Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Zendikarofthewest wrote:True, it would absolutely be a subpar vessel to a Saganami-C. In all seriousness though, I would give it an even chance of smacking a Roland or Avalon down (Avalon especially - it only has ERMs), or with two or three of them taking on a Saganami-C with some degree of success.

The Battle of Saltash, in the Meyer Sector. Tenth Fleet's DDRon 301 of 5 Rolands against the SLN's detachment of half of Battlecruiser Squadron 491, consisting of 4 Indefatigables. All four were lost and didn't even fire in response because the Rolands were completely outside of the range of the BCs. Vice Admiral Oxana Dubroskaya was expecting to see 30 missiles in a volley (6 per broadside times 5 ships), but she got 120 fired per volley at each of her ships - a double-double.

That acceleration though, oof. I never realized how much damn powercreep they had there - fucks sake, an Invictus goes faster then a damn Culverin.

There's a quote between two Solly officers, which I think is Filareta and his tactical officer, but I can't find. Basically, the senior of the two is saying, "I think there has to be an error in those acceleration numbers. They can't have superdreadnoughts faster than our destroyers." (I've already searched for "faster", "acceleration" and "Filareta" in the books where solly officers show up)

I was moreso thinking along the lines of a Roland, using off-bore capability to get semi-decent viability out of older CA hulls.

As others have said, that's basically gutting the entire ship and redoing her armour. That's not cheap at all.

To be honest, I think the cost of refits is overstated, and I don't really buy into the idea that refitting a Nevada would be more expensive then buying a brand new DDM-armed CA or BC. I think that refitting older ships to take ERMs and DDMs would be fairly popular, especially for third-rate navies that can get them for dirt cheap.

Maybe. I think you're right and I agree that a half-assed (or quarter-assed) job for third rate navies can be done cheaply enough that it's worth not buying a new ship... in the short run. This refitted ship is going to be an eggshell and comes with a "best use by" date stamped on the hull, so in the medium- to long-run, it is cheaper to buy a new one.

But we don't make the rules. As Theemile's signature says, RFC himself says that refitting an SLN SD to Manticoran standards is more expensive than buying a new one.

I will admit though, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the native-born designs of these navies. Maybe some would focus on MDM-armed battleships? Maybe DN(P)s? It's something I want explored tbh.

No one builds BBs any more because of the square-cube law: a DN and an SD have more volume per unit of area than a BB. So long as you can build a bigger ship, there's no point in building something smaller, which will have less armour per unit of volume and less internal volume to carry missiles, power plants, etc. DNs are today still "cheap SDs" and as we've seen they were only built in peace time to keep the costs down. Once the hostilities started and war funding kicked in, no one built DNs any more.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The Battle of Saltash, in the Meyer Sector. Tenth Fleet's DDRon 301 of 5 Rolands against the SLN's detachment of half of Battlecruiser Squadron 491, consisting of 4 Indefatigables. All four were lost and didn't even fire in response because the Rolands were completely outside of the range of the BCs. Vice Admiral Oxana Dubroskaya was expecting to see 30 missiles in a volley (6 per broadside times 5 ships), but she got 120 fired per volley at each of her ships - a double-double.

I was referring to an upgraded Nevada with DDMs.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's a quote between two Solly officers, which I think is Filareta and his tactical officer, but I can't find. Basically, the senior of the two is saying, "I think there has to be an error in those acceleration numbers. They can't have superdreadnoughts faster than our destroyers." (I've already searched for "faster", "acceleration" and "Filareta" in the books where solly officers show up)

Yeah... I really wish the Sollies hadnt been so neutered, honestly made the last few books kinda boring for me. At some point it just gets too much.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Maybe. I think you're right and I agree that a half-assed (or quarter-assed) job for third rate navies can be done cheaply enough that it's worth not buying a new ship... in the short run. This refitted ship is going to be an eggshell and comes with a "best use by" date stamped on the hull, so in the medium- to long-run, it is cheaper to buy a new one.

But we don't make the rules. As Theemile's signature says, RFC himself says that refitting an SLN SD to Manticoran standards is more expensive than buying a new one.

No one builds BBs any more because of the square-cube law: a DN and an SD have more volume per unit of area than a BB. So long as you can build a bigger ship, there's no point in building something smaller, which will have less armour per unit of volume and less internal volume to carry missiles, power plants, etc. DNs are today still "cheap SDs" and as we've seen they were only built in peace time to keep the costs down. Once the hostilities started and war funding kicked in, no one built DNs any more.

