Escort Carrier Modification

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I can't help thinking that the design of the Frigate is what a LAC would be if it had a hyper generator, so says the Wiki. The hyper generator consumes too much space for the design to be useful. Removing the hypergenerator from a Frigate allows the platform to be turned into a LAC?

But, I was thinking how small the Frigate is, and perhaps a design can be made to easily swap out the hypergenerator quite readily and use the space for pods. That would be a new variant of LAC? Less maneuverable but missile heavy. But able to quickly be turned into a hypercapable warship. Can sails be designed to be an add on?

Why isn't there a DD(P)?

Why isn't there a DD(P)? SIZE!

Pretty sure a DD is too small to run missile pod rails out to the hammerhead given the chokepoint formed by the aft impeller rooms (which form a ring inboard of the aft impellers).
Even the Roland, huge for a DD, has 10% the volume of an Agamemnon-class BC(P) and those can barely squeeze 4 pod rails through that hole. A Roland struggles to fit 6 missile tubes, which would take up maybe 50-60% the cross section of a podrail.

You might be able to squeeze in a broadside or ventral launch bay for pods; but those areas are full of important things so you'd really compromise the ship's other combat abilities to squeeze a few pods in.

As for trying to fit one into a LAC - the pod has approximately the same cross section at the LAC does. Not going to happen. No way no how.
A Shrike or Ferret is 72m x 20m x 20m while a Pod appears to be 20m x 20m x 5m

<snip>

Actually, there was a CL (P)... "ish"....

The Liberty class was a class of 12 75kTon CLs built in Silesia for a group of liberation fronts (Notably the Libau Independance Force) (LIF)) They started Life as a Courier design and had dozens of bolt on Box Launchers from LACs bolted on the Hull. The Box Launchers are usually 6-12 missile cells with mechanical or chemical launchers giving a 1 shot missile capability. Box launchers are evolutionarily on the same family as Pods, but were powered from the mother ship.

This design, allowed a cheap military refit on a large courier design and gave the liberation fronts a quick, cheap Weapons platform, without long term combat capability.

Each broadside had 12, 6 missile boxes, and just had enough firecontrol to control 12 missiles in a salvo. So these light refits could fire huge salvos for a CL, but had no staying power in a fight.

This is the closest you could get to a DD/CL podnaught - a limited # of box launchers permanently mounted to the hull with no reloadability during a battle.

cthia wrote:Thanks again y'all. What helped spurn the thought was when learning that the first LACs in history were owned by the SL and were much larger? I don't know how much larger, but I assume significantly. They were simply less capable weapons platforms. Dunno about their endurance.

At any rate, initially I was simply gathering wool about how much the size of the GA's LACs could increase to become more useful and still be considered LACs. (Same class of ship). Utilizing all the current tech advances. Present LACs have adopted a completely new paradigm (change in tactics) from the original conception of LACs. Without changing its class. Actually they've gotten even smaller than the old SL LACs? IINM.

But now that their tactics have changed and they're proving significantly more useful, can their size grow even larger fitting even more tech or weapons? Are LACs up against the limit of their design?

The thread is about increasing its strategic use. In addition to that, I'm questioning the future of an even more deadly and useful tactical ship.

LACs were always small, Limited capability platforms, designed to be used in squadron form to swarm a larger vessel cheaply.

Corvettes, the logical outgrowth of LACs, are FG-CL sized warships without the hyper capability of the FG-CL designs. They have DD-CL weapons fits with commensurate firecontrol, sensors and ECM.

No major navies build this type of ship currently - the cost to add hyper capability is miniscule in comparison to the growth in capability hyper capability offers. The only MODERN reference to this units is a pair in Schiller at a Dillingham refinery - Dillingham used them as a work around of Silesian laws concerning private armed Hyper Warships.

Manticore bought a handful of Corvettes in their original buildup prior to the Plague as a cheap defense unit. Several Pegasus Class? are still in use in the Manticore Ascendent series.

cthia wrote:At any rate, initially I was simply gathering wool about how much the size of the GA's LACs could increase to become more useful and still be considered LACs. (Same class of ship). Utilizing all the current tech advances. Present LACs have adopted a completely new paradigm (change in tactics) from the original conception of LACs. Without changing its class. Actually they've gotten even smaller than the old SL LACs? IINM.

