"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Having read the whole Honor series and its offshoots for the nth time while awaiting the publication of the new novel, it strikes me that a resource is being wasted in the narative. (at least at this point in the series)
The Grand Alliance possess at least 100 SDs it captured from the Solarian League (Filaretta and Crandall). More, if the less damaged ones are counted.
Obsolete or not, this is a VERY large capital investment in VERY big, still functioning starships with VERY heavy, if obsolete, combat capability.
Bearing in mind what Honor, way back when, did to the invaders of Grayson with 6 rebuilt SDs, it strikes me that sending one or two of these to each system in the Talbot sector and/or Silesia, and then to the verge/shell systems liberated by Mike Henke would be a very efficient use of assets. They could act as flagships/life support outposts, education centers for new crew, anti pirate and anti raider bulwarks etc. etc. With a wing of modern LACs in each system as the mobile element, even without the Mycroft system it would free up a LOT of fleet assets for whatever they need to do.. Big energy weapons are still big energy weapons. God knows that have enough captured missiles
Comments?.

This topic has been discussed to death.

Using the SD's is problematic because of a host of problems.

1. They require are very large crew to function - there is no surplus of trained spacers after the attack.
2. They are obsolete. Period.
3. Some re-training is needed for the crew.
4. Very high maintenance.
5. Where do you source spare-parts? From other SD's you say? Who is going to do it? Manticore lost most of their trained spacers in the attack.
6. Where do you resupply missiles? Or are you suggesting retrofitting them with Manticore launchers? See - no trained spacers to spare.

And on and on and on...

You really should search the forum for the extremely long threads dealing the SD's. This dead horse has been flogged so much there is nothing left to flog...

This isn't your fault - you're new here, I can see - but this is one of those topics that has been beaten absolutely to death, had the dead horse resurrected and beaten to death again, reanimated as a zombie and dismembered a third time and then burned to a crisp and used as fertilizer. You're welcome to contribute if you've got a new perspective, but I'd suggest doing a couple searches on 'captured SD' or variations thereof just so that you can avoid repeating the same arguments that have been thoroughly thrashed to bits before.

Joat42 wrote:This topic has been discussed to death.

Using the SD's is problematic because of a host of problems.

1. They require are very large crew to function - there is no surplus of trained spacers after the attack.
2. They are obsolete. Period.
3. Some re-training is needed for the crew.
4. Very high maintenance.
5. Where do you source spare-parts? From other SD's you say? Who is going to do it? Manticore lost most of their trained spacers in the attack.
6. Where do you resupply missiles? Or are you suggesting retrofitting them with Manticore launchers? See - no trained spacers to spare.

And on and on and on...

You really should search the forum for the extremely long threads dealing the SD's. This dead horse has been flogged so much there is nothing left to flog...

I'd only add - the mothballed RMN pre-pod wallers are probably still around; the ones they decommissioned to free up crew for the latest round of SD(P)s.

Those are bigger and far more up to date and capable ships that SLN Scientist and Vega classes that were captured. RMN would reactive those before even thinking about SLN junk - but even old RMN SDs aren't worth the cost and manpower to reactive.

Jonathan_S wrote:Those are bigger and far more up to date and capable ships that SLN Scientist and Vega classes that were captured. RMN would reactive those before even thinking about SLN junk - but even old RMN SDs aren't worth the cost and manpower to reactive.

If they had ship yards to do this. Which they don't.

To be honest, I've thought at bit about this, and came to the conclusion that the only possible use militarily for these ships are twofold:
1. Selling them to idiot separatist core worlds that Mantacore doesn't like/trust to finance the Manty government. Hey, money is money.
2. For wormhole assaults. If the Manty's need to assault through the Torch wormhole for some reason they can automate some of these ships, and send them through to shoot up anything in beam range and soak up mines. They'd only do this because casualties on that sort of operation are appalling, and these ships are useless for anything else anyway.

The consensus opinion is the best use for all of those SLN ships is to break them down for scrap. Doing so would result in a saving of the time it would normally take to mine and refine the materials salvaged. At least that way, they would be of some military use.

