Escort Carrier Modification

I think the battlecruisers are too scarce to be using them for something like this. As was said earlier in the thread: if you want escort carriers, build them.

munroburton wrote:Probably because Frontier Fleet wasn't as lazy or rigid. I'm always surprised by how modern the Nevada class seemed to be, better than Manticoran BCs in 1905-1915 were.

There has never been a direct confrontation of a Reliant and a Nevada, at least not on screen. So on what do you base your statement?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:Probably because Frontier Fleet wasn't as lazy or rigid. I'm always surprised by how modern the Nevada class seemed to be, better than Manticoran BCs in 1905-1915 were.

There has never been a direct confrontation of a Reliant and a Nevada, at least not on screen. So on what do you base your statement?

Paper specs. Storm from the Shadows came with some lineart of it, up against the Nike-class BC.

Nevada-class battlecruiser
Mass: 911,250 tons
Dimensions: 721 × 92 × 81 m
Broadside: 28M, 12G, 12CM, 16PD
Chase: 6M, 4G, 6CM, 8PD

House of Steel wrote:Reliant-class battlecruiser
Mass: 877,500 tons
Dimensions: 712 × 90 × 80 m
Acceleration: 488.7 G (4.792 kps²)
80% Accel: 390.9 G (3.834 kps²)
Broadside: 22M, 8L, 6G, 2ET, 10CM, 10PD
Chase: 4M, 1L, 2G, 6CM, 6PD

During SotS, Byng's internal narrative tells us that his BCs could make just under 490g - a dead heat. If it were not for the RMN's much faster cycling missile launchers, this would be a very even fight.

Definitely edged out by the Reliant Flight III/IV, though. What I meant is, the Nevada's design is only around five or six years out of date by 1920. It's a big red flag that Frontier Fleet(and potential SLN tech) wasn't as behind the times as Battle Fleet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:Probably because Frontier Fleet wasn't as lazy or rigid. I'm always surprised by how modern the Nevada class seemed to be, better than Manticoran BCs in 1905-1915 were.

There has never been a direct confrontation of a Reliant and a Nevada, at least not on screen. So on what do you base your statement?

In some ways A Nevada probably was superior to the early flights of Reliants; at least on paper.
It's about 4% larger (911 kton vs 877)
It has an all graser energy armament (though carrying slightly fewer mounts per broadside: 12 grasers compared to a Reliant's mixed broadside of 6 grasers, 8 lasers, 2 ET)
It has more missile tubes (+6 per broadside, +2 per chase)
More CMs (+2 per broadside)
More PDLC (+6 per broadside, +2 per chase)

In exchange it's a bit lower accel (I estimate about 1.1g) even before the Reliants started getting the improved Grayson derived compensators.


However we do know that the SLN missile launchers were far slower cycling that the RMN ones. (IIRC over twice as slow) so the tonnage per minute is actually in the Reliant's favor, though each salvo will be slightly smaller.
I don't know if the same rate of fire issues affect their CM launchers.

And of course we don't know how their soft stats stack up. How do their missile seekers and pend-aids stack up against the RMN's pre-war ones (we know their drives are better; giving slight more range and a bit better terminal velocity; but we don't know about their sensors)? How does their ECM or their towed decoys stack up? (They're far behind Ghost Rider - but so is what a pre-war Reliant has) How capable are the sensor and programs behind their point defense?

Though for the later didn't the PNE massively boost the effectiveness of ex-SLN surplus warships by basically overwriting their defensive programs with late war Peep ones? I'm sure the Peep's SW got better during the first war, but it was always behind Manticore's; and so it doesn't imply great things about SLN software if replacing it with stuff that isn't even customized for their systems greatly boosts its effectiveness.


So I suspect that, despite looking good on the top-trump style stats matchup, that a Nevada would actually be at a disadvantage against an early Reliant.

Cute idea for y'all. The RMN already has the hull size and specs for what used to be the best size for a BC, the Reliant class. They know how to add the newest compensators and ECM tech, and keeping in mind that I'm talking new builds in the size, not upgrading older ships.

So what if everything "between the hammerheads" was tweaked towards being an upsized Sag-C with all the latest greatest, including the 120 firing arc Mk16-Gs? Thinking they could build at a faster rate than Nike(s), say 3:1 for tonnage and maybe 50% faster, so a roughly 5:1 build ratio. That becomes the CA (heavy cruiser) workhorse, and no more DDs are built, just Sag-C's (or -Ds if that's what we'd call them.

Be an interesting surprise for some other space navy who got hinky and thought they were jumping a pre-Oyster Bay Reliant...

Good or no good?

Jonathan_S wrote:So I suspect that, despite looking good on the top-trump style stats matchup, that a Nevada would actually be at a disadvantage against an early Reliant.

Sounds like just about every ship type comparing either pre-war to pre-war or comparing RMN pre-war to late SLN stock. The Gryphon SDs were the best SDs ever and given no one is building conventional SDs any more, they will remain so. But if you pitted a Gryphon against a Scientist or a Vega, the Gryphon would win but it would know it's been in a battle. Your comparison between a Reliant and a Nevada shows the same. I'd be interested on your take between a Reliant and an Indefatigable.

