Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #2

kzt wrote:

Eagleeye wrote:I wonder how the workload is parted on a modern DD. Take a Roland with its crew of 68 (iIrc). In my opinion (and if there are 4 duty-shifts) normal operations would then need only 17 people; and you should be able to effectively fight the ship with, say, 2 shifts - that are 34 people. So, you could reduce the crew down to that barebone - at least for a limited (and short! - no more than a few weeks or so) time. But if that would be necessary at all, the GA would already be royally screwed.

The average USN sailor at sea has a 108 hour workweek. In peacetime.

The average USN sailor at sea also doesn't have the technology and computer support available a RMN-rating or -NCO would take for granted aboard such a high-tech-vessel as a Roland-DD. Not even in comparision.

Eagleeye wrote:

kzt wrote:The average USN sailor at sea has a 108 hour workweek. In peacetime.

The average USN sailor at sea also doesn't have the technology and computer support available a RMN-rating or -NCO would take for granted aboard such a high-tech-vessel as a Roland-DD. Not even in comparision.

The highly automated USN ships don't have the problem of having their crew work huge numbers of hours at sea. Because they don't actually spend much time at sea, usually involving being towed into port to wait months for a an engine replacement. Every USN vessel in Mayport sailed away from the hurricane except for the two newest 'warships' in the navy. Apparently they couldn't find enough ocean going tugboats.

kzt wrote:

Eagleeye wrote:I wonder how the workload is parted on a modern DD. Take a Roland with its crew of 68 (iIrc). In my opinion (and if there are 4 duty-shifts) normal operations would then need only 17 people; and you should be able to effectively fight the ship with, say, 2 shifts - that are 34 people. So, you could reduce the crew down to that barebone - at least for a limited (and short! - no more than a few weeks or so) time. But if that would be necessary at all, the GA would already be royally screwed.

The average USN sailor at sea has a 108 hour workweek. In peacetime.

KZT:

Navy works just like most other businesses that operate 24/7. Most work a normal 8 hour work day, and then for a week they work a half shift. So upwards of a week they work 12 hour days. Or the 6 hour splits etc for watches instead of those who push paper.

Since there are 3 full shifts aboard most all navy vessels currently..... I think anyone who is reading this can do the very simple math...

How many hours in a week? Yea.. 24x7 = 168 and half of that even on only a 2 shift crew is 84. Most all ships have 3... Or 56 hours a week. Not exactly a back breaker week. In engineering land that is called a normal work week.

Common kzt, lets not stretch the truth massively.

Relax wrote:.

How many hours in a week? Yea.. 24x7 = 168 and half of that even on only a 2 shift crew is 84. Most all ships have 3... Or 56 hours a week. Not exactly a back breaker week. In engineering land that is called a normal work week.

Common kzt, lets not stretch the truth massively.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/worl ... -warn.html
"The rotation can lead to a watch officer working a 20-hour day every three days, Mr. Cordle said, adding that even designated sleep time can be interrupted by drills or refueling operations that can keep sailors up for days at a time. A Government Accountability Office report from May said sailors were on duty up to 108 hours each week."
https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/684771.pdf

kzt wrote:The other option is to hyper out on top of the security element on a wormhole. Nobody can stay at GQ for weeks, much less months.

That is certainly a probable situation which Manticore is taking into account. The description of the RMN BCs and then the CLAC exiting that final wormhole would seem to show that they were speading the force out 1) for security comming through in case there was more at that other end than expected, 2) provide maximum dispersement for both supporting fire and area domination relative to the wormhole, 3) probable layerd defensive coverage including the LACs.
I suspect that at least two dispatch boats are going to be included at each end of the wormholes eventualy so that communication can be maintiained on both an regular and emergency basis back up that chain without reducing the firepower at each terminus to do it.

Those ships are going to be stuck there for a while out on the sharp end as are every seperate task group at each end of the wormhole chain leading back to Manticore. They should get some rotation but everybody is still out where they can be attacked by a force able to get much closer with the hyper limit of a terminus than a star.

One suggestion would be a fairly heavy (and rotated with replacements regularly) drone shell in a couple of layers linked to the tactical systems of the ships. The ships themselves are going to be on hightened alert but not GQ much of the time though a lot of weapons systems are going to be on standby when not fully hot. The real intersting part is how touchy you can set the tactical systems linking to the ships sensors, the drone net and the triggering of GQ/Battle Stations with auto bringing up everything so the systems ship will automaticly be ready to fight if almost anything unexpected happens.
They probably aren't going to be fireing anti-ship missles automatically but all the defensive suite can target and launch on anything incoming outside of a very short list of paramiters.

