Roland Peacetime duties

saber964 wrote: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.

I might point out the 7 meters of armor on the front as mentioned by a Bu9 staffer suggests your assumption is not necessarily true.

saber964 wrote:One of the things they could do to the ships is pull 4 missile launchers 2 fore and aft.

You're forgetting that the Rolands could only fit six tubes in each hammerhead by grouping three tubes around the support equipment for one tube -- an over-simplification, but useful shorthand -- so pulling one tube from each trio or pulling two tubes from one trio doesn't reduce the space required by near as much as you think.

If you're going to modify a Roland to add marine quarters -- a very unlikely scenario, IMHO -- it would be simpler to just add a "plug" of about five or ten meters mid-ship. Similar to the way the C-141B was extended to add air-refueling capability and add more cargo capacity.

Depending on how long the current conflicts last the Roland may not even be in mainstream service by the time peace is established .

pnakasone wrote:

Sigs wrote:
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.

In wartime I would prefer the ship that has the smallest crew with the largest amount of firepower.

As for redundancy, I mean more of during peacetime and anti-piracy missions there would be more crew than during peacetime to provide those extra warm bodies. If the minimum crew needed for operation is 70, but you have space for 100 people plus marines that means that you can add an extra shift, man stations that would normally be automated if possible etc...


If a Roland is upgraded to provide space for more crew and marines, it allows flexibility, in peacetime it has a bloated crew that allows it to conduct different missions and can be transferred to a war front in a hurry. Plus once you put the war crew requirements in effect you have quite a few people to draw from to man new construction or mothballed/reserve ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

1) I would prefer having much longer range on my missiles than having more energy weapons.

2) Rate of fire and ammunition supply was in favour of the 4 FF BC's in Saltash, just like their energy weapons but since they were outranged to greatly that was irrelevant. If I can destroy your ship from well outside your range, your rate of fire and ammunition supply becomes irrelevant.

Sigs wrote:In wartime I would prefer the ship that has the smallest crew with the largest amount of firepower.

As for redundancy, I mean more of during peacetime and anti-piracy missions there would be more crew than during peacetime to provide those extra warm bodies. If the minimum crew needed for operation is 70, but you have space for 100 people plus marines that means that you can add an extra shift, man stations that would normally be automated if possible etc...


If a Roland is upgraded to provide space for more crew and marines, it allows flexibility, in peacetime it has a bloated crew that allows it to conduct different missions and can be transferred to a war front in a hurry. Plus once you put the war crew requirements in effect you have quite a few people to draw from to man new construction or mothballed/reserve ships.

Actually do we have proof that the Roland can not already support a larger crew if it was available?

Sigs wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

1) I would prefer having much longer range on my missiles than having more energy weapons.

2) Rate of fire and ammunition supply was in favour of the 4 FF BC's in Saltash, just like their energy weapons but since they were outranged to greatly that was irrelevant. If I can destroy your ship from well outside your range, your rate of fire and ammunition supply becomes irrelevant.

Not that you don't have something of a point about the longer ranged missiles; though 4 Avalons would have chewed those Indefatigables apart just as thoughoutly as the Rolands did.

But I think you're wrong about the rate of fire being in favor of the BCs (though the ammo supply certainly was).
We know from the battle of Monica that an Indefatigable-class mounts 29 tubes on it's broadside, and has a max firing rate of 35 seconds. [edit: oops, turns out 2 of them had older mod tubes with 45 second cyclic rates; so the average rate is 40 seconds, not 35]
The 4 BCs at Saltash could pump out a max of 2*29*60/40 = 176.8 rounds per minutes.
The 5 Rolands could each pump out 12 rounds every 18 seconds 5*12*60/18 = 200 rounds per minute. A slight, but noticeable, advantage to the Rolands.
And if they'd been 5 Avalons they'd have still outranged the Indefagitables and would be pumping out 5*20*60/9 = 666.6 rouns per minute!
Kind of shows how pitiful even the first line FF equipment is compared to RMN kit.



Also, as an aside, I noticed an odd thing while digging for Indefatigable specs; their accel seems too high for their stated displacement.
At Monica they accelerate at 500g, and at Saltash we're told that 3.89 KPS^2 (396.9g) is 80% of their max; which make that 496.2g - close enough to 500 if you allow for rounding.

That's nice and consistent; except with a tonnage of about 850,000 tons their accel should be more like 489.9g. The way the accel curves work that extra 10g would require them to shed 250,000 tons! Now one approach would be to say the SLN has a slightly improved compensator; except the numbers for the slightly larger (911,250 tons) Nevada-class BC are right on the money for an unimproved compensator at "less than four hundred and ninety gravities” [SftS]; or as I calculate it 487.6g.
Not sure what that discrepancy means - maybe RFC made a typo in his tech bible for the Indefatigable. (It would have been more interesting to discover that all SLN ships were a little quicker than you'd expect)

Weird Harold wrote:

saber964 wrote:One of the things they could do to the ships is pull 4 missile launchers 2 fore and aft.

You're forgetting that the Rolands could only fit six tubes in each hammerhead by grouping three tubes around the support equipment for one tube -- an over-simplification, but useful shorthand -- so pulling one tube from each trio or pulling two tubes from one trio doesn't reduce the space required by near as much as you think.

If you're going to modify a Roland to add marine quarters -- a very unlikely scenario, IMHO -- it would be simpler to just add a "plug" of about five or ten meters mid-ship. Similar to the way the C-141B was extended to add air-refueling capability and add more cargo capacity.

Although it could be done, it won't be as simple as your post seems to suggest. The C141 is basically a hollow tube with a cockpit stuck on the front a tail assembly on the back, and it was simple to make it longer. This has been a standard practice for airplanes, the Boing 737 is another example of this.

In the same way it wouldn't be a big deal to stretch a freighter for more cargo space, but a warship is not hollow.

There is missile storage, fusion reactors, energy weapons, missile control links, hyper generator, compensator, sidewalls and much much more, all packed in to maximize space.

Remember that the Roland is 45M tall. With 8' (2.5M) headroom and 4' (1.25M) plenem between decks, that is enough room for 12 "residental" decks Energy weapons and missile tubes have to be much more than 8' high or they would be able to fit more than 1 weapons deck on a destroyer, 2 on a BC, 3 on a SD. A fusion plant is 20M on a side, and probably close to 20 M tall as well.

It would would probably be much easier to create a Roland B from scratch, or even a new class of destroyer than to "stretch" an existing Roland.

darrell wrote:Although it could be done, it won't be as simple as your post seems to suggest. ...

In the same way it wouldn't be a big deal to stretch a freighter for more cargo space, but a warship is not hollow....

No doubt it would not be "easy" -- just easier than sacrificing chase armament in a ship that only has chase armament to make room in the only area with any real armor to make things difficult.

It would also help that Rolands are destroyers and not battlecruisers; they don't have a lot of armor and cofferdamming to cut through to cut them in half. The fact they have no broadside armament would also help; the armament shouldn't overlap the area where the cut would be needed.

Also, I don't foresee any such radical modification of the Rolands. Neither plan offers any real benefit that simply introducing an entirely new design that takes advantages of the lessons learned from the Rolands' deficiencies and strengths.

Weird Harold wrote:It would also help that Rolands are destroyers and not battlecruisers; they don't have a lot of armor and cofferdamming to cut through to cut them in half. The fact they have no broadside armament would also help; the armament shouldn't overlap the area where the cut would be needed.

Rolands totally have a broadside armament: 5 lasers, 10 CM, and 9 PDLC per broadside.