SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

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What funding does the SLN have now? They can't use the verge as a piggy-bank any more, plus every ship they have (left) is obsolete.

Just remember the stipulations Honor made to the SL and how that will affect R&D and navy build-up.[/quote]

The new SLN constitution will most probably allow direct taxes to their citizens, or some other changes in how the central government is funded.[/quote]

The Sollie League, as such, may not have funding. In fact it will probably be exceedingly limited in it's funding. The old League was sorta like the US (in a very loose fashion), 50 states with out armies of their own but protected by the federal governments army. The new League strikes me as likely to be more like NATO (again, in a very vague fashion), each star nation involved is responsible for their own defenses and military but they contribute their forces to the protection of everyone else in the League as needed. Mostly the League, as such, is going to be the codification of galactic standards for behaviors, trade agreements, etc.

The new League's total economy is still stupendous and most of the core systems have plenty of money of their own. They're going to be building their own defense fleets, they can't rely on the League for protection anymore after all. They know that the GA has done all of this R&D to build the long ranged missiles, the FTL comms, etc. They'll throw money into crash R&D projects, massive efforts to steal the tech or buy even Manti-Lite tech to get a leg up.

What funding does the SLN have now? They can't use the verge as a piggy-bank any more, plus every ship they have (left) is obsolete.

Just remember the stipulations Honor made to the SL and how that will affect R&D and navy build-up.

The new SLN constitution will most probably allow direct taxes to their citizens, or some other changes in how the central government is funded.

Fireflair wrote:The Sollie League, as such, may not have funding. In fact it will probably be exceedingly limited in it's funding. The old League was sorta like the US (in a very loose fashion), 50 states with out armies of their own but protected by the federal governments army. The new League strikes me as likely to be more like NATO (again, in a very vague fashion), each star nation involved is responsible for their own defenses and military but they contribute their forces to the protection of everyone else in the League as needed. Mostly the League, as such, is going to be the codification of galactic standards for behaviors, trade agreements, etc.

The new League's total economy is still stupendous and most of the core systems have plenty of money of their own. They're going to be building their own defense fleets, they can't rely on the League for protection anymore after all. They know that the GA has done all of this R&D to build the long ranged missiles, the FTL comms, etc. They'll throw money into crash R&D projects, massive efforts to steal the tech or buy even Manti-Lite tech to get a leg up.

I expect that the new Solarian League will be closer to a Federation, with member control and member funding. I expect that everyone learned the lesson of the previous bureaucracy and its indirect funding; in particular because of the Grand Alliance insistence that the members exert stronger democratic control over the League agencies - which would include their budgets.

I expect that the primary defense will still be supplied by the League Navy, despite whatever forces the members might assemble on their own. But now the Navy will answer to the Assembly and not to the bureaucrats.

Fireflair wrote:The old League was sorta like the US (in a very loose fashion), 50 states with out armies of their own but protected by the federal governments army. The new League strikes me as likely to be more like NATO (again, in a very vague fashion), each star nation involved is responsible for their own defenses and military but they contribute their forces to the protection of everyone else in the League as needed. Mostly the League, as such, is going to be the codification of galactic standards for behaviors, trade agreements, etc.

An extremely loose fashion; in that each system could (though most didn't) fund, raise, and operate a full system defense force military -- up to and including squadrons of superdreadnoughts; allowing them significant force projection capabilities.


The League government seemed to have no ability to regulate or limit those SDFs -- though if the Assembly voted a formal declaration of war I seem to recall that the League could then nationalize those formations. But no lesser emergency or authorization permitted that.

So that's far different than the various US State National Guards which get significant federal funding (and a fair bit of federal control over their equipment, training, etc.) and can be called up into federal service without any Congressional action required.


In practice most of the Core didn't bother to operate anything more than lifesaving and customs services -- so not even equivalent to everything the US Coast Guard does -- happy to sit under the protective aegis of Battle Fleet. But they had the right to their own militaries -- and enough of them exercised that right (like Beowulf) that, unlike secession, nobody questioned whether the right still applied under the old League constitution.

From a great distance I'll say-
The US is supposed to be a singular country, so outsiders wonder about the talk of militias, and the second amendment implied permission to commit insurrection.
Meanwhile Europe is composed of individual sovereign states, that each have their own laws, but have agreed to provide funding and resources to NATO to defend them all. Against the only likely threat, Russia.
Thus my interpretation is that the situation is somewhat like between NATO and another sort of NATO. Two assosiations of soverign states facing off.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
And the issue there doesn't appear to be crew size. The Rolands and even Terekhov's Sag-Cs didn't have lots of prize crews and marines because they weren't expected to be needed. The internal volume is probably not the issue; the ships could embark more crew if necessary. And if we're going to have fewer ships around, then putting more aboard in the ones that will be around so they get some experience in the field will be useful.

