Return Of The Frigate

Duckk wrote:The microfusion plants aren't necessary for MDMs. No one aside from Grayson and Manticore have them in their missiles - Haven, Andermani, and Erewhon are all capacitor based.

And Manticore's first MDMs were also capacitor missiles.

As much as I would love for there to be a new form of frigates used by the mainline fleets of the Honorverse I believe, and I may be wrong here, that RFC has stated that such a new form of frigate won't be happening.

drothgery wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Which seems unlikely. The secret of the MDM is out of the bag, and it won't be too long before everyone has one.

It's kind of odd. Haven and the Andermani have built true MDMs on their own. The Alignment has known about them just as long as Haven and the Andies have, and has genetically engineered super-techies working on the problem, but does not. And the super-sized league defense contractors that could make a fortune selling new warships if they could prove the League's existing wall of battle needed replacing haven't been able to either.

Weeeelll, consider this: The Alignment wants the League to go down. It is not in their best interest to give them the best weapons they could make, whereas giving them weapons that are a massive upgrade over what they had before but are still generations behind what their opposition is fielding will certainly lead to a few rather embarassing cockups on the part of the SLN that can only lead to a hastening of the destruction of the League.

Assuming that the Alignment doesn't have the expertise to build at least capacitor-driven MDMs, in other words, may be a bit premature.

The E wrote:

drothgery wrote:It's kind of odd. Haven and the Andermani have built true MDMs on their own. The Alignment has known about them just as long as Haven and the Andies have, and has genetically engineered super-techies working on the problem, but does not. And the super-sized league defense contractors that could make a fortune selling new warships if they could prove the League's existing wall of battle needed replacing haven't been able to either.

Weeeelll, consider this: The Alignment wants the League to go down. It is not in their best interest to give them the best weapons they could make, whereas giving them weapons that are a massive upgrade over what they had before but are still generations behind what their opposition is fielding will certainly lead to a few rather embarassing cockups on the part of the SLN that can only lead to a hastening of the destruction of the League.

Assuming that the Alignment doesn't have the expertise to build at least capacitor-driven MDMs, in other words, may be a bit premature.

I believe Drothgery's point is that the Alignment hasn't even managed to develop true MDMs for themselves. The Cataphract is the best they have managed in that direction. The text confirms that the Alignment has not developed MDMs.

SWM wrote:I believe Drothgery's point is that the Alignment hasn't even managed to develop true MDMs for themselves. The Cataphract is the best they have managed in that direction. The text confirms that the Alignment has not developed MDMs.

Exactly.

My working theory is that the Alignment's best and brightest tech guys have been on their unique stuff (spider drive, streak drive, spider torpedoes, etc.) and the efforts to reverse-engineer Manty tech are running into the classic 'not invented here' problem.

Meanwhile, Technodyne's actual senior people 'know' that the 'real' weapons development is being done by the Alignment so they're not really trying as hard as they should be on their own.

I have ... ideas... on what's going on at defense contractors not subverted by the Mesans, but that's fanfic ...

Roguevictory wrote:As much as I would love for there to be a new form of frigates used by the mainline fleets of the Honorverse I believe, and I may be wrong here, that RFC has stated that such a new form of frigate won't be happening.

He's deep-sixed hyper-capable warships in the classic frigate size range. Many of us - maybe most of us, if not every last 'frigate' enthusiast - are just plugging for use of the name 'frigate' for hyper-capable warships doing the frigate role, but almost certainly much larger than classic Honorverse frigates. Like five times larger, but still in the smallest range of current first-line navies' warship roster and built for long range picket and patrol duty while remaining large enough to be a serious warship.

Alternatively, the same ships could all just be labelled 'light cruiser', but the same job was done in the age of sail by frigates and under that name, so reviving it instead of having to talk about light cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battlecruisers as everything below the wall would likely make for more clarity rather than less.

I think hes just slowly amalgamating the classes into 4 clasxses: ff++dd becomes only dd, ca+cl become ca, bb+bc become bc, and dn+sd become sd. he's streamlining the process, reducing the amount of tech he needs to keep straight, while also having an in universe explanation of the new tech and sizes of the GA fleet obsoleting the neesd for the removed classes. Raiding/scouting/flag showing? dd or ca depending on required force. destruction of small sln fleets? bc. big firepower? SDP.

JeffEngel wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:As much as I would love for there to be a new form of frigates used by the mainline fleets of the Honorverse I believe, and I may be wrong here, that RFC has stated that such a new form of frigate won't be happening.

He's deep-sixed hyper-capable warships in the classic frigate size range. Many of us - maybe most of us, if not every last 'frigate' enthusiast - are just plugging for use of the name 'frigate' for hyper-capable warships doing the frigate role, but almost certainly much larger than classic Honorverse frigates. Like five times larger, but still in the smallest range of current first-line navies' warship roster and built for long range picket and patrol duty while remaining large enough to be a serious warship.

Alternatively, the same ships could all just be labelled 'light cruiser', but the same job was done in the age of sail by frigates and under that name, so reviving it instead of having to talk about light cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battlecruisers as everything below the wall would likely make for more clarity rather than less.

Hutch wrote:
And quite a spitited discussion it was indeed. But basically it amounted to- LACS or full up destroyers are far more cost and combat effective. A frigate by nature is a compromise- almost impossible to get everything you NEED and want on a hull that small. For anyone- even the RMN.

True; the RTN (previously the Anti-Slavery League's) frigates were due to (1) limited funds (2) limited crews and (3)the mission requirements (capture unarmed slaver ships and raid unarmed bases).

But Torch is working hard to acquire better and larger ships as soon as they can for the reasons stated by the MWW and others.

Still...it is such a proud name, and one with so long a history, that it does seem a shame that there is no room for it in the Honorverse....[/quote]

What´s to keep someone from using "frigate" in its original meaning? Or either of them even.

It could for example be a perfect designation for a first generation of streak drive warships, using the original meaning of a warship built for speed.
Essentially, anything too small for a wall of battle CAN be called a frigate.
It´s just the recent 70 years that SOME have taken to consider warships smaller than a destroyer as a frigate.
Wasnt until WWII that "someone" took the liberty of radically changing the definition of frigates.

Personally i prefer the definition of the frigate as the smallest warship suitable for (completely) independent deployment.
Putting it somewhere between a big destroyer and a battlecruiser depending on what navy you ask.

When playing some WWII games that allow adding your own warship classes, i usually build frigates around 4-8kt as powerful allround escorts with enough firepower to outright shred any destroyer daring to get close, so basically a light cruiser whose surface to surface guns are maybe half of a regular light cruiser, but instead is very capable in other ways.
Slightly expensive, but tends to be VERY useful ships.


For the Honorverse? Well, something cruisersized(CL to BC depending on design and intent), either built with 1st generation streak drives to provide strategic mobility ships, or with special equipment for detecting spider tech ships.

Well historically (until about the turn of the 20th century) the definition of a frigate was:

a sailing warship of a size and armament just below that of a ship of the line.

That sounds like a BC in the Honorverse, but I still think using the name for the replacement for the Roland, which we have been told is a transitional design.

The Frigate exists. It is called a Wolfhound DD.

Just because RFC doesn't like the word "frigate" doesn't mean the rest of us need to keep the wool over our eyes.

Enjoy.

PS. All old DD's with SDM are frigates with the introduction of DDM DD's, CL's, CA's, etc. So, RMN has approximately 400 Frigates.