Honorverse ramblings and musings

no mention of the havenites ever adopting automation but then they had a much bigger population to draw from. I beilve the entire population of haven (planet) is equal to all of manticore and quite a bit of sphinx. given that the RHN has a min of what 20? 30? planets in can drawn people from you will understanding why automation was never a big deal to them

up until very recently the SKM could only draw personnel from 3 planets, all with relatively small populations. (compared to haven or SL worlds).

The SKM needed the automation, so they could crew more units to help reduce the numbers they were facing. obviously having better tech helped but as the well know quote goes "quantity has quality of its own".

of course a lot of this was done before people realised quite how much of a knock out Buttercup was going to be.

as we all know Jancek tried to build down the fleet and the loses taken there meant that again as many ships as possible were needed to counter the threat when the RHN did Thunderbolt .

as I have speculated before, once the Talbot quadrant and Silesia are brought up to Manty levels of education the RMN is going have a huge increase in potential warm bodies so may, emphasises on may, scale back its automation from 70% to more like %50.

more then one captain in particular terekov and kaplin has commented on how thin the automation leaves them for things like SAR or boarding ops.

Dauntless wrote:no mention of the havenites ever adopting automation but then they had a much bigger population to draw from. I beilve the entire population of haven (planet) is equal to all of manticore and quite a bit of sphinx. given that the RHN has a min of what 20? 30? planets in can drawn people from you will understanding why automation was never a big deal to them

up until very recently the SKM could only draw personnel from 3 planets, all with relatively small populations. (compared to haven or SL worlds).

The SKM needed the automation, so they could crew more units to help reduce the numbers they were facing. obviously having better tech helped but as the well know quote goes "quantity has quality of its own".

of course a lot of this was done before people realised quite how much of a knock out Buttercup was going to be.

as we all know Jancek tried to build down the fleet and the loses taken there meant that again as many ships as possible were needed to counter the threat when the RHN did Thunderbolt .

as I have speculated before, once the Talbot quadrant and Silesia are brought up to Manty levels of education the RMN is going have a huge increase in potential warm bodies so may, emphasises on may, scale back its automation from 70% to more like %50.

more then one captain in particular terekov and kaplin has commented on how thin the automation leaves them for things like SAR or boarding ops.

I don't recall any Havenite automation either. I'll assume that they'd want to adopt it though, to some degree, to reduce their butcher's bill. No need to throw warm bodies away.

Dauntless wrote:no mention of the havenites ever adopting automation but then they had a much bigger population to draw from. I beilve the entire population of haven (planet) is equal to all of manticore and quite a bit of sphinx. given that the RHN has a min of what 20? 30? planets in can drawn people from you will understanding why automation was never a big deal to them

up until very recently the SKM could only draw personnel from 3 planets, all with relatively small populations. (compared to haven or SL worlds).

The SKM needed the automation, so they could crew more units to help reduce the numbers they were facing. obviously having better tech helped but as the well know quote goes "quantity has quality of its own".

of course a lot of this was done before people realised quite how much of a knock out Buttercup was going to be.

as we all know Jancek tried to build down the fleet and the loses taken there meant that again as many ships as possible were needed to counter the threat when the RHN did Thunderbolt .

as I have speculated before, once the Talbot quadrant and Silesia are brought up to Manty levels of education the RMN is going have a huge increase in potential warm bodies so may, emphasises on may, scale back its automation from 70% to more like %50.

more then one captain in particular terekov and kaplin has commented on how thin the automation leaves them for things like SAR or boarding ops.

Please pardon the emboldening of your text.

Yet, besides for the sake of saving warm bodies, automation reduces crewing requirements which reduces life support and frees up available mass for more efficient use.

That would be even more critical to Havenite technology, which is more mass intensive across the board.

cthia wrote:
<snip>

Yet, besides for the sake of saving warm bodies, automation reduces crewing requirements which reduces life support and frees up available mass for more efficient use.

That would be even more critical to Havenite technology, which is more mass intensive across the board.

Unfortunately, it took Manticore about 40 years to get the current level of automation right. In the (semi-canonical) Sits and Jayne's there are several mentions of classes where the experimental automation was installed and ripped out because the tech just wasn't ready yet.

And using the COTS stuff merchants use doesn't cut it - the multiple redundancies and cofferdaming warships have requires a totally different level of AI remotes to handle and smart systems to allow just a few people to control (and fix) a ship.

The most important parts seem to be bleeding edge tech, that Haven probably cannot replicate yet.

