"Modern" era Battleships - are they still obsolete?

was sure that the Sag C was 583K but no you are right HOS lists it as 483K, I still think about the 500K size would work well for the next gen CL as that gives it the ability to have broadside DDMs fixing the biggest weakness in the Roland design.

still not convinced that inferior is the right word, apart from the weight of its missiles it is the equal to the roland and has the marines that are useful in place like Silesa.

Less capable would probably cover it, and yes i'm probably being overly pedantic about 1 word, :Shrug: I just think the wolfhound gets a lot of unjustified grief.

If the RMN hadn't been going into another war I think there would have been a more even ordering of the two designs, particularly if the Mk16 didn't have the Mod G or if that upgrade was also applied to the LERM.

Dauntless wrote:was sure that the Sag C was 583K but no you are right HOS lists it as 483K, I still think about the 500K size would work well for the next gen CL as that gives it the ability to have broadside DDMs fixing the biggest weakness in the Roland design.

still not convinced that inferior is the right word, apart from the weight of its missiles it is the equal to the roland and has the marines that are useful in place like Silesa.

Less capable would probably cover it, and yes i'm probably being overly pedantic about 1 word, :Shrug: I just think the wolfhound gets a lot of unjustified grief.

If the RMN hadn't been going into another war I think there would have been a more even ordering of the two designs, particularly if the Mk16 didn't have the Mod G or if that upgrade was also applied to the LERM.

I think we can agree - There is nothing wrong with the Wolfhound design - besides the small crew.

And If memory serves, the Wolfhound was 1/3rd the acquisition cost of the Roland, so it did have the advantage of being easier to procure, in larger numbers. And a large # of ships with small crew sizes is desirable.

But the Avalon, with the larger crew, and cheaper acquisition cost (relative to the Roland) is more ... can we agree with flexable?... than either of the DD designs.

So yeah - if you don't need the warfighter, the Wolfhound would have been the focus over the Roland.

Yep I can agree with you. The Avalon is a solid design, very solid given that it is only about 20K bigger then the wolfhound.

all too often a CL is just a DD with deeper magazines and a little armour but a 2/3 increase in broadside along with the increased ammo and armour make the Avalon a big step up from the Wolfhound.

So, we have the hot war with the SL over but we (and the GA and most everybody else) knows that there is going to be a lot of challanges between systems wanting to leave the SL/ becoming independt of OFS, actively changing local regimes once the assistance of OFS/FF is removed.

We also know that there is probably going to be a rise in piracy as jurisdictions are sorted out and/or people think they see an opertunity to grab shipping.

Then there is the now ongoing search/war with the Alignment.

What is going to be the probable most effective general duty warships now?

Manticore, and the Aldermani, are probably going to use older ships to deal with problems in the former Silesia.
Talbot Sector is now & still a boarder area for Manticore in one vector to the former SL.

MDM ships are now available to the GA and we presume the SLN has at least the specs and manufacturing data to build Cataprhacts and othe DD weapons even if Technodyne may be out of business. I say may because although Honor demanded all the facilities and tech that SL had from Technodyne, nobody has said anything about Technodyne & Yelden (spelling) their private star system where the primary R&D plus manufacturing is located.

The GA at least is going to need to upgrade the search for the Alignment and that probably means more ships in at least a modern Crusier size/endurance/capability range with most modern weaponry. Does that mean building more of whatever current production class best fits the mission statement or do they have something in design?

Brigade XO wrote:So, we have the hot war with the SL over but we (and the GA and most everybody else) knows that there is going to be a lot of challanges between systems wanting to leave the SL/ becoming independt of OFS, actively changing local regimes once the assistance of OFS/FF is removed.

We also know that there is probably going to be a rise in piracy as jurisdictions are sorted out and/or people think they see an opertunity to grab shipping.

Then there is the now ongoing search/war with the Alignment.

What is going to be the probable most effective general duty warships now?

Manticore, and the Aldermani, are probably going to use older ships to deal with problems in the former Silesia.
Talbot Sector is now & still a boarder area for Manticore in one vector to the former SL.

