New Ship: the Corvette

They're distinctly less capable than even an LAC, but then pointing even a few destroyer-class energy weapons at a merchant ship is probably overkill (note that 'crippling fire' to cover a boarding operation on a merchantman is perfectly possible with a standard point defence cluster - you see this happen in Shadow of Sagnami), and a full pinnace is able to go out and meet a ship a reasonable distance out without needing a ship to 'carry' them, like a cutter would.

Well, the cponfiguration isn´t written in stone, if you think the broadside weapons are too much, well remove them.

And as per above, they don't need broadside energy mounts at all, and missile tubes are far more useful for anti-piracy patrolling the hyperlimit perimeter while also being vaguely useful for a wormhole custom boat, since the pinnaces would provide any major energy fire needed. That makes the pathetic destroyer broadside lasers, and especially the SD graser spinal mount completely irrelevant, either it's an actual merchant ship in which case pinnaces lasers are better, or it's a full up warship even if you have a Shrike bow-wall or SD grade sidewalls, you're so close those passive defenses can't stop an energy beam coming through. This also removes the need for PDLC-proof armor plating, this corvette would be standing off while it sends a cutter over, possibly with a pinnace or two hovering nearby. The corvette itself is rarely going to be in danger, especially if there's a pinnace or two already in position to threaten the 'merchy', much like Hexapuma at Montana was in virtually zero danger while they sent the pinnace over to the Marianne.

Missles maybe are very usefull, but they need to much space, so the ship would become much bigger, thats why I had my focus more on energy weapons, they don´t need so much space.

One or two pinace can maybe do the job, but the point is, they don´t survive laser cluster fire, the most common weapon on mercant ships. If someone decide that they want resist an inspection, they can shoot the pinaces and return into hyper.
The corvette is designed to resist laser cluster, so, if you fire at them, be ready for the counter attack.

Talbott & Silesia ARE Manticore now, if they only got an export version that's essentially saying they're second-class citizens, which will rapidly cause resentment and with enough time, you wind up with a Mesa + Seccies situation. If Manticore uses a corvette (micro-CLAC launching pinnaces instead of LACs) for customs, they'd use ONE design for Manticore Junction + Terminii, Silesia, and Talbott combined.

I wrote that the corvette is for local security! Does the police use high end secret military tecnology? No!

Maybe i should correct myself here:
- The high end version is only for the RMN use, if another organisation, even in manticre use it, than without all the secret stuff.

Even though they're friendly to Maya, you're including wayy too much Manticoran tech into the design for Maya to be building it, they're friendly with one another but Maya never really did sign on to fight Mesa, so unlike Haven + Manticore (or Manticore + Andermani), I can't quite see Manticore handing over the keys like that. That's also why while Manticore offered to send Mycroft platforms to cover Mayan & Erewhon systems they were also sending the crew to operate and maintain it, NOT giving those designs so Maya & Erewhon could build their own (aka not completely trusted).

Well, maybe I haven´t made it clear enough:

The solarian vision is made with solarian tec, not manty tec, so no trust problem. What count is the design.

Zero need for this as:
1) Missile pods full of MDM is the REAL hammer
2) Shuttle crews tied to defensive net and EVERYONE in system knows it.
3) Said defensive net has MDM missiles: Need one say more?

Does the system defense missles prevent drug smuggling? Or that someone smuggles bombs into your territory?

The job is to inspect incomming ships before they come close to your planets or orbital installations.

Heavier units like full scale destroyers or light cruisers can do the job and much more, but they are NAVY ships, my design is more a Coastguard/Police design.

Maldorian wrote:

Zero need for this as:
1) Missile pods full of MDM is the REAL hammer
2) Shuttle crews tied to defensive net and EVERYONE in system knows it.
3) Said defensive net has MDM missiles: Need one say more?

Does the system defense missles prevent drug smuggling? Or that someone smuggles bombs into your territory?

The job is to inspect incomming ships before they come close to your planets or orbital installations.

Heavier units like full scale destroyers or light cruisers can do the job and much more, but they are NAVY ships, my design is more a Coastguard/Police design.

