MDM light cruiser - just a Saganami-C without armor?

pappilon wrote:IMHO, The CL is going the way of the frigate.Between the Roland class DDs and the Saganami "C" CAs here is no mission parameter for the CL, it is squeezed out.

drothgery wrote:

pappilon wrote:IMHO, The CL is going the way of the frigate.Between the Roland class DDs and the Saganami "C" CAs here is no mission parameter for the CL, it is squeezed out.

I think if the RMN stays true to its principles of going by mission rather than size, the Sag-C (or its close cousin) is a CL despite being much bigger than a traditional CA. It doesn't have the marine complement to handle traditional CA peacetime duties well, nor enough armor to really slug it out with Mark-16 Mod G equivalents around, but is about as small as you can with Mark 16s and a traditional weapons layout. For the CA role, you'd want something traditional-BC sized that's a tweaner between a Sag-C and a Nike.

And the Rolands are explicitly a transitional type that won't survive the RMN's enemies having cruiser-sized DDMs.

pappilon wrote:No DD class can stand up to DDMs. Isn't/wasn't their mission more fleet screen (preLACs), convoy escort, and piracy suppression? They were never built to stand in combat against anything big enough to fire DDMs, yet fast enough to run away.

I suppose we have t get back to mission parameters and see what we need.

ldwechsler wrote:

pappilon wrote:No DD class can stand up to DDMs. Isn't/wasn't their mission more fleet screen (preLACs), convoy escort, and piracy suppression? They were never built to stand in combat against anything big enough to fire DDMs, yet fast enough to run away.

I suppose we have t get back to mission parameters and see what we need.

The problem with the discussion is that it forgets one key element. Ships are built for specific missions. If you build a SagC and leave off the armor, it has the tools for a heavy cruiser mission but very little protection.

Essentially filling a need between a destroyer and heavy cruiser, it should be able to handle appropriate missions. It could be, for example, a super LAC with a real lot of antimissile weapons. Or it could be a mini-Nike, good armor and effective missiles. Or a super destroyer, perhaps serving as a flagship to a destroyer task force.

But with very little armor (and we know there isn't all that much of it anyway in lighter ships) they are more likely to be victims.

Perhaps different models for specialized kinds of missions.

Why spend 80% of what you would on a Sag C to get an almost unarmored version? Presumably you would need a crew as large (maybe larger if carrying more marines).

The Manties are perfectly prepared to continue using transitional types and types which will become highly vulnerable once the other side has MDMs very aggressively and offensively as long as their range advantage allows them to do so without prohibitive casualties, but they are already looking towards the next generation of warships and warship design. Hence the internal studies which are suggesting a 300,000-ton platform as the minimum to perform the light cruiser/destroyer role. In fact, what is probably going to happen is that the destroyer as a type will effectively disappear, with its independently deployable role reverting to the cruiser and its fleet screening role going to the LAC groups. In that respect, the Roland is every bit as much a short-term, transitional type as the BC(P) ever was, and the Admiralty's internal thinking reflects that. They are absolutely great, galaxy-beating ships to have... as long as the other side doesn't have ships with comparable weaponry.

As the technological and tactical innovations of the RMN and the Republican Navy spread through the rest of the galaxy's fleets, it's far more likely that the combination of LACs and CLACs will be much more attractive than the resumption of frigate construction. Current Manticoran fleet exercises and tactical analysis suggest that even destroyer types as large and robust as the Roland-class may well largely disappear from battle fleet formations. They will continue to have utility as independently deployable hyper-capable units, but there are indications even there that the destroyer will be supplanted in that role by the cruiser and that the destroyer's screening functions will be taken over by LACs transported in company with heavier combatants aboard attached CLACs. That, in fact, is already becoming Manticoran practice, and many Manticoran naval theorists point out that the primary reason for the Rolands' existence is the RMN's monopoly on the Mark 16. Once that monopoly is breached, they argue, the Roland will no longer be a survivable proposition in the face of larger units with more ammunition capacity and greater defensive strength (i.e., properly designed cruisers). Those theorists are projecting something closer to the 300,000-ton range for an MDM-era "light cruiser" which would be required to take over the independent "show the flag," picket, and hyper-capable convoy escort roles. Some of those same theorists are arguing that the best approach to convoy escort may actually be the construction of freighters with "spliced in" modules capable of transporting and servicing two or three LACs. Such armed merchantmen integrated into and scattered through convoys would provide reasonably adequate convoy defense anywhere except in the middle of a gravity wave, where the LACs would be unable to operate. It would not be a perfect solution, of course, but the analysts who support it argue that it would be the most cost-effective use of resources.

