SLN Ship improvement

As of the last book it was demonstrated that the SLN is thoroughly outclassed technologically and in many cases their senior ranks are outclassed even worse. We all have come to the conclusion that the SLN’s SD’s are next to useless and they won't be able to match up to the GA until they get new designs.

That may be true but the SLN cannot afford to build the new ships in large enough numbers even if they somehow equalized the tech imbalance but what could they really do?


Ultimately they will not have capital ships(BB/DN/SD) for at least 6-10 years that have the ability to match the GA’s ships on anything approaching equal terms. Their lighter combatants are equally outclassed. So their only hope is to hold the League together long enough to start building up their strength. They have new missiles that give them more range but it is still not enough.


My thought and question is this:

If the SLN focused on the defensive, started pumping out missile pods as fast as they can and as many of them as they can while at the same time designing new warships that are exclusively for point defence area control. Instead of building BC’s and CA’s and CL’s and DD’s they focus on designing ships that are purely anti-missile platforms.


Think about it this way, designing LAC’s that focuses exclusively on anti missile role, it would mean no offensive ability and understandably not even close to equal to the GA’s LAC’s but being able to pump out thousands of cheap ships for anti missile role while building more capable system defence FF’s with pure anti-missile armament and DD’s/CL’s with pure anti-missile armament would allow the SLN to neutralize at least some of the GA’s advantages.

The GA sends in a Task Force to attack a certain system and are faced with thousands of individually much inferior LAC’s that are meant to provide missile defence and at the same time present are new Frigates that are also pure local defence ships but are meant to provide more firepower to back up the LAC’s and all of this backed up by missile pods and SD’s. If the SLN were to use large quantities of “obsolete” specialized vessels to provide missile defence, and with proper sensor upgrades through research they should be able to make any attack by the GA an expensive endeavour. Granted this would be almost exclusively located on the most heavily industrialized systems that would provide the backbone for the League economy and fleet in long term conflicts.


If you take an SLN DD and CL design and put only CM’s and PD clusters work on improvements to their sensors/EW and you have a viable anti-missile platform. It might surpass a Katana LAC, granted having a 95,000 Ton destroyer compared to a 20,000+ ton LAC is not real comparison but it would be a brute force approach.



So this is the scenario:

*20-40 Select heavily industrialized systems
These systems would pump out as many anti-missile LAC’s and FF’s as they can at the same time as pumping out as many missile pods as they can. Start fortifying each system starting from the most heavily industrialized first and going down the list.


System defence would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of pods backed up by SD’s, lighter combatants and the thousands of LAC’s and FF’s in the anti-missile role. The anti-missile units are backed up by SD’s and BC’s to provide firepower incase the GA moved into the system to engage close up. Once they discover the power of allied LAC’s those heavy ships would be used to protect the anti-missile forces from LAC’s. So in effect you would be putting the SD’s in use but you would be relying on their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses, granted it is nowhere near perfect but until the SLN can produce capable ships that would do.

You can also build offensive ships, you just have to accept they will have the surviability of home fleet. So fire early and often, then bail out in something armored and unarmed that hopefully will not be targeted as the threat by the super sophisticated RMN seekers.

Sigs wrote:As of the last book it was demonstrated that the SLN is thoroughly outclassed technologically and in many cases their senior ranks are outclassed even worse. We all have come to the conclusion that the SLN’s SD’s are next to useless and they won't be able to match up to the GA until they get new designs.

That may be true but the SLN cannot afford to build the new ships in large enough numbers even if they somehow equalized the tech imbalance but what could they really do?


Ultimately they will not have capital ships(BB/DN/SD) for at least 6-10 years that have the ability to match the GA’s ships on anything approaching equal terms. Their lighter combatants are equally outclassed. So their only hope is to hold the League together long enough to start building up their strength. They have new missiles that give them more range but it is still not enough.


My thought and question is this:

If the SLN focused on the defensive, started pumping out missile pods as fast as they can and as many of them as they can while at the same time designing new warships that are exclusively for point defence area control. Instead of building BC’s and CA’s and CL’s and DD’s they focus on designing ships that are purely anti-missile platforms.


Think about it this way, designing LAC’s that focuses exclusively on anti missile role, it would mean no offensive ability and understandably not even close to equal to the GA’s LAC’s but being able to pump out thousands of cheap ships for anti missile role while building more capable system defence FF’s with pure anti-missile armament and DD’s/CL’s with pure anti-missile armament would allow the SLN to neutralize at least some of the GA’s advantages.

