How many naval personnel is there available in Talbott.

I imagine that there may be a use for a few of the captured Solarian Navy vessels captured. Training vessels for the Talbott naval personnel. Since these vessels are manpower heavy, would it not make sense to retrain them in a few captured light or heavy cruisers while be able to contribute to pirate suppression?

olddatsunfan wrote:I imagine that there may be a use for a few of the captured Solarian Navy vessels captured. Training vessels for the Talbott naval personnel. Since these vessels are manpower heavy, would it not make sense to retrain them in a few captured light or heavy cruisers while be able to contribute to pirate suppression?

I mentioned using the captured Solarian light units to replace the Talbott SDF ships on a 1:1 basis about 5 years ago. David shot it down saying that the RMN is not creating a 2 tier naval system.

<snerk below>

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Besides - as of the beginning of the new book, ALL the SLN ships are being fed into a trash compactor after they are stripped of useful parts, and are being melted down for useful metals to rebuild the stations. They are just gone

PeterZ wrote:
One suspects that retooling the Quadrant to build Shrikes and Ferrets is in the works. I doubt that the GA would see an advantage in upgrading The Quadrant twice. It would make more sense to use Cemeterres to shore up the Verge systems wanting to align with the GA. That is more of a dead end tech anyway, but still represents a major threat against anything short of a waller.

Heck, pretty soon Haven will be selling the licenses to build them for export. I would be surprised if Talbott residents didn't find a way to purchase a license. Havenite builders would be more interested in building Shrikes.

You know Silesia will. With an average of >1 shipyard per system (34 RMN systems), something has to keep them busy or else ... wel,l everyone knows the idle hands saying. In pre-annexation Silesia, many minor shipyards kept themselves busy doing piece work. And it was stated that it was just as expensive to run a shipyard that wasn't building a ship as one that was, so many who needed a contract just built a light warship, hoping to force a planetary SDF to buy it so it didn't end up it pirate hands... or just let it go to those same random nameless customers.

It would be better to keep them focused for as long as possible. Currently, they are either picking up the merchie maintenance slack that Manticore cannot do, or assisting directly or indirectly in the rebuild efforts for Manticore. But after Manticore's stations are up and running - it would be best to have a plan for them.

Theemile wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
One suspects that retooling the Quadrant to build Shrikes and Ferrets is in the works. I doubt that the GA would see an advantage in upgrading The Quadrant twice. It would make more sense to use Cemeterres to shore up the Verge systems wanting to align with the GA. That is more of a dead end tech anyway, but still represents a major threat against anything short of a waller.

Heck, pretty soon Haven will be selling the licenses to build them for export. I would be surprised if Talbott residents didn't find a way to purchase a license. Havenite builders would be more interested in building Shrikes.

You know Silesia will. With an average of >1 shipyard per system (34 RMN systems), something has to keep them busy or else ... wel,l everyone knows the idle hands saying. In pre-annexation Silesia, many minor shipyards kept themselves busy doing piece work. And it was stated that it was just as expensive to run a shipyard that wasn't building a ship as one that was, so many who needed a contract just built a light warship, hoping to force a planetary SDF to buy it so it didn't end up it pirate hands... or just let it go to those same random nameless customers.

It would be better to keep them focused for as long as possible. Currently, they are either picking up the merchie maintenance slack that Manticore cannot do, or assisting directly or indirectly in the rebuild efforts for Manticore. But after Manticore's stations are up and running - it would be best to have a plan for them.

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Silesia and Talbot are used to produce export naval platforms. I doubt the GA will be eager to produce export variant hyper capable units though. Too likely those units will end up as pirates. I am sure exceptions will be made and those Talbot and Silesian yards would be in line to produce those units too. Between supplying parts and munitions for the LACs and what hyper capable units are approved, that'll keep the Silesian and Talbotter builders quite busy.

I forgot to include those incessantly ingenious Graysons in my musings.

They would adapt Cimeterres to fire Mk 9 Vipers and offer an export version of the Katana. Better yet redesign the Cemeterre as the export Katana. Those SD point defense laser clusters are tough enough against armed merchant ships/pirates. The Mk 9 are equally good against lightly armored pirates. Shrike variants have that massive GRASER. One or two Shrikes are useful as part of a floatilla of Cimeterres or Katanas.

PeterZ wrote:I forgot to include those incessantly ingenious Graysons in my musings.

They would adapt Cimeterres to fire Mk 9 Vipers and offer an export version of the Katana. Better yet redesign the Cemeterre as the export Katana. Those SD point defense laser clusters are tough enough against armed merchant ships/pirates. The Mk 9 are equally good against lightly armored pirates. Shrike variants have that massive GRASER. One or two Shrikes are useful as part of a floatilla of Cimeterres or Katanas.

