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Roland Peacetime duties

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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by Sigs   » Wed May 04, 2016 7:41 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
Dauntless wrote:...using the older ships and wolfhounds/avalons for convoy duty lets the rolands be where they need to be, at the tip of the spear giving sollies fits...


This thread is about the peacetime role of Rolands; there is not going to be any "Sollies" left and no "tip of the spear" giving anyone fits.



The tip of the spear will still be there as the main purpose of a fleet is to fight wars. Having a bunch of ships that would be great in peacetime but poor fit in wartime is a little counter intuitive. Besides there would be hundreds of new successor nations and not all of them would be on friendly terms with Manticore.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by kzt   » Wed May 04, 2016 8:07 pm

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Pretty much.

The role of major combatants in peace is to deter other states from doing things you don't want them from doing and to make your allies and citizens feel all warm and fuzzy about their safety. The way they do this varies, but in general they are not doing it by patrolling but be being an available effective force to protect important spots and threaten people who need to be threatened.

Light units have lots of things to do. Actually fighting is close to the bottom of the list but being ready to fight is pretty high on the list and being obviously (to the trained observer) capable of fighting is close to the top.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by munroburton   » Wed May 04, 2016 8:19 pm

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I figure Rolands are going to become the princes of diplomacy. They'll be less threatening than Sag-Cs(or Nikes!), but still represent far more of a warning than even a legacy cruiser.

There's a nice flag cabin for the diplomat delivering the verbal part of the message too.

They're already being used in this way, actually. Didn't work out very well at New Tuscany, though! But Byng probably would have opened fire on a squadron of Gryphons in that situation anyway.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by Sigs   » Wed May 04, 2016 10:30 pm

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And maybe, designing a upgraded version that if possible allows automation to be lessened during peacetime. Having a slightly bigger DD with a crew 2 or 3 times the current Roland crew but the same capabilities seems like a win. You will get the firepower of a Roland, but also the abilities of a lesser ship(prize crew, marines etc.)
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by kzt   » Wed May 04, 2016 10:44 pm

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Sigs wrote:And maybe, designing a upgraded version that if possible allows automation to be lessened during peacetime. Having a slightly bigger DD with a crew 2 or 3 times the current Roland crew but the same capabilities seems like a win. You will get the firepower of a Roland, but also the abilities of a lesser ship(prize crew, marines etc.)

No, because David has decreed that manpower is the main limitation on the size of the RMN. Going to a DD that needs the crew of a CA to operate is pretty silly in light of that.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by Sigs   » Wed May 04, 2016 11:24 pm

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kzt wrote:
Sigs wrote:And maybe, designing a upgraded version that if possible allows automation to be lessened during peacetime. Having a slightly bigger DD with a crew 2 or 3 times the current Roland crew but the same capabilities seems like a win. You will get the firepower of a Roland, but also the abilities of a lesser ship(prize crew, marines etc.)

No, because David has decreed that manpower is the main limitation on the size of the RMN. Going to a DD that needs the crew of a CA to operate is pretty silly in light of that.


Building a DD that can operate with the manpower of a CA during peacetime but could engage automation and operate with 1/3 of the crew during wartime is different. Have 100 DD's with 180 Crew on board and another 200 DD's in reserve, if war breaks out you engage the automation and within a few weeks or months you could get 300 DD's instead of 100.

On the other hand having a light cruiser with a larger crew and smaller than much weaker a destroyer seems silly to me.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by Dauntless   » Thu May 05, 2016 7:00 am

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I have to admit that RFCs decsion to have CLs smaller then a DD is odd.

every other combatant class (bar LAC of course) has been revamped to fire at least DDMs, where as the GA's most modern CL is still only SDM capable.

I know the roland was supposed to be something of a test but surely there has been enough use of them by now for at least talk of DDM CL to be floating around the fleet even if due to the loss of the Hepestus etc they have not gotten around to building it.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by SharkHunter   » Thu May 05, 2016 7:06 am

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Let's assume that when peace exists, what we're really saying is that the MAlign has been stomped, and whatever form of the Solarian League remains has been freed from the Mandarin(s) and the tentacles of OFS. I would imagine that the worthwhile remnants of FF won't be trying to restore OFS control, they'll be engaged in anti-piracy operations, system support, etc.

The GA has no interest in becoming the galaxy's top cop, but they are interested in not getting "boltholed" by some former OFS governor getting up sufficient modern forces built up enough to make a play that costs millions of lives.

So what are the Rolands doing? Henry Kissinger was famous for asking where the carriers were before taking a public position on an issue, a tactic called "gunboat diplomacy". They're showing the flag, engaging in piracy and warlord suppression of their own, and reminding folks that you really really really don't want to make a try at basic human rights suppression and war machine building. After all, a pair of Rolands care pretty much represents any potential warlord's bad day.

That doesn't even count the idea that the Roland is seen as a transitional design towards a notional CL that addresses the limitations of the DD for around the same amount of naval crew size, but with more Marines, etc.

Thoughts?
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by munroburton   » Thu May 05, 2016 8:29 am

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Dauntless wrote:I have to admit that RFCs decsion to have CLs smaller then a DD is odd.

every other combatant class (bar LAC of course) has been revamped to fire at least DDMs, where as the GA's most modern CL is still only SDM capable.

I know the roland was supposed to be something of a test but surely there has been enough use of them by now for at least talk of DDM CL to be floating around the fleet even if due to the loss of the Hepestus etc they have not gotten around to building it.


The notional DDM CL runs into a couple of issues.

Firstly, the Sag-C is the minimum width required for both broadsides to have DDM launchers. This means a DDM CL needs to be as fat as the Sag-C - and it loses compensator efficiency if its length doesn't match.

Secondly, the Roland packed all its DDM launchers into a very unconventional hammerhead arrangement whereby its launchers are fed by the same magazines and loading mechanisms. This system is indeed very compact, but it's vulnerable to battle damage. One hit potentially kills half this ship's missile firepower.
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Re: Roland Peacetime duties
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu May 05, 2016 8:58 am

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Sigs wrote:Building a DD that can operate with the manpower of a CA during peacetime but could engage automation and operate with 1/3 of the crew during wartime is different. Have 100 DD's with 180 Crew on board and another 200 DD's in reserve, if war breaks out you engage the automation and within a few weeks or months you could get 300 DD's instead of 100.
Well one issue with that is that automation doesn't uniformly eliminate 2/3rd of the crewing for each position - it disproportionately affects lower position highly duplicated positions (gun mount crews (including marines), junior techs, etc, etc)

So while I'm somewhat in favor of a flex-manning design that can be "overmanned" with marines and prize crew for detached ops you can't gets 2 more ships complete crews just by stripping that one ship back to normal. Not without a significant leavening of command personnel, departments heads, senior noncoms, etc.


I don't think anybody on a destroyer is senior enough to be on the List, so I don't think any of them are elegantly for being beached on half pay. Though I guess there are other forms of naval reserve they could be transferred to to reduce personnel costs. And some of them could be cycled through enlarged or lengthened shoreside training billets to keep them fresh and available for recall should the DD force need to go back on a war footing.
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