What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:What ship classes log the most light-years of Hyper travel?

Shouldn't the classes of ships that are in hyper more than others get Streak Drive first?

To some extent. So yes, for a variety of reasons build new dispatch boats with Streak drives first.

But after that you'd probably focus on creating a balanced fast raiding force.. Rather than, say, upgrading (or replacing) all your modern destroyers first it would make sense, to me at least, to designate design a task group (similar to Honor's 8th fleet during Cutworm/Sanscript), then build up that desired mix of ships with either Streak retrofits, or new built Streak equipped classes.

The main point is that the ship classes that travel in Hyper the most need streak drives first.

That is generally couriers, shouts, and the various cruisers. If you speed up you messages, then your scouting, then your raiders, each greater class already has lesser ships ready to act as screening units. The end of that progression is SDs

That isn't to say that when a heavy cruiser goes into the dock for repairs or upgrade for some combat related system the Streak Drive should be left in the warehouse, but priority should be placed on getting streak drives to those who use their hyper generators the most.

Weird Harold wrote:

Chyort wrote:...

What ship classes log the most light-years of Hyper travel?

Shouldn't the classes of ships that are in hyper more than others get Streak Drive first?

Would you stop trolling about a senario that we have no reason to believe will ever come about. The choice of which ship gets the new streak drive will be which is in construction, followed by in for major repair/refit for other reasons.

If you are going to continue with your thesis that there will be a lack of drives, explain why. I am of the opinion that they will be in series production in all of the standard sizes the Navy needs within a few months at most from the first successful prototype test.

Castenea wrote:If you are going to continue with your thesis that there will be a lack of drives, explain why.

Where do you get the impression that there will be a shortage of drives? There may be a shortage of docks to install the drives, or there may be a shortage of skilled technicians to install them, but the bottleneck probably won't be a shortage of drives.

There will however be many ships contending for limited yard space, so there will have to be priorities set for which ships get yard space first. Smaller ships of classes which spend more time in hyper than larger ships should have priority when priority for a streak drive is the tie-breaker for yard space.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:To some extent. So yes, for a variety of reasons build new dispatch boats with Streak drives first.

But after that you'd probably focus on creating a balanced fast raiding force.. Rather than, say, upgrading (or replacing) all your modern destroyers first it would make sense, to me at least, to designate design a task group (similar to Honor's 8th fleet during Cutworm/Sanscript), then build up that desired mix of ships with either Streak retrofits, or new built Streak equipped classes.

The main point is that the ship classes that travel in Hyper the most need streak drives first.

That is generally couriers, shouts, and the various cruisers. If you speed up you messages, then your scouting, then your raiders, each greater class already has lesser ships ready to act as screening units. The end of that progression is SDs

That isn't to say that when a heavy cruiser goes into the dock for repairs or upgrade for some combat related system the Streak Drive should be left in the warehouse, but priority should be placed on getting streak drives to those who use their hyper generators the most.

But it's more nuanced that this which classes spend in most time in hyper.

First, you need to discount time spend escorting or convoying, because you're tied pretty tightly to the rest of the group; you aren't jaunting around in other hyper bands.

But second it's a oversimplification to focus on classes of warships; because you're allocating yard space to specific ships.
Yes, on average DDs likely spend the most time in hyper. But on a ship by ship basis the 5% of SDs that spend the most time in hyper (assigned to a raiding force; for example) probably spend more time there than the 25% of DDs that spend the least (assigned to system defense).

So if that's true the it follows that it's a waste to upgrade/replace those particular DDs before those particular SD.



Assuming no shortage of streak drives, deciding which individual ship to refit with them next will just be one small part of a bigger matrix determining the next ship to get yard space -- or what new hulls to lay down. But it's going to be competing with all the other refit or new hull requirement priorities.

And I doubt the result will be anything as simple as "smaller units first".

Jonathan_S wrote:But it's more nuanced that this which classes spend in most time in hyper.

Which is why I specified "log the most light-years in Hyper" originally. "More Time" is just easier to type repeatedly.

PS:

Jonathan_S wrote:Yes, on average DDs likely spend the most time in hyper. But on a ship by ship basis the 5% of SDs that spend the most time in hyper (assigned to a raiding force; for example) probably spend more time there than the 25% of DDs that spend the least (assigned to system defense).

I doubt that even Eighth Fleet during operation Buttercup logged enough hyper distance on the SDs as it did on it's attached scouting and screening elements.

Picking and choosing DDs based on current assignments is silly; if a DD from a defensive task force -- like home fleet -- is available for installation of a streak drive, install it and swap the new Fast-DD for a slow-DD from some other assignment.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But it's more nuanced that this which classes spend in most time in hyper.

