Potential Future or Current Ship Names

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sadly, not anymore. Lost (while docked for repair) during Oyster Bay. "HMS Hexapuma blew up with all hands as the Mesan graser ripped across her fusion plant" [MoH: Ch29]

But HMS Hexapuma was added to the Roll Of Honor to be kept permanently in commission; the name will be given to one of the next ships to commission.

Manticore's Roll of Honor is already fairly long. Are they going to have to maintain a fairly large peacetime navy to keep them all in commission?

The RMN is going to be expanding rather a lot, even without any wars to fight.

Manticore is no longer just the Star Kingdom of Manticore (Manticore System plus some of the wormhole terminus systems). The Star Kingdom expanded to most of the womhole terminus systems, and added the human-inhabited planets from them. All of those need to be defended and patrolled, not just the terminus. Oh, sure, the Andies would probably frown rather heavily upon some third party attacking Gregor-B, and Beowulf is likely to be a reliable partner too, but there's Trevor's Star and Lynx - plus Basilisk (which doesn't exactly count, but no Admiralty or Manticoran Government is going to be leaving it or any of the other termini undefended).
Plus the traditional commerce protection and anti-piracy/anti-slaver patrolling the RMN has done for a very long time.
Then, Manticore added most of the Talbott Cluster, renamed the Talbott Quadrant (for some reason). That's another 14 systems (assuming Lynx doesn't count) that need protection and patrolling. That's a significant permanent fleet presence, plus it's unlikely that the patrol bubble will be limited to the Quadrant proper, and will likely include courtesy visits to other systems in the region.
And Manticore has added about half of Silesia. Now Manticore is responsible for the territorial integrity of their half of Silesia, they're not just whacking pirates and slavers, they're responsible for the whole thing.
Plus, it remains a possibility that Manticore will acquire some of the systems taken from Haven during the war(s), and those will need a fleet presence.

And now Manticore is at war with the League, and the League has to be broken up into much smaller successor states. Manticoran influence is going to be expanded out of necessity and default, and Manticore is going to want to whack the pirates and overly aggressive warlords that will be emerging from the ruins of the League.


The RMN is going to be expanding like mad. And, once they get the training establishment expanded properly, they'll actually have the manpower for all the ships they can build. Probably, anyways - I expect that the RMN's shipbuilding capacity is likely to expand too, but probably more slowly than manpower will.

I was thinking about Grayson ships and the Sayed came to mind... Or the Republic of Haven, the E. Babbitt. Perhaps the Andermani could have the Otto Looyer. Or maybe not.

Do the math.... [slinks away proud of his punniness.... ]

A quick btw... the RMN List of Honor is < 20 ships that we know of so far, right? [looked over on the Wikia for that, I'm not 100% sure...]

Actually, that would be a good forum thread... to nominate a few more candidate ships for inclusion in some future "post-war powwow". Anyone game?

Gun Boat Diplomacy wrote:imho,
i think there should be a HMS Nemesis (Greek Goddess of Revenge)

SharkHunter wrote: I liked it -- until the Enterprise crew rammed that green fellers ship right in the running lights. AKA used detrimentally in another series. Oh well, one is a fictional TV series, the other is... oh wait. A fictional book series, sixteen centuries later. As you were.

munroburton wrote:IIRC, the big Romulan ship in Nemesis was called the Scimitar.

Pretty sure the PRN had one - it would have been a Sword-class CA.

You are [known in advance to be] correct... I was trying to stir up the fires a bit by mentioning that other series that has pretty good movies but not so many great books... and invents it's science as it goes along.

SharkHunter wrote:A quick btw... the RMN List of Honor is < 20 ships that we know of so far, right? [looked over on the Wikia for that, I'm not 100% sure...]

Actually, that would be a good forum thread... to nominate a few more candidate ships for inclusion in some future "post-war powwow". Anyone game?

How about HMS Hawkwing. Going down defending a convoy against a battle cruiser has got to qualify. Same thing with HMAMC Wayfarer blasting two battle cruisers into junk and rescuing a cruise liner.

SharkHunter wrote:You are [known in advance to be] correct... I was trying to stir up the fires a bit by mentioning that other series that has pretty good movies but not so many great books... and invents it's science as it goes along.

Fair enough. And yes, I do agree about the hit-or-miss nature of ST/SW books. It comes down to the authors in the end and there are a variety of writers for those aforementioned universes.

saber964 wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:A quick btw... the RMN List of Honor is < 20 ships that we know of so far, right? [looked over on the Wikia for that, I'm not 100% sure...]

Actually, that would be a good forum thread... to nominate a few more candidate ships for inclusion in some future "post-war powwow". Anyone game?

How about HMS Hawkwing. Going down defending a convoy against a battle cruiser has got to qualify. Same thing with HMAMC Wayfarer blasting two battle cruisers into junk and rescuing a cruise liner.

IIRC, the wiki List only feature known, confirmed names. That 11 of 16 names were added after the relatively recent Battle of Monica is a giveaway.

Hawkwing definitely should be on the list. We know from Troubadour being re-used for a SD(P), there isn't necessarily a strict class assignment for List names so Wayfarer could be reborn as something other than a Q-ship(which they no longer use).

munroburton wrote: quote="SharkHunter"]You are [known in advance to be] correct... I was trying to stir up the fires a bit by mentioning that other series that has pretty good movies but not so many great books... and invents it's science as it goes along.

