"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Addendum to Autocannon post:

In the Honorverse autocannon and laser clusters are both CIWS (Close In Weapons System). Autocannon may make relativistic speeds, but lasers are already C weapons.

As long as your reactors are running, they will shoot. The only space requirement is capacitors. Autocannon run the risk of jamming, ships need ammo storage, and like CMs one runs the risk of shooting them dry.

WeirdlyWired wrote:

Theemile wrote:Of course you can't just pull them and Voila, it's all fixed. No one said that.

But the fact is there are other existing sources of Manticorian trained workers that, in a reasonable amount of time can be transferred - as their replacements are trained - back to Manticore to build the stations and man the building slips. Will the efficiency be the same as before - no. But people need to stop saying that all the workers are dead they are not. I just listed multiple sources of trained specialists (and I'm am not saying that all their talents will apply) exist, and copies of the latest Manticorian tools exist - whether they can be used as a template, used to rebuild their brethern or repurposed. Any extraneous time granted by Beowulf's entry into the alliance will only allow those other sources to act as training cadres to train up more specialists. Obviously, you wouldn't just grab people and send tham back to Manticore, you would build a plan which hired new or lesser trained workers from other sources, and add them to existing teams, train them, then promote all menbers of the team and rotate senior people back to Manticore sooner than you normally would.
[Snip]

So why pull them at all until they are needed assembling the bits and bobs needed to put the modules built elsewhere? I am sure most of them will be busy onverting the frepair ships and whatever into temporary production lines to make whatever pieces and parts are needed elsewhere.

The fact remains their time and talents can be better utilized doing almost anything besides trying to make something useful out of SLN SDs.

Like Upgrading 10th fleet's SDs to Keyhole Two.

I never said you would pull them before they are required to build/man the new stations.

You are putting words in my mouth.

I just said there are additional sources of trained manpower that many are overlooking, and places where more can be currently trained, NOW, to free the more senior workers later when needed. Also, there are also locations where hardware exists that may assist with the reconstruction.

I have NEVER advocated that any RMN personnel or facilities be used to update the captured SLN SDs. Any effort there is at best putting a shine on a turd, and would be better spent updating the existing RMN/Grayson SDs and DNs (an exercise which is still just a wasteful stopgap measure.) Or most preferably, just waiting to build new construction SD(p)s.

Relax, I don't think anyone does think you're saying any of that. Some people just have to go the long way round to reach agreement. [no, I'm _not_ confused about who I'm talking to. i'm just using a common interjection - at least, it _was_ common when i learned to speak English]

I would note that you are overlooking something particularly important about Weyland's surviving production crews: not only are they there, but they're also going to be the people with the most practice turning BuWeaps and BuShips brainstorms into production systems - and, even more importantly, teaching others how to do it when the work moves to the other facilities. So while there may only be 50-100,000 of them, they're exactly the ones you would have saved if you'd been forced to choose your slain.

Theemile wrote:
I never said you would pull them before they are required to build/man the new stations.

You are putting words in my mouth.

I just said there are additional sources of trained manpower that many are overlooking, and places where more can be currently trained, NOW, to free the more senior workers later when needed. Also, there are also locations where hardware exists that may assist with the reconstruction.

I have NEVER advocated that any RMN personnel or facilities be used to update the captured SLN SDs. Any effort there is at best putting a shine on a turd, and would be better spent updating the existing RMN/Grayson SDs and DNs (an exercise which is still just a wasteful stopgap measure.) Or most preferably, just waiting to build new construction SD(p)s.

I think someone doesn't particularly know volumetric geometry. I don't know the exact math, but I know that an autocannon round exploding into 1000 fragments will NOT cover enough volume to give a CEP (Circular Error of Probability - typically used for target hit evaluation by the various branches of the military - although I suppose since we're talking about space, it might well be changed to Spherical Error of Probability) of better than 1% and most likely worse than that.

Not to mention, even with a large spread, with overlapping spheres of shrapnel, the range at detonation would have to be pretty damn close, because an exploding device in space sends shards in all directions, with the pieces getting farther apart every split second. I would imagine that even after a couple seconds, the shrapnel bits would spread far enough apart for the entire missile to slip through without even having to steer - the wedge will take care of the rest.

As i said before, if we are talking about 1 missile, you are absolutely right, space is too big. But as we are seeing, we are talking about missile launches well above 10k missiles.

