Commerce raiding

Sigs wrote:Presumably the RHN has some form of a fleet train and more importantly they get to choose the time and place of the war so they can set up advance bases in one of the thousands of unoccupied out of the way systems. BB's that take damage are either sent home or if they cannot make it home are scuttled all without costing the RHN all that much in combat power.

Can you tell me what a BB can do to fight insurrections that a cruiser cannot do? If a system has the shipyard to be able to build warships of its own it likely will have a sizeable fleet presence, if it doesn't have the ability then a destroyer or two along with a dozen old style LAC's will do the trick just fine.

No, Haven't doesn't appear to have much of a fleet train. Haven's navy, prior to the first war, was optimized around:
1) Deterring internal insurrection (yeah, you don't need one to fight an insurrection; loyal ground troops plus even a DD providing orbital bombardment is plenty. But the visible proof that the iron boot is hovering over your head to drop outsized marine detachments and fire from the sky helps remind restless planets that it isn't worth causing a fuss. (Plus being a warship its harder to infiltrate saboteurs the way a groundside army base might be vulnerable to)
2) Carefully planned short range overwhelming lunges.

So they just didn't need much of a fleet train because they only fought wars of choice, and only from nearby bases. Therefore they didn't need to send supplies, ammo, repair ships, etc. after the fleet to keep it supplied and operational far from home because the fleet would stock up, overwhelm their target, and then mostly return to base. The supplies, repair capabilities, ammo, could just stay at their forward bases.

(This is kind of like assuming France, because they have a modern aircraft carrier and thus are a pretty significant navy, must have a decent fleet train. Not really, they don't operate far enough from, or long enough away, from their ports to need one -- so, unlike the modern RN, they really haven't invested in any expeditionary capability and would be hard pressed to sustain an operation in, say, the Pacific or South Atlantic without support from allied bases or fleet trains)

Note that in At All Costs it is noted that when Tourville attacked Honor's forces at Sidemore in the Marsh System, they were 400 light-years from home without the possibility to use a wormhole. So when their damaged ships could not go above the Delta band, the voyage home took over 3 months.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Sigs wrote:Presumably the RHN has some form of a fleet train and more importantly they get to choose the time and place of the war so they can set up advance bases in one of the thousands of unoccupied out of the way systems. BB's that take damage are either sent home or if they cannot make it home are scuttled all without costing the RHN all that much in combat power.

Can you tell me what a BB can do to fight insurrections that a cruiser cannot do? If a system has the shipyard to be able to build warships of its own it likely will have a sizeable fleet presence, if it doesn't have the ability then a destroyer or two along with a dozen old style LAC's will do the trick just fine.

No, Haven't doesn't appear to have much of a fleet train. Haven's navy, prior to the first war, was optimized around:
1) Deterring internal insurrection (yeah, you don't need one to fight an insurrection; loyal ground troops plus even a DD providing orbital bombardment is plenty. But the visible proof that the iron boot is hovering over your head to drop outsized marine detachments and fire from the sky helps remind restless planets that it isn't worth causing a fuss. (Plus being a warship its harder to infiltrate saboteurs the way a groundside army base might be vulnerable to)
2) Carefully planned short range overwhelming lunges.

So they just didn't need much of a fleet train because they only fought wars of choice, and only from nearby bases. Therefore they didn't need to send supplies, ammo, repair ships, etc. after the fleet to keep it supplied and operational far from home because the fleet would stock up, overwhelm their target, and then mostly return to base. The supplies, repair capabilities, ammo, could just stay at their forward bases.

