Ship Classifications

Walks Alone wrote:It still seems like shifting sands to me... or two opponents moving around as they react to each other... the evolution of the destroyer seems to have been just that... reacting to new threats as they came up.

There you go, nailed it in one. And typicaly a lot more than two opponents.

Build something that works.
The other side (and you) then have to figure out how to defeat that and how to employ it.
Find a way to overcome that defence and/or find a new way to defeat their stuff. All this being weapons, wepon platforms (ships, aircraft, etc), tactics, electronics, shielding, various countermeasures, adding longer range to stuff,
Repeat as often as nessisary to prevail and defeat your opponent until the fighing stops---and then go into the slower peace time variation of this.

This cycle moves a LOT faster in war time. Hello Mr. Darwin. Not everything works but finding out what does not can kill you. Bigger is not always better. More accurate is always better if you can get close enough AND defeat the defences deployed to stop your attack.

Make an areal torpedo that can be dropped in much shallower water than anybody elce believes possible and you sink a lot of battleships at Pearl Harbor.

Don't figure out (or know that is done but don't impliment it) that you need to flush your aviation fuel lines on aircraft carriers with something like CO2 right after you fuel aircraft for a strike AND decide mid-job that you need to change armement on your refueling aircraft AND leave all that stuff you just unloaded lying on the hanger deck when your opponents find your carriers all grouped within sight of one another and press home their attacks with determination......and you lose much of your first line carrier fleet (and most of the experienced naval pilots) at Midway.
Oh, and change your codes more frequently so the other side doesn't figure out you are going to hit Midway in the first place.

Don't test your nifty new torpedo (magnetic) detonators enough (because they and the live torpedoes you would have to use are expensive) and a lot of your submarines spend the 1st year of the war not getting the enemy ships they hit sunk because the dammed detonators were failing when they should have sunk or severly damaged dozens of enemy warships and transports.

Rock over fist, Club over rock, spear over club, arrow over any of them, horse moves your fighter faster, armor protects, too much armor can both slow you down and get you killed. Things can defeat armor. Fire, catapults, castles- which don't do well against big things using gunpowder. You can drop things from airplanes. You can shoot things from airplanes.
You can shoot down airplanes. There is this nifty thing called camouflage and something called stealthing a large metal and carbon composit thing so electronic detection equipment can't "see" it even if it is flying at you (mostly at night because the Mark I eyeball can see that big black thing in daylight any you can shoot them down if you hit them.

Something is going to change. It never ends.

The key to dealing with this is not to expect consistency, which should be fair because comparatively little around us is consistent. So it's best to just go with the flow.

Terms change meaning. An example would be that word frigate. In the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, that word designated a ship that would approximate a battlesruiser in the honorverse. In the honorverse, a frigate's pride of place would be less than a Revolutionary War sloop.

So...go figure!

Don

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Brigade XO wrote:

Walks Alone wrote:It still seems like shifting sands to me... or two opponents moving around as they react to each other... the evolution of the destroyer seems to have been just that... reacting to new threats as they came up.

There you go, nailed it in one. And typicaly a lot more than two opponents.

Build something that works.
The other side (and you) then have to figure out how to defeat that and how to employ it.
Find a way to overcome that defence and/or find a new way to defeat their stuff. All this being weapons, wepon platforms (ships, aircraft, etc), tactics, electronics, shielding, various countermeasures, adding longer range to stuff,
Repeat as often as nessisary to prevail and defeat your opponent until the fighing stops---and then go into the slower peace time variation of this.

Then decide that the all that stuff is too expensive and you need cheaper ships/weapons in order to build the numbers you need.

Then add to the confusion by rarely re-categorizing ships when they’re obsolete and not capable of performing their original role or at least hardly comparable with current ships of the same designation.

It’s all a somewhat messy tangle of weird definitions.

Heck you’ve got the JSDF with helicopter ships the size of pretty much anybody’s VSTOL carrier. But for political reasons they’re a “destroyer“.

Classification always has to be sorted according to function. Form will always follow function in the military. It has to be first and foremost in getting Congress to turn loose funding. You have to be able to explain it to the bean counters.

