How to downgrade the fleet without upsetting the public?

Brigade XO wrote:What might be happening in the design considerations to provide newer warships with some capasity to provide prize crews after the several conversations where the new, lower crew requirement, units were discoverd to not be able to put prize crews on ships or had enough marines to handle some of the things that they ran into.

Yes, the greater automation allowed the RMN to expand the numbers of hulls (with the same numbers of people and skate past some of the challanges of not enough people) but that was in great part driven by the need to build and deploy the newer warfighting variations of differnt classes.

Now they are moving into a period where the SEM is not at open war with anybody excpet the Alignment (which nobody has a handle on) and many of the ships which are going to be tasked with commerce protection appear to be either somewhat under staffed to fulfill that role or are older designs which may or may not be reasonably upgraded in armament.

If they are going to do commerce protection, they are going to need more people to do things like board ships (particlarly multiple at a time) along with the small craft and marines to do the jobs. They are also probably be configured for longer duration "cruising" to give them the ability to spend longer times away from bases and cover more areas in the various redeveloping trade routes. The weapons mixes need adjusting.
One of the difficulties is that nobody knows where the next problems are going to come from. At the moment, there are a lot of SLN ships out there, either as part of the the SL or in SDFs of lots of systems. There are also things like the RF which has already been noticed by at least the SLN and I think RMN as a rising player in the SL.2 scheme of things and nobody has a handle --that we yet know of- of what they have and that the intentions are.
Remember that the SLN was mostly ignoring (or having the information misreprsened and or buried) new weaponry, ships, tactics etc prior to going up against Manticore. We and they don't know what they don't know except that much of what SLN ONI had for information was sadly lacking in depth, and accuracy. That includes on it's own members, and trading partners of it's member worlds.

I forsee any future light and medium builds having 2 manpower levels - war time and patrol. All the automation from the current generation will stay in place allowing a smaller crew, but ships will be built with accomodations for 20-30% more crew and larger (or existent) Marine formations. Units assigned to patrol roles or quick reaction squadrons will operate with Patrol levels - Fleet units and ships assigned to warzones will operate with war time crews - minimal marines and excess crew, unless absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, both the surviving ERM and LERM units, and the pre-OB Mk 16 units will be with the fleet for some time. Which means we will probably see the ERM units operating as patrol units, and the Mk 16 units attached to fleets and hotzones.

Puidwen wrote:After all I believe that the general Manticoran public knows that the Mesan alignment is still out there. But there's also been a general theme in Manticoran history where whenever they downgrade the fleet (or just let it get in bad shape) trouble happens. I doubt they will be thrilled even with Queen Elizabeth telling them they need to trim the fleet.

Start with mothballing/scrapping the oldest non-pod-noughts remaining. send crews into new build destroyers and cruisers for commerce protection.

Yes they need a wall of battle for defense. but probably not much bigger than current numbers on a build down as oldest are mothballed. IF it can't take Apollo it doesn't remain in the Imperial fleets wall of battle, what the Talbot SDF want...LACs and missile pods and local build fortresses to house Mycroft in a system defense roll. 15 to 20 million ton Mycroft fortress with three times the defensive firepower of an Invictuse with fire-control links to scores of relay platforms and sensor arrays to control swarms of pods and LACs. 20 to 30 of these for coreworlds of the Old Kingdom and major naval bases. Can the grav pulse be put on a moon? Is so can the fire control computers be buried in a underground complex and the scores of communication relays be upgraded to handle both civil and military applications?
This allows a smaller more lethal and more mobile wall of battle and does not tie down superdreadnoughts/LAC carriers on defense. Thus they are available for offensive operations. Though a four squadron task group, or two would be left behind in key systems for a mobile reaction force.

Howard J Howe wrote: Can the grav pulse be put on a moon? Is so can the fire control computers be buried in a underground complex and the scores of communication relays be upgraded to handle both civil and military applications?
This allows a smaller more lethal and more mobile wall of battle and does not tie down superdreadnoughts/LAC carriers on defense. Thus they are available for offensive operations. Though a four squadron task group, or two would be left behind in key systems for a mobile reaction force.

Dunno about on a moon itself, but you could certainly fly Keyhole or Mycroft relays above the surface of a moon. Enough of them would be hard to wipe out by surprise. (And -- given that their biggest signature is their FTL test emissions - hypothetical surface or even sub-surface emitters wouldn't be much better hidden than orbital ones)

Though, since you can't put a sidewall around most moons, I'm not sure computers buried in the moon are actually more survivable against Honorverse weapons than computers buried in the heart of a 16+ Mton state-of-the-art fortress.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though, since you can't put a sidewall around most moons, I'm not sure computers buried in the moon are actually more survivable against Honorverse weapons than computers buried in the heart of a 16+ Mton state-of-the-art fortress.

The additional protection of the moon would be that, with proper shielding, the enemy does not know the location of the hidden installation (which might be on the other side). A fortress is packed with vital things, a moon is mostly rock.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though, since you can't put a sidewall around most moons, I'm not sure computers buried in the moon are actually more survivable against Honorverse weapons than computers buried in the heart of a 16+ Mton state-of-the-art fortress.