If you look at the Battle of Manticore, the numbers were as follow

Home Fleet launched over 150,000 missiles at 2nd Fleet, and 2nd Fleet launched over 524,000 missiles in return.

I´ll follow your own math and accept a 1% interception rate. Means that my 1000 fragments hit 10 missiles. Of those, let´s say that only 2 sucessfully impact destroying the missile.

Now, let's say a missile launch is detected at 20 million km. Call it another minute before the AA ships have figured the course of the missiles. Now they start firing, and at that point, range is down to 18-19 million km. Missile ship detects flak incoming, sends a command to the missiles to change heading 1/2 of 1 degree. By the time your BALLISTIC flak has reached where the missiles would have been had they stayed on their original course (which - and I'm being generous here - might be 1-2 million km from the FLAK ship, because there's no way that a ballistic round can accelerate once it's been fired, whereas the missiles are accelerating constantly, assuming no ballistic phase), the incoming missiles would be thousands, if not tens of thousands of kilometers away from the BALLISTIC flak.

Now sir you´re either trolling me or not taking things seriously.Or playing too hard on the "winnning an argument game" of forums, if which im not interested. Missile ship detetcs flak incoming? Can you please explain how, according to what we know of the Honorverse, would that happen? They would need to have a FTL platform in optical range of the AA ship. Otherwise, it´s just not possible, it´s been stated MANY times in the Honorverse how difficult is to detect even SHIPS lying dogo with their wedges down. An incoming missile detects a CM because it has a wedge too.

The thing that you don't seem to realize is that missiles dodge and weave during their flight - not like a pair of F-15's playing wargames with each other, not at those accelerations and distances - changing heading up, down, left, right, and every angle in between. They also spread out, partly to avoid wedge fratricide, but also to allow room for this dodging and weaving, to the point that there might be hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers of distance between each missile. They only start getting closer together towards the end of their attack run, and as kzt pointed out, a missile's range is far enough out that it can detonate anywhere inside a volume of billions of cubic kilometers (a sphere with a radius of 50,000km - attack range of a Mk-23 laserhead - centered on the ship being targeted). A missile only settles into an unchanging course in the last 250,000 km or so, just prior to releasing the laserheads.

That last bit is the ONLY time in the entire missile attack sequence where you MIGHT have a (very) small chance of actually hitting one, but let's say that 100 missiles are incoming. How much volume of that several billion cubic km that KZT mentioned would each missile take up, assuming a perfectly spherical attack (not really possible, but let's run with it anyway)? Let's call it 5 billion cubic km, divided by 100 missiles - if I've done my math right, each missile could be anywhere in a volume of 50 million km, screaming in at better than half the speed of light. How many rounds do you think you could get off in the few seconds left before the laserheads light up? I guarantee that even if the autocannon was firing at the same rate as a Vulcan rotary cannon (6000 rounds per minute), it wouldn't be enough.

Let´s consider what you are saying with an example actually in the books. The first part of the battle of Manticore. The battle lasted 11.9 minutes, and the incoming fire was 524.000 missiles. Going even under the estimate someone else did, assume a velocity for the flak round of 300,000 m/s. Let´s cut 1.9 minute for the calculations etc for the Flak fire to start. Again, just to go with a worse than optimal scenario. In those minutes, the round would reach 180,000 kms, well far out of detonation range for the missile. Admittedly there's at least 1 more minute (leaving aside the 0.9) and assuming a rate of fire of 1 round per second (again way under possibilities) you could get 60 other rounds of flak fire in the way.

No matter how much space there is, those missiles need to be in the distance you yourselves have stated to detonate, and they have to have a chance to inflict damage. One missile has the whole vector to choose from, 524,000 don´t. Furthermore, you choose the area most likely to have some volume of that fire passing by. It´s pure mathematics, since even in space, if the object needs to reach a specific area it needs to approach it under the object limitations of endurance, range and maneuverability. Which in turn gives you a vector.

Please feel free to check it in the words of Mr Weber. Note the especific reference to the inaccuracy of the CM fire of Foraker´s defence.

Shipkillers generally don't worry about evasive maneuvers until they are about to enter effective counter-missile range. There's not much point evading when no one's shooting at you, anyway. Evasive maneuvers may or may not be used across the counter-missile engagement envelope. That's normally a decision for the tactical officer planning the attack, and he'll make that decision based on several variables. The biggest three are:

(a) How accurate are the other side's counter-missiles likely to be?

(b) How effective at decreasing the counter-missiles' probability of a kill would evasive maneuvering be?

