peep/hanite BCs

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Notoriety aside, it's ridiculous to suppose that Havenite BB's were there directly and entirely to keep planetary populations in line. A troop transport with a handful of KEW's could do that - if it were secure from enemy warships. A battleship would be comically excessive for keeping a planet below it in fear, but unlike the troop transport, it's not a pushover if an enemy cruiser (light, heavy, or battle) comes calling.

Given the comic-opera nature of much of the People's Republic of Haven's decision making under the Legislaturalists (when most of the BBs were built and positioned for "system security") using an ostentatious show of force to cow restless populations fits. There is textev that the BBs could not be pulled from their dispersed deployments because they were needed for "system security" by the Committee for Public Safety.

As illogical and inefficient as building and deploying battleships for political oppression might seem, there is textev that the reason had so many was the need for "system security" and textev that the reason they couldn't assemble a force of BBs in a timely manner is the political concern involved with pulling them from "sensitive systems."

Bear in mind that this is the same political mindset that equipped their State Security with SDs and used the latest BC design as a roving propaganda studio and prisoner transport.

munroburton wrote:

Dauntless wrote:do we know the names of many peep/havenite BC classes?

off the top of my head i only know of Sultan class (PNS Saladin/Thunder of God) and Warlord class (PNS Tepes)

there are mentions in things like Torch of Freedom of Warlord C but no info on how they differed from stock warlords.

yet again of the top of my head i can do 5 RMN BC class. Redoubtable, homer, Reliant, Agamemnon and Nike and can check house of steel for more.

Tiger and Lion are two other Peep BC classes I can think of. The Sultan was a replacement for the Tiger in much the same way the Reliant replaced the Redoubtable, though the older ships continued to be used for a while.

Dafmeister wrote:IIRC, weren't the PN's battleships all quite old? I don't think they'd built any for quite a while, they were leftovers from the old days when the RMN was also building battleships. The PN kept them on with upgrades because they were useful for rear area security, while the RMN scrapped them to free up some of their limited funds for DN and SD construction.

JeffEngel wrote:The last listed PN BB class, the Triumphant, were introduced in 1823 PD. I don't have a reference for when they ceased building them. I guess before 1900.

The RMN still had BB's in service, as the core of their wall of battle, in 1844. But the last of those had been built 250 years before. So the RMN's BB building ended about 1600, while Haven's continued to 1823 at the earliest. Those Triumphant class BB's were "general purpose workhorses meant primarily for covering rear areas against raiding squadrons of cruisers or battlecruisers and for keeping restive systems from asserting their independence."

The RMN gave up BB's for the wall as soon as they could afford to; the PN was still building them for an entirely different purpose much later.

JeffEngel wrote: Notoriety aside, it's ridiculous to suppose that Havenite BB's were there directly and entirely to keep planetary populations in line. A troop transport with a handful of KEW's could do that - if it were secure from enemy warships. A battleship would be comically excessive for keeping a planet below it in fear, but unlike the troop transport, it's not a pushover if an enemy cruiser (light, heavy, or battle) comes calling.

Weird Harold wrote:Given the comic-opera nature of much of the People's Republic of Haven's decision making under the Legislaturalists (when most of the BBs were built and positioned for "system security") using an ostentatious show of force to cow restless populations fits. There is textev that the BBs could not be pulled from their dispersed deployments because they were needed for "system security" by the Committee for Public Safety.

As illogical and inefficient as building and deploying battleships for political oppression might seem, there is textev that the reason had so many was the need for "system security" and textev that the reason they couldn't assemble a force of BBs in a timely manner is the political concern involved with pulling them from "sensitive systems."

Bear in mind that this is the same political mindset that equipped their State Security with SDs and used the latest BC design as a roving propaganda studio and prisoner transport.

JeffEngel wrote:
I'm perfectly content to acknowledge a complex attitude toward BB's and one that would change from Legislaturalists to the Committee.

The Legislaturalists were experienced conquistadors. If they were relying on the terror value of BB's, it was because they did have terror value, but at the bottom of that would be I think a recognition that they really were dangerous warships. They got into the waller fear category, so that someone under a BB's shadow knew that thing wasn't going to get brushed aside. For actually, physically keeping that planet under control, a lot less would have sufficed. But something that they knew would stay there, that's got a fine role in keeping them from even trying something. The psychological value's grounded in at least a crude appreciation of military reality on the part of both the oppressor and the oppressee.

The Committee era is where you've got the instances of BB's being kept occupying rear systems for security, even without any real expectation of raiding of those systems by the Manticoran Alliance. It's also an era of much, much less militarily cognizant political leadership. People's commissioners, secretaries of war prior to McQueen, and Cordelia Ransom had power over military conduct all out of proportion to their knowledge; Saint Just would not let military facts he knew he did not know well interfere with the security concerns he did know well; and Rob Pierre was not only not a professional but was far too busy keeping the circus running to pay enough attention to one act. There, I think the leadership just got to thinking "battleship is for keeping people in line!" and gave not enough thought to any other way to do that or the battleship's specific role in that. But they weren't the builders of the battleship fleet - they were just its mis-users.

