Build a Fleet!

Theemile wrote:Tom Pope weighed in on it when I asked him awhile back. Corvettes are essentially Frigate/DD sized Sublight ships with DD/CL weapons fits. It made more sense in Travis Long's day than today (Due to size of the weapons of the day).

Good info. Thanx. (I haven't read the full novel(s) yet in that series, but don't mind this kind of spoilers.)

Theemile wrote:They are used sparingly today in certain situations - The Dillingham cartel had a pair protecting it's operations in Walther IIRC, ...

I can't find any textev re: Dillingham except for their establishment in Melchior:

... she knew from the general background brief Captain Bachfisch had shared with War Maiden's company that Dillingham had seen fit to install some truly impressive defensive systems to protect their extraction complexes and Arianna itself. They would not have been very effective against a regular naval force, but they were more than enough to give any piratical riffraff serious pause. Unfortunately, the Confederacy's central government refused to countenance privately flagged warships in its territorial space, so Dillingham had been forced to restrict itself to orbital systems. ...

No mention of Corvettes in connection with Walther, either.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:Tom Pope weighed in on it when I asked him awhile back. Corvettes are essentially Frigate/DD sized Sublight ships with DD/CL weapons fits. It made more sense in Travis Long's day than today (Due to size of the weapons of the day).

Good info. Thanx. (I haven't read the full novel(s) yet in that series, but don't mind this kind of spoilers.)

Theemile wrote:They are used sparingly today in certain situations - The Dillingham cartel had a pair protecting it's operations in Walther IIRC, ...

I can't find any textev re: Dillingham except for their establishment in Melchior:

... she knew from the general background brief Captain Bachfisch had shared with War Maiden's company that Dillingham had seen fit to install some truly impressive defensive systems to protect their extraction complexes and Arianna itself. They would not have been very effective against a regular naval force, but they were more than enough to give any piratical riffraff serious pause. Unfortunately, the Confederacy's central government refused to countenance privately flagged warships in its territorial space, so Dillingham had been forced to restrict itself to orbital systems. ...

No mention of Corvettes in connection with Walther, either.

Grrrr, force me to look it up...

It was in HaE and the planet was Schiller.

Somtaaw wrote:Regarding building hyper-capable corvettes (or the concept)

McKeon during the later end of Honor of the Queen, paraphrased slightly wrote:By the time you have the technology to build the tractors, you can build better ships and dont need the LACs

I recall those TL-corvettes were roughly an old battlecruiser chopped in half, but I don't have my House of Steel to check the oldest ships that were listed there.

Checking the wiki, the oldest page of RMN BC is the Redoubtable (1786 PD, 686m length), and the oldest RMN FG is the Noblesse (1819 PD, 351m length). That's just about exactly the same size ratio of a corvette being loosely 50% of a BC.

That makes a corvette simply a sublight DD. Dispatch boats aren't much smaller than a DD and they carry zero weapons for the hyperdrive. Corvette being the same size as both DD's and DB's, there's simply no room to cram a hyper drive in and still be useful. It'll carry slightly more weapons for displacement, but the drawback in mobility (both in sublight and lack of hyper) makes either LACs or full DD's a better choice.

I didn't read the wiki, but if it called Noblesse a frigate, it is incorrect. Whatever they did for Travis Long's navy, it doesn't look like a good sort of idea.

Compare the beams, before you just cut it in half--doing that with a Redoubtable would give you a ship heavier than a cruiser, and you wouldn't want the armor anyway.

Also, the corvette is considerably smaller than a dispatch boat. Otherwise, it must be very like a sub-light Last Century PD destroyer. The ones used in the text (at Schiller,thanks Theemile!) were allowed because they weren't any threat to the Confederate Navy, which was not the most effective police force.

Ship sizes: At 68K+ tons, a Noblesse is small for a destroyer. A frigate is the size of a DB, or similar in size to the Tankersly (Star Falcon class VIP transport -55K ton), so likely around 50 to 60K tons. The corvette is described as being around 40K tons. I hadn't remembered it as being sub-light, but it apparently is.

Theemile kindly posted that Tom Pope commented on these ships: it is in "Re: Corvettes" , posted in 2013; here is a link to the page. The thread is worth reading, if you missed it.

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4483&p=104772&hilit=corvette#p104772 Pope made more than one comment on the topic.

