1924 PD - Rebuilding the Solarian League Navy

Somtaaw wrote:So the Sollies just simply may not even know about the pod-cores, rails, and how pod patterns work. And if they don't know the concept even exists, they can't design an entire class around it. Which puts them back in 1905ish, or more specifically prior to First Hancock and Honor vs Chin. Pods have been reintroduced to capital ship combat, and they know the pods allow destroyers and cruisers to throw around capital ship missiles, but the very 'thought' of redesigning your SD to become part-freighter specifically to cart said pods around may not even occur for another 10 years or so, under wartime pressurization.

I don't think that's a big deal. Those are not revolutionary new technologies. It's just applied engineering.

The SLN was already carrying missiles in a collier and resupplying ships during battle. Being able to fire them immediately and/or fortifying those colliers would be obvious, even assuming that pod-laying dreadnoughts weren't known. The rest of the technology inside the ship to resiliently launch pods, control them, power them, is pure engineering. Don't get me wrong, it'll take time, but no breakthrough required.

Except for the improved compensators. I'm not talking here about acceleration, but about mass/volume. The SLN SDs at the end of the war didn't reach 7 million tonnes, while the GA's were approaching 9. The 30% increase in volume is not negligible: it means far more pods carried internally and thus more time firing. And by the square-cube law, those ships are also able to dedicate more armour per unit of internal volume than a smaller ship.

Don't forget the size of the pod door either. That's proportional to volume, as the geometry of impeller ships is fairly constrained. This gets worse because the SLN will have for the foreseeable future a disadvantage in missile size. So their ships are smaller, less survivable, with bigger missiles, and have to pass through a smaller door. Until they crack at least the volume/mass solution for compensators, I expect the SLN would need at least a 2:1 numerical advantage if it had to go toe-to-toe with the GA.

Theemile wrote:In the meantime, much of the funds provisionally earmarked for the Navy have been redirected to the rebuilding of Sol's infrastructure. However, sufficient funds were left to be allocated to a single fast tracked development and build project.

As a member of the Solarian Admirality, it's your job to lead the analysis and shuffle through the proposals to develop platforms to match or counter observed GA capabilities. With an eye on a quick return for the development dollars (and time), what one tech tree would you focus on now?

BTW, my answers above are based on what I think the Solarian Admirals and politicians would do: improve the battle-line.

It's not what they should do. They shouldn't be funding development for fighting the GA, because the GA has no interest today to conquer the SL. They should be working on LACs for system police and light units for anti-piracy work. That means more efficient power generation and better compensators, to be able to catch anyone who has a current generation SLN destroyer or CL.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:In the meantime, much of the funds provisionally earmarked for the Navy have been redirected to the rebuilding of Sol's infrastructure. However, sufficient funds were left to be allocated to a single fast tracked development and build project.

As a member of the Solarian Admirality, it's your job to lead the analysis and shuffle through the proposals to develop platforms to match or counter observed GA capabilities. With an eye on a quick return for the development dollars (and time), what one tech tree would you focus on now?

BTW, my answers above are based on what I think the Solarian Admirals and politicians would do: improve the battle-line.

It's not what they should do. They shouldn't be funding development for fighting the GA, because the GA has no interest today to conquer the SL. They should be working on LACs for system police and light units for anti-piracy work. That means more efficient power generation and better compensators, to be able to catch anyone who has a current generation SLN destroyer or CL.

So they should be content with, er acknowledge, er accept, being a third-rate Navy? Do you think nearly a lifetime of institutional arrogance will allow them to?

Besides, why should they accept being third-rate among unequals, in the long run? After all, they have been a sleeping GIANT for a very long time. Sleeping, but a GIANT. It's only physics and mother nature.

One thing I have not seen any of you address is Time. All that you have mentioned is needed to go toe to toe with the GA. The the requisite here is fieldable hardware in the factories/yards within 24-30 months.

Can you develop a working MDM inside of 30 months and setup the production line? Can you design an SD(p) that would stand up to battle and start construction in that time frame? You certainly can't iterate much with a design that takes 36-60 months to build.

With at fact in mind (and the knowledge that you don't have to have a final product, just one that can reliably go into battle with a fair probability of success, given the right realistic conditions/tactics) would you change your priorities?

And if not, what development direction would you take to get success?

cthia wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
BTW, my answers above are based on what I think the Solarian Admirals and politicians would do: improve the battle-line.

It's not what they should do. They shouldn't be funding development for fighting the GA, because the GA has no interest today to conquer the SL. They should be working on LACs for system police and light units for anti-piracy work. That means more efficient power generation and better compensators, to be able to catch anyone who has a current generation SLN destroyer or CL.

