Roland DD or not?

The Roland is a small crew large ship with BIG missiles and fast capabilities. But is it a Destroyer?

After analysis it seems that the Roland is not the Destroyer but rather the never meant to be HAC. Only H doesn't stand for Heavy, which it is, but Hyper capable Attack Craft. HAC. The Wolfhound is the Destroyer and the Avalon the CL. The Roland is none of these things. It does follow the Shrike formula though and would be an ideal HAC. Hyper capability with heavy missiles and very few of them. Made to attack fast with small crew like a traditional LAC. Only writ large.

Making the Roland the HAC changes nothing in the books, it is what it is, a Heavy Hyper Capable Attack Craft (ship). One might eliminate the Small lasers in the side walls and replace them with two or three Shrike B Grasers. Give them Beta Squared Beta Nodes and Alpha Nodes. Stronger Sidewalls, Bucklers, and beef up their stealth.

The Manty order of Battle would be:

LAC Shrike Variants.
HAC Roland

DD Wolf Hound
CL Avalon
CA Sag C

MC Kammerling

BC A reliant replacement
BCL Nike

CLAC
SD(P)

This leaves the Agamemnon, without pods, with missile tubes, upgrade its energy weapons to Shrike B Grasers and give it more armour. Mk16 Tubes. and make it the new AMC Armed Merchant Cruiser. The big hold in the back for carrying sensitive cargo's reloads, Dignitaries or the like. While providing cargo carrying armed support for convoys. Could also be a small Carrier if so desired.

AMC

Lord Skimper wrote:The Roland is a small crew large ship with BIG missiles and fast capabilities. But is it a Destroyer?

After analysis it seems that the Roland is not the Destroyer but rather the never meant to be HAC. Only H doesn't stand for Heavy, which it is, but Hyper capable Attack Craft. HAC. The Wolfhound is the Destroyer and the Avalon the CL. The Roland is none of these things. It does follow the Shrike formula though and would be an ideal HAC. Hyper capability with heavy missiles and very few of them. Made to attack fast with small crew like a traditional LAC. Only writ large.

Making the Roland the HAC changes nothing in the books, it is what it is, a Heavy Hyper Capable Attack Craft (ship). One might eliminate the Small lasers in the side walls and replace them with two or three Shrike B Grasers. Give them Beta Squared Beta Nodes and Alpha Nodes. Stronger Sidewalls, Bucklers, and beef up their stealth.

The Manty order of Battle would be:

LAC Shrike Variants.
HAC Roland

DD Wolf Hound
CL Avalon
CA Sag C

MC Kammerling

BC A reliant replacement
BCL Nike

CLAC
SD(P)

This leaves the Agamemnon, without pods, with missile tubes, upgrade its energy weapons to Shrike B Grasers and give it more armour. Mk16 Tubes. and make it the new AMC Armed Merchant Cruiser. The big hold in the back for carrying sensitive cargo's reloads, Dignitaries or the like. While providing cargo carrying armed support for convoys. Could also be a small Carrier if so desired.

AMC

You certainly seem to want to redefine and redesign RFC's ships and navies. May I suggest that you go off and write you own 20 volume space opera using your own naval designs, and when you have sold as many copies as David, come back here and tell us how is should be done.

I, however, will not cease respiratory functioning in anticipation of this event.

I do expect that you will once again engage in necrotic equine abuse.

fallsfromtrees wrote:You certainly seem to want to redefine and redesign RFC's ships and navies. May I suggest that you go off and write you own 20 volume space opera using your own naval designs, and when you have sold as many copies as David, come back here and tell us how is should be done.

I, however, will not cease respiratory functioning in anticipation of this event.

I do expect that you will once again engage in necrotic equine abuse.

Pretty much this.
Although it seems odd to sinlge the Roland out for having a small crew "less than seventy" [MoH:ch23] when the Wolfhound he does accept as a DD has a crew almost as small "only 87" [HoS], and most of that is probably because its missile tubes aren't clustered so require more on-mount crew.

Lord Skimper wrote:The Roland is a small crew large ship with BIG missiles and fast capabilities. But is it a Destroyer?

Yes.

'Destroyer' is defined by the users. The users here are primarily the RMN. They call it a destroyer - poof, it is a destroyer. There is no Platonic order of battle establishing some usage against which they rebel.

It's built to defend commerce, to attack it, to be the minimal serious hyper-capable combatant in the multi-drive missile era. That defines 'destroyer' in this milieu.

Crew size does not. Mass/volume has, over the last few centuries, been a pretty good measure of a warship class, but that's just because the conventional tech base has left that hull size range as a very good indicator of what you need to fill that niche - and it no longer does that job.

After analysis it seems that the Roland is not the Destroyer but rather the never meant to be HAC. Only H doesn't stand for Heavy, which it is, but Hyper capable Attack Craft. HAC. The Wolfhound is the Destroyer and the Avalon the CL. The Roland is none of these things. It does follow the Shrike formula though and would be an ideal HAC. Hyper capability with heavy missiles and very few of them. Made to attack fast with small crew like a traditional LAC. Only writ large.

If by 'analysis' you mean 'determined make-believe', I have no quibble.

Otherwise - If 'HAC' stands for 'Hyper-capable Attack Craft', and 'attack craft' stands for 'a dangerous vehicle', then, well sure, it's a HAC. We call those "warships". One handy thing about 'warship' is that people will understand what you mean by it, and mean about the same thing. This marks successful use of language.

