Reserve Fleet

cthia wrote:I don't think the SL had a choice whether or not to create a reserve. I can see their reserve as being a symptom of having so many ships that were being retired from a lack of need. I can imagine a time when OFS had its hands full with a fairly young galaxy of untamed belligerents, and the build-down diet was the furthest thing from the gorilla's mind, and was a luxury they didn't have. Once upon a time, Battle Fleet and OFS needed plenty of ships for browbeating, pirating while incognito, showing the flag, taming general uppity aggression, and supplying their drug of choice, expansion. When the League's equivalent of the "West" was won, what was the SLN to do with so many decades of investment. Just like a certain nation I know. Art imitates life.

I think that the SLN started like most military organizations with a realistic threat assessment and decided that having a reserve was a good idea, problem is that they kept dumping their old ships in the “reserve” until is it became a ship junkyard. They may have started out with a small well organized reserve but ended up with a heap of useless ships because they kept adding more ships to the “reserve” without ensuring that those ships had the crews, infrastructure or logistics to actually mobilize them. They started with the mentality that there is a real threat they have to protect against and ended up with 2,300 SDs in service which at the start of the first Havenite War was almost 4x the combined Waller fleet of manticore and haven and probably 3x the combined Waller strength of every other navy, at some point the reserve became a threat for anyone who doesn’t bend to the leagues desires rather than an actual threat to anyone.

Sigs wrote:

cthia wrote:I don't think the SL had a choice whether or not to create a reserve. I can see their reserve as being a symptom of having so many ships that were being retired from a lack of need. I can imagine a time when OFS had its hands full with a fairly young galaxy of untamed belligerents, and the build-down diet was the furthest thing from the gorilla's mind, and was a luxury they didn't have. Once upon a time, Battle Fleet and OFS needed plenty of ships for browbeating, pirating while incognito, showing the flag, taming general uppity aggression, and supplying their drug of choice, expansion. When the League's equivalent of the "West" was won, what was the SLN to do with so many decades of investment. Just like a certain nation I know. Art imitates life.

I think that the SLN started like most military organizations with a realistic threat assessment and decided that having a reserve was a good idea, problem is that they kept dumping their old ships in the “reserve” until is it became a ship junkyard. They may have started out with a small well organized reserve but ended up with a heap of useless ships because they kept adding more ships to the “reserve” without ensuring that those ships had the crews, infrastructure or logistics to actually mobilize them. They started with the mentality that there is a real threat they have to protect against and ended up with 2,300 SDs in service which at the start of the first Havenite War was almost 4x the combined Waller fleet of manticore and haven and probably 3x the combined Waller strength of every other navy, at some point the reserve became a threat for anyone who doesn’t bend to the leagues desires rather than an actual threat to anyone.

Once again, any bureaucracy eventually "evolves" to the state where it's primary mission is the defense and maintenance of the bureaucracy.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:The basic technology doesn't change though, which means that the person trained to operate the basic version of the tech can operate the more advance version of the tech, probably not to the same standard or to the maximum potential but they can be operated just the same.

Beowulf would most likely be able to operate a Havenite or Manticoran SD(P) without any training from the RMN or the RHN again definitely not to the same degree of efficiency or to the same standard but they will be able to operate an SD(P) and work on improving their expertise with the new systems.

There is a big jump from capacitor-driven, tube-launched tech to fusion powered, pod launched, FTL guided, highly automated systems.

Maybe Havenite tech could be reverse engineered but there would still be a pretty steep leaning curve. The older the tech, the steeper the learning curve.

The tech level is much less important than keeping training current.

A well trained RMN crew from 1900 dropped into a newly constructed ship in 1920 would require upgrading knowledge and capabilities but would be able to grasp the upgrades relatively easily, after all we are not talking about having the crew of a 1800s frigate dropped into a modern Halifax-Class frigate and expecting them to be ready to go to war within a few months. Having a highly educated well trained individual having to upgrade their skills should not be a major problem because at the end of the day they have the basics that those improved technologies are build upon.


A well maintained reserve would keep its ships and personnel up to as close to the same standard of the regular forces as possible thereby eliminating the problems of having to train crews on technologies several generations ahead of their own equipment, and if the enemy makes technological advances the equivalent of those made by Manticore then your regular force would be behind the curve so having the crews of 200 SD(P)s or the crews of 800 SD(P)s to retrain won’t really matter. Besides I doubt that every war would start with such drastic technological difference because not everyone can afford to be so ignorant of their surrounding as the SLN and let a potential competitor get so ahead of them technologically by such a margin as to make their navy irrelevant.

Theemile wrote:
Once again, any bureaucracy eventually "evolves" to the state where it's primary mission is the defense and maintenance of the bureaucracy.

