Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Theemile wrote:You're missing 1 point - depending on the definition, CLACs and BCs are Capital Ships. I think we can say BCs are not part of those calculations, they actually could be used for patrolling and day to day operations - besides, the crews on the Agamemnons and Nikes are significantly smaller then pre-war CAs, making them very cost effective for what they bring to the game. About 26 Agamemons were known lost in the war and a single Nike in UC, leaving over 60 Agamemons and 17 known Nikes surviving the war. Combined with the Survivors of the 73 Reliant III/IVs, will give at least 150 ERM and DDM armed BCs - Any surviving Homers still in service will probably be sold or reclaimed - the survivors of the 95 completed Reliant I/II will probably be mothballed or sold as soon as conditions allow, but will probably be kept in service for the immediate future.

* Some of the 24 BC(p)s lost at BoMa might have been Grayson Courvousier IIs.

CLACS, likeways, are actually more useful than SD(p)s for day to day operations. 1st) they escort the Battle squadrons, freeing up escorts and pickets. I believe the ratio we figured previously was going to be 2 CLACs for each 6 ship SD(p) BattleSquadron. 2nd) A single CLAC is presence - if you want to own a system, 1 CLAC's wing will completely fill a system in a few hours. The same "eyes" can be had with a handful of system drones, but the LACs are visible. no other formation, besides a large destroyer Flotilla can do this. Every Fleetbase needs a responce CLAC or 2 just for this purpose. 3rd) Spec-ops: A CLAC on it's own can do alot of damage, and 4th) moving LACs around the empire. Of course, it seems this can now be done with the multipurpose FSVs.

Manticore had a little over 100 CLACs after BoMa's loses, and was still building more up through OB, so are probably fielding in the 120 region at the end of UC. Another 8 may be repaired or declared junk after BoMa. Regardless, some will be going into the Reserve; most likely all the surviving Minotaurs will find their way there, and probably a healthy dollap of the Hydras as well.

My calculations have 43-47 Manticorian SD(p)s surviving BoMa, with ~10 more that could be repaired in time. 20 of which are the non-Keyhole equipped Medusas with Henke. I think we can guarantee that these will definitely be mothballed, and (if economics allow) upgraded to KHII in the Future. The rest of the few surviving Medusas were upgraded to KHII, which reduceded their already limited podcore. Chances are any Medusa that is not a Command variant will be mothballed. Ungraded Gryphons will probably be kept in the reserve for now, most of the the rest will be scrapped. Of course the biggest variable (which we do not know) is the size of the Python Lump. Most likely it was ~200 ships, but it could have been 2-3x that. Up to seeing that comment, I would have said that it could also be just around 100 ships - but then the fleet limit comment would not make as much sense.

Once construction is resumed, assuming a new war has not started, we can expect new construction to push the oldest designs into the reserve and the oldest of the reserve to be sold or destroyed in turn. Ideally all the main fleet will be Mk 35/16/23 ships, with the Mk 14/41 ships filing the reserve.

It will be interesting to watch

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Those are good points about CLACs. I hadn't taken them into account, but they should indeed be used. It's possible David can see further expanded roles for them, the same way that carriers became the defining naval force in the 20th century, displacing the battleships. My only gripe with them is that they should be "CV" like CV-6 USS Enterprise and the COLAC should be called the CAG.

You don't need CLACs to ferry LACs around for supplying the empire. You can do that efficiently with crated LACs in an 8-million-ton freighter. Using the CLAC means it has a smaller load, as it's in the DN-size range and the LACs are arranged so they can be launched. You may say a freighter needs an escort, otherwise it's a juicy target, but the same is true of a CLAC that offloads the entire wing. An unescorted CLAC would only be able to deliver some 80 LACs in a trip and does tie up a resource.

Of course, if you have an abundance of CLACs anyway (and your numbers indicate the RMN does), you may as well use them instead of chartering freighters. Can you explain your calculations to get o 100? The 1920 fleet strengths in the Pearls (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/106/1) says there were 42 and this was before BoMa.

kzt wrote:What makes you think that nobody has a hab module to stick in a freighter?

The cargo bay is something like a km long and 120 meters in radius. And it's in zero G, so you could velcro it to the wall. So you can easily fit everything you need.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:What makes you think that nobody has a hab module to stick in a freighter?

The cargo bay is something like a km long and 120 meters in radius. And it's in zero G, so you could velcro it to the wall. So you can easily fit everything you need.

You would also need to hook it up to power for the environmental equipment; unless it also had its own power source (then what about waste heat?).

kzt wrote:What makes you think that nobody has a hab module to stick in a freighter?

The cargo bay is something like a km long and 120 meters in radius. And it's in zero G, so you could velcro it to the wall. So you can easily fit everything you need.

tlb wrote:You would also need to hook it up to power for the environmental equipment; unless it also had its own power source (then what about waste heat?).

kzt wrote:The freighter has a fusion reactor. A couple of hundred meters of superconducting cable is easy enough to install.

kzt wrote:What makes you think that nobody has a hab module to stick in a freighter?

