Captured Solly SDs

jgnfld wrote:Send the stupid things into Manticore A or use them for target practice.

Good lord, TEN pages???

The latter might actually be a good option, provided they are captured mostly intact. I'd actually send them off to Bolthole for Shannon and Sonja to test new weapons systems on.

Most could be donated to liberated star nations. A few might actually be able to man SDs, and following the twin blows of First Manticore and Oyster Bay I doubt the Alliance will be in a position to sell many new ships. Most wouldn't, but they could remove the weapons mounts and deploy them on orbital fortresses, or even home-built lighter warships if they have the capacity.

The same fate would befall any other captured Solly warships. In the aftermath of the current war, ex-Solly warships may be as common as ex-Soviet tanks are today.

Meshakhad wrote:

jgnfld wrote:Send the stupid things into Manticore A or use them for target practice.

Good lord, TEN pages???

The latter might actually be a good option, provided they are captured mostly intact. I'd actually send them off to Bolthole for Shannon and Sonja to test new weapons systems on.

Most could be donated to liberated star nations. A few might actually be able to man SDs, and following the twin blows of First Manticore and Oyster Bay I doubt the Alliance will be in a position to sell many new ships. Most wouldn't, but they could remove the weapons mounts and deploy them on orbital fortresses, or even home-built lighter warships if they have the capacity.

The same fate would befall any other captured Solly warships. In the aftermath of the current war, ex-Solly warships may be as common as ex-Soviet tanks are today.

No the WON'T be sold to friendly star nations. First of all, there is a large number of pre-podnaught GA SD in storage, which could be sold instead. Which are more powerful, cheaper to run and the maintenance contract could go to GA without re-engineering Solly parts. The availability of old GA SD, which presumably can do anything and more the Solly SD can do and cheaper, is the end of any use of Solly SDs other than target practice for me.
Secondly if you are honest with you customer and he asks for an old SD, you tell him to buy a modern CL or DD instead. While they might be willing to basically give a SD away, what you spend on operating the damned thing would fiance a number of modern small ships from yard slip to the breaker. And anyone of them could blow away an old Solly SD.

Let's take this from a manpower prospective. Say you are a modestly prosperous verge star nation like Montana or Rembrandt. You can afford a modest sized navy of 10,000 personnel. Would you tie up that much manpower crewing just one ship. When for the same crewing requirements you could crew a dozen ships or more. For what it would take to man one SLN SD you could man 4 CLs at 500 men each and 9 DDs at 300 men each. Plus one ship can only be in one place at a time while 4 or 5 ships can be in 4 or 5 different places at once.

saber964 wrote:Let's take this from a manpower prospective. Say you are a modestly prosperous verge star nation like Montana or Rembrandt. You can afford a modest sized navy of 10,000 personnel. Would you tie up that much manpower crewing just one ship. When for the same crewing requirements you could crew a dozen ships or more. For what it would take to man one SLN SD you could man 4 CLs at 500 men each and 9 DDs at 300 men each. Plus one ship can only be in one place at a time while 4 or 5 ships can be in 4 or 5 different places at once.

One thousand LAC's!

Or 800 LAC's and two installations to control as many system defense missile pods as you can afford.

500 LAC's, 4 DD's, 2 system defense missile installations....

Really, the only thing a SD is good for is being one very, very, very hard to kill thing able to move between systems and project power from one point at a time. That's an important role, don't get me wrong, but for system defense, it's one of the last roles you need to fill, not the first.

If they happen to be stupid-cheap - and still worth it - and within your means for purchase, maintenance, and crewing - and all the normally much better things for your system defense budget things are at their normal high prices, unavailable, or already in hand - then maybe you would want to be the proud owner of a new-to-you SD. But it would be no great surprise if not one of 3000 star systems jointly satisfied all those conditions.

saber964 wrote:Let's take this from a manpower prospective. Say you are a modestly prosperous verge star nation like Montana or Rembrandt. You can afford a modest sized navy of 10,000 personnel.

You pay how much per naval service member? Assume you are paying 100k per on average. That means 10k people costs 1 billion per year. Assume you have population of 500 million. What is a reasonable amount of money to devote to protecting your planet against attack per citizen. Is 2 really the limit per citizen should be expected to contribute to the national defense?

kzt wrote:

saber964 wrote:Let's take this from a manpower prospective. Say you are a modestly prosperous verge star nation like Montana or Rembrandt. You can afford a modest sized navy of 10,000 personnel.

You pay how much per naval service member? Assume you are paying 100k per on average. That means 10k people costs 1 billion per year. Assume you have population of 500 million. What is a reasonable amount of money to devote to protecting your planet against attack per citizen. Is 2 really the limit per citizen should be expected to contribute to the national defense?

If you are going to afford a navy, ask yourself what kind of a navy you need and how effective it would actually be before you pour your money down the proverbial rat hole.

I don't see much point to SDs unless you are a wealthy system who needs to project power. For one thing, one SD probably isn't a very good idea, but a squadron of six or eight might be sinse their basicly designed for the wall of battle. Then you have to be able to maintain the things. If you can't do that there really isn't much point in having them.

