Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

kzt wrote:A perfectly logical solution is to a radiation hardened pod and install a power cable on the hull.

As Theemile said, that's basically what box launchers are. For fast reloading they could basically create a "socket" for the existing Mk16 pods; four to six per side of the ship and you'd basically have what I suggested above, and when you've fired them you could just jettison the pod and mount a new one. Only problem with the off-the-shelf tech is that the existing pods are set up to only fire all or none, not the one or two missiles you need for a warning shot at a potential pirate.

Theemile wrote:

David's reply to this argument several years ago was this : Manticore is the one system "That must be defended at all costs" in the empire. You couold lose any other system - and if you drove the defenders out, they would regroup, reinforce, and take it back. MANTICORE had to be defended to the death, no matter what. It is the center of government, the home to the Manticorian people, the house of the Queen, the economic engine, and the junction which connects the spokes of the empire - and is protect as such with force levels seen in few other systems in the galaxy. Because of this, it makes sense to place all the vulnerable lifeblood of the fleet (the shipbuilding) inside those same defenses.

I'm not suggesting eliminating the industry in the Manticore HS, what I am suggesting is to disperse some of it to other systems to prevent 100% loss should a future enemy conduct another stealth attack. The idea is not to weaken Manticore's defences but to allow the other systems in the empire to flourish and in times of war to keep some separation of all the important industrial and fleet resources. The point is to make the mission harder for the enemy when they have to coordinate over hundreds of LY's to accomplish something instead of having all of it conveniently located in one system. Give each system a small part of the ship building, either building LAC's, CLAC's, DDs to SD(P)'s depending on the size of the picket. Dispersing some of the industry doesn't mean that Manticore's Home Fleet would be weakened, it means that someone has to hit multiple targets where one target is 600+ LY away from the other two and the other two are separate by at least 200 LY between them and an entire Empire between them. Which would be safer? The nation will 90% of it's important industry in one system or the nation with 40% of it's important industry in one system and the other 60% split amongst two very distant objectives. Coordinating an attack between two or more forces 600+ LY apart is no trivial task and opens the door for errors and increases the chances that something will go wrong somewhere and one or more of the attacks will fail. The RMN will need to increase in size during the war with the MA and most definitely after the war is over because when everyone is close technologically, 60 systems protected by less than 150 SD(P)'s is not adequate.

Weird Harold wrote:




3) The SEM/TQ has explicitly stated that the TQ will NOT be 'second-class citizens' or field second-class ships.

If the SEM has a choice between building Chanson class DD's or Roland Class DD's to equip the Quadrant Guard and they choose Chanson class ships because they are cheaper then they will be making Talbott second class navy. The thing is that they don't have the choice at the moment, if the Chanson class ship improves of the Quadrants current naval ships then it's a step in the right direction.

Option 1: Keep the Talbott navies in ships from the 1700's until you can field Roland's for them which could be a year or 5 or 10.

Option 2: Equip them with better ships then they have when those ships become available, when a better class of ships becomes available start giving it to the Talbott Guard and so on until the Talbott navies are technologically equivalent to the RMN and can be integrated into the RMN.


Which option makes more sense? Which option would make the Talbott Quadrant happier?

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:




3) The SEM/TQ has explicitly stated that the TQ will NOT be 'second-class citizens' or field second-class ships.

If the SEM has a choice between building Chanson class DD's or Roland Class DD's to equip the Quadrant Guard and they choose Chanson class ships because they are cheaper then they will be making Talbott second class navy. The thing is that they don't have the choice at the moment, if the Chanson class ship improves of the Quadrants current naval ships then it's a step in the right direction.

Option 1: Keep the Talbott navies in ships from the 1700's until you can field Roland's for them which could be a year or 5 or 10.

Option 2: Equip them with better ships then they have when those ships become available, when a better class of ships becomes available start giving it to the Talbott Guard and so on until the Talbott navies are technologically equivalent to the RMN and can be integrated into the RMN.