Then you need more platforms with smaller crews to cover more volume (or area, since everyone is on the ecliptic plane anyway). Isn't this what LACs are for?

Maldorian wrote:
Zero need for this as:
1) Missile pods full of MDM is the REAL hammer
2) Shuttle crews tied to defensive net and EVERYONE in system knows it.
3) Said defensive net has MDM missiles: Need one say more?


Does the system defense missles prevent drug smuggling? Or that someone smuggles bombs into your territory?

The job is to inspect incomming ships before they come close to your planets or orbital installations.

Heavier units like full scale destroyers or light cruisers can do the job and much more, but they are NAVY ships, my design is more a Coastguard/Police design.


Then you need more platforms with smaller crews to cover more volume (or area, since everyone is on the ecliptic plane anyway). Isn't this what LACs are for?

LAC´s are normally not big enough to transport boarding crews or shuttles to bring them to the ship.

Maldorian wrote:LAC´s are normally not big enough to transport boarding crews or shuttles to bring them to the ship.

You don't need a shuttle. Just dock the LAC itself. The crew is of 10 spacers in combat situations, but a 30000 tonne ship must have space to embark half a dozen Marines and a couple more Navy personnel for customs duties. They're after all in their home system, it's not like they're going to be on patrol for weeks. It's entirely possible each LAC crew is out for one shift only, with a different LAC with a new crew coming out before the end of the shift to relieve them. When they return to base, they turn their LAC to ground crew and then to another spacer crew.

A wing of LACs (10 ships) can deploy 4 at a time in two shifts for continuous coverage, with 2 ships down for maintenance at any time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Maldorian wrote:LAC´s are normally not big enough to transport boarding crews or shuttles to bring them to the ship.

You don't need a shuttle. Just dock the LAC itself. The crew is of 10 spacers in combat situations, but a 30000 tonne ship must have space to embark half a dozen Marines and a couple more Navy personnel for customs duties. They're after all in their home system, it's not like they're going to be on patrol for weeks. It's entirely possible each LAC crew is out for one shift only, with a different LAC with a new crew coming out before the end of the shift to relieve them. When they return to base, they turn their LAC to ground crew and then to another spacer crew.

A wing of LACs (10 ships) can deploy 4 at a time in two shifts for continuous coverage, with 2 ships down for maintenance at any time.

I think that's far too optimistic for a long term schedule - but you could probably manage at that rate for few months before having to stand down the wing for major maintenance on all of them. Here and now the naval rule of thumb is you need at least 3 ships for every one constantly deployed - that covers transit, working up, refit, major maintenance, etc. (And combat aircraft are worse, they often need many hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time; F-18s are apparently on the low maintenance side at a reported 6 hours of maintenance per hour of flight -- though obviously that's an average with much of the maintenance coming in multi-day lumps at periodic intervals)

LACs might need less maintenance than 21st century warships, and they'd have shorter transit times - but they still have plenty of wear/service limited items that require maintenance and that isn't always fast or something you can do in a single off-shift, or limit to just 20% of the wing at a time. Also unless these are only required to ever do customs patrolling, never any combat work, the patrol work is poor training for the rest of their jobs - so you still need to take wings off patrol periodically for training.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think that's far too optimistic for a long term schedule - but you could probably manage at that rate for few months before having to stand down the wing for major maintenance on all of them. Here and now the naval rule of thumb is you need at least 3 ships for every one constantly deployed - that covers transit, working up, refit, major maintenance, etc. (And combat aircraft are worse, they often need many hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time; F-18s are apparently on the low maintenance side at a reported 6 hours of maintenance per hour of flight -- though obviously that's an average with much of the maintenance coming in multi-day lumps at periodic intervals)

LACs might need less maintenance than 21st century warships, and they'd have shorter transit times - but they still have plenty of wear/service limited items that require maintenance and that isn't always fast or something you can do in a single off-shift, or limit to just 20% of the wing at a time. Also unless these are only required to ever do customs patrolling, never any combat work, the patrol work is poor training for the rest of their jobs - so you still need to take wings off patrol periodically for training.

