Forts, pre- and post-Buttercup and their manning req's

So last night, my random thought of the night before sleep turned to Honorverse forts, and in particular Manticore's.


Now we know Manticore had something like 200+ forts covering the Junction until they decommissioned about 100 to release the crews to man almost 200 podnoughts... except where did all those crew really come from?


Your average fort is anywhere between 33% larger than a superdreadnought, to a full 100% larger. Pre-Buttercup, many forts were not truly pod combatants, which means they relied heavily on broadside mounts. Manticore has the tradition that their MARINES are the ones who man and operate their broadside weapons, along with functioning as damage control + Search And Rescue parties. As they must be broadside heavy, supplemented by the mines and pods but pre-Buttercup they were still broadside forts. With the tonnage differential's between a fort and an SD, more of the crew has to be Marines than a typical SD. And pre-Buttercup, SD's carried full battalions of Marines, including their attached heavy weapons unit.


Given a fortress usually operates in a fairly stationary role, guarding critical bases, or in Manticore's case the Junction, they still do not move much. This means they almost assuredly have less naval ratings and officers aboard than your average SD. The only department that wouldn't be smaller than an SD would be tactical, because it's a fort.... it's sole job is to fight, anything else it does is simply an added perk but not the core role.


The automation built into podnoughts slashed crews by nearly 50%, which would double the crewing potential, but you still need crew that are not Marines. Even Manticoran Marines aren't trained to truly operate naval equipment, most other navies we've seen simply embark regular Army and just call them Marines. But those other navies, the Army/Marines don't really have actual jobs while the ship is in combat, so far as we really know.


And LAC's are 100% naval crews, they don't carry even a single marine. So when the CLAC's were being stood up with their broods, at the same time as podnoughts, it's another net "where did the Fortress Marines disappear too??!?"


I know plot made a strong force for the almost handwavium of "naval ratings appear, and Marines disappear", but I really wonder where they truly went? I know kzt has pet peeves about the Manticoran population plot devices, so I'm sure he/she has strong thoughts on this topic once this thread gets seen.



Edit: forgot to cover the post-Buttercup era. Fort's have become vastly smaller, I think they're closer to DN-sized now, they have little to no broadsides, and they're almost purely pod combatants now. I think the latest Manticoran designs are basically fort versions of podnoughts, that roll pods as necessary. Which means their need for Marines got slashed, which is probably how they managed to get the forts smaller. Less need for storage, life support, and other related fields after slashing your on-board mount crew needs from huge to zero.

Still going to have large Tactical crews, a small-ish Marine contingent for Damage Control, a medium sized Engineering department to tend to the impellers, and a non-existant Astrogation/Helm department.

Somtaaw wrote:So last night, my random thought of the night before sleep turned to Honorverse forts, and in particular Manticore's.


Now we know Manticore had something like 200+ forts covering the Junction until they decommissioned about 100 to release the crews to man almost 200 podnoughts... except where did all those crew really come from?


Your average fort is anywhere between 33% larger than a superdreadnought, to a full 100% larger. Pre-Buttercup, many forts were not truly pod combatants, which means they relied heavily on broadside mounts. Manticore has the tradition that their MARINES are the ones who man and operate their broadside weapons, along with functioning as damage control + Search And Rescue parties. As they must be broadside heavy, supplemented by the mines and pods but pre-Buttercup they were still broadside forts. With the tonnage differential's between a fort and an SD, more of the crew has to be Marines than a typical SD. And pre-Buttercup, SD's carried full battalions of Marines, including their attached heavy weapons unit.


Given a fortress usually operates in a fairly stationary role, guarding critical bases, or in Manticore's case the Junction, they still do not move much. This means they almost assuredly have less naval ratings and officers aboard than your average SD. The only department that wouldn't be smaller than an SD would be tactical, because it's a fort.... it's sole job is to fight, anything else it does is simply an added perk but not the core role.


The automation built into podnoughts slashed crews by nearly 50%, which would double the crewing potential, but you still need crew that are not Marines. Even Manticoran Marines aren't trained to truly operate naval equipment, most other navies we've seen simply embark regular Army and just call them Marines. But those other navies, the Army/Marines don't really have actual jobs while the ship is in combat, so far as we really know.


And LAC's are 100% naval crews, they don't carry even a single marine. So when the CLAC's were being stood up with their broods, at the same time as podnoughts, it's another net "where did the Fortress Marines disappear too??!?"