MDM ships are now available to the GA and we presume the SLN has at least the specs and manufacturing data to build Cataprhacts and othe DD weapons even if Technodyne may be out of business. I say may because although Honor demanded all the facilities and tech that SL had from Technodyne, nobody has said anything about Technodyne & Yelden (spelling) their private star system where the primary R&D plus manufacturing is located.

The GA at least is going to need to upgrade the search for the Alignment and that probably means more ships in at least a modern Crusier size/endurance/capability range with most modern weaponry. Does that mean building more of whatever current production class best fits the mission statement or do they have something in design?

Well Manticore is still rebuilding their production facilities. And I don't know that they'll necessarily want to rely on Haven=built ships now that it isn't a war emergency. That seems like it would require separate parts logistics and maintenance/repair supplies. (Something that's acceptable in a war emergency, but something to be transitioned away from as rapidly as practical once you return to a less emergency footing)

Also they've still have some number of older designs pre-pod SDs, 1st-gen SD(P)s that lack Keyhole, older cruisers, etc. They'll presumably want to work on retiring those as quickly as they can get more modern designs online.

On the other hand there are reasons to moderate the build rate. you don't want to accidentally recreate the situation Great Britian and the Royal Navy got put into before WWI -- where a post war economic depression (combined in that case with treaty regimes) led to both a block obsolescence problem and a collapse of ship-building capabilities. Because they weren't buliding ships they lost a lot of that workforce and facilities but because almost all their ships had been built in the war rush they all reached end of life in one huge block. Manticore also should be aware that the underlying tech is likely to continue to evolve for a while - so a slower build rate gives time to design new flights or new designs and switch over to them.

In the very short term I'd say their cruisers are a bigger concern than their wallers. They've got enough Apollo equipped SD(P)s to kill any likely opponent for the next 5 years so they can afford to focus on replacing their lighter units. Also the lighter units seem more likely to face combat (anti-piracy, etc) and more likely to face legacy single-drive missile designs (as the League and various SDFs look to scrap or sell off their obsolete designs for ones that are at least Cataphract compatible). So making sure all your DDs and CLs can fire at least LERMs and your CAs can fire DDM (and almost as importantly carry the heavily improved anti-missile defenses of the newer designs) makes the sailors more likely to face combat less at risk. They probably don't want to totally shut down waller construction but they can go to a low build rate on them and a higher one on the small fry.

Though even there they might want to take the time until their shipyards are to look over how the newest designs held up to all their tasks, not just warfighting. There's probably time to make relatively small changes in a new flight to, for example, restore Marine numbers or maybe something else we haven't seen a need for "on-screen".

excellent questions.

I think it is safe to assume that at the very least cataphract like missiles are going to be quite common in the not to distant future. in theory true non GA DDM and MDMs should also start appearing. by now it well know that it can be done, all the rest is just engineering and some trial and error to make it work. Haven managed it in only a couple of years and that with a weaker tech base then many SL worlds.

possibly more dangerous is that ships will be built that can tube fire the new missiles, rather then rely on pods or firing "weaker" (i.e SDs firing CA/BC munitions and BC firing CL missiles).

GA is going to need to overhaul the smaller combatants. BC(P) while a valid design currently if used correctly, are really too fragile for a true DDM/MDM threat envrioment, despite its future proofing against change in ordnance sizes.

BC i.e. Nike class are pretty decent, they might grow in size a bit again to fit a KHII but I'm not sold on that really being necessary.

I've already bored you all enough with my ideas for the smaller ships but here is a quick summary for those who missed my earlier comments.

CA Sag C was solid but going forward I think something around 1Mt will be needed, this extra size mainly for ammo, armour and more PD. might, emphasis on might carry a cutdown KH1 platform

CL will basically be a Sag C but with fewer tubes, maybe 15 per broadside, due to the need to mount the tubes on the broadside to fix the worries over how fragile a Roland's tubes are.

basic Roland is fine, upsize it a bit to give it more ammo and armour, plus the option for marines so it can do general patrol/customs work. probably be about 250K

Dauntless wrote:I've already bored you all enough with my ideas for the smaller ships but here is a quick summary for those who missed my earlier comments.