Problem with that is that not everyone has the luxury to make national defence such a low priority as to make themselves irrelevant. The SLN got away with it for so long because until the technological revolution happened right around 1900 no one was able to actually stand up to them in open combat no matter how well trained or equipped they were simply because of the numerical superiority of the SLN and the general insanity of picking a fight with a nation that can outbuild every other nation at the same time. Unless the SEM gets significantly bigger and the rest of the galaxy breaks into small 1-3 system nations they wouldn’t need to worry about following in the SLNs footsteps...not for long anyway.

Sigs wrote: A well trained RMN crew from 1900 dropped into a newly constructed ship in 1920 would require upgrading knowledge and capabilities but would be able to grasp the upgrades relatively easily, after all we are not talking about having the crew of a 1800s frigate dropped into a modern Halifax-Class frigate and expecting them to be ready to go to war within a few months. Having a highly educated well trained individual having to upgrade their skills should not be a major problem because at the end of the day they have the basics that those improved technologies are build upon.

They'd still have some specific holes in their training that would need to be addressed. They could be brought up to speed much faster than a raw civilian recruit; but probable not dropped in with just the tech manuals to figure it out.

Care and feeding of a microfusion power plant has got to be quite a bit different than plasma capacitors. And maintenance on the missile tubes is also quite different as all the missile powering-up mechanisms moved from the magazines to the individual tube.

LAC space traffic control is a pretty new specialty. Old style LACs weren't launched or recovered en-mass from stations (much less ships). And maintenance, repair, operation, and emergency proceedures for a LAC fission plant are all quite different from the small fusion plants old-style LACs use.

Tactics is somewhat different thanks to the significantly evolved toolbox and threat environment of the last 20 years (extended CM range, MDMs and related closing speeds, FTL comms and recon drones, bow walls, sustained pod combat, LAC integration, etc. etc.

Beta squared nodes are probably a little different to maintain than either Alpha or Beta nodes. Though that's probably a smaller adjustment.


Like I said, none of this is impossible or even necessarily all that hard to train them on. But even so that training takes some time - so you need to count on having several months to both blow the rust off their skills and train them on specific gaps in skills related to the technology and tactics changes of the last 20 years. That's far faster than you can get a new recruit up to speed, and once through the refresher/update training each reserve personnel will be more effective than a newly trained wet behind the ears seaman or ensign would be. But that's still a far different model than the current US National Guard which get far more frequent training and deployment.

Jonathan_S wrote:They'd still have some specific holes in their training that would need to be addressed. They could be brought up to speed much faster than a raw civilian recruit; but probable not dropped in with just the tech manuals to figure it out.

There is no argument that there will be holes in their training/experience no matter how good it is. It may not be ideal but if your reservists are a generation or two behind they will catch up a lot quicker than raw civilians as you said but they will also have years or decades of experience to rely on, something a raw recruit no matter how good his training and how intelligent and motivated said recruit is cannot match.

Care and feeding of a microfusion power plant has got to be quite a bit different than plasma capacitors. And maintenance on the missile tubes is also quite different as all the missile powering-up mechanisms moved from the magazines to the individual tube.

In the grand scheme of things was the SLN reserve obsolete because the RMN and the RHN hid their technology and warfighting abilities and surprise attacked the League or was is 100% the Leagues fault because they had all the raw data and they had the resources to a) gather the intelligence and do their own R and D to catch up and b)quickly build ships that are technologically close to the RMN/RHN. They ignored all developments from the MAnticore-Haven war and paid the price because of their arrogance and stupidity but ultimately few other nations will have the luxury or stupidity to ignore a fellow powers growing technological edge which means that they will be fighting to keep within shouting distance. Not building a reserve because it might be obsolete when you need it seems like a ridiculous reason because how many nations can build a significant technological edge in their fleet without anyone noticing other than the MA?

LAC space traffic control is a pretty new specialty. Old style LACs weren't launched or recovered en-mass from stations (much less ships). And maintenance, repair, operation, and emergency proceedures for a LAC fission plant are all quite different from the small fusion plants old-style LACs use.

And keeping your reserves trained up to the latest technology is a must. Ignoring your reserves until they are needed and then rushing to reorganize them, train them and arm them defeats the whole purpose of the reserves.

Like I said, none of this is impossible or even necessarily all that hard to train them on. But even so that training takes some time - so you need to count on having several months to both blow the rust off their skills and train them on specific gaps in skills related to the technology and tactics changes of the last 20 years. That's far faster than you can get a new recruit up to speed, and once through the refresher/update training each reserve personnel will be more effective than a newly trained wet behind the ears seaman or ensign would be. But that's still a far different model than the current US National Guard which get far more frequent training and deployment.

For technological reserve that is required in the honorverse you require a more intense and hands on training.


Say for example the RMN decided on 500 SD(P)s as reserves, 50 of them are always active to rotate your crews through 6 month cruise every 5 years, 6 months of very intense training and drilling. Once that training is complete they go to their home base and continue with simulators and periodic short term training on reserve SD(P)'s until your turn come up for a 6 month rotation. Work them hard within their limited time and plan for a 6-9 month shake down cruise unless its a dire dire emergency where your nation might not be around in 9 months.