List of Honour - Honourverse

Fox2! wrote:

Theemile wrote:... So the reserve is a hodgepodge of old and new, updated and not (over half still have autocannon on them. Some, still with the new aircar smell, others as moldy and mildewy as they come

It's possible that every SD (at least) the SLN has ever owned sits orbiting some dead planet as part of the "Reserve Fleet."

No, that is not possible. We know that Battle Fleet (the active ships) still has a couple thousand superdreadnoughts. We also know that many of them had been heading to Tasmania to act as a second attack fleet if Filareta failed. After word of the complete failure of Filareta in Operation Raging Justice, the SLN decided not to send the second attack fleet to Manticore. It is speculated that some or all of the ships gathered at Tasmania will be used against Beowulf.

Fox2! wrote:

Theemile wrote:... So the reserve is a hodgepodge of old and new, updated and not (over half still have autocannon on them. Some, still with the new aircar smell, others as moldy and mildewy as they come

It's possible that every SD (at least) the SLN has ever owned sits orbiting some dead planet as part of the "Reserve Fleet."

Except, of course, for those destroyed at Spindle or 2nd Manticore (recognizing those who insist that the battle against the Brotherhood should really be considered 1st Manticore, Axelrod/Volsung as 2nd, the Haven invasion as 3rd and Filaretta 4th).

Not to change the topic, but is there any textev that the Brotherhood actually made it into Manticore local space before they were defeated? Might they have been engaged in some system far, far, away (at least from Manticore)?

No on the renumbering of the battles of Manticore. The battle against the Free Brotherhood took place in two different star systems. So technically The first battle of Manticore is the RMN vs the Volsung/Axelrod.

SWM wrote:

Fox2! wrote:
It's possible that every SD (at least) the SLN has ever owned sits orbiting some dead planet as part of the "Reserve Fleet."

No, that is not possible. We know that Battle Fleet (the active ships) still has a couple thousand superdreadnoughts. We also know that many of them had been heading to Tasmania to act as a second attack fleet if Filareta failed. After word of the complete failure of Filareta in Operation Raging Justice, the SLN decided not to send the second attack fleet to Manticore. It is speculated that some or all of the ships gathered at Tasmania will be used against Beowulf.

The perhaps poorly stated predicate was that the reserve fleet still contained every SD that the SLN had ever retired from the active fleet. Perhaps SLN SD-01 still molders in Mars orbit, forgotten by all but the crew that aired her up once every five years. And the squadron commander who nominally claims her as his flagship. While he enjoys the fleshpots of Mars One.

SWM wrote:

Fox2! wrote:It's possible that every SD (at least) the SLN has ever owned sits orbiting some dead planet as part of the "Reserve Fleet."

No, that is not possible. We know that Battle Fleet (the active ships) still has a couple thousand superdreadnoughts. We also know that many of them had been heading to Tasmania to act as a second attack fleet if Filareta failed. After word of the complete failure of Filareta in Operation Raging Justice, the SLN decided not to send the second attack fleet to Manticore. It is speculated that some or all of the ships gathered at Tasmania will be used against Beowulf.

Expounding on what SWM said, Battlefleet has a little more than 2000 wallers on "active duty" with 350 or so in Maintenance. the Reserve is ~8300 SDs IIRC.

71 SDs were Destroyed (23)/ Captured (48) at Spindle

427 SDs were destroyed (296)/ mission killed(71)/ Captured (60) at Manticore

100 SDs were poised to jump through the wormhole as backup but stopped by Truman at Beowulf

~600 SDs were send to Tasmania for a 2nd wave against Manticore, assuming the 1st wave weakened the defenses sufficiently

All told, ~1200 SDs (or 1/2 of the Active/Maintenance strength of the SLN BF) have been involved in motions against Manticore to date, of them ~500 have been lost or captured.

Theemile wrote: the Reserve is ~8300 SDs IIRC.

What's the age distribution of the Reserve Fleet? What is the oldest SD hull in the Reserve Fleet? Which SD has been in the Reserve Fleet the longest? Do they ever scrap hulls (other than for battle or operational damage), or just let them gather dust, unpowered, unaired, uncrewed, orbiting some distant planet?, What is the technology span of the Reserve Fleet? RFC has said that some of the Reserve Fleet still have auto cannon rather than PDLCs. Will the SLN expend the resources to activate the newest tranche of SDs from the reserves?

Fox2! wrote:

Theemile wrote: the Reserve is ~8300 SDs IIRC.

What's the age distribution of the Reserve Fleet? What is the oldest SD hull in the Reserve Fleet? Which SD has been in the Reserve Fleet the longest? Do they ever scrap hulls (other than for battle or operational damage), or just let them gather dust, unpowered, unaired, uncrewed, orbiting some distant planet?, What is the technology span of the Reserve Fleet? RFC has said that some of the Reserve Fleet still have auto cannon rather than PDLCs. Will the SLN expend the resources to activate the newest tranche of SDs from the reserves?

You should read the Pearls, and specifically http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/202/1.

