Upcoming surplus of junior officers

Weird Harold wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:And we don't know how many snotties will be on each ship. Based on Hexapuma, there were five middies for a ship of 700. In other words, less than one percent of the crew.

IIRC while there were on seven assigned, the Midshipman's quarters of Hexapuma were sized for eight Snotties. Or just over 1% of the nominal crew size.

If that percentage holds true for other ships, New SD(p)s with full automation would run about 15 snotties and an older ship, like Hercules might run about 50 snotties.

Almost every example we have of snottie cruises shipped out with fewer Snotties than the quarters were designed for.

Ships dont necessarily NEED Midshipman, if you have 1,000 graduates you can have 10,000 positions in the fleet you need to fill out only 1,000. Just because a ship had room for snoties does not mean they have to have snoties.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Remember that a LOT of RMN people were lost between BoM and Oyster Bay. After OB, the Navy was struggleing to find people to fill all sorts exising slots (beyond midshipmen) in the existing ships and would appear to have been promoting or moving people into positions which would normaly had a person with a higher rank to bring the EXISTING fleet up to compliment with experienced people.

I don't think midshippersons are being assigned to LACs. Ensigns yes, but not snotties.

I agree they wouldn't be assigned to LACs - those have so few officers and men there doesn't seem room for a Snottie to fit in.
I do wonder if Snotties ever get assigned 'cruises' on forts or LAC bases though.

It'd probably be a boring cruise, but on the other hand, until the war the vast majority of Snottie cruises must have been dead boring. Not everybody is lucky enough to get assigned to a ship trolling for pirates in Silesia. Someone's going to get a ship that's just riding in orbit as part of Home Fleet, or out doing survey missions. (Heck even during the war there were plenty of ships that just hung around in defensive fleets for systems that didn't suffer raids or attacks for years at a stretch; so even then there must have been a share of boring Snottie cruises - just simulation and drills to provide stress and allow the newly minted midshipmen's measure to be taken.

The few Snottie cruises we've read about were exciting (and in some cases too exciting) but those have to be the exceptions; not the rule.

Possibly not; it depends on whether the RMN policy is to test their junior officers under fire if at all possible. Remember how as many middies as possible are always sent over to see the gruesome battle scenes? It may well be that a middie cruise is preferably to somewhere with a reasonable expectation of action, even if it's low scale action.

Certainly when the Troubles were running in Northern Ireland it was usual for recruits and young officers to get sent over at the end of their training for a mini-tour. If they couldn't cope with being in genuine danger, the army wanted to find that out. Fast.

With the snotties, I suspect that the question is how many slots were needed which would be determined by the size of the class. If a class came in too large for the number of slots available, I would imagine that an expanding navy which Manticore's was at least up to OB, you expand the number of slots available to fit the size of the class.

Don

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Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Almost every example we have of snottie cruises shipped out with fewer Snotties than the quarters were designed for.

Ships dont necessarily NEED Midshipman, if you have 1,000 graduates you can have 10,000 positions in the fleet you need to fill out only 1,000. Just because a ship had room for snoties does not mean they have to have snoties.

This is true, but the maximum each ship class can handle is relevant to the discussion of class size vs slots available after OB.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:

Ships dont necessarily NEED Midshipman, if you have 1,000 graduates you can have 10,000 positions in the fleet you need to fill out only 1,000. Just because a ship had room for snoties does not mean they have to have snoties.

This is true, but the maximum each ship class can handle is relevant to the discussion of class size vs slots available after OB.

Ships don't need middies, middies need ships. Regardless of ship class and crew size, there are only so many departments and there are about the same number of departments on all classes of ships. While the ATO is in charge of training, all department heads are tasked with training.

So, basically N(departments)(3 shifts)+ (number of departments that can actually handle 2 or more middies per shift)=~ the MAX number of middies per ship.

Flagships do not need/want any more middies, at least textev doesn't ever show a middy kicking around on Honor's flag deck. Helen is a very young Flag LT, which is about the only trainee on an admiral's/commodore's staff.

pappilon wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:This is true, but the maximum each ship class can handle is relevant to the discussion of class size vs slots available after OB.

Ships don't need middies, middies need ships. Regardless of ship class and crew size, there are only so many departments and there are about the same number of departments on all classes of ships. While the ATO is in charge of training, all department heads are tasked with training.

So, basically N(departments)(3 shifts)+ (number of departments that can actually handle 2 or more middies per shift)=~ the MAX number of middies per ship.

Larger ships have larger crews, larger departments, can handle more trainees, Midshipmen or enlisted OJT students.

