How many Star Nations are there with Ships of the Wall?

Jonathan_S wrote:

evilauthor wrote:If we assume a minimum total of 3000 SDs being used by the SDFs and then spread them evenly between all 600 SDFs, then that means that each SDF has FIVE SDs, which doesn't look like an unreasonable number.

Of course, we know that Beowulf's SDF has 36 SDs, which is well above that 5 SD average. If other actual SD users have fleets of similar size, that leaves plenty of the 600 SDFs without any SDs at all, but the total number of SDs owned by all SDFs combined would still reach the thousand mark.

Actually exactly 5 seems a little unlikely to me.
If you're building SDs to really use then the minimum number to be effective, and form even the most abbreviated wall of battle, is 4. But even with 6 it would be impossible to keep 4 in nearly ready to operate status.

Most wet navy ships do well to keep 1/3rd deployed. Normally it's 1/3rd doing post cruise activities/minor maintenance/pre-cruise workup, 1/3rd in major maintenance and overhaul, 1/3rd deployed.
(Right now it appears out of 10 US CVNs, 3 are back in home port, 4 are in major maintenance/upgrade, and 3 are deployed)

Even if SDs need less maintenance and your SDF is hanging around the home system most of the time you're still likely going to need somewhere between 33%-50% "extra" SDs to be reasonable sure you've got your minimum number ready to go when needed.


So an SDF with a target of always having a 4 ship SD squadron ready would likely need between 6-8 active (non-reserve) SDs to achieve that. So I'd be really surprised if any SDF bothered to have less than that number. At that point you're better off operating a useful number of BCs for your money and manpower. (At least in my opinion )

The RMN had a practice of keeping <15% of it's wall in maintenance at any time. When it exceeded this during the first war pushes pre-Icarus, it caused long term availability issues.

We know the Havenites relied more on depot maintenance in the 1st war due to training issues, bubt how much was never stated. SLN BF never operate outside the SL Shell, so probably rarely deploy away from their base.

So in the Honorverse, ship uptime varies widely between navies.

SWM wrote:I'm afraid you are mistaken. The Midgard Federation is expanding enough that the Anderman Empire was concerned the Federation was cutting into territory the Andermani would eventually want. See On Basilisk Station:

"Gustav XI wouldn't mind getting a firm toehold in Basilisk, and he could figure we'd automatically jump to the conclusion that it was the Peeps. I can't quite see it, though, however hard I try. His attention is focused on Silesia right now, and he'd be worrying more about the Midgard Federation than us."

Weird, that is directly in contrast to DW's "Reinforcements to BoMa" infodump in the Pearls:

The discovery of the third terminus of the Asgerd Wormhole Junction could have implications for Matapan's development, but that terminus was discovered only very shortly before the beginning of the First Havenite War. The Asgerd Association has an… interesting relationship with the Andermani Empire, which generally inspires it to not do anything likely to irritate the Andies, who are both the greatest military threat to it and its most important trading partner. During the period of the First Havenite War, when the Empire was being any "friendly neutral" as far as the Star Kingdom was concerned, Asgerd had all sorts of reasons to avoid any potential brangles with Manticore. Moreover, Asgerd has been much more interested in and involved with Midgard, which is sort of its own version of Matapan. All of this means that there had been a sort of informal division of "spheres of influence" under which Asgerd stayed out of Matapan, leaving the field there clear for the Star Kingdom's "Trucial States" relationship.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/108/1

Hm. I think the Pearl is saying that Asgard is trying hard not to be noticed by the Andermani, implying that the Andermani could swallow them without effort if the Empire turned its gaze on them. That does not suggest that Asgard has any sizeable offensive force.

But the part about the relationship between Asgard and Midgard is odd. It seems to imply that Midgard security is supported by Asgard, just as Matapan security is supported by Manticore. Which is, as you say, in contrast to OBS suggesting that Midgard was a threat to Andermani interests in Silesia.

Perhaps Midgard was interested in picking up what systems it could in and near Silesia, and looked at Asgard as a big brother. That might not mean that either one was any kind of threat to the Anderman Empire, just that Midgard had expansion interests that intersected the Andermani. If Midgard got a few slices of Silesia before the Andermani could move, it would be an irritation rather than a serious threat. The Empire would not be able to casually sweep up the slices that Midgard caught. Midgard (and presumably Asgard as well) must then have a modest offensive force.

