Verge Liberation Movements

KNick wrote:It could be done, but since the RMN and RHN both already have dedicated troop transports, I see no reason to make the effort. Will both navies need more transports than they have? Of course. That is nearly always the case.

I seem to recall mention of an "Assault Transport" conversion of JMT freighters to carry a battalion of Marines with assault shuttles and close air support stingships -- or something similar -- to address the lack of Marine complements in the new designs.

I don't recall if it was in Shadow of Freedom, A Rising Thunder, or here on the forums.

KNick wrote:If it became truly necessary, it would probably be easier to design "plug and play" containers to be carried by a standard freighter.

That would be a reasonable solution for transporting occupation troops -- although the RHN already has dedicated troop-ships, like those captured at Cerberus, that could be used qicker than designing and building life support modules for troop transport.

The only problem is going to be providing transportation that can keep up with the Task Forces that are going to need ground assault and/or boarding actions.

Weird Harold wrote:

KNick wrote:If it became truly necessary, it would probably be easier to design "plug and play" containers to be carried by a standard freighter.

That would be a reasonable solution for transporting occupation troops -- although the RHN already has dedicated troop-ships, like those captured at Cerberus, that could be used qicker than designing and building life support modules for troop transport.

The only problem is going to be providing transportation that can keep up with the Task Forces that are going to need ground assault and/or boarding actions.

The RMN has their own equivalent of the RHN's Roughneck troop transports. These are designed to be deployed with the rest of the Fleet train, for both navies. In other words, strategic rather than tactical transports. Tactical transports or increased Marine compliments are going to be needed in the near future. That should be one of the design constraints BuShips is looking at for the next generation of warships.

KNick wrote:The RMN has their own equivalent of the RHN's Roughneck troop transports. These are designed to be deployed with the rest of the Fleet train, for both navies. In other words, strategic rather than tactical transports. Tactical transports or increased Marine compliments are going to be needed in the near future. That should be one of the design constraints BuShips is looking at for the next generation of warships.

The Kamerling-class system control cruiser detailed in House of Steel would seem like something along the lines you're talking about.

drothgery wrote:The Kamerling-class system control cruiser detailed in House of Steel would seem like something along the lines you're talking about.

Thank you. I do remember that class. I just could not remember where I had read/heard about it. Since I don't have the ebooks, I would have had to reread to find it and I didn't have a clue where to start looking.

drothgery wrote:The Kamerling-class system control cruiser detailed in House of Steel would seem like something along the lines you're talking about.

Thank you. That is what I remember seeing:

House of Steel wrote:One of the major disadvantages of the new RMN warship classes and their highly automated designs is that station commanders are finding more and more often that they lack the manpower and Marines to deal with boarding actions, prize crews, piracy suppression, and similar missions.

The Kamerling class was designed to address this problem. It takes advantage of the same level of automation and crew reduction as all modern classes, but in addition to the small Navy crew, it carries three companies of Marines, with support equipment and enough small craft lift capacity to move the entire contingent in a single flight.

While capable combatants against anything they are likely to encounter in distant stations such as the Silesian Confederacy, the Kamerling’s weapons fit is biased towards defense and, despite its tonnage advantage over both the Avalon and Valiant classes, its antiship capability is limited for its size due to the tonnage consumed by additional life-support. These ships were never intended to contest space control with another navy’s units.

...

Only forty-eight have been built and no more are planned until at least 1923. Nearly all of those have been assigned to Silesia.

Weird Harold wrote:

drothgery wrote:The Kamerling-class system control cruiser detailed in House of Steel would seem like something along the lines you're talking about.

Thank you. That is what I remember seeing:

House of Steel wrote:One of the major disadvantages of the new RMN warship classes and their highly automated designs is that station commanders are finding more and more often that they lack the manpower and Marines to deal with boarding actions, prize crews, piracy suppression, and similar missions.

The Kamerling class was designed to address this problem. It takes advantage of the same level of automation and crew reduction as all modern classes, but in addition to the small Navy crew, it carries three companies of Marines, with support equipment and enough small craft lift capacity to move the entire contingent in a single flight.

While capable combatants against anything they are likely to encounter in distant stations such as the Silesian Confederacy, the Kamerling’s weapons fit is biased towards defense and, despite its tonnage advantage over both the Avalon and Valiant classes, its antiship capability is limited for its size due to the tonnage consumed by additional life-support. These ships were never intended to contest space control with another navy’s units.

...

Only forty-eight have been built and no more are planned until at least 1923. Nearly all of those have been assigned to Silesia.

That was what I was thinking about. What you need are dedicated fast troop transports, which can keep up with task forces for operations where they are needed. You make plans (in this case ship building plans) that you have something to review and change.

BobfromSydney wrote:I've been thinking about a way for Manticore and/or the GA to deny involvement with the 'liberation movements in a credible way and try to pin it on the MA.

My suggestion:

Publicly announce a $10 million bounty for any Mesan Agents captured alive who are claiming to represent the SEM.

As part of the announcement, it should be made clear that the SEM has zero involvement in ANY liberation movements and no one claiming to be from them can be trusted.

This should make it very impractical for MA agents to claim to be Manticoran.

