The Charles Ward

cthia wrote:A couple of things. I always thought that the backup command deck was also located down in CIC. Who is actually in charge on the backup command deck, the XO? The XO is always on the bridge with the Captain isn't he? It certainly seems that the responsibility would fall on someone's shoulders that could carry the weight...

Rajani Isa wrote:

cthia wrote: I also lightheartedly suggested that they should be able to put a lot of missiles into space very quickly. A Full Metal Dump.

I believe the proper Tropean term would be "Macross Missile Massacre"

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:A couple of things. I always thought that the backup command deck was also located down in CIC. Who is actually in charge on the backup command deck, the XO? The XO is always on the bridge with the Captain isn't he? It certainly seems that the responsibility would fall on someone's shoulders that could carry the weight...

On DD/CLs/small CAs the aux control is collocated with Damage Control, not CIC. Damage Control is as armored as the ship can get, so it can survive any damage the ship may have survived. It's only manned as aux control during battlestatons.

cthia wrote:I C. Yet how ironic, as it seems that it offers better protection for the CO from those huge flying projectiles of shredded debris from bulkheads, which always seem to dismember a member of the bridge from remembering.

cthia wrote:What a slap in the face it would be for a Solly force to be destroyed by two fleet auxiliaries, the CW and Pirate's Bane. LOL

After all, the silly Sollies are only acting like... pirates.

Theemile wrote:About 5 years ago, I posted a thread called "1922: patrolling the Talbott quadrant with medium units" The main point of the post was Manticore's greatest advantage was it's force multiplier found in pods, and especially for light and medium units, you cannot patrol with heavy pod loads, as their reactor's "tactical lifespan" when using the internal tractor, limited them to a fraction of their max pod load when using only ship tractors.

Jonathan_S wrote:And we saw how well Pirate's Bane stood up to a pair of modern destroyers, even with some surprise on her side. She was able to limp into Sidemore afterwards, but she was fairly beat to hell. Suckering a Sollie raider into energy range (her favorite tactic against pirates) is a deadly gamble.

Brigade XO wrote:

cthia wrote:The CW is of course a fleet auxiliary. Upon a wiki search it is noted that The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a civilian-manned fleet owned by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, whose purpose is to support the Royal Navy. Why they would ever be civilian manned is beyond me. It isn't like enemy blockades are going to allow support ships full of fuel, food and munitions through simply because they are civilian.

Were the Honorverse's auxiliaries ever civilian manned, even before they were unarmed?

The CW is certainly not meant to go into battle, although if she has to, she can, certainly if up against Solly arrogance.

That reminded me of ships like the USNR Bob Hope which is a Military Sealift Command ship. Civilian crews under contract to the government, in the case of the Bob Hope (at least was) anchored at Diego Garcia as part of the prepositioning program of equipment and supplies.

Not armed but would be carrying all sorts of supplies and equipment plus have the ability to offload that material where the military needs it. Depending on the ship class, they may or may not need some sort of port facility (even a rudimentary one) to deliver the material. In the Honorverse, this would be somewhat simplified since they could pass shipping contaniers or load shuttles (their own or from other Navy ships) for delivery.

The Pirate's Bane was a former Aldermani auxiluary transport and was armed from the beginning. Clearly the Aldermani were already dealing with the realities of the pirate problems in the Silesia area and required that their auxil transports could at least defend themselves against your garden variety of pirate. They might have to run away but they were going to make it difficult and probably expensive to chase them. Pirates really don't like having to fight a target that can fight back. Aside from the possibility that they could get killed, pirates don't like having their ships damaged nor that it is more expensive to try and capture something than the prize is worth. Bachfish bought her and another ship which were decommissioned by the Aldermani (with very quiet help from Manticorian ONI who did appreciate both his skill and commitment) with the weapons systems intact and is able to purchase reloads for his missile magazines etc. Bachfish also has licenses from the Aldermani (and earlier from various governments in the Silesia area) to operate these armed civilian ships in their systems and we might presume would now have one from Manticore to continue doing so.
He has been (mostly) quietly eliminating pirates in the Silesia area by letting them discover they have picked on the wrong merchant ship- and picking up reward and prize money by capturing or destroying them. Just part of his business model...big smile. Actually, if you have the experience, the competence, the trained (and motiviated) crew and availability of weapons, it is quite good one as it lets you trade -sucessfuly and more or less safely- in places where others would be avoiding and you can earn a premium on your shipping rates for what is essentialy hazardous duty areas where most merchants are worried about going. For Bachfish, it is also a vindication of his military service & experience and it has let him continue to both make a living and have the respect (justly earned) of the Aldermani, those in Manticore that know what happened and value a good officer doing his job, and the clients for whom he is providing a needed service that others are afraid to undertake.

