Captured Solly SDs

WilliamHall wrote: Crew them with the SLN survivors after destroying their weapons systems and send them back, in lots of 5-10, to different core worlds.

No drain with POWs. There is at least a chance that the truth of the encounters escapes into public knowledge. You require parole of the crews (who might be smart enough to refuse further combat anyway, that's a PR hit.) And then the SLN [idiots] maybe waste their resources in the same way it has been suggested here, trying to fix them.

Parole would be difficult to arrange. Terms such as 'parolees can't be assigned to positions that would return them to the conflict until/unless exchanged' won't work, since the GA should be launching deep strikes into the League. That might be manageable; e.g. 'can't be assigned to hypercapable ships until...'.

But the big problem is that parole assumes a degree of good faith on both sides. I.e. that parolees won't simply be ordered back into the war. Which would put the parolees in the position of either violating their parole or disobeying a direct order. The SLN would have to publicly agree not to do that. But the Mandarins are currently claiming that the Manties murdered a million Sollie spacers — after they surrendered. How can they agree to treat the Manties as honorable enemies?

If they don't, what are the Manties going to do if they recapture parolees violating their paroles? Shoot them? PR-wise, it'd be better to keep them as POWs, and eat the cost of their rations and quarters.

Bill Woods wrote:

WilliamHall wrote: Crew them with the SLN survivors after destroying their weapons systems and send them back, in lots of 5-10, to different core worlds.

No drain with POWs. There is at least a chance that the truth of the encounters escapes into public knowledge. You require parole of the crews (who might be smart enough to refuse further combat anyway, that's a PR hit.) And then the SLN [idiots] maybe waste their resources in the same way it has been suggested here, trying to fix them.

Parole would be difficult to arrange.

[snip]

If they don't, what are the Manties going to do if they recapture parolees violating their paroles? Shoot them? PR-wise, it'd be better to keep them as POWs, and eat the cost of their rations and quarters.

Why even bother paroling them if you are doing if strictly for PR?

Remove/damage the weapons system badly enough to need a yard to repair them, crew them up with captured Sollies, and 'escort' them back to Beowolf and on to Old Sol. The GA escorts could remain outside the hyper limit and send a message "We are returning your surviving sailors and warships with offensive capability removed. We do not want a war, but if you insist on having one we will finish it." Wait a bit to see if there is any response and then hyper out.

The PR damage alone of simply returning hundreds of thousands of captured sailors PLUS all of the SDs like they don't even matter could be huge by itself as the implication of that filtered through the population of Old Sol (the only thing that really matters to the Mandarins).

I wonder even without parole how many SLN survivors would be willing to go out and face the GA again. Its also harder to silence hundreds of thousands of voices, made more effective by sending them to a dozen or so core world's with no warning. If the enlisted sailors were forced to fight you'd imagine they would be very vocal about surrendering if it even began to look rocky. Might be true for officers too. If you are the SNL admiralty do you risk that or shove those sailors away where they can't damage your remaining morale?

I would take all the new missiles left and give them to Beowulf for there SD. If there are enough missiles left I would then outfit the best surviving SL SD and give them to Beowulf A nice stop gap till there system defense is up and running and a good way to start training up new crews for the war. I would scrap the rest for the new ship yards.
The support train is were the real help comes in I would up grade the compensators on all the repair, troop trans port, and military supply ships. They may be crew intensive but then again Beowulf needs to work up there forces to a war time standing and there priority will be in getting the new SD from haven out fitted with all the manti hardware and missiles. Not having to build these ships while up grading there Sd fleet will speed things along.

marcus wrote:I would take all the new missiles left and give them to Beowulf for there SD. If there are enough missiles left I would then outfit the best surviving SL SD and give them to Beowulf A nice stop gap till there system defense is up and running and a good way to start training up new crews for the war. I would scrap the rest for the new ship yards.

This only works if Beowulf's SDF is actually operating Scientist-class SDs. Chances are that their ships are more advanced than that. In any case, it would make more sense for them to try and use mothballed RMN ships.

The E wrote:

marcus wrote:I would take all the new missiles left and give them to Beowulf for there SD. If there are enough missiles left I would then outfit the best surviving SL SD and give them to Beowulf A nice stop gap till there system defense is up and running and a good way to start training up new crews for the war. I would scrap the rest for the new ship yards.

This only works if Beowulf's SDF is actually operating Scientist-class SDs. Chances are that their ships are more advanced than that. In any case, it would make more sense for them to try and use mothballed RMN ships.

Well - the crews are still going to be very familiar with Scientist SD's, even if they've moved up to better ones. And Beowulf's SDF refits and new builds have been intentionally conservative to avoid giving the SLN (if it pays that much attention) to the changes in warfare, so the BSDF may not already be using much more advanced ships anyway.

