BB(P/C) for rear area security

drothgery wrote:You do realize the Haven sector powers have these things called CLACs which let them bring LACs along with their fleets, and even if a system doesn't have an existing station that's workable as a LAC base, they have designs for prefabbed ones they can ship in, right?

And the relevancy of that statement? Zero.
Because either you are saying they should pennypacket fleet units, which is outright stupid, peace or war, or you´re saying that you want the equivalent of a wetnavy "battleship only" fleet.

drothgery wrote:Nothing between a LAC and BC(L) should be anywhere close to a clash between wallers. This has been pretty well established at this point.

Did i say anything to contradict that?
Operational and strategic scouting can´t be done without hyper ability.
And if you suggest using the fleet itself for this, well...

drothgery wrote:You seem to forget that barring oddball hyperspace conditions, it's all but impossible to catch someone in hyper

Except that it happens repeatedly in the books.

And the more predictable merchant routes, the greater the chances to interdict.

drothgery wrote:And why would commercial traffic go to an uninhabited system? Hyperspace doesn't work that why. Meanwhile, if a fleet is using one as a staging area, they have CLACs.

I didn´t say anything about the merchants going there now did i. But it´s rather perfect place for pirates to put a nice little hidden base or two(and preferably a decoy or two as well), whenever there´s an incoming hyper, anything that can be noticed carefully runs away and disappears into hyper, preferably going to a backup base elsewhere.

If the base is just outside of the stars hyper limit, going to hyper can be done VERY quick.

Then you get a situation like the REAL world Tortuga and other pirate havens of the Caribbean, with military´s attacking whenever they can be found or become too much of a nuisance, but with too much gold going around for the bases to go down and STAY down and out.

And a resurgent Silesia will certainly draw enough merchant traffic to be worth some effort from pirates.


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SWM wrote:I already pointed out the infodump where David described 300kt as the probable size of the smallest RMN warships, but I will show it to you again, with emphasis added:

And as i already wrote earlier(at least twice), i was responding to claims earlier in THIS THREAD, about how the only thing big enough would be something Sag-C or BIGGER.

300kt is almost realistic and with the already happened sizecreep, means DDs does not disappear.

SWM wrote:So 300,000 is not my value, it is David's value.

You were AFAIK, the first in this thread to bring it up.

SWM wrote:All I said is that the question of superdreadnought survivability is irrelevant to the question of whether 300kt becomes the smallest RMN ship. Please tell me how that is BS?

DDs are suddenly made to face a test that is unrealistic for them, while SDs are not made to face the same test even though for them it could actually be considered relevant.

SWM wrote:Yes, seriously. I do believe that. I disagree that tractored pods should be counted in the hypothetical test, because you would only carry those pods when you knew exactly when and where you were about to enter battle.

And if the Sag-C and Nike had not been specifically designed with areas on the hull for Flatpack pods, you would have a point.
For other ships, tractored pods is an improvisation, a temporary addition beyond normal.
For those 2 ship classes, it´s what they were DESIGNED to carry.

SWM wrote:I didn't ignore it, I said the comparison does not apply, and apparently you agree. If you believe it does apply, you'll have to explain a bit clearer because I don't see it. If you knew the argument was flawed, then you should not have used it. If you were "returning the favor from earlier posters in the thread", then you shouldn't have aimed it at my post.

You effectively agreeing with them made it relevant to make it part of that reply.

The comparison does apply, in part.
For one thing, other posters keep throwing around the assumption that there will be CLACs available just about everywhere ALL THE TIME.
That strategic and operational recon will either not happen enough or will be done by capital ship formations.

It´s very simple really, if i was involved in a strategy game and someone played like this against me, and it wasn´t fake, i would go YAY! and then kill them off with a small part of my own forces as the sideshow they would be.

Someone that doesn´t understand why both light and heavy units exist in anything that resembles a navy, is pretty much just a victim waiting to be exploited and conquered.

And destroyed.

SWM wrote:As for not having enough ships, you are making a flawed comparison when you say "you have the worlds best 10kt DD capable of doing everthing you might need as well as being main combatants, when what you need is 5 DD with 1/10 the individual capabilities." In Manticore's opinion, 1/10 the individual capability is insufficient capability. Manticore does not see a situation where they would want a ship with 1/10 the capability. If they did, they would still have been building frigates early in the war.

False argument, as FFs are too small to be USEFUL, especially for those missions that are now left for DDs(and CLs) to perform.

In contrast, the current big DD, the Roland class is perfectly well capable, often even generally good at doing all missions it needs to be able to do. It would need a platoon or two of marines added to handle some parts, but aside from that it´s mostly already "good enough" to do the vast majority of the mostly boring missions that you need light units for.

Adding extra defenses? Sure that would be great! But 99% of the time it would make ZERO difference for how able it is to perform it´s missions.

A modernised Culverin or Wolfhound DD could handle most of those missions almost as well.
Even if they sacrificed a lot of their offensive armament to switch them to dual drive missiles.