The CW is not a civilian ship. Dispite the convoluted path the Janack (spelling) administration took to get there, it ended up being designed to deliver both munitions and proved repairs in front line conditions. It also has a fair amount of capasity to defend itself (in the spirit of the best defence is a good offense). So, this is clearly NOT some lightly armed merchant or liner and is expected to hang with fleet units to provide support in places that a freighter has little business being. You get a military crew with all the training that implies, firmly in the chain of command and not some soap-bubble that can't defend itself.
Not an escort CLAC, and not LAC squadron bolt-on package for a merchant ship. Armed Fleet Aux- with intragal LAC squadron.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:What a slap in the face it would be for a Solly force to be destroyed by two fleet auxiliaries, the CW and Pirate's Bane. LOL

After all, the silly Sollies are only acting like... pirates.

Though things would have to be screwed up by the numbers for Pirate's Bane to be part of that fight. Her longest ranged weapons would be a single-drive missile, ~7.5 million mile range, no ballistic segment option.

She'd slightly out ranged by the Sollie's latest single drive missile, and badly out ranged by the Cataphracts they're likely to actually be carrying. (Which in turn are badly out ranged by the Mk16s the Charles Ward would have in her pods).


And we saw how well Pirate's Bane stood up to a pair of modern destroyers, even with some surprise on her side. She was able to limp into Sidemore afterwards, but she was fairly beat to hell. Suckering a Sollie raider into energy range (her favorite tactic against pirates) is a deadly gamble.

Theemile wrote:About 5 years ago, I posted a thread called "1922: patrolling the Talbott quadrant with medium units" The main point of the post was Manticore's greatest advantage was it's force multiplier found in pods, and especially for light and medium units, you cannot patrol with heavy pod loads, as their reactor's "tactical lifespan" when using the internal tractor, limited them to a fraction of their max pod load when using only ship tractors.

And since then David mentioned in passing that externally carried pods also suffer from interference from the ship's impeller nodes - which slowly degrade the molicircs in the missiles' dormant drive nodes. Kind of a very slow motion version of why dual drive missiles didn't work (without either a lot of stand-off distance - Cataphract solution - or the grav "baffle" proper DDM/MDM solution. Otherwise the active impeller ring would trash the 2nd set before they could be used)

So apparently even if you could provide power to the missile simply riding around for a month or so on the ship's exterior hull, or towed within the wedge, will have rendered the missile in need of refurbishing before use.

Brigade XO wrote:

cthia wrote:The CW is of course a fleet auxiliary. Upon a wiki search it is noted that The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a civilian-manned fleet owned by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, whose purpose is to support the Royal Navy. Why they would ever be civilian manned is beyond me. It isn't like enemy blockades are going to allow support ships full of fuel, food and munitions through simply because they are civilian.

Were the Honorverse's auxiliaries ever civilian manned, even before they were unarmed?

The CW is certainly not meant to go into battle, although if she has to, she can, certainly if up against Solly arrogance.

That reminded me of ships like the USNR Bob Hope which is a Military Sealift Command ship. Civilian crews under contract to the government, in the case of the Bob Hope (at least was) anchored at Diego Garcia as part of the prepositioning program of equipment and supplies.

Not armed but would be carrying all sorts of supplies and equipment plus have the ability to offload that material where the military needs it. Depending on the ship class, they may or may not need some sort of port facility (even a rudimentary one) to deliver the material. In the Honorverse, this would be somewhat simplified since they could pass shipping contaniers or load shuttles (their own or from other Navy ships) for delivery.

