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SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!

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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Sat Jan 01, 2022 12:39 am

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cthia wrote:At any rate, I always thought missiles could have a live-fire setting. Just enough to shake up the ship and cause minor damage.


We saw--they have exercise missiles. Drive but no warhead. I would presume they're like exercise torpedoes--no actual attack but you can evaluate whether they would hit. Unlike exercise torpedoes they can't be recovered, though.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:52 pm

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Loren Pechtel wrote:
Their basic failure was realizing that triggering a very long war between Manticore and Haven would drive military advancements. They expected weapons to get better but not that they would get so powerful to be able to swat the SLN aside easily.

And when they saw the MDM they didn't change their plans. They should have reacted by ceasing all operations and redoing their plans pretty much from scratch.


And that's a major issue - every "long" war between peer foes in the industrial era onward has fostered major technological change. And not necessarily what was fielded during the war, but the ideas that it fostered and came to fruition after it ended, and the old concepts that were thoroughly put to bed in it's wake.

Historically we can point to many concepts and say that "they were coming anyway", Like the Shell gun, steam propulsion, iron clads, breech loading rifles, but by the end of the ACW, all were proven and not having them (or more importantly, fielding the older tech in the face of them) put you at a severe disadvantage. Yes, the HMS Captain really spelled the end of the classic Ship-of the Line in 1858, but by the end of the ACW 7 years later, everyone knew such ships were relics.

In WWI, France, considered one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, went from having just ~100 trucks in it's army to over 10,000 by the end of the war. At the outset, Strategic mobility was the subject of trains or ships, Tactical was that of the foot or horses. Post WWI, trucks replaced horses, and even horse Cavalry disappeared in almost every European army, as light tanks replaced them in the OOB.

Any amature Historian can go on for hours listing techs that matured during or just after a long peer war - so why wouldn't it be expected in a future one?
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:59 pm

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Theemile wrote: Yes, the HMS Captain really spelled the end of the classic Ship-of the Line in 1858, but by the end of the ACW 7 years later, everyone knew such ships were relics.
Did you mean HMS Warrior (1860)? Because HMS Captain (1869) postdates the ACW though she was one of the earliest turret ships intended to be properly ocean going -- unfortunately her stability and freeboard were rather lacking and she sank in a storm less than 6 months after being commissioned. (Some of the USN Monitors did manage to make it across the Atlantic, but usually partly under tow and weren't really designed to be fully ocean going warships)

HMS Warrior on the other hand was the first major ironclad - a steam powered (but also sail carrying) armored frigate capable to defeating any wooden ship of the line in the world when she launched.


Also note that some of the armored self-propelled gun batteries of the Crimean War of a decade before the ACW were comparable to many of that later war's ironclads. They just didn't get much chance to go up against wooden warships and primary had to face off against shore fortifications so you didn't get the first fight between iron clads until the ACW, nor a direct showdown between (unarmored) steam frigates and iron clads until CSS Virginia (nee USS Merrimack) came out to try to drive off the Union blockage of Hampton Roads. So the ACW gave the first major ship to ship combat use of armored ships - but they were neither the first nor the most technologically advanced such ships.


And then shortly after the end of the ACW the Battle of Lissa (1866) showed that maybe ships of the wall weren't quite as obsolete as expected against ironclads; at least not yet. The Austrian unarmored ship of the line SMS Kaiser at various times in the battle faced off against 4 of the 12 Italian armored ships (included one armored turret ship). Now the Austrians did have 7 armored ships of their own, and Kaiser did have a steam engine and screw propulsion to augment the sails; which help in maneuverability but still she survived the battle as part of the victorious Austrian force despite ramming attacks and gunfire from armored Italian ships, on and off, throughout the battle. And she wasn't alone, the other unarmored Austrian warships also held up surprisingly well in close combat with Italian ironclads and inflicted damage despite the latter's armor.


Still, enough nitpicking the naval ironclad side. Armored ships were the way of the future for at least most of the next century; and conflicts (and arms races driven by fear of conflict) did drive forward its development.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by kzt   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 5:18 pm

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Part of it is that David created a world where technological change was very slow and large wars just didn't happen. And change was actively resisted by the SLN.

Most of the changes that happened were obvious and only didn't happen earlier for plot related reasons. The FTL control is the key development that marries together several incremental changes.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by tlb   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 6:42 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:And then shortly after the end of the ACW the Battle of Lissa (1866) showed that maybe ships of the wall weren't quite as obsolete as expected against ironclads; at least not yet. The Austrian unarmored ship of the line SMS Kaiser at various times in the battle faced off against 4 of the 12 Italian armored ships (included one armored turret ship). Now the Austrians did have 7 armored ships of their own, and Kaiser did have a steam engine and screw propulsion to augment the sails; which help in maneuverability but still she survived the battle as part of the victorious Austrian force despite ramming attacks and gunfire from armored Italian ships, on and off, throughout the battle. And she wasn't alone, the other unarmored Austrian warships also held up surprisingly well in close combat with Italian ironclads and inflicted damage despite the latter's armor.

This is a better example of incompetence, than of unarmored versus armored ships; because at times during the battle the Italian guns were being loaded with powder, but not shot.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by tlb   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 7:04 pm

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kzt wrote:Part of it is that David created a world where technological change was very slow and large wars just didn't happen. And change was actively resisted by the SLN.

Most of the changes that happened were obvious and only didn't happen earlier for plot related reasons. The FTL control is the key development that marries together several incremental changes.

Very true during the long peaceful stretches (when only brief skirmishes occurred), because as Theemile said it is in the extended battles between industrial peers that technology advances the fastest.

The SLN became like the British Admiralty that saw no reason to worry about planes or submarines. Even the steam turbine caused them shock and embarrassment. Some of this was just bureaucratic inertia within the Solarian League Navy and some was due active subversion by the Malign.

