Roland Peacetime duties

With the crew size of the Nike being Old Light Cruiser size, A nike could just basically fill the Role of anything that a Roland or Saganami C can't do. Sometimes it will be total overkill but overkill doesn't matter, if you need 300 crew this is what has 300 crew and can carry 100 marines. If you just need to fly a flag a Sag C does that. If you need to put a ship in hyperspace for a year while the freighter fleet slowly make the 600 light year flight, you need to put as few people on board the ship and that ship is a Roland.

I wonder if by naming things for the Role if you could just call the Nike a light or Heavy cruiser. or just call it a Cruiser.

... though more recently he's suggested that the smallest useful hyper-capable warship for a first-tier navy may well be in the Sag-C range.

I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

blair wrote:

... though more recently he's suggested that the smallest useful hyper-capable warship for a first-tier navy may well be in the Sag-C range.

I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Jonathan_S wrote:

blair wrote:I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Or a CLAC, as in Shadow of Freedom. Though that ought to allow a lot more support craft than a cruiser.

blair wrote:I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Jonathan_S wrote:Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Bill Woods wrote:Or a CLAC, as in Shadow of Freedom. Though that ought to allow a lot more support craft than a cruiser.

A CLAC also ties up a whole lot more resources than a cruiser. You use a CLAC if you have to, but you'd really rather not.

Actually, I think there's more likely to be a next-gen Kamerling or a larger ship for the same purpose that carries more Marines. Probably, there'll be a DDM-capable Kamerling successor, if not two different classes, one with similar Marine capacity and one with a substantially larger Marine capacity.
You could probably get a fair amount of additional Marine support capacity on something the approximate size of a Sag-C if you halved or quartered the offensive missile broadsides.



However ... it has just occurred to me that Blair meant build Sag-Cs instead of the notional DDM CL, and mentioned the Kamerling because it uses the same yard space and facilities that a Sag-C does while being the size of the DDM CL, and therefore presumably the DDM CL requires the same space and facilities as well.

Kytheros wrote:

blair wrote:I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Jonathan_S wrote:Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Bill Woods wrote:Or a CLAC, as in Shadow of Freedom. Though that ought to allow a lot more support craft than a cruiser.

A CLAC also ties up a whole lot more resources than a cruiser. You use a CLAC if you have to, but you'd really rather not.

Actually, I think there's more likely to be a next-gen Kamerling or a larger ship for the same purpose that carries more Marines. Probably, there'll be a DDM-capable Kamerling successor, if not two different classes, one with similar Marine capacity and one with a substantially larger Marine capacity.
You could probably get a fair amount of additional Marine support capacity on something the approximate size of a Sag-C if you halved or quartered the offensive missile broadsides.



However ... it has just occurred to me that Blair meant build Sag-Cs instead of the notional DDM CL, and mentioned the Kamerling because it uses the same yard space and facilities that a Sag-C does while being the size of the DDM CL, and therefore presumably the DDM CL requires the same space and facilities as well.

Just that. --Blair

What it really comes down to - and this has been said by many people in many similar threads - is life cycle cost. And we just don't have the information needed for an intelligent evaluation. _if_ I can build _and_ operate 5 CLs for the cost of 4 CAs, you can be sure that I'll be mixing them up: that extra hull is going to be very handy one of these days. If the ratio is more like 21:20, OTOH, it becomes a harder call: you may not get enough extra hulls to justify not having enough ship for the job at hand. The closer the ratio gets to unity, the less building CLs makes sense, and, given the very long service lives possible for Honorverse ships, it's not hard to get the ratio down. In those circumstances the CAs win.

If I can build 10 CL for every 6 CA, but it costs the same to operate a CL as a CA, it almost doesn't matter what the mix is to start with because I'll end up with the same total number of hulls actually in service. Probably, most or all of those will be CAs: again, what's the risk of sending people off to be hammered because you don't have a hammer of your own handy?

Kytheros wrote:

blair wrote:I was wondering about this myself - If a Kamerling takes the same size building facility as a Saganami-C (HoS), and a Kamerling is about the same size as the Mk16-based CL being disussed, why not build Saganami-C's? If the production lines hadn't been destroyed this would be even more compelling, but reconstituting a mature line is probably easier (and faster) than starting from scratch.

You might end up with a Saganami-D tweaked to save crew and maybe trading off some broadside for all the stuff it's nice to have on patrol - more drones, more boats, more bunkerage, deeper magazines and maybe more Marines - but it's still a leg up.

