Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

tlb wrote:Sorry about that; I did not read your post well enough, because I assumed that Nike would always be the lead of the class. So I thought you just used the Reliant as a stand-in for the old Nike.

No problem. But yeah, the old Nike was a Reliant class.

I'm actually a little surprised that the RMN would deliberately allow a a ship class to carry the name of one of the ships on the roll of honor (or whatever they called the list of names that must always be kept in commission). It seems like a recipe for confusion as, over time, you'd be likely to end up with different classes with the same name.

Imagine Nike had been the lead and name ship of both classes -- whenever they mentioned "Nike class" they'd then have to clarify whether they meant the 1896 class or the 1920 one.


Or, even as it stands, you're moderately likely to eventually end up in the weird position where there are still be Nike-class BC(L)s in service, but there's a new HMS Nike of some newer class. (Unless you're willing and able to hang onto the current HMS Nike until she's obsolete; then retire her with the rest of her remaining (newer) classmates)

It would seem simpler to simply have a policy that once a ship's name in on that roll of honor it'd never be picked as the lead ship of any new class.

Jonathan_S wrote:Or, even as it stands, you're moderately likely to eventually end up in the weird position where there are still be Nike-class BC(L)s in service, but there's a new HMS Nike of some newer class. (Unless you're willing and able to hang onto the current HMS Nike until she's obsolete; then retire her with the rest of her remaining (newer) classmates)

Actually that chapter explains how they get around the situation. The old Nike was destined for the breakers, but military necessity forced it to be retained. So they renamed the ship as Hancock Station (despite the superstitions about doing so), to free up the name for the new Nike.

Wait no, that is not what you were saying. In The Honorverse Companion they show two classes for the Reliant battlecruiser differentiated by a revision number. However if the old Nike had been a class leader, then they could rename that as the Hancock Station class.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Or, even as it stands, you're moderately likely to eventually end up in the weird position where there are still be Nike-class BC(L)s in service, but there's a new HMS Nike of some newer class. (Unless you're willing and able to hang onto the current HMS Nike until she's obsolete; then retire her with the rest of her remaining (newer) classmates)

Actually that chapter explains how they get around the situation. The old Nike was destined for the breakers, but military necessity forced it to be retained. So they renamed the ship as Hancock Station (despite the superstitions about doing so), to free up the name for the new Nike.

Wait no, that is not what you were saying. In The Honorverse Companion they show two classes for the Reliant battlecruiser differentiated by a revision number. However if the old Nike had been a class leader, then they could rename that as the Hancock Station class.

Yeah, for single ships it's not a big deal -- and most of the time as you noted the old ship is lost, or get retired right before, the replacement carrying the same name commissions.

But it seems it'd be way more confusing to retroactively rename an entire class than just one ship. (But maybe that's just because I'm used to multiple ships over history carrying the same name, but I'm less used to entire ship class names getting reused)

"Sorry, we know that for nearly the last quarter century all documentation, books, mention, etc. of these ships have called them Nike-class; but from now on they have to be called Hancock Station-class"
Now you've got two problems -- a pile of out of date references (where you still need to get clarification of whether they meant the ex-Nike-class or the current Nike-class)


As I said, it seems simpler to just avoid the issue by making ships like Nike the 2nd or 3rd ship of the class, so the class name ends up something far less likely to get reused down the road. But clearly the RMN isn't listening to me

And despite the possible confusion class name reuse does happen in the real world. Two examples that come to mind are the King George V-class battleship (1911) vs (1939), and South Dakota-class battleship (1920; canceled) vs (1939)

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, for single ships it's not a big deal -- and most of the time as you noted the old ship is lost, or get retired right before, the replacement carrying the same name commissions.

But it seems it'd be way more confusing to retroactively rename an entire class than just one ship. (But maybe that's just because I'm used to multiple ships over history carrying the same name, but I'm less used to entire ship class names getting reused)

"Sorry, we know that for nearly the last quarter century all documentation, books, mention, etc. of these ships have called them Nike-class; but from now on they have to be called Hancock Station-class"
Now you've got two problems -- a pile of out of date references (where you still need to get clarification of whether they meant the ex-Nike-class or the current Nike-class)


As I said, it seems simpler to just avoid the issue by making ships like Nike the 2nd or 3rd ship of the class, so the class name ends up something far less likely to get reused down the road. But clearly the RMN isn't listening to me

I understand what you are saying and do not disagree, but Manticore seems to be going ahead anyway.

As mention in the Companion there is an 1896 Reliant and a 1915 Reliant (Flights III - IV). So if it were to become a problem just automatically include the begin date in the class name, So the Reliant-1915 would automatically be different from the Reliant-1896 and in most cases you would not need to even mention the number (only important in cases like the Reliant). The change was intended to sneak upgrades past the High Ridge government to make it seem there was nothing new here.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, for single ships it's not a big deal -- and most of the time as you noted the old ship is lost, or get retired right before, the replacement carrying the same name commissions.

But it seems it'd be way more confusing to retroactively rename an entire class than just one ship. (But maybe that's just because I'm used to multiple ships over history carrying the same name, but I'm less used to entire ship class names getting reused)

"Sorry, we know that for nearly the last quarter century all documentation, books, mention, etc. of these ships have called them Nike-class; but from now on they have to be called Hancock Station-class"
Now you've got two problems -- a pile of out of date references (where you still need to get clarification of whether they meant the ex-Nike-class or the current Nike-class)


As I said, it seems simpler to just avoid the issue by making ships like Nike the 2nd or 3rd ship of the class, so the class name ends up something far less likely to get reused down the road. But clearly the RMN isn't listening to me

I understand what you are saying and do not disagree, but Manticore seems to be going ahead anyway.