CA Sag C was solid but going forward I think something around 1Mt will be needed, this extra size mainly for ammo, armour and more PD. might, emphasis on might carry a cutdown KH1 platform

CL will basically be a Sag C but with fewer tubes, maybe 15 per broadside, due to the need to mount the tubes on the broadside to fix the worries over how fragile a Roland's tubes are.

basic Roland is fine, upsize it a bit to give it more ammo and armour, plus the option for marines so it can do general patrol/customs work. probably be about 250K

RFC has hinted that smaller ships might get defensive only remote platforms. A towed platform that was just sensors and PDLC would probably be a lot smaller than a Keyhole - and even one that mounted CM control links (but not offensive fire links) should be small enough a CA could carry a pair without undue impact. But fitting a keyhole capable of controlling its offensive fire as well probably drives the size up too much unless, as you indicated, the CA doubles in size to 1 MT.

He's also indicated that Bolthold is already rolling out ad-hoc control missiles for Mk16s and I'd expect to see true (though light-speed control only) Mk16 control missiles to improve their effectiveness at long to extreme ranges. Though supporting that in a tube design will be interesting, as presumably the control missile will still need to be bigger than a normal Mk16.

Either of those would drive new designs as they couldn't readily be retrofit into existing ships (well, the control missile could got into BC(P)s easily enough - that just takes a new pod, with presumably a reduced missile loadout)

Jonathan_S wrote:He's also indicated that Bolthold is already rolling out ad-hoc control missiles for Mk16s and I'd expect to see true (though light-speed control only) Mk16 control missiles to improve their effectiveness at long to extreme ranges. Though supporting that in a tube design will be interesting, as presumably the control missile will still need to be bigger than a normal Mk16.

Either of those would drive new designs as they couldn't readily be retrofit into existing ships (well, the control missile could got into BC(P)s easily enough - that just takes a new pod, with presumably a reduced missile loadout)

I don't see why a Mk16 control missile would have to be larger than a standard Mk16 - the driving factor for the Mk23 Apollo was the FTL transmitter and possibly the receiver. The light speed links to both the ship and the other missiles of the salvo shouldn't be that big of a squeeze on space, nor should the improved AI hardware. And the base Mk16 hardware already has all the drive and power support functions built in. What more is needed?

A few thoughts on some of the points raised:

Modern Battleships
The development of the SD(P) has pretty much killed the Battleship as a platform. Whilst a BB(P) is a possibility, it would always suffer from the issue of not having the ammunition reserves, fire control links and point defence capabilities of the larger DN and SD hulls. Short of either a poor -man's capital ship or as a step in the development of a major league Navy, they're unlikely to be built.

Kamerling-class System Control Cruiser
Have we established yet where all the extra tonnage has gone (or if the tonnage and dimensions are correct)? It's 7,750t heavier than the old Broadswords, and 129,500t heavier than the Avalon-class with a lighter armament - yet only carries three companies of Marines compared to the Broadsword's reinforced battalion. HoS says more are wanted, but they couldn't afford the yard space.

Wolfhound-class Destroers
HoS makes the point that the Admiralty do want more than 19 Wolfhounds. Whilst they aren't good enough for major warfighting work, they are perfectly adequate for all other duties, feeding up Rolands for the war fighting role.

Joint Projects with Haven
Why would they stop? My reading is that when the crunch comes, the idea is that all GA navies will be using the same tech - which would make it quicker and easier when any repair team can work on any ship. Oh, and it allows intermingling of fleet elements whereas separate tech wouldn't necessarily integrate.
The Mark 16 development, I believe, still comes under spoilers right now.

WLBjork wrote:
Wolfhound-class Destroers
HoS makes the point that the Admiralty do want more than 19 Wolfhounds. Whilst they aren't good enough for major warfighting work, they are perfectly adequate for all other duties, feeding up Rolands for the war fighting role.

The other question is, given ongoing, real-world experience, is the Wolfhound now considered too small (especially it's crewsize) for operations? Is is worth just building the more capable Avalons in their place?