The Pirate's Bane was a former Aldermani auxiluary transport and was armed from the beginning. Clearly the Aldermani were already dealing with the realities of the pirate problems in the Silesia area and required that their auxil transports could at least defend themselves against your garden variety of pirate. They might have to run away but they were going to make it difficult and probably expensive to chase them. Pirates really don't like having to fight a target that can fight back. Aside from the possibility that they could get killed, pirates don't like having their ships damaged nor that it is more expensive to try and capture something than the prize is worth. Bachfish bought her and another ship which were decommissioned by the Aldermani (with very quiet help from Manticorian ONI who did appreciate both his skill and commitment) with the weapons systems intact and is able to purchase reloads for his missile magazines etc. Bachfish also has licenses from the Aldermani (and earlier from various governments in the Silesia area) to operate these armed civilian ships in their systems and we might presume would now have one from Manticore to continue doing so.
He has been (mostly) quietly eliminating pirates in the Silesia area by letting them discover they have picked on the wrong merchant ship- and picking up reward and prize money by capturing or destroying them. Just part of his business model...big smile. Actually, if you have the experience, the competence, the trained (and motiviated) crew and availability of weapons, it is quite good one as it lets you trade -sucessfuly and more or less safely- in places where others would be avoiding and you can earn a premium on your shipping rates for what is essentialy hazardous duty areas where most merchants are worried about going. For Bachfish, it is also a vindication of his military service & experience and it has let him continue to both make a living and have the respect (justly earned) of the Aldermani, those in Manticore that know what happened and value a good officer doing his job, and the clients for whom he is providing a needed service that others are afraid to undertake.

The CW is not a civilian ship. Dispite the convoluted path the Janack (spelling) administration took to get there, it ended up being designed to deliver both munitions and proved repairs in front line conditions. It also has a fair amount of capasity to defend itself (in the spirit of the best defence is a good offense). So, this is clearly NOT some lightly armed merchant or liner and is expected to hang with fleet units to provide support in places that a freighter has little business being. You get a military crew with all the training that implies, firmly in the chain of command and not some soap-bubble that can't defend itself.
Not an escort CLAC, and not LAC squadron bolt-on package for a merchant ship. Armed Fleet Aux- with intragal LAC squadron.

Theemile wrote:About 5 years ago, I posted a thread called "1922: patrolling the Talbott quadrant with medium units" The main point of the post was Manticore's greatest advantage was it's force multiplier found in pods, and especially for light and medium units, you cannot patrol with heavy pod loads, as their reactor's "tactical lifespan" when using the internal tractor, limited them to a fraction of their max pod load when using only ship tractors.


I pointed out that for medium forces to be most effective, they required a podlayer that could keep up with them, and support them when they were on station. In fact it needed to be able to stay in formation with the patrolling squadron, as they never knew, if after they crossed the hyperlimit, if they would require pods. And if it had to be hazarded like that, it should have it's own firecontrol and defenses. Even if it wasn't brought into a system, it could be on it's own at the hyperlimit or deep space, which may force a squadron to split up to guard the auxiliary - so having at least a small internal defensive/offensive suite would be a good idea for squadrons at the tip of the spear.

At the time, the options were Frieghters, AMCs, Spec built Ammo Carriers, Fast Minelayers, and BC(p)s. I dismissed the Freighters and AMCs outside my analysis, they were way too slow to keep up with CLs, CAs and BCs, and eventually would be left behind for the sake of expedience, and thus not be available when truly needed.

The Ammo Carriers, like the 4.5Mton Volcano class, were a decent solution, but (despite their integrated defenses) lacked offensive firecontrol. They were probably fairly cheap to build, but adding firecontrol would change that, and require a larger crew than the ~70 they currently had. Besides, their speed made them a better fit with the wallers they normally supported.



Fast Minelayers and BC(P)s were left. Both are on BC frames, with BC impellers and comps - so fast enough to almost keep up with CLs and CAs. However Fast Minelayers are like ammo ships - small crews, with no firecontrol - and adding firecontrol got you into the price, and crew size of a BC(p).

So, my conclusion was in 1922/23, we would see the remaining mk 16 armed BC(p)s leading squadrons of defensive patrols and raiding squadrons.

Well, I was wrong, but for the right reasons. The FCs are definitely the class for the need I forsaw, and more. It is also a light repair ship , and parts storage. Even without pods, with it's 8 LACs, it has the firepower of a modern light cruiser squadron, so has the ability to control a system by itself if necessary. They free the BC(p)s up to be independent strike forces, not glorified freighters.