-SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes

n7axw wrote:Along with everything else that has been said, I would imagine that given today's offensive weapons, a battleship would be vulnerable and hard to protect.

Actually, they are very tough targets. The main vulnerability is vs torpedoes or extremely large ASMs. But a BB can absorb a lot more torpedoes or harpoons than a modern US CA can. And not many ships shrug off 5-15 ton missiles moving at at about a km/second.

But fiendishly expensive.

The Alignment may have thrown every SPIDER ship it had into OB but not every ship. Only the Spiders would be capable of the work-up and delivery of the weapons.

We don't know what they have in terms of conventional warships. While the Alignment INTENDED to use the RF as a rally point for the systems fleeing the breakup of the SL, I wouild have to guess they would have had at least a few conventional warships to picket the Alignment sides of most of the wormholes in their secret network. Ok, they had a CA or BC squadron from Mannhime sitting on Alighment side of the Torch wormhole but that doesn't mean they don't have anything on their own. Remember that the guy who was the observer with the PRHinExile mercenaries was Alignment Navy not Mesa Navy.
They probably also have at least one ship that is outfitted to do wormhole research and exploration.
If nothing else, there are a bunch of Streak Drive ships and various merchant ships (armed or otherwise) to move people and materials.

We have some idea of what the RF has- with Mannheim leading the way- but neither all about the RF nor how modern they are in terms of weapons and other tech. We can guess that at least Mannheim has some version of Cataphracts and also that the rest will upgrade as soon as practical given the "new" information from the SLN and Technodyne gets out and the RF doesn't look like an Alignment front...big smile.

One problem not yet addressed is that whatever the plan for using the Ghosts and Lenny Dett's (and whaterver elce they have been building) the League isn't going to shatter in the manner expected. Manticore, Haven, the Aldermani, all sorts of Star Nations have come out of this strong and with considerable tech advantages and combat experience.
Even the SLN is going to learn. The RF is not now the great net to catch all those systems bailing from a catastrophic failure of the League. The RF is going to be one piece of a puzzle.

saber964 wrote:The reason why nobody is building battleships is mostly money and manpower. ... The cost of building a new class of battleships would have exceeded 35-45 billion dollars per ship. All for a ship that would have a very limited utility.

That sounds, to me, a lot like the situation for most Navies in the Honorverse -- those that don't already have SD(P)s. Those Navies that do have SD(P)s are going to find few missions where they are required and lots of missions that require the versatility of Cruisers and CLACs.

saber964 wrote:Even today if the U.S. Navy wanted to it could reactivate all of the Iowa class for about 5 billion dollars and crew them for another billion. As to manpower you could crew 5 or 6 cruisers or destroyers for the manning of one battleship.

Sounds a bit like the situation the SLN reserve found itself in. Lots of obsolete ships that needed mucho dinero just to present them as targets for the opposition.

Weird Harold wrote:

saber964 wrote:The reason why nobody is building battleships is mostly money and manpower. ... The cost of building a new class of battleships would have exceeded 35-45 billion dollars per ship. All for a ship that would have a very limited utility.

That sounds, to me, a lot like the situation for most Navies in the Honorverse -- those that don't already have SD(P)s. Those Navies that do have SD(P)s are going to find few missions where they are required and lots of missions that require the versatility of Cruisers and CLACs.

saber964 wrote:Even today if the U.S. Navy wanted to it could reactivate all of the Iowa class for about 5 billion dollars and crew them for another billion. As to manpower you could crew 5 or 6 cruisers or destroyers for the manning of one battleship.

Sounds a bit like the situation the SLN reserve found itself in. Lots of obsolete ships that needed mucho dinero just to present them as targets for the opposition.

Keep in mind that the large battle cruisers are about the size of the old battleships and a lot tougher.

Ships of the Wall are getting bigger and their electronics are getting REALLY better.

Battleships might not really be necessary. A mix of ships might do it.

And the leaders all know how fast things change.

Theemile wrote:

n7axw wrote:
10000 SD(p)s??? Were I John Q Public on a League world, I'd be asking what on earth for? Who are we planning to conquer? It would make more sense to make friends with your neighbors and promote trade, perhaps negotiating some arms limitation agreements.

Don

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The League has 10,000 white elephants now, built over 250 years. If someone tries to build 10,000 SD(p)s, someone else will point out the previous fleet's uselessness and snip the appropriations to a fraction of that.

Loren's correct, no one "knows" the Malign has warships - I've mentioned before that OB could have been accomplished just as well by freighters, not warships, and Beowulf proved that. The only spider drives spotted were on the torpedoes - NOT the warships. There is the assumption that invisible ships made the attack, but just like the Ghost scout ships in Manticore or the Silver Bullets at Beowulf, Freighters, covered as legimitate shipping could have delivered the Graser torpodos and pods and left them to swim into the system on their own.

