Are Tincans and CL's obsolete to "modern" fleets?

The DD / CL (and even the FF at risk of the bazooka noodle gun) will likely always be present because the defined mission will be there.

The DD / CL is for
(1) fleet scouting / info collection
(2) commerce / convoy escort
(3) anti-piracy
(4) diplomatic courier (with muscle)

The weapons and armament of a DD/CL WILL change with the environment, but still it is a ship capable of mass production and able to operate where a larger vessel is not needed.

The USN DDG/DD's of the 1980's / 90's (Spruance / Burke) are significantly more capable than the WWI / WWII 4-Stack DD's but the tactical environment is significantly different as well.

An older RMN DD (Devestation / Reprise / Hawkwing) is similar to the 4-stackers when compared to a Roland, but again the tactical environment has changed.

The Rolands perform their mission in the Talbot Quadrant and against the better armed opponants; Reprise and others of her series are better (now) for the lower threat of anti-piracy in Silecia the lower threat areas.

The mission is the same, the weapons suite is chosen for the area.

Eventually the Reprise and her class will be retired, as the Faragutt class DD's were.

-- Stewart

Somtaaw wrote:To at least put my thoughts on whether 5-10 years down the road, possibly MAlign put down, former-SL states in at least some form of truce state. It was also mentioned, eventually others are going to develop similar technology to at least early- and mid-generation Ghost Rider capabilities.

Even the garden variety privateers in Silesia are as large as battlecruiser range ships. (HoE, early chapters before Honor deploys in the Q-Ships) // Post-1900 Maven CA's are just as big, and even without Ghost Rider tech, are far tougher, more dangerous, and while maintaining old (smaller) CA acceleration rates, so they can easily rundown any pirate at any time.

Presumably over the next 20-50 years, and MAlign is taken care of, even in a peaceful setting you need to balance numbers, with raw potential. Having 200-300 destroyers doesn't really help much, if your potential enemy pulled a Bolthole and has a few thousand BC's, with tech just as good. Maven BC's are really tough, especially the Nike-class which is damn near an old-style BB.

Retiring and sending to the breakers anything sub-CA means any potential hostile HAS TO Bolthole wallers, which pushes the stealth requirement way up. Sure a solar system is a pretty big place, but hiding a Bolthole that mass produces cruisers, is easier than one mass producing SD's.

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Somtaw -- I beg to differ.

There were 3 issues in HoE
(1) increased "regular" pirates due to the RMN patrols being absent
(2) Andre Warneke and his gang of misfits gaining "stuff" to re-take their part of paradise from their home in exile at Marsh
(3) the active commerce raiding conducted by the PRN under Gisgard.

The PRN was the only antagonists using BC's (the Andies were neutral in Manticore's favor at the time)

Warneke's ships were CA's gone renegade, as were the ships Oversteegan encountered at Refuge.

Most pirate vessels were / are lightly armored and lightly armed since merchants are generally unarmed.

Missiles are expensive and bulky and missile crews need training, both of which get in the way of pirates taking stuff.

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:snip------------------

Somtaw -- I beg to differ.

There were 3 issues in HoE
(1) increased "regular" pirates due to the RMN patrols being absent
(2) Andre Warneke and his gang of misfits gaining "stuff" to re-take their part of paradise from their home in exile at Marsh
(3) the active commerce raiding conducted by the PRN under Gisgard.

The PRN was the only antagonists using BC's (the Andies were neutral in Manticore's favor at the time)

Warneke's ships were CA's gone renegade, as were the ships Oversteegan encountered at Refuge.

Most pirate vessels were / are lightly armored and lightly armed since merchants are generally unarmed.

Missiles are expensive and bulky and missile crews need training, both of which get in the way of pirates taking stuff.

-- Stewart

Alas, I must disagree with you. Chapter Five of Honor Among Enemies, practically the last paragraph

All in all, Honor thought as Schubert finished his explanation and soared off to show her the next point of interest, Wayfarer and her sisters might just prove more effective in the Breslau Sector than even the Admiralty was willing to believe. Honor had once spent most of a two-year commission in Silesian space, chasing pirates in the heavy cruiser Fearless . She knew the story—some of them could nearly match a battlecruiser's offensive power—but they were few and far between and, for the most part, careful to avoid Manticoran shipping. That could have changed with so much of the Fleet diverted to the battle front, but privateers had to worry about the "liberation governments" they nominally represented. No breakaway star system wanted to irritate the Star Kingdom unduly, and at least one "privateer" had found itself seized by its own government, its entire crew handed over to the Manticoran courts, when that government had been informed of what would happen to it if the offending crew wasn't surrendered.