The additional protection of the moon would be that, with proper shielding, the enemy does not know the location of the hidden installation (which might be on the other side). A fortress is packed with vital things, a moon is mostly rock.

If you hit it with a frac C missile it doesn’t matter. It’s going to blow a 50 km wide crater in the surface and send enormous shock waves through the interior.

kzt wrote:

tlb wrote:



The additional protection of the moon would be that, with proper shielding, the enemy does not know the location of the hidden installation (which might be on the other side). A fortress is packed with vital things, a moon is mostly rock.

If you hit it with a frac C missile it doesn’t matter. It’s going to blow a 50 km wide crater in the surface and send enormous shock waves through the interior.

I like how you think.

I don’t see how the RMN can reduce their fleet while meeting their commitments to their new imperial subject as well as provide the old SKM with protection while also protecting Beowulf. This doesn’t even account for the RMN having to step in to protect any one of the hundreds of potential new nations that rise out of those systems leaving the League if any decide to leave because they might be forced to provide protection to some of the more important systems that have economic and trade relationship with Manticore/Grayson/Haven. The RMN’s 120-150 SD(P)’s cannot be expected to protect 40-50 Imperial systems while simultaneously maintaining nodal forces in key area’s to support potential allies and also maintain a contingent with the GA fleet.


The threats that face Manticore specifically and the GA in general did not magically disappear with the surrender of the League, they are still there only hidden and dormant for the moment. The GA has a desperate lack of intelligence on the MA, they don’t know who stands with the MA or how big the MA actually is (Territory, population, industry, economy or military). The GA doesn’t know how long it would take for the MA to build up their fleet if they don’t have a sufficient fleet at the moment and they don’t know the technological secrets of the MA so from the standpoint of looking at the MA I would say that the RMN specifically and the GA in general cannot start to cut the military in fact they will need to increase their light combatants and at least double their SD(P)’s which could be accomplished by scrapping their obsolete SD’s.

On the other hand the SLN may be down but it most definitely is not out, even if the league looses ¾ of their core and shell members they would still represent a significant industrial and economic power that could dump immense effort and wealth into researching new weapons and technologies, building up their ship building capabilities, building up their ship designing capabilities and fleet train… that is effort and resources that the GA can only dream of. The SLN is defeated at the moment but the shock of that defeat plus the depth of the infection by forces unknown will force the SLN to do a very intense cleaning from the top down of all officers and enlisted who are incompetent, corrupt or both. It might take 5 or more years before the SLN can expect to start receiving new warships with technologies that make them more survivable…that is 5 years of cleaning the corrupt and incompetent and retraining the entire navy to a higher standard while also eliminating their bloated command structure and divided command structure(BF/FF). Within 5 years a highly motivated League backing an ever more highly motivated SLN can start fielding advanced warships, within 10 they would be able to have a large % of their wall converted to newly constructed SD(P)’s and within 20 they may have surpassed the GA technologically, quality wise and quantity.


The RMN and the GA need to expand the military in order to gather allies from as many of the verge, protectorates, independents and core/shell systems as they can in order to be able to survive the war with the MA that they have to know is nowhere near over and the potential resurgence of the SLN in a decade or two if not much sooner. After all having even 200 League core/shell systems open their purse strings and their research and development teams will allow the league to make leaps in their research and development that the GA can only dream of and even the old League could have only dreamed of.


The bottom line is that reducing their wallers is just an invitation for disaster to come a knocking or for another plot twist where the bad guys come in with overwhelming force while the good guys fight them off and eventually win against overwhelming odds.


The GA’s future survival rests in the hands of the Verge and the protectorates as they are so far back in terms of economy, industry and technology that minor investments will reap exponential growth and since there is so many of them there is a good chance that many will thrive. Plus most of the population in the Vere and protectorates will be very motivated to improve their lot in life so that they don’t end back up with Frontier Security. The GA needs to invest resources and military forces to build up and protect those systems until they reach a point where they can protect themselves.

Emulate Baron High Ridge.

As there is no immediate (this year) threat, then QE3 and the gov will be under pressure to cut spending naval spending. epically they have to rebuild the yards before they can make any more ships


now cutting spending does not mean taking the high ride approach of build only LACs and the odd cruiser. it just means they do not need to be building hundreds of SD(P)s on a we need them tomorrow approach.

particularly as mentioned above they are going to need a year/2 to get to the point where they can even BUILD a SD(P).

now as others have said, they can scrap all non pod SDs and a lot of the older light units, which alone will save them a nice bit of cash. while rebuilding the SD yards they can be pumping out light units, whose yards will be rebuilt much quicker, to deal with the pirates and rouge SLN units.

so no doubt there will be construction of SOME SD(P)s, and more light units then has been the norm for a while. They just will not be building them in the numbers or speed they were before the yards were destroyed.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Emulate Baron High Ridge.

Bite your tongue