What about DN(P)s for the GA?

I don't see DN(P)s ever being built. This is because alot of the previous books harped alot about ammo endurance of podnaught designs, which in turn has led to size creep among SD(P)s with more and more of their internal volume to just ammo.

And someone wants to build DN(P)s which will inevitably have LESS ammo endurance than the first gen SD(P)s? Shyeah, right!

evilauthor wrote:I don't see DN(P)s ever being built. This is because alot of the previous books harped alot about ammo endurance of podnaught designs, which in turn has led to size creep among SD(P)s with more and more of their internal volume to just ammo.

And someone wants to build DN(P)s which will inevitably have LESS ammo endurance than the first gen SD(P)s? Shyeah, right!

They talk about this a lot, but name an on-screen battle where ammo endurance was an issue.

kzt wrote:They talk about this a lot, but name an on-screen battle where ammo endurance was an issue.

The battle where Michelle Henke was captured -- Solon(?)

The Agamemnons were not used for offensive fire until late in the battle because of ammunition capacity -- and the fact they were armed with Mk16s to increase the number of pods they could carry.

Hi Clancy688,

Kudos for the quote.

Given the first RMN/GSN SDP's had only ~504 pods, and the second design 1074 pods, before the asymmetrical pods added 4+%, making it around 1122, while the RHN's only carry 400 pods, though the last may carry 500.

The 'Medusa B' design was supposed to carry 2000+ pods, but those being built were destroyed by OB, but the next will use that as a baseline plus the streak drive if they make enough progress in 3-4 years to include them in the first 'laid down' at the new shipyards.

If DN's average mass is only about 80% of the SD's, and in terms of weapons and capabilities, they aren't worth it for the RMN in terms of being replaced in 4 month's by far better ships.

The GA currently has around 300 Apollo SDP's and ~205 older SDP's, while the RHN has 420 SDP's plus 400 more about to complete at Haven and 3-4 nearby colony systems this fall through the winter for over 1300, without adding the older SD's that can tractor hundreds of pods to their hulls.

Given the GA SDP's can already destroy every SD BF has 3 times over before reloading, the need for DNP's isn't that critical.

Despite a current total of near 4000 warships before the RHN's current construction is detailed, NTM Beowulf and Maya are added; lesser ships mainly cruisers are needed, such as Mk-16 armed light cruisers, which we have yet to see in the books, that can also carry a marine company [possibly in the 275-325 KT range].

Given fresh Rolands may be only another 18 month's or so away, the situation is difficult but not desperate.

L

clancy688 wrote:There was something about this in the pearls:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/290/1

An 8,500,000-ton SD(P) takes 23 months to build and work up, using a Manticoran-style "hard" shipyard.

An "old-style" 6,000,000-ton DN would take 20.1 months using the same yard.

A 1,750,000-ton BC(P) takes 16.95 months using the same yard.

A 2,000,000-ton BC(L) takes 20.1 months using the same yard.

So, allowing for the same sort of construction rates, I'd guesstimate an off-the-cuff "fly away" time requirement for a 4,000,000-ton BB(P) to come in somewhere around 19 months (you'd save a little time over a standard BB or a Nike-class BC(L) because of the hollow missile core), at which point you recognize a time-saving over an all-up SD(P) of perhaps four months. If you're turning them out in a production-line fashion, with new construction slotting into the queue as soon as building space becomes available, a four-month savings isn't really very significant on the scale at which these people are operating.

Bottom line: If an SD(P) only needs ~20% longer to complete than a BB(P), an DN(P) would only be marginally quicker to build than a true SD(P). Probably a few weeks.

So no, they can't build DN(P)'s faster than SD(P)'s, at least not that much faster that it would matter. And that's even without covering the little problems of having no DN(P) designs at the ready AND having no experience with DN(P)'s at all.

kzt wrote:

evilauthor wrote:I don't see DN(P)s ever being built. This is because alot of the previous books harped alot about ammo endurance of podnaught designs, which in turn has led to size creep among SD(P)s with more and more of their internal volume to just ammo.

And someone wants to build DN(P)s which will inevitably have LESS ammo endurance than the first gen SD(P)s? Shyeah, right!

They talk about this a lot, but name an on-screen battle where ammo endurance was an issue.

The (second?) Battle of Marsh. IIRC, Honor had to throttle back her rate of fire or throw weight or both because she was running out of ammo faster than she was killing Haven ships.

Second Battle of Marsh, and Battle of Solon were the first 2 true fleet engagements between modern SD(P)'s; where both sides looked at realized ammo was a big issue.

Honor shot her SD(P)'s dry in Marsh, and Tourville shot 2/3's of his dry just driving Honor into the Moriarty storm.


