SPOILER end of the MA

drothgery wrote:
In the first place... take that up with the RMN and GSN's shipbuilding people. They designed and built 2-2.5 Mton ships to take the roles of 800-900Kton ships, and no one in-universe seems to think it was a bad idea to do so.

There are a lot of things done/said in universe that make little to no sense so just because something is done in universe one way does not make it a good idea or right.

Secondly, you're assuming a degree of linearity in shipbuilding costs, operational costs, and maintenance costs which RFC has explicitly said does not exist. It's more like 1 Nike:2 Sag-Cs:3 Rolands. And if one of the Rolands doesn't come back, then it's a false economy.

So why doesn't the RMN then build only SD(P)'s and be done with it? If we use those numbers then 1 SD(P) should cost 1.5 times as much as a nike and it would be by far the cheapest ship to build.


Building 2.5 million tons of BC(L) for the same price as 966k ton of CA or 564k ton of DD makes zero sense, because at that point if it were true I would simply build nikes all day long.


Instead of me building 200 Nikes, 600 Sag-C's and 300 Roland's for my fleet I would simply build all nikes... so I would end up with 600 Nikes.

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Turning this on its head, why don't you want to just build Torch's Nat Turners? Frigates can swat pirates just as well as super-destroyers can, after all, and you could build more of them.

Because using your numbers, it might be significantly cheaper to build SD(P)'s for anti-piracy instead of DD's, CA's and BC(L)'s. Using your numbers by far the cheapest ship ton for ton would be an SD(P), which means one thing... only an idiot would build anything smaller.

But first-line Honorverse navies do not build frigates, because they're not survivable in combat against a peer post-laserhead.

They shouldn't build frigates because apparently lighter ships are prohibitively expensive. Building 2.5 million tons of BC(L) is according to you the same price as building 566k tons of Roland's or 966k tons of Sag-C. I can only imagine how much the cost would be for FF's but I don't have the courage to see the absolute number... probably 250k tons of Frigate is the same price as a 2.5 million ton of BC(L)... man the Torch navy should really consider buying a BC(L) or two.

but the RMN is not currently run by fools and so will not be counting on that happy state to persist). So they're going to be sending a much bigger warship than they would have previously for anything that requires a hyper-capable warship at all.

I would beg to differ... they could have had 75 more Nikes instead of the 150 Sag-C's and 15 more Nikes instead of the 46 Roland's. I would say a Nike would eat 2 Sag-C's for breakfast and come back for the 3 Roland's for morning snack. So if they build Roland's and Sag-C's instead of nikes they are fools.

And if they have a mission that requires more marines than a Sag-C carries (which is far fewer than a traditional CA does), then they're going to need a ship that carries more than that.

A mission does not translate to every mission. Just because you might need an extra company on a specific mission does not mean you need an extra company for every mission. If the requirement is identified then for sure send a ship with more marines but don't send a BC(L) overtime because it happened to be needed that one time.

Which means either designing something new or the next-bigger class they already have, and that's a Nike. Or sending a transport with a warship escort, which is often a less than optimal solution.

So I don't know exactly what you are going for here, I understand that if you need 2 companies of marines then send a Nike on that mission but sending a nike on every mission because one required more marines seems like a waste. It might make sense to send an SD(P) for a mission that a Sag-C would normally do because of extenuating circumstances but that doesn't mean you now start sending an SD(P) on every Sag-C mission just because on one of them an SD(P) was required.

Sigs wrote:For the same investment as one Nike you get ~3 times the missile tubes, ~54% of ammunition reserve, 4.6 times the PD and 4 times the CM.

But it's not.

The cost of the ship isn't in the structural elements, those are very low cost in the Honorverse. It's in the complex technological systems. Like the hyperdrive. Making a hyperdrive twice as big doesn't cost twice as much, it's like 1.2-1.3 times as much. This is why there are very few hypercapabable small freighters. An 8 MT freighter is some small percent more expensive than a 4 MT freighter. Like 20% more, not 100% more.

kzt wrote:But it's not.