There is still the issue there with sheer numbers of trained, available crews for Beowulf - same as anywhere else to send those SD's, with the exceptions of places (Haven) that may have the crews but certainly have better places to put all of them. And if Beowulf's ships have relatively quiet advances built in, such as better compensators, that would still give the BSDF a performance envelope the Scientist SD's can't match.

i have been thinking about captured solly hardware a lot, especially the SD´s

destroyers,cruisers,heavy cruisers could obviousely be given to trusted systems for antipiracy duties

as theress obviouesely enough fleet train captured to ensure a shortterm supply of spareparts

and im pretty sure the allianz is going to capture more units and spares.

arment is sufficent to detere pirates too, at least for the next 5-10 years

captured solly BC and SD are another page of this

for one fleet trains captured should enable them to be sevicabel for a while, while obsolete by allianz standard they are quiet good by any other standard

so they are sufficent for 2nd or 3d grade navys

the catharpht muultidrive missiles making them superior to any verge hardware

so what to do ?

problem nr 1 is finding a starsysttem worthy to be entrusted with this combat power

problem nr 2 is the enourmese personal requirement and the necesary recources to keep the units combat ready

the enemy is the solarian league, which in the verge in the form of frontier fleet has battle cruisers max

so to counter frontierfleets solarian bc it would be sufficent to have solarian superdreadnaughts

im thinking of meyers, a system with a population and techbase sufficent to operate bc´s and even solarian SD´s

friendly to manticore and vital to its interests, give them 18 SD and 8 BC and they will be able to defend themselfs for 3-5 years

btw i think the personal problem can be solved, a SD with full complement of 6000 can be faught by 2 people

a helmsman and a captain

propably at no more then 10% capability

but 10% of a SD is a lot

with 60 people it may very well achive 65% of capability at the start

i think a SD with 60 people, 20 main 20 secondaryy 20 damage control would be worth 3 BC fully maned, that is solarian BC

think throw away orbital defense fortresses for stratedgic systems

with limited lifetime

svenhauke wrote:i have been thinking about captured solly hardware a lot, especially the SD´s

destroyers,cruisers,heavy cruisers could obviousely be given to trusted systems for antipiracy duties

as theress obviouesely enough fleet train captured to ensure a shortterm supply of spareparts

and im pretty sure the allianz is going to capture more units and spares.

arment is sufficent to detere pirates too, at least for the next 5-10 years

captured solly BC and SD are another page of this

for one fleet trains captured should enable them to be sevicabel for a while, while obsolete by allianz standard they are quiet good by any other standard

so they are sufficent for 2nd or 3d grade navys

the catharpht muultidrive missiles making them superior to any verge hardware

so what to do ?

problem nr 1 is finding a starsysttem worthy to be entrusted with this combat power

problem nr 2 is the enourmese personal requirement and the necesary recources to keep the units combat ready

the enemy is the solarian league, which in the verge in the form of frontier fleet has battle cruisers max

so to counter frontierfleets solarian bc it would be sufficent to have solarian superdreadnaughts

im thinking of meyers, a system with a population and techbase sufficent to operate bc´s and even solarian SD´s

friendly to manticore and vital to its interests, give them 18 SD and 8 BC and they will be able to defend themselfs for 3-5 years

btw i think the personal problem can be solved, a SD with full complement of 6000 can be faught by 2 people

a helmsman and a captain

propably at no more then 10% capability

but 10% of a SD is a lot

with 60 people it may very well achive 65% of capability at the start

i think a SD with 60 people, 20 main 20 secondaryy 20 damage control would be worth 3 BC fully maned, that is solarian BC

think throw away orbital defense fortresses for stratedgic systems

with limited lifetime

Svenhawk, those 6000 people aren't there on vacation. Look at Honor at Cerebus, and the sizes of crews she needed on her CAs/BCs just for a short term duration. These ship require massive amounts of maintenance, and require dozens of men just to observe the operations of the reactors. Yes, there is lots of redundancy in an SD (they are the definition of redundancy), but just to move (and not fight) an SD will require a crew of hundreds. The minimum crew needed to fight a Solarian SD is believed to be in the 1500-2000 range.

Yes, your crew of 60 can turn on the automation, but the SD will fight like a lamed duck. We've seen in several places what a trained crew can do against canned systems - and it isn't pretty.

The item you are not addressing is this is a situation ripe for a 3rd party to attempt to walk off with your waller.

most of the crew is for damage control, or support

the arment ecm defense are in controll of the comand deck, to fight a ship you need the crew of the command deck

the kitchen staff for 6000 people is propably 80 people to 120 people, totally useless in a fight

theres about 3200 people in the individual graser laser cm and missile mounts, not needed just write off mounts disabled

theres about 2200 people in engeneering and emergency repair partys, not needed, shut off the system and forget them

you need the comand deck, 2. comand in case primary gets destroyed and damage control

the problem is power and engines

id prefer to remote control them from damage control

and no need for marines

so 60 can fight

and not even close to full capability, id say no more then 50%

as SD´s are terrible expensive (oops they are freee) people want to use them at their max fighting capability

but if they are for free ?

50% is fine

and honor harington grew up in a navy which fights max, she only needed 1/4 of the usual personal

svenhauke wrote:most of the crew is for damage control, or support

the arment ecm defense are in controll of the comand deck, to fight a ship you need the crew of the command deck

the kitchen staff for 6000 people is propably 80 people to 120 people, totally useless in a fight

theres about 3200 people in the individual graser laser cm and missile mounts, not needed just write off mounts disabled

theres about 2200 people in engeneering and emergency repair partys, not needed, shut off the system and forget them

you need the comand deck, 2. comand in case primary gets destroyed and damage control

the problem is power and engines

id prefer to remote control them from damage control

and no need for marines

so 60 can fight

and not even close to full capability, id say no more then 50%

as SD´s are terrible expensive (oops they are freee) people want to use them at their max fighting capability

but if they are for free ?

50% is fine

That doesn't appear to be the way things work in the Honorverse, I'd say more like 20%, especially after the first couple of salvos.