Which is why I specified "log the most light-years in Hyper" originally. "More Time" is just easier to type repeatedly.

PS:

Jonathan_S wrote:Yes, on average DDs likely spend the most time in hyper. But on a ship by ship basis the 5% of SDs that spend the most time in hyper (assigned to a raiding force; for example) probably spend more time there than the 25% of DDs that spend the least (assigned to system defense).

I doubt that even Eighth Fleet during operation Buttercup logged enough hyper distance on the SDs as it did on it's attached scouting and screening elements.

Picking and choosing DDs based on current assignments is silly; if a DD from a defensive task force -- like home fleet -- is available for installation of a streak drive, install it and swap the new Fast-DD for a slow-DD from some other assignment.

I wasn't literally saying take a solo scout DD out of service to upgrade; sure you'd refit the next DD in the queue then assign it to "fast-DD" duties, or take the next new-build streak DD off the line and assign it to them. Then rotate the DD that had been on those duties back to "slow-DD" work; convoy escort, defense fleet screen, etc.

And at least some of 8th Fleets DDs got more hyper time than the SD(P) (certainly the ones who went out on decoy scouting missions when the SD(P)s weren't coming did). But 8th Fleet's SD(P)s probably got more "fast" hyper time during those months than 50% of the DDs in the RMN.


Again I'm not saying you need to literally pull Harrington's SD(P)s away from her to upgrade. But you'd upgrade some SD(P)s before you upgraded most of the DDs - BCs; and you'd assign those to raiding forces (either new forces, or swapping them for "slow" SDs previously assigned to the force)

Weird Harold wrote:

Chyort wrote:...

What ship classes log the most light-years of Hyper travel?

Shouldn't the classes of ships that are in hyper more than others get Streak Drive first?

And yet again you refuse to read my post and comment on the primary relevant fact.

Wow...

I can however play this game too... So im going to have to say it was Honor when she was doing Deep raids into Haven... Clearly when she was spending 2-3 months in transit one way for a few days spent raiding. That is clearly the most light-years wasted on a military operation!
So clearly that one small example proves me right by ignoring anything i don't wish to look at or consider!

Weird Harold wrote:

Castenea wrote:If you are going to continue with your thesis that there will be a lack of drives, explain why.

Where do you get the impression that there will be a shortage of drives? There may be a shortage of docks to install the drives, or there may be a shortage of skilled technicians to install them, but the bottleneck probably won't be a shortage of drives.

There will however be many ships contending for limited yard space, so there will have to be priorities set for which ships get yard space first. Smaller ships of classes which spend more time in hyper than larger ships should have priority when priority for a streak drive is the tie-breaker for yard space.

Weird Harold wrote:I doubt that even Eighth Fleet during operation Buttercup logged enough hyper distance on the SDs as it did on it's attached scouting and screening elements.

Buttercup was a system by system advance. Traditional Warfare.

The end of the havenite war focused on deep raids by both sides, and it is stated in the books they are going to take everything they learned about deep raids and apply it to the Sollies.




Anyways! i will officially crown you king of the lollipop guild. And let the subject drop here in public because other people are getting tired of our ranting.
If you wish to continue the debate feel free to throw me a PM however. It has actually been quite fun for me

Jonathan_S wrote:

Chyort wrote:The tops and bottoms are effectively unarmored. They were using this fact way back on the original nike. So armor is something of a wash i would assume.

That's true up through about classic BCs. But by the time you get up to SDs there's still nontrivial armor on the top and bottom, and then there's more on the internal armor belt around the core hull (and I expect the hyper generator is somewhere in that core hull area).

It still less armor than going through the meters of side armor, but it's still tough as hell to cut through.

Heh, that is why i said effectively unarmored not simply unarmored.
But i do understand what your saying and for the most part agree. But they are set up to repair battle damage on the sides, so they can work with meters of armor if they need to. But going thru centimeters of armor would be far easier was what i was getting at.
Or put another way. Meters of armor, and meters of decking from the side. Or centimeters or armor and meters of decking from the top. After a certain point the thinner armor would actually be easier to deal with than the decking itself i would imagine.

But the big point is you don't always have to cut thru the thickest armor to accomplish your goal which we both seem to agree on. So its all good either way.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think it was an RFC post, rather than something from the book. But I can't seem to find it quickly.

I expect, eventually, all the Keyhole SD(P)s will be upgraded to Keyhole II status. That's a significant overhaul but not too horrible. They weren't all done prior to the Battle of Manticore; but they would all have been expected to as soon as they could be freed to cycle through the yards.