And at that, the number of missile platforms seen in the OB raid could have been accounted for by 1 SD(p) (or ammo freighter) attacking each target. Just 4 GA ships could have accomplished what 27 Sharks did. So why should everyone think thousands of invisible ships, when 4 normal ones could have accomplished the mission? As Military minds, they are thinking the worst case senario, which is invisible warships, but nothing proves that there are thousands of them, if they exist at all.

I agree that no one knows, but the GA obviously believes OB was conducted via warships using the spider drive.

Slneezy wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:How many countries currently feature Battleships -- dreadnought size or bigger, excluding aircraft carriers -- in their Navies?

John Q Solly isn't going to worry about how many SDs the SLN has, he's going to worry about how much his taxes are going up to pay for them. The SLN Admiralty is going to look at the way four RMN CAs destroyed 90+ SLN BCs and one RMN Destroyer drove off the remaining 100+ ships.

John Q Solly is going to get worried about security more than about the economy. Like sure there's going to be some economic upheaval but the sheer impact of a military defeat coupled by an intelligence fiasco of huge proportions is going to influence the public more than an extra 2% tax on their income.

Frankly the inside of the Kuiper belt should feel like the peak of the Red Scare times a hundred. That's not an environment conductive to calm credit counting.

Weird Harold wrote:Dollar for dollar, the SLN can buy more combat power in Cruisers and more powerful missiles than they can in SDs. That doesn't mean they won't build a few pod-layer designs but they'll probably experiment with a BC(P) or Marksman/Arsenal design first.

The SLN has had dramatic illustrations of how effective Cruisers and SysDef missile pods can be -- even with the FTL command modules trashed -- and equally dramatic illustrations of how vulnerable SDs can be. The minor detail that SD(p)s were used in the conquest of Sol system, is going to weigh less than the emotional impact of the many "lesser" defeats.

I fully expect all of the Navies in the Honorverse to start looking at packing the most lethality into the smallest packages and wind up with a mix of CLACs, Destroyers and Cruisers that are as capable as present day SD(p)s.

The neat trick about SD(P)s is that they're not that expensive. At their most basic they're an uparmored and heavily reinforced ammunition ship which can withstand enemy fire and profide fire control for its own missiles. They don't even require much new tech - the SLN can just load them with the current MDMs and they'll do just fine against anyone who isn't GA. For the matter they'll do resonably well against GA ships that stray within the MDM range.

The emotional impact of the many lesser defeats isn't going to counter that when Manticore was serious (Manticore; Beowulf; Sol) they used SD(P)s to send a message. The League and especially its core worlds are used to seeing themselves as the big guys of the galaxy. They're almost certainly going to opt for a very serious navy.

I think the exact opposite is true. How many league core worlds did the GA attack? Only one! For the most part the threat of the GA was existential. What will be hurting them is the damage that all the Transtellars will be suffering. Not to mention the damage done to the economy by the closure of the junctures by the GA.

I believe the new league, needs reform and at least some level of federal tax in order to build a new navy. I think they could build one that can get in reasonable shouting distance of the GA in a couple of years if they are really determined to do so. I'm sure they'll build something similar to the current size of the GA or slightly larger. However, 10000 is just ridiculous.

ywing14 wrote:I believe the new league, needs reform and at least some level of federal tax in order to build a new navy. I think they could build one that can get in reasonable shouting distance of the GA in a couple of years if they are really determined to do so. I'm sure they'll build something similar to the current size of the GA or slightly larger. However, 10000 is just ridiculous.

If every inhabitant of the SL was taxed one dollar they could raise enough money to build about 1000 SD(P)s. A couple trillion people can raise a LOT of cash and man a LOT of ships.

kzt wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I believe the new league, needs reform and at least some level of federal tax in order to build a new navy. I think they could build one that can get in reasonable shouting distance of the GA in a couple of years if they are really determined to do so. I'm sure they'll build something similar to the current size of the GA or slightly larger. However, 10000 is just ridiculous.

If every inhabitant of the SL was taxed one dollar they could raise enough money to build about 1000 SD(P)s. A couple trillion people can raise a LOT of cash and man a LOT of ships.

It could, but we really don't know who's going to want to stay and play in the league and who's going to want to leave. So building 10000 SDs(p) seems pretty unlikely especially given that there war with the GA pointed out how weak they are in lighter units. I think they'd concentrate on building up those first. That's not to say they won't build SDs(P). Even in a large number. What I see happening is a lot of planets building system defense forces since the SL's buccaneer pointed out what happens when you don't have one.

ywing14 wrote:I agree that no one knows, but the GA obviously believes OB was conducted via warships using the spider drive.

Spider drive, yes.

Warships? They have no indication they were armed. Colliers could have done the job.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I agree that no one knows, but the GA obviously believes OB was conducted via warships using the spider drive.

Spider drive, yes.

Warships? They have no indication they were armed. Colliers could have done the job.

Colliers could have done the job, but I don't believe that's what the GA believes did the job.