(c) How much of an adverse effect on his shipkillers' accuracy will evasive maneuvering have?

If the other side's counter-missiles are relatively inaccurate and evasive maneuvers would significantly degrade his chances of scoring hits, then he probably wouldn't maneuver against the counter-missiles, figuring that the decrease in his chances of scoring hits would more than offset the chances of dodging interceptions. If, on the other hand, the counter-missiles waiting for him were relatively accurate and evasive maneuvers would make them less accurate, then he might accept the lowered hit probability for his shipkillers in order to get more of them into attack range in the first place. Obviously, the questions which have to be answered will vary from navy to navy. Against something like Shannon Foraker's defense in depth (which, I suspect, is the specific situation people had in mind when the possibility was raised), evasive maneuvering probably wouldn't be worth the effort. Shannon's defense relies not on the individual accuracy of any given counter-missile but on the erection of a roadblock composed of hundreds of individually very inaccurate counter-missiles. Evading one of them would be just as likely to take you into the flight path of another, and the hit your shipkillers' terminal accuracy would take -- especially at extended ranges -- would be significant.

http://www.davidweber.net/posts/177-shipkiller-missile-evasiv.html

Even if you assume a hemispherical attack (much more likely), cutting the attack volume in half, you're still talking about a volume for each of those 100 missiles of somewhere around 25 million cubic km, of which each missile only displaces maybe 100 cubic km (including the wedge - the missile by itself only takes up a few tens of cubic METERS).

As we've been saying, space is HUGE. Even if you converted ALL the sollie SDs to AA ships, and had ALL of them there, you couldn't possibly fill that amount of volume to give yourself ten hits, let alone one.

You´re not trying to fill the space, you are trying to detonate them in the path of the missiles. So the math you are employing is biased, because the missile is not in those 25 million cubic kms. You are trying to get your round close enough in its way to detonate. Under those circumstances, you go back from considering a 1% chane to 0, with 100 AA SDs lying fire. Respectfully, i think that is even a worse result than what they actually got with conventional AC rounds in the actual engagements they have been in.

Edit: Regarding kzt's comment about particle screens, we've discussed this in BuNine, and the conclusion is that Mk-23s most likely will have them (and probably Mk-16s), but any non-MDM/DDM missile doesn't.

My question there stands. Would a particle screen shield against the impact combining the missile and shrapnell speeds? Please check terminal velocity of those missiles before answering.

Edit 2: You'd have much better luck, and certainly many, MANY more missile kills if you converted the sollie ships to fire only countermissiles. That won't happen for two major reasons:

No, it won´t happen because something entirely different:
http://www.davidweber.net/posts/19-countr-fire-cntrol-issues.html

The notion that a ship would launch shpikiller-sized pods of CMs in order to thicken the defensive fire thus runs afoul of the fact that thickening it by that huge a number would tend to enormously reduce the effectiveness of the defenses by seriously degrading the ability to steer the missiles to intercepts in such a control-adverse (if I may use the term) environment.
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I don't think any Navy in the Honorverse is currently likely to be particularly interested in dedicated antimissile platforms. The generalist designs already in service are capable of putting out all the defensive fire current generation control systems can handle, anyway, without significantly reducing offensive firepower (especially in the pod designs) and without making them dependent on the presence of the specialists.

I do agree however if the control was improved, increasing CM effectiveness and density is a good option.

1. You get back to the initial reasons that it's difficult to do ANY sort of conversion, as discussed many times throughout this thread and any of the 10 or 20 (or 50, or 100) threads on this subject. It's not impossible, but there are better things for the RMN to do with their money, time, and manpower.

Again. I´ve already replied to this. I´ll again. It is doable, because it´s been done before by a not so advanced planet like Grayson. It not only not impossilbe, but feasible. And please, tell me what else should be doing? With installations like the ones Grayson have, uncapable of laying down new hulls?

2. David has said constantly that the RMN doesn't do specialization. All warships have multiple uses. Sure, you could argue the pro's of specialization, but there are equal arguments against. Same for generalization.

I´m not arguing for ships capable of doing only one thing. By all means, leave some missile tubes, lasers and grasers. Just enhance what you want of them for their mission. I believe it is exactly what the RMN has done with the SD(P)s and CLACs. So... did you really misread me saying that´s all they would do? Or are you throwing it purposely?

and a third reason why any idea anyone comes up with for using these ships won't end up in a book, is that even if you (or someone else) come up with something that actually makes sense, David won't use it. Legal reasons. Even if you publicly say here that you would not seek credit (of ANY sort - cash or otherwise) for your idea, he won't do it.

