"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Sigs wrote:

Star Knight" quote="Relax wrote:Look at militaries today. Even po-dunk militaries of small nations. It is roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000 as the ratio! […] USA: Pop ~320M, Military ~1.5M ~1:200

Yes.
But you forgot about prolong, health care and age limits. Today only a fraction of the population is capable to serve in the military. Everyone older than what – 50ish or something – is generally exempt anyway, and of those many are just not fit/healthy enough to serve.
If you take the US for example, out of the 320M less than half (145ish million, both male and female) are in the desired age range. Even less (120 million) are actually healthy enough to serve (personally I think the number is far lower but whatever).
With about 1.5 mill serving (actually less active personnell atm, but much more with deployable reserves) that’s actually about 1 out of 80.
If you compare this to Manticore…
The Manticoran Binary System is home to 3.6 billion people. All of them enjoy a standard of living higher than in the western world today.
With prolong, the age limits are much, much less of a problem. Apart from the last generation without prolong (which is basically dying from naturally causes during the time of the first war anyway) everyone can serve if he or she wants to.
Virtually everyone, sine the population is much healthier than today. In the Honorverse, practically all diseases are cureable, apart from serious injury or really rare and freaky health issues, there is no reason why any Manticoran wouldn’t be fit enough for military service.
Even pregnancies are a non-issue with prolong and tubing.
So all in all in the Manticoran Binary System there should be more than 2 billion people available for military service. Maybe even 2.5 billion.
If we apply the ratio the US manages comfortably today (which a much less educated/healthy population and not fighting a war for survival) that translates 25 to 31 million.
Or 4.000 to 5000 SLN Superdreadnoughts.

In an actual war? Easily ten times that.

And how many verge and protectorate systems have access to prolong and good healthcare for all of their citizens?

For every person serving on a warship you would require something like 5 people supporting them and that number gets significantly large as the average technological education and knowledge goes down.

Star Knight wrote:And yet, the Peoples Republic got away with poorly educated conscripts manning their wallers. It wasn’t perfect but it worked well enough.

Yeah but their officers would in many cases likely be doing jobs that would be done by enlisted in any other navy. Problem is we are talking about the verge and protectorates where they don't have the trained officers to take up some of the slack.[/quote]



The problem with that is the lack of trained personnel. The Soviet navy used the same method as the PN and they ran into all sorts of problems. Like the fact that the could only toss one or two trained personnel at a problem instead of a whole team of people like 5 or 6 on a small ship or 20 or 25 on larger ships. Remember on navy ship only about 10 to 15% of a ships crew is officers. Think of how long it would take to repair a major casualty on a ship if you only had one trained person to do it. Versus 4, 5 or 6 personnel to troubleshoot problems all over the ship.

If you want a Honorverse example of trained versus undertrained or untrained personnel. One word Harkness.

He made a Battle Cruiser's computer sit up and beg and do all sorts of tricks with the RW equivalent of a cheap laptop computer.

Weird Harold wrote:

GabrialSagan wrote:They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League.

No, the SLN Scientist Class is a design over two centuries old, not much bigger than a "Haven Sector" Dreadnaught, and only sporadically upgraded with more modern systems -- like replacing auto-cannon point defense with PDLCs or the purely cosmetic "Fleet 2000" upgrade.

They were built for energy-range combat and lack sufficient missile defense to survive against even moderate system defenses built around even extended range single drive missiles (like the Technodyne missile pods used in Monica.)

Against almost any ship -- including Shrike-class LACs -- that can control extended range or multi-drive missiles a Scientist-class SD is just a target.

Any SLN screening units would be better gifts/sales to systems building a SDF from scratch. The SLN Scientist-class SDs should only be sold to systems the GA wants to bankrupt or feels they will have to deal with militarily in the future.

They are state of the art against the SLN which incidentally is what any recipient of those ships would be worried about. If a system is sceding, they would see one of 4 threats:

1)The SLN sending a couple of ships if they have nothing to defend themselves with and forcing them back into the fold.

2)A neighbour with a warship or two who decides to build himself a little empire.