A few things. I personally think that statement is heavily overstated - it likely refers to either giving them MDMs, Apollo, and Keyhole II, or turning them into SD(P)s, not simply modifying them with DDMs/MDMs. We know the RMN did it with a few of their SDs, so it clearly has some value.
The reason why I brought up battleships and DN(P)s, was for a few reasons. Yeah, they are far less capable then a SD(P), but I think it would be very feasible to make a MDM-armed battleship that could take on any DDM-armed BC or CA. It wouldnt have the durability issues of a BC(P), either.

As for DN(P)s, I think they would be a decent low-budget option - especially since they wouldnt have the durability issues that BC(P)s have, but would still have salvo strength comparable to SD(P)s. Its similar to how normal DNs were made, to be honest - a smaller nation can afford more of them to guard spread-out territory.

Zendikarofthewest wrote:
A few things. I personally think that statement is heavily overstated - it likely refers to either giving them MDMs, Apollo, and Keyhole II, or turning them into SD(P)s, not simply modifying them with DDMs/MDMs. We know the RMN did it with a few of their SDs, so it clearly has some
value
The reason why I brought up battleships and DN(P)s, was for a few reasons. Yeah, they are far less capable then a SD(P), but I think it would be very feasible to make a MDM-armed battleship that could take on any DDM-armed BC or CA. It wouldnt have the curability issues of a BC(P), either.

I think the value refitting the Gryphons had was 99% political.

The High Ridge and he Janacek Admiralty were trying to justify redirecting the emergency wartime taxes into their domestic (vote buying) programs.

But if they admitted that the existing pre-pod wall was hopelessly obsolete they'd have a very hard time resisting the demand from the Crown Loyalists and Centrists to resume construction on the new SD(P)s to replace it. A low rate (even if very individually expensive) trial program of MDM upgrades to legacy wallers lets them avoid that. They can claim to believe that it'll be cheaper to refit the old wall and avoid "throwing away" relatively new SDs -- and further claim that significant naval spending should be delayed until the first few trial conversions are completed and the kinks worked out.

They don't care that it's not cost effective, nor that it results in an inferior ship -- because by being able to limit it to just a few ships (for now) they can divert the rest of that money elsewhere. They're playing a short-term game where they don't care that converting all the old SDs would cost more than finishing the SD(P)s; because they're not converting them all -- only enough to buy political cover.

I'm quite confident that if the Cromarty Government had survived the assassinations they wouldn't have wasted money on converting any pre-pod SDs; even a basic paper study would show the cost/benefit/time ratios are all out of whack and you're better off building a proper new ship designed for both offense and defense if a pod-heavy combat environment.

Zendikarofthewest wrote:As for DN(P)s, I think they would be a decent low-budget option - especially since they wouldnt have the durability issues that BC(P)s have, but would still have salvo strength comparable to SD(P)s. Its similar to how normal DNs were made, to be honest - a smaller nation can afford more of them to guard spread-out territory.

One concern with DN(P)s is that, unlike legacy DNs, pod-layers have a critical dimension constraint -- the inner diameter of the aft impeller ring/rooms.

If you get much smaller than an SD(P) I worry you might not have room for 6 pod rails to pass through it; and if you had to drop to just 5 that'd be just over a 16% drop in firepower. Whereas, classically, DNs appears to have about 90% the firepower of a contemporary SD, not 84%.

(Now you could make a 'fat' DN(P) to keep the ring diameter up; but it'd cost you acceleration -- likely leaving you barely quicker than a full-sized SD(P). (For example Tom Pope, head of BuNine, confirmed that the 'fatness' of the CLACs is why their acceleration is a bit below what you'd expect from their tonnage. They have a non-optimal hull form to squeeze in that many LAC bays)

But mostly what a smaller pod-layer would cost you is hull area to mount missile defense. (Cube-square law means you lose surface area quicker than volume, so your defenses go down faster than the number of pods you can carry). That's going to make a DN(P) even more fragile than the tonnage ratio between DN(P) and SD(P) would imply. If it's 15% lighter it's probably at least 20% less survivable.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think the value refitting the Gryphons had was 99% political.

The High Ridge and he Janacek Admiralty were trying to justify redirecting the emergency wartime taxes into their domestic (vote buying) programs.

But if they admitted that the existing pre-pod wall was hopelessly obsolete they'd have a very hard time resisting the demand from the Crown Loyalists and Centrists to resume construction on the new SD(P)s to replace it. A low rate (even if very individually expensive) trial program of MDM upgrades to legacy wallers lets them avoid that. They can claim to believe that it'll be cheaper to refit the old wall and avoid "throwing away" relatively new SDs -- and further claim that significant naval spending should be delayed until the first few trial conversions are completed and the kinks worked out.

They don't care that it's not cost effective, nor that it results in an inferior ship -- because by being able to limit it to just a few ships (for now) they can divert the rest of that money elsewhere. They're playing a short-term game where they don't care that converting all the old SDs would cost more than finishing the SD(P)s; because they're not converting them all -- only enough to buy political cover.

