Rolands actually have plenty of room for Marines

Despite the long discussion on Air treatment kit/ Scrubbers the Crew Size and Overload carrage of a Roland does not really address the issue.

Sure Life Support in terms of Air and Water is a key factor and I suspect that Military Systems are based round small distributed units rather than Merchant Systems where a couple of Large systems will do as well, consume less volume and need fewer man hours of maintenance.

Still for "Permanent Crew" there are lots of other factors - What Galley Space do we have? Can't just give them MRE's all the time. I assume that there is a Wardroom Galley serving the officers and 1 "crew" Galley serving the rest normally. If we add 30 marines can the enlisted galley and mess cope?
Bunk Space - 3 in one Hot Bunking is not acceptable.

Briefing/training/ rec spaces ? Do we have room for a Marine Pinnace / lander in addition to the existing small craft? For Marines do we have room for a Range and excercise room. Sure Naval crews have some weapons training requirements but Marines need much higher levels of currency.

I do think the every Roland DD having a Flag Bridge and associated accomodation is wasteful. A Software configurable Flag Bridge that can be swapped to other roles would make sense. So Flag Bridge, Emergency Bridge, School (Training) Bridge, Marine SQHQ, LAC SqHQ, Diplomatic space, etc.

Of course the "Staff" space is unknown. I think we can agree that the Flottila HQ staff would be a senior Captain as Commodore (eg Role not rank), with about 8 or 9 staff weighted towards officers and Senior NCO's - so single state room's and a Suite. That's a lot of space but not much in terms of mouths to feed. Flag Dinning Room to be excercise space Comm quarters to be Armoury and Marine Office, State rooms to be multi-occupancy (2 NCO or 4 other ranks). What of that can be built in rather than needing a yard conversion?

So room for 30-40 extra people in place of Flag should be no problem. If the Marines can fullfil shipboard roles then say about 20 of the ships crew could be replaced by Marines as well.

Skill currency would be the issue, what level of ship skills are lost by using marines who need to be duel trained? Given HO Training levels can we do that or is it a better use of resource to single train and deploy? (Of course in Peacetime we need fewer but more flexible crews so this changes).

So Across a Flottila of 8, 2 set up as Flag vessels, 2~4 with Marine contingents, 1 or 2 as School or Diplomatic. Perhaps one with the flag space configured for Med-evac Casualty clearing for Emergencies etc.

Also how many "pods" can a Roland carry on the hull? Opening an engagement with a couple of POD's worth of MK16's saves the internal magazines. Also dropping while moving under stealth gives some great options.

Could they Doc a LAC or 2 to carry them through Hyperspace - Maybe only limited around the system from a Station or out of a combat zone to the CLAC - we see DD's collecting LAC's like this in at least one of the Manti - Haven battles. Would those Crews need to come inboard? Maybe just using the Mess. I understand that the LAC's have limited Bunking/ Galley spaces - little more than a rest room with microwaves for hotting up pre-packed meals. A Roland and a couple of LAC's makes a good convoy escort with the LAC's clamping on for the Hypertransitions and Gravity Wave Transits.

G.

Relax wrote:

Theemile wrote:
What probably happened in the late 1880 is pirates and privateers suddenly had enough firepower to cleanly take out 1-3 Frigates, and did so repeatedly. It's not stated, but with the rapidity with which the RMN got rid of the class, something had to prove their lack of survivability without a shadow of a doubt - and losing a few dozen ships in a year or so might have been it. \

David Weber tells us WHY frigates vanished in House of Steel in the description of the Light Cruiser Class.

"It took the looming war with Haven to knock the frigate out of favor due ot its inability to face any regular warship, regaredless of tonnage, and one of King Roger's major initiaitaves"

Oh yes, But there is always an event that proved the line of thought, especially for a quick pivot. And I don't think a wargame or a workgroup paper would be sufficient to suddenly shelf ~1000 Frigates in less than 5 years.

As long as things work (processes, programs, devices, etc), even if their paradigm is fatally flawed, it doesn't get fixed - it has to break first. Bureaucratic inertia just drags the status quo forward, even building more flawed parts, until everything cracks and finally breaks.