The cost of the ship isn't in the structural elements, those are very low cost in the Honorverse. It's in the complex technological systems. Like the hyperdrive. Making a hyperdrive twice as big doesn't cost twice as much, it's like 1.2-1.3 times as much. This is why there are very few hypercapabable small freighters. An 8 MT freighter is some small percent more expensive than a 4 MT freighter. Like 20% more, not 100% more.

In absolute terms what would be the cost difference? Would a 500k ton ship like a Sag-C cost half as much as a Nike? If the Hyperdrive costs 1.2 times as much for a nike than for a Sag-C how much does the rest cost?


There is more to investment than just the upfront cost, to my thinking the upfront cost is important but its not the be all end all of the equation even then I don't think that the price difference would be so small between a nike, Sag-C and Roland.


2.5 million tons of Roland's are going to give a Nike a very bad day, 2.5 million tons of Sag-C most definitely would take apart a Nike piece by piece and still have some combat capable ships at the end of the day. If I had to invest in a fleet, I would invest money in the best possible fleet I can and utilize my ships to the best of my abilities.

If the question is investing in 100 ships that can be in 100 places or spending 50% more and having 500 ships of the same tonnage I know where I would invest my money because those 500 ships would have the ability to be in 1 pace or 500 places at once or anywhere in between.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that a Sag-C is probably at least 1/5 the cost of a Nike or an BC(P). And a Roland is probably 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of a CA.

Sigs wrote:

drothgery wrote:
In the first place... take that up with the RMN and GSN's shipbuilding people. They designed and built 2-2.5 Mton ships to take the roles of 800-900Kton ships, and no one in-universe seems to think it was a bad idea to do so.

There are a lot of things done/said in universe that make little to no sense so just because something is done in universe one way does not make it a good idea or right.

In the real world, that's true. In a fictional universe, we have to assume that the author's statements about that universe are true and that the decisions of characters presented as competent make sense given the internal logic of that universe.

Sigs wrote:So Using the numbers for Roland, Sag-C, and Nike that were present in House of Steel I came up with the following conclusions:

For similar tonnage to 1 Nike you would need 13 Roland-Class destroyers. Those Destroyers would have a total of 156 Missile Tubes, 3,250 missiles, 390 PD and 260 CM.

For the same investment as one Nike you get ~3 times the missile tubes, ~54% of ammunition reserve, 4.6 times the PD and 4 times the CM.

For similar tonnage to 1 Nike you would need 5 Sag-C's. Those cruisers would have a total of 200 missile tubes, 6,000 missiles, 320 PD and 200CM.

For the same investment as 1 Nike you get ~ 4 times the missile tubes, equal ammunition, 3.8 times the PD and 3.125 times the CM.



Now, the conclusion I draw for this is that if it were to come to an equal fight ton for ton the Nike is the weakest of them all, regardless of armour, regardless of qualitative difference of the defences of a nike it still will face overwhelming missile waves from either an equal force of Roland's or an equal force of Sag-C's.

Since they all have the same missile in their magazines they all have the same range, the Nike has an advantage of capital ship grade PD, sidewall and it also has heavier armour even accounting for this in this comparison I do not believe it would not make the Nike as powerful a unit as it seems. Having 13 Roland's instead of 1 Nike means you can be in 13 places at once, or 13 ships in one place. Same goes for Sag-C's they can be on 5 separate missions or 1 mission with 5 ships.

BC(L)'s should be reclassified and re-purposed because having a 2.5 million ton warship doing a job that an equal tonnage of lighter ships can do much better seems like poor use of resources.

