Sphinx and Gryphon class SD

Draken wrote:Also they could be sufficient to be used as a raiding for and for protecting force in the Verge. Older SD is better than none. Also they should be quite capable destroying a lot of SLN ships if needed.
Sphinx had 36 missiles, 21 lasers, 19 grasers, 27 counter missiles, 31 point defence. So they should be able to destroy any SLN ships. In the Verge and shell they should be only facing Nevadas, which have light armament and Haven have a lot of manpower. And if I'm correct it's very similar to old flights Homers, so they shouldn't have a lot of problems with them. And even Bellerophon should be a little overkill in Verge, even if they will run into any Solly SD they should destroy them if they will have Mk 16 or newer missiles, Mk 23 will be overkill and adding Keyhole don't have a lot of sense.
Is there any news if Andermani will give as a present a Seydlitz class ships, also is there any news on Medusa-B?
Also bigger Nikes with more missiles and grasers should be cheap solution for fighting against Sollies Frontier Fleet and even so older squadrons of Battle Fleet.

Sure, they should be quite deadly against normal SLN forces.

But, there are a lot of drawbacks here: Even if they achieve truly outrageous kill counts, every single one of them that the Alliance loses means 6000 or more people that the Alliance can't very well do without, or that could be better used elsewhere. It's like back in the first war, only worse; The SLN has deeper reserves than Haven did, more capacity to rebuild. Simply put, any SD division of old SDs you deploy will weaken the Alliance a great deal (because you're talking about somewhere around 15000 people and 6 or 12 ships once escorts are factored in), while it will do very little to protect the targets (because, if the SLN really wants to fight for it, they can send overwhelming force).

The E wrote:

Draken wrote:Also they could be sufficient to be used as a raiding for and for protecting force in the Verge. Older SD is better than none. Also they should be quite capable destroying a lot of SLN ships if needed.
Sphinx had 36 missiles, 21 lasers, 19 grasers, 27 counter missiles, 31 point defence. So they should be able to destroy any SLN ships. In the Verge and shell they should be only facing Nevadas, which have light armament and Haven have a lot of manpower. And if I'm correct it's very similar to old flights Homers, so they shouldn't have a lot of problems with them. And even Bellerophon should be a little overkill in Verge, even if they will run into any Solly SD they should destroy them if they will have Mk 16 or newer missiles, Mk 23 will be overkill and adding Keyhole don't have a lot of sense.
Is there any news if Andermani will give as a present a Seydlitz class ships, also is there any news on Medusa-B?
Also bigger Nikes with more missiles and grasers should be cheap solution for fighting against Sollies Frontier Fleet and even so older squadrons of Battle Fleet.

Sure, they should be quite deadly against normal SLN forces.

But, there are a lot of drawbacks here: Even if they achieve truly outrageous kill counts, every single one of them that the Alliance loses means 6000 or more people that the Alliance can't very well do without, or that could be better used elsewhere. It's like back in the first war, only worse; The SLN has deeper reserves than Haven did, more capacity to rebuild. Simply put, any SD division of old SDs you deploy will weaken the Alliance a great deal (because you're talking about somewhere around 15000 people and 6 or 12 ships once escorts are factored in), while it will do very little to protect the targets (because, if the SLN really wants to fight for it, they can send overwhelming force).

Yeah but we have Talbott Cluster and Silesia which should give us something like another 30-50% more manpower in SEM only and Haven has a lot of free manpower, also a lot of older cruiser and destroyer are useless and bigger sens will have activating mothballed SD, in Beowulf we have ~200 SD(P) and some of them could be replaced with pre pod design.
Idea of using older missiles isn't that great because we will have them for very short period of time and they have much shorter range, so Mk 16 or 23 is better idea.

Draken wrote:Yeah but we have Talbott Cluster and Silesia which should give us something like another 30-50% more manpower in SEM only and Haven has a lot of free manpower, also a lot of older cruiser and destroyer are useless and bigger sens will have activating mothballed SD, in Beowulf we have ~200 SD(P) and some of them could be replaced with pre pod design.