The other aspect is that it prevents the SEM from looking like Putin to [soon to be] neutral powers.

The only problems I can see with this are:
A - getting the message to every planet/system, after all this area isn't well covered by couriers or merchant shipping
B - Manticore official already has this policy (see actions in the confederacy)
C - ONI/SIS operatives would be heading into the area and this would make their jobs ten times harder
D - For the resistance movements to claim the bounty they would have to expose themselves
E - The PR damage within the SL ("of course they saying their not involved, would you admit to funding terrorist groups")
F - The only response that Manticore can take is the one Mike as 10th Fleet Co took: honour the call where possible, ensure the safety of her own people, and patch up the PR/political damage later.
Note: If 'Firebrand & Co' have been using the same template every where, then the RMN has a built in out "Our operational needs shifted/we didn't get your message in time and we couldn't get to you, were sorry but we did warn you. Oh, by the way here's X million units of industrial/medical goodies to help you rebuild, plus some peacekeeper troops"

KNick wrote:
It would take some redesign to fit even a squad of Marines on any kind of cargo vessel (ammo or supply ship). By the time all the addition support space (galley, mess deck, armory, training facility, etc.), is added in, it takes hundreds of cubic feet per body. While this is not a lot of space to use up in a cargo vessel that contains millions of cubic feet of space, the vessel itself uses that same space for other things, like cargo handling equipment.

It could be done, but since the RMN and RHN both already have dedicated troop transports, I see no reason to make the effort. Will both navies need more transports than they have? Of course. That is nearly always the case. If it became truly necessary, it would probably be easier to design "plug and play" containers to be carried by a standard freighter.

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I agree with this, although the freighter would need military grade compensators and hyperdrives to keep up. And, of course, this would allow flexibiliy to decide how many marines are needed for the mission rather than accepting the limits the shoehorning them onto ships designated for other things would impose.

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think, Harold, that some of the things being pointed out about widespread liberation movements provides good rational for building those small units you were talking about soonest. The Rolands combined with the Mark 16s are probably the quickest to build.

Yeah, that's always been a part of why I contend the GA needs more smaller units to deal with the League and SLN. I think a CA or CL production push would be more productive; a Roland just doesn't have the magazine capacity for sustained independent operations nor does it have sufficient marines for any kind of ground or boarding action -- most of them don't have Abigail and Matteo to improvise with either.

For that matter, a Havenite CA or CL would probably work better for supporting insurgencies.

Personally, since we haven't seen any Havenite breakthroughs in ERMs or DDM/MDM for sub-wall units I'd prefer not to deploy their CAs or CLs units alone. I agree they've got the manpower to better handle these ground combat or police presence missions. But they don't appear to have a missile range advantage over SLN units.

You could team them with ERM/DDM ships, but politically that might not work. It might seem like you're always sticking the Havenite ships with the crap jobs (planetary intervention) while keeping RMN hands clean and their ships free for the glory jobs (naval combat).


I'd think an early (but unglamorous) Bolthole focus would be upgrading the missile range on smaller Havenite units. Maybe the Manti capacitors are efficient enough that you can fit an ERM drive and it's extra power into the same size missile the Havenites currently use in the cruisers. It didn't work that way for the Manties, their Mark-14 was too big for the tubes of their existing cruisers, but maybe in this case Haven's original lack of miniaturization prowess will have a beneficial side effect for them. If they can do that then I'd be far less concerned that Havenite DDs - BCs might be offering SLN units too fair a fight.

Jonathan_S wrote:Personally, since we haven't seen any Havenite breakthroughs in ERMs or DDM/MDM for sub-wall units I'd prefer not to deploy their CAs or CLs units alone. I agree they've got the manpower to better handle these ground combat or police presence missions. But they don't appear to have a missile range advantage over SLN units.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd think an early (but unglamorous) Bolthole focus would be upgrading the missile range on smaller Havenite units. ...

A lot of RMN ships also suffer similar deficiencies in missile range. Extended Range or Multi Drive missiles should definitely be a priority. I'm not sure that it would be that much of a disadvantage in a ground support role, though.

Jonathan_S wrote:You could team them with ERM/DDM ships, but politically that might not work. It might seem like you're always sticking the Havenite ships with the crap jobs (planetary intervention) while keeping RMN hands clean and their ships free for the glory jobs (naval combat).

It wouldn't be all that difficult to pair long range missile ships with marine-heavy ground support ships. Even the Kamerlings will need escort by CLAC or Cruisers to secure the high orbitals.

Mixing and matching RMN/GSN and RHN ships to provide a mix of space superiority and ground combat doesn't have to give the space superiority to the RMN/GSN components. In fact, the RHN probably has a few CLACs and Cruisers to spare as escorts for the Talbot Quadrant Guard forces being assembled and trained as RMA occupation forces.

Of course, the GA may choose to send homogenous task forces with no cross-command elements. Send whatever navy/marines combination that happens to be available to the next hotspot, but I think that would cause the impression of a lack of solidarity in the GA. Both alliance members and outside observers might see that pattern as a pack of wolves dividing up a vulnerable herd instead of a concerted, combined effort to deal with Solarian aggression.