I know plot made a strong force for the almost handwavium of "naval ratings appear, and Marines disappear", but I really wonder where they truly went? I know kzt has pet peeves about the Manticoran population plot devices, so I'm sure he/she has strong thoughts on this topic once this thread gets seen.

1) pre-Buttercup, no Forts were podlayers. They might have external pods around them, but internally, they were all either energy or missile combatants. I'm fairly certain either some or all specialized, so the Energy armed Forts would watch the emergence lanes, while the missile centric stood further out watch for Hyper attacks.

2) SOME broadside weapons were manned by Marines on Manticorian ships - it allowed larger Marine contingents, because fewer ratings were needed to be carried to man all the stations. This was really because of the higher education level of the entire RMN vs. other navies - fewer ratings were needed to maintain the ships, which allowed larger marine contingents on the same sized crew, and more flexibility - the downside being during Battle stations, someone still needed to man the weapons another navy's ratings would man - and the heavily trained RMN Marines did that duty until automation made the heavily manning of the broadside weapons unnecessary.

Now, would Marines be needed in such masses by a fort? Probably not. I can see a platoon or 2 on a Fort as Ship's police and for boarding use, but I can't see keeping 100s of battalions idle at the junction.

Don't have time this AM, but I will point out that Manticore marines operate "some" weapons, not "all" weapons. So I think your estimate of marine needs is very high.

Somtaaw wrote:Your average fort is anywhere between 33% larger than a superdreadnought, to a full 100% larger. Pre-Buttercup, many forts were not truly pod combatants, which means they relied heavily on broadside mounts. Manticore has the tradition that their MARINES are the ones who man and operate their broadside weapons, along with functioning as damage control + Search And Rescue parties. As they must be broadside heavy, supplemented by the mines and pods but pre-Buttercup they were still broadside forts. With the tonnage differential's between a fort and an SD, more of the crew has to be Marines than a typical SD. And pre-Buttercup, SD's carried full battalions of Marines, including their attached heavy weapons unit.

Theemile and kzt have covered this already: On normal RMN ships, Marines would provide gun crews for a few weapon mounts, the rest would be manned by the Navy.

If anything, Forts would carry fewer Marines, given that general traffic control duties do not require that many, and also given that a mobile force with multiple battalions of them is pretty much guaranteed to be on call at all times.

Given a fortress usually operates in a fairly stationary role, guarding critical bases, or in Manticore's case the Junction, they still do not move much. This means they almost assuredly have less naval ratings and officers aboard than your average SD. The only department that wouldn't be smaller than an SD would be tactical, because it's a fort.... it's sole job is to fight, anything else it does is simply an added perk but not the core role.

Not so sure about that. The only thing that Forts do not do is go into hyperspace; in all other aspects, they're pretty much identical to Superdreadnoughts. Given that, I would expect them to have manning requirements proportional to those of an SD; the few specialists you'd be able to save by deleting the hyper drive won't make an appreciable dent in them. Forts may be able to get away with fewer maintenance specialists, given that shipyards are only a couple hours' flight away, but I'm pretty sure that BuPers wouldn't want to gamble on it.

And LAC's are 100% naval crews, they don't carry even a single marine. So when the CLAC's were being stood up with their broods, at the same time as podnoughts, it's another net "where did the Fortress Marines disappear too??!?"


I know plot made a strong force for the almost handwavium of "naval ratings appear, and Marines disappear", but I really wonder where they truly went? I know kzt has pet peeves about the Manticoran population plot devices, so I'm sure he/she has strong thoughts on this topic once this thread gets seen.

See above: Marines were only a relatively small part of Fortress Command.

The E wrote:
Not so sure about that. The only thing that Forts do not do is go into hyperspace; in all other aspects, they're pretty much identical to Superdreadnoughts. Given that, I would expect them to have manning requirements proportional to those of an SD; the few specialists you'd be able to save by deleting the hyper drive won't make an appreciable dent in them. Forts may be able to get away with fewer maintenance specialists, given that shipyards are only a couple hours' flight away, but I'm pretty sure that BuPers wouldn't want to gamble on it.