Note that Pope is pretty clear on one thing--the Havenite LACs (Cimeterre) are almost as big as the pre-war corvettes already; and the LACs probably are just as dangerous as the older corvettes. Which means, there isn't any advantage to building them.

Weird Harold, yes Melchior. I went through the books and anthologies once--I think I got 14 star systems just in Saginaw. So how come the Star Empire only got 34?

YMMV, of course.

Rob

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote: How many will they keep in service when they achieve the Harrington goal of Peace Through
Trade?

About 3000 SD’s because according to your theory they will be involved in a new war every other day... When you have hundreds or thousands of Mutual Defense treaties you end up having to uphold your side of the treaty regularly, you have to destroy someone’s fleet and then occupy their planets

How do figure that?

The whole point of Nodal MDF forces is to prevent wars by having a multi-national force ready and able to swat anyone who starts a war.

There will never be a need to "occupy their planets" because once an aggressor's navy is neutralized, they are no longer capable of effective aggression.

I'm not sure where you get the 3,000 SD figure. Participation in a Nodal MDF should only require 4 X 200 = 800 SD(p) with minimal RMN screen units. Other than that, Manticore, Haven, and Grayson can drop back to essentially pre-war levels of a couple hundred SDs for home fleet(s) spread over the various areas of the SEM. The majority of the RMN pre-war was cruisers with Battlecruisers as the "queens of the fleet." Post-war, I'd expect a next-gen "Roland" DD/CL and Nike class BCL, [with a tonnage-matching BCL(P) design,] to make up the majority of the RMN.

I have a little more faith in international politics at least warning of war before it breaks out, and have faith in my fixed defense SDF even if the legacy equipment is sub-optimal; "quantity has a quality all its own."

According to my Strategic Assessment, I only need a basic anti-piracy/anti-slavery patrol force and I chose roughly the same equipment as I expect the RMN to down-size to when peace breaks out. (Apparently, YOU are on the far side of the Renaisance Factor because they were the nearest potential threat I identified.)

Sigs wrote:My neighbors perception would not save me in a war, therefore it is irrelevant.

Your neighbors perception is very relevant if your over-sized fleet pushes them into an arms race and starts that war you're paranoid about. Especially if two or more of your neighbors of comparable economic strength band together against you.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote: I went through the books and anthologies once--I think I got 14 star systems just in Saginaw. So how come the Star Empire only got 34?

YMMV, of course.

Rob

Because there were less than 70 star systems in the Silesian Confederacy. Some sectors in Silesia have only a few systems. The text gives the number, somewhere; I think it was 68, which means the Star Empire got exactly half.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Theemile kindly posted that Tom Pope commented on these ships: it is in "Re: Corvettes" , posted in 2013; here is a link to the page. The thread is worth reading, if you missed it.

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4483&p=104772&hilit=corvette#p104772 Pope made more than one comment on the topic.

Note that Pope is pretty clear on one thing--the Havenite LACs (Cimeterre) are almost as big as the pre-war corvettes already; and the LACs probably are just as dangerous as the older corvettes. Which means, there isn't any advantage to building them.

Since the Corvette class came up as a better description of my notional "frigate-sized LAC with a Spider Drive and armed with an SD-class Graser and Mk-16G equivalents" I probably should expound a bit more on the rough concept.

1: Spider-LACs are cheap. A system can build or buy a LOT of them, so their lack of speed is less of a disadvantage.

2: Spider-LACs don't have the armament to fill a Corvette or Destroyer's role. Despite the size of individual Spider-LACs, it takes a squadron or two to make up to sustained combat power of a DD, FG or Corvette. They're in a lot of ways, just missile pod transport engine. They are as big as they are to have room for three missile pods nestled in between their triple-keels; one per side.

3: Spider-LACs have to start from deployed positions around the system to generate intercepts on even slow merchantmen for customs inspections -- which is their primary employment.

4: Shrike/Cimmeterre class LACs are individually more capable, but are too small to mount Mk16G analogs. The extended range of the Mk16G equivalents and Stealth are sold as offsetting the lack of acceleration.

SWM wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote: I went through the books and anthologies once--I think I got 14 star systems just in Saginaw. So how come the Star Empire only got 34?

YMMV, of course.

Rob

Because there were less than 70 star systems in the Silesian Confederacy. Some sectors in Silesia have only a few systems. The text gives the number, somewhere; I think it was 68, which means the Star Empire got exactly half.

