Roland Peacetime duties

darrell wrote:
When the comparison is between a flawed ship and am unflswed ship the choice is obvious. When the choice is between ships that are both flawed in a different way the choice is not so clear, so lets rephrase your question.

Which would you rather have: A long ranged ship with a skeloton cerw or a fully useful ship that dosen't have as much of a range advantage?

And the correct answer is both. Get some of each. put the long ranged ships where they are more likely to want to DESTROY the enemy, the fully crewed ships where they will be more likely to want to CAPTURE the enemy.

That's fine as long as you have the freedom to deploy the ships you have wherever, and in whatever role, you want. Reality tends to be less co-operative, however, so you end up having to deploy crew-light DDM-equiped ships in anti-piracy roles and crew-heavy SDM-equiped ships in warship-v-warship combat. The RMN's current deployment patterns aren't a deliberate choice. They're the best fit that could be managed, given the seismic changes in warship armament that have take place in the last decade, concentrating the most modern ships against the main enemy and relegating the older designs to Silesia

darrell wrote:
When the comparison is between a flawed ship and am unflswed ship the choice is obvious. When the choice is between ships that are both flawed in a different way the choice is not so clear, so lets rephrase your question.

Which would you rather have: A long ranged ship with a skeloton cerw or a fully useful ship that dosen't have as much of a range advantage?

And the correct answer is both. Get some of each. put the long ranged ships where they are more likely to want to DESTROY the enemy, the fully crewed ships where they will be more likely to want to CAPTURE the enemy.

But the premise is that this is peacetime. Since there wont be any new Roland's for a while the RMN can modify and upgrade the designs to be able to overcome the short comings you mentioned.


Now, if the technological balance is restored post-war and the League is split into hundreds of nations the balance of your forces would be important. Having any significant number of ships that would be at a significant range disadvantage when compared to any of their potential rivals is a recipe for disaster. Having CL's that cannot go toe to toe with the smallest hyper capable enemy unit is just asking for trouble. True there would be second, third and fourth rate navies who may choose even smaller hyper capable units but that does not mean much in the big picture.


Tell me this:

What advantages does the Avalon Class CL have over the Roland Class DD?


Right now, the RMN likes the firepower, but realises that there are some significant shortcomings to the new design. With the attacks on the Manticore Home System and Grayson Home System there would be no new Rolands rolling out for a while so why not update the design?


Roland-A: Current Generation Roland, Small Crew, no marines, has a Flag facilities.

New Ships:

Roland-B: Same firepower as the Roland, has a flag facilities, has Marines and a larger crew with redundancy.

Roland-C: Same firepower as the Roland, has NO flag facilities, has more Marines and a larger crew with redundancy.

Once they start coming online they will have the firepower to fight and will have the marines and crew to do anti-piracy.

Modifying the Roland eliminates many of the weaknesses and allows it to do an all around better job in any task than an Avalon.

Sigs wrote:But the premise is that this is peacetime. Since there wont be any new Roland's for a while the RMN can modify and upgrade the designs to be able to overcome the short comings you mentioned.

The premise is also what should be done with the 30-50 Rolands currently in service once peace is declared. What is going to be built in five, ten, or twenty years to replace them is irrelevant -- peacetime budget restrictions are going to slow replacement, anyway.

For some missions, the Flag Deck will probably be utilized as Marine quarters, but the RMN still doesn't have an excess of Flag Decks and the majority are going to be parceled out as command ships for other types.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:But the premise is that this is peacetime. Since there wont be any new Roland's for a while the RMN can modify and upgrade the designs to be able to overcome the short comings you mentioned.

The premise is also what should be done with the 30-50 Rolands currently in service once peace is declared. What is going to be built in five, ten, or twenty years to replace them is irrelevant -- peacetime budget restrictions are going to slow replacement, anyway.

For some missions, the Flag Deck will probably be utilized as Marine quarters, but the RMN still doesn't have an excess of Flag Decks and the majority are going to be parceled out as command ships for other types.

The Roland's that remain will find uses within the fleet. Right now with so many fires to fight the Roland's are a great if flawed tool. Peace will not come soon, even if the League collapses relatively peacefully and the MA is beaten quickly there would still be a long time before Peace is fully restored and that is counting on best case scenario.


