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

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.

-snip-

wastedfly wrote:Wrong battle Munro.

munroburton wrote:

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.

lyonheart wrote:Hi all,

I was curious a couple weeks ago as to just how large the RMN's new construction was up to by the time of OB.

We have 2 interesting benchmarks; the old Fleet Strength Chart [FSC] of June 1920 just over 7 month's from the beginning Operation Thunderbolt, and the HoS "Jayne's" update of April 17, 1921 which split the remaining 20 month's before OB surprisingly evenly; the first ten month's from the June 1920 FSC, then the last perhaps most intriguing last ten month's.

I assume the 1920 FSC is familiar to most fans here, since it's been around since 2005 and is easily accessible at Joe Buckley's fifth imperium, and mention the HoS increases.

First, despite the several WroH and AAC references [NTM RFC posts] to 12 Invictuses in service and only 35 left under construction when Thunderbolt struck, especially at Grendlesbane, HoS claims 53 have been built despite the textev for only 47 until those laid down after the High Ridge government fell were completed in the month's after First Manticore [if built in only 90 weeks construction by accelerating and 'telescoping' all possible 'shortcuts', October 24th might have been roughly when the first commissioned if it was laid down on January 1st, 1920], so where the other 6 came from at least 27 weeks early is another one of those unexplained Bu9 mysteries.

In terms of size the next construction surprise were the 70+ more CLAC's, to the 42 in service as of the June 1920 FSC less the 9 losses with 3rd Fleet in First Manticore, which even with their unarmored construction is still quite impressive [isn't there a RFC post somewhere that CLAC's and BCL's take ~75-80 weeks for construction?]; despite the new missile screening doctrine does anyone think 112 CLAC's was enough by April 1921, before the new missile screening doctrine, so those building slips might have been then used to build more SDP's, or were even more slips built for more CLAC's?

After the Hydra CLAC's, there are the 11+ new Nike BCL's, and 79+ more Agamemnon BCP's for 90 new BC's in ten month's, which is also very impressive before considering the 165 million tons they mass.

Again, do people feel 80 odd BCP's [after Solon] is enough so all those yards would have been switched to Nike's, or are their potential capabilities as auxiliary Apollo pod carriers among other things, enough to keep them in production, and if so for how many more?

Granted what they could do to the SLN beggars description, since the SLN isn't a 'peer competitor', but how much of a consideration was that really in April 1921, especially when it appeared that Terekhov had removed that threat, NTM when Solon was the last action the Agamemnon's had seen?

The next category is heavy cruisers of course, and 146+ more Sag-C's at 70.5 MT, is awesome; how many think many more Sag-C's were completed before OB?

I'm betting the number built before OB easily exceeds the 175 of the Prince Consort Class, making it the largest heavy cruiser class in RMN history.

Avalon light cruisers are next and the 196+ mentioned poses a problem because they were first commissioned in 1919, possibly several month's before Thunderbolt.

So how many were built and commissioned before the June FSC?

I'm willing to consider 16-26, leaving 170-180 as new, for another 25+ MT, but how many of those yards were switched to Rolands, because of their greater missile capabilities?

Given the RMN had some 277 CL's as of the June FSC, isn't ~470 light cruisers [after losses], ie 60% more than the 295 the RMN had at the beginning of the First Haven war, enough?

It's possible due to their small size that the same slip could have built 2 in the 10 month interval, to give some idea of the number of Avalon class dedicated building slips.

Then we have the 48 Kamerling's at 276,250 tons for another 13 MT, which might be the basis for the near mythical light cruiser design although it appears RFC may favor something nearer the 336 KT mid point between the Sag-C and Roland.

Since no more are scheduled, were these yards used for Rolands or Sag-C's?

Then we have the 46+ Rolands, RFC told us years ago that the old 85,000 ton Chanson DD's [back when that was textev] took 15 weeks to build compared to a SD 100 times their mass taking 100 weeks, but that was the first war, so I suspect construction times have been significantly reduced or 'telescoped' and accelerated by integrating major sub assemblies and souped up nano's etc, such that a Roland might be built in as little as 20-21 weeks despite being more than twice the mass.

In case you've been adding all the new ships up, combining the known 35 Invictuses makes it 631 new ships, depending on how many Avalon's you figure were built before the June 1920 FSC, or over a billion tons in ten month's!

No wonder the star empire wasn't about to give up despite how dark it may have looked to us poor readers in WroH and the early part of AAC!