So, while you can daydream and create new, pointless ways to use these ships all day long until the end of days, don't ever expect to see them used

Now sir you´re one step short of being offensive. I´m posting in a forum in which speculation and ideas are encouraged. I have no dream or intention to see my ideas in one of Mr Weber books. I don´t think it was the intention of any of the people contributing to these thread... but let´s say its pointless. Oh well. Never have imagined posting in a forum would be pointless you shatter my teenager dreams sir. But if it is pointless to speculate, reason and write about this... what are you doing then? Save us from our speculation?

I will make it very clear for you. There was a post "Obsolete SDs Waste not...", in which there was a discussion if there was a way for those ships to be of use. I thought one, i shared it. As an intellectual exercise. Because i could.

Now please sheath your judgmental sword and participate civilly, if you´re so kind.

Likewise the Grayson Yards at Blackbird were also destroyed with almost 100% loss of life.

Yes it was. Blackbird. But all of Grayson infrastructure in orbit survives, as Dettweiler himself has stated regretfully. And only the orbital structure was enough to modify the captured Havenite SDs.

The other issue I haven't seen mention (which is another aspect of space is huge, is the lack of time to get these ballistic shells downrange. If you want them to intercept even 100,000 km out you need an auto cannon capable of a muzzle velocity in excess of 375,000 m/s. Even a full up MDM's flight time is usually under 270 seconds, so given the vast distances involved that's not much time for a shell to coast all that far.

I´ve addressed it in my earlier example, producing an intercept further out and with worse assumptions.

And given that the ships are likely accelerating at hundreds of gravities the fragment from shells fired at one salvo can't have any real chance of intercepting later salvos (even ignoring their dissipation). So you can't even try to build a debris field to hind behind as the fight goes on.

So yes I agree that desire the theoretically unlimited range of ballistic projectiles that this wasn't a practical scheme.

Well we can agree you fire more than one salvo can´t we agree on that? If it was the RMN doing it, they would have FTL capability to refine the interception sollution... constantly.

To recap - the RMN's battle wall can handle six times the League's active wall alone. Add in their 80-odd BC(P)s, scores of Nikes, hundreds of Sag-Cs and Rolands and they certainly can handle Frontier Fleet as well as picket the necessary wormhole termini.

They only have 50 to 60 star systems to defend, including Talbott and Silesia. One BC(P) in each system secures it against all but the heaviest attacks(and it'd bleed such an attack considerably).

There are also system defense mechanisms already in place from the 2nd Manticore-Haven war. That means lots of pods and LACs in less critical systems; LOTS of pods, LACs and either Mycroft or Moriarty in more critical ones.

That frees up virtually all their cruisers and destroyers for offensive missions - seizing termini and punching out Frontier Fleet bases before they can organise those raids.

The lack of new, modern ships in the next few years isn't that great a problem. They will have new ships completed before the League has finished drawning up any new designs to even start laying down.

I think that is highly unlikely. While Moriarty and Mycroft will certainly make impossible for the SLN to claim the orbitals of a planet and demand its surrender in accordance with the Eridani Edict, i think we would be overlooking what has already happened in the Honorverse.

The Havenite raids on different systems, and 8th fleet posterior raids, have shown that fixed defenses can´t hope to stop the damage a raiding fleet would inflict on all the orbital infrastructure. It´s been stated, in the most clear terms (Zanzibar, Alizon, Grendelsbane, Basilisk...) that to avoid said damage to a system´s infrastructure you need mobile units, because otherwise the attacking force can launch its missiles BALLISTICALLY, since orbital installations can´t dodge.

Actually Weyland had a naval yard AND Hauptman's Unicorn belt shipyard, it was just the smallest and most secluded of the 3 stations, so the R$D was stationed there. There were plenty of trained workers which survived. as I have listed before:

Hancock Station, Sidemore, Basilisk, and San Martin all have intact fleet bases, and are in use maintaining the fleet, but would be a source for trained workers, tools, and training other workers. Alizon still has a working BC class shipyard built and manned with Manticorian assistance, and Zanzibar has the portion of a shipyard, being rebuilt by Manticore since 1920. Talbot, a 1st war Manticoran ally, had a 1905 Manty SD quality shipyard, which is currently underutilized.