As for peacetime budgets and fleets, the RMN is going to expand over the next few decades as the Silesian and Talbott systems are integrated, and as their financial position improves they would be able to make up more and more of the economic and industrial power of the SEM and each system would expect a certain degree of protection.

We must remember that one of the major driving forces for ship design in the RMN was that they lacked the population of their adversaries. They also refused to use conscription which compounded their man power shortage. If you are in a war which would you prefer 10 ships or 20 ships with both designs have the same firepower per ship?


The battle of Saltash is i feel case of them using what was available to get there quickly rather then what would have been preferred as the longer they waited the more time Saltash had to get reinforced. One wonders if Governor Dueñas would have been more open to be reasonable if he did not have what he thought was an overwhelming force on his side at the start of the battle.

pnakasone wrote: If you are in a war which would you prefer 10 ships or 20 ships with both designs have the same firepower per ship?

That is the point of redundancy, you may be able to fight the ship with 70 crewmembers but you have 110, should the need arise you can start trimming the redundancy. And once peace comes about, unless something drastic happens Manticore would have about 8 time the population is had at the beginning of the war with Haven so manpower shortages would not be drastic.

Sigs wrote:

pnakasone wrote: If you are in a war which would you prefer 10 ships or 20 ships with both designs have the same firepower per ship?

That is the point of redundancy, you may be able to fight the ship with 70 crewmembers but you have 110, should the need arise you can start trimming the redundancy. And once peace comes about, unless something drastic happens Manticore would have about 8 time the population is had at the beginning of the war with Haven so manpower shortages would not be drastic.

You did not really answer the question of which you would prefer if you where fighting a war?

More crew is a from of redundancy but so is having more ships available to deploy. The RMN wanted the more ships available to deploy so they designed the Roland with a small crew and no marines. As a colder calculation a smaller crew makes the ship more expendable then one with a larger crew. It comes down to what is decided as the acceptable trade off in features.

Sigs wrote:Tell me this:

What advantages does the Avalon Class CL have over the Roland Class DD?

You probably meant that rhetorically, but in addition to the larger crew an Avalon can lay down over 3 times the rate of fire, and sustain that fire longer than a Roland. (20 ERM tubes fired off-bore at 9 second intervals vs 12 DDM tubes fired off-bore at 18 second intervals). It's also got a noticeably more powerful energy battery; a broadside of 4 grasers vs 5 lasers. And it's main battery is more survivable in the face of battle damage. Oh, and it's slightly smaller size means that with equal generations of compensators installed the Avalon is about 0.3% quicker than the Roland.

Of course it has obvious disadvantages; half the powered missile range, lower ECM power budgets on its missiles, less powerful missile warhead (DD/CL missile rather than the CA/BC missile carried by the Roland), weaker point defense (fewer CM or PDLC mounts).

Overall the Roland is still throwing missiles that are individually harder to stop (more powerful ECM and higher terminal velocity) but the Avalon's ability to spray out over 3 times as many per minute, combined with the ability to sustain that fire for longer, tend to counterbalance that; as long as the enemy doesn't outrange the LERMs carried by the Avalon...



A simulated combat between the two where the engagement geometry doesn't allow a Roland to hold the range open would be messy; I'm not sure who wins; but it's certain to be a Pyrrhic victory. But if the Roland can keep out of LERM range I think it can stack salvos deeply enough to pierce the Avalon's point defense and at least cripple it before running out of DDMs.

Here's a thought as if there have been no new light combatants built other than Sag-C's. As much as possible in high threat areas, substitute one Roland and one Avalon for your two ships. It doesn't give you as much long range punch but if the Avalon tractors all DDM pods then it might not be all that much difference in early stacked salvos anyway.

It might be odd because the higher ranking officer is likely t be on the Roland, but your "mix and match" ration would presumably be really highly optimizable no matter the per-cycle mission parameters. Thoughts?

You guys are overlooking some things about the Roland class Destroyers the fact that they are destroyers. Destroyers are essentially unarmored and therefore fairly easy to modify. One of the things they could do to the ships is pull 4 missile launchers 2 fore and aft. Then replace two of the areas as birthing for two squads (27) Marines, a weapons bay for a fire team worth of battle armor (7-8 suits) and small arms and a training area.