But now that their tactics have changed and they're proving significantly more useful, can their size grow even larger fitting even more tech or weapons? Are LACs up against the limit of their design?

The thread is about increasing its strategic use. In addition to that, I'm questioning the future of an even more deadly and useful tactical ship.

The benefits of enlarging an RMN/GSN LAC would need to be fairly massive to justify breaking compatibility with all the existing LAC infrastructure they've built up over the last decade or so. All their CLACs, LAC bases, LAC armed forts, etc. have been build around hangars/bay designed to fit LACs the size of Shrike/Ferret/Katana [okay the Katana is slightly different is size; being 1 meter shorter, but it's got the same cross section]

A larger LAC would require a new CLAC design, with larger bays; which inherently means it can carry fewer of these new LACs per ton as each LAC & LAC bay now takes up more volume. Forts/bases would also need to be retrofitted (to carry fewer LACs) or replaced (that being much harder for the heavily armorer forts). Plus having incompatible CLACs and LACs introduces some organizational and logistic headaches.

Consequently the total LAC wing a CLAC can carry would need to be sufficiently better than the larger LAC wing it could carry of current sized LACs, to justify the new design and their costs, plus those operational/logistical issues mentioned above.


I'm not saying such a design could never be accepted. I'm just saying it'd have to give you a really decisive advantage to justify itself. And at the moment I'm not sure that making it, say 20% larger would make give enough benefits to be worth the major costs/tradeoffs it would entail.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, initially I was simply gathering wool about how much the size of the GA's LACs could increase to become more useful and still be considered LACs. (Same class of ship). Utilizing all the current tech advances. Present LACs have adopted a completely new paradigm (change in tactics) from the original conception of LACs. Without changing its class. Actually they've gotten even smaller than the old SL LACs? IINM.

But now that their tactics have changed and they're proving significantly more useful, can their size grow even larger fitting even more tech or weapons? Are LACs up against the limit of their design?

The thread is about increasing its strategic use. In addition to that, I'm questioning the future of an even more deadly and useful tactical ship.

The benefits of enlarging an RMN/GSN LAC would need to be fairly massive to justify breaking compatibility with all the existing LAC infrastructure they've built up over the last decade or so. All their CLACs, LAC bases, LAC armed forts, etc. have been build around hangars/bay designed to fit LACs the size of Shrike/Ferret/Katana [okay the Katana is slightly different is size; being 1 meter shorter, but it's got the same cross section]

A larger LAC would require a new CLAC design, with larger bays; which inherently means it can carry fewer of these new LACs per ton as each LAC & LAC bay now takes up more volume. Forts/bases would also need to be retrofitted (to carry fewer LACs) or replaced (that being much harder for the heavily armorer forts). Plus having incompatible CLACs and LACs introduces some organizational and logistic headaches.

Consequently the total LAC wing a CLAC can carry would need to be sufficiently better than the larger LAC wing it could carry of current sized LACs, to justify the new design and their costs, plus those operational/logistical issues mentioned above.


I'm not saying such a design could never be accepted. I'm just saying it'd have to give you a really decisive advantage to justify itself. And at the moment I'm not sure that making it, say 20% larger would make give enough benefits to be worth the major costs/tradeoffs it would entail.

Thanks. However, I was also thinking that the overall benefit would be the possibility of designing an all inclusive LAC. Currently the GA employs three different LAC versions. A missile heavy Shrike. A graser toting Ferret, and the anti-LAC Katana. Perhaps a single larger design can adopt the important characteristics of all three. Although, wanting to incorporate the virtues of an anti-LAC platform in the mix might be too ambitious.

At any rate, I understand that the RMN might pass on it even if possible because it would mean shelving the present designs and infrastructure. They are the same concerns that plagued the SL across the board. But that problem wouldn't exist for a new entity, like the MA. They could upset the GA with a completely new LAC and purpose, like the GA did to the SL. And they'd only have to build one platform.