Most Verge systems probably are better off with a navy that can protect them against pirates; that is BC class and lower. BCs plus some missile pods and LACs would probably discourage a neighbor who decided to play conquistador. If you are a Verge system struggling to make ends meet and you find yourself pitted against someone with a wall of battle, you are probably sunk anyway so you'd just as well invest in achieving goals you can actually accomplish such as keeping order in your own system with ships you can afford to own and maintain.

Don

n7axw wrote:If you are going to afford a navy, ask yourself what kind of a navy you need and how effective it would actually be before you pour your money down the proverbial rat hole.

I don't see much point to SDs unless you are a wealthy system who needs to project power. For one thing, one SD probably isn't a very good idea, but a squadron of six or eight might be sinse their basicly designed for the wall of battle. Then you have to be able to maintain the things. If you can't do that there really isn't much point in having them.

Ideally you want a couple extras so you can usually deploy a full squadron despite having 2 or 3 down for maintenance, or working up post refit.

Although with 8 you can usually hope to have a short squadron of 6 available. Not ideal, but at least enough to provide mutual support.

Jonathan_S wrote:

n7axw wrote:If you are going to afford a navy, ask yourself what kind of a navy you need and how effective it would actually be before you pour your money down the proverbial rat hole.

I don't see much point to SDs unless you are a wealthy system who needs to project power. For one thing, one SD probably isn't a very good idea, but a squadron of six or eight might be sinse their basicly designed for the wall of battle. Then you have to be able to maintain the things. If you can't do that there really isn't much point in having them.

Ideally you want a couple extras so you can usually deploy a full squadron despite having 2 or 3 down for maintenance, or working up post refit.

Although with 8 you can usually hope to have a short squadron of 6 available. Not ideal, but at least enough to provide mutual support.

Mutual support could be had with as few as two. More than purely nominal mutual support, eh, figure four. I'd peg that as the minimum count of SD's you can expect to afford to get and keep before you want to make the "jump" to the waller league.

Even then though, now, that may indicate an interest in projecting power, not merely being more serious about system defense. For that, you could still do better with fortress(es) and/or system defense missile pods and control installations. You wouldn't be able to chase people around a system with a fortress, but they're maneuverable enough to avoid cheap kills with c-fractional missile strikes. The system defense missile pods are vulnerable that way, but they can (nowadays) have a fair expectation of remaining hidden. And either one of them can put a hurt on SD's that come to their range, for much less cost per unit effectiveness.

I do wonder about Beowulf's and Mannerheim's SDF SD's. Granted, it's only recently that system defense missile pods would be able to do that job, and neither of those has publicly deployed MDM's (much less combined them with FTL fire control) to make that really work. But still, SD's over fortresses and cruisers/destroyers suggest an interest in being able to project power that has to raise eyebrows.

JeffEngel wrote:
Mutual support could be had with as few as two. More than purely nominal mutual support, eh, figure four. I'd peg that as the minimum count of SD's you can expect to afford to get and keep before you want to make the "jump" to the waller league.

Even then though, now, that may indicate an interest in projecting power, not merely being more serious about system defense. For that, you could still do better with fortress(es) and/or system defense missile pods and control installations. You wouldn't be able to chase people around a system with a fortress, but they're maneuverable enough to avoid cheap kills with c-fractional missile strikes. The system defense missile pods are vulnerable that way, but they can (nowadays) have a fair expectation of remaining hidden. And either one of them can put a hurt on SD's that come to their range, for much less cost per unit effectiveness.

I do wonder about Beowulf's and Mannerheim's SDF SD's. Granted, it's only recently that system defense missile pods would be able to do that job, and neither of those has publicly deployed MDM's (much less combined them with FTL fire control) to make that really work. But still, SD's over fortresses and cruisers/destroyers suggest an interest in being able to project power that has to raise eyebrows.

There can be valid reasons to project power. When King Roger began his buildup, he had a specific opponent in mind. In order to survive over the long term, Manticore had to be able to project power both in order to defend its allies and to keep the Peeps out of her yard. Ulimately Manticore had to be able not only to defend herself; she had to build her navy to defeat Haven.

In that context, had Manticore restricted herself to a system defense force, she would have been toast.

Don

JeffEngel wrote:I do wonder about Beowulf's and Mannerheim's SDF SD's. Granted, it's only recently that system defense missile pods would be able to do that job, and neither of those has publicly deployed MDM's (much less combined them with FTL fire control) to make that really work. But still, SD's over fortresses and cruisers/destroyers suggest an interest in being able to project power that has to raise eyebrows.

IIRC, Beowulf also had a large merchant fleet. The Beowulf SDF was, at least in part, designed to discourage nations in the Verge from messing with Beowulf flagged merchants. It is something that Battle fleet would consider beneath itself, and Frontier Fleet may be understrength to handle.

On a different note, do you think Beowulf's merchants being pulled out of the SL will mess with the Mandarin's calculations?