Ok, so you need 3 ships for each deployed. That's only 12 LACs. They're cheap to produce en masse, have very modest crewing requirements and probably can be maintained and repaired almost anywhere in the SEM. They also have a dedicated transport already developed: a CLAC.

A CT would cost more, consume more crew and probably be more complex to maintain. The number of them per system probably doesn't decrease, since it's tied to the area to patrol and the volume of ships calling. So a system that could do with 12 LACs would probably also need 12 CTs. At best, if the CT had shuttles and could embark two or three inspection crews, we could reduce it to 9.

Is that a worthwhile trade off? I don't expect a CT to cost less than 33% more than a LAC, neither in production costs nor in crewing requirements. And unlike the LAC, it wouldn't be multi-role.

In fact, what I'd expect to see is a cheaper LAC, with even more standardised parts and exchangeable with civilian components. So instead of 12 ships, you could have 18 in system.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think that's far too optimistic for a long term schedule - but you could probably manage at that rate for few months before having to stand down the wing for major maintenance on all of them. Here and now the naval rule of thumb is you need at least 3 ships for every one constantly deployed - that covers transit, working up, refit, major maintenance, etc. (And combat aircraft are worse, they often need many hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time; F-18s are apparently on the low maintenance side at a reported 6 hours of maintenance per hour of flight -- though obviously that's an average with much of the maintenance coming in multi-day lumps at periodic intervals)

LACs might need less maintenance than 21st century warships, and they'd have shorter transit times - but they still have plenty of wear/service limited items that require maintenance and that isn't always fast or something you can do in a single off-shift, or limit to just 20% of the wing at a time. Also unless these are only required to ever do customs patrolling, never any combat work, the patrol work is poor training for the rest of their jobs - so you still need to take wings off patrol periodically for training.

Ok, so you need 3 ships for each deployed. That's only 12 LACs. They're cheap to produce en masse, have very modest crewing requirements and probably can be maintained and repaired almost anywhere in the SEM. They also have a dedicated transport already developed: a CLAC.

A CT would cost more, consume more crew and probably be more complex to maintain. The number of them per system probably doesn't decrease, since it's tied to the area to patrol and the volume of ships calling. So a system that could do with 12 LACs would probably also need 12 CTs. At best, if the CT had shuttles and could embark two or three inspection crews, we could reduce it to 9.

Is that a worthwhile trade off? I don't expect a CT to cost less than 33% more than a LAC, neither in production costs nor in crewing requirements. And unlike the LAC, it wouldn't be multi-role.

In fact, what I'd expect to see is a cheaper LAC, with even more standardised parts and exchangeable with civilian components. So instead of 12 ships, you could have 18 in system.

Oh, I agree that you're better spending your money on LACs.
And most ships don't need to be chased down for an early customs inspection. Sure if you see something hinky (say with an RD or system sensor array) by all means divert a LAC or two over to have a pointed chat.

But if all you want to do is inspect incoming freighters at a long remove from you valuable stations you can set up a few customs inspection points around the system most of the way out to the hyper limit. Ships that don't follow traffic control routing to an inspection point get a hostile visit from a LAC. At the customs point you could have a "nearby" basic support station or even a ship to base your inspection crews and their pinnaces on - run them over to inspect the ships that arrive at that inspection point.

Most merchant ships are unarmed and won't be a problem. And in the cost calculus of war better to risk losing a pinnace to a disguised pirate (and one ballsy enough to trundle over to an inspection point like a good little boy) than sink a non-trivial chunk of your naval budget into sub-par warships that primarily do inefficient customs inspection. You've got LACs or pods to destroy any ship stupid enough to punch out one of your inspection pinnaces - and if that's know there should be very little chance that someone will bother. Killing one isn't a militarily cost effective response a Q-ship or enemy warship would attack earlier and target something more valuable - and a pirate would run rather than meekly putting itself under the guns covering each inspection point.