3)Pirates

4)Manticore turning empire builder and conquering them.

of the 4 threats the first 3 could be mitigate if not neutralized by a couple of SD's and some smaller warships. On the other hand if Manticore desires to force someone into their empire there is little they can do about it. So why would any core or shell system that is seceding turn down captured SD's and screen just because they cant fight off Manticore if Manticore decides to conquer them?


As for the MA and RF... few if any of those core and shell systems actually believe the threat exists and if they did same point applies, why would they refuse weapons to defend themselves against most threats just because those weapons cannot adequately protect them against all threats?

Castenea wrote:Actually as a general rule anyone capable of effectively manning these white elephants can build something better.

I do expect some to be sold outside of Manticore but the uses of those sold have a fairly low max number that can be utilized. Main uses I for see for these ships (besides scrap), a handfull sold for use in destructive testing, another handfull used in training (probably in Manticore) for marine boarding parties (live fire!) and for SAR teams.

And wouldn't it be that much better to have those SD's in service while you are building something better? Leaving yourself virtually defenceless because you are building better ships that will be done in a few years might be a tad irresponsible.

And any seceding systems would start from the bottom with regards to ship designs. So they may not be able to laydown anything better for a few years at least so those ships would be better than nothing.

Sigs wrote:

Castenea wrote:Actually as a general rule anyone capable of effectively manning these white elephants can build something better.

I do expect some to be sold outside of Manticore but the uses of those sold have a fairly low max number that can be utilized. Main uses I for see for these ships (besides scrap), a handfull sold for use in destructive testing, another handfull used in training (probably in Manticore) for marine boarding parties (live fire!) and for SAR teams.

And wouldn't it be that much better to have those SD's in service while you are building something better? Leaving yourself virtually defenceless because you are building better ships that will be done in a few years might be a tad irresponsible.

And any seceding systems would start from the bottom with regards to ship designs. So they may not be able to laydown anything better for a few years at least so those ships would be better than nothing.

Seceding systems may find these ships usefull, if they can get them at a usefull time. A seceding cannot legally take possession of the ex-SLN ships before formal secession. Also, the manning problems rears it's ugly head, does the seceding systems SDF have the core of trained personnel to effectively man both the screen (hopefully made up of ships in the pre-secession SFD) and the newly acquired SDs?

Also what is the build time for a slightly modified (SDF specific improvements) Scientist SD versus transit time for the crew who take possession of the ships in Manticore, and bring them home? Sending the ferry crews is defacto declaring that you are no longer part of the SLN.

Castenea wrote:Seceding systems may find these ships usefull, if they can get them at a usefull time. A seceding cannot legally take possession of the ex-SLN ships before formal secession. Also, the manning problems rears it's ugly head, does the seceding systems SDF have the core of trained personnel to effectively man both the screen (hopefully made up of ships in the pre-secession SFD) and the newly acquired SDs?

Also what is the build time for a slightly modified (SDF specific improvements) Scientist SD versus transit time for the crew who take possession of the ships in Manticore, and bring them home? Sending the ferry crews is defacto declaring that you are no longer part of the SLN.

I don't think legalities would be a concern.


There are ~1.8 million POW's in GA custody, I doubt that they all came from Earth or even only a few systems. Likely they would be recruited from all over the core, shell and verge. What the GA does is interview them, ask if the POW's want to go home and release them as soon as soon as their home systems secede.

The former POW's, plus any SDF personnel they should have, plus any SLN ships and crew in the system that they can convince to remain should form a nice core of trained manpower. Then the GA sends in a cadre of personnel to help them establish a training system and organize their navy. It would not be perfect but at the end of the day its better then nothing and if the education systems of the Core and shell systems are at all comparable to Manticore they should have plenty of people with the capabilities to become productive sailors.

Sigs wrote:They are state of the art against the SLN which incidentally is what any recipient of those ships would be worried about. If a system is sceding, they would see one of 4 threats:

1)The SLN sending a couple of ships if they have nothing to defend themselves with and forcing them back into the fold.

2)A neighbour with a warship or two who decides to build himself a little empire.

3)Pirates

4)Manticore turning empire builder and conquering them.

I'd argue at least for the first few to succeed there's a 5th concern.
5) That they'll provoke the SLN to make an example of them by sending a lot of SDs.

So the question is, how much will it tick off the SLN decision makers if you accept ships captured from the SLN? Is the risk of attracting a big hammer worth the security of scaring away people with a few BCs?