And of course, the Carrier could be a completely stealthy LD platform?

Theemile wrote:Manticore bought a handful of Corvettes in their original buildup prior to the Plague as a cheap defense unit. Several Pegasus Class? are still in use in the Manticore Ascendent series.

Yup, and as hyper-incapable units, the corvettes were in the process of being transferred from the RMN to the MPARS prior to the Volsung invasion. We haven't seen in text, but it looked to me that the invasion reversed that and folded MPARS back into the RMN.

cthia wrote:
Thanks. However, I was also thinking that the overall benefit would be the possibility of designing an all inclusive LAC. Currently the GA employs three different LAC versions. A missile heavy Shrike. A graser toting Ferret, and the anti-LAC Katana. Perhaps a single larger design can adopt the important characteristics of all three. Although, wanting to incorporate the virtues of an anti-LAC platform in the mix might be too ambitious.

At any rate, I understand that the RMN might pass on it even if possible because it would mean shelving the present designs and infrastructure. They are the same concerns that plagued the SL across the board. But that problem wouldn't exist for a new entity, like the MA. They could upset the GA with a completely new LAC and purpose, like the GA did to the SL. And they'd only have to build one platform.

And of course, the Carrier could be a completely stealthy LD platform?

BTW you got the Shrike and Ferret mixed up - the Shrike is the one with the massive graser, and the Ferret's the one that's missile heavy.

An all in one design is tempting, but often you end up with jack of all trades, master of none -- where you're far less effective than a designs specialized for each specific role it undertakes. There's a reason most aircraft up into the 50 or 60 were were optimized for just one use, with any other uses being afterthoughts. Even as recently as the F-15 program in the 70s and the F-22 program in the 90s air to ground capability was either omitted or minimize in order to maximize each one's effectiveness as an air superiority fighter (especially compared to the "all around" designs of other aircraft). The F-15 program even had a semi-official slogan of "Not a pound for air-to-ground".

Still, it the MAlign might well take a totally fresh look at parasite combat craft and could come up with a totally different set of design trade-offs than the GA navies did.

Though a LAC with a wedge would be hard to hide - making it tricky to coordinate with a spider drive CLAC. But on a ship as small as even a conventional DD, it sounds like the hull would be too short to fit sufficient spider nodes to reach the same acceleration as the larger LDs can. An even slower (but I guess more expendable) spider-LAC would seems an odd kind of trade-off. (Especially given the MAlign's existing very long range capabilities in their GT)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
But unlike the LAC, the frigate is stuck in that system. It can't be transported to another AO aboard a carrier. The logistics are much more complex, for too little gain.

Actually, a frigate can be transported to another system.....In a raid on a slaver location by Torch using a freighter the to infiltrate the system they had a Torch Frigate in the hold and "related" (I won't say launched) it though cargo hold doors to provide firepower and speed.

Don't recall what had to be done to the freighter to accommodate the frigate but IF a freighter has a hold large enough to accommodate the ship and has or can be modified to carry hatches large enough to allow reasonably fast exit and entry then, sure, you can do it.
But unless your taking some of your fleet logistics train to the edge of a system you are going into and you make suitable preprerations in advance such that you can stuff a damaged frigate into some hold on one of your naval transports, you probably aren't going to be able to do it.

Brigade XO wrote:Actually, a frigate can be transported to another system.....In a raid on a slaver location by Torch using a freighter the to infiltrate the system they had a Torch Frigate in the hold and "related" (I won't say launched) it though cargo hold doors to provide firepower and speed.

The RTN frigates are hyper-capable.

We're talking about the hypothetical scenario of a hyper-incapable frigate. As Theemile suggests, that's probably called a "corvette."

Don't recall what had to be done to the freighter to accommodate the frigate but IF a freighter has a hold large enough to accommodate the ship and has or can be modified to carry hatches large enough to allow reasonably fast exit and entry then, sure, you can do it.
But unless your taking some of your fleet logistics train to the edge of a system you are going into and you make suitable preprerations in advance such that you can stuff a damaged frigate into some hold on one of your naval transports, you probably aren't going to be able to do it.

