RHN hardware vs SLN

Shannon_Foraker wrote:The current RHN would curb-stomp the Reserve, even if it was reactivated, assuming Shannon's podlayers stayed out of energy range, IMHO.

There's a reason that Pritchart suggested to Beth using the RHN 2nd fleet to stop Filareta and keeping the Apollo stock for when it truly mattered.

Somtaaw wrote:[So the League might be able to determine a decent starting point for internal R&D, based on what they saw demonstrated by the GA and what technologies the People's Republic were desperate for. But State Security also secretly bought a lot of crap like the homing beacon + homing missiles that ultimately led to the Cromarty assassination, which the People's Navy had no idea was getting purchased, so the SLN has to sort out what was purchased because it was bug-house crazy StateSec garbage, and what was purchased which could lead to minor advancemnts.

Don't forget all the crap they bought that didn't pay off at all, even assuming it was actual tech. We know Charles tried to sell them stuff multiple times, like the Crippler. If he was selling, then we have to assume that the Legislaturalists and later the StateSec were buying from a lot of sources. That will make a lot of noise for the SLN to sort through.

Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH below the wall they wouldn't have had that same kind of edge. We never saw new designs of smaller ships, they appear to have no counterpart to the RMN's Mk16 DDM; and possibly not even to their older extended range missiles. And given that at least SLN CAs and BCs can fit some flavor of Cataphract into their magazines a BC or below engagement should involve Haven's ships with a serious missile range disadvantage. And if they don't have new designs then they may not have the kind of improved anti-missile suites that RMN ships do.

I find it unlikely they didn't have such missiles. We haven't heard of them and haven't seen them used, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. If they had the tech to make 3 stages, they had the tech to make 2. The question is only of size: we know Havenite tech was at this stage clunkier, more massive, and more reliant on brute force and clever usage than the equivalent Manty tech. So it's possible they hadn't perfected making the 2-stage missiles small enough to fit anything but battlecruisers yet. But I think they were there... it's just such an obvious solution.

Of course, solution means a problem to solve, and massive 2-stage missiles may not have been a good fit to solve a problem against the Alliance. But against the SLN, it would be and I guess that the pressure of a looming war against the SLN would have kicked their production and further development into high gear.

Don't forget we haven't heard about what class of BC has followed the Sultans and Warlords, nor what class of CA has followed the Mars. In both cases, I find it unlikely to the extreme that the RHN under Theisman and with Foraker's improvements would still be using those. Bolthole might have had to prioritise the production of SD(P)s and CLACs because of a war with Manticore, but designs for ships below the wall must have at minimum existed. And as walls, the support ships must have existed. They just weren't relevant to the story.

Still, if the MAlign has already slipped the SLN Cataphracts then any BC or CA fights are going to let the SLN get in some significant lumps before Haven's ships can beat their way close enough to return fire. (But once you get down to the destroyers and light cruisers there's no Cataphract small enough for them to carry; so the missile ranges are far closer to equal)

Even if the Cataphract had appeared before the RHN had had a two-stage missile, it would be all the information the RHN needed to deploy their Cataphract-like missiles. And given they knew the secret to the quantum baffle because they could make true MDMs, they would undoubtedly make a much better two-stage missile than the Cataphract.

Combined with the above, I'd expect that the RHN did have DDMs, but like the Cataphract, they had destroyer-grade warheads on missiles fired by cruisers and cruiser-grade warheads on BC missiles. This problem didn't apply to the wall because the RHN wallers were pod design, so they didn't need missile tubes in the first place.

Still, despite those advantages Haven's smaller ships just don't have the utter dominance that their SD(P)s do over the League's wallers.

No, but they're still a couple of steps above their SLN counterparts. I think they'd win any fight that they faced at even 2:1 disadvantage, or outfight their own weight (CAs against BCs, CLs and DDs against CAs). It just wouldn't be the utter rout that a wall-on-wall battle would be.

I'd like to add a point in favour of the RHN, that Manticore didn't have.

The RoH did have a large industrial base that could compete with the best that the SLN could mobilise. Please read this not as "Haven can compete with the entire League," but understanding that the SLN was limited where it could source war matériel from and the RHN wasn't. The RoH and the PRH before it had been on a war-time economy for at least two decades.

We speculate that they had at least four major shipyards, including Bolthole. Their production capacity far outnumbered, outmassed, and outclassed the SLN itself.

