Reserve Fleet

quite possibly a cat wrote:I think the best way to go about creating a reserve fleet probably isn't to create a reserve fleet. Instead automate your industry and just massively increase your production. You don't need a reserve fleet. You need reserve industrial capacity. Of course, you can't just keep reserve capacity like that, you need to exercise it! Like a muscle.


The plan: Build giant printers that can print your ships with minimal human intervention. Teach the printers to self-replicate. Give them spare components and a limited ability to self-diagnose problems and self-repair. Feed a good chunk of raw materials. Maybe give them a few hundred trillion tons of raw materials to start the self-replication process.

Wait while the printers run. When the printers get old, the other ones will consume them!

Now give them the rest of the asteroid belt to make ships! These won't be conventional ships, they'll be designed for complete automation. Filled with helium or something to minimize degradation. The printers will increase their numbers at the same time. Keep building. Eventually feed them Pluto and Charon.

The goal is to have at least a Pluto worth of ships for your system. The old ships can be recycled every few dozen years.

Had the Solarians done this like they should have, they would have won the Second Battle of Manticore hands down! Honestly, one Pluto isn't a whole lot of ships. What if some Beserkers show up after eating a few thousand star systems?

The Forge of Heaven and The Anvil of Stars.

After World War 2, guided missiles rendered most US warships, aside from aircraft carriers and submarines, obsolete. However; the USN very quickly deployed an enormous fleet of guided missile cruisers. It seems that simply pulling the turrets for the main guns on Cruisers (Light Cruisers were particularly well suited for conversion) created space for missile magazines and a mounting point for a missile launcher. Most US Cruisers were actually recycled WW2 era warships until the Aegis cruisers were introduced.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:After World War 2, guided missiles rendered most US warships, aside from aircraft carriers and submarines, obsolete. However; the USN very quickly deployed an enormous fleet of guided missile cruisers. It seems that simply pulling the turrets for the main guns on Cruisers (Light Cruisers were particularly well suited for conversion) created space for missile magazines and a mounting point for a missile launcher. Most US Cruisers were actually recycled WW2 era warships until the Aegis cruisers were introduced.

Actually only a few were converted as stopgap measures and they were retired as quickly as possible as the conversions were damn near as costly as a new build and were far less efficient. Only 3 baltimores were converted to double enders, 2 were converted as single enders retaining the 2x3 forward 8" guns. They also converted 6 cleveland class light cruisers.

This is 11 conversions in total with most only have a service life of ~10 years with only 2-3 remaining by 1975 despite being converted between 1960 and 1965

However by the late 50's early 60s they were building ships like the Leahy and Belknap as dedicated cruisers in batches of 9 ships which had much longer lives lasting until the late 80s early 90s.

Reports are that the conversions were not well liked ships in service as thier hybrid nature and conventional hull design caused a lot of issues in layout and operation. In fact for the 3 single ended Baltimores by the late 60's the guns were once again considered the main armament. Once again they proved that a purpose designed ship is better and usually in the long run cheaper than trying to convert an existing ship. But conversions offten happen for political and short term penny pinching reasons.

See https://www.hazegray.org/navhist/cruisers/guided.htm

addendum: The core of the design issue is that a conventional gun cruiser or Battleship is weight constrained but a missile ship is volume/space constrained.

A weight-constrained design needs a careful ballancing of heavy weights such as armour and high mounted turrents/guns.

By contrast a volume constrained ship has to find a lot of space for (Relatively) low density stuff like missile magazines, helecopters, bulky radar dishes etc. They also need a lot more space high up for all the sensors. This is why a modern warships tend to have high boxy designs compared to the lower hulls and more centralised superstructures of traditonal gun armed ships.

Important points for a "reserve fleet"are:

1) For what service time is the ship build? Is it a long service peace time build or an war time "throw away" build ship?


2) how good is the upgrade capability? How easy is it to replace systems? Are any addotional cables in the construction?

3) how high are the costs to keep the ship running/mothballed?

Maldorian wrote:Important points for a "reserve fleet"are:

1) For what service time is the ship build? Is it a long service peace time build or an war time "throw away" build ship?


2) how good is the upgrade capability? How easy is it to replace systems? Are any addotional cables in the construction?

3) how high are the costs to keep the ship running/mothballed?

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Added points --

4) Can the Conversions serve effectively in an area to free up other ships ?

5) What is the "Known Threat Environment" (possible moving target) for the Conversion ships assignment areas ?


