Warship Construction in the Silesian Protectorate.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Would the operational instructions of the RMN make it more likely that the ships would visit those planetary systems that have problems with corruption and piracy? The idea being to let everyone know that the RMN is vigilant. There would still need to visit where corruption and piracy were less well known, but it would not be as high a priority. If so, a junior officer's observations would be biased.

SharkHunter wrote:IIRC, prior to uprating the threat to the Talbott sector, Admiral Sarnow was being given the highest priority for the Rolands and Sag-Cs for just that reason... because of the need to sit on and thwack the system governments that attempted to continue with business as usual. I think RFC intended the decision to be something like a best-possible version of the EU annexing the corrupted countries to their Southeast, then trying to clean up their systems, or some best possible version of the United States annexing southward and having to clean out the chicanery and bribery infestations common to many of the Central American countries and economies. Not sure what the early-21st century equivalent of a Sag-C expeditionary force would be...

Theemile wrote:In addition, Sarnow got virtually all 48 of the new Kammerling System Control Cruisers with the Marine Battalions. You don't get 45-50 new ships designed to drop heavy marine forces assigned to a relative backwater during a war if you don't have a need for them. Manticore got ~34 planets from the Silesian breakup, just the Kammerlings represent 1.4 ships per planet, or more ships than Kumalo had in his Talbott OOB in March 1920 pd.

Actually I was thinking of the time before the annexation when Midshipman or Lieutenant Harrington was on her early cruises; more like the information that Theemile provided from SITS. During those times would the routes be biased toward the worst spots, or from what SITS states was it so bad everywhere that the routing could be arbitrary?

Actually, I would think any RMN ships in the "hunting" role would be reactionary - so they would be following the upsurge in reports in an area, so yeas, a hunter would see the worst. A convoy ship would probably get a wider slice of experience, but less shore time.

Theemile wrote:
Actually, I would think any RMN ships in the "hunting" role would be reactionary - so they would be following the upsurge in reports in an area, so yeas, a hunter would see the worst. A convoy ship would probably get a wider slice of experience, but less shore time.

Pretty much. Convoy escort is always good business (if often a hateful job for the officers concerned!) as you don't normally need much to make a convoy essentially unassailable to any credible pirate, and Silesia is sufficiently far from any current enemy of the SEM that it's unlikely to see commerce warfare attacks in the way the PN tried it.

Silesia being Silesia, though, you can't guarantee that pirates won't have confed military hardware, especially after formally dissolving the military, because no-one has a single, consistent picture of exactly how much hardware there was out there in the first place.

Add in the various lunatic fringe liberation fronts, who unlike their "I blew up a building" Talbot equivalents had all-up warship formations before the Andermani and Manticoran annexation, and are no more likely to be happy with the current state of affairs than the previous one. Add in the odd rogue officer and even rogue warship, and you've got a credible pirate threat of military-grade warships with military-grade crews. Yes, all right, Silesian military, but it means a 'secure' convoy is probably going to want multiple cruisers in the escort.




Going hunting for bases of operation is a long, slow process, which involves your ships being in the out-system of back-end-of-nowhere minor systems for weeks at a time, or possibly even in otherwise uninhabited systems and it's very hard to find a competent pirate who doesn't want to be found, even with superior technology, because if you stooge around on silent running you're slow and myopic but if you don't people see you coming and hide or skedaddle.

It's logistically costly in supply, probes, hulls and above all your crew's time, and it's the sort of operation you'd only want to mount in an area if you have a pretty credible reason to believe there's something to be found - i.e., as Theemile says, recent attacks in the area.

-- big snip, new direction--

Theemile wrote:Actually, I would think any RMN ships in the "hunting" role would be reactionary - so they would be following the upsurge in reports in an area, so yeas, a hunter would see the worst. A convoy ship would probably get a wider slice of experience, but less shore time.