The GA sends in a Task Force to attack a certain system and are faced with thousands of individually much inferior LAC’s that are meant to provide missile defence and at the same time present are new Frigates that are also pure local defence ships but are meant to provide more firepower to back up the LAC’s and all of this backed up by missile pods and SD’s. If the SLN were to use large quantities of “obsolete” specialized vessels to provide missile defence, and with proper sensor upgrades through research they should be able to make any attack by the GA an expensive endeavour. Granted this would be almost exclusively located on the most heavily industrialized systems that would provide the backbone for the League economy and fleet in long term conflicts.


If you take an SLN DD and CL design and put only CM’s and PD clusters work on improvements to their sensors/EW and you have a viable anti-missile platform. It might surpass a Katana LAC, granted having a 95,000 Ton destroyer compared to a 20,000+ ton LAC is not real comparison but it would be a brute force approach.



So this is the scenario:

*20-40 Select heavily industrialized systems
These systems would pump out as many anti-missile LAC’s and FF’s as they can at the same time as pumping out as many missile pods as they can. Start fortifying each system starting from the most heavily industrialized first and going down the list.


System defence would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of pods backed up by SD’s, lighter combatants and the thousands of LAC’s and FF’s in the anti-missile role. The anti-missile units are backed up by SD’s and BC’s to provide firepower incase the GA moved into the system to engage close up. Once they discover the power of allied LAC’s those heavy ships would be used to protect the anti-missile forces from LAC’s. So in effect you would be putting the SD’s in use but you would be relying on their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses, granted it is nowhere near perfect but until the SLN can produce capable ships that would do.

Would that be enough to defeat the GA's electronic warfare tech though? Solarian tech is pathetic by comparison, as we all know, and I doubt they'd be able to improve fast enough that sensors will be able to see through Dazzlers.

Sigs wrote:...

Ultimately they will not have capital ships(BB/DN/SD) for at least 6-10 years that have the ability to match the GA’s ships on anything approaching equal terms. Their lighter combatants are equally outclassed. So their only hope is to hold the League together long enough to start building up their strength. They have new missiles that give them more range but it is still not enough.

...

How long do you estimate the SLN will require to implement your plan? Not that the current run of snippets indicate they are inclined to any such defensive action.

FWIW, RFC "guessed" that Uncompromising Honor ends in Mar 1923 PD or about six months after SoV ends. Since this story arc will end then, the SLN has less than six-months to make any hardware changes. Or change tactics or strategy, for that matter.

Well, to start with they would have to stop being morons.

But let's look at some ideas that might work. Or might not since they'll depend on a wide variety of details!

1) Super-Sized Sprint Drive. Wasn't there a drive that was based on a CM drive? Super-size that. Make it big enough that your wedge is strong enough to blow through CM wedges and come out alive.

2) Low G, Long Duration Drive: Really the first stage just needs to keep a wedge up for as long as possible. Use a drive for high endurance to eliminate the need for ballistic stages. The final drive needs the high acceleration. This works really well with number one if you can pull it off.

If you manage both one and two, you've got the basis for a really good system defense. Obviously these would be way too large for their current line of tubes anyway.

3) Brain Simulators! You can take stuff apart molecule by molecule? Well find some volunteers, take apart their brain and make a simulation based off it. Your best and brightest able to do thousands of hours worth of planning in mere moments. You can put them inside your missiles making Apollo obsolete!

Also its good for interrogations.

4) Drone Ships. Who care if the Manties have better compensators! Just turn yours off! This works really well with number three.

5) Self-Installing Puppet implants! Basically run the cybernetics backwards. Take over a person's body! This is extra effective if you pulled number three off. Make Mind Control Nano Obsolete!

6) Self-Replicating Factories. Automate the factory and teach it to build a copy of itself. Bonus points if you can get it working underwater and running off sea water and rocks.

7) Disguised Murder Drones. Make drones that look like rats, cats, birds etc. Give them the ability to kill. Judging from Honor's arm, the stealthy cybernetics must be pretty good. Didn't she have to point it out to a Prince's security in fact? Make sure they have an autonomous mode too! They'll probably need some sort of bio-reactor to self-power.

