New ships designs

Draken wrote:Yep, but in 1960 typical carrier weight around 50kT and in 1970 it was 100kT so heavier CLACs will be only matter of time. And bigger carrier could have heavier armor, more point defense, less crew, more LACs and it could have bigger Marines detachment. And typical carrier should have similar tasks as current Marines transport ship for example USS America, big marines detachment, a lot of landing crafts, some air support, big flag deck, a lot of communication links. Also in Honorverse it should carry a lot of satellites and kinetic strike ability. Also Marines really need any transport/assault ships, because if they need to transport they must buy freighters for that and dedicated ship for them would be cheaper in long term.

I'd hesitate to argue from wet navy progress to Honorverse space navy development without care to be sure the situations are analogous. The largest practical hulls in the Honorverse seem to be relatively fixed - very fixed previously, somewhat more flexible now with evolving compensator capabilities.

Wet navy carriers are often about projecting air power onto land. Honorverse CLAC's are not about projecting power into atmosphere or onto the ground - you use pinnaces, assault shuttles, KEW's, and the threat of KEW's for that. Restored marine complements on ships are a recognized need, for SAR and boarding work, but the units feeling that need are the small units, not the ones travelling with the wall or on raids.

The RMN does have dedicated marine transport platforms, on modified BC hulls. They may be updating those too, but they're probably still going to be running in the classic CA-BC tonnage range. It's remotely possible they'd tweak, say, a Minotaur CLAC design to replace the LAC bays with pinnace and assault shuttle ones on the same design and fill it with marines for a monster planetary assault platform, but it'd be a departure for them from established practice. And they're not building anything for awhile in any case.

Brigade XO wrote:The smaller CLAC provides a more flexable fleet unit.
Just changing a present 100 LAC design to become a Marine Assault Ship would cut the number of LACs it could carry and you would have significant changes to the interior design and what it carries for small craft such as Assault Shuttles. Essentialy a compeat new design.

Agreed. When you compare the width of the current DN sized CLACs (189 meters) to the length of a pair of LACs (71 m each = 142m) you realize that the LAC bays come surprisingly close to meeting in the middle of the hull. Once you allow for hatches, hull, bulkheads, you've got maybe 25m of "stuff" between them in the middle of the hull. Most stuff probably has to be crammed fore or aft of them in the tapered sections of the hull.

About assault ships I was thinking about something only in size similar to current Manticoran designs. About bigger CLACs I was thinking about them as Nimitz class carrier, they're big and very easy to destroy, but you need to hit it. So on bigger CLACs we could put more PDs and CMs and also get bigger amount of LACs. Current naval doctrine says that carrier deploy aircraft outside of danger zone. So that CLAC could travel we fleet, but after deploying LACs will escape to hyper and after the battle is finished it would hop into rendezvous point where it would take remaining LACs on board.
Somewhere in this discussion I posted my requirements for Marine ship, when I will find I will post it here.

David is on record about the coming divergence in CLAC designs, with a "bulk hauler" type CLAC being one of them. It's in one of the inforumps posted at the beginning.

And of course there is Torch, who are using old freighters to carry..Frigates....in raids on slave stations...

I'll get my hat...

About that Marines ship, I was thinking about something which mass around 4-5 MT and is capable of 450 gees acceleration, so it can travel with wallers. Minimum amount of rockets, the best one would be Mk 16 but with big magazines. Good amount of heavy grasers, a lot of point defence. A lot of boat bays, capacity to carry something like 3000-4500 Marines and support it for longer period of time. CIC similar to SD one and similar grade flag deck, so it could be used as HQ by Marines flag officer. Good amount of kinetic strike weapon, if possible Keyhole One or Two but with fusion plants, communication satellites, weather ones too. And as escort squadron of that type of ships should have up to three BC squadrons, also to convince governor of that planet to surrender to Admiral.

Draken wrote:About that Marines ship, I was thinking about something which mass around 4-5 MT and is capable of 450 gees acceleration, so it can travel with wallers. Minimum amount of rockets, the best one would be Mk 16 but with big magazines. Good amount of heavy grasers, a lot of point defence. A lot of boat bays, capacity to carry something like 3000-4500 Marines and support it for longer period of time. CIC similar to SD one and similar grade flag deck, so it could be used as HQ by Marines flag officer. Good amount of kinetic strike weapon, if possible Keyhole One or Two but with fusion plants, communication satellites, weather ones too. And as escort squadron of that type of ships should have up to three BC squadrons, also to convince governor of that planet to surrender to Admiral.

As has already been stated, Manticore already has good designs for marine transports and support craft.

SWM wrote:

Draken wrote:About that Marines ship, I was thinking about something which mass around 4-5 MT and is capable of 450 gees acceleration, so it can travel with wallers. Minimum amount of rockets, the best one would be Mk 16 but with big magazines. Good amount of heavy grasers, a lot of point defence. A lot of boat bays, capacity to carry something like 3000-4500 Marines and support it for longer period of time. CIC similar to SD one and similar grade flag deck, so it could be used as HQ by Marines flag officer. Good amount of kinetic strike weapon, if possible Keyhole One or Two but with fusion plants, communication satellites, weather ones too. And as escort squadron of that type of ships should have up to three BC squadrons, also to convince governor of that planet to surrender to Admiral.

As has already been stated, Manticore already has good designs for marine transports and support craft.

The Current "Roark's Drift" Class of Manticorian Marine transport is about that size (4.5 Mtons). The "Roughneck" Marine Carrier, the Havenite design Honor captured at Cereberus is alos that size - it carried 20K marines and 84 - 600 ton assault shuttles. (it is discussed in The Havenite Jayne's book)

4.5 Mtons is also the size of the JMNT freighters and the "Volcano" class ammo carriers. It makes we wonder if as many of the fleet train type ships as possible are built on a common frame and share parts like the compensator and nodes - it would allow a class of limited size maintenance and crew training advantages.

Theemile wrote:The Current "Roark's Drift" Class of Manticorian Marine transport is about that size (4.5 Mtons). The "Roughneck" Marine Carrier, the Havenite design Honor captured at Cereberus is alos that size - it carried 20K marines and 84 - 600 ton assault shuttles. (it is discussed in The Havenite Jayne's book)

4.5 Mtons is also the size of the JMNT freighters and the "Volcano" class ammo carriers. It makes we wonder if as many of the fleet train type ships as possible are built on a common frame and share parts like the compensator and nodes - it would allow a class of limited size maintenance and crew training advantages.

I doubt that the freighters and ammo carriers are built on the same frame as the marine transports. As I recall, the marine transports do have warship frames and defensive systems. The freighters and ammo carriers are probably civilian-style frames with no hammerheads--albeit with military-grade equipment.

SWM wrote:

Theemile wrote:The Current "Roark's Drift" Class of Manticorian Marine transport is about that size (4.5 Mtons). The "Roughneck" Marine Carrier, the Havenite design Honor captured at Cereberus is alos that size - it carried 20K marines and 84 - 600 ton assault shuttles. (it is discussed in The Havenite Jayne's book)

4.5 Mtons is also the size of the JMNT freighters and the "Volcano" class ammo carriers. It makes we wonder if as many of the fleet train type ships as possible are built on a common frame and share parts like the compensator and nodes - it would allow a class of limited size maintenance and crew training advantages.

I doubt that the freighters and ammo carriers are built on the same frame as the marine transports. As I recall, the marine transports do have warship frames and defensive systems. The freighters and ammo carriers are probably civilian-style frames with no hammerheads--albeit with military-grade equipment.

Could anybody tell me where are informations about Marines support ships?