Retrofitting the RMN: A Saganami Island Assignment

So you're a senior in the next graduating class post-Nemesis from Saganami Island's strategic analysis course. The assignment is to assess the RMN's post-Yawata strike but pre-Nemesis status, and suggest how to best retrofit and equip the existing non-DD, non-MDM portions of the RMN for whatever. It is also a given that part of these assignments is "fighting the battles of the last war better", as that teaches us how to fight the next battles. And the GA is still short on ships given the vast size of the crumbling Solarian League.

The assignment doesn't preclude having at least one Mk16 tube-firing ship available -- such as at Hypatia; the course rules preclude having a majority of the new classes of ships.

What do you recommend?

Here's mine (not what I would really do, by the way, just one to get the conversation rolling), and given, we don't know how many ships currently exist from HMAMC-Wayfarer's class list of converted Caravans, to use as immediately available colliers. Yes, I know they can't get there quickly, but via whatever set of wormholes, they can still get to remote systems and take up station (anti-Buccaneer) just in case.

Orders:
From: Sir Thomas Caparelli

All HMAMC ships are hereby recalled for immediate temporary re-assignment to Trevors star for upgrade to flatpack-pod dispensing standards. Upon completion and supply, report to Manticore Junction control where you will receive your immediate reassignment and orders to theatres of operation under the direction of your assigned task force commander.

Signed,

yadda yadda yadda.

Changes: Updated (Sag-c) class tactical computers, Needs two dispatch boats with less LACS, Stern-Wall Generator

All of the armed Caravans were decommissioned shortly after Thunderbolt. In the years since they've almost certainly been scrapped rather than held in reserve.

Galactic Sapper wrote:All of the armed Caravans were decommissioned shortly after Thunderbolt. In the years since they've almost certainly been scrapped rather than held in reserve.

Or sold as freighters.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:All of the armed Caravans were decommissioned shortly after Thunderbolt. In the years since they've almost certainly been scrapped rather than held in reserve.

Or sold as freighters.

I doubt that. Ripping out all the conversions to the point where it could be a worthwhile freighter would be almost as costly as building a brand new freighter of the same class. Ripping out missile launchers, grasers, LAC bays, an entire hold built into crew quarters, a second reactor, etc. etc. etc. would be massively expensive, whereas material reclamation seems to mostly consist of putting the ship through a robotic shredding machine.

But you're correct in that, either way, they're certainly not in service as AMCs and probably not just sitting in mothballs.

Galactic Sapper wrote:But you're correct in that, either way, they're certainly not in service as AMCs and probably not just sitting in mothballs.

100% Agreement that those ships probably aren't around anymore, but keep in mind, this is supposed to be "retrofitting" vs new construction as a purely theoretical academic assignment. The instructor hasn't provided the current RMN order of battle, he or she is asking the student to propose novel but maybe workable near-term solutions to the lack of shipyards. Maybe this is for an engineering class, for example, vs. tactics. Another student might propose RD/Missile combo(s) a la the Hastas, etc. purely missile controlling LACs, etc., who knows?

My "student's paper" posits that said ships were mothballed somewhere and could be quickly refurbed and upgraded in terms of which pods, better fire control, and the dispatch boats far faster than the RMN could produce a SAG-C and an FSV and get them fitted, crewed, and sent out. The paper doesn't even suggest upgraded grasers, etc.

Once complete presumably the strategic action would be to send a pair of two to round-robin in and out of system where the RMN thinks the Mandarin's might suggest that the SLN go Buccaneering again. They're pretending to carry on some useful form of commerce but the main point is that if an FF fleet shows and starts to issue threats, the plan would call for them to send for the nearest nodal RMN forces with their dispatch boats. The Wayfarer class ship isn't supposed to fight if at all possible, just get a drone shell in place and pretend to boogie out of the system but actually stay in-system just outside the hyper limit and make like a hole in space.

If it comes to having to intervene, the supply of pods, drones, and positioning outside the hyper-limit are supposed to be the tactical advantage, but how to fight the ship is not part of the assignment.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:If it comes to having to intervene, the supply of pods, drones, and positioning outside the hyper-limit are supposed to be the tactical advantage, but how to fight the ship is not part of the assignment.

Thoughts?

That strategy would work only once, or only as many time as it takes for all the SLN forces to get the word. After that, the SLN task force will quarantine all ships that look like a Caravan, "for their own safety". She doesn't have enough acceleration to outrun an SLN destroyer, which is all that the SLN needs to force real freighters to comply. If she fires, she's either doomed if she's still too close to SLN forces, or she actually has to translate out.

