The big problem of late Honorverse

ThinksMarkedly wrote:No, the reasons they have so few embarked Marines were that the RMMC was having staffing difficulties and that they didn't need Marines to complement the Navy crew during damage control. When fighting Haven during the second war, there weren't almost any boarding actions in hostile territory and Rolands didn't operate independently. This was a shortcoming that wasn't realised until Tenth Fleet dispersed in tiny packets that still kicked SLN ass.

I'm pretty sure it's been stated that they were incapable of carrying marines because they hadn't designed in any marine quarters. But maybe I'm wrong.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:No, the reasons they have so few embarked Marines were that the RMMC was having staffing difficulties and that they didn't need Marines to complement the Navy crew during damage control. When fighting Haven during the second war, there weren't almost any boarding actions in hostile territory and Rolands didn't operate independently. This was a shortcoming that wasn't realised until Tenth Fleet dispersed in tiny packets that still kicked SLN ass.

I'm pretty sure it's been stated that they were incapable of carrying marines because they hadn't designed in any marine quarters. But maybe I'm wrong.

That's inverting cause and effect. They didn't have Marine quarters because they didn't think they needed to have any Marines aboard.

This is not limited to Marines, BTW. As we discussed in another thread, a Roland is not a very good peace-time ship. It can probably take on any pirate ship out there, probably even a squadron of pirate BCs, but it doesn't have the embarked Marines for boarding actions and it doesn't have sufficient Navy for multiple prize crews either.

That makes me wonder if the Wolfhound is even worse. Deployed to Silesia, where I'd expect a lot of anti-piracy and anti-insurgency work, I don't see how they could have succeeded.

What would the crew in those ships do after they'd liberated three freighters from pirates?

The good thing about those classes is that you can probably get a lot of them for the same number of personnel available. That may become important as the RMN and GA's patrol responsibilities explode in the post-OFS & post-FF galaxy.

kzt wrote:I'm pretty sure it's been stated that they were incapable of carrying marines because they hadn't designed in any marine quarters. But maybe I'm wrong.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's inverting cause and effect. They didn't have Marine quarters because they didn't think they needed to have any Marines aboard.

This is not limited to Marines, BTW. As we discussed in another thread, a Roland is not a very good peace-time ship. It can probably take on any pirate ship out there, probably even a squadron of pirate BCs, but it doesn't have the embarked Marines for boarding actions and it doesn't have sufficient Navy for multiple prize crews either.

That makes me wonder if the Wolfhound is even worse. Deployed to Silesia, where I'd expect a lot of anti-piracy and anti-insurgency work, I don't see how they could have succeeded.

What would the crew in those ships do after they'd liberated three freighters from pirates?

The good thing about those classes is that you can probably get a lot of them for the same number of personnel available. That may become important as the RMN and GA's patrol responsibilities explode in the post-OFS & post-FF galaxy.

We have not seen conditions in the current Silesia, so this is a guess; but there should be many more RMN stations and reliable planets, such that that any prize crew would not have to travel far. Perhaps the warship would accompany the captured vessel (since there are many more patrol vessels, it is not as vital to continue the patrol).

For those areas where pirates are numerous and secure posts are few, the RMN could station something like a troop ship as a collection point. It would need an escort, but each ship returning with (or without) a prize could release the previous escort and stay until the next ship arrives. The troop ship would be replaced by another after some interval and would provide the crews to take the prizes to the supporting RMN base. The new troop ship could also bring some supplies to the patrol ships.

Theemile wrote:There wasn't a rush, it as a finished design. Bu-ships just designed a stripped down warfighter; a design that packed the most in the smallest hull while endangering the fewest crew. And as a fighting unit, it was much more capable than anything before, at an economical cost, while risking the smallest crew possible.

They just took that concept too far. In peace time, they would have slowly built a handful, deployed them, then realized the design couldn't do 1/3rd of the normal destroyer/cl jobs, then redesigned the rest. But building in wartime, they built a bunch and got exactly what was needed, while finding their peacetime limitations.

What most of us have been saying for years is why was the commodore space not be designed to be multifunctional, with the space able to be modified for a squad of Marines and equipment when the Ship isn't used as a flagship.

In peace time they simply wouldn't have built Rolands at all. Not even as a design study. There'd be no reason.

I think you're missing the fundamental point: the navy didn't just "realize" the Rolands were barely capable of doing routine antipiracy duties and the like, they absolutely knew and didn't care. That knowledge may not have made it all the way down to the officers that would serve on them, or perhaps the exact extent to which they'd be bad at that work, but the Admiralty certainly knew. They just saw that the primary functions destroyers were serving during the war were not routine antipiracy and thus that capability could safely be downgraded in order to pump out as many hulls as possible with the capabilities they did need to actively fight the war. They weren't designed with "after the war" in mind, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if further Rolands are not built at all even after Manticore's shipyards are rebuilt. The function the Rolands were designed to fulfill isn't really there any more, and a more balanced (and even larger) design will likely be created. I seem to remember something about a "notional 300k combatant" that RFC was discussing as the minimum ship necessary to carry out all the peacetime patrol functions the RMN will need.