I would also think that RMN might want to mine the surrounding area with pods. If the SLN wants to throw ships at the blocking force, it is going to have to absorb punishment all the way in. A lot depends on distence to the hyper-limit vs the range of the missiles in the pods and the overlap of coverage and ranges. This would be an interesting place to put some of the repurposed SLN grazers...big smile.
Remember that RMN is using FTL communications. It is possible to coordinate the fire from multiple dispursed pods for time-on-target effect against incoming ships. It could also be possible to retarget the weapons from pods outside of fully powerd flight range to take advantage of a ballistic period and essentialy fire across a good portion of the sphear of the hyper limit it that would help.
The blocking force is also going to be constantly in motion. Nobody sitting still because they don't have any real depth of a system to provide reaction time against an attacking force.
They should also have something working to deal with ships that might be comming out of hyper well outside the hyperlimit to south the terminus. They also are parobably not going to be letting anybody go through the terminus without prior clearence so nobody is going to be getting a close look.

A lot also depends on just how much the SLN decides to throw at any given blocking force. If the SLN sends 60 SDs they are probably going to destroy some and drive off the rest of the blocking ships but that would still be at some high cost to the SLN.

Brigade XO wrote:I would also think that RMN might want to mine the surrounding area with pods. If the SLN wants to throw ships at the blocking force, it is going to have to absorb punishment all the way in. A lot depends on distence to the hyper-limit vs the range of the missiles in the pods and the overlap of coverage and ranges. This would be an interesting place to put some of the repurposed SLN grazers...big smile.
Remember that RMN is using FTL communications. It is possible to coordinate the fire from multiple dispursed pods for time-on-target effect against incoming ships. It could also be possible to retarget the weapons from pods outside of fully powerd flight range to take advantage of a ballistic period and essentialy fire across a good portion of the sphear of the hyper limit it that would help.
The blocking force is also going to be constantly in motion. Nobody sitting still because they don't have any real depth of a system to provide reaction time against an attacking force.
They should also have something working to deal with ships that might be comming out of hyper well outside the hyperlimit to south the terminus. They also are parobably not going to be letting anybody go through the terminus without prior clearence so nobody is going to be getting a close look.

A lot also depends on just how much the SLN decides to throw at any given blocking force. If the SLN sends 60 SDs they are probably going to destroy some and drive off the rest of the blocking ships but that would still be at some high cost to the SLN.

I think you are making a fundamental mistake here. The entire area around the WHT is far outside the hyperlimit. You can translate from alpha into anywhere around the WHT anywhere other then the actual terminus. Certain areas are "less favorable" for this than others and might produce certain unpleasant "complications" depending on various factors. However the SLN does in fact understand these.

"the resonance zone—the volume of space between the Junction and Manticore-A in which it was virtually impossible to translate between hyper-space and normal-space. Any wormhole terminus associated with a star formed a conical volume in hyper, with the wormhole at its apex and a base centered on the star and twice as wide as its hyper limit, in which hyper-space astrogation became less than totally reliable. The bigger the terminus or junction, the stronger the resonance effect . . . and the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, with its multiple termini, was the largest ever discovered. The resonance zone it produced was more of a tsunami, and it didn't just make astrogation "less than reliable." It made it the next best thing to flatly impossible. Any translation out of the resonance zone risked serious astrogational uncertainty, and any translation into the zone would have been no more than a complicated way to commit suicide."

kzt wrote:I think you are making a fundamental mistake here. The entire area around the WHT is far outside the hyperlimit. You can translate from alpha into anywhere around the WHT anywhere other then the actual terminus. Certain areas are "less favorable" for this than others and might produce certain unpleasant "complications" depending on various factors. However the SLN does in fact understand these.

"the resonance zone—the volume of space between the Junction and Manticore-A in which it was virtually impossible to translate between hyper-space and normal-space. Any wormhole terminus associated with a star formed a conical volume in hyper, with the wormhole at its apex and a base centered on the star and twice as wide as its hyper limit, in which hyper-space astrogation became less than totally reliable. The bigger the terminus or junction, the stronger the resonance effect . . . and the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, with its multiple termini, was the largest ever discovered. The resonance zone it produced was more of a tsunami, and it didn't just make astrogation "less than reliable." It made it the next best thing to flatly impossible. Any translation out of the resonance zone risked serious astrogational uncertainty, and any translation into the zone would have been no more than a complicated way to commit suicide."

