Kizarvexis wrote:The MAlign has been defeated, the League is broken up into successor states and the Roland DD's need a job.
Reaction force for the now many star systems in the SEM.
The Manticore binary system has those large arrays for detecting enemy translations. I expect San Martin to get similar arrays (if they do not already have them) as that junction end has swapped hands in the past and was the Sword of Damocles over the home system for so long. The terminus near Lynx should as well as it is the link to Talbott. But what about all the star systems in Talbot and Silesia? They are going to want to be defended too. I expect that they will get a down graded version of the home system arrays, but you will still want quick reaction forces for them to sooth the civilians there. With the 4 systems of the Old Kingdom (counting the terminus near Lynx) and the 17 in the Talbot Quadrant, plus who knows how many in Silesia, there are lots of places for Rolands to be useful. If it is an enemy, you have a very capable ship as the trip wire with help not far away. If it is a pirate, you are close enough to home for boarding and prize support. If it is a ship in trouble, same thing, you can be the first response while more help comes. I wouldn't send out a quick reaction force with less then two ships, so two Rolands should be able to muster humanitarian relief to a commercial ship. This also makes the Rolands a good strategic reserve in case of war. You can put Rolands back into the battle fleet and use a different DD for quick reaction.
Now, for what this thread has devolved to. What replaces the Roland in the future?
Are you talking near future right after the peace? Probably the less capable DDs and CLs with ERM as the Manties still have to rebuild the ship building facilities.
For after the SEM has ramped up on ship building again, I would make something in the Sag-C range, with a slightly more crew as a DD. I like using DD over CL as a class range for public relations and internal thinking. While short term a new DD at old CA size is going to be looked askanced at, in the past all ship classes were MUCH smaller and have grown over time. It is time for them to grow again. If DDs are a 500k ton ship, then CCs & CAs would be over 1M tons. The Nike at 2.5M tons is the BC and so on. The DDM genie is out of the bottle, so for the long term, you need all DDM ships. ERM for short term to tide over, but DDM for the long haul.
Why will they still have ERM after Oyster Bay? You already have the plans for them. Unless you can spare the planning people from the enormous task of replacing all the ship building, manufacturing facilities and replacing the Hephaestus, Vulcan and Weyland stations, you are going to go with what you have. Once that is done, then you branch out to new ship classes. With the lead time in designing ships, I think that some more ERM class ships will be built before going to all DDM ships. The ERM ships will be assigned to less important duties, like convoy escort and pirate suppression until the new DDM classes are made in enough numbers to replace them. Since this is PEACE time, that will take time.
The above is why I think the Admiralty should rethink and build a few more Rolands. While Talbot and Silesia are building up the native ability of fleet officers and ratings, you need a lightly crewed ship to not strain manpower too much in what is again, peace time. Don't go whole hog on building them, but until you are building a new DDM DD class with broadside launchers, a few more for all those reaction force locations would be a good thing. Also as a DDM strategic reserve as you build new DDM classes.
Except Rolands really don't have the crew for prizes or much in the way of humanitarian/rescue ops.
As currently designed and configured, the Roland is far too specialized as a pure warfighting/fleet operations ship. And it has too little ammunition capacity to really be very good at the combat roles involved - it's a scout/fleet escort, where it won't have to do much fighting on its own.
I expect the Rolands to only be assigned to two places - the warfighting fleets as scouts/screening elements (but mostly as scouts) and to the response/reaction squadrons checking out anomalous signatures from system defense gravitic sensor arrays. And, to be honest, I expect the latter assignment to be where the Roland lasts the longest, as in the former, I expect Rolands to be replaced by newer designs implementing defensive advances like a stripped down keyhole derivative for defensive purposes* and/or whatever the hell "Lorelei" is supposed to be.
*Maybe also the "periscope" ability of Keyhole-1 to allow for fire control while rolling ship, but definitely only the lightspeed links, not the FTL links of Keyhole-2.
The minimum hypercapable combatant in the RMN's future has to be DDM capable, and most likely broadside DDM capable, as hammerhead cluster DDM launchers basically defaults you to the firepower of a Roland until/unless you get into much larger ships - most likely much larger than required for broadside DDMs.
Broadside DDM means a minimum size of a Sag-C unless you go for an unconventional arrangement, ie staggered or angled (most likely angled, because staggered would be too complicated an arrangement for the support equipment). Once you're the size of a Sag-C for a minimum, you've got the space for all kinds of supplemental roles. The Sag-C might be tighter on crew than preferred for a generalist, but a Sag-C is, at present the closest thing to to the minimum DDM-capable generalist there is.
Frankly, between tonnage creep and technology advances, I expect, at least for a time, there to be a reduction in new-build deployed classes/types by the RMN.
One will likely be in the pre-war battlecruiser range, probably roughly equivalent capabilities to a Sag-C plus some form of basic Keyhole and other defensive advances. Probably it'll just be called a cruiser. There may also be a Marine support variant based on the same hull with significantly reduced offensive capabilities and significantly increased Marine support capabilities and capacity.
The BC(L), likely a refined/updated evolution of the Nike, since as far as I know the Nike meets all the needs of a Battlecruiser and a generalist, and doesn't have the kinds of flaws imposed by shoehorning in capabilities into too small a hull.
The SD(P), of whatever design they figure out.
The CLAC, in two forms, the max-LAC capacity design, and the armored design for staying with the wall and re-arming LACs mid-combat.
As for LACs, there'll likely mostly be Katana/derivatives and Ferret/derivatives, as Shrikes need to get way too close to use their grasers to retain a primary role.
It's also possible that the RMN might employ less thoroughly integrated Marine complements on ships. That is, have the Marine complements less tightly integrated into the basic functioning of shipboard duties. They'd remain available for damage control, but perhaps they wouldn't be manning weapons stations. They'd be more in the nature of supernumeraries than considered part of the base crew.