Oh, and unless you can get a steady supply of Cataphract (or better) missiles, and towed pods of same, you'll rapidly loose your military parity with the Scientists and Vegas still operated by the Solarian Navy. if you have to fall back on SDM while the actual SLN still had dual-stage missiles you've at a significant disadvantage.
Also unless you've got access to a lot of expertise on ECM I think you'd rapidly fall behind the SLN. You've got the same hardware they do, but even they aren't so incompetent they won't deploy new software for Halo, etc, to replace the routines they know the Manties have had access to. So their ECM will be fairly effective again your missiles, but they'll know all your routines and can far better program their missiles to ignore your decoys or jamming (or at worst use it to better target your ships)

And that's assuming you can get enough trained people and spare parts to keep them fully in service. If stuff starts degrading on you then the advantage each active duty SLN unit would have over your 2nd hand captured ships simply increases.


Also, the Manties primarily captured SDs - not the light units you need for anti-piracy work. So I'm not sure how well the captured units would let you detur pirates or commerce raiders. (Though I guess if someone was dumb enough to demand danegeld to, for example stop blowing up intrasystem freighter, and you knew their home system your Scientist-class SDs could just be sent to induce them to surrender; at least if you have enough for offensive operations after your defensive needs are met)

So even for people not worried about getting attacked by Manticore or its friends I don't see captured SLN SDs as necessarily a good solution against the other threats they may face.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Sigs wrote:They are state of the art against the SLN which incidentally is what any recipient of those ships would be worried about. If a system is sceding, they would see one of 4 threats:

1)The SLN sending a couple of ships if they have nothing to defend themselves with and forcing them back into the fold.

2)A neighbour with a warship or two who decides to build himself a little empire.

3)Pirates

4)Manticore turning empire builder and conquering them.

I'd argue at least for the first few to succeed there's a 5th concern.
5) That they'll provoke the SLN to make an example of them by sending a lot of SDs.

So the question is, how much will it tick off the SLN decision makers if you accept ships captured from the SLN? Is the risk of attracting a big hammer worth the security of scaring away people with a few BCs?

Oh, and unless you can get a steady supply of Cataphract (or better) missiles, and towed pods of same, you'll rapidly loose your military parity with the Scientists and Vegas still operated by the Solarian Navy. if you have to fall back on SDM while the actual SLN still had dual-stage missiles you've at a significant disadvantage.
Also unless you've got access to a lot of expertise on ECM I think you'd rapidly fall behind the SLN. You've got the same hardware they do, but even they aren't so incompetent they won't deploy new software for Halo, etc, to replace the routines they know the Manties have had access to. So their ECM will be fairly effective again your missiles, but they'll know all your routines and can far better program their missiles to ignore your decoys or jamming (or at worst use it to better target your ships)

And that's assuming you can get enough trained people and spare parts to keep them fully in service. If stuff starts degrading on you then the advantage each active duty SLN unit would have over your 2nd hand captured ships simply increases.


Also, the Manties primarily captured SDs - not the light units you need for anti-piracy work. So I'm not sure how well the captured units would let you detur pirates or commerce raiders. (Though I guess if someone was dumb enough to demand danegeld to, for example stop blowing up intrasystem freighter, and you knew their home system your Scientist-class SDs could just be sent to induce them to surrender; at least if you have enough for offensive operations after your defensive needs are met)

So even for people not worried about getting attacked by Manticore or its friends I don't see captured SLN SDs as necessarily a good solution against the other threats they may face.

It is better then nothing. What it comes down to for me at least is that no matter how disadvantaged they are, nations will take those ships and use them to the best of their abilities.

Now, for the SLN to make an example they have to gather a sufficient force to guarantee total victory because if they go to enforce their will on a core or shell world and said world kicks their backsides it would do more harm then good.

The idea is to give those ships to systems that have potential, potential to grow and become strong enough ensure their own security and that of their immediate neighbours if for no other reason than their own continued security.

Systems that get those SD's would have to be important enough to also get a GA military package, some LAC's backed up by pods and a couple of divisions of SD's plus screen. Then you sprinkle random seceding systems with SD(P) pickets and pods so that the SLN never knows what they are going to get into.