I don't think that's true right now. None of the systems in Talbott or Silesia (Rembrandt excluded) operates a sizable SDF or merchant marine, meaning that the pool of available trained personnel is very shallow and mostly already employed in places where they can't easily be replaced. Secondly, while the overall manpower pool just got a lot deeper, there is no way these people can be trained up to RMN standards in less than a year or two of intense, focussed education, something for which there is probably not enough qualified teaching personnel available. In 5 or ten years, the RMN won't have a manpower problem anymore. Right now, it does.

Also we have Beowulf which has rather small navy which couldn't have problems with rapid expansion.

Draken wrote:Also we have Beowulf which has rather small navy which couldn't have problems with rapid expansion.

Draken, you obviously feel strongly about this (you'll find most of us do about certain topics.....DO NOT get kzt starterd on the Battle of Manticore from At All Costs... ), but while the Sphinx and Gryphons are still powerful combatants, they are much like the battleships of 1905 AD, still powerful but suddenly rendered obsolete to stand in the line of battle with the commissioning in 1906 of HMS Dreadnought.

Bluntly put, they are old technology, despite being relatively young for warships. Upgrading them will probalby cost nearly as much as building new ones, and all ths spaces that are available are going to be building the next generation of SD's.

Plus I wonder exactly how many are available. According to House of Steel, the Gryphon went into service in 1895PD and 67 were built; the Gryphon first appeared in 1900 and 163 were constructed. Given that they bore the brunt of the First Havenite War and a number of them were with Home Fleet at the Battle of Manticore, I expect the numbers in mothballs are not all that great...maybe no more than 30-40 ships.

So is it worth it to man those ships or to work up and train personnel to man new ships coming off the line?

That all said, we know some of the older ships are still in commission (see Admiral Khumalo's flagship) and the need for ships right now, especially given that instead of the hundreds of systems to consider in the Havenite Wars, we now have litterally thousands of systems all over known space to contend with.

So I wouldn't be surprised to see an old Gryphon or two wnadering about--I just don't see them being pulled out of mothballs unless there is no other option.

We shall see, eventually.

Hutch wrote:So is it worth it to man those ships or to work up and train personnel to man new ships coming off the line?

That all said, we know some of the older ships are still in commission (see Admiral Khumalo's flagship) and the need for ships right now, especially given that instead of the hundreds of systems to consider in the Havenite Wars, we now have litterally thousands of systems all over known space to contend with.

So I wouldn't be surprised to see an old Gryphon or two wnadering about--I just don't see them being pulled out of mothballs unless there is no other option.

We shall see, eventually.

And there were those few that were modified to handle MDMs; before the SD(P)s fully proved themselves. Those seem more likely to be in use still in secondary roles.

Draken wrote:Also we have Beowulf which has rather small navy which couldn't have problems with rapid expansion.

Welcome.

Military skills --and the military mindset-- isn't something you pick up overnight. Even if you assume there are enough veterans to provide crews, they will not be cohesive, combat-ready units for several months AFTER they arrive on ship. Even in the RMN, the need to work up crews to combat readiness climbed steeply after personnel losses at BoMa; and other navies don't have the experienced vets to get the job done any faster.

Although, they could work up to Battle Fleet standards.

Rob

Manning SLN reserve is going to be difficult at best. SLN designs are as already stated in the text as manpower intensive. IIRC the Scientist and Vega class SD's have a crew of 6000 plus. It would take upwards of 60mill personnel to man the SLN reserve. While the older RMN SD's like the King William's have a crew of 4900. The Sphinx and Gryphon classes are probably in the neighborhood of 3500-4000 personnel with the SD(P)'s having even less at around 2000 personnel.

And as current CNO said all their reserve is just deadly junk, deadly only to people which are serving on them. He is wiser than Rajampet so there is 0% chance for another Filareta attack or one-sided slaughter, because he is too smart to order something like that. If 4th generation of SD(P) will be as deadly as I'm thinking Sollies will have a lot of problems with them.

I don't see a need. The GA has SDPs coming out the ying-yang by the time you combine Manticore (400) Grayson (150 minimum) Haven (300+) and programs for building more are going full bore at bolthole and other yards.

Where the GA is short of hulls is in the BC, Heavy and light cruiser, destroyer classes. For the kind of jobs out there that need to be done mostly, a SD of any description is about like hitting a thumb tack with a sledge hammer which would make refurbishing older SDs wasteful unless you have buyers for the units in question.

Don