What you are overlooking in the case of the Nikes combat capabilities is they mount Keyhole I. With Keyhole I, the Nikes are able to fight with the wedge rolled towards the enemy, fire from both broadsides simultaneously with full control of both ship-killer, ECM, and counter-missiles, and use the Keyholes PDLCs to increase anti-missile capability. An example:

At All Costs, Chapter 27 wrote:HMS Nike twisted sinuously as the depleted missile storm tore down upon her and her division mate.
The Katanas had thinned it considerably before Oversteegen ordered them to stand down. Of the nineteen hundred missiles which had launched, the LACs had killed seven hundred. The battlecruisers' counter-missiles killed two hundred and sixty, and another hundred and fifty or so simply lost lock and wandered off on their own. Three hundred and twelve more locked onto the Ghost Rider decoys Nike and Hector had deployed, and another sixty looped suddenly back towards the Katanas, only to be ripped apart by the LACs' point defense clusters.
But that left four hundred and seventy-eight, and as they streamed past the Katanas, the battlecruisers were on their own.
Oversteegen watched them come, absolutely motionless in his command chair, narrow eyes very still. Thirty point defense laser clusters studded each of Nike's flanks. They were individually more powerful than any past Manticoran battlecruiser had ever mounted, with fourteen emitters per cluster, each capable of cycling at one shot every sixteen seconds. That came to one shot every 1.2 seconds per cluster, but that was only twenty-five per broadside per second, and these were MDMs. They had traveled over twenty-five million kilometers to reach their targets, their closing speed was almost 173,000 KPS—fifty-eight percent of the speed of light—and they had a standoff attack range of 30,000 kilometers.
They crossed the inner perimeter of the counter-missile interception zone, losing another hundred and seventeen in the process. Of the three hundred and sixty-one survivors, fifty-eight were electronic warfare platforms, which meant "only" three hundred and three missiles—barely fifteen percent of the original launch—actually attacked.
The space about Nike and Hector was hideous with incandescent eruptions of fury, and bomb-pumped lasers ripped and gouged at their targets. But these battlecruisers had been designed and built to face exactly this sort of attack. Their sidewalls—especially Nike's—were far tougher and more powerful than any previous battlecruisers had mounted, and both of them were equipped with the RMN's bow and stern walls. The fact that they'd been able to keep their wedges turned towards the incoming fire even while they engaged it with their own counter-missiles presented additional targeting problems for the Havenite missiles' onboard systems. Instead of the broadside aspect ships were normally forced to show attack missiles' sensors, all these missiles saw was the wedge itself. But no sensor could penetrate a military-grade impeller wedge, which made it impossible for them to absolutely localize their targets. They could predict the volume in which their target must lay, but not precisely where within that volume to find it.
And that was why Nike and Hector survived. The missiles' sensors could have seen through the battlecruisers' sidewalls, but the sidewalls were turned away from them. Most of them streaked "above" and "below" the Manticoran battlecruisers, fighting for a "look-down" shot, while others crossed the Manticorans' bows or sterns, trying for "up-the-kilt" or "down-the-throat" shots. Tough as Nike's passive defenses were, they were no match for the raw power of the Havenite lasers, but the very speed which made MDMs such difficult targets for short-range point defense fire worked against them now. They simply didn't have time to find their targets and fire in the fleeting fragment of a second they took to cross the Manticoran ships' tracks.

One must be cautious about equating tonnage to fighting power. That could be a good way of getting handed your arse...

Don

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n7axw wrote:One must be cautious about equating tonnage to fighting power. That could be a good way of getting handed your arse...

Don

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There is a definite correlation between mass and survivability in the honorverse. As long as it’s designed as a warship, a 8 mt freighter is no tougher than a 2 mt freighter.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:One must be cautious about equating tonnage to fighting power. That could be a good way of getting handed your arse...

Don

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There is a definite correlation between mass and survivability in the honorverse. As long as it’s designed as a warship, a 8 mt freighter is no tougher than a 2 mt freighter.

Up to a point. There are other factors as well. Crew quality is a factor. Tech superiority trumps tonnage. Tactical positioning can be a factor and there are probably things I am not bringing to mind right now. My point is not to say that tonnage doesn't matter. It is to say that it cannot be taken for granted.

Don

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kzt wrote:I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that a Sag-C is probably at least 1/5 the cost of a Nike or an BC(P). And a Roland is probably 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of a CA.

And a Sag-C is slightly less than 1/5 the size of a nike.