Theemile wrote:Erls wrote:So, my maiden post...<snip>
Hi Erls, I'll be kind, As other have mentioned, this horse keeps getting trotted out, only to be taken back to the firing squad - Then brought back by seyonce, ouiji board , or black magic - again and again...and again.
I just wish we had some silver bullets.
To begin with, there are not 300 SLN SDs available for use - ~320 SLN SDs have been destroyed outright and 71 have severe battle damage between BoMA 2 and BoSpindle - see the snip below from ART:
She didn’t know, and she never would, for there had been no survivors from SLNS Philip Oppenheimer. And of the four hundred and twenty-seven superdreadnoughts Massimo Filareta had led into the Manticore Binary System, only sixty had managed to surrender undamaged. Two hundred and ninety-six—including Oppenheimer—had been destroyed (most of them outright, although some had merely been turned into hopelessly shattered and broken hulks), and another seventy-one might have been repairable, assuming anyone was interested in returning such obsolete, outmoded deathtraps to service.
Less than 110 ships, of the original ~500 SDs in Filaretta and Crandall's fleets are in an operational state - and nothing is known of their maintenance state.
As for their use, I have a litmus test, not everyone agrees with it (thank you, RELAX), but to me any use has to pass several logical tests before it's viable.
1) It has to do something a Manty ship cannot. - We know the RMN and GSN have ~230 surviving tube SDs between them that are superior to the Scientists, and the IAN and the RHN each have several hundred which are less capable than a Manty ship, but more so than a SLN ship. They are maintained, updated and use parts which are standard in their navies. Many of these are in mothballs, but many are also in 2nd tier use. Any navy would prefer to pull a known ship out of mothballs, than field an unknown, inferior ship which requires more resources to use. Simultaneously, the RMN just wrote off the last 2 classes of DNs in 1921 - so any project which needs pieces or parts of a Waller has those to pick through.
2) It cannot be combat related - as stated, there are plenty of GA capital ships left which can blow these ships away without breaking a sweat, in fact those DNs that the RMN just disposed of are far superior to the SLN SDs, yet the RMN is actively disposing of them and mothballing SDs because it feels it does not need them. Using a SLN SD over a RMN ship is like switching from a paid for newish Porsche Cayenne to a gifted 1990 Ford Torus.
3) It cannot use a shipyard or repair ship. - Let's face it, practically every shipyard, big or small, in GA friendly territory is extremely busy. Even the smallest, least capable shipyard in former Silensian space is building modular docking tubes or industrial modules for the new Manticorian space stations, or is busy repairing the ships turned away from those shipyards who are. Any shipyard will not be free until months or years after the 6 big stations are completed. Building a new one or upgrading an existing one (how? we already said all the construction assets were in use) will take time and probably won't be available until RMN new construction is also available.
4) If giving them away, it has to address proliferation concerns. These are the nukes of the 40th century. Do you want to give one to Kenya? or Mali? There are reasons Kenya (and especially Mali) doesn't have a nuclear arsenal now. If they were suddenly given one, could they secure it? keep it working? use it responsibly? Only use it for defense? - and best - is there a better, cost effective alternative? And in the Honorverse, with the GA, there are several.
Personally, I hate scarecrow ideas, but Bill's idea of using them to try to strike sense into any SLN commander's mind is as good as any suggestion, though I fear ~140 ships (The SLN intact survivors and the BSDF) is just too few to do so. The SLN assault will be a minimum of 100 strong (Tang had 100 SDs in her force at the Beowulf terminus, and In their shoes, I'd reinforce to at least 300 before I'd push the button) and that many scarecrows might just cause the SLN taskforce to do the stupid thing and go for a c-fractional EE violation.
