Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Whitecold wrote:Grayson managed to acquire a few old point defense autocannons that else would have gone to scrap.
How much more expensive do you figure an entire SD with spares is?
We're biased because we mostly see Manticore, which is not only the richest single star entity, but also the largest shipbuilding center. Building a new SD is much cheaper for the RMN than buying a single Solly SD.
Of course, with the war starting, the SL is not going to sell much.

I was kind of thinking that they have a lot of "slightly used, surrendered only once" SLN SDs and other ships that they have no good use for.

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:
Second, you are grossly underestimating what it would take to be able to support a navy with superdreadnoughts. It is not just the pay of the crew, or even the raw cost of building the ships. It is investment in entire industries which a Verge nation otherwise does not need. It is infrastructure, both groundside and in space, for logistics, command, maintenance. Why should a Verge nation do all that if they don't need it? As I said before, they generally don't need it.

You are getting complete systems with a supply of spare parts. You don't need to build anything. You can also buy parts, since the tech is most over 100 years old. You don't need the ability to run expeditions 200 ly, you need the ability to operate inside the hyperlimit.

By "complete systems", do you mean they are getting shipyards to do maintenance work? Storage facilities to hold all those spare parts? Docking facilities? Training facilities? Naval command facilities? Housing for crew, maintenance, command, and logistics personnel?

And I still say they generally don't need superdreadnoughts in the first place. Why do you need superdreadnoughts to "operate inside the hyperlimit"?

Brigade XO wrote:I thought this particular horse was dead and buried (or turned into glue and dogwood).

Only the good die young, XO.

Don't worry, someone will be posting a thread about Frigates before too long....

Friend kzt, of course the overall costs for crewing and maintaining a SD and support units is within any systems budget if they are willing to either raise taxes or cut somewhere else in the budget.

That is why Indonesia has that supercarrier and the Phillipines the half-dozen Aegis cruisers...oh, wait...

Like SWM is saying, it depends on the threat enviroment as perceived by each planet--or just as importantly what the leadership of said planet views as the threat environment. A republic-type government in the Core may have a slightly different outlook from a megomanical dictator on a Verge world.

On the other hand, with the...interesting times...that are coming to the SL and indeed, all of human-space, the environment will be changing, sometimes quickly and drastically, and threats may be arising from sources heretofore not considered threatening--well, I guess we shall see.

In other words, I don't know where the )(&(*%$ the MWW is going to take us, but I hope to enjoy the journey...

As I se it the only useful Solly Warships that can be distributed to verge navies are the destroyers and light cruisers that were captured. They could be used for system protection.

BC's and HC's could be converted to fast transports by pulling their broadside missile batteries and replace with boat bays they could operate with the fleet providing the back up personal that the new designs don't have.

SD's could be converted to command posts for captured territories or they could have their broadside missile batteries removed and replaced with LAC bays and provide LAC bases and transports freeing up CLACs for other duties

crayven wrote:As I se it the only useful Solly Warships that can be distributed to verge navies are the destroyers and light cruisers that were captured. They could be used for system protection.

BC's and HC's could be converted to fast transports by pulling their broadside missile batteries and replace with boat bays they could operate with the fleet providing the back up personal that the new designs don't have.

SD's could be converted to command posts for captured territories or they could have their broadside missile batteries removed and replaced with LAC bays and provide LAC bases and transports freeing up CLACs for other duties

Hi Crayven, welcome to the Bar. The first one is virtually on us!

This is a topic that has been depbated up one side, down the other and then over and over again. There are literally more than a thousand posts over what to do with captured ships at this point in the Honorverse, including the Author himself weighing in on the subject.

Pretty much everyone will agree with you on #1, with the caveat that the SLN light ships seem to have been upgraded so many times in a hodge podge manner that each ship may be fairly unique - giving a small fleet of them to a verge system may be a logistical nightmare due to this lack of standardization.

As for 2 & 3, what you are discussing amounts to a complete rebuild of the ships - which requires resources, time and shipyards, and in many examples will not be possible (due to the heavy construction of warships). The money and time spent here will put off maintenance on the main GA ships or keep new, infinitely more capable ships from being built.

SDs are built with heavy framing throughout and heavy armor - To put in LACS bays, you would need to rebuild the entire internal structure AND cut holes in the armor -it would be simplier to build a new ship and just use the old drive components in the new ships, with the exception that any GA built component is far better.

You would have similiar issues with side shuttle bays on CAs and BCs, though to a lesser degree. In addition, there really isn't space for large amounts of personel - the internal framing and compartmentalization of warships make them poor transports.

SWM wrote:And I still say they generally don't need superdreadnoughts in the first place. Why do you need superdreadnoughts to "operate inside the hyperlimit"?

Consider HotQ with Masada running a peep DD and CL instead of a BC. How does that work out? It's a lot shorter book, isn't it?

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:And I still say they generally don't need superdreadnoughts in the first place. Why do you need superdreadnoughts to "operate inside the hyperlimit"?

Consider HotQ with Masada running a peep DD and CL instead of a BC. How does that work out? It's a lot shorter book, isn't it?

I'm not sure what your point here is. Yeah, Masada got a battlecruiser and destroyer, instead of a CL and DD. But note that Haven didn't give Masada a superdreadnought.

In addition, Masada wanted that battlecruiser for aggressive operations in a foreign system. How does is that related to giving superdreadnoughts to a system for operations, in your own words, "inside the hyperlimit"?

Not to mention Masada completely bankrupted itself getting just those two Peep ships and operating its own navy.

Potato wrote:Not to mention Masada completely bankrupted itself getting just those two Peep ships and operating its own navy.

If memory serves, the ships were worth multiple years of the Planetary GDP. Haven essentially gave them away, and it was still more than the planet should have afforded.

Potato wrote:Not to mention Masada completely bankrupted itself getting just those two Peep ships and operating its own navy.

And even then Masada could only really operate them because the Peeps provided (gratis; I'm sure) a cadre of experienced crew and trainers. I assume they also provided ongoing logistical and maintenance support for those ships.

A far cry from just selling a 4th rate system like that some true surplus ships and leaving them to their own devices.

(The Peeps didn't care about cost effectiveness of the gambit, they just wanted their cat's paws and just enough legal separation to limit the blow-back if their gamble blew up on them)