8) Underground/Underwater shipyards. Yeah, I know it seems difficult, but your opponent won't bombard your planets from orbit. And they won't set foot on your planet if you managed numbers 5-7. Just keep them hidden until the time is right to launch millions of super dreadnoughts into space and destroy the enemy!

Now there are plenty of possible stumbling blocks. For example, your scientists might say something like "No. This is the stupidest idea that anyone has had ever, and someone thought up the Final War!" and then all quit en masse. Or the machines might rise up around step 5 and murder everyone.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Well, to start with they would have to stop being morons.

But let's look at some ideas that might work. Or might not since they'll depend on a wide variety of details!

1) Super-Sized Sprint Drive. Wasn't there a drive that was based on a CM drive? Super-size that. Make it big enough that your wedge is strong enough to blow through CM wedges and come out alive. <Snip>

Wedges don't quite work like that. It is not that wedges of similar size destroy each other, wedges of multiples of size and power destroy each other. How much? Imagine wedges were on a linear scale, with a CM as a 1. The CM could still destroy the wedge on a 10. A wedge of scale 100 would probably ignore the CM. To have the power you discuss, your CM would be the size of a small LAC.

There are no analogues for 3,4,6 in the Honorverse, and David specifically wrote it that way. That technology may be in other stories, but he delineated the technologies in each universe to tell different stories.

Theemile wrote:Wedges don't quite work like that. It is not that wedges of similar size destroy each other, wedges of multiples of size and power destroy each other. How much? Imagine wedges were on a linear scale, with a CM as a 1. The CM could still destroy the wedge on a 10. A wedge of scale 100 would probably ignore the CM. To have the power you discuss, your CM would be the size of a small LAC.

Umm... it really doesn't seem that way. Maybe its different with missile wedges, but from the Infodump:

Infodump wrote: Let me put this very simply: to take down an impeller wedge through a brute application of force requires an impeller wedge at least as powerful as the wedge you are trying to destroy. The more powerful wedge, always destroys the weaker wedge, and the more powerful wedge's generating nodes take no damage in the process.

...

You could build a starship with over-powered nodes, which is basically what the Peeps did with the Mars-class, but even so, you would not be able to shoehorn anything capable of taking out, say, a dreadnought's wedge into anything smaller than a battleship-sized "missile."

Theemile wrote:There are no analogues for 3,4,6 in the Honorverse, and David specifically wrote it that way. That technology may be in other stories, but he delineated the technologies in each universe to tell different stories.

Which is why you'd need to develop them first! Three should be pretty straight forward to try. At least if you can find the volunteers.

Also we've seen ships run on automatic pilot, or nearly so. Obviously there are some disadvantages, but a crude drone ship should be borderline trivial. Hell, stick a wedge on a keyhole platform and you've got your very own point defense drone. (They also might need a reactor, I'm not sure.)

Oh and self-replicating nano-tech is a thing, and nano-tech does have some major uses in Honorverse industry. Although there is a fairly strong cultural aversion to self-replicating nano.

Honestly, there are very good reasons for not trying 3,5,6,7 or 8. And Manticore has a really big head-start on 4.

You guys are ignoring Weird Harold's question and quite frankly, that is the only one that really counts. Eventually there will be counters for Manty tech. But the League will be gone before it happens.

Don

-

Rednek731 wrote:

Sigs wrote:As of the last book it was demonstrated that the SLN is thoroughly outclassed technologically and in many cases their senior ranks are outclassed even worse. We all have come to the conclusion that the SLN’s SD’s are next to useless and they won't be able to match up to the GA until they get new designs.

That may be true but the SLN cannot afford to build the new ships in large enough numbers even if they somehow equalized the tech imbalance but what could they really do?


Ultimately they will not have capital ships(BB/DN/SD) for at least 6-10 years that have the ability to match the GA’s ships on anything approaching equal terms. Their lighter combatants are equally outclassed. So their only hope is to hold the League together long enough to start building up their strength. They have new missiles that give them more range but it is still not enough.


My thought and question is this:

If the SLN focused on the defensive, started pumping out missile pods as fast as they can and as many of them as they can while at the same time designing new warships that are exclusively for point defence area control. Instead of building BC’s and CA’s and CL’s and DD’s they focus on designing ships that are purely anti-missile platforms.


