Dilandu wrote:Easternmystic wrote:
So all those wunderwaffe that Charis has been building have been a huge mistake. The galleons, new cannon, breachloaders, ship armor, cased ammunition etc... have been a gigantic waste of time and effort on the part of Charis. Just imagine where they could be today if they hadn't wasted their time building any of this stuff.
Yes, you completely missed my point.
Please, learn the difference between the "superior weapon" and "superweapon"
There is difference, and pretty sharp, actually.
To make things easier, let's look at the World War II and the USN shipbuilding.
The superior weapon way (real): the USN started to build a large number of not individually perfect, but quickly avaliable fleet carriers of "Essex" and "Independence" classes, and armed them with the F4F and latrer F6F fighters. None of this weapons were perfect, but they were superior to the cotemporary japanese, and they could be build quickly and in large numbers. And they won the Pacific War.
The superweapon way (charisian): if the USN decided to play Charisian, they would not build any fleet carriers in 1942-1944. Istead they would wait until the "Midway"-class supercarrier would be avaliable in 1945-1946; in hope that japanese would be so scared of this giant ships, that the IJN would surrender without actual combat. Also, the USA wouldn't build "Wildcat's" or "Hellcat's", but they would wait until the "Corsair" would be perfected.
Also, in the "superweapon" model the USA did not build any destroyers, escort ships, submarines or landing crafts in 1942-1944.
Only a handful of cruisers as scouts and counter-raiders.
See the difference?
Dilandu, that is a flat out ridiculous comparison, and you ought to know it if anyone does.
In WW II, the carrier was the critical weapon, the Japanese had superiority in both carriers and surface units following Pearl Harbor, and the fleet carriers you cite were a finished design, already in the production queue, each of which cost far less and could be built in substantitally shorter periods of time than the CVBs to which you compare them. I.e., they were part of an already existing production plan, formulated in what was still peacetime, which was simply accelerated in wartime. The cruiser conversions into light carriers were wartime expedients, not a prewar design, but a full analysis of carrier battles and tactics in the Pacific indicate that the conversions may well not have been the best use of resources by a long chalk, just as the huge amount plowed into escort carriers vastly exceeded the final strategic and operational value of those carriers. Your steam-powered sailing ironclads would be a very close analogue to the vast (and hugely in excess of the actually needed) numbers of DDEs and CVEs laid down during WW II. It would, in fact, have made much better sense to build a smaller number of the more capable DD designs the USN wanted than to produce such a horde of DDEs (and CVEs) that scores of them were cancelled as early as the end of 1943. (And which quickly became useless in the fact of the post-WWII realities of ASW and the size and power of post-WWII aircraft types.) Better to have spent the extra ninety days or so required to build the DD instead of the DE, frankly, and to have liad down/ordered about half the number of CVEs.
And as for the the CVLs you mention above, they weren't converted from existing ships (which is what you're recommending Chairs do) but rather ships on the ways which were converted
during the construction period. The ICN didn't have bunches of conventional galleons on the ways when it decided to build the
Cities instead of additional wooden ships. They converted the ones they
did have on the ways into the
Rottweilers and then laid down an entire class of clearly superior ships which could be built in a roughly comparable window of time (actually, a lot
less time if they followed the traditional wooden shipbuilding practice of letting them season in the frame for months before planking them to avoid dry rot) than would be required to build additional wooden-hulled ironclads.
The ICN is in a position of crushing superiority in conventional galleons, has converted half a dozen wooden galleons into sailing ironclads (which is one hell of a lot easier than converting a sailing ship's hull into a steampowered one after the fact), has laid down and is completing an entire fleet (not huge, but more than big enough to do the job) of
City-class ironclads with 6" batteries, and is building a very limited number of
KHs for a specific strategic purpose which has very little to do with winning the war in the immediate short term. The sudden upsurge in Desnarian privateers (and their effectiveness) under the impetus of a new Desnarian naval minister/commander caused an unexpected need to divert not just the first operational
Cities (which should already have been in the Gulf under the original deployment plan) to take out their bases but also required the redeployment of much of the ICN's conventional galleon strength for escort duties until those bases were dealt with.
What this means is that there was a rational plan in place which would cover the need to win the war
without the
KHs but which came a cropper because --- guess what? --- the enemy did something that wasn't expected when the plan was formulated. Had the enemy deployments (and changes in its own strength) which the ICN
reasonably anticipated come to pass, people would probably be criticizing them for tying up so much armor, so many guns, and so much industrial effort in a bevy of purpose built or hastily converted sailing ironclads with auxilliary steam as a stop gap against a threat that never materialized when they could have produced a far more capable ship in the same period of time.
Where are they supposed to get the armor and the steam plants for these hyopthetical hybrids of yours? Building the
City-class ironclads
takes no more time (appreciably) than your conversions would, pretty much uses up the available supply of marine steam power plants, and actually costs less
in terms of skilled labor manhours, although somewhat more in terms of money. So what you're suggesting is that they spend the same amount of time, divert their available steam plants to a clearly second-class design allternative, and tie up even more of their labor force to produce a fleet of broadside ironclads which will be slower, less maneuverable, less powerful,
and available perhaps a whole 2-3 months earlier than the far superior
Cities.
The
KHs are totally a
non-issue when it comes to what is needed to actually win the war at sea. I have repeatedly said this, but you do not seem to be listening. Their basic purpose is completely different from that and has far more to do with Merlin's
ultimate objectives than it does with the destruction of the RDN. And those ultimate objectives of his are far more important than the short term destruiction of the RDN. The Charisian "man iin the street' may think they're being built to win the war; the
inner circle knows differently and is ordering its decision-making priorirties on the basis of that knowledge
which it can't share with that "man in the street' for reasons which should be pretty darned evident. Do they want to have the
KHs (or at least some of them) available when/if it comes time to go after Gorath? Yes, but not because they think the'll need them to do the job. They want them because that will be the point at which they grind home the ships' total superiorty to anything anyone else can possibloy build withougt first embracing every scrap of Charisian-style tech and industry they can lay their hands on, thus driving the industrialization of the entire planet and undermining the power of the Proscriptions.
I've never claimed that the Charisian decision-making process is perfect, and I've certainly never argued that everyone out there should agree with every single decision they make, but this is getting just plain silly. You have focused on a single decision tree that
you think represents a foolish misuse of resources, but the truth is that
neither of the sailing ironclads would have been lost if one of them hadn't gone aground on a shoal it didn't know was there and that even without them the conventional ICN strength in the Gulf is totally adequate to hold the ring until blue-water, steam-powered ironclads are redeployed to support them. And the delay in sending those ironclads is due entirely to the need to operate within a communications loop which can be explained within the limitations of allowable Safeholdian technology. Absent that constraint, they could have been there within a few five-days of Sarmouth's arrival. It's not a question of total available strength, it's a matter of where that strength is
at a single, specific moment and how long it takes to get it shifted to where it now needs to be.
By my thinking, if a Navy has more than adequate fighting strength to do the job and it's simply a matter of a temporary deployment imbalance caused by an unanticipated shift in enemy operational patterns half a world away from the theatre in which the imbalance has occurred
and a totally unanticipated loss of combat power due solely to circumstances no one could have foreseen, it's completely bogus to lambaste that navy and its decisions as grossly incompetent.
They aren't. A temporary reverse occurred due to the fact that --- as the old axiom has it --- stuff happens. The ICN has
already restored order to its position in the Gulf. Ships are currently being dispatched which will render the RDN totally combat ineffective when they arrive there. The situation is in hand.
Deal with it.
)
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.