They are too crew intensive in comparison to their Alliance counterparts, their hardware is generations out of date (approximately where the RMN was at the beginning of the 1st Havenite War), their weapons and are obsolete, those weapons they do carry are based on an obsolete tactical theory and they are woefully under armed for the sort of missile defense needed in the modern threat environment. There's also no way to obtain spares short of cannibalizing some of them for spare parts or dedicating some production output (which could be used to make superior versions) to produce them.

Conversion over to RMN or Alliance standard wouldn't be cost effective either and would take badly needed production output from refit of existing platforms and would slow down new ship production.

blackjack217 wrote:To be honest, I've thought at bit about this, and came to the conclusion that the only possible use militarily for these ships are twofold:
1. Selling them to idiot separatist core worlds that Mantacore doesn't like/trust to finance the Manty government. Hey, money is money.
2. For wormhole assaults. If the Manty's need to assault through the Torch wormhole for some reason they can automate some of these ships, and send them through to shoot up anything in beam range and soak up mines. They'd only do this because casualties on that sort of operation are appalling, and these ships are useless for anything else anyway.

To your first point: Have you ever noticed some crackpot third world dictator buy an old USN Aircraft carrier? This would be unlikely for much the same reasons.

To your second point: We have word of god that while they could be somewhat more automated with considerable effort, they can not be automated enough for suicide missions.

Torlek wrote:

blackjack217 wrote:To be honest, I've thought at bit about this, and came to the conclusion that the only possible use militarily for these ships are twofold:
1. Selling them to idiot separatist core worlds that Mantacore doesn't like/trust to finance the Manty government. Hey, money is money.
2. For wormhole assaults. If the Manty's need to assault through the Torch wormhole for some reason they can automate some of these ships, and send them through to shoot up anything in beam range and soak up mines. They'd only do this because casualties on that sort of operation are appalling, and these ships are useless for anything else anyway.

To your first point: Have you ever noticed some crackpot third world dictator buy an old USN Aircraft carrier? This would be unlikely for much the same reasons.

To your second point: We have word of god that while they could be somewhat more automated with considerable effort, they can not be automated enough for suicide missions.

The Invincible was to be sold to Australia if the Falklands war didn't blow up. The Indian carrier was a former Kiev class and Brazil's flagship was the Foch, an ex-French Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier. Disposing them to trusted star nations could be viable.

jtg452 wrote:-snip-their hardware is generations out of date (approximately where the RMN was at the beginning of the 1st Havenite War),-snip-

Almost all the captured Solarian SD's are even older than RMN levels prior to the outbreak of the First Haven War, putting them to parity is insulting to Manticoran tech

There are still Solarian wallers around that are equipped with autocannon for point defense, and would not be at all surprised that some of the captured ones are autocannon equipped. Just because probability indicates that even the MAlign couldn't possibly have 'suggested' the League Navy put only their latest, most recently updated superdreadnoughts on those maneuvers without a single autocannon sister in the formation somewhere. And Filareta's fleet almost had to have more than one, considering it was such a large portion of the active fleet, that probability alone suggests maybe even a few squadrons had to be autocannon equipped.

And then probability after the missiles start flying say that at least some of the multi-hundreds captured had to be the autocannon equipped ones, instead of their slightly better laser defended sisters.


Manticore, by contrast, did not have a single autocannon equipped ship in their fleet, and even their Bellerophon dreadnoughts were larger than the Scientists. And not only was the Bellerophon class larger, it was also more heavily armed and better defended, which suggests that overall it was ahead of the tech curve of the larger superdreadnought.


The League's ships are all at least a few decades more obsolete than First Haven War, simply because they hadn't been subject to the "King Roger pressurized military buildup" process. I think there's also text-ev somewhere, that they were only really just beginning to understand how dangerous laserhead missiles were recently, meanwhile everyone in Haven Sector has been slinging laserheads at each other for damned near 20 years already.