SWM wrote:Perhaps Midgard was interested in picking up what systems it could in and near Silesia, and looked at Asgard as a big brother. That might not mean that either one was any kind of threat to the Anderman Empire, just that Midgard had expansion interests that intersected the Andermani. If Midgard got a few slices of Silesia before the Andermani could move, it would be an irritation rather than a serious threat. The Empire would not be able to casually sweep up the slices that Midgard caught. Midgard (and presumably Asgard as well) must then have a modest offensive force.

Or it was one aside comment in OBS, and RFC changed his mind about Midgard being strong enough to cause the Andies problems.

Hi SWM,

I think you've got this figured out right.

Midgard wasn't a threat to the AE it self, just to its plans for the SC, so the Gustav's concern is how he could swat Midgard without distracting the SKM from the peeps.

At the end of HAE, Honor learned that the IAN was 3/4 the size of the then RMN, not the 2/3's ONI thought, which given the RMN was by then much bigger than the 1905 Fleet strength chart; so the IAN was well over 1200 warships and had no stupid build down like High Ridge, so it ought to be over 50% larger than the 1920 Fleet strength chart, but the difference may have been due to RFC adjusting to "From the Highlands" etc, however much we fans might be interested in what might have been.

Notice that in the 1920 chart the IAN had a larger 'old wall' [311] than the RMN did at the beginning of the peep war [309] despite being barely half the size or ~38% of the whole, ie double the RMN's fraction; so many SDF's might have a far larger fraction of the hyper fleet in their wall than real navies might; probably by leaving commerce protection and most escort duties to the FF which they know is much more competent than BF.

So some SDF's might have a far bigger fraction of wallers, perhaps having more capitol ships just for show, even if some of them are a couple of centuries old.

L

SWM wrote:Hm. I think the Pearl is saying that Asgard is trying hard not to be noticed by the Andermani, implying that the Andermani could swallow them without effort if the Empire turned its gaze on them. That does not suggest that Asgard has any sizeable offensive force.

But the part about the relationship between Asgard and Midgard is odd. It seems to imply that Midgard security is supported by Asgard, just as Matapan security is supported by Manticore. Which is, as you say, in contrast to OBS suggesting that Midgard was a threat to Andermani interests in Silesia.

Perhaps Midgard was interested in picking up what systems it could in and near Silesia, and looked at Asgard as a big brother. That might not mean that either one was any kind of threat to the Anderman Empire, just that Midgard had expansion interests that intersected the Andermani. If Midgard got a few slices of Silesia before the Andermani could move, it would be an irritation rather than a serious threat. The Empire would not be able to casually sweep up the slices that Midgard caught. Midgard (and presumably Asgard as well) must then have a modest offensive force.

Theemile wrote:

evilauthor wrote:Wait a sec...

According to the Honorverse Wiki, the Solarian League has 2000+ member worlds. Let's call it 2000 even for simplicity's sake.

Of those 2000, 1/3rd or 600-700 of them (call it 600, again for simplicity) has "more than LACs".

If we assume a minimum total of 3000 SDs being used by the SDFs and then spread them evenly between all 600 SDFs, then that means that each SDF has FIVE SDs, which doesn't look like an unreasonable number.

Of course, we know that Beowulf's SDF has 36 SDs, which is well above that 5 SD average. If other actual SD users have fleets of similar size, that leaves plenty of the 600 SDFs without any SDs at all, but the total number of SDs owned by all SDFs combined would still reach the thousand mark.

IOW, less than 100 SDFs out of 2000 actually need walls of battle the size of Beowulf's in order for there to be "thousands" of SDF SDs. That's less than 5% of the Solarian League members, well within being the "top TEN percent of all naval forces". That number seems entirely reasonable.

IOW, no contradiction at all.

Yet we know that less then 25 navies and Defense Forces TOTAL can field squadrons of the wall. So MWWW has already ruled out that 100s of SDFs have dozens of SDs, the number has to be around 12 that have any significant accumulation of wallers.

