Just how big is Frontier Fleet?

Hi SWM,

A wall to wall comparison has been suggested several times, but until we get some clarification, we'll never know for sure.

L

SWM wrote:The reference to the Havenite fleet being less than a quarter of the League's might be referring solely to Battle Fleet, and not including Frontier Fleet at all.

lyonheart wrote:A wall to wall comparison has been suggested several times, but until we get some clarification, we'll never know for sure.

Do RMN assessments/comparisons of strength generally include "Silesia Station?" That would be somewhat comparable to Frontier Fleet -- very few, if any, wallers and lots of screening element sized ships.

I seem to remember a comment, early on, to the effect of "and then the PRN has all those BBs tied up in internal security duties they could use." That implies that fleet comparisons at that point were "available for offensive use" numbers.

@Lyonheart Oops, that what happens when you go from memory. It is actually in IEH, mea culpa, and the actual phrasing is :

IEH Chapter 2 wrote:Even the vast military machine People's Republic had forged was less than a fourth the size of the League Navy.

As for the ship number in FF, I was just using a round, reasonable number.
My personal believe is that FF is proportionally deficient in CAs, as we know they are to an extent in CLs, but we have no actual textev of such. As for the remaining squadron of Byng's BCs, they show up at Spindle. My major point is that we don't know what the hull count is, except by inference, but we do have a lower bound on the mass, which is in 1904-1905 FF alone significantly out massed the RMN (though this might not have included the fixed defenses).

We can, however, make a good guess as to average type mass, possess a lower bound on hull count, possess an upper bound on hull count, as ( FF + central reserve screen)/(central reserve wallers) approximates the BF nonwaller to waller ratio (note BF may possess independent BatCruRons not part of the screen, though that might fall under the heading of FF during peacetime). And one thing we definitely know is that FF has a greater proportion of BCs in its force mix than is found in the BF, and we have hints that BF's own nonwaller mix is relatively rich in BCs, when compared most other major, i.e. waller possessing, navies.

Yukon Ho! (Man I miss Calvin and Hobbes)

1905 verses 1920 strength charts:

1905 did not have any designated in the reserve
1920 had ships designated as reserve.

1905 chart numbers must include reserve. 1/2-->1/3 of those ship numbers would be reserve.

This should drop your number of hulls by approx an equivalent number for SLN(BF/FF).

Now off to finding the quotes. So far the discussion has a dearth of relevant quotes. I am "finding" them the old SLOW way. Yea Yea, have the electronic versions, but an excuse to reread the books and tag relevant quotes...

J6P wrote:Yukon Ho! (Man I miss Calvin and Hobbes)

1905 verses 1920 strength charts:

1905 did not have any designated in the reserve
1920 had ships designated as reserve.

1905 chart numbers must include reserve. 1/2-->1/3 of those ship numbers would be reserve.

This should drop your number of hulls by approx an equivalent number for SLN(BF/FF).

Now off to finding the quotes. So far the discussion has a dearth of relevant quotes. I am "finding" them the old SLOW way. Yea Yea, have the electronic versions, but an excuse to reread the books and tag relevant quotes...

In 1905 there was no reserve to speak of - Manticore was building and manning every ship they could in defense of Haven's sprall. They called it the fleet buildup for a reason - there was no reserve or need for it in 1905 - every ship was manned and being used - or discarded as obsolete. When the SD-03 Gryphon was retired in ~1903 to make way for the new Gryphon class's namesake, it was sent to the reclaimation yards, it's usable lifespan had come to an end.

By 1920, Janacheck had created the reserve to place the ships that still have reasonable lifespans on them, but were not needed for the day to day missions of the shrunken navy. Janacheck sold off or retired most everything built before ~1890, and slowly mothballed the oldest of what was kept that still had life in it.

Hutch wrote:And all Roczak had in Crown of Slaves was a flotilla of destroyers and a light cruiser, IIRC. Nothing heavy at all. and that to protect one of the richest and most modern sector.

A well established and "safe" sector.

And was that ALL he had everywhere in the sector, or all he had AVAILABLE nearby?

Hutch wrote:And Meyers was surprised by Bing's 3 squadrons of FF BC's, as if seeing them in such numbers was a most unusual thing.

The surprise i believe was at seeing that many in a single group, a single command, in one place at the same time.

I think noone would have thought much of it if they had passed by in pairs over 2-3 weeks.

Hutch wrote:Let's say there are 2,000 Protectorate/Verge worlds that need patrolling (that is probably high, but better to estimate high than low IMHO).

No way to be certain, but based on the maps and how large the core is supposed to be, i think your estimate is more likely LOW.

Hutch wrote:If each Sector has about 20 planets in it, that's 100 Sectors. And if those sectors have the same level of force as Meyers/Maya did...about 10-15 ships per sector...then there may be no more than 1,500-2,000 or so front line FF ships.

FF is noted as nearly always having a large part of its ships in yards, so maybe double your estimate for actual number of ships, with 1/3 maybe as much as half of them "laid up" for maintenance and repairs at any one time.

Plus it sounds like they have a fair amount of reserves(?) among the core worlds.

Hutch wrote:Now, I do think that there are "Regional" headquarters where most of the BC forces are concentrated (Bing's taks force came from somewhere, after all),

My guess is that you find a lot of those bases on the coreworlds.

Hutch wrote:Battlecruiser Squadron 491

Potentially indicating that they have over 500 squadrons of just battlecruisers.

