Honorverse ramblings and musings

Imaginos1892 wrote:

Theemile wrote:The original Cimeterre w the fusion plant had a 96 hour endurance. Manticorian fission LACs had a 18 month endurance on the powerplant, with consumables for a considerable time (weeks), assuming you wanted to live on canned rations in a sardine can.

You lot have been throwing these ship sizes around for so long you've forgotten how big they really are. The old Fearless, sent to Basilisk, was the size of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier with a crew of 200 compared to 7,000 on a Nimitz.

I spent 2 1/2 years on a 2700 metric ton destroyer. It could carry enough food for 40 days for a crew of 240. The LAC is 7 times bigger with a crew of 10.

A better comparison would be an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, which can remain submerged for up to six months, limited only by food. The LAC is shorter and fatter, but has almost exactly the same volume and mass. A coincidence? The sub has a standard crew of 165.
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Firepower is not a thousand bullets that miss - it's one bullet that hits.

Good Point Imaginos, I actually do not know the space per person in those LACs - we only know their density is more than 2x that of a normal Honorverse starship because most of the internal spaces (walkways, accessways, and crew compartments) have been removed, so compared to another Honorverse ship their same dimensions, they have very little space per man.

In this case, the parallel may be more like a modern plane than a ship - some bombers (I'm thinking specifically of the B-58 Hustler here) are the size of a passenger jet, but only have a (tight) cockpit for the crew, while the passenger jet may have a bunk for the crew to rest.

I don't think it's fighter cockpit bad in a LAC, but you probably have berthing spaces similar to what you see on a Nuc sub, a smallish galley/wardroom, a medbay the size of an oversized closet, and the properly sized "working" spaces.

Once again, there is no text-ev to back this up, but the crews do not live on-LAC when in the CLAC or at a base, so I doubt the living area is luxurious, or else they would.

The talk about the crewing requirements of a LAC reminded me of an itch I never got around to scratching. Perhaps someone can assist.

I was reading in FIE, I think; anyways, it mentioned the crewing requirements of a pre-pod SD to be around 3000, IIRC?

I'm interested in how the crewing requirements changed from SD to the more automated SD(P) and in comparison to the SLN.

Every time an SLN ship blows, I cringe at the butcher's bill. I remember textev giving specifics somewhere.

Thanks in advance.

cthia wrote:The talk about the crewing requirements of a LAC reminded me of an itch I never got around to scratching. Perhaps someone can assist.

I was reading in FIE, I think; anyways, it mentioned the crewing requirements of a pre-pod SD to be around 3000, IIRC?

I'm interested in how the crewing requirements changed from SD to the more automated SD(P) and in comparison to the SLN.

Every time an SLN ship blows, I cringe at the butcher's bill. I remember textev giving specifics somewhere.

Thanks in advance.

More like 5,000 and closer to 6,000 for the SLN as far as pre-pod SDs go. Quite a contrast to be had with the latest RMN/GSN SD(P)s carrying about 1,500-2,000 lives.

Other contrasts can be found at the other end of the tonnage scale. The Star Knight CA needed over 900; the Sag-C, despite being quite a bit larger, only needs 355 crew. Pre-war destroyers had 300 crew; Rolands and Wolfhounds now ship with less than 90.

I can't recall ever seeing crew numbers for Havenite SD(P)s. However, the numbers of captured and KIA personnel compared with the hull numbers captured or destroyed at First Manticore suggests they don't have the automation at all.

some of the crew savings are going to be a pain when the RMN returns to a more peacetime navy and spends most of its time to anti-piacry and similar where the lack of marines will seriously hamper ops.

heck as sown in spindle the lack of warm bodies for SAR is causing issues.

as the haventies and automation.They probably don't have it because warm bodies to man the fleet was never an issue for them. even pre CPS it was one place a dolist who worked hard could do fairly well for himself. unlikely to make flag rank, but still commander or captain (JG) would be a massive step up from the slums.

the manties only adopted automation because they had one planets population to use (all right 3, but it was 3 instead of the 10s that the heavenits had), now that they have siliesa and talbot (once they've improved education levels) I can see them reducing the automation a bit.

not to the old levels, automation has reduced most crews by over 70% i believe, but they might scale that back to 50% which would still be a significant saving and start giving them back some of those warm bodies needed for SAR or Marines

Dauntless wrote:some of the crew savings are going to be a pain when the RMN returns to a more peacetime navy and spends most of its time to anti-piacry and similar where the lack of marines will seriously hamper ops.

heck as sown in spindle the lack of warm bodies for SAR is causing issues.