The issue with anything below the Sag-C is that it's no longer a viable combatant in the modern environment. The Rolands were, but they were a wartime design, not a patrol ship. We haven't heard much about the Avalons (we may in the upcoming stories about Sarnow), but I expect they will also need to be updated. The last we heard is that nothing smaller than a CA was actually a viable combatant.

Part of the discussion is role. In the past, DD/CL were mainly scouts and light convoy protection against pirates and were not expected to fight anything bigger (CA and up). With the tech the GA has in theory you could do a better job with a CLAC and its LACs. While we have no numbers, a pair of CL even if they are the size of a SAG-C cost less to man/maintain/resupply then the CLAC does.

The Avalon is the most modern CL design currently in production anywhere but Maya, and Maya CL are just smaller Star Knights, and until/unless someone cracks the DDM tech secrets then no-one is going to building a small ship with the range/bite of a Roland. The smallest Cataphracths which carry warheads no better then the LERM can only be tube fired by a 900KT BC. So if there is no plan to use the next CL against anything big, then the LERM is a perfectly good missile to build the ship around.

Now that said that does, to me at least, fall into the category of thinking you are fighting the last war which so hampered the SLN.

A DD/CL isn't meant to do heavy fighting, so an upsized Roland of 300KT would probably be able to do both the Roland and Avalon roles. Fragile compared to a Sag-C? Yes, but a Valiant looks fragile compared to a Sag-B and Manticore needs to replace its light ships quickly. A 300Kt design with the space for the extras that the Roland lacked that make the Avalon the superior patrol ship will be quicker to design and build as a stop gap while they replace the designs that are 50 years old.

As you said, the Sag-C really is about as small as a proper hyper capable warship will be in the future. With new CAs probably the size of pre Nike BCs in the 900KT to 1Mt range.

Dauntless wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
And the issue there doesn't appear to be crew size. The Rolands and even Terekhov's Sag-Cs didn't have lots of prize crews and marines because they weren't expected to be needed. The internal volume is probably not the issue; the ships could embark more crew if necessary. And if we're going to have fewer ships around, then putting more aboard in the ones that will be around so they get some experience in the field will be useful.

The issue with anything below the Sag-C is that it's no longer a viable combatant in the modern environment. The Rolands were, but they were a wartime design, not a patrol ship. We haven't heard much about the Avalons (we may in the upcoming stories about Sarnow), but I expect they will also need to be updated. The last we heard is that nothing smaller than a CA was actually a viable combatant.

Part of the discussion is role. In the past, DD/CL were mainly scouts and light convoy protection against pirates and were not expected to fight anything bigger (CA and up). With the tech the GA has in theory you could do a better job with a CLAC and its LACs. While we have no numbers, a pair of CL even if they are the size of a SAG-C cost less to man/maintain/resupply then the CLAC does.

The Avalon is the most modern CL design currently in production anywhere but Maya, and Maya CL are just smaller Star Knights, and until/unless someone cracks the DDM tech secrets then no-one is going to building a small ship with the range/bite of a Roland. The smallest Cataphracths which carry warheads no better then the LERM can only be tube fired by a 900KT BC. So if there is no plan to use the next CL against anything big, then the LERM is a perfectly good missile to build the ship around.

Now that said that does, to me at least, fall into the category of thinking you are fighting the last war which so hampered the SLN.

A DD/CL isn't meant to do heavy fighting, so an upsized Roland of 300KT would probably be able to do both the Roland and Avalon roles. Fragile compared to a Sag-C? Yes, but a Valiant looks fragile compared to a Sag-B and Manticore needs to replace its light ships quickly. A 300Kt design with the space for the extras that the Roland lacked that make the Avalon the superior patrol ship will be quicker to design and build as a stop gap while they replace the designs that are 50 years old.

As you said, the Sag-C really is about as small as a proper hyper capable warship will be in the future. With new CAs probably the size of pre Nike BCs in the 900KT to 1Mt range.

2 Nits,

While a GA LAC has the warfighting (Defense/Offense) of a CL, if does not have the endurance of a DD/CL. So while the roles of fleet screen, tactical scout, and in-system patrol have moved to the LAC, Strategic Scout, convoy protection, piracy stalking, and the Show the Flag presence missions are still roles for the DD/CL. It may be awhile before 300 Kton is truly a requirement to safely conduct such missions in all environments.

480 Ton CAs (Mars-D was discussed in Text) can fire the smallest Cataphract missiles - they didn't in text because there were not enough of them supplied for both the PNiE's BCs and CAs magazines to carry a sufficient # of them to be useful. The Mars class does not carry special missile launchers (just a bunch of them), so any 1850s+ CA/BC should be able to launch a Cataphract.