(This is kind of like assuming France, because they have a modern aircraft carrier and thus are a pretty significant navy, must have a decent fleet train. Not really, they don't operate far enough from, or long enough away, from their ports to need one -- so, unlike the modern RN, they really haven't invested in any expeditionary capability and would be hard pressed to sustain an operation in, say, the Pacific or South Atlantic without support from allied bases or fleet trains)

https://www.gotshifted.com/honorverseglossary/files/1_First_Havenite_War_theatre_of_operations_from_OBS_to_SVW.png

Seaford 9, Mendoza, Cheaslea, and several other systems held Havenite forward operating bases to support the attack on Manticore. It has been mentioned several times the education issues Haven faced - they decided to concentrate their trained maintainers at fleet bases, not on ships or Fleet trains due to how few there were. onboard ship maintainers were trained not to repair system, but to replace modules. Such a system ties formations to regularly return to local bases, with short operating tempos.

The PRN, and later the RHN, learned and gained capabilities during the the war as lessons were learned (and the carefully built operating bases were lost). Operations like Stalking Horse and Giscard in Silesia were a trial of newly built capabilities and testing new doctrine, and not indicative of the capabilities of majority of the PRN.

Sigs wrote:BB's are expendable, if a ship suffers damage and cannot get home and cannot be repaired in a forward deployed base then it is scuttled and the RHN doesn't lose too much combat power.

I dispute that characterisation of expendability. Indeed those are ships that the PN would not commit to front-line action against Alliance's wallers, all of which would be bigger. But they did try to use them where they expected no wallers to be present, like during Fourth Yieltsin.

Those ships are expensive. They were obsolete and needing to be replaced, but until such happened, they were assets to be used. Since the PN didn't just have a surplus of ships that weren't in use (like the SLN Reserve), it stands to reason that they were used where they could be. Repurposing them would mean some other need went unmet. Possibly just deploying some Mars-class CA would have been enough for quashing internal unrest, but not a good deterrent against Alliance deep raids using BatCruRons.

Likely the most important asset in a BB was its crew. The 4000 spacers and officers were not something the PN could afford to throw away, especially not the loyal ones after the Pierre purge. Plus, we know that the ships don't have enough life boats to the entire crew, so if they were used in an attack and damaged beyond the ability to limp home, the crew would have no option to scuttle and transfer to other ships that were able to escape. They'd have to surrender the ship and be interned as POWs for the duration of the war, which equally removes the crew from the PN's active list.

Whole thread can be summed up:

#1 Why build DD's? Short legged build CL's
#2 Why build CL's? No armor build CA's
#3 Why build CA's? No Heavy armor&endurance, build BC's
#4 Why build BC's? No capital grade missiles build BB's
#5 Why build BB's? No capital grade sidewalls/Grasers build DN
#6 Why build DN's? Not as large as possible build SD
#7 Why build SD's? Not as large as forts

Economics is why DN's are not on commerce raiding or defense.
POLITICS, $$$ determines what you can build and what you can USE to either DEFEND your commerce or attack someone's commerce.

Prior to WWII everyone knew current treaty imposed tonnage limitations, crippled in one form or another, ALL classes of ships from carriers down to DD. Everyone agreed to the Washington/London naval treaties because all the politicians saw this as a way to SAVE MONEY. LOTS and LOTS of $$$$$$$$ Was there RAMPANT cheating of one form or another by clever parties, but still ~in general, the treaties were basically followed? Yes.... for a short period of time anyways.

Relax wrote:Whole thread can be summed up:

#1 Why build DD's? Short legged build CL's
#2 Why build CL's? No armor build CA's
#3 Why build CA's? No Heavy armor&endurance, build BC's
#4 Why build BC's? No capital grade missiles build BB's
#5 Why build BB's? No capital grade sidewalls/Grasers build DN
#6 Why build DN's? Not as large as possible build SD
#7 Why build SD's? Not as large as forts

Nice summation, but of course a fort is not hyper-capable; so there will always be an SD class, with its size limited by the compensator.

As for the rest, size inflation might be making some classes go away. A modern DD is now the size of a CL or CA. A modern BC is now the size of a BB and basically the DN has gone away. So the warship class these days is defined by the mission and not the size/weight.