It had a large economy after the Pierre reforms that Pritchart continued. It had a large and roughly homogeneous population, compared to the SLN. Manticore did have a very modern economy, but at 3 billion people in the MBS, they were actually behind.

This is to say that the RHN could fight a protracted war, something the SEM could not. The SEM could fight the SL at all only because they had a very high starting point, with an extremely outsized Navy and technology, second only to their best allies from Grayson. But they knew they couldn't let the SL catch its breath -- hence the Harrington Plan.

A Theisman Plan would not be equivalent. Oh, sure, he and Pritchart would know they couldn't allow revanchism to set in the SL, but they would know they could hold for longer.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH below the wall they wouldn't have had that same kind of edge. We never saw new designs of smaller ships, they appear to have no counterpart to the RMN's Mk16 DDM; and possibly not even to their older extended range missiles. And given that at least SLN CAs and BCs can fit some flavor of Cataphract into their magazines a BC or below engagement should involve Haven's ships with a serious missile range disadvantage. And if they don't have new designs then they may not have the kind of improved anti-missile suites that RMN ships do.

I find it unlikely they didn't have such missiles. We haven't heard of them and haven't seen them used, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. If they had the tech to make 3 stages, they had the tech to make 2. The question is only of size: we know Havenite tech was at this stage clunkier, more massive, and more reliant on brute force and clever usage than the equivalent Manty tech. So it's possible they hadn't perfected making the 2-stage missiles small enough to fit anything but battlecruisers yet. But I think they were there... it's just such an obvious solution.

Of course, solution means a problem to solve, and massive 2-stage missiles may not have been a good fit to solve a problem against the Alliance. But against the SLN, it would be and I guess that the pressure of a looming war against the SLN would have kicked their production and further development into high gear.

Don't forget we haven't heard about what class of BC has followed the Sultans and Warlords, nor what class of CA has followed the Mars. In both cases, I find it unlikely to the extreme that the RHN under Theisman and with Foraker's improvements would still be using those. Bolthole might have had to prioritise the production of SD(P)s and CLACs because of a war with Manticore, but designs for ships below the wall must have at minimum existed. And as walls, the support ships must have existed. They just weren't relevant to the story.

It's true that the tech for a 3-drive MDM is the same as for a 2-drive DDM. But Manticore didn't find it useful to develop DDMs until after they'd developed the microfusion power plants that let them downsize their missiles -- so the 1st war only featured full up 3-drive MDMs.

(IIRC One reason they started looking at BC(P) designs during the ceasefire was that pods were the only practical way to get such oversized missiles into something as "small" as a 1.75 mton BC)

So Haven certainly could downscale their giant, capacitor powered, MDMs into a not quite so oversized, capacitor powered, DDM. But since they hadn't seen any in use before the 2nd war they might not have known Manticore developed DDMs for their new CAs & BCs -- and so may not have designed or deployed similar missiles and classes of their own.


Given that Haven has a lot less need for independent cruiser operations, especially given how they expected to fight the war if it had to resume, they may not have put any priority on cruisers that can operate independently in the multi-drive era. And the targets they were thinking about mostly had system defenses more than capable of swatting away pretty much any cruiser raid, no matter now long ranged its missiles.
So I think there's a reasonable chance than any new designs were more along the lines of close-escort ships -- focusing on providing anti-missile defense to the wall of battle. And in that role their offensive missile are basically irrelevant -- the focus would instead be on more CMs and PDLCs.


But you're right, we've seen nothing (except some statements about how Mars-class have gotten some refits; e.g. to mount a bow wall) -- so this is all pure speculation.

Jonathan_S wrote:Given that Haven has a lot less need for independent cruiser operations, especially given how they expected to fight the war if it had to resume, they may not have put any priority on cruisers that can operate independently in the multi-drive era. And the targets they were thinking about mostly had system defenses more than capable of swatting away pretty much any cruiser raid, no matter now long ranged its missiles.
So I think there's a reasonable chance than any new designs were more along the lines of close-escort ships -- focusing on providing anti-missile defense to the wall of battle. And in that role their offensive missile are basically irrelevant -- the focus would instead be on more CMs and PDLCs.


But you're right, we've seen nothing (except some statements about how Mars-class have gotten some refits; e.g. to mount a bow wall) -- so this is all pure speculation.