As mention in the Companion there is an 1896 Reliant and a 1915 Reliant (Flights III - IV). So if it were to become a problem just automatically include the begin date in the class name, So the Reliant-1915 would automatically be different from the Reliant-1896 and in most cases you would not need to even mention the number (only important in cases like the Reliant). The change was intended to sneak upgrades past the High Ridge government to make it seem there was nothing new here.

But Reliant (flight I) to Reliant (flight III) is at least notionally an iterative process on the same basic design.

Something that happens in the real world too, see how the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer have progressed across:
* flight I of the late 80s at 505' long and 8,400 tons
* flight II of the early 90s at 505' long and 8,500 tons
* flight IIA of the mid 90s at 509.3' long and 9,700 tons
* flight III of the mid 2010s at 509.3' long and 9,900 tons

But I don't think the flight IIIs were an attempt to hide the upgrade from the High Ridge government. Since the first flight III ship commissioned in 1915 (the same year High Ridge came to power) that means the design had to be largely locked and construction begun no later than mid-to-late 1913; well before High Ridge. And the increases over the flight I (and whatever the flight II had) look minor enough that it really seems intended, all along, to just be a minor update to the basic Reliant design.

Now in the RMN they also have an intermediate step between flights of the same underlying design and a new class; and that's the A/B/C designators. Though we've only seen that on the Edward Saganami class CAs (where the -Cs really were a end-run around of High Ridge's resistance to new classes; but the Sag-Cs didn't enter service until 1920. And logically the design didn't get locked down and construction started until sometime after the Sag-Bs started commissioning in 1917; so their design and authorization were all under his regime)



And if we go back to your original assumption that Nike would always be the lead ship of the class (of BCs) then since her name entered that list of honor back in 1672 every BC class of the last 250 years would be named Nike-class (unless the RMN stopped naming classes after their lead ship). And I think that would be confusing. At that point you might as well give up referring to classes by name at all, and just talk about them by year -- the 1789 BCs, the 1863 BCs, 1896 BCs, the 1919 BC(P)s, the 1920 BC(L)s .

Still, despite my thinking it's messy the RMN clearly isn't all that worried about having a ship class named after a ship of honor -- even at the risk of repeat class names or the current named ship no longer being a member of said class.

Jonathan_S wrote:And if we go back to your original assumption that Nike would always be the lead ship of the class (of BCs) then since her name entered that list of honor back in 1672 every BC class of the last 250 years would be named Nike-class (unless the RMN stopped naming classes after their lead ship). And I think that would be confusing. At that point you might as well give up referring to classes by name at all, and just talk about them by year -- the 1789 BCs, the 1863 BCs, 1896 BCs, the 1919 BC(P)s, the 1920 BC(L)s .

The name Nike is extra special, because it is always expected to be the BEST BC of its time. So if talking about a Nike, then more identification will always be needed.

The problem with naming like is that there can be more than one type of BC active at a time; see the 1919 BC(P) and the 1920 BC(L). The RMN did not choose to name the BC(P) Nike (even though they could have), perhaps because they felt it was too experimental and therefore not the pinnacle of BC design. I thought it would be the lead ship of A class of BC, not necessarily EVERY class of BC. So every Nike class might have to be distinguished by a year (if there was more than one class active at a particular time), but not every BC would be in the Nike class. Not every BC design would necessarily be enough of an improvement (particularly if the previous class can be reasonably upgraded), to knock the current Nike off its perch.

You can see this better with the Avalon light cruiser and the Kammerling system control cruiser (built two years later and considered a light cruiser); both are light cruisers classes, however each has different design objectives. So if there were a light cruiser name that was always to be kept active, it still would not have been put on both classes.

PS: Finally, thinking that when a new design for a BC was needed, that the lead ship might be a Nike was a mistake on my part. But the mistake arouse because that seemed to be what the RMN was doing.

tlb wrote:PS: Finally, thinking that when a new design for a BC was needed, that the lead ship might be a Nike was a mistake on my part. But the mistake arouse because that seemed to be what the RMN was doing.

I think the RMN would not have named their first BC(L) the Nike class if it were not for High Ridge. The design was only allowed to proceed because it was reusing the name Nike.

The post-High Ridge situation could have renamed the class though, to go back to the regular ways of working, but they didn't.

tlb wrote:I thought it would be the lead ship of A class of BC, not necessarily EVERY class of BC. So every Nike class might have to be distinguished by a year (if there was more than one class active at a particular time), but not every BC would be in the Nike class. Not every BC design would necessarily be enough of an improvement (particularly if the previous class can be reasonably upgraded), to knock the current Nike off its perch.

Fair. And certainly there is A Nike that's the lead ship of A class of BC -- the new Nike that's lead ship of the Nike-class BC(L)s.

We just don't know, in the ~250 years since the name was placed on the list of honor (when Edward Saganami died along with the 3rd HMS Nike), whether there's been any other BC class called Nike. (Or if/when the future RMN might use it again some new lead-ship/class-name)

If this was the first time why now and not any previous time when a new more powerful BC class was laid down? (Or why not continue holding the class-name Nike for some later, even more powerful, BC design?)
If this isn't the first time how much separation does the RMN leave before reusing a class name?

Though ThinksMarkedly might have a point that the timing may have been 100% politics. Use the name as a was to stir public opinion and force through at least that lead ship of the new BC(L) design; despite what the Janacek Admiralty or High Ridge government might prefer.