Going from a system defense force with a large cruiser force to protect its shipping and search for slave smugglers, is going to be a challenge. What should they build first?
What should Hypatia follow and in turn copy?
Early textev often mentioned that Beowulf had one of the largest merchant marines in the SL (3rd or 4th), initially even bigger than the MMM, although gradually in the textev the MMM eclipsed and surpassed it to easy domination, the process taking RFC several years. but given ship lives lasting centuries I doubt all the freighters etc present 20 years ago in the textev 30 years in real life) suddenly disappeared, so I suspect Beowulf still has a very large MM by SL standards at least, but what should they build first?
"Serve on a destroyer to see what the navy's about."
Presumably Beowulf built most of it's lesser warships insystem, while the SD's may have ordered from elsewhere.
Bolthole has concentrated on building the biggest warships, SD's, SDP's and CLAC's, so aside from experimental work, it may not be a supplier for the smaller types.
What upgrades should Beowulf make for its own Roland's?
First, Beowulf doesn't have the potential crew shortage problem with a population 2-3 time's that of the SKM's when the Roland was designed (9-12 billion people?)so keeping the crew to 67-72 isn't necessary.
I don't know when RFC first drafted the Saltash chapters that Abigail features as CO of the station assault force of sailors so Abby could command it because there's no room aboard the Roland class for marines, but when he first described the Roland years ago, apparently to deliberately set up Abby's command opportunity. .
However, the flag bridge isn't needed in the non flag Rolands, so the flag quarters could hold at least a couple squads of marines while the flag bridge equipment could be stored away, and the space used for a gym or a VR simulator for training, so out of a 4 ship division of Rolands, the other 3 could carry at least 6 squads, not great but better than nothing. Besides the marines there would need to be at least an extra hydroponicist, a cook, an armorer and or tech or both to support the marines equipment; suits, weapons, as well as an extra SBA for 4-5 more, not counting any command echelons distributed among the 3 ships which might have only a single LT as CO for this rump company, and any extra navy spacers for redundancy on the navy side.
Beowulf could include an entire marine company aboard its Flight II Roland's. Honor's light cruiser HMS Fearless (C-56) massed about 84,000 tons in OBS, less than the new 85,000 ton Chanson class DD's, with a crew around 455 for an average of ~185 tons per crewman. Assuming that crew quarters and amenities hasn't improved in over a century (very unlikely IMO), 140 men would require almost 26,000 tons; but marines probably require lest privacy and space, so it could be less but I'll use it as a general estimate.
The second criticism is the lack of missiles, only 240. At 94 tons each that's 22,560 tons or less than 12% of the ship's mass, rather low compared to the Sag-C and Nike, but a lot of the ship's mass is necessary for the simple ship's structure. But Beowulf could add at least another 60 missiles for 5640 tons for a total of 31,540 tons without the increased ship structure, more hydroponics, mess, gym, and sanitation facilities etc, going well over the 220,290tons of the known figures.
Nonetheless the flight two Roland would be a much better fit for what the BSN and the GA need, and quite superior to the Avalon light cruiser which apparently has only 5 missile tubes per broadside. As the genesis of a Mark-16 light cruiser, the flight two could match the old heavy cruisers in the 227-234-240,000 ton range if even more missiles were added, though vastly superior tactically.
The step up building Sag-C's from the Roland seems natural enough, with the primary criticism being the lack of redundancy in the crew. Again Beowulf's much larger high tech trained population ought to answer this concern besides providing a full marine company of 155 if not more.
While ultimately the BSDF will get Alliance built Invictus type SDP's from Bolthole, it's going to take at least a couple of years just build them in Bolthole before the many months long fitting of RMN tech in Beowulf. Until then it might get some of the older SDP's from its allies, if they 're willing to share

First, starting with increasing its size at least 38% to the range of the Nike if not larger would eliminate most of the criticisms, adding another 40 pods to the HoS figure would bring it up to 400, for a half hour launch time for 5600 Mk-16's or 3200 Mark-23's, while adding mini-keyholes from the outset, besides extra armor. Adding pods would gross almost 3MT, or battleship tonnage range. I suspect such an improved BCP would be quite popular with the BSN and the GA.
CLAC's shouldn't be that hard for Beowulf to build since they don't require all the armoring of the wall despite their battle steel framing, and provide early prototyping of the latest design proposals. Its quite possible the ratio of CLAC's to SDP's might be one for every two SDP's if the RMN and GSN's new construction continued to expand before OB.
The numbers of each type to be built is another point given the rebuilding of the habitats, but the sooner the better for the BSN to become an equal partner in the GA.
Your wise contributions will be appreciated, so thanks ahead of time.