SWM wrote:David agrees that the small ships need to concentrate on not getting hit rather than absorbing the damage. The increase in size is not to add better armor--it is to add better defenses to prevent those hits. And he thinks that 300kt is the minimum size which can provide sufficient active defenses in that future environment. In particular, he said:

It´s his world so of course his word has precedence. But i´m looking at this as the longtime analyst and strategy gamer i am, and based on available knowledge, yes he may be correct, but he is also at the same time changing the definition of warships.

Doing the same mistake that has been done since WWII in the real world navies, building bigger and bigger because they can be sooo much better like that, and then during some crisis, like the pirates outside SE Asia or East Africa, they suddenly find themselves with pisspoor ability to simply cover enough area(and in space, that part is exaggerated by several magnitudes).

I mean hello, my own nation even sent a freaking sub-1kt corvette to the area(with a "command/base ship" in support), and that was a NOTICEABLE addition to the forces outside E. Africa?

That´s a point when it becomes blatantly obvious something is screwed up really bad.

And it´s also a big part of the reason why USA is currently scrambling to build a new breed of SMALLER ships.

Tenshinai wrote:

drothgery wrote:You seem to forget that barring oddball hyperspace conditions, it's all but impossible to catch someone in hyper

Except that it happens repeatedly in the books.

And the more predictable merchant routes, the greater the chances to interdict.

To the best of my recollection it's happened a total of twice (SVW when Captain Zilwicki's convoy escort sacrificed themselves to save the merchants, and in HAE the fight in Selker Rift)

And at that David Weber posted that those two examples actually over represent the likelihood of a successful in-hyper intercept. (Basically there shouldn't even have been two in the entire Haven Quadrent during the entire war, but for dramatic plot reasons there were)

runsforcelery wrote:Again, people have to bear in mind that patrol and escort in hyper-space is going to become a primary mission requirement only in an infinitesimally small percentage of cases because of the sheer difficulty of locating a target in hyper-space. Combat is going to be almost inconceivably rare in hyper-space. Patrol functions, escort functions, and screening functions are going to be vastly more important — indeed, it would be impossible to exaggerate how much more important — in normal-space. It's not simply that normal-space is where all of the targets worth attacking are located in terms of astrographic real estate, but that you literally cannot find each other to fight battles in hyper-space except under very extraordinary circumstances, such as occurred in the case of the Selkir Rift in Honor Among Enemies or in the convoy ambush in which Helen Zilwicki the elder earned the POV. And it should be noted that the convoy ambush was possible only because the Peeps had detailed information on the convoy's departure and arrival times, which allowed it to extrapolate its route with highly atypical accuracy — and even then, the odds against the intercepts were very high. Frankly, it occurred only because I decided the Peeps were going to get incredibly lucky because I wanted the sequence I'd come up with to work.

From this infodump: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/322/0


Remember the in hyper combat is so startlingly rare that everyone's navy seems to have decided it's not worth equipping any class of ships; not even ones that routinely pull convoy escort duties, with sidewall bubble generators. The tradeoff in the 99% of combat (outside a grav wave) isn't worth the huge advantage it gives 1% (or less) of the time -- because combat in grav wave, or in hyper in general, is shockingly improbable.

That is for random encounters away from star systems. You have a lot higher possibility if you wait near a star system and chase a merchant.

kzt wrote:That is for random encounters away from star systems. You have a lot higher possibility if you wait near a star system and chase a merchant.

Are you thinking perhaps of the destruction of convoy MG-19 in the opening phases of the first war? (SVW) Or are you thinking of Captain Bassfisch chasing that destroyer? (WoH)

kzt wrote:That is for random encounters away from star systems. You have a lot higher possibility if you wait near a star system and chase a merchant.

Still has nothing to do with hyperspace fighting.

@ general discussion:

Ultimately, ships MUST be already outside the hyperlimit in modern combat to hold the defensive tactical advantage with hot wedges and hypergenerators. This is complicated by the fact we do not really know how long it takes hyper generators to translate all of the multiple alpha, beta, bands within the major 'band' and then accelerate, move, drop out of hyper on top of the fool going across the hyper limit.

1 measly DD should be nailing Merchies in job lots unless in a convoy or said merchies being told to ONLY translate at certain defended points along a hyperlimit or conversely along the perimeter of wormhole nexie.

PS. No reason a 120kt DD can't haul tractored pods as well for long range punch allowing it to only carry LERM missiles. Would be a lot easier if the RMN could reinvent the power cord allowing only a single missile from a pod to be fired instead of having to fire up its one time use fusion power plant to fire a single missile(Pirate or DD in role of commerce raiding) and wasting the rest of the pod. You can't tell me a tin can needs 150,000 tons for tougher sidewalls(its main armor which most forget is its main armor) in a DDM capital grade missile environment. EDIT: OOPs, last sentence came out WRONG! Lets try this again. A capital grade missile will blow completely THROUGH a DD ship doing less damage than several smaller warhead hits. Leaving the small DD, hurt, but still fighting. Remember, the beam diameter of the MK-16 is no greater than that of old CA missile heads, just that its throughput enabling it to BURN through armor and therefore transfer ENERGY causing much more damage is greater. Was this not proven in WWII at Guadalcanal?