It's the pre-keyhole SD(P)s that I believe aren't going to be upgraded. Modding the armor to create the keyhole bays, rerouting, installing all the shipboard support hardware to run the keyhole, adding dedicated beamed power emitters and (I assume ultra-high speed) keyhole com links is way, way more work to the Keyhole to Keyhole II upgrade. Enough so that my recollection is that RFC said it just wasn't going to happen. (But my memory could be wrong, or the situation could have changed that. But more likely they'd be relegated to secondary duties until enough 4th gen SD(P)s are available to allow the 1st gen (pre-Keyhole) designs to be retired.

Hmm, intresting... must have missed that post(or simply forgotten it. heh) Thanks for the heads-up.

Chyort wrote:The end of the havenite war focused on deep raids by both sides, and it is stated in the books they are going to take everything they learned about deep raids and apply it to the Sollies.

Yep, they're going to apply everything they learned about deep raids, including the need for scouts and the need for screening elements.

If you give priority to SDs for streak upgrades, where are you going to find scouts and screening elements to keep up with them or go ahead of them to gather information?


Another thing about deep-raiding strategy: You only need SDs when you're attacking systems defended by SDs or SD equivalent system defense pods. If you're "attacking" SL Core Worlds without a SLN presence or SDF, you only need a Roland or two to destroy a system's infrastructure.

Of course you'd need Fast-DDs to scout the systems and tell you which could be raided by Rolands, which needed Nikes and which needed SDs.

But then you'd send SDs everywhere do do all of those missions because they're so "versatile."

PS: If you want me to acknowledge the content of your posts, try deleting all the personal attacks and address the content of mine.

Weird Harold wrote:

Chyort wrote:The end of the havenite war focused on deep raids by both sides, and it is stated in the books they are going to take everything they learned about deep raids and apply it to the Sollies.

Yep, they're going to apply everything they learned about deep raids, including the need for scouts and the need for screening elements.

If you give priority to SDs for streak upgrades, where are you going to find scouts and screening elements to keep up with them or go ahead of them to gather information?


Another thing about deep-raiding strategy: You only need SDs when you're attacking systems defended by SDs or SD equivalent system defense pods. If you're "attacking" SL Core Worlds without a SLN presence or SDF, you only need a Roland or two to destroy a system's infrastructure.

Of course you'd need Fast-DDs to scout the systems and tell you which could be raided by Rolands, which needed Nikes and which needed SDs.

But then you'd send SDs everywhere do do all of those missions because they're so "versatile."

PS: If you want me to acknowledge the content of your posts, try deleting all the personal attacks and address the content of mine.

The thing is, you keep seeming to assume that the limiting factor will be the number of streak drives available. If this is the case, how is a Roland a better scouting unit than an Invictous? If I have the ability to build 12 streak units, what job exactly will a small ship do better than an SD? If I have twelve streak drive DDs, they could scout twelve systems, then report back which system is best to attack, then you send in regular speed SDs. Or if you have 12 streak drive SDs, each of them could scout a system, then regroup and attack a streak drive speeds.

On a HULL FOR HULL basis, SDs are more versitle than small ships. On a tunnage or price or even manpower basis, small fry are more versitle than SDs. That is just the way it is. And if the limit is the number of streak drives is what the limit is, then we are talking about a hull to hull comparison. An SD can do everything a single DD can do, not everything a division of DDs can do.

As far as upgrading, I wouldn't be surprised if SDp's are the only pre-streak ships that CAN be upgraded to the streak drive. A dispatch boat is the absolute minimum necessary to carry a message between stars. That is exactly how it is designed. Everything that can be cut has been. So, if the Hyperdrive is 10% of a DB's tunnage, (and it is probably more,) doubling it would make the boat 110% of its standard size, and that would mess with the compensator, and if you expanded the ship you would need to redesign the nodes, etc. On an SDp, the hyper generator is probably only one or two per cent of the tonnage of the ship, so they need to find a lot less space proportionally. And that extra tonnage could all come out of the pod bay really quite easily. If the hyper generator room is close enough to the pod bay, a redesign to include it in the basic build would take about a day.

Pre streak BDs, DDs, CLs, and CAs will almost have to be taken apart and rebuilt from scratch to incorporate a streak drive, to the point where it would probably take about the same time and actually cost less to build new. Probably BCs and BC(L)s as well. A BCp would probably have to sacrifice to much of its ammo load to make it worthwhile, but an SDp, as soon as they have a streak drive ready for one, they could drop it in to the core, and grow some new armor between it and the aft of the ship. Probably could do it without even needing to extend the standard refit time by too much.