This is before they are even deploy to Silesia and learn about Warnecke, and is referencing (loosely) when Honor took the heavy cruiser Fearless into Silesia.


Edit: Now Manticore has long sent destroyers and light cruisers into Silesia as a way to blood, and trial-by-fire their skippers. So even before the First Havenite War, Manticoran destroyers were taking on upto battlecruisers (in theory, we dont have any actual proof a destroyer has taken on a privateer BC). But it was known some of them were bumming around, taking prizes from time to time.

However, like the frigates (and Battleships) there comes a time, when some ship classes just prove to have had their roles taken over by other ships that aren't one trick ponies.

Being able to nearly match a battlecruiser's offensive firepower doesn't mean that you nearly match a battlecruiser's size. I can't remember where the references are, but it's been mentioned a few times that minor naval powers and privateers have a bad habit of overgunning their vessels and skimping on other systems, like countermissiles, point defence lasers etc. It's a symptom of lacking the depth of naval experience a higher-tier naval power like Manticore or the Andermani Empire has - you produce ships that look very intimidating on paper but turn out to be glass cannons when exposed to real combat.

Dafmeister wrote:Being able to nearly match a battlecruiser's offensive firepower doesn't mean that you nearly match a battlecruiser's size. I can't remember where the references are, but it's been mentioned a few times that minor naval powers and privateers have a bad habit of overgunning their vessels and skimping on other systems, like countermissiles, point defence lasers etc. It's a symptom of lacking the depth of naval experience a higher-tier naval power like Manticore or the Andermani Empire has - you produce ships that look very intimidating on paper but turn out to be glass cannons when exposed to real combat.

Also, the overgunning can be VERY paper thin. (Warning, this is from SITS and Jayne's, so take it with your preferred amount of salt). One Silensian CA is just barely in the CA mass range, but carries 15 DD missile tubes in each broadside. Obviously, it's a killer against the light ships pirates usually field, but against another CA, it's light armor and DD sized weapondry make it unable to fight in it's weight class. Also, the rest of the Silensian navy carries fewer, and less powerful, energy weapons than a RMN or IAN ship would. The energy armament of the 2 Silensian CAs mentioned in SITS 3 is about equal to most pre-war RMN destroyers in both number and size. Most of the Silensian designs carry fewer reloads per launcher, and are noted to sacrifice patrol endurance and crew comfort in order to pack the largest missile broadside in the smallest ship possible.

oh agreed Silesian ships are built pretty terrible, and focus too much on offense. At the time of Honor Among Enemies though, SKM wasn't building over-sized energy weapons yet and Grayson was only starting to do it. So a Battlecruiser still carried Battlecruiser-sized energy weapons.

And at close range, even in the short stories such as Honor's middy cruise, or Oversteegen in Refuge, pirates that pounce on a Manty ship and then find out afterwards, still hope to finish the ship off; as that is the only way to stay alive is to eliminate records. And Honor's middy cruiser also showed, if the pirate can close the range, they still have the offensive firepower to win (War Maiden only survived by luck really)

StateSec rogue units are usually in their Heavy cruiser, and Battlecruiser size, assuming the SL implodes, FrontierFleet is also very heavy on CA/BC hulls too, because who knows what they might take with them weapon wise.

So sending anything on anti-piracy, you can't always send a destroyer, and hope you don't meet anything really big. That's like taking an old 1800's musket into a gunfight with a Barrett .50cal. If pirates have actual CA/BC sized hulls, and firepower, then your anti-pirate patrols need the same, just in case.

Somtaaw wrote:oh agreed Silesian ships are built pretty terrible, and focus too much on offense. At the time of Honor Among Enemies though, SKM wasn't building over-sized energy weapons yet and Grayson was only starting to do it. So a Battlecruiser still carried Battlecruiser-sized energy weapons.