However many Middies a crew can train, the Middies need bunks as much as they "need ships." That's why the bunks available on "Snottie Row" is a limiting factor.

Note that we haven't seen any Snottie Row that was full, let alone had multiple compartments. But then we haven't seen any snottie cruises organized since OB. With the ship/bunk losses from BOM and OB, they may need to fill every Snottie Row Bunk they can find, regardless of normal practice -- even if it is only eight bunks, regardless of ship size.

ldwechsler wrote:Good points, but remember they were talking about 11,000 for classes.

If ships are limited to eight bunks on Snottie Row (which I think is probably unrealistic,) then they need 1375 ships worth of bunks. More if they don't fill every SR to capacity, less if larger ships have more or bigger SR compartments.

Weird Harold wrote: This is true, but the maximum each ship class can handle is relevant to the discussion of class size vs slots available after OB.

pappilon wrote:Ships don't need middies, middies need ships. Regardless of ship class and crew size, there are only so many departments and there are about the same number of departments on all classes of ships. While the ATO is in charge of training, all department heads are tasked with training.

So, basically N(departments)(3 shifts)+ (number of departments that can actually handle 2 or more middies per shift)=~ the MAX number of middies per ship.

Yes, thank you for expanding on my post. Of course I am assuming that some time after Travis U Long retired some kinda-smart-but-not-particlarly-brilliant 29th Space lord or whichever one is in charge of training snotties had the just-a-little-but-not-very-bright idea to send a RFI to each department head in each and every ship in the fleet asking how many snotties her department can train on one cruise.

Who knows maybe it was a slightly-smarter-than-average naval architect who asked the question so he would know how many snotty row bunks he would need for the particular class of ship he was designing. And maybe that Space Lord in the preceding paragraph thought it might be a good bit of info to have on each class of ship.

Of course thee is NO, absolutely none, textev that such a request was ever made, or even requested.

Weird Harold wrote:[uote="pappilon"]

Weird Harold wrote:This is true, but the maximum each ship class can handle is relevant to the discussion of class size vs slots available after OB.

Ships don't need middies, middies need ships. Regardless of ship class and crew size, there are only so many departments and there are about the same number of departments on all classes of ships. While the ATO is in charge of training, all department heads are tasked with training.

So, basically N(departments)(3 shifts)+ (number of departments that can actually handle 2 or more middies per shift)=~ the MAX number of middies per ship.

Larger ships have larger crews, larger departments, can handle more trainees, Midshipmen or enlisted OJT students.

However many Middies a crew can train, the Middies need bunks as much as they "need ships." That's why the bunks available on "Snottie Row" is a limiting factor.

Note that we haven't seen any Snottie Row that was full, let alone had multiple compartments. But then we haven't seen any snottie cruises organized since OB. With the ship/bunk losses from BOM and OB, they may need to fill every Snottie Row Bunk they can find, regardless of normal practice -- even if it is only eight bunks, regardless of ship size.

ldwechsler wrote:Good points, but remember they were talking about 11,000 for classes.

If ships are limited to eight bunks on Snottie Row (which I think is probably unrealistic,) then they need 1375 ships worth of bunks. More if they don't fill every SR to capacity, less if larger ships have more or bigger SR compartments.[/quote]



It depends on the ship IIRC when Prince Michael sailed on HMS Intransigence a CL there were twelve berths in snotty row but Helen was one of five with eight berths. My guess is that a old SD could have upwards of one hundred berths but a SD(P) might have thirty or so.

saber964 wrote:It depends on the ship IIRC when Prince Michael sailed on HMS Intransigence a CL there were twelve berths in snotty row but Helen was one of five with eight berths. My guess is that a old SD could have upwards of one hundred berths but a SD(P) might have thirty or so.

And with The Great Automation larger ships require smaller crews than smaller ones used to. which, again means we gotta know now how many snotties each class of ships coming off the lines can actually train today hence my original formula which assumed 1 snotty per shift per department adjusted by the + each additional (over 1 per shift) the Senior officer of that department feels his department can realistically handle. It may be 0 more for Astro and 6 or 12 more for engineering.

Barring TextEv we are making it up and your making-up is no better than mine, and certainly no worse.

n7axw wrote:With the snotties, I suspect that the question is how many slots were needed which would be determined by the size of the class. If a class came in too large for the number of slots available, I would imagine that an expanding navy which Manticore's was at least up to OB, you expand the number of slots available to fit the size of the class.

Don

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Or maybe every ship has a number of slots, but not every slot has to be filled. If an SD has 10 slots that does not mean it can't function if it gets only 3 midshipmen.