But on the other side of the hill, if Manticore contemplated deep system raids, the presence of all those battleships likely did keep Manticore from trying it much without bringing their own wallers to do it, prior to Buttercup at least and the possibility of doing it with super-LAC's. If they did try it with BC's, a well-handled BB (as under Froggy Hall) would make that a very bad day for the RMN.

They did their job, when they were left to do it, despite clueless leaders, up until technical developments put them out of business.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:A third point--The Triumphant class could have been put into production later specifically for use against the RMN, which had a well known penchant for using the BC for raiding infrastructure and commerce raiding. Against a smallish group of BC's and CA's, the BB is an effective defensive ship.

As always, YMMV

Rob

Roguevictory wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:A third point--The Triumphant class could have been put into production later specifically for use against the RMN, which had a well known penchant for using the BC for raiding infrastructure and commerce raiding. Against a smallish group of BC's and CA's, the BB is an effective defensive ship.

As always, YMMV

Rob

When was the RMN in an actual war that lasted long enough for them to be using BCs to raid commerce and infrastructure anyway? Everything I remember was short campaigns or single battles the RMN versus pirates or mercenaries neither of which would be likely to have military infrastructure or commerce to target

Roguevictory wrote:When was the RMN in an actual war that lasted long enough for them to be using BCs to raid commerce and infrastructure anyway? Everything I remember was short campaigns or single battles the RMN versus pirates or mercenaries neither of which would be likely to have military infrastructure or commerce to target

House of Steel, The Manticore Wormhole Junction
1585–1723 PD wrote:In 1660 PD, Manticore became embroiled with the Ranier System near the Hennesy Terminus of the Manticore Junction. Ranier was little more than a pirate enclave which had been raiding commerce around the relatively unsettled Phoenix Cluster. No local star system had the power to deal with the Ranierians—indeed, Phoenix itself had been forced to pay tribute to them—and the pirates saw no reason they should not extort the same payments from Manticoran merchantmen. Faced with this situation, the RMN deployed heavy escort forces and fought numerous cruiser actions against Ranierian pirates between 1660 and 1662 PD. This effort culminated in Commodore Edward Saganami’s punitive expedition against Ranier itself with the first five modern Manticoran battlecruisers under his command, which ended the Ranier War by terminating the government of the Ranier System later that same year.
In 1669 PD, Manticore began amassing evidence of governmental connivance in the growing piracy problem in Silesia. At this time, the RMN still thought of itself as primarily a system defense fleet and Saganami’s Ranier expedition as something of a flash in the pan that was unlikely to be repeated. Queen Adrienne felt differently, however, and attacks by those pirates on trade with that region via the Gregor Terminus were costing not simply ships but the lives of her subjects, as well. In 1670 PD, she directed her Admiralty to take steps to protect the Star Kingdom’s commerce in Silesia.
At the time, the involvement of Solarian interests with the region’s pirates and their targeted attacks on Manticoran shipping was not suspected. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) would learn only later that Manpower Incorporated, apparently out of an awareness of how the RMN’s enforcement of the Cherwell Convention would hamper its slave-trading (and other illegal) activities in Silesia, had begun providing covert support through its Solarian transtellar associates in an effort to drive Manticoran trade out of the Confederacy. Should the pirates fail to fully accomplish that task, they might at least keep the still small RMN too preoccupied convoying merchant ships to go slaver-hunting.
Unaware of Solarian involvement, Saganami, the hero of the Ranier War, was ordered to assemble a force for the purpose of proactive, search-and-destroy operations against pirates in the Silesian Sector. His operations were an unqualified success, destroying dozens of pirate ships and many bases before the Silesian government—with heavy technical support from Manpower—made a covert attempt to either destroy or discredit him. These efforts resulted in the Battle of Trautman’s Star and then in the Battle of Carson, in which Saganami and the entire crew of his flagship were lost in the successful defense of a convoy against overwhelming odds.
The SKM’s response to the Battle of Carson, unfortunately for the Silesians (and Manpower), was the exact opposite of the one they had anticipated. Instead of being horrified and convinced Silesia was simply too dangerous an area for Manticoran trade, the public—and the Royal Manticoran Navy—had been given an iconic hero. HMS Nike’s last action became a rallying point which galvanized the entire Star Kingdom into wholehearted support for the Silesia mission. In the end, the RMN dispatched a complete squadron of battleships to systematically locate and destroy pirate bases throughout the entire eastern portion of the Confederacy. Following the successful eradication of piracy in the region, the battleships—supported by two divisions of dreadnoughts—made a “courtesy call” on the Confederacy’s capital system to escort the new Manticoran ambassador to Silesia. In the face of that visit, the Confederacy signed a most-favored star nation trade agreement with the SKM—and the Cherwell Convention—in 1674.