Can a Roland carry Marines?

I was wondering if there was enough extra berthing capacity in a Roland to carry some Marines ad hoc at need? I was thinking of a Platoon or so if necessary? I was thinking that environmental systems might be able to deal with it, but, is there enough extra space?

dd

olddatsunfan wrote:I was wondering if there was enough extra berthing capacity in a Roland to carry some Marines ad hoc at need? I was thinking of a Platoon or so if necessary? I was thinking that environmental systems might be able to deal with it, but, is there enough extra space?

A platoon of Marines would be ~40 troops and officers. Which is about half the complement of a Roland. I don't think there's room for a eMarine Platoon on a Roland. I suspect Tristan had trouble finding an extra berth for Mateo.

The only empty space on a Roland is the volume and life support reserved for carrying a destroyer squadron staff. Which we have seen are most likely to be what was described in one of the Hornblower novels as a "Commodore of the Second Class*," doubling as both squadron commander and commanding officer of the flag ship.


* In contrast to a "Commodore of the First Class", who had an assigned flag captain.

Fox2! wrote:dd

olddatsunfan wrote:I was wondering if there was enough extra berthing capacity in a Roland to carry some Marines ad hoc at need? I was thinking of a Platoon or so if necessary? I was thinking that environmental systems might be able to deal with it, but, is there enough extra space?

A platoon of Marines would be ~40 troops and officers. Which is about half the complement of a Roland. I don't think there's room for a eMarine Platoon on a Roland. I suspect Tristan had trouble finding an extra berth for Mateo.

There is Flag space on all Roland's, so there is berthing for a Commodore an staff, on top of a Roland's normal crew. Most likely you could put a Squad in there with no issues.

A number of us think the space should be, though it is not, changeable to a Marine centric space (armory, training space, etc), on ships not carrying a flag staff. But this is fan, not cannon.

The MWW, has pretty much said that a swappable space isn't going to happen. But that doesn't mean that a squad or so can't be carried for a specific mission.

Fox2! wrote:
A platoon of Marines would be ~40 troops and officers. Which is about half the complement of a Roland.

A Roland class has the same crew complement of a US Word War II fleet submarine---Gato https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/g/gato-i.html or Balao https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/b/balao.html class?

To revisit this for xth time....

I suspect the squadron staff consists of:

The squadron CO. O5 (1) Who is entitled to an orderly. (2) XO O4 (probably in another ship normally) with an orderly. The Operations officer O4 (3) Communications officer O2-3 (4) Logistics officer O2-3 (5) Personnel officer O2-3 (6) Squadron chief NCO (7) At least 5 enlisted clerks etc (12).

Then we have possibly the flag lieutenant O1-2, the tactical officer O2-3, the EW officer O2-3, a squadron astrogator O2-3, etc, most of whom have enlisted assistants. Are they supposed to run 24-7? Need more people.

So we have at least one 05, one 04, 3 O2-4, One senior NCO, 6 junior enlisted. We quite possibly instead have one O5, one O4, 6 O2-3, one O1, one senior NCO, two to four midgrade NCOs, eight to twelve junior enlisted.

I suspect you can accommodate 12 marines in the billeting designed for the 12+ members of the command staff.

How many marines could be accommodated in the normal CO quarters on ship? The one with the dining room, etc? How about the Operations officers quarters?

I suspect that you could accommodate at least two squads easily and possibly an entire platoon.

And since the CO's quarters has food storage and preparation capability they can feed the marines too.

You convert the flag bridge into the storage area for weapons and such. Battle armor might be a problem, but it all depends on have big the squadron briefing room/conference room is.

kzt wrote:To revisit this for xth time....

I suspect the squadron staff consists of:

The squadron CO. O5 (1) Who is entitled to an orderly. (2) XO O4 (probably in another ship normally) with an orderly. The Operations officer O4 (3) Communications officer O2-3 (4) Logistics officer O2-3 (5) Personnel officer O2-3 (6) Squadron chief NCO (7) At least 5 enlisted clerks etc (12).

Then we have possibly the flag lieutenant O1-2, the tactical officer O2-3, the EW officer O2-3, a squadron astrogator O2-3, etc, most of whom have enlisted assistants. Are they supposed to run 24-7? Need more people.

So we have at least one 05, one 04, 3 O2-4, One senior NCO, 6 junior enlisted. We quite possibly instead have one O5, one O4, 6 O2-3, one O1, one senior NCO, two to four midgrade NCOs, eight to twelve junior enlisted.