The 300,000-ton type the Royal Manticoran Navy is looking at as a notional ship is viewed by most Manticoran theorists as a light cruiser, not a heavy cruiser, but there's another group which argues that basically 300,000 tons is going to become the floor for an effective destroyer design in the fullness of time. It bases that statement on the role definition of the type, not its tonnage. Something similar happened to the United States Navy following World War II when it attempted to build a new escort vessel with the volume and tonnage to support the increasingly sophisticated sonar systems and weapons designed to meet the new submarine threat. The systems' displacement and volume requirements pushed "destroyer" design into the development of the Norfolk-class, which drove displacement up from the 2,182 tons of the Gearing-class to almost 6,000 (actually a tad larger than the WW II Atlanta-class light cruisers), at close to twice the cost… and resulted in a ship which was less effective as a generalist because of its need to concentrate on a single role. In essence, the changing weapons/technology mix drove up platform size, as well as increasing the cost and complexity of the technology itself, to a level at which the United States simply couldn't afford to buy the type in the numbers it would have required, and Norfolk became a one-off test bed rather than the lead ship of a new class of 'destroyer.'

olddatsunfan wrote:Rather than create a MDM light cruiser, why not simply expand upon the size of the Roland itself. Stretch the frame out a bit, deepen the magazine space, add a bit of energy firepower and counter missle and point defense along with increased crew space for say a platoon or two of marines? Would you have to go past 200,000 tons to get this?

olddatsunfan wrote:Rather than create a MDM light cruiser, why not simply expand upon the size of the Roland itself. Stretch the frame out a bit, deepen the magazine space, add a bit of energy firepower and counter missle and point defense along with increased crew space for say a platoon or two of marines? Would you have to go past 200,000 tons to get this?

Potato wrote:Surely I am not the only one who remembers the painful frigate topics of this forum's history? Because during that time, we got a relatively clear look at the future of ship design:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/286/1

The Manties are perfectly prepared to continue using transitional types and types which will become highly vulnerable once the other side has MDMs very aggressively and offensively as long as their range advantage allows them to do so without prohibitive casualties, but they are already looking towards the next generation of warships and warship design. Hence the internal studies which are suggesting a 300,000-ton platform as the minimum to perform the light cruiser/destroyer role. In fact, what is probably going to happen is that the destroyer as a type will effectively disappear, with its independently deployable role reverting to the cruiser and its fleet screening role going to the LAC groups. In that respect, the Roland is every bit as much a short-term, transitional type as the BC(P) ever was, and the Admiralty's internal thinking reflects that. They are absolutely great, galaxy-beating ships to have... as long as the other side doesn't have ships with comparable weaponry.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/289/1

As the technological and tactical innovations of the RMN and the Republican Navy spread through the rest of the galaxy's fleets, it's far more likely that the combination of LACs and CLACs will be much more attractive than the resumption of frigate construction. Current Manticoran fleet exercises and tactical analysis suggest that even destroyer types as large and robust as the Roland-class may well largely disappear from battle fleet formations. They will continue to have utility as independently deployable hyper-capable units, but there are indications even there that the destroyer will be supplanted in that role by the cruiser and that the destroyer's screening functions will be taken over by LACs transported in company with heavier combatants aboard attached CLACs. That, in fact, is already becoming Manticoran practice, and many Manticoran naval theorists point out that the primary reason for the Rolands' existence is the RMN's monopoly on the Mark 16. Once that monopoly is breached, they argue, the Roland will no longer be a survivable proposition in the face of larger units with more ammunition capacity and greater defensive strength (i.e., properly designed cruisers). Those theorists are projecting something closer to the 300,000-ton range for an MDM-era "light cruiser" which would be required to take over the independent "show the flag," picket, and hyper-capable convoy escort roles. Some of those same theorists are arguing that the best approach to convoy escort may actually be the construction of freighters with "spliced in" modules capable of transporting and servicing two or three LACs. Such armed merchantmen integrated into and scattered through convoys would provide reasonably adequate convoy defense anywhere except in the middle of a gravity wave, where the LACs would be unable to operate. It would not be a perfect solution, of course, but the analysts who support it argue that it would be the most cost-effective use of resources.

The 300,000-ton type the Royal Manticoran Navy is looking at as a notional ship is viewed by most Manticoran theorists as a light cruiser, not a heavy cruiser, but there's another group which argues that basically 300,000 tons is going to become the floor for an effective destroyer design in the fullness of time. It bases that statement on the role definition of the type, not its tonnage. Something similar happened to the United States Navy following World War II when it attempted to build a new escort vessel with the volume and tonnage to support the increasingly sophisticated sonar systems and weapons designed to meet the new submarine threat. The systems' displacement and volume requirements pushed "destroyer" design into the development of the Norfolk-class, which drove displacement up from the 2,182 tons of the Gearing-class to almost 6,000 (actually a tad larger than the WW II Atlanta-class light cruisers), at close to twice the cost… and resulted in a ship which was less effective as a generalist because of its need to concentrate on a single role. In essence, the changing weapons/technology mix drove up platform size, as well as increasing the cost and complexity of the technology itself, to a level at which the United States simply couldn't afford to buy the type in the numbers it would have required, and Norfolk became a one-off test bed rather than the lead ship of a new class of 'destroyer.'