munroburton wrote:WLBjork wrote:I'm going to argue in favour of the SLN being an early adopter of the PDLC system - firstly, it is only recently that the SLN has lost it's status as chief innovator and secondly simply considering the number of SDs that have been built or refitted with PDLCs. Presumably all active SDs of Battle Fleet are fitted with PDLCs, and approximately 1/3rd of the Reserve SDs have as well.
The Reserve consists of 5,000 SDs, so 1,500-1,750 have been refitted with PDLCs, and there are a further 2,000 SDs in active service. This indicates between 3,500 and 3,750 SDs are equipped with PDLCs.
In MoH, Caparelli briefs the Queen on the state of the Solarian Navy based on captured data from New Tuscany.
"at least two thirds of their reserve fleet's still equipped with autocannon point defense, not lasers."
The Reserve also contains 8,000 wallers. There's a Pearl which suggests some of those might be DNs, but those would be the very oldest of the Reserve. Certainly part of the autocannon brigade, in other words.
I would say one aspect you've overlooked in this otherwise interesting piece of analysis is endurance - how long the ship can carry out sustained operations without resupply. We were never told how much of a fleet train Crandall needed for her task force, nor the one Filareta needed.
And there's also the sizing of individual weapons to be considered - we don't know how big those grasers and lasers are in comparision to the Haven Sector's. I'm pretty sure they're smaller calibers, in the two to four metre ranges. For comparision, an older BC's graser is roughly 150cm... and an Invictus has ~650cm chase grasers.
I've made a couple of guesses that the first Scientist was built sometime between 1750 and 1825, with the Vega coming between 75-100 years after that. It can't really be refined any better than that until we get the Companion with the League's ship classes.
By the way, the RMN didn't refit their Ad Astra DNs with PDLCs until 1878. I would argue that the SLN did not adapt PDLC much earlier than this.
Missiles weren't that dangerous until the laser-head started increasing the stand-off range. The bomb-pumped laser warhead wasn't around until 1800 and it didn't become effective against larger warships until 1860.
I also have the suspicion that before 1850, autocannon were far more effective against the crappier missiles of those days than the earliest PDLCs were. Anyone with eyes can see that most movie laser rifles are nowhere near as good at mowing down a massed charge as a proven machine gun would be.
That will teach me to double check numbers rather than relying entirely on memory.
Likewise, the reduced endurance and smaller weapons had been in some of my earlier thoughts, then forgotten about when I made the post (notes make things so much easier to remember
).
I was inclined to argue for the SLN SDs to have smaller calibre energy weapons on the grounds that they are most likely to engage smaller warships, rather than their equals. In the event of facing their equals, the SLN could make up the difference with sheer volume of fire.
The Laserhead certainly won't be the driver in adoption of the PDLC, mainly as it only appeared as a viable weapon from 1866 (and wasn't concieved until 1827, with the tests taking place in 1833). Again,
IFF indicates that the PDLC was in general service prior to 1800 with the statement 'The point defence laser cluster created the final of light speed defense that resulted in the now familiar geometrically increased chance of the missile being destroyed in the last 50,000 to 60,000 km of its run. Hits against intact defenses became rare'.
The other way to look at this is effective range - you need a high muzzle velocity in order to kill a sidewall contacting nuke (remembering sidewalls are about 10km out). Granted, the gravitational railguns of the Honorverse can manage some high velocities, but even if they can get a muzzle velocity of 10kps (
Jayne's gives the M32A1 Pulse Rifle a muzzle velocity of 2.2kps) it would still take over one second to reach this range, meaning the target missile can move - in turn using up more ammunition to cover possible angle changes of the attacking missile.
For further consideration, stand off 'sidewall burning' nukes were already in existence, which would probably be effectively immune to a PDAC. Certainly the standard RMN missile of 1826, with it's 8,000km+ stand off range would be, as the PDAC shots would have to be fired before the missile in order to hit it!
lyonheart wrote:Hi WLBjork,
Congratulations on some interesting analysis, but I have to go with Munroburton here on a couple of points.
Given the textev that BF had almost 11,000 SD's when Byng was blown away, 2000 active with 300+ refitting, the BF reserve may have reached 8600 before many were activated to replace those dispatched to Filaretta.
Until the PDLC had demonstrated its superiority in combat ie post 1860 PD, its very unlikely that the SLN would have adopted some unproven technology, just because it was new; so allow some time for the IAN and others [not the RMN or PRHN-too much of a red flag] to validate it, ie suffer very little damage when autocannon would have stopped far fewer missiles on more than one occasion before the SLN even considers replacing its tried and true, much tested autocannon.
The number of SLN SD's converted annually and for how long has been discussed here a few times, but since RFC has been evolving his creation since his early posts [now the pearls] over ~25 years, some of the early posts that suggested the SLN had severe budget problems that sometimes prevented any new construction to a more consistent annual new construction budget, some estimates have put the number of SD's usually completed every year (in recent decades at least) in the 37-55 range, allowing for the 15+% margin that's usually refitting on average.
If the SLN has been replacing autocannon for around 40 years, besides adding the third of new construction, some 50 per year were being modified, a reasonable number along with the active fleet refits, implying around 400 building and/or refit/repair slips.
Remember too how little we have to go on, there's no textev, but it's implied that the follow on Vega's are not the current or most recent SD class being mentioned in the past tense, so its possible there's a couple more unnamed classes, that the latest may lean towards a more modular design, like the Nevada BC's, which we don't know when they were introduced either.
Isn't the House of Lies due out next spring, which includes detailing the PRHN and the SLN?
A little patience may pay off in a few month's.
Best wishes,
L
It may indeed.
However, I think that any more modern SD designs (after the Vega - which is really a Flight II Scientist) from the SLN would be a surprise. They will be desgined to be in production for 50+ years. Manticore has a good reasoin to have so many classes prewar - they were refining their designs in light of combat experience, something which the SLN is not doing.
As you say, it's difficult whemn there's no hard evidence (which to be fair, allows RFC the luxury of changing numbers when the forumites comes up with an awkward point
)
As I recall the hardest number we have is that there are about a dozen systems capable of building/refitting SDs.
How many slips, we don't know, but when building a new SD they will be tied up well in excess of 3 years (the first
Victory class were commisioned in 1892, the first of the following
Sphinx class commisioned in 1895, and the first
Sphinx was laid down beore the first
Victory commisioned - and this was whilst the build rates were accelerating). Not that that information helps that much!