Exact words. What counts as a "significant number" of SDs? Does an SDF with only a single squadron of SDs that never leave the home system and only keeps them around for prestige purposes count as "significant"?

Also, it's not hundreds of SDFs with dozens of SDs. It's either "hundreds of SDFs with only a single squadron of SDs each" or "LESS THAN a hundred SDFs with dozens of squadrons each". Either one can hit the multiple thousands mark, and the latter fits with less than 10% of SDFs having significant numbers of SDs. "LESS THAN a hundred systems" is also LESS THAN five percent of the systems the Solarian League has.

evilauthor wrote:[quote="Theemile] Yet we know that less then 25 navies and Defense Forces TOTAL can field squadrons of the wall. So MWWW has already ruled out that 100s of SDFs have dozens of SDs, the number has to be around 12 that have any significant accumulation of wallers.[/quote]

Exact words. What counts as a "significant number" of SDs? Does an SDF with only a single squadron of SDs that never leave the home system and only keeps them around for prestige purposes count as "significant"?

Also, it's not hundreds of SDFs with dozens of SDs. It's either "hundreds of SDFs with only a single squadron of SDs each" or "LESS THAN a hundred SDFs with dozens of squadrons each". Either one can hit the multiple thousands mark, and the latter fits with less than 10% of SDFs having significant numbers of SDs. "LESS THAN a hundred systems" is also LESS THAN five percent of the systems the Solarian League has.[/quote]

The quote is that that if your navy can form 1 squadron of the wall or more, you are in the top 1% of navies in the universe - and there are only 25 or so which can do so. The discussion was not concerning SDFs, but they were included in the figure. So yes, it is possible that there are 1000 navies with 3-5 SDs - but the fact that there are only 25 with 8 or more makes that unlikely.

If you want an excellent analogy of what the Honorverses ships of the wall situation might be like think of how many of todays navies have carriers and pseudo-carriers eg LHA and LHD's. currently only about a dozen navies have carriers. The all run the gamut as far as capability usefulness.

US
10 CV
10 LHA & LHD

UK
1 CVL
2 CV building

France
2 CV

Russia not sure
1 CV?

Spain
1 CVL

Italy
1 CVL
1 LHA

India
2 CV
1 CV building

Thailand
1 CVL/LHA
Prestige ship major engineering problems, hasn't sailed since 2007.

Japan
1 LHD

China
1 or 2 CVL

Brazil
1 CV

Theemile wrote:The quote is that that if your navy can form 1 squadron of the wall or more, you are in the top 1% of navies in the universe - and there are only 25 or so which can do so. The discussion was not concerning SDFs, but they were included in the figure. So yes, it is possible that there are 1000 navies with 3-5 SDs - but the fact that there are only 25 with 8 or more makes that unlikely.

Found 1 of the quotes on the subject - in House of Steel in the introducion to Superdreadnaughts:

"Their true strength is in the concentrated fire a battle squadron can create, and the existence of even a single battle squadron automatically propels a naval force into one of the top two dozen or so navies in the galaxy."

Better add Algeria to that list:

http://www.janes.com/article/42871/osn-delivers-algerian-navy-s-new-flagship

Earlier stage of construction:
http://i58.servimg.com/u/f58/15/11/26/95/20140112.jpg

Perfect example of a minor navy with a major combat vessel. Though I can't quite see why the Algerian's need a Landing Platform Dock.....

Anyway, just goes to show that a "Capital Ship" can turn up in some odd places.

saber964 wrote:If you want an excellent analogy of what the Honorverses ships of the wall situation might be like think of how many of todays navies have carriers and pseudo-carriers eg LHA and LHD's. currently only about a dozen navies have carriers. The all run the gamut as far as capability usefulness.

US
10 CV
10 LHA & LHD

UK
1 CVL
2 CV building

France
2 CV

Russia not sure
1 CV?

Spain
1 CVL

Italy
1 CVL
1 LHA

India
2 CV
1 CV building

Thailand
1 CVL/LHA
Prestige ship major engineering problems, hasn't sailed since 2007.

Japan
1 LHD

China
1 or 2 CVL

Brazil
1 CV