The RMN's new construction fleet and what it means.

Jonathan_S wrote:The problem with that is that we're told that the Sag-C has the minimum beam (74m) necessary to mount broadside tubes for Mk16s. That's about 50% wider than an Avalon (48m) or Roland (54m). [Oddly a Wolfhound is actually a bit wider (51m), if shallower and shorter, than an Avalon]

You're going to have to do something pretty unconventional to fit tubes that big/long into a next-gen CL hull which is likely to be no more than, say, 60m wide.

We've discussed options for that before though; the ones I recall offhand are:
a) Stick with Roland-style hammerhead missile clusters
b) angled tubes - mount the tubes so they angle aft enough to penetrate no more deeply than a ERM tube; so from above the tubes would look like a herringbone pattern).
c) interleaved or offset tubes - let the tubes stick back past the centerline of the ship, but mount them at different points long each broadside so they can extend past each other.
d) vertically offset tubes - put the port tubes one deck above the starboard tubes; so they extend over/under each other
e) asymmetric broadside - only mount tubes on one side

But all of those have drawbacks, and many of them seriously disrupt the other compartment, components, and passageways that live in the middle of a ship.

SWM wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The problem with that is that we're told that the Sag-C has the minimum beam (74m) necessary to mount broadside tubes for Mk16s. That's about 50% wider than an Avalon (48m) or Roland (54m). [Oddly a Wolfhound is actually a bit wider (51m), if shallower and shorter, than an Avalon]

You're going to have to do something pretty unconventional to fit tubes that big/long into a next-gen CL hull which is likely to be no more than, say, 60m wide.

We've discussed options for that before though; the ones I recall offhand are:
a) Stick with Roland-style hammerhead missile clusters
b) angled tubes - mount the tubes so they angle aft enough to penetrate no more deeply than a ERM tube; so from above the tubes would look like a herringbone pattern).
c) interleaved or offset tubes - let the tubes stick back past the centerline of the ship, but mount them at different points long each broadside so they can extend past each other.
d) vertically offset tubes - put the port tubes one deck above the starboard tubes; so they extend over/under each other
e) asymmetric broadside - only mount tubes on one side

But all of those have drawbacks, and many of them seriously disrupt the other compartment, components, and passageways that live in the middle of a ship.

You missed one:
f) make the new light cruiser at least the size of the Saganami-C.

Which is what David has said Manticoran planners are considering.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:One implementation of that notional light combatant is simple: take the Saganami-C, tweak it according to needs (fewer small craft, more recon drones, for instance), and declare that your new light cruiser. You've already got assembly lines for it, it's already tested, so there's a lot of investment spared. The trouble is that the operating cost for it is a lot higher than you really want for a "minimum" hyper-capable warship - not much less than for a Nike, we're told. So if you can tweak it any way that reduces personnel required even more consistent with a cruiser's mission - or reduces operating costs any other way - it would be a compelling modification to make.

Sure you could do the latter - basically rebrand the Sag-C a light cruiser. (Possibly shed a few tubes / energy mounts to free up space/tonnage for marines, or even a keyhole-lite)

But your earlier suggestion of a squat or stumpy hull has some issues. Going too far outside the 'normal' l*w*b ratio impacts your acceleration. Making a wide short ship will give you less displacement tonnage; but you'll still accelerate almost as if you were the higher tonnage 'full figure' hull of the same beam. In the short to medium term, the RMN has enough of a compensator accel advantage that they can probably live with that -- but it's not a great idea to tie yourself down to a sub-optimal hull shape on the assumption that you can maintain a compensator advantage throughout the ship's lifetime. (Or assume that it doesn't matter if your CL can't run from future CAs, or run down future CLs)

JeffEngel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But your earlier suggestion of a squat or stumpy hull has some issues. Going too far outside the 'normal' l*w*b ratio impacts your acceleration. Making a wide short ship will give you less displacement tonnage; but you'll still accelerate almost as if you were the higher tonnage 'full figure' hull of the same beam. In the short to medium term, the RMN has enough of a compensator accel advantage that they can probably live with that -- but it's not a great idea to tie yourself down to a sub-optimal hull shape on the assumption that you can maintain a compensator advantage throughout the ship's lifetime. (Or assume that it doesn't matter if your CL can't run from future CAs, or run down future CLs)

The proportions seem to have some odd give to them, looking from warship to warship, though smaller faster ones do tend to be leaner. Still, if being shorter is a problem after a certain point, there's still the draught dimension to shrink: go flatter instead of stumpier. Do we have reason to suppose that's too likely to be too much punished if the designers shed tonnage there?

saber964 wrote:IIRC the 3rd and 4th space lords where probably undercutting and using workarounds to hide projects from Janacek. IIRC Lord Toscarilli took what was to be a design study (Invictus class(?). All the way to final design stage.