Valid point about LAC endurance but as long as you have the carrier (a proper CLAC not a modified freighter that can carry 10/20) along then it should not be a huge problem in convoy protection but yes another reason to use a proper ship like a CL.

Good catch on Mars CA being able to fire cataphracts. I'd forgotten that it was a numbers issue, not capability. Definitely something to remember when working out the threat environment and with so many going pirate if Cataphracts become easily acquired on black market.

Theemile wrote:While a GA LAC has the warfighting (Defense/Offense) of a CL, if does not have the endurance of a DD/CL. So while the roles of fleet screen, tactical scout, and in-system patrol have moved to the LAC, Strategic Scout, convoy protection, piracy stalking, and the Show the Flag presence missions are still roles for the DD/CL.

Though it's worth remembering that piracy stalking isn't the only form of anti-piracy work. In-system patrol also keeps pirates from hunting within your system - and hyperspace piracy is so difficult as to generally be impossible (or at least wildly unprofitable). So securing the end-point systems is the bulk of anti-piracy work.

You only need to troll for pirates if you're in the weird situation of trading with systems that:
a) can't chase away pirates on their own.
b) won't let you station permanent anti-piracy forces (or subsidize their anti-piracy units)
c) yet, will allow your warships to enter and engage pirates.

Even convoying is kind of pointless unless the systems will allow the convoy escorts entry -- because the risk isn't in hyperspace it's after you cross the hyper limit.



[Military convoys during wartime are a bit of a different thing. Nations sometimes have the intelligence sources to pull off a hyperspace ambush. Plus the convoy escort provides some protection against the risk that one of the systems the convoy is scheduled to visit may have been taken over by, or besieged by, the enemy since the convoy last heard. But neither of those should be risks with pirates]

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:While a GA LAC has the warfighting (Defense/Offense) of a CL, if does not have the endurance of a DD/CL. So while the roles of fleet screen, tactical scout, and in-system patrol have moved to the LAC, Strategic Scout, convoy protection, piracy stalking, and the Show the Flag presence missions are still roles for the DD/CL.

Though it's worth remembering that piracy stalking isn't the only form of anti-piracy work. In-system patrol also keeps pirates from hunting within your system - and hyperspace piracy is so difficult as to generally be impossible (or at least wildly unprofitable). So securing the end-point systems is the bulk of anti-piracy work.

You only need to troll for pirates if you're in the weird situation of trading with systems that:
a) can't chase away pirates on their own.
b) won't let you station permanent anti-piracy forces (or subsidize their anti-piracy units)
c) yet, will allow your warships to enter and engage pirates.

Even convoying is kind of pointless unless the systems will allow the convoy escorts entry -- because the risk isn't in hyperspace it's after you cross the hyper limit.



[Military convoys during wartime are a bit of a different thing. Nations sometimes have the intelligence sources to pull off a hyperspace ambush. Plus the convoy escort provides some protection against the risk that one of the systems the convoy is scheduled to visit may have been taken over by, or besieged by, the enemy since the convoy last heard. But neither of those should be risks with pirates]

Very true, I was think about long endurance piracy pounce missions. Where you sit for weeks on end under emcon, waiting for someone to do something stupid. LACs have an endurance measured in days, so you'd want ships with several weeks+ endurance to in space as the hyper locus shifts past them, move, rinse, repeat.

Also, large rifts will always be a special place for pirates - ship have to shift to normal hyper out of the grav waves, so there is a set place they can be jumped mid-journey. You would want patrols in those regions to make them less profitable for anyone who gets the smart idea.

Lastly, until the verge planets get their defensive postures sorted out, Manticore and Haven will be their guarantors of sorts, so anti piracy and show the flag missions will be necessary for the next 5 or so years in those areas, once again, just to keep people with smart ideas from acting on them. Long term, this will be a smaller issue.

Theemile wrote:Very true, I was think about long endurance piracy pounce missions. Where you sit for weeks on end under emcon, waiting for someone to do something stupid. LACs have an endurance measured in days, so you'd want ships with several weeks+ endurance to in space as the hyper locus shifts past them, move, rinse, repeat.

The new fission-powered LACs have an endurance measured in years before they need to refuel.
At each of the common arrival places where the freighters hyper out, you could have like 6 of them patroling, and one or two groups patroling areas where pirates might try to hide, like asteroid belts. Then you add in 12 in orbit, for the crews to relax and refill food, and maintainance - and you can rotate them in and out of duty. A single LAC carriers worth of LACs should be enough to secure any normal solar system against pirates and other occasional ambushes.