It's been over 9 years since I joined the bar, and I remember one of the first strong RFC critiques if not rebuke was to one of my posts for suggesting rather high RMN building rates for the lesser classes, since I figured each class had some 28 of the smaller and older building slips between Vulcan and Hephaestus, which was that many given the sizes of the stations.

Given the building curve RFC had implied above, I suggested that if DD's took 15 T-weeks, then CL's probably took 20 T-weeks given their then relatively small size, while CA's needed 25, and BC's 50.

RFC didn't mention any errors for those assumptions, but if they were in any way close, perhaps current building rates up to OB might have been 20-21 weeks for DD's, 25 for CL's and 30 for CA's.

Given the unarmored nature of CLAC's, even if they're framed in battle steel, I wonder if they might be built closer to 60 T-weeks, while the Nike takes 75.

I believe it was in SFtS, that we first had textev that the MA would have some 365 SDP's by the third week of February 1922, most of them Apollo capable, which ignored most of the ~205 older alliance SDP's that survived First Manticore that can't accept Keyhole's let alone KH-2's.

Somehow according to HoS, Benjamin managed to up Grayson SDP production so instead of the 2-3 per month we knew of in WroH and AAC, that Grayson really couldn't afford, a total of 50 more were completed according to Jayne's in those ten month's, almost 439 million tons of SDP's, a truly incredible triumph; and possibly why the MA survived.

Compared to that engineering miracle the GSN's other new ship construction is relatively paltry, 12 CLAC's, 17 type Sag-C's, 37 Avalon types, and 17 Roland types or less than 92 more million tons spread across 83 new warships, but a combined 740+ new starships of over 1.5+ billion tons in ten month's is nothing to be ashamed of.

The FSC details only 127 modern types then in the RMN, compared to 179 in the GSN for 306 total.

I'll have to finish this later, but does anyone want to suggest how much more the SEM was still expanding its production base over the next ten month's?

Besides the 180-200 SDP's completed as the RMN's share of the expected N/C, if new shipyard construction ceased, how would you have allocated the the last ten month's production?

For example, would you have upped Nike production over CLAC's?

Please feel free to add your wisdom.

L

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.

fester wrote: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.

JeffEngel wrote: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.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I don't think Kamerling is the "300K ton light ship" people are expecting at all; I think it's a lightweight, updated Broadsword intended primarily for Silesia,and any systems taken/occupied by the Alliance (in the 2nd Havenite war) for system control and law enforcement; more of a planetary control/customs ship than a naval combatant.

The same role as the Havenite BBs before the war, but much much less expensive.

JeffEngel wrote:Not exactly. The BB's did have a good bit of Marine presence and deployment capability, but they really were there for security against enemy warships as well - at least as much for that, though just how unpopular the government on Haven was and how much threat other navies posed at a time may make either mission weightier at a given time. A BB in a system meant you'd have to bring another waller or a lot of BC's on down to take the system away; a Kamerling in a system would mean you'd have to bring... a light cruiser. Possibly a tough destroyer.

JeffEngel wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I don't think Kamerling is the "300K ton light ship" people are expecting at all; I think it's a lightweight, updated Broadsword intended primarily for Silesia,and any systems taken/occupied by the Alliance (in the 2nd Havenite war) for system control and law enforcement; more of a planetary control/customs ship than a naval combatant.

Agreed. Strongly. With big shocked eyes that another conclusion could be drawn. HoS states outright that these are not meant to contest control of a system in space, but just for the traditional police and peacekeeping cruiser duties.

It's of about the right tonnage for that theoretical Future Cruiser - that's all it's got in common with it.

The same role as the Havenite BBs before the war, but much much less expensive.

Not exactly. The BB's did have a good bit of Marine presence and deployment capability, but they really were there for security against enemy warships as well - at least as much for that, though just how unpopular the government on Haven was and how much threat other navies posed at a time may make either mission weightier at a given time. A BB in a system meant you'd have to bring another waller or a lot of BC's on down to take the system away; a Kamerling in a system would mean you'd have to bring... a light cruiser. Possibly a tough destroyer.

kzt wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Not exactly. The BB's did have a good bit of Marine presence and deployment capability, but they really were there for security against enemy warships as well - at least as much for that, though just how unpopular the government on Haven was and how much threat other navies posed at a time may make either mission weightier at a given time. A BB in a system meant you'd have to bring another waller or a lot of BC's on down to take the system away; a Kamerling in a system would mean you'd have to bring... a light cruiser. Possibly a tough destroyer.

David suggested you could take it (or a solo SD) down with a BC squadron, but you'd end up with BC division left after your glorious victory.