Logcom is another place to cut. Bulk spares can be warehoused nearby and delivered when Forts are off their alert mode, as would food and fuel. Hydroponics bays and massive stasis units would be unnecessary, as a shipment from the planet or a nearby specialist platform could top off a fort every day. Fuel bunkers would probably be measured in days on a fort, not weeks as a hypership would be, and topped of Simularly. All you would need onhand is what you would expect to consume in a lengthy battle - say 2-3 weeks worth of food, parts and fuel.

Like LAC wings, you can probably skimp on senior specialists in each field on each ship - since the squadron will always be together and near other experts, squadron level senior specialists may be all that is needed if the Forts are well maintained, so you could have a higher ratio of spacers and Jr. enlisted men to senior enlisted men on forts than you would on a hypership.

Unlike SDs, Junction forts had to remain at high(if not full) readiness for very extended periods of time. So they may have oversized crews to increase their readiness endurance.

Or they reduced the supernumeraries listed by Theemile and filled their bunks with fighting crews.

First, A slight correction and addition to KZT and thermopoly. My impression is that although on sight weapons mount crews contained marines, the weren't staffed only by marines. If an on mount crew was 5 people, IMO it would likely be one navy NCO, a couple of navy rankings, and a couple of marines.

Second and more importantly, automation is an ongoing process. The medusa's had automation that dropped it's crew in half, from 6,000 to 3,000. The next generation SDP's had even more automation, dropping the crew from 3,000 to about 1,800 with the newest SDP's (keyhole) having the most automation and about 1,200 crew.

The same would be true with forts. 50% larger 2nd generation fort (invectus) would have 2,700 crew vs 33% larger 3rd generation fort (keyhole) would have 1,600 crew.

By standing down one second generation fort, that would free up more than enough crew to man 2 3rd generation SDP's

Somtaaw wrote:So last night, my random thought of the night before sleep turned to Honorverse forts, and in particular Manticore's.

Now we know Manticore had something like 200+ forts covering the Junction until they decommissioned about 100 to release the crews to man almost 200 podnoughts... except where did all those crew really come from?

Still going to have large Tactical crews, a small-ish Marine contingent for Damage Control, a medium sized Engineering department to tend to the impellers, and a non-existant Astrogation/Helm department.

No, I think David is stealing from USN practice. The Iowa has a 5" gun that was always manned by marines. You also don't arbitrarily mix people together, the marines have a command chain that runs parallel to the navy chain until you get to the XO or CO level. So a navy chief has no command authority over a marine private, They would have general military authority, but that is very different.

Forts, like ships are both getting ever improving and increasing automation and growing in size. They're certainly not getting any smaller. My understanding is that Forts are, and always have, been large enough that they're far enough on the bad side of compensator efficiency curves that there's not a whole lot of difference between the acceleration a compensator can get you and grav plates can get you.


The latest generation forts that I remember being mentioned were 16 megatons. I think the pre-war Junction Forts were 10 or 12 megatons. Or, in other words, 50-60% larger than a Superdreadnought.

Mix in the fact that because Forts have spherical sidewall generators, they also have to cover the top and bottom with broadside equivalent firepower - not just the port and starboard broadsides of ships. And all of those mounts would need maintenance support personnel and on-mount crew.
Forts probably also had an outsized number of personnel for damage control teams.


And when, as mentioned earlier, Forts have to be able to maintain full readiness continuously for extended periods - which is brutally demanding on the crews, they likely have more crew than a basic look at the numbers would suggest.

Each pre-war Fort might well have had manning requirements of two equivalent-era superdreadnoughts. IIRC, there were more RMN personnel manning the Junction Forts than everywhere else in the RMN combined.


As far as the Marines on the Forts ... there probably would have been a much lower Marine ratio on Forts than that on regular ships would suggest for their size.
Remember, the Marines were responsible for holding captured territory until the Army could get there in sufficient force.
The RMN was also continuing to build ships that didn't have the increased levels of automation, all of them requiring their full allotment of naval crew and Marines.

There are a bunch of ways you could optimize crew size due to the fact that the forts will always close to the largest and most capable repair facilities that the RMN has. You don't need to plan on doing my extensive damage control as you are very close to the junction platforms and hours from manticore. Plus when supporting large numbers of similar class ships that are always in roughly the same place means you can very effectively do a lot of the routine maintenance via dedicated support elements instead of needing crew to do that.

Fights involving the forts are not going to be protracted fights, there is just too much firepower there.