The cargo bay is something like a km long and 120 meters in radius. And it's in zero G, so you could velcro it to the wall. So you can easily fit everything you need.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:You're missing 1 point - depending on the definition, CLACs and BCs are Capital Ships. I think we can say BCs are not part of those calculations, they actually could be used for patrolling and day to day operations - besides, the crews on the Agamemnons and Nikes are significantly smaller then pre-war CAs, making them very cost effective for what they bring to the game. About 26 Agamemons were known lost in the war and a single Nike in UC, leaving over 60 Agamemons and 17 known Nikes surviving the war. Combined with the Survivors of the 73 Reliant III/IVs, will give at least 150 ERM and DDM armed BCs - Any surviving Homers still in service will probably be sold or reclaimed - the survivors of the 95 completed Reliant I/II will probably be mothballed or sold as soon as conditions allow, but will probably be kept in service for the immediate future.

* Some of the 24 BC(p)s lost at BoMa might have been Grayson Courvousier IIs.

CLACS, likeways, are actually more useful than SD(p)s for day to day operations. 1st) they escort the Battle squadrons, freeing up escorts and pickets. I believe the ratio we figured previously was going to be 2 CLACs for each 6 ship SD(p) BattleSquadron. 2nd) A single CLAC is presence - if you want to own a system, 1 CLAC's wing will completely fill a system in a few hours. The same "eyes" can be had with a handful of system drones, but the LACs are visible. no other formation, besides a large destroyer Flotilla can do this. Every Fleetbase needs a responce CLAC or 2 just for this purpose. 3rd) Spec-ops: A CLAC on it's own can do alot of damage, and 4th) moving LACs around the empire. Of course, it seems this can now be done with the multipurpose FSVs.

Manticore had a little over 100 CLACs after BoMa's loses, and was still building more up through OB, so are probably fielding in the 120 region at the end of UC. Another 8 may be repaired or declared junk after BoMa. Regardless, some will be going into the Reserve; most likely all the surviving Minotaurs will find their way there, and probably a healthy dollap of the Hydras as well.

My calculations have 43-47 Manticorian SD(p)s surviving BoMa, with ~10 more that could be repaired in time. 20 of which are the non-Keyhole equipped Medusas with Henke. I think we can guarantee that these will definitely be mothballed, and (if economics allow) upgraded to KHII in the Future. The rest of the few surviving Medusas were upgraded to KHII, which reduceded their already limited podcore. Chances are any Medusa that is not a Command variant will be mothballed. Ungraded Gryphons will probably be kept in the reserve for now, most of the the rest will be scrapped. Of course the biggest variable (which we do not know) is the size of the Python Lump. Most likely it was ~200 ships, but it could have been 2-3x that. Up to seeing that comment, I would have said that it could also be just around 100 ships - but then the fleet limit comment would not make as much sense.

Once construction is resumed, assuming a new war has not started, we can expect new construction to push the oldest designs into the reserve and the oldest of the reserve to be sold or destroyed in turn. Ideally all the main fleet will be Mk 35/16/23 ships, with the Mk 14/41 ships filing the reserve.

It will be interesting to watch

Those are good points about CLACs. I hadn't taken them into account, but they should indeed be used. It's possible David can see further expanded roles for them, the same way that carriers became the defining naval force in the 20th century, displacing the battleships. My only gripe with them is that they should be "CV" like CV-6 USS Enterprise and the COLAC should be called the CAG.

You don't need CLACs to ferry LACs around for supplying the empire. You can do that efficiently with crated LACs in an 8-million-ton freighter. Using the CLAC means it has a smaller load, as it's in the DN-size range and the LACs are arranged so they can be launched. You may say a freighter needs an escort, otherwise it's a juicy target, but the same is true of a CLAC that offloads the entire wing. An unescorted CLAC would only be able to deliver some 80 LACs in a trip and does tie up a resource.

Of course, if you have an abundance of CLACs anyway (and your numbers indicate the RMN does), you may as well use them instead of chartering freighters. Can you explain your calculations to get o 100? The 1920 fleet strengths in the Pearls (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/106/1) says there were 42 and this was before BoMa.

Theemile wrote:David commented on that back when we were discussing the original dispersing of LAC wings in the TQ and "why wait for CLACS, use a freighter" came up.

It's not the hab module that is important - Using a CLAC allows the Crews to be constantly training on the SIMs built into the CLAC while they are deploying, so skills don't get soft and they are ready to deploy once they hit their destination.

He was very adamant about that.

tlb wrote:What kind of SIMs was he talking about? Honor had a games room where SIMs were run after dinners with the invited cadets; so those kind of SIMs would be easy to fit into the living space of a LAC freighter. Perhaps you need a LAC mockup to do what he wanted, that should be just as easy to prefabricate. Alternately it is a SIM were the crew sits in their LAC stations and responds to computer driven events, that should not present a problem either (but a LAC mockup might be easier and safer); but manning each LAC easily within a freighter might be a technical challenge (perhaps there is a series of tubes with mating connections to each LAC wing to provide power and helmetless access).