Jonathan_S wrote:The defensive systems of even a CL aren’t cheap, and take space and crew to operate. So building your missile colliers with significant self defense capability means you have to give something up to pay for that - not just in the year they’re build, or when they use their defenses but every year in maintenance cost and sailor direct and indirect expenses.
That’s fewer missile colliers, or fewer warships, or some other corner getting cut to stick defenses on every missile collier you have. And that’s not a patch on the cost of something like the CW. Can’t you more than buy and crew a Nike-class BC(L) for what a CW fast support vesicle will run you in acquisition and operating costs?
You want to know was the USN’s Supply-class fast combat support ships are armed with? Several .50 (caliber hard aimed) machine guns; and assorted small arms. Barely enough to drive off a speedboat of AK wielding yahoos. Nothing that’d protect from an air, missile, or submarine threat. (Well you might be able to operate an anti-sub chopper off their helipad; but no built in defenses). Because the USN knows those ships are already so expensive they can’t have many of them, and giving them worthwhile defenses means you can afford less than the 2 they have active. (Because you’d never convince Congress to fund one instead of a DDG; but worthwhile defenses would cost a fair fraction of a DDG)
Better to give them a DDG escort when needed, abut be able to deploy those defensive assets elsewhere when the supply ship is in a safe area.
looking to Honorverse sources, the only details we have on auxiliaries are the ships Bachfitch are using and The PRN Roughneck fast attack transport.
Bachfitch's ships are refurbished IAN Missile Colliers that had been put out to auction - the Pirate Bane specifically had had a compensator casuality. It came unarmed, but was armed easily; Bachfitch said, he just had to "get the Guns". The tac section and power runs were probably intact, as were the weapons bays existant, so rearming was probably easy. Even if the entire system was pulled, space and conduits for the computers, radars, etc existed, and common replacements could be easily sourced and installed.
Bachfitch felt, and proved, that he could take a 1st rate DD in combat, even though he took damage. So his defenses probably were in the CL category.
The Armament of the Roughneck, a marine 4.5 mton assault transport, is best summed up in the Doctrinal Notes of its errata in Jaynes:
The Roughnecks have no offensive weaponry at all, and have the sidewalls and defensive suite of a heavy cruiser or older battlecruiser, in spite of massing as much as a battleship. Operationally the People's Navy does it's level best to ensure the Roughnecks never see combat in space; the aim is to send Roughnecks in to planets after the People's Navy has swatted aside any space based defenders.
Which pretty much matches my assumption of a purpose built auxiliary's armament in a first class honorverse navy, and your assumption of the expected operating conditions of such a ship.