Think about it this way, designing LAC’s that focuses exclusively on anti missile role, it would mean no offensive ability and understandably not even close to equal to the GA’s LAC’s but being able to pump out thousands of cheap ships for anti missile role while building more capable system defence FF’s with pure anti-missile armament and DD’s/CL’s with pure anti-missile armament would allow the SLN to neutralize at least some of the GA’s advantages.

The GA sends in a Task Force to attack a certain system and are faced with thousands of individually much inferior LAC’s that are meant to provide missile defence and at the same time present are new Frigates that are also pure local defence ships but are meant to provide more firepower to back up the LAC’s and all of this backed up by missile pods and SD’s. If the SLN were to use large quantities of “obsolete” specialized vessels to provide missile defence, and with proper sensor upgrades through research they should be able to make any attack by the GA an expensive endeavour. Granted this would be almost exclusively located on the most heavily industrialized systems that would provide the backbone for the League economy and fleet in long term conflicts.


If you take an SLN DD and CL design and put only CM’s and PD clusters work on improvements to their sensors/EW and you have a viable anti-missile platform. It might surpass a Katana LAC, granted having a 95,000 Ton destroyer compared to a 20,000+ ton LAC is not real comparison but it would be a brute force approach.



So this is the scenario:

*20-40 Select heavily industrialized systems
These systems would pump out as many anti-missile LAC’s and FF’s as they can at the same time as pumping out as many missile pods as they can. Start fortifying each system starting from the most heavily industrialized first and going down the list.


System defence would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of pods backed up by SD’s, lighter combatants and the thousands of LAC’s and FF’s in the anti-missile role. The anti-missile units are backed up by SD’s and BC’s to provide firepower incase the GA moved into the system to engage close up. Once they discover the power of allied LAC’s those heavy ships would be used to protect the anti-missile forces from LAC’s. So in effect you would be putting the SD’s in use but you would be relying on their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses, granted it is nowhere near perfect but until the SLN can produce capable ships that would do.

Would that be enough to defeat the GA's electronic warfare tech though? Solarian tech is pathetic by comparison, as we all know, and I doubt they'd be able to improve fast enough that sensors will be able to see through Dazzlers.

Quantity is the answer. The SLN would be trying to improve their sensors but the idea would be to pump out as many specialized anti-missile ships as you possibly can in as short time as you can. Either make them easy to swap components to allow for easy upgrades or upgrade as improvements happen.

The SLN cannot stop many missiles because their focus is not on missile defence. If I remember correctly their Nevada class BC's are double the mass of a Sag-C but have half the anti missile defence.

What I am talking is building ships that focus 100% of their armament on anti missile. Build LAC's, build frigates, destroyers and light cruisers. Make the LAC's and Frigates purely system defence ships requiring carriers thereby freeing up every bit of space for weapons and ammunition. Carriers should be simply ships that move the LAC's/Frigates from Point A to Point B and have zero weapons in and of themselves. Crew amenities should be cut to the barebones as they will be used for system pickets and you can rotate crews etc...

With enough ships in battle and a layered defence you can stop a lot of missiles. Maybe enough to make a difference.


What I am proposing has absolute no finesse it is just a brute force approach. As technology improves the SLN can start working on building offensive ships with the ability to survive the GA, but first it has to secure a large enough portion of it's industry to have a chance.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:...

Ultimately they will not have capital ships(BB/DN/SD) for at least 6-10 years that have the ability to match the GA’s ships on anything approaching equal terms. Their lighter combatants are equally outclassed. So their only hope is to hold the League together long enough to start building up their strength. They have new missiles that give them more range but it is still not enough.

...

How long do you estimate the SLN will require to implement your plan? Not that the current run of snippets indicate they are inclined to any such defensive action.

FWIW, RFC "guessed" that Uncompromising Honor ends in Mar 1923 PD or about six months after SoV ends. Since this story arc will end then, the SLN has less than six-months to make any hardware changes. Or change tactics or strategy, for that matter.

I'm not actually being this scenario on the book's ending. This is a what if. But even if the series ends in 1923 it likely will not end with the complete disintegration of the League as the League is pretty large.

At the end of the day wether the SLN does this or whatever rump state does this it would still matter. It's not as if the SLN has much choice in the matter, eventually someone will bring up the question. They can send as many BC's to raid the GA's territory and then what? Sit on their hands and wait? Even the SLN leadership is bound to start considering their exposed industry.