1. Why do we need these?

2. What role will they play?

3. Where and how are our shores threatened?

Manticore's problem would be in the rapid pace of the radical ship designs that they are implementing. Traditionally, categories were defined according to role which seemed to demand a certain tonnage. Roles and tonnage both changed because of the radical designs. So if, because of the redesigning, a smaller ship now fits a bigger role, what do you do?

If the US navy could get away with building a bigger battleship and have it also serve the role of an aircraft carrier, it would.

But then, what would they call it?

This is precisely why I think there should be only three types of hypercapable warship, because there are only three major roles for those ships...

1. Light units for scouting, anti-piracy, perhaps taking out LACs.

2. Medium units for chasing away light units that are making a nuisance of themselves.

3. Heavy units for system defense against other heavy units.

Speaking of light units making a nuisance of themselves, I wonder why the Havenites didn't send out a few battlecruisers to chase away the pairs of destroyers that were doing just that during Operation Cutworm?

cthia wrote:Classification always has to be sorted according to function. Form will always follow function in the military. It has to be first and foremost in getting Congress to turn loose funding. You have to be able to explain it to the bean counters.

1. Why do we need these?

2. What role will they play?

3. Where and how are our shores threatened?

Manticore's problem would be in the rapid pace of the radical ship designs that they are implementing. Traditionally, categories were defined according to role which seemed to demand a certain tonnage. Roles and tonnage both changed because of the radical designs. So if, because of the redesigning, a smaller ship now fits a bigger role, what do you do?

If the US navy could get away with building a bigger battleship and have it also serve the role of an aircraft carrier, it would.

But then, what would they call it?

An amusing diversion:

And the moral of this story is...

Does the RMN pass this cost savings of force multiplication on to Congress who will most certainly cut the budget?

'Tis so subtile a look into the internecine politics between the military and the civilian bean counters. Your current technological advancements have just given you a windfall in force multiplication. Do you pass the savings on to Congress? Who, in light of, will only seek to cut the budget. LOL

"Are you going to tell them sir? No? Then I suppose I've got clearance now."

But then, what would they call it?

The Trump?

Annachie wrote:

But then, what would they call it?

The Trump?

WTF!

Walks Alone wrote:
Speaking of light units making a nuisance of themselves, I wonder why the Havenites didn't send out a few battlecruisers to chase away the pairs of destroyers that were doing just that during Operation Cutworm?

If memory serves, the targets for cutworm were mostly ... in dire need of reinforcements, let's say? So, the system-commanders in question simply didn't have the vessels to chase away inconveniant intruders.

Walks Alone wrote:This is precisely why I think there should be only three types of hypercapable warship, because there are only three major roles for those ships...

1. Light units for scouting, anti-piracy, perhaps taking out LACs.

2. Medium units for chasing away light units that are making a nuisance of themselves.

3. Heavy units for system defense against other heavy units.

Speaking of light units making a nuisance of themselves, I wonder why the Havenites didn't send out a few battlecruisers to chase away the pairs of destroyers that were doing just that during Operation Cutworm?

We'll, *most* Honorverse navies are dinky little things. Ships of the Wall are extremely rare. Heck, I'm left with the impression battlecruisers are rare enough. Consider Silesia - quite a large area of space, yet only a few yards capable of building battlecruisers.

As for chasing down RMN destroyers with battlecruisers...seriously? The RMN destroyers are stealthier than anything Haven can deploy, and significantly faster to boot. They don't know where the RMN destroyers are, nor could they catch them if they did. Finally, most of the data would have come from the Ghost Rider recon drones, the destroyers would be well out of the system.

kzt wrote:I have an idea! We'll build little crappy ships, that cost 30% of the cost an an actual warship, have 50% of the crew and 5% of the firepower and can sometimes run for almost a month between engine overhauls in shipyard. That will save us!

Or you could build a new ship, about 50% larger displacement that is grossly expensive and significantly less capable than the class it replaces...which, unlike the Culverin, isn't going to be redeemed.