--Blair

Jonathan_S wrote:Because a Kamerling is a specialized marine support ship; it does a very different (yet important) job than a Sag-C. As House of Steel says, "it's antiship capabilities is limited".

A Sag-C is designed to go out and fight other peoples ships. A Kamerling is designed for planetary, or orbital base, intervention supporting it's 3 companies of marines. I'm not sure if a modern automated SD(P) carries that many marines; but certainly nothing smaller does. They were always going to be built in limited numbers, but if you didn't have them you'd have to tie up an entire SD(P) (or legacy SD) to do the same Marine support mission.

Bill Woods wrote:Or a CLAC, as in Shadow of Freedom. Though that ought to allow a lot more support craft than a cruiser.

A CLAC also ties up a whole lot more resources than a cruiser. You use a CLAC if you have to, but you'd really rather not.

Actually, I think there's more likely to be a next-gen Kamerling or a larger ship for the same purpose that carries more Marines. Probably, there'll be a DDM-capable Kamerling successor, if not two different classes, one with similar Marine capacity and one with a substantially larger Marine capacity.
You could probably get a fair amount of additional Marine support capacity on something the approximate size of a Sag-C if you halved or quartered the offensive missile broadsides.



However ... it has just occurred to me that Blair meant build Sag-Cs instead of the notional DDM CL, and mentioned the Kamerling because it uses the same yard space and facilities that a Sag-C does while being the size of the DDM CL, and therefore presumably the DDM CL requires the same space and facilities as well.

Louis R wrote:What it really comes down to - and this has been said by many people in many similar threads - is life cycle cost. And we just don't have the information needed for an intelligent evaluation. _if_ I can build _and_ operate 5 CLs for the cost of 4 CAs, you can be sure that I'll be mixing them up: that extra hull is going to be very handy one of these days. If the ratio is more like 21:20, OTOH, it becomes a harder call: you may not get enough extra hulls to justify not having enough ship for the job at hand. The closer the ratio gets to unity, the less building CLs makes sense, and, given the very long service lives possible for Honorverse ships, it's not hard to get the ratio down. In those circumstances the CAs win.

If I can build 10 CL for every 6 CA, but it costs the same to operate a CL as a CA, it almost doesn't matter what the mix is to start with because I'll end up with the same total number of hulls actually in service. Probably, most or all of those will be CAs: again, what's the risk of sending people off to be hammered because you don't have a hammer of your own handy?

Well, I believe that it's been said that one of the largest factors in ship operating costs is crew size*. Now, a DDM CL probably would have a somewhat smaller crew than a Sag-C, but a Sag-C has a rather small crew for what it does - roughly on par with the Courageous-class CL Fearless from OBS, IIRC. And, for that matter, most of the difference would be in the enlisted and junior non-com ranks.
*Discounting things like expendable munitions.
And, I believe it's been consistently the case that the single largest constraint on the RMN's size under every administration and Admiralty in recent history except for under High Ridge/Janacek, has been manning concerns, not budgets. The advance and increase in warship automation has significantly reduced that concern, as will the vastly larger recruit pool available due to Manticoran Silesia and the Talbot Quadrant.



At any rate, I doubt that the operational cost savings between the notional DDM CL and the Sag-C are worth building the notional DDM CL instead of a Sag-C.
Especially when one realizes that a DDM ship smaller than Sag-C probably ends up with armament similar to that of a Roland, or it's using one of the hypothesized non-traditional broadside configuration (probably angled launchers, rather than staggered or asymmetric) which is probably less space-efficient than a conventional configuration.
I'd probably ditch plans for building anything DDM-capable smaller than a Sag-C in the future, and only build DDM-armed hyper-capable warships. Especially since Cataphracts are around - ERMs won't have a decisive range advantage against them, so everything needs to be DDM capable or better.

With regard to the Rolands being used for convoy duty but not carrying enough marines for a prize crew, this shouldn't matter since any pirate stupid enough to attach a convoy escorted by a warship carrying 240 missiles will probably not survive long enough to need a prize crew. However, since convoying is usually a wartime activity it is unlikely that there will be any convoys to escort post-war, except as in Honor of the Queen where the real purpose was an official visit to a possible ally.

Keith_w wrote:However, since convoying is usually a wartime activity it is unlikely that there will be any convoys to escort post-war, except as in Honor of the Queen where the real purpose was an official visit to a possible ally.

Silesia was a constant peace-time convoy area. After the SL breaks up, there are going to be numerous places where pirates will feel safe in operating -- verge and shell worlds that aren't as prosperous as Core worlds, for example.