Actually, unlike a pinnace, a customs corvette might just be valuable enough to be worth bushwhacking if it is even 5% of a system's entire defenses. Better to keep your SDF warfighters away from potential attackers - let any ambush be triggered by something more expendable like a pinnace to give time and distance for your military to react. (Rather than hoping you were able to build a sometimes warfighter capable of surviving a close range ambush)

Jonathan_S wrote:Oh, I agree that you're better spending your money on LACs.
And most ships don't need to be chased down for an early customs inspection. Sure if you see something hinky (say with an RD or system sensor array) by all means divert a LAC or two over to have a pointed chat.

But if all you want to do is inspect incoming freighters at a long remove from you valuable stations you can set up a few customs inspection points around the system most of the way out to the hyper limit. Ships that don't follow traffic control routing to an inspection point get a hostile visit from a LAC. At the customs point you could have a "nearby" basic support station or even a ship to base your inspection crews and their pinnaces on - run them over to inspect the ships that arrive at that inspection point.

Most merchant ships are unarmed and won't be a problem. And in the cost calculus of war better to risk losing a pinnace to a disguised pirate (and one ballsy enough to trundle over to an inspection point like a good little boy) than sink a non-trivial chunk of your naval budget into sub-par warships that primarily do inefficient customs inspection. You've got LACs or pods to destroy any ship stupid enough to punch out one of your inspection pinnaces - and if that's know there should be very little chance that someone will bother. Killing one isn't a militarily cost effective response a Q-ship or enemy warship would attack earlier and target something more valuable - and a pirate would run rather than meekly putting itself under the guns covering each inspection point.

Actually, unlike a pinnace, a customs corvette might just be valuable enough to be worth bushwhacking if it is even 5% of a system's entire defenses. Better to keep your SDF warfighters away from potential attackers - let any ambush be triggered by something more expendable like a pinnace to give time and distance for your military to react. (Rather than hoping you were able to build a sometimes warfighter capable of surviving a close range ambush)

This brings back an idea from 10 years ago-the Customs LAC. It was a Shrike A, with the original cutter hanger), with a downsized Graser or a CA/ BC spinal Laser in the place of the BC spinal Graser. The extra space would be give to a dedicated cutter flight crew, a squad of Marines, and some extra consumables and larger crew area, for longer duration missions.

2 of these would be part of a LAC squadron intended for maritime patrol, with the rest being Shrike B's for heavy hitting, giving each Squadron integrated boarding capability and Marine forces.

The missile systems would give the Customs LAC the same long range capabilities as it's squadron mates, and the energy mount would still be sufficient to hurt even BCs, even if it wasn't the conversation winner the upgraded BC spinal Graser is.

Maldorian wrote:

Zero need for this as:
1) Missile pods full of MDM is the REAL hammer
2) Shuttle crews tied to defensive net and EVERYONE in system knows it.
3) Said defensive net has MDM missiles: Need one say more?

Does the system defense missles prevent drug smuggling? Or that someone smuggles bombs into your territory?

The job is to inspect incomming ships before they come close to your planets or orbital installations.

Heavier units like full scale destroyers or light cruisers can do the job and much more, but they are NAVY ships, my design is more a Coastguard/Police design.

If you want to inspect: Do it outside the hyper limit. Can jump around quickly with... a hyperdrive for multiple contacts on multiple vectors. Or at dedicated spots inside the hyper limit so can't escape and still far from planet. Both would only require a shuttle as they can destroy any civi freighter.

Drug smuggling? Has nothing to do with reality as this is cargo based and only way to do this is open EVERYthing... yea right good luck. No one will ever do this and no one ever has.

A typical ISO cargo container can weight up to 10 tons. So an average 8MT freighter has somewhere around 700,000 of these. Densely packed in, nose to tail and deck to roof.

Can you provide to me a search strategy to find 50 kilos of contraband hidden in that load? Note that the holds are in vacuum and zero g, and the containers are typically fully sealed.


(OK, technically the Honorverse uses more like 80 ton cargo containers, but there are still tens of thousands of identical mass produced cargo containers crammed into the holds.)