As for why they aren't building DN(P)'s, it's been established by previous posters already that it wouldn't save much time. I'm hunting for the textev, I think it's in AAC in a discussion involving William Alexander and er, Caparelli I think it was (still searching for the exact quote)

Boils down to, yes DN(P)'s would be faster on the lines of 2-3 months per hull, SD(P)'s take approximately 21 months to build each, but the following issues make it bad:

1) you'd have to design a new hull from scratch, which would take anywhere upto a few months
2 Even after starting to build the first DN(P)'s; the expected teething issues and need to iron out any kinks means it'd take 24-27 T-months to get the first DN(P)'s leaving spacedock's and working up.

So by the time your first DN(P) left spacedock, it's a minimum of 3-6 T-months after SD(P)'s would have left, which means you'd have built approximately 2 full slips worth of SD(P)'s before your first slip worth of DN(P)'s are completed. After that point, sure DN(P) are faster to build, but looking at that sort of math and based on Grendelsbane having had something like 40+ Medusa's in progress during Op.Thunerbolt. Even Hephaestus or Blackbird Yards would have built upwards of 80-100 SD(P) to get your first 40-50 DN's.


At the time of the GA forming, force breakdown is something like:
Haven: 300-400 SD(P) built, and ~800+ building
Manticore: maybe 200 SD(P) total, plus their late-flight pre-pod SD's
Grayson: 80-100 SD(P)'s actually built, perhaps a few dozen more in progress.
Andermani had about 100-200 I think, most of which were just finishing refits with Keyhole 2

With the force tech balance known to heavily favor the GA, being what something like almost 100 SLN ships to possibly take out 1 GA ship, and thats based on the Mk 16 internal missiles and no Apollo. Definitely no need to waste time building DN's, of any nature, when just the existing GA fleet could mop the floor with any SLN fleet that could arrive in a reasonable time.

(and heh, didn't expect to write a wall of text now that I finally fixed my pc and stopped using my phone)

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/290/1

Sixth, about those crews… The manpower requirements of a battleship and a superdreadnought built to current Manticoran standards are going to be very close to the same. That means that if you choose to build 48 million tons of capital ships, six 8 million-ton superdreadnoughts are going to require half the trained manpower of twelve 4 million-ton battleships. It also means that when you lose 48 million tons worth of superdreadnoughts, you lose 50% as many people as when you lose 48 million tons worth of battleships. Trained people, you'll have to replace right along with their (expendable) ships. Not to mention people who are someone's husbands, wives, sons, or daughters.

You forgot to cover the crews. Based on the above, a SD and DN are going to have roughly the same number of crew. So why go for a weaker ship that has the same crew cost? And don't poo=poo crew costs as salary, benefits, training and the like are going to be a big part of a budget. The ship gets built once, but you pay the crew everyday.

Hi SomTaaw,

Welcome to the forums, enjoy your favorite cg beverage on the cg forum.

A few nits:

It was Giscard not Tourville at Solon that ran out of ammunition, it was the palace conference in AAC [~June 1920]where Hamish explained to his brother why DNP's were too little too late, given the design time etc.

For the Fleet breakdown, you may want to check the Fleet Strength Chart of 1920 at the pearls at fifth imperium, meanwhile permit me please a few corrections:

The RHN at Bolthole has built ~800 SDP's with 420 in service plus ~400 about to complete this fall and winter at Haven and 3 near major colony-industrialized systems

The Manticore Alliance had ~237 SDP's after BoMA, 32+ Apollo, ~205 early SDP's too old to convert; but completed last winter some 300 Apollo's.

The GSN was completing 2 SDP's every month before the war and roughly the first 18-20 month's during, and some suggest they were able to bump that up to 3 a month in 1921 before their several dozen war production SDP's were completed at the same time as the RMN's, and both had all their shipyards where they were building Medusa B's destroyed by the MAlign in OB.

The IAN had 42 SDP's in service by June 1920, after they joined the alliance, with another 88 under construction, but we don't know their rate of completion though 18 converted to Keyhole 2 [Apollo] had joined HH-A and Eighth Fleet with ~24 more expected soon.

We don't know how many more they completed as part of the alliance construction plan, but Hamish said it was something close to 300 more Apollo's by the middle of February 1922, all of which OB missed.

So the GA and the IAN has some 920+ SDP's plus ~400 more about to finish for the RHN, so again who needs smaller DNP's?

Overall a very good post, I look forward to seeing a lot more.

L

Somtaaw wrote:Second Battle of Marsh, and Battle of Solon were the first 2 true fleet engagements between modern SD(P)'s; where both sides looked at realized ammo was a big issue.

Honor shot her SD(P)'s dry in Marsh, and Tourville shot 2/3's of his dry just driving Honor into the Moriarty storm.


