LAC Style Destroyers?

It really does read like cruiser lights and destroyers are going to be the one class putely due to missiles and keyhole.

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Relax wrote:
Of course... What is "short range" 500LY? Basilisk to Silesia to Gregor and back home would be ??? 300+ LY by the time one adds in stops? If Warshawki sails fail, must have enough reserve to get somewhere safe. What? 100LY minimum reserve? 150LY?

With the annexation of Silesia, it could be argued that a large portion of short hop route needing protecting via DD's is not as pressing of a concern anymore further leading to the DD's demise and the rise of a DD/CL hybrid, or a lone CL class distinction. Of course if the SL really does fall into the crapper, it could also be argued that either there will be an immense number of long haul commerce protection required furthering the CL's role, but also a far more numerous number of short patrols where the DD with its cost savings become very useful.

That does bring up the interesting point of what happens once things sort themselves out with the breakup of the SL and post SL successor states start to back off from a hybrid Medieval-Civil War period. Of course, it is probably going to take a long while before the shooting stops, possibly from exhaustion, as the bits and pieces of the League have sorted themselves into Star Nations and things like Mercenary Bands. Even if the Alignment isn't dragged screaming into the light, the RF is going to be part of that mix.
It also doen't suggest that the areas outside the present SL and OFS controlled territory are going to be any safer except in places where Haven, Manticore, the Aldermani hold as primary territory. Commerce is going to get dicy. Pirates, Letters of Marque- from "legitimate Star Nations", Systems who will pick off individual merchants either by seizeing them for "violations" or just making them vanish, are going to play havoc with trade.
At that point you are back to needing high duration endurance Crusier mission ships to do trade protection.
Problem is, everybody has to get thought the SL Wars and Manticor's responce direction has been with things like the Rowlands which are configured for war fighting and conditions that can be expected to last for years. Probably decades. It is possible that everything is going to go into the crapper and you end up with centuries of medium level conflict punctuated by major local wars.

Brigade XO wrote:
That does bring up the interesting point of what happens once things sort themselves out with the breakup of the SL and post SL successor states start to back off from a hybrid Medieval-Civil War period. Of course, it is probably going to take a long while before the shooting stops, possibly from exhaustion, as the bits and pieces of the League have sorted themselves into Star Nations and things like Mercenary Bands. Even if the Alignment isn't dragged screaming into the light, the RF is going to be part of that mix.
It also doen't suggest that the areas outside the present SL and OFS controlled territory are going to be any safer except in places where Haven, Manticore, the Aldermani hold as primary territory. Commerce is going to get dicy. Pirates, Letters of Marque- from "legitimate Star Nations", Systems who will pick off individual merchants either by seizeing them for "violations" or just making them vanish, are going to play havoc with trade.
At that point you are back to needing high duration endurance Crusier mission ships to do trade protection.

Well only to the extent that it's economically viable to trade in unsafe areas even after the overhead of escort costs and higher insurance. Silesia was despite its higher than average piracy problems, a net economic benefit to trade with; so the RMN provided escorts or pirate hunters when it could.

But unless there's a political or military reason to subsidize trade with a given area, some place that's too screwed up to chase off garden variety pirates is probably not worth trading with. Escpccialky if the trade needs to generate enough profit to offset the (direct or indirect) costs of convoy escorts.

Duckk wrote:I'm not making it a black and white issue. My entire point is that destroyers are routinely deployed independently. It is so routine that destroyers are often designed for that role, like the Chanson.

If I were doing it, I would build a cruiser based on the roland. Double the missile storage, increase the bunkerage, add space for a platoon (or at least a couple of squads) of marines. My guess is such a ship would be about 25% bigger, or on the order of 235K tons. call it the Charlemagne class.

From Wikipedia: Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne

That would correct the main drawbacks for using the rolands independently. Because manticore needs so many hulls to work independently, build 10 charlemagnes for each roland.

darrell wrote:

Duckk wrote:I'm not making it a black and white issue. My entire point is that destroyers are routinely deployed independently. It is so routine that destroyers are often designed for that role, like the Chanson.

If I were doing it, I would build a cruiser based on the roland. Double the missile storage, increase the bunkerage, add space for a platoon (or at least a couple of squads) of marines. My guess is such a ship would be about 25% bigger, or on the order of 235K tons. call it the Charlemagne class.

From Wikipedia: Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne

That would correct the main drawbacks for using the rolands independently. Because manticore needs so many hulls to work independently, build 10 charlemagnes for each roland.

They're still using 1860s destroyers(massing 85k) and light cruisers(126k) in low-risk areas because they couldn't build enough hulls - even with 200 brand new Avalons built since 1919! - to cover all their requirements.

I'm not certain whether the Wolfhound has a marine detachment, or room for one. If it does, that would explain the line about plans to put it into production to replace the oldest surviving destroyer classes, but that building slips had been allocated to Rolands and Avalons - to me, that implies neither the Roland nor Avalon was intended to replace those old destroyers.