At All Costs, Chapter 7 wrote:"We're also engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of our building options. One of the very few things the Janacek Admiralty did right—by accident, I'm sure—was to leave Vice Admiral Toscarelli at BuShips. I doubt they would have done it if they'd realized what he was actually up to over there, although I may be doing Chakrabarti a disservice. He may have known exactly what Toscarelli was doing.
"At any rate, despite the official Janacek position that there was no need to build anything other than LACs and commerce-protection units, Toscarelli and his people managed to get the Saganami-C approved as a 'modification' of the existing Saganami design, rather than as a totally new class which represents as significant a tactical departure for cruisers as the Medusa-class represented for superdreadnoughts. He also managed to get the design for the new Nike-class battlecruisers and Agamemnon-class BC(P)s approved. We only have the lead ship of the Nike-class about to commission, and only six of the Agamemnons, but there are six more Agamemnons already in the pipeline. Almost more importantly, most of the construction kinks have been worked out of both designs, and they can be put into rapid series production quickly. Then there's the new Medusa-B-class SD(P). It was authorized by Chakrabarti solely as a paper study, but Toscarelli took it to the detailed blueprint stage. It's a significant improvement on the Invictus design, but we'd be looking at an additional delay of six to ten months to put a completely new design into production rather than simply building repeat Invictus-class ships."

Vince wrote:

saber964 wrote:IIRC the 3rd and 4th space lords where probably undercutting and using workarounds to hide projects from Janacek. IIRC Lord Toscarilli took what was to be a design study (Invictus class(?). All the way to final design stage.

Medusa B (which we haven't seen), not Invictus.

At All Costs, Chapter 7 wrote:"We're also engaged in a comprehensive evaluation of our building options. One of the very few things the Janacek Admiralty did right—by accident, I'm sure—was to leave Vice Admiral Toscarelli at BuShips. I doubt they would have done it if they'd realized what he was actually up to over there, although I may be doing Chakrabarti a disservice. He may have known exactly what Toscarelli was doing.
"At any rate, despite the official Janacek position that there was no need to build anything other than LACs and commerce-protection units, Toscarelli and his people managed to get the Saganami-C approved as a 'modification' of the existing Saganami design, rather than as a totally new class which represents as significant a tactical departure for cruisers as the Medusa-class represented for superdreadnoughts. He also managed to get the design for the new Nike-class battlecruisers and Agamemnon-class BC(P)s approved. We only have the lead ship of the Nike-class about to commission, and only six of the Agamemnons, but there are six more Agamemnons already in the pipeline. Almost more importantly, most of the construction kinks have been worked out of both designs, and they can be put into rapid series production quickly. Then there's the new Medusa-B-class SD(P). It was authorized by Chakrabarti solely as a paper study, but Toscarelli took it to the detailed blueprint stage. It's a significant improvement on the Invictus design, but we'd be looking at an additional delay of six to ten months to put a completely new design into production rather than simply building repeat Invictus-class ships."

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

JeffEngel wrote:The Sag-C has marines - not as many as they would like for some jobs, but probably more than they expect to settle for for the notional light combatant.

drothgery wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:The Sag-C has marines - not as many as they would like for some jobs, but probably more than they expect to settle for for the notional light combatant.

Perhaps it does, but the entire crew complement is closer to a traditional destroyer's than a CL's. And for the kind of jobs you want a future light combatant for (especially considering that the screening and system defense roles will largely be done by LACs, not hyper-capable ships), having a marine complement is rather useful. I mean, I think Hexapuma carried fewer marines than the CL Fearless; certainly it wasn't many more.