Reworking the flag facilities may well be a reasonable stop-gap measure, but the Rolands may have other shortcomings that would limit their antipiracy capabilities in other ways (small craft hanger capacity, for instance, or limited/no brig space).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That makes me wonder if the Wolfhound is even worse. Deployed to Silesia, where I'd expect a lot of anti-piracy and anti-insurgency work, I don't see how they could have succeeded.

The Wolfhounds may be better balanced for antipiracy work since they're more of a traditional design. Despite being smaller ships they actually have larger crews than Rolands (87 vs 60-ish for a Roland). Older designs will be even better, or course, so we can probably expect to see the pre-war designs serving for many years to come. Or further construction of Avalons to replace older destroyers with more capable CLs which still require smaller crews.

tlb wrote:We have not seen conditions in the current Silesia, so this is a guess; but there should be many more RMN stations and reliable planets, such that that any prize crew would not have to travel far. Perhaps the warship would accompany the captured vessel (since there are many more patrol vessels, it is not as vital to continue the patrol).

For those areas where pirates are numerous and secure posts are few, the RMN could station something like a troop ship as a collection point. It would need an escort, but each ship returning with (or without) a prize could release the previous escort and stay until the next ship arrives. The troop ship would be replaced by another after some interval and would provide the crews to take the prizes to the supporting RMN base. The new troop ship could also bring some supplies to the patrol ships.

I don't see how that would work.

We don't know the conditions in Silesia now (1923), but we do know what it was prior to the partition. So when the Wolfhounds were deployed under Sarnow in 1919, we know what environment they'd face. I don't see how a troop ship would help unless it were in the same system as the liberated prize, which means it would need to be travelling with the destroyer in the first place. If you're going to travel in multiple ships, then you may as well pair a Wolfhound with an older DD or CL, then you'd have the crew.

Note that I made a logic mistake: I assumed that the smaller Wolfound would have a smaller crew than a Roland. Thanks to Galactic Supper for pointing to the right information. That means the Wolfhound may actually not be as bad as I'd thought for Silesia.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The function the Rolands were designed to fulfill isn't really there any more, and a more balanced (and even larger) design will likely be created. I seem to remember something about a "notional 300k combatant" that RFC was discussing as the minimum ship necessary to carry out all the peacetime patrol functions the RMN will need.

Reworking the flag facilities may well be a reasonable stop-gap measure, but the Rolands may have other shortcomings that would limit their antipiracy capabilities in other ways (small craft hanger capacity, for instance, or limited/no brig space).

A Flight II Roland could have those redesigned, possibly at the expense of smaller missile loads.

On the 300k ton combatant: would that be a CL or a DD? We know the RMN does not assign ship types on mass, but on purpose. So what are the criteria for a DD and for a CL?

Or further construction of Avalons to replace older destroyers with more capable CLs which still require smaller crews.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:We have not seen conditions in the current Silesia, so this is a guess; but there should be many more RMN stations and reliable planets, such that that any prize crew would not have to travel far. Perhaps the warship would accompany the captured vessel (since there are many more patrol vessels, it is not as vital to continue the patrol).

For those areas where pirates are numerous and secure posts are few, the RMN could station something like a troop ship as a collection point. It would need an escort, but each ship returning with (or without) a prize could release the previous escort and stay until the next ship arrives. The troop ship would be replaced by another after some interval and would provide the crews to take the prizes to the supporting RMN base. The new troop ship could also bring some supplies to the patrol ships.

I don't see how that would work.

We don't know the conditions in Silesia now (1923), but we do know what it was prior to the partition. So when the Wolfhounds were deployed under Sarnow in 1919, we know what environment they'd face. I don't see how a troop ship would help unless it were in the same system as the liberated prize, which means it would need to be travelling with the destroyer in the first place. If you're going to travel in multiple ships, then you may as well pair a Wolfhound with an older DD or CL, then you'd have the crew.

Note that I made a logic mistake: I assumed that the smaller Wolfound would have a smaller crew than a Roland. Thanks to Galactic Supper for pointing to the right information. That means the Wolfhound may actually not be as bad as I'd thought for Silesia.

From what little we've been told - piracy is all but gone in Silensia.