I doubt even the Havenites will keep their second tier LACs if they have access to Alliance top tier ones. They may or may not make them available to verge systems.

It appeared that Manticore was in the process of shipping LAC squadrons to Talbott as the primary way to build System Defence Forces. Mike ended up grabbing several CLACs for 10th Fleet (compleat with the LAC loads) but putting several squadrons of LACs anywhere is a potent defence against more than pirates.
If an SLN DD or CA showes up, RMN LACs can do the job. If four or five show up in the commerce raiding scenario, that might keep them from raiding deep into the system but not from causing a lot of damage to anything caught in transit (in or out) or from shooting up part of whatever orbital infrastructure or system extraction/frabrication was going on in astroid belts etc.
The places such as Rembrandt are going to be able to continue to field their existing ships for a while. They are hyper-capable warships and just fine in anti-piracy convoy work even if they are SL retired ships. It is entirely possible that some of those SL model ships can get upgrades or at least add-ons to boost their defenses. If they have the command channels, they could handle some pods which might even out running into an current SL ship. In any event, they ware warships that should be able to stand agains a similar force of SL warships in defence of a local system, particularly with support of TRAINED and prefferably experienced LAC squadrons. More platforms, more weapons, more defenses and probably much better communications.
There is no good reason, given the lack of present Manticore abilit to produce warships etc and the time it will take to retrain all the Talbott SDF people, to retire anyting except the SL type LACs. As far as system defence, some of those could even continue to be used as pure Customs boats to keep modern LACs in pure System Defence mode. Retraining them all at the same time is going to take their units out of service when there is a pressing need to bolster the defence capasity.

PeterZ wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I don't know if Manticore would want to bother, or if Haven would be willing to cooperate, but even Cimeterres-Betas would be a significant improvement to capabilities over classic LACs. (Well, their missiles might not be as good anti-ship as old style missiles in box launchers but their accel, bow-wall, and spinal laser make them much nastier up close than any old-style LAC.

We might see Haven temporarily providing LACs to Talbott systems until the Shrike / Ferret production lines are running again. (But I'd bet they actually soldier on with whatever 10th fleet resources have been assigned plus any RMN pods and LACs shipped their way before Oyster Bay)

One suspects that retooling the Quadrant to build Shrikes and Ferrets is in the works. I doubt that the GA would see an advantage in upgrading The Quadrant twice. It would make more sense to use Cemeterres to shore up the Verge systems wanting to align with the GA. That is more of a dead end tech anyway, but still represents a major threat against anything short of a waller.

Heck, pretty soon Haven will be selling the licenses to build them for export. I would be surprised if Talbott residents didn't find a way to purchase a license. Havenite builders would be more interested in building Shrikes.

Eh, I've said before that Haven's LACs have more breakthrough tech in them that you might think. Far from being dead it access to it gives people a solid roadmap past the multi-century design stagnation of warships.

They've got far better compensators than the League has - showing at least one development path towards Manticore's current capabilities of roughly 50% better than the 22 year old status quo.

They've got advanced drive nodes. They're not quite Beta Squared nodes, but they might be 2^1.6 nodes . They're more powerful than nodes previously mounted on LACs (not that that helps much for full up starships). But more importantly they and their impeller rooms were designed to be compatible with bow walls (we know from SoS that adding a bow wall to an older ship required rebuilding the impeller rooms to support it) so this shows people how to make that tech change. And most important they're designed to provide moderate bandwidth FTL communications -- a capability that the SLN is convinced would be hard to fit into an SD almost 200x the size.

Sure there are also plenty things that they lack compared to a Shrike but just because they're missing some pieces and other parts aren't quite as far down the development path doesn't make all their tech a dead-end.


That doesn't mean they can't be exported - just that you want to be careful who you export them to.

Ok, Cimeterres can be deployed and sold to Silesia for systems defense roles. Export versions with less efficient compensators get sold to the Verge. Sure the more powerful drive nodes are exposed, but those don't lead to MDMs. They are another path to ESDMs. SLN already have them.

PeterZ wrote:Ok, Cimeterres can be deployed and sold to Silesia for systems defense roles. Export versions with less efficient compensators get sold to the Verge. Sure the more powerful drive nodes are exposed, but those don't lead to MDMs. They are another path to ESDMs. SLN already have them.

I really don't see Sarnow wanting to buy Havenite LACs for his new systems in Silesia. Its not like they will become independent systems after all. More like Talbott Sector. Why settle for second best from another system. Buy Cimterres you have to either keep buying missiles from Haven or divert resources to build them, maintaining a double inventory.