Which option makes more sense? Which option would make the Talbott Quadrant happier?

No one is talking about building new Chansons instead of Wolfhound. The idea is to simply use the existing assets the best way to bring the training level of the TQG up to RMN levels. It's not very different than what was done to Grayson at the beginning of the alliance: Manticore sold a few Chansons and other relatively recent designs to them early on, so they'd begin getting acquainted with a modern Navy and create their own discipline. What others are suggesting is that the experience be repeated, though probably on a larger scale.

And since the Talbott Quadrand is part of the Star Empire, mixed crews and squadrons will probably be the norm. If the RMN could afford to have lots of experienced officers on loan to Grayson and other allied navies, having them in Talbott should be a no-brainer. For that matter, Grayson can also offer officers on loan and pay forward what they got.

When and if those Chansons get replaced by Wolfhounds or Rolands remains to be seen. It will depend on what everyone else deploys and what falls through the cracks to warlords, petty tyrants and pirates. There the geographical considerations will make for different decisions for Talbott, Silesia and the home systems (and I doubt Chansons are useful in the MBS).

One more aspect that the Admiralty will have to consider is how they'll patrol outside of their borders. Between the old allies (who have some tech level), Maya (who's catching up quickly) and Meyers (who has no tech base), there's a lot of volume. The whole Verge is now without SLN Frontier Fleet protection, for good or will and that volume is a shell 200 ly thick, with an inner radius of what, 250 ly?

Who is going to patrol the other side of the League?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The whole Verge is now without SLN Frontier Fleet protection, for good or will and that volume is a shell 200 ly thick, with an inner radius of what, 250 ly?

Who is going to patrol the other side of the League?

You know the answer. Nobody. FF had like 10,000 ships to do that, with bases located nearby. There is no replacement for them.

The SEM isn't going to triple or quadruple the war taxes so they can eventually have 80 million citizens patrolling an area solely so the government flunkies can feel good about how caring they are.

Instead they will be significantly reducing the budget for the RMN, as they have to spend ridiculous amounts of money rebuilding their core military industrial base.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
No one is talking about building new Chansons instead of Wolfhound. The idea is to simply use the existing assets the best way to bring the training level of the TQG up to RMN levels. It's not very different than what was done to Grayson at the beginning of the alliance: Manticore sold a few Chansons and other relatively recent designs to them early on, so they'd begin getting acquainted with a modern Navy and create their own discipline. What others are suggesting is that the experience be repeated, though probably on a larger scale.

And if they can build those ships in Quadrant Yards? Start expanding the yards on ships they can quickly put into production, equip their local units with those ships, when the yards are able to put the next generation of ship into production they do so and stop production of the previous generation up until they can produce Rolands or whatever replaces them. It might take a decade or two to do it on their own and it might take a lot less with assistance from the GA. The idea is to improve the shipyards of the Quadrant while bringing up the various navies of the Quadrant closer in capabilities to the RMN. The difference between the situation with Grayson in 1905 and Talbott in 1923 is the industrial power of Manticore, in 1905 Manticore had a large and efficient spaceborne industrial base while in 1923 it does not so most of the buildup at least in the early years has to be from local and limited resources and with as little outside assistance as possible.

And since the Talbott Quadrand is part of the Star Empire, mixed crews and squadrons will probably be the norm. If the RMN could afford to have lots of experienced officers on loan to Grayson and other allied navies, having them in Talbott should be a no-brainer. For that matter, Grayson can also offer officers on loan and pay forward what they got.