Though technically the wormhole, like a gas giant though much smaller, creates a small hyper limit of it's own. OBS says "Both wormholes and stars had hyper limits, within which no ship could enter or leave hyper. For junctions, the limit was, less than a million kilometers; for a G0 star, it was twenty-two light-minutes." (In contrast HotQ says "Uriel’s bloated sphere. The planet was so enormous it created a hyper limit of almost five light-minutes" [or almost 90 million km]

Still a wormhole's hyper limit is barely enough to keep people from dropping out within energy range of the terminus - they can emerge in easy missile range (assuming they don't screw up their jump like the Havenite's did when they pounced on Basilisk)

snip

“I can’t say I disagree, Gabby,” he said finally. “On the other hand, if the stories about what happened to Eleventh Fleet and Admiral Crandall are anything to go by, this could get . . . interesting.”


“One way to put it, Sir,” Timberlake agreed. “On the other hand, I think I like the thinking behind this. The bastards can’t have those killer missile pods and their damned superdreadnoughts everywhere!”

“They don’t need to have them ‘everywhere’ to ruin our whole day,” Capriotti pointed out dryly. “They only have to have them wherever we turn up.”

“I know, Sir.” The admiral’s flag captain shrugged. “Sooner or later, though, we’ve got to take it to them. And given what they did to Admiral Filareta, it looks like fleet engagements are going to be a really bad idea until our tech people can figure out how to match their damned missiles.”

snip

Excuse me, but am I reading this wrongly? The SLN still doesn't seem to have a clue about Manty ship capabilities??? It isn't just the SDs. Which made me think, the SLN didn't have benefit to any of the hard data from their own captured ships. But didn't the RMN send them the equivalent of their own "black box" untouched? Makes you wonder whether the RMN should have returned at least one ship, computers untouched and intact.

cthia wrote:
Excuse me, but am I reading this wrongly? The SLN still doesn't seem to have a clue about Manty ship capabilities??? It isn't just the SDs. Which made me think, the SLN didn't have benefit to any of the hard data from their own captured ships. But didn't the RMN send them the equivalent of their own "black box" untouched? Makes you wonder whether the RMN should have returned at least one ship, computers untouched and intact.

Don't forget the timeframe. We are still in July 1922; Filareta had just got handed his head on a silver platter (courtesy of the MAlign) and - yes: they have seen modern LAC and CLACs, but not in a fighting situation. And they still don't have a clue about podnaughts and podlaying BCs (after all, these are not our "good Sollies" in Smoking frog ) - One year down the road, and I would agree with you; so ... I doubt, they even have begun to analyze (in an impartial way) any data they may've got from the manties; and they have no - not one single bit - data from their own surviving ships. And that would be the only source they would regard as reliable. But there are no surviving ships. Either they were destroyed, or their computer cores were burnt, or they were taken by the different manticoran fleets and taskforces.

Now, that I think about it - ok, there are surviving solarian vessels still operable and in solly hands: the 3 DDs in Saltash. These were abandoned by their crews, but not destroyed by the Manties. They may have useful data; the question is - are they able to send one of the vessels (or at least any data they got) to Earth in time to do the Sollies some good? After all, they fought only against 5 Rolands in Saltash. Nothing else. Better than nothing (regarding uncompromised data sources) I assume, but still not really much.

DDMs have only been used in a few engagements like at Saltash, and not many sollies survived that fight. I think only the ones who scuttled their piece of junk destroyers would be able to give anything close to proper report as to what happened

now even if that info has made it back to HQ no SLN admiral is going to believe that a handful of destroyers, even ones that are well on the way to being heavy cruisers could destroy battlecruisers. especially not with missiles that outperform what SLN SDs can tube fire

They have barely got their heads around the concept of missile pods, they have no clue that those missiles can be fired from tubes and be just as nasty.

on a side note do manty SDs even HAVE missile tubes anymore?

I thought the invictus class and presumably the oft rumoured 3rd gen SD(P) that was destroyed with Vulcan and the other yards had removed them in favour of a deeper pod core.

still leaves all the medusa/haringtons (63 were made according to houe of steel but at least some of those were destroyed, BOMa if nowhere else) but still that means that the SL are unlikely to see MDMs coming from tubes very often.

in one respect that stregy might work if the raiders only encounter the older ships which are what are more likely to be used for convoy or patrol. most newer ones are either in 10th fleet, or Lacoon. we know the ERM and LERM exist but i have seen no text EV as to weather they have the power to really hurt solly CA+. the original mk 16 struggled with BC grade armour and yes the upgrade was fairly easy to do but given that the ships that use ERM were largely being replaced by DDM ships it might not have happend. the only ship still likely to need it would be the Avalon CL.