As for why they aren't building DN(P)'s, it's been established by previous posters already that it wouldn't save much time. I'm hunting for the textev, I think it's in AAC in a discussion involving William Alexander and er, Caparelli I think it was (still searching for the exact quote)

Boils down to, yes DN(P)'s would be faster on the lines of 2-3 months per hull, SD(P)'s take approximately 21 months to build each, but the following issues make it bad:

1) you'd have to design a new hull from scratch, which would take anywhere upto a few months
2 Even after starting to build the first DN(P)'s; the expected teething issues and need to iron out any kinks means it'd take 24-27 T-months to get the first DN(P)'s leaving spacedock's and working up.

So by the time your first DN(P) left spacedock, it's a minimum of 3-6 T-months after SD(P)'s would have left, which means you'd have built approximately 2 full slips worth of SD(P)'s before your first slip worth of DN(P)'s are completed. After that point, sure DN(P) are faster to build, but looking at that sort of math and based on Grendelsbane having had something like 40+ Medusa's in progress during Op.Thunerbolt. Even Hephaestus or Blackbird Yards would have built upwards of 80-100 SD(P) to get your first 40-50 DN's.


At the time of the GA forming, force breakdown is something like:
Haven: 300-400 SD(P) built, and ~800+ building
Manticore: maybe 200 SD(P) total, plus their late-flight pre-pod SD's
Grayson: 80-100 SD(P)'s actually built, perhaps a few dozen more in progress.
Andermani had about 100-200 I think, most of which were just finishing refits with Keyhole 2

With the force tech balance known to heavily favor the GA, being what something like almost 100 SLN ships to possibly take out 1 GA ship, and thats based on the Mk 16 internal missiles and no Apollo. Definitely no need to waste time building DN's, of any nature, when just the existing GA fleet could mop the floor with any SLN fleet that could arrive in a reasonable time.

(and heh, didn't expect to write a wall of text now that I finally fixed my pc and stopped using my phone)

lyonheart wrote:Hi SomTaaw,

Welcome to the forums, enjoy your favorite cg beverage on the cg forum.

A few nits:

It was Giscard not Tourville at Solon that ran out of ammunition, it was the palace conference in AAC [~June 1920]where Hamish explained to his brother why DNP's were too little too late, given the design time etc.
[...]
Overall a very good post, I look forward to seeing a lot more.

L

Not so good a post, imho, else he had to see, that I mentioned the palace conference in AAC in my opening post.

In fact, that conference was the real reason I opened these special can of worms at all. Because, after Oyster Bay, and after the start of construction of the new yards, there would be time (imho, at least) to consider if it would make sense to design a DN(P). After all (at least as far as we know) all navies with podlayer-capability (aside of the MAN; I think it is a given that the Detweiler-Class is a podlayer, too) are either part of the GA or at least neutral towards the GA.

So a DN(P) could be useful to guard sectors there the political or military situation on the one hand demands for some Wallers, but on the other hand is probably not (yet) so dangerous that you need the really big hammer. Similar to the policy, Haven used its old BBs for. Only question is - how likely is it that such a situation would or could arise?

Hi EagleEye,

For an early post, I think it was well above average.

By the time the SEM starts building SDP's again, I suspect they will incorporate the Streak Drive and be based on the 'Medusa B' design that RFC posted ten years ago with over 2000 pods.

I suspect that capability dwarfs any attempt to get a few DNP's a few month's early.

RFC brought it up himself, so it could be a red herring [not the first] or possibly be the basis for a few streak drive prototypes, though the apparent engine volume required would probably reduce the number of internal missile pods to something closer to the original SDP's pod load than the 'Medusa B', considerably reducing its limited utility ever further, something the RMN sets a great store by.

So while the military situation may be dire 4-5 years from now, the RMN won't know that when it lays its new SDP's down around 2-3 years from now.

L

Eagleeye wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi SomTaaw,

Welcome to the forums, enjoy your favorite cg beverage on the cg forum.

A few nits:

It was Giscard not Tourville at Solon that ran out of ammunition, it was the palace conference in AAC [~June 1920]where Hamish explained to his brother why DNP's were too little too late, given the design time etc.
[...]
Overall a very good post, I look forward to seeing a lot more.

L

Not so good a post, imho, else he had to see, that I mentioned the palace conference in AAC in my opening post.

In fact, that conference was the real reason I opened these special can of worms at all. Because, after Oyster Bay, and after the start of construction of the new yards, there would be time (imho, at least) to consider if it would make sense to design a DN(P). After all (at least as far as we know) all navies with podlayer-capability (aside of the MAN; I think it is a given that the Detweiler-Class is a podlayer, too) are either part of the GA or at least neutral towards the GA.

So a DN(P) could be useful to guard sectors there the political or military situation on the one hand demands for some Wallers, but on the other hand is probably not (yet) so dangerous that you need the really big hammer. Similar to the policy, Haven used its old BBs for. Only question is - how likely is it that such a situation would or could arise?