How to downgrade the fleet without upsetting the public?

Jonathan_S wrote:In the extreme short term; sure.

But I can't see Manticore, with their history of naval self-sufficiency, being willing to be completely dependent on allied production of hulls. They're going to feel (and correctly in my opinion) that their medium to long term naval security requires that they rebuild their domestic warship construction capability.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:In the extreme short term; sure.

But I can't see Manticore, with their history of naval self-sufficiency, being willing to be completely dependent on allied production of hulls. They're going to feel (and correctly in my opinion) that their medium to long term naval security requires that they rebuild their domestic warship construction capability.

They may not need to ramp it all the way back up to where it was at the peak of the war, but they're going to at the very minimum want to rebuild it to the late pre-war capabilities that King Roger ushered in during his naval buildup. (And the missing production lines will need to be far in excess of what existed back then given the drastic increase in missile usage)


So, yes, despite the existence of Bolthole, I expect Manticore to be sinking a fair bit of their naval budgets into rebuilding domestic yard and supporting manufacturing infrastructure.

I suspect that anything coming out of Bolthole will always be a "Havenite" design, with Manticorian technology - either bolted on, or later, integrated into the design. By this, I mean that the design will be a Warlord-D, a Mars-E, or similiar type of design currently under construction, but with Manticorian firecontrol, grasers or whatever can be integrated into the ships.

We will probably see construction broken into multiple tech levels based on where they are in construction.

At first, it will be systems easily integrated into the ships already under construction in a manner that will not interfere with their construction rates. This will probably be broken into several integration groups, so there are multiple consistent ships with similiar or identical loadouts; as the ships are closer to laying down with less of the ship constructed, they will have a higher % of Manty technology added. Ships laid down with Manticorian tech will probably have it more pronounced (Like Beta^2 nodes and ERM tubes), and essentially be a new mark of ship, though they will still have the same basic design as before so as not to interrupt construction flow.

Later, we might see some "clean sheet" designs - but once again I think they will follow Havenite design principles more than Manticorian. But these designs will be optimized for the then state of the art tech, not an old design reworked so it can fire better weapons.

In short, I'm fairly certain that a Nike or Sag-C (or descendant) is never coming out of Bolthole.

Sigs wrote:

kzt wrote:The problem is scale. You can’t divide your fleet up to cover several hundred times as much volume as you were responsible for and do a good, or even marginally acceptable job. You need an order of magnitude more cruiser class ships just as a start, assuming you want to have them see an RMN ship more than once a decade.

And also remember the ratio of three ships being needed to keep one on station.

So if you want to make that kind of promise you’ll need to double at least the naval budget, and seriously cut back on the SD, LACs and other manpower intense designs as you need them to crew your huge number of light vessels.

The RMN does not have to do this alone, as long as all members of the GA carry their weight in regards to fleet then they would have enough. We are not talking about picking thousands of systems and investing at the same time, the GA should pick the most likely to suceed and invest as much as they can in those systems as soon as possible. There are going to be core and shell worlds that will naturaly gravitate towards the GA and they can assist as well.

The goal here is to find the most likely to suceed, give them the best tools that you can as well as assistance in terms of expertise and training and let those systems pull themselvs out of the hole. This wouldent be meant to do everything for each system, this would be intented to give a few systems assistance to start up their recovery. In the mean time all other systems that have any degree of stability and acceptable government would be equiped to at the very least protect themselvs, recruit people from any stable systems and train them in centralized GA training facilities to an acceptable standard, once people are trained they are returned home and the GA donates or sells them export version of the Cimeterre so that they can at least protect themselves from pirates. At some point those systems become capable of expanding their domestic industry on their own with little outside help, with more time and bigger industry they also expand their fleets to protect themselves and their newly build industry. Hell you can give the League reduced rates to any of the WH if they provide industrial and financial assistance to the Verge and Protectorates, but even without them the League and the SLN painted themselves as the bad guys to way too many core and shell worlds and the GA the good guys to way too many core and shell worlds which to me means that a lot of those systems will gravitate to the GA and will be willing to set up trade relations with the Verge and protectorates under the supervision of the GA. A lot of industrial potential would be coming into the GA Sphere of influence, some of which would be willing to help out the Verge.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:I suspect that anything coming out of Bolthole will always be a "Havenite" design, with Manticorian technology - either bolted on, or later, integrated into the design. By this, I mean that the design will be a Warlord-D, a Mars-E, or similiar type of design currently under construction, but with Manticorian firecontrol, grasers or whatever can be integrated into the ships.

We will probably see construction broken into multiple tech levels based on where they are in construction.