Note -- Ships that might serve well in Silecia or Maya/Erewhon may be obsolescent in Talbott

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Important points for a "reserve fleet"are:

1) For what service time is the ship build? Is it a long service peace time build or an war time "throw away" build ship?


2) how good is the upgrade capability? How easy is it to replace systems? Are any addotional cables in the construction?

3) how high are the costs to keep the ship running/mothballed?

--------------

Added points --

4) Can the Conversions serve effectively in an area to free up other ships ?

5) What is the "Known Threat Environment" (possible moving target) for the Conversion ships assignment areas ?


Note -- Ships that might serve well in Silecia or Maya/Erewhon may be obsolescent in Talbott

-- Stewart

For ships to be updated/converted

6) What is the cost of conversion vs cost of new ships? Post conversion capability vs new ship capability? And what is the time of conversion and infrastructure required to do so?

--If a conversion costs 90% of a new ship and gives you a ship with 40% of the capability of the new design, while tying up the infrastructure required to build a new ship, it does not make sense. If the conversion cost 40% of a new ship and gives you 90% of the capability while tying up an obsolete slip for a couple weeks, green light it!

You can optimize for the capability to do upgrades to a good extent when designing and building. There are some trade-offs. Probably costs a bit more. Building in larger hatches and access paths marginally increases vulnerability. Oversized missile tubes cost more and reduce magazine capacity. Things like that.

And if you don’t have the equipment to install on hand or able to be rapidly built then they’re are only usable in a war large enough and long enough to gear up industrial production. However it appears that electronics and such are much easier to produce than ships hulls.

I would imagine ship building goes on around the clock in space. One thing that can be done is to ensure several full shifts of knowledgeable ship builders at all times. As a result, the forward throttle on the assembly line can be engaged at will.

Theemile wrote:For ships to be updated/converted

6) What is the cost of conversion vs cost of new ships? Post conversion capability vs new ship capability? And what is the time of conversion and infrastructure required to do so?

--If a conversion costs 90% of a new ship and gives you a ship with 40% of the capability of the new design, while tying up the infrastructure required to build a new ship, it does not make sense. If the conversion cost 40% of a new ship and gives you 90% of the capability while tying up an obsolete slip for a couple weeks, green light it!

I'd go an extra step and look at remaining service life.
If the conversion costs 40% of a new ship and gives you 90% of the capability that sounds awesome. But not if it's got just 15% of the remaining service life that new ship would have. (Unless you're in a crisis situation where you need hulls now and will have to worry about hulls for later later. In that case you care about how soon you can deploy a capability much more than you care about economics of it)

Sometimes ships are just worn out and their remaining service lives are too short to justify expensive refits.

Historically you can find a number of examples where a navy did a major refit on a capital ship just to retire it a few years later. They'd have been better off (if politics allowed) saving that money towards a new replacement that could serve for decades, not just years.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:For ships to be updated/converted

6) What is the cost of conversion vs cost of new ships? Post conversion capability vs new ship capability? And what is the time of conversion and infrastructure required to do so?

--If a conversion costs 90% of a new ship and gives you a ship with 40% of the capability of the new design, while tying up the infrastructure required to build a new ship, it does not make sense. If the conversion cost 40% of a new ship and gives you 90% of the capability while tying up an obsolete slip for a couple weeks, green light it!

I'd go an extra step and look at remaining service life.
If the conversion costs 40% of a new ship and gives you 90% of the capability that sounds awesome. But not if it's got just 15% of the remaining service life that new ship would have. (Unless you're in a crisis situation where you need hulls now and will have to worry about hulls for later later. In that case you care about how soon you can deploy a capability much more than you care about economics of it)

Sometimes ships are just worn out and their remaining service lives are too short to justify expensive refits.

Historically you can find a number of examples where a navy did a major refit on a capital ship just to retire it a few years later. They'd have been better off (if politics allowed) saving that money towards a new replacement that could serve for decades, not just years.

I would almost roll the lifespan into the capability calculation, but your point is so true. Sadly, so many concepts are studied to death (especially in peacetime) that when something is finally agreed on, it is too late to actually do the upgrades on the ships. Or a budget compromise during construction doesn't allow a (known) forward thinking technology or design element to be used later. Take the short hulled Essexes or FFG-7 Frigates as perfect examples. As a result, they had short lifespans when they couldn't adopt to new technologies.