The traditional light attack craft is defined by being light relative to hyper-capable combatants. That's the 'light' part. Writing it large and making it hyper-capable defines a hyper-capable combatant.

Even as a hyper-capable unit that is much larger, it doesn't follow any Shrike formula. (You would do better declaring the OBS Fearless as a kind of proto-Shrike. You'd need to be very, very loose to do it, but you'd still come closer.) You may note the prominent absence of a spinal mount graser in the Roland. The hammerheads. The hypergenerator. The vastly large missiles. The CLAC (CHAC?) to which it does not return. It's not built for a long, sustained combat, sure - thereby following the formula of just about any combatant, relative to larger ones.

So, I suppose it's fair to say that the Roland could be less like a LAC if it were a superdreadnought or the color blue. How it could be definitely not a destroyer - I got nothin'.

I'm confused as to why anyone even reads threads Skimper starts, much less spends any time making a serious and well-thought out response to them.

JeffEngel wrote:Even as a hyper-capable unit that is much larger, it doesn't follow any Shrike formula. (You would do better declaring the OBS Fearless as a kind of proto-Shrike. You'd need to be very, very loose to do it, but you'd still come closer.) You may note the prominent absence of a spinal mount graser in the Roland. The hammerheads. The hypergenerator. The vastly large missiles. The CLAC (CHAC?) to which it does not return. It's not built for a long, sustained combat, sure - thereby following the formula of just about any combatant, relative to larger ones.

So, I suppose it's fair to say that the Roland could be less like a LAC if it were a superdreadnought or the color blue. How it could be definitely not a destroyer - I got nothin'.

While I otherwise agree with your points, I do feel compelled to make a technical correction. House of Steel says the Roland-class does have a pair of chase grasers (aka spinal mounted grasers) in each hammerhead. It doesn't state their size (and given everything else crammed in they probably aren't of unusual size). But they probably are bigger than any of it's broadside energy mounts (5 lasers per broadside).

Of course a shrike has no broadside weapons at all, so that's another way it's unlike one - you know like basically everything else about it

kzt wrote:I'm confused as to why anyone even reads threads Skimper starts, much less spends any time making a serious and well-thought out response to them.

They probably haven't either figured out

1) yet that replying to Skimper is useless
or
2) how to set the forum to ignore all of Skimper's posts.

JeffEngel wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:The Roland is a small crew large ship with BIG missiles and fast capabilities. But is it a Destroyer?

Yes.

'Destroyer' is defined by the users. The users here are primarily the RMN. They call it a destroyer - poof, it is a destroyer. There is no Platonic order of battle establishing some usage against which they rebel.

It's built to defend commerce, to attack it, to be the minimal serious hyper-capable combatant in the multi-drive missile era. That defines 'destroyer' in this milieu.

Crew size does not. Mass/volume has, over the last few centuries, been a pretty good measure of a warship class, but that's just because the conventional tech base has left that hull size range as a very good indicator of what you need to fill that niche - and it no longer does that job.

After analysis it seems that the Roland is not the Destroyer but rather the never meant to be HAC. Only H doesn't stand for Heavy, which it is, but Hyper capable Attack Craft. HAC. The Wolfhound is the Destroyer and the Avalon the CL. The Roland is none of these things. It does follow the Shrike formula though and would be an ideal HAC. Hyper capability with heavy missiles and very few of them. Made to attack fast with small crew like a traditional LAC. Only writ large.

If by 'analysis' you mean 'determined make-believe', I have no quibble.

Otherwise - If 'HAC' stands for 'Hyper-capable Attack Craft', and 'attack craft' stands for 'a dangerous vehicle', then, well sure, it's a HAC. We call those "warships". One handy thing about 'warship' is that people will understand what you mean by it, and mean about the same thing. This marks successful use of language.

The traditional light attack craft is defined by being light relative to hyper-capable combatants. That's the 'light' part. Writing it large and making it hyper-capable defines a hyper-capable combatant.

Even as a hyper-capable unit that is much larger, it doesn't follow any Shrike formula. (You would do better declaring the OBS Fearless as a kind of proto-Shrike. You'd need to be very, very loose to do it, but you'd still come closer.) You may note the prominent absence of a spinal mount graser in the Roland. The hammerheads. The hypergenerator. The vastly large missiles. The CLAC (CHAC?) to which it does not return. It's not built for a long, sustained combat, sure - thereby following the formula of just about any combatant, relative to larger ones.

So, I suppose it's fair to say that the Roland could be less like a LAC if it were a superdreadnought or the color blue. How it could be definitely not a destroyer - I got nothin'.

You know, I want to say 'do not engage' where Skimper is concerned, but the popcorn potential of watching him/his arguments be brutally deconstructed is just too high.

roseandheather wrote:
You know, I want to say 'do not engage' where Skimper is concerned, but the popcorn potential of watching him/his arguments be brutally deconstructed is just too high.

What she said.

Vince wrote:

kzt wrote:I'm confused as to why anyone even reads threads Skimper starts, much less spends any time making a serious and well-thought out response to them.

They probably haven't either figured out

1) yet that replying to Skimper is useless
or
2) how to set the forum to ignore all of Skimper's posts.

You know, to give LS credit, while most of his ideas are full-goose bozo, the rebuttals almost always lead off into a productive discussion of something....normally having nothing to do with the original post.

Which is pretty much what rosenheather said, but I said it better....

*Ducks waffle iron chucked at head.*