At first, it will be systems easily integrated into the ships already under construction in a manner that will not interfere with their construction rates. This will probably be broken into several integration groups, so there are multiple consistent ships with similiar or identical loadouts; as the ships are closer to laying down with less of the ship constructed, they will have a higher % of Manty technology added. Ships laid down with Manticorian tech will probably have it more pronounced (Like Beta^2 nodes and ERM tubes), and essentially be a new mark of ship, though they will still have the same basic design as before so as not to interrupt construction flow.

Later, we might see some "clean sheet" designs - but once again I think they will follow Havenite design principles more than Manticorian. But these designs will be optimized for the then state of the art tech, not an old design reworked so it can fire better weapons.

In short, I'm fairly certain that a Nike or Sag-C (or descendant) is never coming out of Bolthole.

I'm not even sure how much work Bolthole was planning to do on smaller Alliance designs. The only part that was really talked about was for SD(P)s, especially getting Haven and Beowulf their own Apollo capable units. Hulls and basic fittings from Bolthole, Keyhole II, missiles, and other 'fancy' gear from Beowulf using Manticore's designs.

That's probably a bit easier to mix and match than on a design like Nike, or Roland.

Though we haven't heard anything about Haven's cruisers since they revealed their SD(P) & CLAC fleet. So I don't know if those got more competitive or if they're still saddled with last-war single-drive missiles. If they aren't significantly improved then Haven is going to want to get upgraded units built -- but given their lack of long range independent patrolling that's probably not quite as high a priority for them as getting some Apollo SD(P)s of their own.

kzt wrote:Well, consider what happens when the next president of Haven gets elected and decides they don't really love Manticore? And the evidence is there are a lot of people in that camp.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:


The RMN does not have to do this alone, as long as all members of the GA carry their weight in regards to fleet then they would have enough. We are not talking about picking thousands of systems and investing at the same time, the GA should pick the most likely to suceed and invest as much as they can in those systems as soon as possible. There are going to be core and shell worlds that will naturaly gravitate towards the GA and they can assist as well.

The goal here is to find the most likely to suceed, give them the best tools that you can as well as assistance in terms of expertise and training and let those systems pull themselvs out of the hole. This wouldent be meant to do everything for each system, this would be intented to give a few systems assistance to start up their recovery. In the mean time all other systems that have any degree of stability and acceptable government would be equiped to at the very least protect themselvs, recruit people from any stable systems and train them in centralized GA training facilities to an acceptable standard, once people are trained they are returned home and the GA donates or sells them export version of the Cimeterre so that they can at least protect themselves from pirates. At some point those systems become capable of expanding their domestic industry on their own with little outside help, with more time and bigger industry they also expand their fleets to protect themselves and their newly build industry. Hell you can give the League reduced rates to any of the WH if they provide industrial and financial assistance to the Verge and Protectorates, but even without them the League and the SLN painted themselves as the bad guys to way too many core and shell worlds and the GA the good guys to way too many core and shell worlds which to me means that a lot of those systems will gravitate to the GA and will be willing to set up trade relations with the Verge and protectorates under the supervision of the GA. A lot of industrial potential would be coming into the GA Sphere of influence, some of which would be willing to help out the Verge.

Well, you see the SLN’s Frontier Fleet did in fact have many thousands of ships roaming the verge making it highly unsafe for pirates and would be conquers. Since the RMN told them they can’t do that, that means they have taken on the job. So how are they going to do it? Or are they going to say to 3/4 of the world “You guys are really in bad shape. I can’t possibly see how we can make a profit here. Hope the next band of pirates to come around aren’t too hard on you. Bye.”

Sigs wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:In the extreme short term; sure.

But I can't see Manticore, with their history of naval self-sufficiency, being willing to be completely dependent on allied production of hulls. They're going to feel (and correctly in my opinion) that their medium to long term naval security requires that they rebuild their domestic warship construction capability.

I am in no way saying that the SEM would hand over all naval construction to the Republic and Bolthole, what I am suggesting is that at the moment they focus on rebuilding their industry, Graysons industry and Beowulfs industry as well as the rest of the SEM's new territories. They should be clear and with a written agreement that the SEM will resume shipbuilding to a specified degree at some point and the Republic would help them with said shipyards. Right now they shouldn't be worried about potential competition 20 years down the road, they should focus on securing their territory as best they can, rebuild their industry and focus on finding the MA while also doing their best to mitigate the future threat of the League.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Since the GA has forbidden the SLN to continue antipiracy patrols, they have no need for their ships. They can be transferred to various SDFs whrre they can protect individual systems.

Relax wrote:Lets just say that 2 countries at war for 2++ decades becoming life long best friends forever is as realistic as a druggie in Seattle/Vancouver where drugs/needles are handed out by the government, going into drug rehab...