And at close range, even in the short stories such as Honor's middy cruise, or Oversteegen in Refuge, pirates that pounce on a Manty ship and then find out afterwards, still hope to finish the ship off; as that is the only way to stay alive is to eliminate records. And Honor's middy cruiser also showed, if the pirate can close the range, they still have the offensive firepower to win (War Maiden only survived by luck really)

StateSec rogue units are usually in their Heavy cruiser, and Battlecruiser size, assuming the SL implodes, FrontierFleet is also very heavy on CA/BC hulls too, because who knows what they might take with them weapon wise.

So sending anything on anti-piracy, you can't always send a destroyer, and hope you don't meet anything really big. That's like taking an old 1800's musket into a gunfight with a Barrett .50cal. If pirates have actual CA/BC sized hulls, and firepower, then your anti-pirate patrols need the same, just in case.

Perhaps we need some differentiating here. On the one hand if we are talking about garden variety pirates, it is very unlikely that they will acquire a genuine warship capable of stand up combat. It really doesn't take much to force a merchi to stand down. And if warships do appear on the scene, you want to be able to run, not fight.

That ship that almost took down War Maiden was a privateer, not a pirate. Her ship's size, weaponry, and crew quality was a rare exception for Silesia, even for privateers. In fact her captain was an ex-Andermani naval officer. While one can never rule out the possibility of meeting another privateer that capable, this one example doesn't argue very strongly for the need for larger, more capable convoy escorts since it is the exception rather than the rule. Ninety-nine plus percent of the time your destroyers/light cruisers will do just fine.

However I do think you have a point, especially in places other than Silesia. The League does have all those BSs which we have textev are going to be used for commerce raiding. When the League implodes, those BCs are going to be orphaned. No doubt a majority of them are going to attach themselves to some system and become part of a legitimate navy. However a certain percentage of them will go rogue and become pirates themselves.

So whether you are talking about commerce raiding or piracy, stronger more capable escorts are going to be needed to counter those BCs. That could turn out to be a challenge.

Don

n7axw wrote:So whether you are talking about commerce raiding or piracy, stronger more capable escorts are going to be needed to counter those BCs. That could turn out to be a challenge.

Don

Well - at least in terms of Manticoran shipping, the smallest recent warships they have built can handle SLN BC's with a numerical advantage favoring the BC's easily. So a Roland isn't too small for that mission.

Very true Don, Silesian BC-sized rogues are usually privateers, see my comment a few posts up with a quote from Honor Among Enemies, Honor knows the existance of some battlecruisers. Some are outright pirates, most (of the few) are actually privateers who know not to touch Manticoran shipping.


I started this whole thread initially, because looking at how frigates were eaten by power creep, and also how battleships were eaten by power creep... that perhaps DD's and maybe even CL's could very well be eaten. At some point the technology will balance out, and Destroyer's cant mop the floor with SLN Battlecruisers, and Manty BC's can't wipe out entire fleets of SLN Superdreadnoughts anymore.

One of the only counter-arguments to DD/CL not being obsolete is in the role of hyper-capable scouts, which my counter-counter argument is... there's a reason no Navy builds dedicated "hyper-combat units". Everyone optimizes for normal space, and if you are forced to engage in hyper (or in a grav wave) you just make the best of it.

So when you account for only normal space actions, LAC's outperform DD's and are on-par with CL's for either energy weapons (Shrikes & Cimeterre-Bs), or missiles (Ferrets & Cimeterre-As), and also provide better missile defence. They do all that while also being harder to hit, and tiny crews so even if you lose one you aren't losing many personnel.

In hyperspace, ships become slightly more balanced and a Destroyer has just as much chance of crippling upto a BC (textev would be Captain Zilwicki, escorting her convoy that holds Anton and Helen, she only had DD & CL versus I think it was 4 Peep BCs).

And it's already been proven that it's possible to haul LAC's around without a CLAC, we know a Sultan-class Peep BC can carry two Masadan LACs, and I think it was a Breslau-destroyer can haul one Masadan LAC. That was in Honor of the Queen; I'd imagine Manticoran (and Grand Alliance ships) would have more/better tractors, not to mention flatpack pods.

A Sultan-class is only 860 Ktons, a Nike-Class is 2.5 Mtons, so Nikes are 2.9 times larger, and could probably tractor upto 6 LACs, and a few hundred flatpacks.

The only thing I have to add here is that I doubt that it will be the Solarian League who will develop the tech to stand up to the RMN. The League will be gone.

Some of the successor states might though, especially if their R&D gets put in the survival oriented pressure cooker that Manticore's was with Gram from the time of King Roger on.

Don