1st, Pirates have no safe ports to repair, replenish or hock their prizes anymore. Pirates need a supply chain for parts and repairs, and a place to turn their catches into money and that is not to be found in Silesia any more.

2nd, The Governments have been cleared up, replaced, and replaced again. Oligarchs which tried to cross their fingers and take the oath to obey while winking furiously have been slapped down hard when they tried to pull a "buisness as normal" approach. So no one is left supporting Pirates and corrupting the official responce to them at high levels because they are getting kickbacks from them.

3rd, The RMN is running a patrol corridor from a system's planets to the Hyperlimit and heavily patroling a volume at the hyperlimit nearest the least time run to the planet and back. This has been widly published and all legimitate traffic is using these corridors. The Andermani are probably doing something similiar. So, without punching out roving RMN forces of LACS and light to medium combatants, you can't get to the merchies.

4th, the SCN is gone. the planetary SDFs are gone. Their weak practices are over, and having a planetary SDF or SCN ship change vocations - either permanently or just for the day, is not going to happen anymore.

5th the dozens of shipyards are now directly under the Andermani and RMN thumb. The common practice was to lose ships during construction, or build 2 ship while only one is official, or refit and lose a ship which was decommishioned and "sent" to the breakers. Any way - this has all come to a stop. All the shipyards are being controlled and watched and the normal channels for new pirate and privateer ships has been dried up.

So the face of Piracy in Manticore's back yard, and the way the RMN has to deal with it, has changed. The chance of capturing said vessels or their victims is plumeting. Now with the fall of Mesa, Slavers may be a thing of the past too. So the RMN has to ask - does it still make sense to field ships and crews to fight a policing war in someone else's space now that you have potentially dealt with the root of the problem?

There were never "dozens" of military shipyards producing lots of warships. Their main military shipyards are Silesia, Posnan and Bresau - This are BC capable. Secondary shipyards are Zoraster and Saginaw - These are CL capable. A lot of the other planets (~40%) have shipyards that can produce at most DDs, but mostly FF and freighters. But these were owned by the local system and might have sold DDs and FFs to the SCN, but they didn't make many ships. They ere largely run as high-tech jobs programs, at low production levels.

What they did need was someone to buy their ships, as the production of ~20 small yards was more than the SCN or the SC SDF's needed. But you can't stop producing ships, or you lose the ability to ever produce ships. So they need to sell the ship they are building so they can fund the next one. So the yards/governments were not always as careful with the paperwork as perhaps they ideally should have been.

Given that the entire RMN production capability was destroyed I have a clever idea what you might do with a bunch of underutilized shipyards...

tlb wrote:We have not seen conditions in the current Silesia, so this is a guess; but there should be many more RMN stations and reliable planets, such that that any prize crew would not have to travel far. Perhaps the warship would accompany the captured vessel (since there are many more patrol vessels, it is not as vital to continue the patrol).

For those areas where pirates are numerous and secure posts are few, the RMN could station something like a troop ship as a collection point. It would need an escort, but each ship returning with (or without) a prize could release the previous escort and stay until the next ship arrives. The troop ship would be replaced by another after some interval and would provide the crews to take the prizes to the supporting RMN base. The new troop ship could also bring some supplies to the patrol ships.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't see how that would work.

We don't know the conditions in Silesia now (1923), but we do know what it was prior to the partition. So when the Wolfhounds were deployed under Sarnow in 1919, we know what environment they'd face. I don't see how a troop ship would help unless it were in the same system as the liberated prize, which means it would need to be travelling with the destroyer in the first place. If you're going to travel in multiple ships, then you may as well pair a Wolfhound with an older DD or CL, then you'd have the crew.

Note that I made a logic mistake: I assumed that the smaller Wolfound would have a smaller crew than a Roland. Thanks to Galactic Sapper for pointing to the right information. That means the Wolfhound may actually not be as bad as I'd thought for Silesia.

Perhaps you are right, but they do not need to be together. The fundamental difference between then and now is that there are many more patrol ships assigned to Silesia, so one does not need to send off prize crews and continue the patrol; instead they can cut the patrol short and rendezvous at a central star system with the latest capture and let someone else continue onward. The troopship brigs the captured pirates and uses the excess flight crews that it carries to sent the prize ship to the nearest base for disposal.

But this may be moot if piracy is now a thing of the past in Silesia, as another poster suggests.

kzt wrote:Given that the entire RMN production capability was destroyed I have a clever idea what you might do with a bunch of underutilized shipyards...

If Havenite shipyards aren't capable of building Alliance tech ships without massive rebuilding and retooling, Silesian don't have a prayer of doing so either. Maybe they'd be able to build industrial ships - asteroid mining boats and the like - but warships would probably take a decade of reworking to do. Probably not even freighters of the standards Manticore is used to building.