We don't know how old the oldest hulls in the Reserve are, but that doesn't matter that much. Prior to the Havenite war, naval technology had been pretty stagnant for centuries. The Solarian League Navy runs the Reserve through a 100-year cycle. Essentially, every year, 1% of the Reserve is refurbished to current standards. Presumably, if a ship hull undergoing refurbishing was determined to be unsuitable or too damaged to use, it would be scrapped. And new-build ships are added to the Reserve regularly, as well. At any given time, no ship was effectively older than 100 years, even if the physical hulls were older. Given the rate of change in naval technology, this was quite adequate to keep the Reserve up-to-date for probably a thousand years or more.

Over the last century, there has been a lot of changes in naval technology--some of the pre-dating the Havenite war. As you noted, some Reserve ships still have autocannons instead of PDLCs, because those were invented less than 100 years ago. And most of the ships are still graser-heavy, because they were designed before laserheads. That's not even counting the changes introduced by Manticore.

Of course, all of these specifics don't really matter, because the Reserve will not be used. The text tells us that the SLN has already decided not to try activating the Reserve. They fully realize that none of the ships in the Reserve are of any use against Manticore.

HMS "big fun hamster" UltraViolet, brainchild of the Ultimate Verbotten Thread (as its name implies, obviously), shouldn't be on the List.

Some of the SLN reserve fleet would probably be sold off or othewise recycled. You have the example of the BCs that were transfered to Monica instead of - supposedly being scrapped. That has chewed at the back of my mind for a while considering that one would think that the SLN would want to get more than scrap value from decommissoned ships by selling these things to small nations. They are "old", the designs have been superseded by more modern ones with theoreticaly better tech and weapons. What comes to mind is something like the sale o fthe former USS Phoenix, launced in 1938 as a Brooklyn Class light cruiser, years afte being decommissioned she was sold to Argentina in 1951 and renamed the General Belgano. She was later sunk by a British submarine early in the Falklands war in 1982

The SLN is also probably repurposing these things in the manner of Manticore taking the older cruiser Harvest Joy and converting it to a Wormhole Research & Explorer Ship.
In our reality, there are examples of things such as the battleship USS Oregon which was decommissiond, then sold as scrap in the early 1940's but was later turned back to the Navy- just a hull with most of her equipment and much of the topside removed- to be used as an ammuntion barge. Ended up at Guam.

Brigade XO wrote:Some of the SLN reserve fleet would probably be sold off or othewise recycled. You have the example of the BCs that were transfered to Monica instead of - supposedly being scrapped. That has chewed at the back of my mind for a while considering that one would think that the SLN would want to get more than scrap value from decommissoned ships by selling these things to small nations.

I don't think the SLN wants scrap value; they're probably more interested in lending "aid" than providing self-defense.

As far as I can recall, we haven't seen a single piece of military hardware of SLN or solarian design outside of SL military control that hasn't been illegally transferred -- often arranged by the MAlign. The League seems to be very adverse to letting anyone have SLN equipment of any vintage -- partly because the Battle Fleet Reserve is largely upwards of a century old, and many active duty ships are the same basic design as the BF Reserve.

Frontier Fleet, OTOH, doesn't have a Reserve that we know of. They do have newer, more capable, ships than Battle Fleet even if the largest they field are BCs. FF does scrap their old ships when they replace them -- I imagine they have no desire to face them at some time in the future. The SLN is extremely conservative, so scrapped ships are probably too close in capability to their replacements.

From a political POV, OFS would vastly prefer to offer protection to verge systems than to allow them to purchase "modern" warships. Collecting "protection" fees from a verge system is more profitable in the long term than to rake-off from selling surplus ships.

Weird Harold wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Some of the SLN reserve fleet would probably be sold off or othewise recycled. You have the example of the BCs that were transfered to Monica instead of - supposedly being scrapped. That has chewed at the back of my mind for a while considering that one would think that the SLN would want to get more than scrap value from decommissoned ships by selling these things to small nations.

I don't think the SLN wants scrap value; they're probably more interested in lending "aid" than providing self-defense.

As far as I can recall, we haven't seen a single piece of military hardware of SLN or solarian design outside of SL military control that hasn't been illegally transferred -- often arranged by the MAlign. The League seems to be very adverse to letting anyone have SLN equipment of any vintage -- partly because the Battle Fleet Reserve is largely upwards of a century old, and many active duty ships are the same basic design as the BF Reserve.

Frontier Fleet, OTOH, doesn't have a Reserve that we know of. They do have newer, more capable, ships than Battle Fleet even if the largest they field are BCs. FF does scrap their old ships when they replace them -- I imagine they have no desire to face them at some time in the future. The SLN is extremely conservative, so scrapped ships are probably too close in capability to their replacements.

From a political POV, OFS would vastly prefer to offer protection to verge systems than to allow them to purchase "modern" warships. Collecting "protection" fees from a verge system is more profitable in the long term than to rake-off from selling surplus ships.

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Agreed --
OFS (and the SL in general) is interested in creating dependencies and protectorates where they have control (or at least controlling interest) than creating polities that can truly stand on their own.

-- Stewart