Fair enough. And yes, I do agree about the hit-or-miss nature of ST/SW books. It comes down to the authors in the end and there are a variety of writers for those aforementioned universes.

saber964 wrote:[quote="SharkHunter" A quick btw... the RMN List of Honor is < 20 ships that we know of so far, right? [looked over on the Wikia for that, I'm not 100% sure...]

Actually, that would be a good forum thread... to nominate a few more candidate ships for inclusion in some future "post-war powwow". Anyone game?

How about HMS Hawkwing. Going down defending a convoy against a battle cruiser has got to qualify. Same thing with HMAMC Wayfarer blasting two battle cruisers into junk and rescuing a cruise liner.[/quote]

IIRC, the wiki List only feature known, confirmed names. That 11 of 16 names were added after the relatively recent Battle of Monica is a giveaway.

Hawkwing definitely should be on the list. We know from Troubadour being re-used for a SD(P), there isn't necessarily a strict class assignment for List names so Wayfarer could be reborn as something other than a Q-ship(which they no longer use).[/quote]

Yep, those would be analogous of HMS Glowworm vs KMS Hipper and HMAMC Jervis Bay vs KMS Adm. Schemer during WWII.

saber964 wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:A quick btw... the RMN List of Honor is < 20 ships that we know of so far, right? [looked over on the Wikia for that, I'm not 100% sure...]

Actually, that would be a good forum thread... to nominate a few more candidate ships for inclusion in some future "post-war powwow". Anyone game?

How about HMS Hawkwing. Going down defending a convoy against a battle cruiser has got to qualify. Same thing with HMAMC Wayfarer blasting two battle cruisers into junk and rescuing a cruise liner.

I'd like to see another Hawkwing, but I'm not sure if it would meet my personal requirements for the List of Honor.

The few examples we have where we know why ships make that list (original Nike, CL Fearless, Hexapuma's squadron) there was an element of moral choice in choosing the near hopeless fight; there were right reasons for choosing to risk being disavowed, or being wiped out. And also a bit of a political statement afterwards showing external support for those action - not only didn't we disavow the action but we publicly hold up the actions of the captain, crew, and ship as an example of the best of the RMN. We also know Black Rose and Quentin Saint-James are on there; but not why. (Despite wiki I doubt Black Rose won that honor at Hume; she appeared to just be providing orbital fire support there. And since it's assigned to ships, some later ship named after Quentin Saint-James must have won its place on the List)

In contrast Hawkwing was doing a fairly routine convoying mission when she got ambushed by overwhelming force and quickly blown out of space. There wasn't a lot of moral choice there - running wasn't even a possibility when jumped from that range by a BC. It doesn't seem (to me) to have that something extra to cement its place on the List of Honor.



But I'd be all for keeping it on a semi-official short list of ship names worthy of being reissued - but not necessarily kept in perpetual service - for example I can't find textev, despite the wiki's claim, that HMS Troubador was added to the List of Honor; but the name was clearly reissued. (Though the phrase "List of Honor" only seems to appear 5 times in the whole series (and oddly doesn't appear in SVW for HMS Nike; it just says "There was always a Nike, with a list of battle honors reaching clear back to Edward Saganami") so we don't have a lot of examples to work from.

Hawking died trying to defend an ad hoc convoy against overwhelming odds so that the civilian merchants could have a chance to escape. It was the same thing when Helen Zilwicki Sr died. IIRC Zilwicki had 2 CL's and 3 DD's vs 6 CA's.

saber964 wrote:Hawking died trying to defend an ad hoc convoy against overwhelming odds so that the civilian merchants could have a chance to escape. It was the same thing when Helen Zilwicki Sr died. IIRC Zilwicki had 2 CL's and 3 DD's vs 6 CA's.

I don't see it as quite the same because (as much as it would be a violation of their duty, and against the traditions of the RMN) Helen Zilwicki Sr had choices. It was physically possible for the escort to run away (not that pretty much any RMN officer would), and picked a battle plan that maximized the chance of laming the pursuers even though it exposed the escort command to greater risks (turn broadside in a grav wave; more weapons but more vulnerable and spread your fire to cripple as many sails as possible before you're inevitable overwhelmed). (And for all that there's no evidence that any of the escort ships involved landed themselves on the List of Honor)

Hawkwing, for all the undoubted bravery of her officers and crew, didn't really have choices (well, except to order the armed civilian passenger liner to run rather that fight). She was ambushed from stealth, deep within the missile range of a far superior unit, and really could only keep up a running fight as long as possible to lure the BC slightly further away from the rest of the convoy. But she couldn't successfully run anyway, and I can't imagine taking that fire without shooting back. So what major moral choice did she make in that fight?


(Still, I'm not the arbiter of what ships belong on the RMN's List, and it's certainly possible I'm reading too much into the few examples we've got. OTOH something had to have kept the list from ballooning to a vast size over the centuries - so it's unlikely every ship that faced unequal odds, or fought a losing battle in defense of a convoy, made it onto the list; even in peacetime much less during declared wars)