So they should be content with, er acknowledge, er accept, being a third-rate Navy? Do you think nearly a lifetime of institutional arrogance will allow them to?

Besides, why should they accept being third-rate among unequals, in the long run? After all, they have been a sleeping GIANT for a very long time. Sleeping, but a GIANT. It's only physics and mother nature.

The first step to overcoming a problem it to admit you have one. They are, at best, a second class navy at the moment. Their only advantage is numbers.

The GA just handed the SLN their A$$es to them over and over again. For their one war "victory", the SLN outnumbered their opponent ~100:5, took 60% losses, then got run out of the system by a DESTROYER sniping their leadership one by one until they found a smart commander.

The only way out is to admit there is a problem, analyze it, and rectify their shortcomings. Failure to do so will make them a 3rd rate navy, even if they fail to recognize it.

Theemile wrote:One thing I have not seen any of you address is Time. All that you have mentioned is needed to go toe to toe with the GA. The the requisite here is fieldable hardware in the factories/yards within 24-30 months.

Can you develop a working MDM inside of 30 months and setup the production line? Can you design an SD(p) that would stand up to battle and start construction in that time frame? You certainly can't iterate much with a design that takes 36-60 months to build.

With at fact in mind (and the knowledge that you don't have to have a final product, just one that can reliably go into battle with a fair probability of success, given the right realistic conditions/tactics) would you change your priorities?

And if not, what development direction would you take to get success?

I have heard references to time working against them before. But I don't get it. Is the SLN pressed for time? Only the navies of the GA can defeat them, and those navies have no such urges. And they aren't fighting an on-going war. So, what's the rush?

They should take their time and do it right. It is like your favorite band that suffers a setback and takes forever to produce a new album.

But it is awesome when it is worth the wait.

"Especially if the genre is heavy metal," says the SLN.

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:One thing I have not seen any of you address is Time. All that you have mentioned is needed to go toe to toe with the GA. The the requisite here is fieldable hardware in the factories/yards within 24-30 months.

Can you develop a working MDM inside of 30 months and setup the production line? Can you design an SD(p) that would stand up to battle and start construction in that time frame? You certainly can't iterate much with a design that takes 36-60 months to build.

With at fact in mind (and the knowledge that you don't have to have a final product, just one that can reliably go into battle with a fair probability of success, given the right realistic conditions/tactics) would you change your priorities?

And if not, what development direction would you take to get success?

I have heard references to time working against them before. But I don't get it. Is the SLN pressed for time? Only the navies of the GA can defeat them, and those navies have no such urges. And they aren't fighting an on-going war. So, what's the rush?

They should take their time and do it right. It is like your favorite band that suffers a setback and takes forever to produce a new album.

But it is awesome when it is worth the wait.

"Especially if the genre is heavy metal", says the SLN.

No, but this hypothetical question posits that the new government is looking to get something done on on a tight schedule within limits as a way to force the SLN to change.

without a timeline - well you see the answers above, everyone is arguing for different tech, all with good reasons.

Without a mandate, (and a real threat) the SL will get analysis paralysis. They will head down thousands of dark corridors, and build nothing, or dozens of 1/2 A$$ed garbage.

But if you have an (artifical) focus, and are forced to put all your eggs in one basket, NOW.... sometimes the noise falls away and you focus on what's achievable.

Somtaaw wrote:It was, but the only time they launched a big salvo was against the Reserve, and it was (almost) immediately out of hyper. But that doesn't 100% mean that Sollies got good looks at the podnought sterns, or in fact even recognize what those strange stern doors even do... after all, Haven barely had a clue and that was with first-hand Manticore COMMAND DECK reports from Warner Caslet and Shannon Foraker.

That's why I actually question whether the SLN even knows what podlayers are, or how they work. Hell, they might think the Grand Alliance was referring to their wallers as being Podlayer-class superdreadnoughts, which was some kind of codename for being the SDs that were designed around having more fire control links specifically for controlling pods.

So the Sollies just simply may not even know about the pod-cores, rails, and how pod patterns work. And if they don't know the concept even exists, they can't design an entire class around it. Which puts them back in 1905ish, or more specifically prior to First Hancock and Honor vs Chin. Pods have been reintroduced to capital ship combat, and they know the pods allow destroyers and cruisers to throw around capital ship missiles, but the very 'thought' of redesigning your SD to become part-freighter specifically to cart said pods around may not even occur for another 10 years or so, under wartime pressurization.

Certainly the MAlign at Darius is aware of podlayers. But whether they've tipped over the SLN or it's ship designers or naval contractors to it is unknown.

But they've been a matter of public knowledge and debate for 8 years and there's currently at least 5 polities publicly building them (Manticore, Grayson, Haven, Anderman, and Erewhon). And, as Honor noted, they're a pretty logical extension of using pods in the first place -- not the mention not a vast conceptual departure from the pod colliers the SLN had already deployed in UH.