I'm quite confident that if the Cromarty Government had survived the assassinations they wouldn't have wasted money on converting any pre-pod SDs; even a basic paper study would show the cost/benefit/time ratios are all out of whack and you're better off building a proper new ship designed for both offense and defense if a pod-heavy combat environment.

Eh, I wouldn't agree. We saw them absolutely axing their conventional fleet - iirc Grayson actually stepped in to nab some of the ships they decommissioned. Was it probably less efficient and worse then building new ships? Yeah, very likely, but it was cheaper. If it wasn't, then I am confident they would never have gotten it through. Say if it was... half the cost of a new Medusa-class, that would still be reasonable. A Medusa is so much more capable then two refitted SDs, but the refitted SDs are cheaper, due to having the hulls on-hand. (Plus the defensive systems and basically everything but the missile launchers.)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Zendikarofthewest wrote:As for DN(P)s, I think they would be a decent low-budget option - especially since they wouldnt have the durability issues that BC(P)s have, but would still have salvo strength comparable to SD(P)s. Its similar to how normal DNs were made, to be honest - a smaller nation can afford more of them to guard spread-out territory.

One concern with DN(P)s is that, unlike legacy DNs, pod-layers have a critical dimension constraint -- the inner diameter of the aft impeller ring/rooms.

If you get much smaller than an SD(P) I worry you might not have room for 6 pod rails to pass through it; and if you had to drop to just 5 that'd be just over a 16% drop in firepower. Whereas, classically, DNs appears to have about 90% the firepower of a contemporary SD, not 84%.

(Now you could make a 'fat' DN(P) to keep the ring diameter up; but it'd cost you acceleration -- likely leaving you barely quicker than a full-sized SD(P). (For example Tom Pope, head of BuNine, confirmed that the 'fatness' of the CLACs is why their acceleration is a bit below what you'd expect from their tonnage. They have a non-optimal hull form to squeeze in that many LAC bays)

But mostly what a smaller pod-layer would cost you is hull area to mount missile defense. (Cube-square law means you lose surface area quicker than volume, so your defenses go down faster than the number of pods you can carry). That's going to make a DN(P) even more fragile than the tonnage ratio between DN(P) and SD(P) would imply. If it's 15% lighter it's probably at least 20% less survivable.

True, but I think it would be worth it for smaller nations. A Bellerophon masses in at ~1293m (3,000m pre GR), and a Medusa is about 1,383m (4,500m pre GR*). ~100m in length isnt a particularly big difference, and a Agememmnon can handle four pods at only 815m. The only issue I could see with DN(P)s is less magazine capacity, to be honest.

Edit: Yes, I am aware of the diameter issues, but that could be easily solved via making broadside launchers DDM-only, or removing them entirely.

*Insert rant about how pre-GR numbers make so much more sense, ignoring the tiny size difference between DNs and BBs, tbh DNs should be in the 3000-3750 range but whatever.*

*Feel free to correct me on this, I am going off the loose calcs on the Nefarious list. They ain't perfect, but they have basically everything in one table lmao

Zendikarofthewest wrote:
*Feel free to correct me on this, I am going off the loose calcs on the Nefarious list. They ain't perfect, but they have basically everything in one table lmao

The nefarious list is based off imagination and bull$hit. 99% of what is in it has no or merely a passing reference to the books. It's only use is for amusement and trash can liners.

"Jackalope class CLAC"?....right.....

There is no accurate comprehensive Pre-GR list that I know of. And honestly, not a lot of details were given. Masses were retained post-GR, because that measurement was used more than any other measurement by at least a 2:1 ratio. I might be wrong, but if i remember correctly, lengths were mentioned only 7 times or so in as many books pre-GR, so those details were never really shared with us - or whoever made the notorious list.

For Post-GR data, RPG Drive Though has the Jayne's RMN and PRN Intelligence Reference books, and House of Steel, they are semi-canonical, and carry a laundry list of caveats, but they are the most detailed post GR references.

As for the Drunk Wiki... it's a great way to get burned in an argument. It's very accurate, unless you are comparing it to what is written in the books. What is there is heavily edited, and abridged. Some is blatantly wrong, much has been edited out, and doesn't contain pertinent details. I always use it as a starting point in research (because there is a lot that is correct), not the definitive or comprehensive answer.

For use online I've built a spreadsheet off the post-GR data found in the Jayne's, HoS and the books.

Zendikarofthewest wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think the value refitting the Gryphons had was 99% political.

The High Ridge and he Janacek Admiralty were trying to justify redirecting the emergency wartime taxes into their domestic (vote buying) programs.