Other sources for trained workers are the evacuated workforce from Weyland which mentioned above, the Fort repair services at the junction, the fort construction group at the Lynx terminus, the builder's reps embedded with all the ships rushed out of the shipyards in the latter half of 1921 and early 1922, which will be trickling back to Manticore.

Also there should be plenty of resources in Manticore B space dedicated towards repair, construction, and servicing the space habitats there housing 300 million people and the mining extraction industry, which can be leveraged or borrowed for the reconstruction effort.

This of course, ignores any available resources in Talbott or Silesia, or any which could be borrowed/ hired away from Haven, Beowulf, the Anderman Empire, or another source.

In addition, there are fleet members with construction, repair and construction management experience which could be reassigned to oversee and plan the work.

There are lots of available trained space construction/repair workers and hardware available. You just need to look for them.

*******

However, backing up your point, the reason Grayson was able to expand their construction capabilities so early and quickly was the vast number of trained shipworkers in Yeltsin space required to support their existing space industry prior to Manticore's involvement. When Manty technologies allowed their many trained workers to do 10x the work or more per person, suddenly they had a massive surplus of workers who were no longer required just for planetary survival, to dedicate to expanding their shipbuilding industry. Without that existing, trained surplus workforce (and Manticorian assistance), it would not have been possible.

Yes exactly. The manpower for modifications is there, specially since some places where not touched at all. Grayson´s orbital structure was NOT touched, for example.

Even if the MAN through whatever means learns the physical location of Bolthole there is still the issue of actually getting there.

This is obviously an very old subject and I'm obviously not "up" on what has been revealed or written about it, but simply conjecture that Bolthole is physically at the far end of a wormhole tramway with a terminus "relatively" near the Haven system. The location of the "Haven" end of the tramline would, of course, be classified "Top Secret - Commit Suicide before learning it," not appearing on any charts and the nav-coordinates wiped from the memory of most ships that have used it including (as the RMN learned) the 2nd Fleet ships built there and were captured at Manticore when ADM Tourville surrendered.

Defenses would be low-visibility, not easily spotted.

Bolthole itself might well be 1,000 light-years away from Haven system, perhaps not even physically within the Republic's boundaries but somewhere inside a sphere with a radius of 1,000Ly. That is a lot of haystack in which that very tiny needle could be.

I think it must be in a really non conventional place, like a system with no planets but a huge asteroid belt. Hiding in plain sight, and close to Haven (if it was started by the Committee, i don´t think they could have bear the thought of losing control of it).

Likewise the Grayson Yards at Blackbird were also destroyed with almost 100% loss of life.

But not Grayson´s infrastructure in orbit.

You can not replace 2 million yard hands even by stripping every available hand from everywhere. And with active fleet operations in Silesia and Talbott, you can't really strip those facilities bare, because the fleets there still need maintenance.

PLUS once the keyhole two platforms become available, there are a lot of Sag Cs that need updates to Apollo. You need hands for that.

Are Alizon and Zanzibar still in the Alliance, or did they pull an Erewhon? And SEM cannot pull workers from an allied star system, although they can request assistance.
Their yards and crews might be better served turning out more Rolands, Sag Cs and Nikes. A few Agamemnons even with their magazine capacity and survivability issues would not be bad to have either.

You do not ned workers before you have yards to utilize them. With missile production restored at Beowulf, and the alliance with Haven, the urgency to rebuild has diminished.

You don´t need to replace the manpower, just to direct the work where it would be done most efficiently. However i would agree if those shipyards can produce Sag Cs etc they obviously should keep doing it. What i mean is there is the manpower, experience and capacity to do it at installations otherwise not occupied with new construction.

1a) When I think autocannon, my mind goes to A-10 Warthog anti tank airceraft mounting 30mm GAU-8gatlin guns.
The exploding shell variation would be the German Millenium Gun 35mm CIWS (Cee-Whiz)An ship-to-ship missile defense gun. Which is a battery of autocannon. Issue is these shells even in space cannot reach relativistic speeds since their only acelleration is what the weapon launches them with. and the is not enough distance-to-target to ramp up .3c or probably even .1c.

The force of an impact is the result of the speed of both objetcs, if we take David´s word maximum velocity of a MDM is

maximum terminal velocity is around 243,581 KPS

http://www.davidweber.net/posts/171-effective-intercept-range.html
If the missile is already at relativistc speed...

2) Yes the SLN is going to commerce raids. But how much experience do they really have even reverse experience fighting pirates. Only FF has that experience. And if you are going Guerre des Courses there is little GA shipping out there with just the Manticoran wormholes.
If we are going for System attacks, BF & FF have two issues (1) concentration or lack thereof and (2) proximity.