I expect "the text" is HOS? The thing is, the Author doesn't define an area until he is writing a story in it. So while you get maps of the "Silesian Confederacy" (in HAE and in WoH) the only areas where he filled in much of anything were the areas patrolled by the Trojans: Posnan, Breslau, and Saginaw got the majority. I got another few system names apiece from the short stories (Ms.Middy, IFF, etc.). I think my list of stars in those three sectors comes close to all the new systems.

But there are several sectors that are mostly just blank, a canvas he didn't write on yet. Like Tumult, with the Chalice Cluster just so you know it is on the other side of forever.

Sarah; Carleton; Tumult; Silisia itself, are all SECTORS. Why bother with a sector or its government overhead if no one lives there? It doesn't make sense to me that the invisible and non-existent "sector borders" would have most of the population in just the southern tier of the entire Confederacy.

It makes a lot more sense that the author didn't define the area more accurately, when the story he was writing at that moment didn't require it. So if all the sectors were more or less the same, I'd expect around three times the number of total systems given in HOS. But what the Star Empire has in Silesia isn't defined any better because it isn't going to make any difference in the war with the League.

Since they weren't ever defined, or even accurately mapped, MWW can do whatever he wants with them; I suspect if he was just now starting the short stories, he might even have set them in different sectors, since none of the systems--like, Casimir, forex., are on the maps. But he put the majority of unmapped systems into Saginaw, for some reason. I don't actually care one way or the other about the system numbers. But I think when it came to Silesia, it is no longer an area central to the story, and the author isn't going to spend the time to flesh it out unless he has to. Which left BuNine with a real lack of information about any of the blank areas.

In addition, the "Trianon Combine" freighter that Caslet found that set Vaubon on Warnecke's trail initially, was from a protectorate system outside the Confederacy. How many of those were there? The author makes a habit of not including details like that, unless they are pertinent to the story he's telling. I think he thinks it cuts down on the total number of info-dumps, and some people were critical of those.

Me, I always liked them.

YMMV

Rob

Weird Harold wrote:How do figure that?

The whole point of Nodal MDF forces is to prevent wars by having a multi-national force ready and able to swat anyone who starts a war.

The thing about wars is that they are rarely black and white, as long as humanity exists people will find ways to benefit from wars. Do you think that this will prevent all wars? When the first such war happens and Manticore is settled with the bill in both financial and humanitarian sense they will reassess their “commitments” if they were stupid enough to make them in the first place.

Weird Harold wrote: There will never be a need to "occupy their planets" because once an aggressor's navy is neutralized, they are no longer capable of effective aggression.

So you go in and blow their industry and their navy or just their navy? Because you kill their navy and leave their government means that you essentially leave them to wait for a better chance to strike.

Weird Harold wrote: I'm not sure where you get the 3,000 SD figure.

Random number, they will need to have enough forces to deal with multiple threats hundreds of light years apart while at the same time protecting their territory and trade. Throw in your Nodal forces and that just drives the #’s up.

Weird Harold wrote: Participation in a Nodal MDF should only require 4 X 200 = 800 SD(p) with minimal RMN screen units.

I have a peace treaty and a navy of 500 SD’s(150 regular/350 reserve), Who provides the SD’s for the Nodal Force in my sector? After all I have a peace treaty with Manticore but I did not sign a Mutual Defense Agreement as I don't want to be dragged in to everyone else's wars. Then add in that there will likely be dozens of major nations who rise after the fall of the League who will not participate in this nodal forces and will therefore build up their own fleets, from a squadron of SD’s up to 500 or more SD’s depending on their resources which means that Manticore ends up having to put in more than 4 SD’s per 100 systems...

Weird Harold wrote: Other than that, Manticore, Haven, and Grayson can drop back to essentially pre-war levels of a couple hundred SDs for home fleet(s) spread over the various areas of the SEM. The majority of the RMN pre-war was cruisers with Battlecruisers as the "queens of the fleet." Post-war, I'd expect a next-gen "Roland" DD/CL and Nike class BCL, [with a tonnage-matching BCL(P) design,] to make up the majority of the RMN.

