 that Caparelli promised go? I'd assume they were destroyed in the "LAC screen had suffered massive losses" part above, which raises total RMN LAC losses to over 5000 RMN LACs. In any event, I tend to think this was not included in the planning for LAC production and crew training.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by thinkstoomuch   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:56 pm

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kzt wrote:...snip...
Total LAC numbers

...snip...

So where did the other 2500 to 9500 that Caparelli promised go? I'd assume they were destroyed in the "LAC screen had suffered massive losses" part above, which raises total RMN LAC losses to over 5000 RMN LACs. In any event, I tend to think this was not included in the planning for LAC production and crew training.


Off the top of my head seeing as every other number seems semi consistent. The space Lord was over estimating times to get underweigh. Not like he didn't have just a might of pressure. And Home Fleet didn't take as long as he thought. Most likely he added the ones from Manticore itself as available. <shrug>

Or it was simply a typo.

Still doesn't address that there are likely another 6-10k of LACs in the Home System which is far from the total destruction of all the LACs that you posted.

Stop and think about how many thousand LACs Manticore/Greyson must have produced. If it was around 10k in Manticore probably quite a few thousand among all the 20-30 allies that stayed signed on in 1920.

In keeping with the topic. They literally have thousands of the dang things all over the place.

What I found interesting was that at the 2nd Manticore Honor only used ~2,000.

Enjoy,
T2M
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A: “No. That’s just the price. ...
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by Hutch   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:28 pm

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Just to jump into the LAC question, IIRC an Commodore (?) Enerby was at Spindle with four CLAC's to deliver LAC's to the Talbott Sector planets before being short-stopped by Mike Henke just before Crandall showed up.

So those ~384 LAC's (32 squadrons of 12 or 48 squardons of 8) could provide 2-3 squadrons per Talbott Sector if Mike let them continue their misison post-Battle of Spindle.

However, RFC sort of let them 'disappear' from the map after the battle (he is the most infuriating man at times keeping his ships straight), so it could be that they returned home with the LAC's once news of the Yawata Strike was known.

But I sort of doubt it.

IMHO as always. YMMV.
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Re: The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.
Post by munroburton   » Tue Mar 03, 2015 5:49 pm

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thinkstoomuch wrote:What I found interesting was that at the 2nd Manticore Honor only used ~2,000.

Enjoy,
T2M


Not 100% sure on this, but the low numbers present could be down to being restricted to however many carriers they had available. After all, Filareta was late and constantly rotating system defense LACs back and forth might lead to some LACs being spotted in transit by the Solarians.

The easiest explanation for any missing LACs is that they were with the battlecruisers and lighter units covering Gryphon in case Filareta showed even a hint of unpredictableness.
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