FF has proximity but no real conentration of heavy units, BF has concentration of units but except for Beowulf has no proximity. 10th fleet has been eliminated as a staging area. Maya has neutralized itself. I'm sure that s word og 10th fleets taking of Meyers, Theisman and Pritchard will slowlt decide it might be a good idea for them to start taking out FF bases near them. Not sure what Silesia may have as far as FF bases, but Adm Sarnow seems to be a fairly intelligent sort too, I'm sure something will occur to him.

We're already at October 1922 PD. It was put forth in MoH that 6 months from Feb, 1922 PD Mycroft would be fully deployed around Beowulf. It is already mostly deployed around Manticore A&B. I'm sure Theisman is deploying Moriarty Around their key systems. Torch, Erewhon and Maya have been promised this system also.

The longer the SLN components take to organize and actually launch attacks, the tougher the system defenses they will encounter even with a division of Rolands riding herd. And then there is the little matter of LACS. Unfortunatly, if a squadron of BF BBs roll into a system and find 4 Rolands and several hundred LACS swanning around, their first instinct is to attack ... probably right into Mycroft. OUCH.

Let´s see. I wouldn´t put it past the SLN to be so stupid to actually try to grab systems. But according to what Kingsford has been saying in the books, the problem stands. And is not defending the system per-se but its infrastructure. The SLN only needs to swarm the existing ships defenses... get past them and hit the orbital structure ballistically. I´ve already explained up somewhere. I will say though being as inept as its been described i wouldn´t put it past the SLN officer in command to do exactly what you are saying and give us more battle-porn.

And to be honest any raid that succesfully attacks the infrastructure of a system WOULD BE a victory for the SLN.

About concentration, my impression is that the most exposed side is Haven, followed by Talbott and the terminals. I don´t agree they need so much to mount them. The SL is truly, really, enormous in size, and the only concentration they need is of battlecruisers of which they have thousands.

How effectively can they do it is a different question, but that the capacity is there shouldn´t be in doubt.

3) Training new personnel. Again yes you could reactivate the old 1960s Trident submarines, find the old manuals, train-the-trainers then train the personnel in time, probably 6 months before you need to retire the obsolete POS tridents and retrain the crews for modern sips. BUT you do NOT need the ships even for stop-gap fill-in-the-gaps. SEE 2 Par 4. Same thing as using SLN SDs with their too few missile tubes, too slow rates of fire, sadly inadequate CM defenses, and pathetic speed. Yes they would still be SDs firing Spatha capital ship missiles of which you may or may not have replacements beyond what is already in your magazines or what you can scavange from damaged SDs and those you may choose to not deploy. And didn't the ships start firing once Filareta's flag launched all of its pods? You may not have enough missiles for a full loadout.

And that´s why i propose a new role for them. As SDs, they´re useless. You don´t need to retrain, you have promotions and promotions coming without ships to man. What i proposed would make them usefull, help fill the time without construction, and therefore make them not a waste.

You are right, the personnel asigned to them could be moving out in 6-12 months time (thanks for agreeing they should be deployed before new construction)

Edit: forgot to mention. I fail to see how that is a problem. You give them experience and the ships are deployed. Once more construction is avalaible, you reassigned your experienced personnel to the new construction. Otherwise your creating a group of idle servicemen. Is actually how a navy has been operating in time of war. Old vessels don´t get decommissioned in time of war, they´re given less relevant roles.

The time Mr Weber establishes is way less generous that the one i´ve been using. The time in which a ship can be deployed is at least around 22 months... and that is with the shipyards already built.
http://www.davidweber.net/posts/100-shipbuilding-times.html

In the Honorverse autocannon and laser clusters are both CIWS (Close In Weapons System). Autocannon may make relativistic speeds, but lasers are already C weapons.

As long as your reactors are running, they will shoot. The only space requirement is capacitors. Autocannon run the risk of jamming, ships need ammo storage, and like CMs one runs the risk of shooting them dry.

And again, im not proposing to substitute cluster lasers. If you read me, then you should acknowledge that what i´m saying is increasing the AA armament of those SDs, since (according to everybody) they´re obsolete and the conventional heavy lasers, grazers and ship to ship tubes is of NO BENEFIT.