And in fact from what the SLN Admiral Isotalo in said in UH, she appears to be aware of podlayers; as she specifically notes when speculating on the number of missiles she sees coming her way from RMN heavy cruisers

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Stack ’em, you mean?” Isotalo considered that, then nodded. “Could be. It’d be a logical steppingstone for heavier salvo density on something that can’t carry their frigging pods internally, at least.

And a bit later she also says

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Given how many missiles they threw at us in that one salvo, and given what we’ve heard so far about the kind of salvos Manty capital ships can throw, I’m inclined to think there can’t be any wallers on the Ajay side. I don’t care what some of our less brilliant colleagues might do if they’d brought a couple of those ‘podnoughts’ of theirs along, but all I’d have done would have been to run the hell away, and they’d have to assume any SLN admiral with a brain would be thinking exactly that.

So that Solly Admiral, at least, believes the knowledge of the existence of SD(P)s is widespread in the SLN.

Also in UH we have Adão Ukhtomskoy, of their OFS, getting briefed that a source, a senior exec in one of Erewhon's yards,

Uncompromising Honor wrote:says they’re building superdreadnoughts. Pod-laying superdreadnoughts, complete with Manty technology. The whole nine meters: FTL coms, stealth, better compensators, those god-awful missiles. The whole shooting match.”

Now, we know that that report is a false one -- part of the false flag op that was being run against Barregos and Rozsak on Maya (pretend Mantie agent who make big promises with the intent to leave Maya out to dry, and ruin their faith in Manticore, by never delivering). But even a false report that Erewhon is building Mantie-tech SD(P)s shows that the SLN is now aware of the simple existence of Mantie SD(P)s.

And then finally, there was Maridors Haeckle on Naval Station Ganymede when Honor's fleet ignored it to blow away the Reserve One ships orbiting below it. Thinking

Uncompromising Honor wrote:He hadn’t even thought about the thousands of obsolescent superdreadnoughts parked in the twenty-four, equidistantly spaced clusters riding Jupiter orbit with Ganymede. Why should he have? If the Manties had proved one thing, it was that those pre-pod fossils were deathtraps waiting to happen.

While "pre-pod" doesn't necessarily mean that he knows about SD(P)s it's certainly a reasonable inference -- especially given the other more explicit statements that parts of their navy and OFS were aware of them.

So I think it's safe to say the relevant bits of the League are aware of the concept.
And they're also aware (by some of the text I didn't quote) of Manticore's ability to fire CM's off-axis.
It's not clear whether they're aware of the increase in effective CM salvo density you can get from offboard fire control links -- but they have already experimented with towed external defensive platforms (Halo).

So it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to see them designing an SD(P) with some kind of 2nd-gen, Halo II, platforms which include at least CM links; to give them something like the CM density a Keyhole equipped SD(P) can put out.

Theemile wrote:Can you develop a working MDM inside of 30 months and setup the production line? Can you design an SD(p) that would stand up to battle and start construction in that time frame? You certainly can't iterate much with a design that takes 36-60 months to build.

With at fact in mind (and the knowledge that you don't have to have a final product, just one that can reliably go into battle with a fair probability of success, given the right realistic conditions/tactics) would you change your priorities?

And if not, what development direction would you take to get success?

The rush is caused by knowing without a Solarian-alternative of a Grand Alliance war-fighting technology, the League Navy is now the very same third-class navy (or even SDF) they used to look down on. IF they can copy literally anything, whether MDMs/CLACs/compensators/other, they automatically become at minimum a second-class navy. They couldn't throw their weight around like they used to, but they'd have so many sheer numbers that only the Grand Alliance would pose a true long-term threat, assuming the MAlign don't come out of the closet by that point.


And from the POV of getting some kind of GA war-fighting technology adapted to what is achieveable by current-gen Solarian tech, they're closest to MDMs. They already technically have MDMs, even if it is only effectively gluing a countermissile to the laserhead of a single-drive missile. But the GA literally proves multiple standard missile drives are possible and they're going to literally kidnap scientists if necessary to throw enough brains at the problem and shotgun enough "maybe this is how they do it...?" attempts until they figure it out.


It may not happen within 30 T-months specifically, but it'll happen a lot faster now that they've fought an honest-go-god war AND LOST!. After multiple centuries of thinking they're the absolute best, having lost a genuine war is even going to make a lot of scientists willing to put in 16+ hours a day to FORCE IT, maybe even willingly take pay cuts in order to to fund more think-tanks at one time.