And I'm just speculating that they had to start losing frigates en mass first (just like they disproportionally lost DNs during the 1st war, and shed them between the wars) to prove what some fleet exercises, white papers, and expensive consultant studies already proved - Frigates didn't have the ability survive in a laser head environment.

Captain Golding wrote:<snip>

Also how many "pods" can a Roland carry on the hull? Opening an engagement with a couple of POD's worth of MK16's saves the internal magazines. Also dropping while moving under stealth gives some great options.

20 Pods on the hull using limpet tractors, 5-7 on shipborn tractors. However, carrying all 20 block firing arcs and sensors, so without planning an alpha launch, a Roland might self limit to the 15 pods that don't block sensors.

And remember, pods using their internal tractors have a limited lifespan of a single extended tactical engagement (David: "more than a day, less than a week"), so you can't carry a full podload on a solo patrol - ironically, when it would be most useful.

Could they Doc a LAC or 2 to carry them through Hyperspace - Maybe only limited around the system from a Station or out of a combat zone to the CLAC - we see DD's collecting LAC's like this in at least one of the Manti - Haven battles. Would those Crews need to come inboard? Maybe just using the Mess. I understand that the LAC's have limited Bunking/ Galley spaces - little more than a rest room with microwaves for hotting up pre-packed meals. A Roland and a couple of LAC's makes a good convoy escort with the LAC's clamping on for the Hypertransitions and Gravity Wave Transits.

A RMN LAC is about 20 meters in Beam and Draught, while a Roland is 54mx45m. A LAC "docked" externally would probably be outside the compensated field of the ship, and require internal or semi-internal docking - An RMN LAC weighs 20Ktons, and a LAC bay on a RMN CLAC uses up 40Ktons of mass (probably including some spares and reloads). On a Warship, that mass comes out of the weapons allotment, not to mention, the docking bay blocks or displaces broadside emitters and tubes. So no, a ship the size of a Roland would never carry a LAC, as the majority of it's combat power would be displaced by the LAC. It may tow one, but it would need to evac the crew first, and the LAC would be liable to multi tractor zoning issues (Like in HoQ).

Theemile wrote:And I'm just speculating that they had to start losing frigates en mass first (just like they disproportionally lost DNs during the 1st war, and shed them between the wars) to prove what some fleet exercises, white papers, and expensive consultant studies already proved - Frigates didn't have the ability survive in a laser head environment.

The DNs were always a "cheap SD" that the RMN could build because they couldn't build as many SDs. This was a numbers game: quantity versus quality. Any DN was better than the battleships that the PRN still had, so they were definitely useful against those, but once the war whittled out the BBs and Haven's own DNs, the RMN had no more use for theirs either.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:And I'm just speculating that they had to start losing frigates en mass first (just like they disproportionally lost DNs during the 1st war, and shed them between the wars) to prove what some fleet exercises, white papers, and expensive consultant studies already proved - Frigates didn't have the ability survive in a laser head environment.

The DNs were always a "cheap SD" that the RMN could build because they couldn't build as many SDs. This was a numbers game: quantity versus quality. Any DN was better than the battleships that the PRN still had, so they were definitely useful against those, but once the war whittled out the BBs and Haven's own DNs, the RMN had no more use for theirs either.

And the math (at the time) was that X Million tons of DNs had the same combat effectiveness as X Million tons of SDs, so who cared if there were 8 DNs or 6 SDs in the battle, they should have the same capabilities.

Of course, when you focus your fire on the 3/4ths capable DNs first, they die that much more quickly. While never mentioned, I'm sure any Havenite focused fire went to any DNs in the line first.

Theemile wrote:And the math (at the time) was that X Million tons of DNs had the same combat effectiveness as X Million tons of SDs, so who cared if there were 8 DNs or 6 SDs in the battle, they should have the same capabilities.

Of course, when you focus your fire on the 3/4ths capable DNs first, they die that much more quickly. While never mentioned, I'm sure any Havenite focused fire went to any DNs in the line first.

In one battle, yes. But a 3/4th as capable ship can be in 4/3rd as many places, on average.

Anyone allow for whether there would be enough room for two squads of heavy-gravity world Marines? And the rations to feed them?

penny wrote:Anyone allow for whether there would be enough room for two squads of heavy-gravity world Marines? And the rations to feed them?