Given the system defense LAC development, wouldn't it make sense for the RMMN to equip an adequate number of merchant hulls with the ability to drop a few LACs to serve as escorts instead of requiring destroyers or cruisers? Not like Wayfarer which was partially an offensive weapon, this is pure "defensive piracy suppression mode". Something like the RMN cartels building a new module for their cargo bottoms where 'Small Bay #1 Forward = LACs. Small bay #2 (just behind bay 1) = a small number of Mk-16 Pods that can be jettisoned to be forward controlled by the LACs. I'm thinking on the order of perhaps a half million ton total cargo usage including support space out of multiple-million tons available. You'd need one per convoy.

Sort of like using the tiny warships in an anti-pirate "Sarnow deployment". The merchies drop into N-Space, the designated
freighter drops the LACs which form up and off they go. We saw something like this when the Hali Sowle was tractoring two Torch frigates into battle or Hawkwing in the short story analogy about the Casamir incident in "In Fire Forged", except the LACs are much smaller and would be bay launched.

Probably equal to anything any remaining Sillie pirates or "revolutionary movements" would have and enough maybe to discourage anything up to an FF squadron gone rogue after UH?

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Thoughts?

With the literally hundreds of ships the Star Empire have in commission and only a couple dozen systems to patrol, this hardly seems necessary. As a rough estimate, Manticore has 500 or so DDs and CLs of pre-war or first war vintage still in commission. Assigning a squadron of 8 to each system would thoroughly end piracy in short order. Or since it seems likely they won't be needed for fleet duty, take one of the scores of carriers they have and put a half wing of LACs on them to use as semi-permanent bases. Or they could the sort of ad hoc civilian station conversions they did between wars, but I'd think a half loaded carrier would be a better option. Plus it keeps the carriers in commission if they are needed later.

In terms of travel to non-Empire systems, well, some of those systems might not look too fondly on bringing in your own escorts without permission - and they may not be too eager to grant permission if you asked.

SharkHunter wrote:-- big snip, new direction--

Theemile wrote:Actually, I would think any RMN ships in the "hunting" role would be reactionary - so they would be following the upsurge in reports in an area, so yeas, a hunter would see the worst. A convoy ship would probably get a wider slice of experience, but less shore time.

Given the system defense LAC development, wouldn't it make sense for the RMMN to equip an adequate number of merchant hulls with the ability to drop a few LACs to serve as escorts instead of requiring destroyers or cruisers? Not like Wayfarer which was partially an offensive weapon, this is pure "defensive piracy suppression mode". Something like the RMN cartels building a new module for their cargo bottoms where 'Small Bay #1 Forward = LACs. Small bay #2 (just behind bay 1) = a small number of Mk-16 Pods that can be jettisoned to be forward controlled by the LACs. I'm thinking on the order of .5 million ton total cargo usage including support space out of multiple-million tons available. You'd need one per convoy.

Sort of like using the tiny warships in an anti-pirate "Sarnow deployment". The merchies drop into N-Space, the designated
freighter drops the LACs which form up and off they go. We saw something like this when the Hali Sowle was tractoring two Torch frigates into battle or Hawkwing in the short story analogy about the Casamir incident in "In Fire Forged", except the LACs are much smaller and would be bay launched.

Probably equal to anything any remaining Sillie pirates or "revolutionary movements" would have and enough maybe to discourage anything up to an FF squadron gone rogue after UH?

Thoughts?

David has said that the current system security in Silesia for every system is as such:

1) a volume at the system hyperlimit at the least time arrival and departure points for merchants at the system ecliptic is patroled by a heavy, pod backed patrol and is heavily seeded with RDs. No pirates have the ability to wait for emerging ships or jump them inside this patrol area without discovery and neutralization.

2) The transit corridors for least time transit to and from the hyperlimit and populated planets is heavily policed with moving patrols - these include warships and LACs. Any pirate who attempts to jump a merchant is within intercept range of a patroling ship - who usually have superior acceleration and range.

3)The transit volumes are widely published. Any ships arriving outside the transit corridors will have their corporate owners and insurance companies notified, and may be refused docking privileges.