The best way to prevent reprisals by the SLN is for the GA to go in and crush as many SD's as they can catch and it shouldn't be too hard as something like the SLN would have most of their fleet in a few core systems with a few ships sprinkled about trouble spots. Hit a handful of major bases and destroy/capture all the SLN ships you can will put a crimp on the SLN's ability to do reprisals on anyone.

Most core systems should be able to man those ships with technologically competent people, it wont be perfect but in a pinch it is better then nothing. And it might help if the GA started producing missile pods and ships for export basically lite versions of their equipment.


If the GA does not give the core and shell worlds the means to defend themselves as well as defend them while they build up their capabilities, the League might scare its members enough to keep them in the fold which would ultimately increase the risk of the GA's demise.

Where on earth did you get the idea that Rollins had to detour to check the net, or that he had to do any sort of sneaking to do so?

Well, I guess it could be argued that he detoured, since he came in 35lm out instead of the 20 or so that would comfortably clear the hyperlimit. But he most certainly wasn't sneaky about it. In fact, if the Manties has been given long enough, they might even have deduced that the delay after arrival that they were scratching their heads over was to query some sort of reconnaissance system. Hard to say, since it would have been something of a leap. That, however, is neither here nor there - the key point is that he came in to the system at a location where he could query Argus to see if anything had changed, and did so. And, according to SVW "the delay to query the Argus net's latest data had confirmed that Parks wasn't here now. The platforms didn't have the reach to see anything within ten light-minutes or so of the primary, but they would certainly have noted anything that came in far enough out to clear Hancock's hyper limit, and nothing heavier than a cruiser had." Which means I don't quite get how you think that any number of DNs could have snuck into the system, either.

Somtaaw wrote:Rollins moved when he thought everything else had left. Danislav arrived with a 10 ship strong squadron, reinforced by an extra division Manticore managed to scare up before Danislav departed. That single division could also have been sent on ahead, arriving before Danislav, and quite possibly even before Rollins. Which actually would have meant Rollins couldn't have known until he arrived and checked the sensor net prior to his "big" arrival.

Which actually is one of those things that glossed over, they were sending single light cruisers out to check them, and they had to come coasting in for days just to get close.... but Rollins took 3 squadrons of SD's, a squadron each of DN and BC + full screen. And NOBODY spotted that hyper event prior to them arriving on a "least-time course from Seaford Nine", despite that detour to check the Argus net?

Aside from that glaring plot hole, if Rollins could have gotten close enough to query the Argus net without being detected, a single division of DN's could have arrived early and been missed by the Argus net, leading to Chin being sent on ahead as planned. The end force actually wouldn't have changed, Danislav had 10 DN's when he arrived in the books, if the extra's had arrived early, Task Group Hancock-001 would have had 2 DN's in order of battle, plus Danislav would have arrived with 8 for a total of 10.

And in this timeline, Rollins actually would have gotten screwed because when he realized 2 DN's had ambushed Chin's 8, he would immediately have started moving to assist and been deep in the Hancock gravity well when Admiral Parks showed up. Instead of having already gone to maxium evasion when Danislav arrives and hypered out just before Parks could engage him.

This chain of events would have reverted back to the book plot timeline. Parks plus Danislav would still have moved on the weak Seaford to crush it, returned back to Hancock (and coincidentally encountering Coatsworth thinking Rollins holds the system) and book plot continues on with Field of Dishonor.

Sigs wrote:But you are missing the point because these ships are both powerful weapons platforms and obsolete targets, just depends who is controlling them. If it is the SLN they are obsolete targets because the GA has much better equipment, but if it is the GA's allies its a whole different story because they would be facing equal or worse equipment from the League.

No, I'm NOT missing the point.

IMHO, the captured SLN SDs have the reputation of powerful weapons platforms, but the reality of wooden square-riggers in a post-Dreadnought world. Especially in the hands of Battle Fleet crews.

Gifted to systems without existing SDFs and the infrastructure to maintain and supply such manpower intensive dinosaurs, they won't be much more effective.

Gifted to a very few systems with exceptional military leaders, and OJT Crew with a couple of months to shakedown, might be competitive with a Battle Fleet crew.