Given how Haven didn't send any ships to assist Laocoon II, I think evidence leans towards Haven not having anything that could truly help the Sag-C's and Rolands. Or at least in anything other than "carrying Marines and boarding parties" is concerned.

Even for missile defense, because Havenite ships rely mostly on on mass not accuracy, that adding a bunch of Havenite ships to a Manticoran formation (or the opposite) would actually lead to a net loss in missile defenses, rather than a net gain, despite more platforms present.


Now that they're part of the Communal Design, Republican sub-capital ships will, shortly, be much more effective at all ranges and able to serve alongside others better. And 'mixed fleets' will no longer truly be a thing, because the only differences will be whose manning the hardware.

Other than the MDM baffle design, and FTL tech, there is nothing the RHN has that the SLN would want. The SLN problem is its integration of its systems, number of systems placed in a modern hull, and doctrine/tactics to go along with them taught/trained to its personnel. This requires more time/testing than anything else rather than RAW R&D.

The main difference between RHN/RMN/SLN is economic scaling of the ships. RMN can use vastly fewer ships/personnel to get the job done than RHN/SLN. Ultimately that bleeds back to your personnel's willingness to go into battle of course. After all, if you are trading 100:1, yet "win", how many more humans would willingly, without slavery, sign up for such a military? Zero.

Relax wrote:Other than the MDM baffle design, and FTL tech, there is nothing the RHN has that the SLN would want. The SLN problem is its integration of its systems, number of systems placed in a modern hull, and doctrine/tactics to go along with them taught/trained to its personnel. This requires more time/testing than anything else rather than RAW R&D.

Improved compensators?
Bow walls? (Some Mars class got upgraded to those; per SoS)

And plenty of RHN software is better that what the SLN currently has -- getting copies would give them a major leg-up in upgrading their software:
* Missile defense software designed to track thousands of missiles closing at 0.8c or more.
* ECM/decoy programs
* Missile software (better target discrimination and decoy rejection at long range)

Remember that the PNIE, hardly technical geniuses, generated a major upgrade in the effectiveness of the ex-SLN units they were given simply by overwriting the tac software with their out of date, off-the-shelf, standard Peep software.


And then the some of the actual hardware installed in the RHN ships may be superior to what's in the SLN's current ships (faster cycling missile and CM launchers, PDLCs with more emitters and better cycle times, etc.) but its unlikely that it is significantly better than what the League could soon get from its own yards if it's willing to spend the money.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Other than the MDM baffle design, and FTL tech, there is nothing the RHN has that the SLN would want.

Improved compensators?
Bow walls? (Some Mars class got upgraded to those; per SoS)

And plenty of RHN software is b

Eh, forgot they had the compensator design. Ok.

Nothing special about a bow wall. Anyone could always implement it. Cuts acceleration to zero, but certainly any hick in the backwoods could do. RMN already showed it so... it is the idea that counts, not the implementation.

Software is completely 100% your own hardware specific for ECM. And no, nothing RHN has would help other than attack ECM profiles of others hardware + own testing, scenario's. Not difficult, time consuming though. The biggest key is the personnel training to use it. Though, how valid that is if you do not have the sensor integration done is questionable.

Relax wrote:Nothing special about a bow wall. Anyone could always implement it. Cuts acceleration to zero, but certainly any hick in the backwoods could do. RMN already showed it so... it is the idea that counts, not the implementation.

Well, it is clear (again from SoS) that you can't just drop a sidewall generator on the nose and have it work -- the impellers need to somehow be made compatible with it.

Shadows of Saganami wrote:There's no way they could've refitted a bow wall without completely gutting her forward impeller rooms, and that brings us back to those fusion rooms of hers. If they were going to invest the time and money to refit bow wall technology, they'd've refitted those power plants at the same time, so without the one, they don't have the other.

It may be that those changes are self-evident (if extensive) once you decide to install a bow wall -- or maybe they aren't. We just don't know. So we don't know what, if any, benefit the League designers might get from being handed a working design.

--
And I'd assume the only reason it was easy to field mod some Shrikes, like Bad Penny for stern walls is that the designers had used compatible nodes/hardware in both their fore and aft impeller rooms (likely for parts commonality to simplify logistics and maintenance) -- so their aft impeller room already happened to be stern wall compatible.