I have NEVER advocated that any RMN personnel or facilities be used to update the captured SLN SDs. Any effort there is at best putting a shine on a turd, and would be better spent updating the existing RMN/Grayson SDs and DNs (an exercise which is still just a wasteful stopgap measure.) Or most preferably, just waiting to build new construction SD(p)s.

Don´t worry i didn´t think you were saying that. But really first, whatever it is, they have to do something. You don´t switch to total war footing and leave yards and workers idle. It´s just non sense and the best way to economical downfall.

It´s very simple indeed. There´s going to be places and installations that won´t be able to anything else, or anything else that is way more beneficial. Modify them there.

Talkregh wrote:
<Major snip>

But not Grayson´s infrastructure in orbit.

Word from Weber is that the pre-war military Grayson space infrastructure was removed from Grayson orbit and all moved to Blackbird after the base was rebuilt from the Masadans and upgraded to Manty technologies. There are no military shipyards remaining in Grayson orbit. This was a specific move to remove the danger of a strike against the military shipyards (a military objective) from accidentally hitting the planet. No word was given to what civilian infrastructure was there in orbit, but the giant space farms still exist.

Talkregh wrote:
<Major Snip>

I think it must be in a really non conventional place, like a system with no planets but a huge asteroid belt. Hiding in plain sight, and close to Haven (if it was started by the Committee, i don´t think they could have bear the thought of losing control of it).

The things we do know about the system Bolthole is in are:

1) There is a habitable planet in the system with a pre-existing population that had no pre-existing heavy industry.

2) Bolthole was started under Pierre and the Committee for Public Safety.

3) It is outside the official volume of space the Republic of Haven currently claims.

4) It is on the far side of Havenite space from Manticore and the war front.

5) Manticore never found the location even though they did heavy scouting with DDs and CLs to find it.

I´ll be damned. Well thanks, made me look for it and found the info dump. Doesn´t leave me at ease at all, there´s no mention to defenses and it would appear to be on the frontier side to nowhere. How they can keep it secret if there´s any traffic at all in the system is beyond me.

I´m more afraid of a Mesan attack now than before. It would be very difficult to protect a classic installation against the MN new ships.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/65/1

("Bolthole," by the way, is simply the code name assigned to a system which already had a fair population -- well up in the hundreds of millions -- before the yard was moved in. The system in question, however, was "off the charts" as far as foreign intelligence agencies were concerned for several reasons. The main one is its extreme distance from Haven -- there's a reason Theisman can only get out there once or twice a year. It's way far on the other side of the RH's space from the SKM, and in an area which, overall, was never noted for its industrial or economic muscle before, in essence, the CoPS moved in and established its "Five-Year Plan" to turn the system into an industrial powerhouse. And, BTW, they never even attempted to give it any other industrial capacity. Basically, this is an entire star system which is one, huge production line for warships and an R&D base and nothing else at all.)

Talkregh wrote: <snip waste of time>

Congratulations. You've just joined skimper on my ignore list.

If you can't realize how lucky you'd have to be to hit even ONE missile with your proposal - even if you used every single sollie SD converted to flak frigates - then there's no point in continuing to discuss anything with you.

Oh, and if you think I'm trolling you, you've obviously never been trolled before.

Talkregh wrote:
<major snip>

And that´s why i propose a new role for them. As SDs, they´re useless. You don´t need to retrain, you have promotions and promotions coming without ships to man. What i proposed would make them usefull, help fill the time without construction, and therefore make them not a waste.

You are right, the personnel asigned to them could be moving out in 6-12 months time (thanks for agreeing they should be deployed before new construction)

Edit: forgot to mention. I fail to see how that is a problem. You give them experience and the ships are deployed. Once more construction is avalaible, you reassigned your experienced personnel to the new construction. Otherwise your creating a group of idle servicemen. Is actually how a navy has been operating in time of war. Old vessels don´t get decommissioned in time of war, they´re given less relevant roles.

The time Mr Weber establishes is way less generous that the one i´ve been using. The time in which a ship can be deployed is at least around 22 months... and that is with the shipyards already built.
http://www.davidweber.net/posts/100-shi ... times.html

In the Honorverse autocannon and laser clusters are both CIWS (Close In Weapons System). Autocannon may make relativistic speeds, but lasers are already C weapons.

As long as your reactors are running, they will shoot. The only space requirement is capacitors. Autocannon run the risk of jamming, ships need ammo storage, and like CMs one runs the risk of shooting them dry.