The RMN must have had loads of smaller ships available to use as scouts. If they're not supposed to fight anyway, a DD or CL will do, but unlike the AMC, they can outrun an SLN pursuer and do have sufficient defences to fight off a long-range attack of any ship that has even close acceleration. Even the older DD and CL clases would suffice, no need for a Roland or an Avalon.

And you do have Rolands, Wolfhounds, and Avalons, since that's exactly what the High Ridge administration was investing in, albeit slowly. They're much cheaper to produce than any freighter or SD(P), so you can crank them out. Your paper proposition was "before Nemesis" but that might be after Hypatia, where a single Roland DD showed it could hold off a certain number of SLN BCs.

If that's a Senior level research paper assignment, you are going to have several thousand variations to read through and grade. Still, you are tasking a bunch of what are bright people with all sorts of current information about ships, tactics, equipment and processes- but before they have any deployments experience- to brainstrom potential solutions or changes.

Will bring up a lot of ideas and they will have to get analysis but it could generate some interesing stuff.
Some of this is what BuShips is already wrangling with in addition to how to get the realtime repairs and manitence plus practical upgrades on what the fleet has now.

Just for sake of argument, despite what Honor and company did with the SLN ships at Sol and other places, might not it be worthwhile for any GA ship that encounters an SLN ship where it shouldn't be take that ship as a prize and send it back to an appropriate location to be recycled into whatever new ships and equipment is going to be produced? Hypatica was a battle and what debris of SLN ships that remain in that System has been quickly moving out of the system if it hasn't been salvaged up already and probably would be left for Hypatical to sell/recycle. All those ships scuttled by the SLN and what the GA fleet destroyed are just a massive waste of materials also moslty leaving the system at various speeds.

--snipping--

Brigade XO wrote:Just for sake of argument, despite what Honor and company did with the SLN ships at Sol and other places, might not it be worthwhile for any GA ship that encounters an SLN ship where it shouldn't be take that ship as a prize and send it back to an appropriate location to be recycled into whatever new ships and equipment is going to be produced? Hypatica was a battle and what debris of SLN ships that remain in that System has been quickly moving out of the system if it hasn't been salvaged up already and probably would be left for Hypatical to sell/recycle. All those ships scuttled by the SLN and what the GA fleet destroyed are just a massive waste of materials also moslty leaving the system at various speeds.

I'm assuming that the GA's attitude towards most SLN ships post-Nemesis found outside a core system would be "not worth the energy required to put a prize crew aboard".

The reason they are effectively telling FF etc. to get their butts back to Solarian League systems, [not the Verge or protectorate] is that those ships still have a role to play i.e. keeping piracy at bay in the rest of the SLN, keeping malign entities (pun intended, aka the Mesan Alignment, which we abbreviate as MAlign) from gobbling up star systems into their new empires, etc. The GA wants the League to survive, but as a constitutionally driven, non-exploitative entity or entities that actually give a s--- about their citizens.

Then again, I would have included the known-to-be-corrupt transtellars to be broken up on my list of surrender demands given when Honor is talking to everyone on planet Earth, but who am I to second guess...

SharkHunter wrote:The reason they are effectively telling FF etc. to get their butts back to Solarian League systems, [not the Verge or protectorate] is that those ships still have a role to play i.e. keeping piracy at bay in the rest of the SLN, keeping malign entities (pun intended, aka the Mesan Alignment, which we abbreviate as MAlign) from gobbling up star systems into their new empires, etc. The GA wants the League to survive, but as a constitutionally driven, non-exploitative entity or entities that actually give a s--- about their citizens.

Then again, I would have included the known-to-be-corrupt transtellars to be broken up on my list of surrender demands given when Honor is talking to everyone on planet Earth, but who am I to second guess...

I am not sure that it was necessary to name interstellar corporations, the reason that they were considered corrupt was the exploitation in border planets that was backed by Frontier Fleet. Although it should be possible to make additions to an incomplete list of corrupt companies; by eliminating the support of FF, the RMN ensured that the local governments (unless they were also corrupt - possibly a separate problem) could either force the SLN companies out or force a rewrite of the exploitive agreements. We did see an example in the books of a corrupt government overthrown and the corporation changing its method of operation as part of the reforms.