JeffEngel wrote:The Sag-C has marines - not as many as they would like for some jobs, but probably more than they expect to settle for for the notional light combatant.

drothgery wrote:Perhaps it does, but the entire crew complement is closer to a traditional destroyer's than a CL's. And for the kind of jobs you want a future light combatant for (especially considering that the screening and system defense roles will largely be done by LACs, not hyper-capable ships), having a marine complement is rather useful. I mean, I think Hexapuma carried fewer marines than the CL Fearless; certainly it wasn't many more.

Kytheros wrote:Hexapuma and the CL Fearless each carried a company of Marines. Of course, Fearless had a much larger crew, despite being nearly 6 times smaller and much more lightly armed.
The destroyer Hawkwing in ... "Let's Dance", I think it was, carried a platoon of Marines.

CA Fearless carried two or three companies of Marines, I think. Can't remember offhand.

In Fire Forged, Let's Dance wrote:“Not good, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Everett Janacek, RMMC, the youthful—extraordinarily youthful, actually—commanding officer of HMS Hawkwing’s embarked Marine platoon, replied from Evita over the com link from his battle armor.

***Snip***

“I’m relieved to hear you feel that way,” she said. “And I’ll admit I’m also a little puzzled. I have the distinct impression you people have a reasonable estimate of Hawkwing’s capabilities. So why mention this to me at all? From what you’ve already said, this sounds like something that’s going to need a couple of companies of Marines, at the very least, and I’ve got one platoon.”

***Snip***

Honor nodded again. Clearly, the Manpower engineering officer had taken her seriously. She still didn’t know exactly how he’d pulled it off—and, to be perfectly honest, she didn’t care—but he’d managed to convince at least a dozen others that protecting the Silesian civilians and slaves being held aboard the platform represented their own sole chance for survival. It was fortunate for everyone concerned that the civilians had been confined in the same section of the station as the slaves whenever they weren’t actually on duty, and that the “new management” had sealed off all but one of the passages into that section as one of their own security measures. Mazur and his fellows had been able to get into the confinement area virtually unopposed, and they’d only had to hold that single entryway until Nat Turner Jurgenson’s fighters and one of Janacek’s two squads of armored Marines smashed their way through to them.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 18 wrote:"Ma'am," Papadapolous said crisply, "I still have ninety-three Marines aboard ship. I have battle armor for a full platoon—thirty-five men and women—with pulse rifles and heavy weapons for the remainder of the company. We can handle any bunch of Stilties armed with flintlocks." He stopped, jaw clenched, and added another "Ma'am" almost as an afterthought.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 23 wrote:"Next, there's the problem of getting our own available strength concentrated. The NPA only has about a five-company field strength, once we allow for essential detachments, and my own company is understrength just now. So, with your permission, Captain, I'd like to recall the Marines currently detached to the customs and inspection parties. I believe the traffic volume has dropped to a level which would permit us to reduce the number of inspection boats and consolidate Navy ratings to crew them, which would release our Marines for possible ground combat. If we can do that, I'd have four full-strength platoons to work with, not three partial ones."
Papadapolous paused and raised an eyebrow at Honor. In turn, she glanced at McKeon and raised an eyebrow of her own.
"I think we could do that, Ma'am," the exec said after a moment. "We can probably get by with two fully-crewed inspection boats, given present traffic levels."
"Very well, Major Papadapolous," Honor said. "You have your Marines back again."

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 24 wrote:“Basically, Admiral, I have three companies aboard Fearless.” Ramirez’s accent differed from most of the Manticorans Matthews had heard, with liquid consonants that were oddly musical in such a massive man. “Apollo has another company embarked, although they suffered about twenty casualties in the engagement. That gives me the better part of a battalion, including just over a company’s worth of battle armor. Our best current estimates suggest the Masadan base is much larger than we’d originally thought, with a complement of about seven thousand men. How many of those have the training and equipment to be considered combat effective is an unknown, but the total numbers give them a considerable edge over our own five hundred troopers.

The Shadow of Saganami, Chapter 11 wrote:All of which explained why, instead of the four hundred and fifty-four men and women, in three companies, commanded by a major, assigned to a heavy cruiser under the "old" establishment, Captain Kaczmarczyk (who received the "courtesy promotion" to major aboard ship—since a warship could afford no confusion over who one meant when one said "Captain") had barely a hundred and forty in his single company. Even at that, they represented almost half of Hexapuma's total complement of three hundred and fifty-five.