Not if they have to maintain hundreds of nodal forces and participate in dozens if not hundreds of wars all over the known galaxy. After all the real point of those nodal forces would be for a strong force behind them right? So the 800 SD’s in the nodal forces will require 2 or more times that number just to rotate them back to home port and back up the nodal forces with powerful fleets. Then add in Home Fleet, and the fleet units assigned to the spread out Talbott and Silesia and you are already approaching 3000 SD’s and I am low balling it here.

Weird Harold wrote: I have a little more faith in international politics at least warning of war before it breaks out, and have faith in my fixed defense SDF even if the legacy equipment is sub-optimal; "quantity has a quality all its own."

Not if your quantity is spread over 20 systems. If you could concentrate all of your defenses in one system or a few systems it might be true but all of your systems are on their own except for the 40 BB’s and 200 DD’s. IF the Nodal Force, Manticore or both are busy or otherwise unable/unwilling to assist you I can dismantle you at my pleasure without worrying about my territory being attacked because you have no mobile forces worth mentioning.


How’s that quantity working out for the league?

Weird Harold wrote: According to my Strategic Assessment, I only need a basic anti-piracy/anti-slavery patrol force and I chose roughly the same equipment as I expect the RMN to down-size to when peace breaks out. (Apparently, YOU are on the far side of the Renaisance Factor because they were the nearest potential threat I identified.)

Why do you assume that the RF would exist after it becomes known that they are part of the MA?

Weird Harold wrote: Your neighbors perception is very relevant if your over-sized fleet pushes them into an arms race and starts that war you're paranoid about. Especially if two or more of your neighbors of comparable economic strength band together against you.

That is assuming that my defense requirements are going to force my neighbors in to war. My philosophy is best summed up by this one statement: Speak softly and carry a big stick. I don’t start fights but I believe in having the means to end them... permanently. I will use diplomacy to prevent wars, but if someone is not quite willing to leave me alone I have my stick to beat them with.

Weird Harold wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Theemile kindly posted that Tom Pope commented on these ships: it is in "Re: Corvettes" , posted in 2013; here is a link to the page. The thread is worth reading, if you missed it.

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4483&p=104772&hilit=corvette#p104772 Pope made more than one comment on the topic.

Note that Pope is pretty clear on one thing--the Havenite LACs (Cimeterre) are almost as big as the pre-war corvettes already; and the LACs probably are just as dangerous as the older corvettes. Which means, there isn't any advantage to building them.

Since the Corvette class came up as a better description of my notional "frigate-sized LAC with a Spider Drive and armed with an SD-class Graser and Mk-16G equivalents" I probably should expound a bit more on the rough concept.

1: Spider-LACs are cheap. A system can build or buy a LOT of them, so their lack of speed is less of a disadvantage.

2: Spider-LACs don't have the armament to fill a Corvette or Destroyer's role. Despite the size of individual Spider-LACs, it takes a squadron or two to make up to sustained combat power of a DD, FG or Corvette. They're in a lot of ways, just missile pod transport engine. They are as big as they are to have room for three missile pods nestled in between their triple-keels; one per side.

3: Spider-LACs have to start from deployed positions around the system to generate intercepts on even slow merchantmen for customs inspections -- which is their primary employment.

4: Shrike/Cimmeterre class LACs are individually more capable, but are too small to mount Mk16G analogs. The extended range of the Mk16G equivalents and Stealth are sold as offsetting the lack of acceleration.

I must have missed more than I thought! Why would you want to build anything with the spider at all for routine use?
1) skateboards are cheap. I don't recommend they use them to replace vehicles. What make the spider lac cheaper than a regular vessel?
2)If they are just a platform for carrying the Mark 16G, what are they going to do that the system defense pods won't?
3) If their primary employment is customs enforcement, they are way way overgunned. I would think you'd do better with regular LACs or DDs or something; cargo inspection is done with a Navy/Marine squad sized element where we've seen it done.
4) Why would anyone buy the stealth or Mk capability in a commerce-inspection vessel? It is total overkill on merchies, and doesn't offer any ability against hostiles you don't already have.

I think someone slipped you one of Skimper's protein bars!

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I think someone slipped you one of Skimper's protein bars!

Nah, Charles or one of his ilk sold my legacy SDF systems. Everything is overbuilt and sub-optimal, but quantity has a quality all its own.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:2)If they are just a platform for carrying the Mark 16G, what are they going to do that the system defense pods won't?

Cover areas "in shadow" from the Huacha systems. And/or repel scouting elements without exposing the exact Huacha deployments.