I suspect you can accommodate 12 marines in the billeting designed for the 12+ members of the command staff.

How many marines could be accommodated in the normal CO quarters on ship? The one with the dining room, etc? How about the Operations officers quarters?

I suspect that you could accommodate at least two squads easily and possibly an entire platoon.

And since the CO's quarters has food storage and preparation capability they can feed the marines too.

You convert the flag bridge into the storage area for weapons and such. Battle armor might be a problem, but it all depends on have big the squadron briefing room/conference room is.

I think there is more than a bit of overstaffing. Most of the Rolands work in groups of four or five. You don't need quite as many people. Zavala was a captain...no need for flag lieutenant.

I would doubt there would be that many assistants needed. Personnel is rather a small issue since they are on the go. They keep the people they have and there are yeoman on each ship. Note that at times a group of Roland is led by someone in a cruiser.

They will not have three astrogators on the ship for the leader's staff. There are astrogators on other ships who can handle a lot of the possible problems while the lead one is off.

The squadron leader won't have an XO...there'll be a chain of command with another captain next in line. The squadron chief might just be the most senior chief in the task force.

And a few of the other officers might not be directly in place. With a four Roland force, the senior among the logistic officers might just be in charge of collating for the whole group.

Remember that there are not all that many crew on the whole ship.A lot of jobs will be cut back.

ldwechsler wrote:And a few of the other officers might not be directly in place. With a four Roland force, the senior among the logistic officers might just be in charge of collating for the whole group.

Remember that there are not all that many crew on the whole ship.A lot of jobs will be cut back.

The Rolands weren't designed or intended to provide Flag Decks for Roland Flotillas, they were provided Flag Decks so they could fill the lack of command ships for older CLs and CAs. They would, therefore have accommodations for a full Flag Staff even though the ship itself doesn't require that many people to operate it. The Flag Deck is undoubtedly cramped for a full flag staff compared to a BCs or an SDs Flag Deck, but there will be a bunk and storage locker for everyone on KZTs list and more.

What if we crew the entire ship with treecats? You would be able to cram significantly more kitties in the available life support. Obvious the cat skinnies will need to be somewhat modified to allow the cats to interact easier with the controls of the ship and so forth. Since you won't be using all the crew space you can cram those areas full of stuff for the marines. Similarly, you can cut back on hydroponics and/or food storage because treecats will consume less than the average human.

Alternatively, you could genetically engineer a bunch of "super-soldiers" which are hobbit sized, and try to pull off something similar. While it would be slightly more cramped, our super-hobbits would likely take less changes to the controls and so forth.

Although a mixture would likely be best. That way you could both use the marine carrying Roland to ferry artifacts of horrible power to a location for them to be safely decommissioned and have treecats to perform use telepathically enhanced interrogation techniques.

Obviously it would be best to build a fully modified Roland designed around smaller crew. That would save significant space, while still carrying marines for larger (counting the marines here) crew. Also the corridors would be smaller compromising ship structure less.

If it works out they could then go full throttle and create a whole navy of super-hobbits and treecats.

quite possibly a cat wrote:What if we crew the entire ship with treecats? You would be able to cram significantly more kitties in the available life support. Obvious the cat skinnies will need to be somewhat modified to allow the cats to interact easier with the controls of the ship and so forth. Since you won't be using all the crew space you can cram those areas full of stuff for the marines. Similarly, you can cut back on hydroponics and/or food storage because treecats will consume less than the average human.

Alternatively, you could genetically engineer a bunch of "super-soldiers" which are hobbit sized, and try to pull off something similar. While it would be slightly more cramped, our super-hobbits would likely take less changes to the controls and so forth.

Although a mixture would likely be best. That way you could both use the marine carrying Roland to ferry artifacts of horrible power to a location for them to be safely decommissioned and have treecats to perform use telepathically enhanced interrogation techniques.

Obviously it would be best to build a fully modified Roland designed around smaller crew. That would save significant space, while still carrying marines for larger (counting the marines here) crew. Also the corridors would be smaller compromising ship structure less.

If it works out they could then go full throttle and create a whole navy of super-hobbits and treecats.

Intriguing concept, but [Bronx Cheer] [/Bronx Cheer]

I still like my explanation:

RMMC regulations absolutely prohibit the quartering of marines in anything but spaces that have been personally sanctified by the SMMC and have never been sullied by the presence of any Navy pukes after that. Which is why the Roland cannot ever carry marines.