But as I originally pointed out, they may be closest to getting true Solly MDMs, but the few times the GA used LACs, is unquestionably causing the same panic attacks in the Sollies as they did to the Peeps and McQueen. That anything so small can kill such large ships, in any circumstances, is going to be terrifying to the League Navy who used to think that just because they had ~10,000 SD's between Reserve and Active they were all-powerful. Except these minnows can kill (and indeed have) killed even superdreadnoughts, so A group probably exists to examine every fragment of data created by a SLN unit, and every news report from the Haven Sector that mentions them to figure out how powerful they are, and any hint of design.

Jonathan_S wrote:And in fact from what the SLN Admiral Isotalo in said in UH, she appears to be aware of podlayers; as she specifically notes when speculating on the number of missiles she sees coming her way from RMN heavy cruisers

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“Stack ’em, you mean?” Isotalo considered that, then nodded. “Could be. It’d be a logical steppingstone for heavier salvo density on something that can’t carry their frigging pods internally, at least.

And a bit later she also says

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Given how many missiles they threw at us in that one salvo, and given what we’ve heard so far about the kind of salvos Manty capital ships can throw, I’m inclined to think there can’t be any wallers on the Ajay side. I don’t care what some of our less brilliant colleagues might do if they’d brought a couple of those ‘podnoughts’ of theirs along, but all I’d have done would have been to run the hell away, and they’d have to assume any SLN admiral with a brain would be thinking exactly that.

So that Solly Admiral, at least, believes the knowledge of the existence of SD(P)s is widespread in the SLN.

Definite points here, but that also doesn't prove she knows 'podnoughts' can actually roll pods. Only that they're able to control larger amounts of missiles than normal and therefore could have popped through from Ajax to control more missiles than the dozen or so cruisers could.

Which is totally true, 1 or 2 Medusa's CAN control more missiles than a dozen Saganami-Cs, and since the Sag's were already in place they had to expect pre-deployed pods in the system (really wormhole) defense role. If Medusa's couldn't carry internally, they could still pop through and control all pre-deployed pods far better than the Sag's could; so that's a toss-up.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also in UH we have Adão Ukhtomskoy, of their OFS, getting briefed that a source, a senior exec in one of Erewhon's yards,

Uncompromising Honor wrote:says they’re building superdreadnoughts. Pod-laying superdreadnoughts, complete with Manty technology. The whole nine meters: FTL coms, stealth, better compensators, those god-awful missiles. The whole shooting match.”

Now, we know that that report is a false one -- part of the false flag op that was being run against Barregos and Rozsak on Maya (pretend Mantie agent who make big promises with the intent to leave Maya out to dry, and ruin their faith in Manticore, by never delivering). But even a false report that Erewhon is building Mantie-tech SD(P)s shows that the SLN is now aware of the simple existence of Mantie SD(P)s.

being honest, that fake report was still factually completely correct. Erewhon's war-fighting tech is still ex-Manty tech AND it's better than any Solarian tech. Erewhonese compensators are better than Solly, Erewhonese have 'god awful missiles' compared to Sollies, they have FTL comms from pre-ceasefire. It's just a full generation (or maybe two) old compared to the absolute latest Manticoran stuff, but it's not actually wrong to say they're 'complete with Manty tech, the whole nine meters'.

Jonathan_S wrote:-snipped-

Everything else, you've got good points. They might actually be truly aware of podlayers having internal cores and the rails, but it's definitely iffy. There's a good chunk of evidence either way, whether or not they'll even start designing their own podnought remains to be seen. Their pods sucked to begin with, even before you allow for how much worse their MDM's are. I think Solly pods are 6 missiles per (assuming Cataphract-Cs), and they're much larger than even Havenite MDM's, AND they aren't using those larger missiles to also field larger warheads (generally).

• Cataphract-As are DD/CL warheads but the countermissile second drive pushes the size up so only CAs and BCs can fire them internally.
• Cataphract-Bs are CA/BC warheads but only waller can fire internally
• Cataphract-Cs are waller warheads but nothing can (currently) fire them internally, so they're a pod-only variation

Alliance side, Mk23s are still able to be fired from their podnought internal launchers (those that have any), in addition to still being either 10 missiles per pod, or 8 per pod plus Apollo. So Solly pods even using similar missile warheads (roughly speaking, not counting the enhanced grav lensing of a Mk16G applied to a Mk23) have just over 50% of the missile density of a Mk23 only pod but considerably less range, slower, smaller warheads, weaker laser rods, lower power budgets for EW, less capable sensors, and so on.

Until they sort out their missile capabilities, even if they truly know what a podnought is, designing one would wind up with endless revisions as their pods (and MDM's) are going to be in a huge flux state for years. And every change to MDMs and/or pods, would lead to tweaking that podnought which can't even be started until they commit to some form of pod dimension stability.