whole star nation from scratch fleet question

I'm creating a game for some friends of mine who play the ad astra saganami tactical simulator. I'm creating a whole star nation from scratch.

I'm designing them with their own navy (low-mid sized, nothing bigger than a heavy cruiser and mostly light cruisers and destroyers). Where I'm hitting a wall is with auxiliries.
In a single system star nation, where they have space station support, planetary industry etc, whould a navy still need a force of space-based auxiliaries (ammunition ships, repair ships, fuel ships, tenders etc)?
Looking at the real world navies - most have auxiliary supports, but these range from something like two offshore tenders to small fleets of support ships.

Any thoughts from my wiser honorverse fans out their would be of great help. Thanks

If it's a system defense force, it's probably not going to have any auxiliaries. If there's a substantial LAC force, it might have a couple LAC tenders, but I don't see the need for a ammunition colliers, minelayers, etc.

arduskaine wrote:I'm creating a game for some friends of mine who play the ad astra saganami tactical simulator. I'm creating a whole star nation from scratch.

I'm designing them with their own navy (low-mid sized, nothing bigger than a heavy cruiser and mostly light cruisers and destroyers). Where I'm hitting a wall is with auxiliries.
In a single system star nation, where they have space station support, planetary industry etc, whould a navy still need a force of space-based auxiliaries (ammunition ships, repair ships, fuel ships, tenders etc)?
Looking at the real world navies - most have auxiliary supports, but these range from something like two offshore tenders to small fleets of support ships.

Any thoughts from my wiser honorverse fans out their would be of great help. Thanks

Let's take your world building a little further to give some "color" to the activities of your navy.

Single planet or multi planet?
small or large merchant marine?
Pirate activity?
Relativly at peace, at War, or long term cold war enemy?
Defensive commitments (asteroid belt, Gas giant mining, miners in nearby systems - wormhole, multiple planets)?

The reason I ask is simple, the more your ships move, the more auxiliaries are needed. For-ex, if you have miners in a nearby system mining a valuable mineral, you probably have patrols in the system. Depending on the distance from you home world and the size and activness of the patrol, you could have a fuel collier, a ammo ship, a supply ship and a repair ship there. Active "Hot" defensive patrols may require a minelayer (if you have a defensible point) and tugs.

If you don't need to project force, you don't need these things, or as many of them. You may have an old converted freighter for ammo/supplies/fuel/repair shops - or the plan is to rent if you ever need that because you've been at relative peace for 200 years.

The Fluff is important.

Depends on what you see the fleet's purpose. If the fleet is purely a system defense force with the hypercapable combatants primary purpose is to be able to microjump and/or exert control/policing presence out by Jupiter and beyond, then very few auxiliaries would be needed. And those support ships may not need to be hyper capable.

Now if the point of the cruisers in the order of battle is to be able to deploy a useful amount of combat power across inter-stellar distances (commerce protection/commerce raiding most likely mission)than hyper capable support ships make sense to support the hyper capable combatants that could routinely be several days from base.

What is this navy's primary and secondary missions? What resources are available? And what is the strategy of this navy to accomplish those missions with the available resource?

Answer those questions and the fleet support question resolves itself in my opinion.

fester wrote:What is this navy's primary and secondary missions? What resources are available? And what is the strategy of this navy to accomplish those missions with the available resource?

Answer those questions and the fleet support question resolves itself in my opinion.

Yep. One of the Appendices in House of Steel explains how to construct a fleet structure, I would strongly recommend reading it.

If you grab House of Steel, there's a chapter entitled "Building a Navy in the Honorverse" which I believe would be quite useful for a project like this.

arduskaine wrote:Looking at the real world navies - most have auxiliary supports, but these range from something like two offshore tenders to small fleets of support ships.

It all varies by mission and funding.

What are the missions of the military, how are they ranked and how are they funded. If, for example, some industrial organization is willing to fund a particular mission (to say protect a particular orbital facility at a gas giant outside the hyperlimit that matters a lot to them) then it might be supported a lot better then would otherwise make sense.

If you have really limited funds and are run by competent people your forces will concentrate on the combat ships you need to fulfill your primary mission, with an attempt to do secondary missions when possible. So your number of auxiliaries will be low and they will be replaced as rarely as they can be. For example, if you rarely need to do missile reloads away from base a chartered freighter might be used to haul missile reloads, without any of the specialized handling equipment of a proper ammo ship. It means your reload time will be quite extended and labor intensive, but it will still work.

If you are lavishly funded then you can actually try to do all the various missions that people want your forces to do and obtain modern specialized ships to do the non-combat ones. For example you can have hyper capable SAR/police vessels to deal with issues outside the hyperlimit instead of trying to find a free warship to assign to help when needed.

arduskaine wrote:I'm creating a game for some friends of mine who play the ad astra saganami tactical simulator. I'm creating a whole star nation from scratch.

I'm designing them with their own navy (low-mid sized, nothing bigger than a heavy cruiser and mostly light cruisers and destroyers). Where I'm hitting a wall is with auxiliries.
In a single system star nation, where they have space station support, planetary industry etc, whould a navy still need a force of space-based auxiliaries (ammunition ships, repair ships, fuel ships, tenders etc)?
Looking at the real world navies - most have auxiliary supports, but these range from something like two offshore tenders to small fleets of support ships.

Any thoughts from my wiser honorverse fans out their would be of great help. Thanks

Arduskaine, I never bought the tactical simulator box, but I did buy the shipbooks. Is there a generic CA, CL, and DD or do you have to just use one of the Manty, Haven, Silensian, or Andermani designs in the shipbooks in a world building senario like this?

arduskaine wrote:I'm creating a game for some friends of mine who play the ad astra saganami tactical simulator. I'm creating a whole star nation from scratch.

I'm designing them with their own navy (low-mid sized, nothing bigger than a heavy cruiser and mostly light cruisers and destroyers). Where I'm hitting a wall is with auxiliries.
In a single system star nation, where they have space station support, planetary industry etc, whould a navy still need a force of space-based auxiliaries (ammunition ships, repair ships, fuel ships, tenders etc)?
Looking at the real world navies - most have auxiliary supports, but these range from something like two offshore tenders to small fleets of support ships.

Any thoughts from my wiser honorverse fans out their would be of great help. Thanks

I would recommend buying axillaries like a AD (Depot Ship) and an AR (Repair Ship).

A Depot ship is used for minor repair work, refit and maintenance work beyond shipboard capabilities but not requiring the use of a shipyard.

A Repair ship is good for ship repair up to medium damage and ad hoc repairs for heavy damage to return damaged ship to a proper shipyard (read OBS on Fearless' return and Hexapuma and Warlock's return in SftS)