And the space for them to train in. Sailors are kept busy during voyages; marines don't usually participate on ship operations except during battles or drills.

You can probably berth two squads of marines in the same volume that a flag staff would be berthed in. The flag officer's quarters are probably large and have an attached meeting room and dining suite, for example. But I doubt that the volume needed for marines to be kept effective is the same as the flag bridge.

So this and the fact that you have many more people, who as penny says are burning far more calories than the flag staff, implies it's not a 1:1 replacement.

That said, the internal volume is actually pretty big so there ought to have been room. Especially as destroyer armour isn't that thick to begin with.

Pods on Limpet Tractors. Limited life of internal power supply.

OK Get that. So How much to rig an external Umbilical Cord/ Feed to support those external pods? Should be simple even if it needs EVA to rig and a quick release to let them go.

Blocked Sensor arcs would be an issue, blocked targetting systems less so - don't need to target until the pods deployed. 12 pods @ 14 Mk16s is 168 missiles - a big uplift on the 240 internal (12tubes @20 reloads). 12 pods is 6 on the roof and 6 on the floor. A Roland has more than enough targetting channels to handle multiple salvo's of 30 (2 pods and full internal tubes).

Understand the limitation on the compensator so acceleration with LAC's tractored on the outside. Was thinking more of a Surface Docking rather than a proper internal one. Dragging the thinks along behind on Tractor beams outside the comp field would probably not be good for them.

Not clear in the stories but probably necessary is clearance between the nodes and the hull when the Wedges are started and stopped - those stress bands will wreck anything but do they start fully formed or build out from the ship? OBS seems to imply the latter.

Captain Golding wrote:Pods on Limpet Tractors. Limited life of internal power supply.

OK Get that. So How much to rig an external Umbilical Cord/ Feed to support those external pods? Should be simple even if it needs EVA to rig and a quick release to let them go.

Blocked Sensor arcs would be an issue, blocked targetting systems less so - don't need to target until the pods deployed. 12 pods @ 14 Mk16s is 168 missiles - a big uplift on the 240 internal (12tubes @20 reloads). 12 pods is 6 on the roof and 6 on the floor. A Roland has more than enough targetting channels to handle multiple salvo's of 30 (2 pods and full internal tubes).

Understand the limitation on the compensator so acceleration with LAC's tractored on the outside. Was thinking more of a Surface Docking rather than a proper internal one. Dragging the thinks along behind on Tractor beams outside the comp field would probably not be good for them.

Not clear in the stories but probably necessary is clearance between the nodes and the hull when the Wedges are started and stopped - those stress bands will wreck anything but do they start fully formed or build out from the ship? OBS seems to imply the latter.

The pod extension cord has been discussed at length, with David never getting in on discussions. Such pods would also need mounting ports to hold them firm. again, not a big issue, but they block sensors, weapons, firecontrol, counter missiles, etc. In short, there is a liability limiting functionality and responsiveness. AS you said, firecontrol ( and weapons) shouldn't be needed until you deploy the pods - BUT the enemy has ways of disrupting your plans, and you need at account for that. (Read the story of the USS Boston prior to the US War of 1812. A 38 gun frigate that was so overloaded with diplomat's luggage and other cargo, that it couldn't run out the guns to fight.)

Stress bands forming are the cause of the tapers in the hull, so yes, you need to account for those locations (note no sensors or weapons emplacements there, even on massive SDs?

The compensated field only extends a few meters from the hull (the bigger the field, the slower the accel, so the field is fairly tight to the hull, but needs to extend far enough to encompass antennas, sensor masts and the Grav sensors ribs.) Pods are ~7m thick, so we know that the compensated field is wider than that, but 20m (especially for a small combatant) is a stretch, So a LAC connected along the broadside would be partially outside the compensated field and dragging the ship - thus prone to stress failure (and also placing that stress on the skin of the ship.), Any formal dock would eat directly into the weapons mass and broadside space.

Please note, the 40-120Kton Keyhole II is in a Semi-recesseed dock on SDs and BCs, which displaces defenses and firecontrol.
A LAC which is about the same physical dimensions of a Keyhole 1, though less massive. Also note, this is done on BDs and SDs with wider compensated fields than a DD.