PS. However the German Army in WW2 still had a heavy dependence on horses and tried to overcome that by requisitioning all too many types of trucks. This resulted in still too many horses and a maintenance parts nightmare compared to the standardized vehicles of the Allies.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 7:37 pm

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tlb wrote:The SLN became like the British Admiralty that saw no reason to worry about planes or submarines. Even the steam turbine caused them shock and embarrassment. Some of this was just bureaucratic inertia within the Solarian League Navy and some was due active subversion by the Malign.

Though that's generally unfair to the British Admiralty. From the start of the age of steam up until the Dreadnaught building race with Germany they held the advantage that the British warship building industry dwarfed any other countries (both in capacity and, less dramatically, in build times).

That advantage in shipbuilding meant they could afford to take a wait and see approach - trying out new technologies ashore, seeing how they worked in warships ordered from British private yards for foreign navies, or in one off experimental ships. Then if another country started a major building program they'd be in good position to exploit their superior shipbuilding capacity to lay down ships to counter the enemy, likely get them in service first, and build more of them to boot.

For example they'd been playing around with ideas for armored steam frigates for a while before the French laid down Gloire - the Admiralty quickly adopted plans for a larger, faster, and more powerful ironclad, HMS Warrior, and got her and her sister ship HMS Black Prince into service not long after Gloire.

And the RN was an early adopter of aircraft (they had a seaplane carrier that was supposed to be at Jutland but was left behind due to a signaling snafu. And they'd launched several seaplane carrier raids during WWI, and in WWII their attack on Taranto showed what a carrier strike could do against battleships in harbor over a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
They were somewhat hampered in their push for aircraft power during the interwar period by having the Naval Air Service taken away and merged into the Royal Air Force after WWI. It took then a while to get control of their own aircraft (and designs) back -- but even then the naval aircraft they had when the war started in 1939 were competitive and sometimes superior to those in USN and IJN service -- but actually fighting a war slowed the development and deployment of new generations of aircraft so with over 2 years more peacetime than the RN enjoyed their aircraft at the end of 1941 generally were now a generation, if not two, behind those entering USN and IJN service and so compared unfavorable with them.
In terms of AA defenses due to the threat of aircraft the RN similarly took the lead, being a very early leader in equipping ships with any AA guns at all - and in the early interwar period developed platforms to allow battleships to launch defending fighters to break up any aircraft attacks on the fleet. And of course they got into non-seaplane carriers before anyone else, also in part to provide fighter cover to the fleet (a good CAP being the best initial AA defense).
But like all navies in the interwar period they failed to anticipate just how much land and naval aircraft would improve by late 1941, much less by mid-1945. And so while they'd been early in getting AA aboard they, like every navy, had insufficient amounts of it. And again having to go to war over 2 years before the perceived gold standard navy in AA guns (the USN) masks the fact than in 1939 the RN had better AA defenses for their ships than the USN did. But again, over 2 years of getting to watch how the war played out gave the USN time to learn some lessons by observation rather than firsthand pain and start redressing their deficiencies in AA.

Basically the idea that the RN Admiralty was technophobic and slow to recognize new threats and adapt to them is in no small part an overblown myth. Comparing them to the SLN is a major insult to the RN of the early to mid 20th century.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:07 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:That advantage in shipbuilding meant they could afford to take a wait and see approach - trying out new technologies ashore, seeing how they worked in warships ordered from British private yards for foreign navies, or in one off experimental ships. Then if another country started a major building program they'd be in good position to exploit their superior shipbuilding capacity to lay down ships to counter the enemy, likely get them in service first, and build more of them to boot.


And that could have been true of the SLN, but they needed to be paying attention to what yards other than theirs were building and even trying a few things out. They didn't have to have been very successful at trying things out, though, but they needed to have people whose mindset was to experiment on things. A success or two in the past would have shown them how to integrate those new technologies into their fleet in a timely basis, without sending every ship to the breakers and rebuilding everything anew. With their massive industry, it would have been doable before the technology proliferated to any potential enemy to the point of endangering the League.

But they didn't.

Though, as we all know, their incompetence wasn't entirely their fault.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by tlb   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:16 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Basically the idea that the RN Admiralty was technophobic and slow to recognize new threats and adapt to them is in no small part an overblown myth. Comparing them to the SLN is a major insult to the RN of the early to mid 20th century.

I accept your criticism, but point out that we do not know how the SLN would have done without the Malign sabotage and subversion of their efforts. The things you say about the British ship building industry, could also be said abount the industrial capacity of the Solarian League:
Jonathan_S wrote:they held the advantage that the British warship building industry dwarfed any other countries (both in capacity and, less dramatically, in build times).

That advantage in shipbuilding meant they could afford to take a wait and see approach - trying out new technologies ashore, seeing how they worked in warships ordered from British private yards for foreign navies, or in one off experimental ships. Then if another country started a major building program they'd be in good position to exploit their superior shipbuilding capacity to lay down ships to counter the enemy, likely get them in service first, and build more of them to boot.

Other than the active interference of the Malign, the main disadvantage that the Solarian League had (compared to the British Empire) was that the League had not fought a war against a major opponent in at least six centuries; while the British had only a century at most.

If it had not been for the Malign, this could have been a fair comparison. Of course, if it had not been for the Malign, the League and the Grand Alliance might not have come to blows. In particular, Byng and Crandall would not have left Sol.
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Re: SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!
Post by Daryl   » Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:36 pm

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The RN of the early to mid 20th century, did many things well, but stuffed up vital small things like flash prevention, and insufficient deck armour on battle cruisers. As was demonstrated at Jutland, and a generation later with the Hood.
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