The situation between 1905 and 1923 is vastly different, in 1905 the RMN had 300 labour intensive DN's and SD's and another 1,300 labour intensive DD's, CLs, CAs, and BC's. This was also without accounting the forts and the logistic tail of the RMN located in the stations. So taking 50,000 or even 100,000 people and loaning them to the allies would have been hard but not impossible. In 1923 the stations are gone along with several million service personnel along with dozens of commissioned ships and hundreds of ships under construction. This followed closely to the Battle of Manticore that saw probably close to 350,000-400,000 RMN personnel killed in battle. In 1923 the RMN has highly automated warships but also highly labour intensive warships(LAC's) and CLACs. The RMN is stretched thin without accounting for the fact that they now have 60 systems to protect instead of only 3 and their administration, logistics and combat crews were gutted in between 1920-1923.

The GSN is not that big to begin with, they have a lot of combat power because they are heavy into SD(P)'s but their lighter units number a little over 200. They lost a lot of their combat power in the OB attacks and BoM as well. They may have some ships and crews to spare but I doubt it is anywhere close to enough.

When and if those Chansons get replaced by Wolfhounds or Rolands remains to be seen. It will depend on what everyone else deploys and what falls through the cracks to warlords, petty tyrants and pirates. There the geographical considerations will make for different decisions for Talbott, Silesia and the home systems (and I doubt Chansons are useful in the MBS).

If ships belonging to the SEM fall in the hands of pirates the Quadrant guard is failing miserably. Before you turn over a semi-modern ship to someone I would hope the RMN and the Quadrant Guard at the very least makes sure the loyalties of the officers and places reliable marines/ground forces.

One more aspect that the Admiralty will have to consider is how they'll patrol outside of their borders. Between the old allies (who have some tech level), Maya (who's catching up quickly) and Meyers (who has no tech base), there's a lot of volume. The whole Verge is now without SLN Frontier Fleet protection, for good or will and that volume is a shell 200 ly thick, with an inner radius of what, 250 ly?

LAC's are the answer, not everyone will get them immediately but the GA should make a priority list and start deploying LAC's to the most Stable systems first. Kingdom of Meyers should be at the top of that list because they are stable and reliable government, the RMN protects them with a handful of LAC's and DD's while training and forming a navy for the Kingdom. The Kingdom can then eventually provide security for the other systems in the sector.

Who is going to patrol the other side of the League?

The GA has limited resources, they cant be everywhere at once and protecting everyone. Prioritize and train equip local navies with the means to protect themselves from garden variety pirates.

kzt wrote:You know the answer. Nobody. FF had like 10,000 ships to do that, with bases located nearby. There is no replacement for them.

To be fair FF needed those ships to oppress the people rather than patrol for anti piracy and they caused a lot of the piracy and problems that is not going to be there when the GA steps in eventually.

No, the Majority of Grayson's shipyard were dispersed and they were still eliminated by Oyster Bay. It would be better to have several highly developed industrial nodes that were carefully planned to have easily upgraded defenses and to have a very extensive sensor network capable of detecting even the most minute of gravitational disturbances.

Sigs wrote: To be fair FF needed those ships to oppress the people rather than patrol for anti piracy and they caused a lot of the piracy and problems that is not going to be there when the GA steps in eventually.

You have a volume of something like 300,000,000 cubic light years full of systems that are too poor to defend themselves that you are supposed to somehow mysteriously patrol. How many ships do you think it will take? Now triple that, since you typically can only have 1/3rd of your ships deployed.

I suspect the GA is going to dive deep into the export market for warships for the next 10-20 years. The Chanson design would work, or at least some export variant of it, for the thousands of newly independent systems of the Verge. Most systems won't need or be able to afford more than a squadron or two of destroyers to see to their basic system security. Parallel to that export market will be consultant services for building a navy from scratch. The only real competition for this market will be the new League selling off surplus warships and hiring out personnel to train the new system defense forces, and for fairly obvious reasons many of the potential client systems will be hesitant to let Sollies back in under any circumstances.

The Talbot sector shipyards could begin construction for those ships relatively quickly while building the expertise and infrastructure to build bigger later. The "second class navy" bit doesn't come into play because the ships they'd be building wouldn't be intended for the RMN anyway.