as the haventies and automation.They probably don't have it because warm bodies to man the fleet was never an issue for them. even pre CPS it was one place a dolist who worked hard could do fairly well for himself. unlikely to make flag rank, but still commander or captain (JG) would be a massive step up from the slums.

the manties only adopted automation because they had one planets population to use (all right 3, but it was 3 instead of the 10s that the heavenits had), now that they have siliesa and talbot (once they've improved education levels) I can see them reducing the automation a bit.

not to the old levels, automation has reduced most crews by over 70% i believe, but they might scale that back to 50% which would still be a significant saving and start giving them back some of those warm bodies needed for SAR or Marines

To solve the lack of manpower-in-the-field issue, all they really have to do is return the marine complements to pre-war levels on cruisers and destroyers, or even double those. Maybe expand the Book-spec'd crews by about 10-30% to provide some personnel redundancy for ships sent on longer patrols outside controlled areas.

Reducing automation on wallers isn't a great idea - it increases their operational costs. And that means fewer overall wallers.

I always thought it was weird for a full battle squadron to lumber around with three or four thousand marines they never seem to use or need, while lone cruisers had to make do with a hundred or two.

Marines don't just sit around twiddling their thumbs during a naval battle. They're part of the damage control teams and help crew local weapons control.

Duckk wrote:Marines don't just sit around twiddling their thumbs during a naval battle. They're part of the damage control teams and help crew local weapons control.

I think he specifically means during peacetime. The jobs they were doing could be done by (less specialized) sailors, while the Marine's skills and training would be better put to use in an independent cruising unit which would be more likely to require their specialized services.

The older ships would still have needed the bodies, but they didn't necessary need to be Marines.

Dauntless wrote:some of the crew savings are going to be a pain when the RMN returns to a more peacetime navy and spends most of its time to anti-piacry and similar where the lack of marines will seriously hamper ops.

Barring significant (and close to Manticore/the wormhole network) parts of the remnants of the League descending into old-Silesia-like havens for piracy and/or the emergence of someone that replaces Mesa/Manpower as a covert sponsor of piracy aimed at Manticore, anti-piracy is going to be a much smaller concern in the long run, even with far more systems to protect than they had in the past.

Theemile wrote:

Imaginos1892"quote="Theemile wrote:The original Cimeterre w the fusion plant had a 96 hour endurance. Manticorian fission LACs had a 18 month endurance on the powerplant, with consumables for a considerable time (weeks), assuming you wanted to live on canned rations in a sardine can.

You lot have been throwing these ship sizes around for so long you've forgotten how big they really are. The old Fearless, sent to Basilisk, was the size of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier with a crew of 200 compared to 7,000 on a Nimitz.

I spent 2 1/2 years on a 2700 metric ton destroyer. It could carry enough food for 40 days for a crew of 240. The LAC is 7 times bigger with a crew of 10.

A better comparison would be an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, which can remain submerged for up to six months, limited only by food. The LAC is shorter and fatter, but has almost exactly the same volume and mass. A coincidence? The sub has a standard crew of 165.
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Firepower is not a thousand bullets that miss - it's one bullet that hits.

Good Point Imaginos, I actually do not know the space per person in those LACs - we only know their density is more than 2x that of a normal Honorverse starship because most of the internal spaces (walkways, accessways, and crew compartments) have been removed, so compared to another Honorverse ship their same dimensions, they have very little space per man.

In this case, the parallel may be more like a modern plane than a ship - some bombers (I'm thinking specifically of the B-58 Hustler here) are the size of a passenger jet, but only have a (tight) cockpit for the crew, while the passenger jet may have a bunk for the crew to rest.

I don't think it's fighter cockpit bad in a LAC, but you probably have berthing spaces similar to what you see on a Nuc sub, a smallish galley/wardroom, a medbay the size of an oversized closet, and the properly sized "working" spaces.

Once again, there is no text-ev to back this up, but the crews do not live on-LAC when in the CLAC or at a base, so I doubt the living area is luxurious, or else they would.[/quote]


Given the fragility of LACs, they probably don't have any type of med-bay, it's probably a well stocked first-aid kit and really fast trip to a CLAC or base. As to a galley it's probably not much more than pre-pack meals and the Honorverse equivalent of a microwave. Birthing space is probably no more than couple of threeman bunks rooms (M and F)that everyone uses, the captain of a LAC might have a separate cabin but I doubt it.

I just got back home from airing my wife's hair out. I have a 568 hp sport's car. 0-60 in 3.6 seconds. Top listed speed 201mph. I notice that its oversized brakes bleeds speed faster than my average car. (It really sheds speed faster than a hooker sheds her clothing.) A noticeable difference in stopping distance.


Does textev give acceleration to deceleration ratios between ships? Is it directly proportional?

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