Relax wrote:Whole thread can be summed up:

#1 Why build DD's? Short legged build CL's
#2 Why build CL's? No armor build CA's
#3 Why build CA's? No Heavy armor&endurance, build BC's
#4 Why build BC's? No capital grade missiles build BB's
#5 Why build BB's? No capital grade sidewalls/Grasers build DN
#6 Why build DN's? Not as large as possible build SD
#7 Why build SD's? Not as large as forts

#7 Why not build forts? Because they aren't mobile.
#6 Why not build SDs? Because they are expensive and usually slow, so they can't catch any other unit.
#5 Why not build DNs? Because they are also slow, can't catch anything below them and require support vessels
#4 Why not build BBs? Because they require almost as much manpower as DNs and can't force an engagement with a non-waller unit.
#3 Why not build BCs? Because any cruiser can run rings around them and avoid engagement, and usually they require a screen too.
#2 Why not build CAs? CLs are still faster and can go to all places a CA can go
#1 Why not build CLs? You can three or four DDs for the price of 2 CLs and thus can be in more places at once.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:#7 Why not build forts? Because they aren't mobile.
#6 Why not build SDs? Because they are expensive and usually slow, so they can't catch any other unit.
#5 Why not build DNs? Because they are also slow, can't catch anything below them and require support vessels
#4 Why not build BBs? Because they require almost as much manpower as DNs and can't force an engagement with a non-waller unit.
#3 Why not build BCs? Because any cruiser can run rings around them and avoid engagement, and usually they require a screen too.
#2 Why not build CAs? CLs are still faster and can go to all places a CA can go
#1 Why not build CLs? You can three or four DDs for the price of 2 CLs and thus can be in more places at once.

The problem is the same as the reason why class members are getting bigger: the increased necessity for firing off masses of missiles and defending against masses of missiles. It is true about the ability to run away from a heavier class; but when trapped within the hyper-limit, it is not possible to run away from the missile launch from a heavier class or a more modern lighter class.

Classes are going to be defined by the mission and numbers within each class are going to be set by estimates on numbers and priorities of missions.

tlb wrote:As for the rest, size inflation might be making some classes go away. A modern DD is now the size of a CL or CA. A modern BC is now the size of a BB and basically the DN has gone away. So the warship class these days is defined by the mission and not the size/weight.

A BC(L) isn't quite that large, though it's still over twice the size of older BCs.

A Triumphant-class BB is ~4.5 million tons
A Nike-class BC(L) is "only" ~2.5 million tons; about 55-56% the volume and tonnage of the only BB we have stats on.

(And even a Roland-class DD is still 16% smaller than the smallest CA we know of, the Truncheon-class which is over a century old)

Size inflation is real, but you just overstated it a bit

tlb wrote:

Relax wrote:#7 Why build SD's? Not as large as forts

tlb wrote:Nice summation, but of course a fort is not hyper-capable; so there will always be an SD class, with its size limited by the compensator

NIT Alert : Everything is hyper capable, including forts should a hyper generator be installed. Also one does not require a compensator. Grav plates work just fine. Now your acceleration is slow as trying to pour cold molasses . If someones slightly smaller SD can Smash 2 systems while you are still transiting to one system... we have a $$$/force problem here. Or know you are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SSSSLLLLLLOOOOOWWWW He can picket your system, watch you leave, tell his admiral, yo , putz just left, admiral send in his SD's, smash you, and still return home before your "fort" shows up--> Roger Winton, we have a problem!

One can argue in the age of FTL controlled missiles... with ~200Mkm range; Speed, in system speed specifically, is pointless or nearly so at this point. Your hyper generator recharge time is now more important than acceleration capability.

Of course the perverse in me would like to point out, if your system is in a grav wave or near and you want to conquer ANOTHER system in/near a grav wave and are connected or nearly so by said grav wave... well your transit time is now ~meaningless. And if you outfit your ship with a new and improve "streak" drive and improved MALIGN grav plates allowing 250G.... well well well... Forts all of a sudden can be used.

<<COUGH DAHAK!!! COUGH>>

So, SIZE inflation is real