And again, im not proposing to substitute cluster lasers. If you read me, then you should acknowledge that what i´m saying is increasing the AA armament of those SDs, since (according to everybody) they´re obsolete and the conventional heavy lasers, grazers and ship to ship tubes is of NO BENEFIT.

I have NEVER advocated that any RMN personnel or facilities be used to update the captured SLN SDs. Any effort there is at best putting a shine on a turd, and would be better spent updating the existing RMN/Grayson SDs and DNs (an exercise which is still just a wasteful stopgap measure.) Or most preferably, just waiting to build new construction SD(p)s.


Don´t worry i didn´t think you were saying that. But really first, whatever it is, they have to do something. You don´t switch to total war footing and leave yards and workers idle. It´s just non sense and the best way to economical downfall.

It´s very simple indeed. There´s going to be places and installations that won´t be able to anything else, or anything else that is way more beneficial. Modify them there.

Unfortunately, there are better things for the "idle" sailors and workers to be doing.

For the Sailors, there are a multitude of old RMN ships in the reserve which can be remanned if there is the need and manpower to do so. Many of which were just placed back in the reserve to free up crews within the last 6-12 months for the newest construction.

The capitol ships (Victory, Sphinx, and Gryphon SDs, and Majestic DNs) all have various degrees of upgrades over their base build, depending on when they were last refitted, but all have at least FTL com, a +30% comp, advanced ECM and stealth features, and 2+x the firecontrol channels and CM systems a scientist has. The crews of which are ~3500-4500 sailors, compared to >6000 in an SLN Scientist and use standard RMN consoles, software, and hardware, as well as standardized RMN parts and tools. In addition, the oldest of these RMN ships was built in ~1885, and average less than 20 years old - compared to the Scientist class, a 250 year old design, where the active fleet's average was over 75 years old.

In addition to the Big boys, The RMN just put to bed several classes of it's sub wallers (Prince Consort CAs, Conquerer CA, some Star Knight CAs, Homer BCs, and several DD and CL classes) that could be reactivated if needed. Once again, these ships were all upgraded with systems which were front line as of at the oldest 1915 - which is still more advanced than the SLN is fielding.

However, from the latest book, the RMN is scrambling to fill all the existing ship slots. Many ships in Home Fleet or which were working up in Manticore space proper lost crew members when the stations blew, even if the ships survived (and vice versa when the crews were on planetary leave.) As of August 1922, there are not many spare crewmembers floating around, and many ships have been deployed understaffed. So the RMN will have to train a whole new class of recruits, (~18 months) before it has a surplus of sailors.

As for the workforce, Weyland's survivors and Grendlesbane's survivors are needed to rebuild the stations and support the current fleet. Since the fleet repair stations in Manticore and Grayson space are no longer available, the other stations like Hancock, Trevor's star and Basilisk have had to take over the workload for both the navies. Moving available idle specialists and available working hardware to those locations until the Manticore stations are ready would have been already accomplished.

Since the Manty stations were so massive and supported not only the RMN but also the 10-40,000 ship Manticorian Merchant Marine, every friendly shipyard is most likely either repairing an alliance ship, repairing a ship displaced by an alliance ship, or building a tool or module of some kind for the Manticore and Grayson rebuild (either directly or indirectly). At any time before 1926, I fear it would be difficult to find a shipyard or building asset idle for any period of time in Havenite Sector space. So there should be no workforce or shipyard, "just lying idle" in RMN space with nothing better to do than upgrade an SLN SD to an upgraded config that would still get trounced by the ships the RMN is purposely leaving in mothballs due to their obsolence.

Theemile wrote:

Talkregh wrote:
<Major snip>

But not Grayson´s infrastructure in orbit.

Word from Weber is that the pre-war military Grayson space infrastructure was removed from Grayson orbit and all moved to Blackbird after the base was rebuilt from the Masadans and upgraded to Manty technologies. There are no military shipyards remaining in Grayson orbit. This was a specific move to remove the danger of a strike against the military shipyards (a military objective) from accidentally hitting the planet. No word was given to what civilian infrastructure was there in orbit, but the giant space farms still exist.

Most of the production was switched, but not the installations. If memory doesn´t fail, Blackbird Yards were an initiative of Honor, and looking for it i find only that the funding was done by Hauptman Cartel, Grayson Sky Domes, Ltd., and the Grayson Office of Financial Development. I find it surprising since it wouldn´t have made sense to switch not so up to date installations to what was being planned as a new state of the art shipyard.

If you can point me out i´ll follow and read the Word of Weber.

http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Blackbird_Yard