Silesian Centaur BLAC

thanatos wrote:Regarding the SLN, they are so far behind the curve that they are where Haven was when the first war broke out. They would first need to divert the necessary resources, at the federal level (which is going to be a serious fight for the limited federal budget), to R&D and start figuring out a whole host of Manticoran advantages, including (but not limited to) miniaturization of components for missiles and ships, fission piles, dual- triple- and quadruple-drive missiles, the new compensators, the FTL communication system, the bow and stern walls (and buckler stage) and the new beta nodes.

Can you name me a single nation that got in an existential war and decided to surrender because they couldn't afford it?

kzt wrote:

thanatos wrote:Regarding the SLN, they are so far behind the curve that they are where Haven was when the first war broke out. They would first need to divert the necessary resources, at the federal level (which is going to be a serious fight for the limited federal budget), to R&D and start figuring out a whole host of Manticoran advantages, including (but not limited to) miniaturization of components for missiles and ships, fission piles, dual- triple- and quadruple-drive missiles, the new compensators, the FTL communication system, the bow and stern walls (and buckler stage) and the new beta nodes.

Can you name me a single nation that got in an existential war and decided to surrender because they couldn't afford it?

Can't think of one directly; but certainly having to rely on external suppliers tends to screw over countries when they can no longer scrape up the money to pay for them. Internally you can get away with inflation and printing money, but foreign suppliers tend to want to deal in stable currencies.

Arguably the way to League is set up it's isn't a nation, it's a treaty organization and the member worlds (and their shipyards) appear to be under no obligation to take IOUs to produce ships and supplies for the SLN or the League government. So if the Mandarins can't cough up hard cash to buy their new military they may be in a bind. Of course if they can convince those sovereign member worlds that they themselves face an existential war then the equation changes. But Manticore is planning to do everything in their power to convince those worlds that Manitcore is no threat to them and this is a fight only with the unconstitutional unelected bureaucracy of the League; and not with the member worlds of the League.

How well they'll pull that off only David knows, but if the people with the shipyards don't view it as an exetential war then the ability of the League government to pay actual cash does seem an important consideration. (They might not surrender due to lack of it, but they might fail to reequip as necessary to win)

You can also slant park the LAC, however I suggested a wide version of the BC(P).

Even if you just mount lasers and CM and Nike Sidewalls Fore and Aft walls You can still have 15-30 LAC and defensive capabilities. Let the LAC attack. Have no idea what somtaaw is typing about.

Ship tonnage is a displacement in alcohol, not a density and mass statement. Shrike LAC in House of Steel have wacky tonnage. They are around 4-5000 tons displacement. LAC have no armour. I have wondered if the Grasers has a great deal of weight.

thanatos wrote:I seem to recall textev from EoH where they described the decision to a DN-sized hull for the LAC Carrier rather than a BB-sized hull for the prototype (HMS Minotaur). I think it came down to Adm. Adcock stating that since they already planned to build DN-sized hulls for the ships off the assembly line, they might as well go for a full sized prototype.

Ultimately, my sense has been that dreadnoughts are going the way of the dinosaur in the Honorverse, as they were always a way to save money while still building ships-of-the-wall that could at least give proper superdreadnoughts a serious fight. At the beginning of SVW, some 90% of the Havenite wall-of-battle was SDs while only 60% of Manticore's was SDs (the rest being DNs). At the beginning of AAC, there was a debate about building DN(P)s and it was deemed not worth the time and money to design one, work out any design flaws and problems, setup the necessary assembly lines and then start building. It was simpler to keep on building the SD(P) which they would need to build anyways. So for Manticore at least, DN-sized hulls are the ships of choice for CLACs while Haven seems to prefer SD-sized hulls for theirs.

Actually, they originally wanted to make the testbed CLAC's even smaller than DNs, but the analysis of how they should/would perform always called for a minimum of a DN in the production model. And Admiral Adcock, then head of BuWeaps sold the testing by saying "the best scale is 10 millimeters to the centimeter" or something about that. However with ship size creep, what used to be called a Battleship is now Battlecruiser size.

And the ship choices are also material to intended roles. Manticore always envisioned their CLAC's to be used offensively, so a smaller hull to balance speed against brood was viewed as necessary. Haven viewed their CLAC's as primarily defensive, so SD's not only bring more LACs to the fight, they're tougher to kill.

On top of that, we've seen two real 'doctrines' of CLAC, even before we really tore them apart on forums. We've got fleet battle carriers (like the original Minotaur) that would drop their brood, and then fire off MDM's from maximum range. And then you've got fleet defense carriers (like the Grayson Covingtons, or Haven's SDs) that focus more on just maximum LAC capacity and they stay the hell away from combat because one good salvo will kill them.

Offensively, you could get away with a size creep battleship, because they're going to be the size of small (old) Dreadnoughts, and make great deep raiding squadrons. Fast enough to run like hell if you get ambushed, but enough firepower anything less than waller squadrons will get torn apart.

Defensively, nothing less than an SD makes any sense, because you want as many LAC's as you can get to protect your real wallers. And the SD's will let you use either half the carriers for the same LACs off DNs, or twice the LACs for only using full squadrons.