Everyone buys into the SLN's reputation for having the best warships in human space, but RFC has shown us glimpses of poor training, poor maintenance, poor readiness, and a host of other Battle Fleet failings. The inflated reputation of SLN SDs is part of the same set of "Emperor's New Cloths" typified by the Fleet 2000 upgrades.

Louis R wrote:Where on earth did you get the idea that Rollins had to detour to check the net, or that he had to do any sort of sneaking to do so?

Well, I guess it could be argued that he detoured, since he came in 35lm out instead of the 20 or so that would comfortably clear the hyperlimit. But he most certainly wasn't sneaky about it. In fact, if the Manties has been given long enough, they might even have deduced that the delay after arrival that they were scratching their heads over was to query some sort of reconnaissance system. Hard to say, since it would have been something of a leap. That, however, is neither here nor there - the key point is that he came in to the system at a location where he could query Argus to see if anything had changed, and did so. And, according to SVW "the delay to query the Argus net's latest data had confirmed that Parks wasn't here now. The platforms didn't have the reach to see anything within ten light-minutes or so of the primary, but they would certainly have noted anything that came in far enough out to clear Hancock's hyper limit, and nothing heavier than a cruiser had." Which means I don't quite get how you think that any number of DNs could have snuck into the system, either.

Somtaaw wrote:Rollins moved when he thought everything else had left. Danislav arrived with a 10 ship strong squadron, reinforced by an extra division Manticore managed to scare up before Danislav departed. That single division could also have been sent on ahead, arriving before Danislav, and quite possibly even before Rollins. Which actually would have meant Rollins couldn't have known until he arrived and checked the sensor net prior to his "big" arrival.

Which actually is one of those things that glossed over, they were sending single light cruisers out to check them, and they had to come coasting in for days just to get close.... but Rollins took 3 squadrons of SD's, a squadron each of DN and BC + full screen. And NOBODY spotted that hyper event prior to them arriving on a "least-time course from Seaford Nine", despite that detour to check the Argus net?

Aside from that glaring plot hole, if Rollins could have gotten close enough to query the Argus net without being detected, a single division of DN's could have arrived early and been missed by the Argus net, leading to Chin being sent on ahead as planned. The end force actually wouldn't have changed, Danislav had 10 DN's when he arrived in the books, if the extra's had arrived early, Task Group Hancock-001 would have had 2 DN's in order of battle, plus Danislav would have arrived with 8 for a total of 10.

And in this timeline, Rollins actually would have gotten screwed because when he realized 2 DN's had ambushed Chin's 8, he would immediately have started moving to assist and been deep in the Hancock gravity well when Admiral Parks showed up. Instead of having already gone to maxium evasion when Danislav arrives and hypered out just before Parks could engage him.

This chain of events would have reverted back to the book plot timeline. Parks plus Danislav would still have moved on the weak Seaford to crush it, returned back to Hancock (and coincidentally encountering Coatsworth thinking Rollins holds the system) and book plot continues on with Field of Dishonor.

Right, Louis. Ok, there was a chance for builing a trap, if (like Honor later did with her damaged Wayfarer) he translated back into normal space extremely slow. But Danislaw didn't have any reason to try such a thing. After all, he didn't know about Argus. But he would have to know about Argus before he went to Hancock to try such a trick ... and, by the way, I think he would have to go as high in the hyperbands as Truman's Apollo did on her return way to Manticore from Grayson to arrive in time to be able to build such a trap. But anything we know about Danislaw says, that he was not the type to take such risks deliberately.

The reason Haven used CLs (or maybe even DDs) to take the Argus-harvest? Because they make smaller footprints which are easier to conceal.

Haven knew (since Basilisk for sure) that Manticore had the better technology. They didn't know exacty how much better, but they took it for a given, that it was considerably better. So they followed the old saying of "better safe than sorry", hypered back into normal space very slow and very far away from their targets and went for their satellites with extreme caution.

But as Rollins arrived, secrecy didn't matter anymore. Argus had fulfilled its purpose, and that Parks detected it in time to get back to Hancock nearly in time to catch Rollins was simply bad luck (from a havenite POV).

The havenite respect for the manticoran technology advantage (in addition to Danislavs sudden arrival) may have played a role, too, in Rollins' decision to turn back. Else he may have decided to push and go for Hancock himself - despite Danislaw's arrival - and get caught by Parks ...