I found this in the GSN section of HoS, for the Paul-class destroyer:

Operationally the GSN expects to use these ships in much the same way the RMN uses the Rolands. They have the stowage for extended operations for deep-raid or commerce protection missions. This represents a change for Grayson destroyer doctrine, one made possible only by the tremendous increase in mass and volume of these units.

darrell wrote:

Duckk wrote:I'm not making it a black and white issue. My entire point is that destroyers are routinely deployed independently. It is so routine that destroyers are often designed for that role, like the Chanson.

If I were doing it, I would build a cruiser based on the roland. Double the missile storage, increase the bunkerage, add space for a platoon (or at least a couple of squads) of marines. My guess is such a ship would be about 25% bigger, or on the order of 235K tons. call it the Charlemagne class.

From Wikipedia: Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne

That would correct the main drawbacks for using the rolands independently. Because manticore needs so many hulls to work independently, build 10 charlemagnes for each roland.

The Roland is a stopgap transitory design. And its primary armament is located on the hammerheads - also known as the most exposed parts of the ship, even with bow/stern wall and buckler technology. One hit can take out half its primary armament.
Anything close to a Roland in a universal/predominantly tube-launched MDM/DDM/Multi-Stage Missile (MSM, ie, the Javelins) and missile pods design paradigm is functionally a frigate, IMO.

You want your primary armament on the broadsides. That means the size of a Sag-C or bigger. If you have it, you want as much of the defensive benefits of Keyhole as you can manage, if not a full Keyhole (FTL capability for Apollo is not required). Now, maybe, you can strip out half the broadside armament to squeeze Keyhole, or some stripped down version thereof, onto something the approximate size of a Sag-C. If you can, fine, call that the minimum light combatant, a destroyer, especially since you're probably going to have to give up a fair amount of other stuff too, including Marine capacity. Then a design with the capabilities of a Sag-C plus Keyhole winds up being the (light) cruiser.
You probably can't, which probably puts your minimum light combatant at around 750kt, I think (don't remember exactly how big each Keyhole and emplacement is, but I vaguely remember something about the 100kt range), assuming you run with the approximate capabilities of a Sag-C plus whatever's needed for Keyhole.
At that point ... you've got more than enough space to manage the traditional roles of both destroyers and light cruisers just fine in a single hull.



Frankly, I think a major rethink in doctrine is in order.
I currently believe that the number of types/categories of hyper-capable warships below the wall is going to shrink substantially.
Here to stay for sure is the BC(L) at ~2mt+; the BC(P) might or might not stay, but if it stays, it's probably going to be about the same size as a BC(L), and is near-exclusively a warfighting design, rather than one for anything else.
If the minimum light combatant winds up being 750kt or so (broadside DDM plus Keyhole, probably roughly equivalent to a Sag-C's capabilities plus Keyhole), I see this as being the ship that takes over the roles of destroyers and light cruisers for sure.
The intermediate ship between the minimum light combatant and the battlecruisers (BC(L)s, really) that I see as most likely would be a warship that carried a larger number of marines, probably in the battalion to regiment range (maybe more, or just room for more available), and increased marine support infrastructure and increased numbers of small craft, ie the Marine-spec pinnaces and assault shuttles, possibly even going so far as to carry planetary vehicles and deployment/recovery systems. This would let you put and support more marines somewhere without tying up a bunch of ships, but when you don't need a dedicated transport's worth of marines. A Marine Support Cruiser, really.
What I don't see is what a heavy cruiser in this paradigm might look like and what purpose it would play. I expect that the heavy cruiser's "traditional" roles would likely end up being split between the light combatant, and the battlecruiser - and maybe the intermediate marine support cruiser.

Destroyers are not considered highly survivable designs. They lack the redundancy and armor of cruisers, so designs that allow for single hits that take out 50% of the armament are acceptable on a DD when they are not on a larger combatant.

munroburton wrote:I found this in the GSN section of HoS, for the Paul-class destroyer:

Operationally the GSN expects to use these ships in much the same way the RMN uses the Rolands. They have the stowage for extended operations for deep-raid or commerce protection missions. This represents a change for Grayson destroyer doctrine, one made possible only by the tremendous increase in mass and volume of these units.

Awesome find! When in doubt, read more! Hrmm where is a thumbs up emoticon when one needs one.

So, Rolands have CL range, not DD range.

So, essentially, Rolands are CL's, except they do not have marine detachment and the MK16 tubes bundled together makes them highly vulnerable... Or not. Why? Vipers can be fired out their CM tubes. It is only a matter of time til' someone figures out how to modify a viper allowing it to use 1/2 step power for much longer run times. So, why the #$*R%*$)@) have they not added the marines or made allowances for them... They already have the pinaces and boat bays. What is the use of a ship that cannot board another ship? Maybe RMN is planning on cross training their small crews to do boarding action without marines? If so, they are going to have to increase enlistment periods to financially cover the extra training required. Another non sexy topic that never sees ink between the covers of a book for .... I would think, obvious reasons.

I believe we have sufficiently demonstrated that you can accommodate a couple of squads to a couple of platoons of marines in the flag bridge area and associated squadron command quarters.