I remember the situation you're talking about but not if the frigates were carried aboard a freighter. But it sounds sketchy for the scenario in question: a freighter can't release a frigate from its belly fast enough for a surprise attack. Might as well translate in conjunction and simply remain in stealth behind the freighter in the first place.

But I could be wrong. Would need to find the scene and reread.

"Collier" in the Honorverse is getting used interchangeably as a naval logistics ship and an ammunations ship. Initially it was (wet navy) literally a ship which transported coal as a fuel- mostly to various naval station depots to supply steamships.

Ammuntion ships (what we are seeing now in the Honorverse) are tropically carrying either pods and or missile reload supplies for anti-ship and CM replenishment.
Theoreticaly they are optimized for a either suppling pods (that would be for either system defense or to replenish the pods expended in a fleet action --think Monica or Harrington at Sol. The other optimization scheme would be to able to lighter over missiles and refill the shipboard manazines of anti-ship missile or CMs to regular warships. You are going to package and handle Pods differently than you handle refill loads of whatever size and type of individuals missiles to load into ships

On the other hand the TUFF freighters the SLN in Operation Buccaneer -dispite the fact that they are "just" really large civilian freighters- fit the deffiniton of collier or missile collier because of what they are carrying and what they are doing with them.....dropping them off to be moved and used by the SLN warships.

Neither of these should be confused with Minelayers (which we have see used several times at least having been noted as having been used to emplace (mostly) missile pods but earlier were placing single weapons like at Ceberus (vs multi-missile pods now used in system defenses).

Brigade XO wrote:Actually, a frigate can be transported to another system.....In a raid on a slaver location by Torch using a freighter the to infiltrate the system they had a Torch Frigate in the hold and "related" (I won't say launched) it though cargo hold doors to provide firepower and speed.

The raid I remember the frigates were tractored to the exterior of the freighter.

Cauldron of Ghosts - Ch: 36 wrote:The two Turner-class frigates, the Gabriel Prosser and the Denmark Vesey, kept pace with her until all three vessels crossed the perimeter and shut down thrusters. Then they rolled slightly as her heavy-lift tractors reached out, locked them up, and settled them into their jury-rigged nests on her flank.
Three more minutes passed as the frigates each locked a personnel tube to the far larger freighter and tested them for pressure and security. The frigates were fully self-contained and self-sufficient starships, of course, but why should their crews stay penned up inside their tiny hulls when much larger open spaces were available (within reason, of course) aboard Hali Sowle?

Cauldron of Ghosts - Ch: 43 wrote:The frigates’ departure was no more spectacular. Hali Sowle simply dropped her wedge long enough for the warships to deactivate their tractors. Then the freighter’s heavy cargo-handling tractors, fitted with the standard industrial tractor/pressor heads, thrust them gently away from her. She didn’t really need to move them far—just enough for their maneuvering thrusters to clear their threat zone of her hull—but Ganny El wasn’t taking any chances with her paint. The pressors moved them gently but firmly five hundred meters clear of her ship before they disengaged, at which point they engaged their own thrusters and went darting away. They had to get at least a hundred and fifty kilometers clear of her before any of them could bring their wedges up once more, but they were over a million kilometers out of range of any shipkiller missiles Balcescu Station might have managed to conceal from them.

But despite the launch method being different ThinksMarkedly's still right - this doesn't seem like a quick enough process to really be a surprise attack.

It works to get them a bit closer to their target than if they'd come over the hyperlimit under their own power. (But at what's presumably at least 8.5 million km out they're not exactly close) So this minimizes how many slavers / slave ships might be able to scatter from the target station before the pair of frigates can secure it - and gets it quickly under their guns to discourage the slavers from spacing the slaves. But as a military attack strategy it isn't so hot.


Even if they used it as a way to infiltrate frigates into a system without the frigates' hyper emergence being detected you'd still need the freighter to explain why it temporarily dropped its wedge; and in a sufficiently plausible way that it didn't arouse suspicions.