I don't believe automation and its ensuring decrease in life support frees up all that much mass, honorvise life support is very efficient.

it is hard to judge given that all the ships with high automation, rolands (almost twice as big), Sag C (all of the sag had somne automation so best comparison is probably a star knight and teh sag C is about two thirds again as big), Nike (got to compare to reliant, flight 4 came to almost 1M tons so nike is more then twice the size) are so much bigger then similar ships.

note i deliberately did not mention the invictus as it is only a bit bigger then a medusa (approx 200K tons with a 60% increase in CM and 20% in PD), yet has greater automation but no broadside tubes (which i have always thought odd). medusa has a fair bit of automation but is again only a bit bigger then a gryphon class.

as i said from my reading of it, the automation and the ensuring reducing in personnel will have left room for more equipment, but the big push was about about being able to spread the same number of people over more ships, hopefully reducing casualties but also spreading what is still a fairly limited pool of personnel over a greater number of ships thus cutting into the peeps numerical superiority.

i'm sure the heavenites will happily adopt it now that the benefits are pointed out, though probably not to the same degree as the RMN.

cthia wrote:I don't recall any Havenite automation either. I'll assume that they'd want to adopt it though, to some degree, to reduce their butcher's bill. No need to throw warm bodies away.

Probably, though possibly not to quite the extremes that Manticore did. Haven has had more recent experience in a multi-sided civil war with the likely need for more boarding actions or landing parties to secure critical locations or prisoners. So they probably wouldn't want to cut as deeply into their attached ground / security capable units as Manticore did on their light units. (OTOH Haven has never had the expeditionary anti-piracy mission that the peacetime RMN was tasked with in Silesia - so that may affect how many troops Haven had on their light units to begin with).

All that said, even though we haven't seen anything about significant crewing reduction from newer Havenite units they are still operate with leaner crews than SLN units of the same displacement.

cthia wrote:I don't recall, did the RHN ever manage to cut its crewing requirements as well? Which, if they didn't, it couldn't have translated into more available mass for increased combat power.

And, if not, then automation would also be a part of the tech transfer.

Not according to the numbers given for Havenite losses at the Battle of Manticore.

251 SD(P)s destroyed : 1.7 to 2 million personnel KIA = ~7,900 per vessel
68 SD(P)s captured : 380k personnel POW = ~5,900 per vessel

Making appropriate adjustments for screening units and LACs, it looks like Havenite SD(P)s were crewed by between 5,000 and 5,500. Pretty much the lower ballpark of legacy SDs.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't recall any Havenite automation either. I'll assume that they'd want to adopt it though, to some degree, to reduce their butcher's bill. No need to throw warm bodies away.

Probably, though possibly not to quite the extremes that Manticore did. Haven has had more recent experience in a multi-sided civil war with the likely need for more boarding actions or landing parties to secure critical locations or prisoners. So they probably wouldn't want to cut as deeply into their attached ground / security capable units as Manticore did on their light units. (OTOH Haven has never had the expeditionary anti-piracy mission that the peacetime RMN was tasked with in Silesia - so that may affect how many troops Haven had on their light units to begin with).

All that said, even though we haven't seen anything about significant crewing reduction from newer Havenite units they are still operate with leaner crews than SLN units of the same displacement.

I didn't think they'd automate to the same degree as the Manties either, that's why I initially said "to some degree." But truthfully, my reasoning had more to do with advancements in tech and training. I.E., I didn't think the RHN could duplicate the level of tech to equally pull off the same level of automation even if they'd want to -- plus, I wonder how much pressure, if any, automation would place on the level of training of the remaining officers.

I would imagine that officers would have to be cross trained to a greater degree with automation. It isn't intuitive, I know. But in practice it is.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't recall, did the RHN ever manage to cut its crewing requirements as well? Which, if they didn't, it couldn't have translated into more available mass for increased combat power.

And, if not, then automation would also be a part of the tech transfer.

Not according to the numbers given for Havenite losses at the Battle of Manticore.

251 SD(P)s destroyed : 1.7 to 2 million personnel KIA = ~7,900 per vessel
68 SD(P)s captured : 380k personnel POW = ~5,900 per vessel

Making appropriate adjustments for screening units and LACs, it looks like Havenite SD(P)s were crewed by between 5,000 and 5,500. Pretty much the lower ballpark of legacy SDs.

Thanks for the numbers. Now that you've posted it, it jogs my memory. The RHN never did achieve any level of automation.

But I wonder if they even knew of the Manty level of automation? Now that I think of it, IIRC, didn't Honor hide the fact once from POWs aboard ship so they wouldn't get any ideas? Or am I misremembering this due to series bleed?

For that matter, after each battle readers are treated to the butcher's bills. I always assumed the bills were public knowledge. Do you think? Because if Haven actually saw the disparaging gulf in perspective butcher's bills per ship, seems someone would ask questions.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't recall, did the RHN ever manage to cut its crewing requirements as well? Which, if they didn't, it couldn't have translated into more available mass for increased combat power.

And, if not, then automation would also be a part of the tech transfer.

Not according to the numbers given for Havenite losses at the Battle of Manticore.

251 SD(P)s destroyed : 1.7 to 2 million personnel KIA = ~7,900 per vessel
68 SD(P)s captured : 380k personnel POW = ~5,900 per vessel

Making appropriate adjustments for screening units and LACs, it looks like Havenite SD(P)s were crewed by between 5,000 and 5,500. Pretty much the lower ballpark of legacy SDs.

Which makes sense - ships with podbays and fewer weapons mounts need fewer people to man them