Also remember Monica, a bunch of BCs got "disappeared in the crowd". Just how many ships are they rotating out of service per year for such a dissappearance not to be obvious?

These could be indications of LOTS more ships than your guess. Potentially, at least.

J6P wrote:Where do those light units come from? FF.

BF have their own light units. In wartime, FF is supposed to ASSIST BF with screening, not do it completely.

J6P wrote:FF can't be very big in comparison to the number of SD hulls.

A completely unfounded and illogical assumption.

J6P wrote:FF on the other hand is nebulously in charge of the protectorates. How many protectorates are you invisioning? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

My guess is somewhere between 1500 and 4000.


Anyway, Lyonheart has pretty much said what i was thinking...

FF is scattered around the different sectors, so any movements on a large scale take along time. Even longer with the wormhole network shutdown. I can see the alliance forced to send forces to ensure forces near the terminii locally are kept in check. It will be easier to deal with them all divided and unprepared, it might take months before the league knows the damage to their fleet.

Hi SYED,

It may depend of the navigation as we saw in SoS, where Helen plots the course to Spindle, which isn't necessarily the most obvious, and the ship's limits in hyper.

Technically if at the ~200 LY perimeter from Sol, only ~25 days would be needed if the ship could go that high and fast.

L

SYED wrote:FF is scattered around the different sectors, so any movements on a large scale take along time. Even longer with the wormhole network shutdown. I can see the alliance forced to send forces to ensure forces near the terminii locally are kept in check. It will be easier to deal with them all divided and unprepared, it might take months before the league knows the damage to their fleet.

lyonheart wrote:Hi SYED,

It may depend of the navigation as we saw in SoS, where Helen plots the course to Spindle, which isn't necessarily the most obvious, and the ship's limits in hyper.

Technically if at the ~200 LY perimeter from Sol, only ~25 days would be needed if the ship could go that high and fast.

L

Yeah, there may be reasons not to simply go to the highest hyperband you're comfortably in a making a bee line for your target. (Although I expect courier ships do that much more frequently, warships do it when it's safe and time is of the essence, and merchant ships almost never do that).

Obviously if there's a rogue wave you need to avoid it, and one possible method is to drop to a lower hyperband (if the wave doesn't cover all bands). It could be faster to do that than to detour hundreds of lightyears out of your way to go around the wave).

And if you're doing a very long range raid you need to trade off range, logistical support, and time. If you stick to grav waves you burn way less fuel; increasing your range. If you cut straight 'cross country' you need more fuel and probably need to bring additional supply ships along to refuel your force. So is a longer transit worth reducing the necessary tanker support?


Although the particular example in SoS seemed odd to me.
"Plot us a least-time course to the Spindle System, if you please, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov requested courteously

If the Captain really wanted the least time course why would Helen search for grav waves, or especially consider dropping to a lower wave to stay in one? For pure time savings a grav wave is only useful if you come across it before you reach your top speed; which takes about a day w/o a wave. While accelerating the roughly 10x accel boost a 'wave gives you would cuts some time off your trip, but once a warship's hit 0.6c all a grav wave does is save you fuel; not time.

So a true least time course would have to avoid rogue waves but otherwise shouldn't deviate to follow other grav waves after the first few hours... Should it?

Hi Jonathan_S,

I think you overlooked something obvious.

Honor-verse hyperspace starships don't expend fuel in hyper because they tap a tiny fraction of the hyper energy.

Since fuel constraints don't dictate deep raids, raid ranges are mainly restricted by on-board supplies; food, water, etc.

Then again, if there are 50-60 wormhole bridges within the SL or half that many [if only 30, average about ~57.5 LY radius each or about a week in hyper] which the GA controls the majority [2/3-3/4+] then any raids will take far less time than the deep raids of the second Haven war.

That also means a single task force can hit several targets before replenishing.

The SLN is dead, dead, dead.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi SYED,

It may depend of the navigation as we saw in SoS, where Helen plots the course to Spindle, which isn't necessarily the most obvious, and the ship's limits in hyper.

Technically if at the ~200 LY perimeter from Sol, only ~25 days would be needed if the ship could go that high and fast.

L

Yeah, there may be reasons not to simply go to the highest hyperband you're comfortably in a making a bee line for your target. (Although I expect courier ships do that much more frequently, warships do it when it's safe and time is of the essence, and merchant ships almost never do that).

Obviously if there's a rogue wave you need to avoid it, and one possible method is to drop to a lower hyperband (if the wave doesn't cover all bands). It could be faster to do that than to detour hundreds of lightyears out of your way to go around the wave).

And if you're doing a very long range raid you need to trade off range, logistical support, and time. If you stick to grav waves you burn way less fuel; increasing your range. If you cut straight 'cross country' you need more fuel and probably need to bring additional supply ships along to refuel your force. So is a longer transit worth reducing the necessary tanker support?


Although the particular example in SoS seemed odd to me.
"Plot us a least-time course to the Spindle System, if you please, Ms. Zilwicki," Terekhov requested courteously

If the Captain really wanted the least time course why would Helen search for grav waves, or especially consider dropping to a lower wave to stay in one? For pure time savings a grav wave is only useful if you come across it before you reach your top speed; which takes about a day w/o a wave. While accelerating the roughly 10x accel boost a 'wave gives you would cuts some time off your trip, but once a warship's hit 0.6c all a grav wave does is save you fuel; not time.

So a true least time course would have to avoid rogue waves but otherwise shouldn't deviate to follow other grav waves after the first few hours... Should it?