And, of course, we know that intercepting a ship in Hyper is almost impossible unless you are able to catch their scent at an entry/stable point/Exit and follow them. (still with a high probability of losing them).

What this might look like: (My take)

At each major planet's least lime hyper-locus, Plant a permanent patrol of 2 Avalon/StarKnight/Sag-A/Reliant (with a 3rd in each rotation for shore leave/planet protection) at the hyper-locus with a moderate # of pods. Have a steady stream of LACS, DDs and old CLS rotating from the planet to the hyper limit, doing some patrolling with the hyper-limit force and then return to the planet.

The pods of the Hyper locus force would be sufficient to cover the entire emergence region, and at any time there would be at Least an extra DD/CL and a dozen LACS within the Region to provide extra coverage. At least 1 or 2 DDs/CLs as well as a dozen or 2 LACS would be paroling up each of the transit legs.

There are 34 Populated planets in the Manticorian sector of Silesia, This would require about 100 Avalon/OLD CA/Reliants, and ~200 DD/old CLs and 34 LAC Wings. Expensive, but easily doable and would quickly remove any piracy.

--snipping--

Galactic Sapper wrote:In terms of travel to non-Empire systems, well, some of those systems might not look too fondly on bringing in your own escorts without permission - and they may not be too eager to grant permission if you asked.

I'm thinking about the verge, but for centuries the same has been true in the Silesian Confederacy until the "takeover/split". You try to steal from the bull, you get the horns, aka I don't think the RMN would worry about whose star systems they are in if you start "shooting at our ships".

Plus -- if you put the right kind of folks in some of the LAC crews occasionally, perhaps the GA can get some kitty whisker early intel on where the MAlign's hidey hole might be located.

For the SEM part of Silesia, RMN might try running DD or CL scouting missions that come in under stealth similar to the ways they ran scouting and survalence againt PRH in the 1st war. Adm. Sarnow's people by now have a handle on the sensitivity and detection range of every System they have responsibility for and could use that to have ships come out of hyper well out and creep in to maintain an overwatch for activity. A similar project might be run against any still independent in the area but other than Marsh, not sure who that would be and Marsh has the RMN fleet base.
The idea would be to monitor shipping and identify places where pirates of former ConFed Navy ships are using for bases. Any unoccupied systems would get the same treatment as they could be usable as bases even if there was no habitable planet to use. Spaced bases habitats (like the Faithfull were doing at Blackbird) are a possibility.

Of course, any pirates the RMN has a run-in with are probably not going to survive the encounter and while the pirate ship involved may not be destroyed in the action, the Navy can just follow normal procedures and excecute the pirates- bringing back the names etc for publicaion. Captured ships may not be much use given the tech differential to be taken into service but they would make dandy trophies and warnings before being fed into the reclamation operations.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

Galactic Sapper wrote:In terms of travel to non-Empire systems, well, some of those systems might not look too fondly on bringing in your own escorts without permission - and they may not be too eager to grant permission if you asked.

I'm thinking about the verge, but for centuries the same has been true in the Silesian Confederacy until the "takeover/split". You try to steal from the bull, you get the horns, aka I don't think the RMN would worry about whose star systems they are in if you start "shooting at our ships".

Plus -- if you put the right kind of folks in some of the LAC crews occasionally, perhaps the GA can get some kitty whisker early intel on where the MAlign's hidey hole might be located.

Perhaps, but I get the impression that the SEM is going to be a lot less aggressive in relations with newly freed Verge systems. Basically proving how different they are from Frontier Fleet and OFS. That may change if particular systems start having issues with piracy but I think overall their policy is going to be reactive instead of proactive in systems where they aren't welcomed with open arms. Running roughshod over the locals is hardly the way to get on their good sides, right?

That said, I'm sure most Verge systems would be fine with occasional SEM warship visits but I doubt they'll want anyone stationed there permanently (except perhaps training detachments to help them organize their own SDFs)