But if they admitted that the existing pre-pod wall was hopelessly obsolete they'd have a very hard time resisting the demand from the Crown Loyalists and Centrists to resume construction on the new SD(P)s to replace it. A low rate (even if very individually expensive) trial program of MDM upgrades to legacy wallers lets them avoid that. They can claim to believe that it'll be cheaper to refit the old wall and avoid "throwing away" relatively new SDs -- and further claim that significant naval spending should be delayed until the first few trial conversions are completed and the kinks worked out.

They don't care that it's not cost effective, nor that it results in an inferior ship -- because by being able to limit it to just a few ships (for now) they can divert the rest of that money elsewhere. They're playing a short-term game where they don't care that converting all the old SDs would cost more than finishing the SD(P)s; because they're not converting them all -- only enough to buy political cover.

I'm quite confident that if the Cromarty Government had survived the assassinations they wouldn't have wasted money on converting any pre-pod SDs; even a basic paper study would show the cost/benefit/time ratios are all out of whack and you're better off building a proper new ship designed for both offense and defense if a pod-heavy combat environment.

Eh, I wouldn't agree. We saw them absolutely axing their conventional fleet - iirc Grayson actually stepped in to nab some of the ships they decommissioned. Was it probably less efficient and worse then building new ships? Yeah, very likely, but it was cheaper. If it wasn't, then I am confident they would never have gotten it through. Say if it was... half the cost of a new Medusa-class, that would still be reasonable. A Medusa is so much more capable then two refitted SDs, but the refitted SDs are cheaper, due to having the hulls on-hand. (Plus the defensive systems and basically everything but the missile launchers.)

Sure if it was cheap and quick to convert them then it might make sense as an interim measure until you could build proper MDM warships. But since needing about a 50% larger launcher and feed system involves cutting through many armored bulkheads and the ship's main armor belt and its internal core armor, plus moving systems that the larger feed tubes wouldn't fit past it's a long slow (and thus expensive) process to give you a ship with no more than 50% the combat potential of a first-gen SD(P).

They've far fewer broadside tubes than the missiles from a 6-pod salvo; they've got about half as many CMs and less than 60% the PDLCs -- so far less survivable against pods than the SD(P).

You probably spend more than 50% the time and cost of building a proper SD(P) in refitting the legacy SD which has no more than 50% the combat effectiveness. You would end up with more MDM capable hulls, but less combat power, for the investment.

(And if you'd done it when the Medusas first rolled out you'd have converted the SDs for Mk41 capacitor powered MDMs and it'd be another massive job to refit them again to carry Mk23 micro-fusion powered MDMs; so you likely wouldn't. But if carrying only Mk41s their missiles would be less capable than what the SD(P)s would soon be firing, due to a lower power budget for ECM/jamming. And when Apollo came along they be equally unable to fire that. So in addition to being more combat effective the SD(P) is more flexibly because it can fire anything that fits into the standard dimensions of a pod)

Theemile wrote:As for the Drunk Wiki... it's a great way to get burned in an argument. It's very accurate, unless you are comparing it to what is written in the books. What is there is heavily edited, and concise. Some is blatantly wrong, much has been edited out, and doesn't contain pertinent details. I always use it as a starting point in research (because there is a lot that is correct), not the definitive or comprehensive answer.

I remember the fun rabbit hole I went down with it where it turned out someone had basically created fan-fic group of characters and ships and edited them into a bunch of battles where the books hadn't included much information.

A whole interlocking series of pages with virtually no basis in the book. (They'd take some battle where the books said there were X BCs, or SDs; and maybe naming one of them. They'd make up names for the others, their senior crew, add them to the battle's page and then create pages for the fan-fic ships and crew. Don't know if they made them up out of whole cloth or if they were trying to tuckerize folks from one of the fan club RMN chapters -- either way that was a weird thing to find in the wiki)

Theemile wrote:The nefarious list is based off imagination and bull$hit. 99% of what is in it has no or merely a passing reference to the books. It's only use is for amusement and trash can liners.

"Jackalope class CLAC"?....right.....

True, unfortunately. I'll prolly keep it in my back pocket for use as an internally consistent thing, but you are right.

As for the Drunk Wiki... it's a great way to get burned in an argument. It's very accurate, unless you are comparing it to what is written in the books. What is there is heavily edited, and abridged. Some is blatantly wrong, much has been edited out, and doesn't contain pertinent details. I always use it as a starting point in research (because there is a lot that is correct), not the definitive or comprehensive answer.

For use online I've built a spreadsheet off the post-GR data found in the Jayne's, HoS and the books.

Drunk wiki? I know of two honorverse wikis, one of which is shit, and one of which is... slightly less shit.

If possible I would like to see that spreadsheet of yours, might see if I can make my own for pre-GR. (Probably by figuring an equation to nail down displacement -> Length conversion that GR did, and then reversing it.)