The problem there is that there's a 20-T-year gap where the SLN did not evolve at all and where RMN and RHN capabilities evolved by leaps and bounds to the point that some things became preposterous by pre-war standards. The remaining Reliants in 1918 would have been upgraded, so pitting one against a Nevada would go very differently. At the very least, it would tow some pods with MDMs inside, like Honor did with the First Grayson Battle Fleet during Fourth Yeltsin, though she could tow more because she had SDs. And at this time it would also be controlling Ghost Rider RDs to provide far better detection.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Sounds like just about every ship type comparing either pre-war to pre-war or comparing RMN pre-war to late SLN stock. The Gryphon SDs were the best SDs ever and given no one is building conventional SDs any more, they will remain so. But if you pitted a Gryphon against a Scientist or a Vega, the Gryphon would win but it would know it's been in a battle. Your comparison between a Reliant and a Nevada shows the same. I'd be interested on your take between a Reliant and an Indefatigable.

I assume there'd be more of an overmatch against the older Indefatigable BC design; since people rarely acquire replacements that are less capable that their predecessor. However I don't actually have the specs on one.

I only had them for the Nevada because the drawings at the end of one of the books included a Nevada with its major specs. And I've assembled a fair few of the specs on a Scientist because they've been mentioned here and there in the books. But no Indefatigable has been important enough to the story, that I can recall, to call out its broadside weight, tonnage, or point defenses.

For more detail on an Indefatigable I suspect we'll have to wait for some counterpart to House of Steel that covers the League.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Sounds like just about every ship type comparing either pre-war to pre-war or comparing RMN pre-war to late SLN stock. The Gryphon SDs were the best SDs ever and given no one is building conventional SDs any more, they will remain so. But if you pitted a Gryphon against a Scientist or a Vega, the Gryphon would win but it would know it's been in a battle. Your comparison between a Reliant and a Nevada shows the same. I'd be interested on your take between a Reliant and an Indefatigable.

I assume there'd be more of an overmatch against the older Indefatigable BC design; since people rarely acquire replacements that are less capable that their predecessor. However I don't actually have the specs on one.

I only had them for the Nevada because the drawings at the end of one of the books included a Nevada with its major specs. And I've assembled a fair few of the specs on a Scientist because they've been mentioned here and there in the books. But no Indefatigable has been important enough to the story, that I can recall, to call out its broadside weight, tonnage, or point defenses.

For more detail on an Indefatigable I suspect we'll have to wait for some counterpart to House of Steel that covers the League.

We do know there were at least seven flights of the Indefatigables. The first flight were probably comparable to Manticore's Homers and by flight seven they had overtaken those(but not the Reliant).

While the advantage seems to be mostly on Manticore's side(at least on a 1vs1 basis) all along, the gap really isn't that significant. It's close enough to produce engagements which could go either way or result in a two-sided defeat, like the one between IANS Hellbarde and HMS Jessica Epps.

Broadly, I think all this shows that the RMN started out imitating the SLN and mirroring it. Because the SLN wasn't really trying, they found it fairly easy to catch up and overshoot before developing the confidence to try something revolutionary.

munroburton wrote:Broadly, I think all this shows that the RMN started out imitating the SLN and mirroring it. Because the SLN wasn't really trying, they found it fairly easy to catch up and overshoot before developing the confidence to try something revolutionary.

Not just the RMN. Everyone emulated the SLN, including the PN, that was before the war with Manticore the only premier navy that had actually fought wars (against much smaller neighbours, but still). Emulating the SLN's doctrine was one of the reasons why the Short Victorious War was neither short nor victorious.

You don't do a lot of redesign of warships without a reason or reasons.

One is superior- or at least a new take on your own -tech is in your pipeline and you need to test it. That is what lead to the use of Fearless and that particular idea wasn't useful.

Another is somebody else has something larger/faster/more deadly or stealthy (or any combination) and you try to at least match or move a little beyond to recover you edge or position.

As far as the relative change rate and development rates for the SLN SDs vs their BCs, you are talking about the 800 lb gorilla and till the Haven-Manticore wars, nobody else came close to the numbers of hulls in commission and that level (the SLN SD level) of offensive power. They didnt send single SDs anywhere, they sent Squadrons and it would be need a massive number of anybody's BC (even SLN BCs) to attempt to fight an SLN SD squadron. So while there were minor improvements a lot of their SD weapons tech was constrained by what thier missile tubes and weapons handling equipment could take. One SD squadron was a massive blunt interment.
For the SLN, the massive active commission and reserve fleets of SDs were a source of massive funding and graft along with ways to keep a lot of senior officers on the books. They may not have taken that good care of them (remember the observations of Abigale doing search & rescue after the beating delivered to Fillerty) but they were the iron gauntlet to intimidate systems.

BCs on the other hand, are more likely to be sent out singly or in small groups. You transfer BC squadrons to area coverage locations- like Meyers- not normally send them to intimidate some Fringe world in the Frontier. The BC's also got a massively larger amount of actual work than the SD (as did the SLN DDs etc) and they also occasionally had to engage in combat against something. That would be mostly the FF ships but I would not be surprised that FF didn't get all that much of any new design or upgrade flight of BC etc but more usually they got "used" Battle Fleet escorts and BCs which probably would have been through a full maintenance and upgrade pass before being redeployed to FF.
On the other hand, FF was the ships that got used hard and fired weapons in other than simulations or fleet maneuvers so they would have been getting relatively more work done on them if for nothing more than their officers and crews were wearing out parts and systems but they were actively using all that equipment and knew their lives depended on it being in the best repair possible. FF would have been a more practical to do live testing of new equipment, software etc in a hostile environment. Point of the spear stuff.