Effectively you get a "Roland" or 300kt DD out of a wolfhound/Avalon, etc DD/CL LERM DD with a couple of pods. Since when should DD's be mixing it up at long range or any range for that matter? That is NOT its mission. What is DD mission again? Scouting, recon eyes years of a fleet, commerce protection in squadron/division strength, pirate row boat suppression. If a DD is fighting, it screwed the pooch long before the Fhit hit the San or Murphy truly had a high hand. CA's, BC's, etc fight. DD/CL do not, unless forced.

KNick wrote:Are you thinking perhaps of the destruction of convoy MG-19 in the opening phases of the first war? (SVW) Or are you thinking of Captain Bassfisch chasing that destroyer? (WoH)

No particular example, but just logic.

If you understand the traffic flow you can predict generally where a merchant will exit or leave a system. That's because time is money and fuel is money, so they will typically take a least-time transit directly to/from the destination or best grav wave.

On the Alpha side a typical hyperlimit is 40 light minutes wide and it's clear that you can typically spot a normal hyper transition at a very long range, several light hours on the real level. So on the Alpha side I'll guess that is visible at the 20LM maximum sensor range for hyper. But we'll assume only half that. So you can see about 6% of the total area of the hyperlimit, but significantly more of the area typically used by merchants. (Since the books say that approaches off the main plane of the system are unusual and expensive.)

So if we assume they transit roughly on the main plane of the system then you can see about 16% of the hyperlimit from one spot. If you have correctly determined where the merchant traffic is likely bound you should, at worst, be able to chase them.

If the system defender has done something like created a series of protected nodes that are defended by LACs and all the merchants use these to exit or enter the system then you have a much easier problem. Assuming that these areas are 20 LM wide you can sit on the other side and be in SDM range of a merchant crossing the wall, and the time of flight is too short for the hyperdrive of your target to cycle.

Now if the system defenses include hypercapable combat vessels constantly patrolling the region in hyperspace this gets a lot harder, though in theory you can also do this on the Beta side.

You could also, at least in theory, force the merchants to use highly suboptimal courses, exiting the hyperlimit out of the plane and going many light hours outside the hyperlimit before crossing the wall. Then a ship waiting on the Alpha side won't likely ever see anything.

The problem with that plan is that a hostile ship waiting a long way out in real-space can see the merchant puttering on out for many hours, so they can microjump on top of it in real-space or pace and wait for it on the alpha side.

If you escort each merchant out with LACs you limit microjumping ambushes, but you need hypercapable escorts to prevent being jumped on the Alpha side. Or you need the kind of hugely capable grav sensors that only extremely important systems usually get - that spots the hostile ship light hours/days out sneaking across the alpha wall in a downward transition.

Tenshinai wrote:Why was it ok for a DD to be unable to "stand up to itself" before, and not now?

DDs equippped with single-drive missiles could survive firing initial salvoes at each other. Once you start putting MDMs on ships, their range goes up dramatically, as does the ability to fire multiple salvoes with different ballistic phase lengths that effectively merge into a single salvo by the time they reach the target.

TheMonster wrote:The additional crew requirements that will go along with making the successor to the Roland able to survive its own firepower ought to be substantially less than replacing them all then they're lost in their first engagement.

And you seriously expect greater tonnage to NOT have any effect what so ever on maintenance costs? Riiight.

I never said that. "Substantially less" does not mean "zero".

Suppose the greater tonnage means 20% more maintenance and therefore requires 20% larger crew. For every six smaller DDs (let's just go ahead and call them FGs) that you could build and crew, then lose as soon as they see action; you could have five larger ones with a chance to fight another day.

Dispatch boats are not just not focused on combat, they are explicitly NON-combatants!

And a DD that can't survive an encounter with an enemy warship is effectively a non-combatant (where "combat" refers to warfare among governments, not anti-piracy operations). It's barely better than a DB; only the fact that it has any offensive punch and some CM at all means that it can stand up to a pirate (unless they bought Cataphracts from Technodyne at a bargain price because they'll be used against Manties).

So if you need a message delivered (which sometimes a DD is used to do) you might as well use a DB to do the job. If you think there's any chance of an armed enemy intercepting a mission, you send a ship that has a chance to survive. Whether that's a "cruiser" or a "destroyer" depends on what kinds of design decisions you make.

You have to make decisions on what to assign based on several factors. One is what you have available. A second is what you think the danger that your systems/merchants are going to face is going to be.
In most cases, in Silesia, the problem is going to be common pirates which typicaly means a converted merchant ship with whatever weapons the pirates can aquire and mount. An early war SEM DD should be able to handle one of those. Two might be a challange but then you are talking a actual warship vs an ad hoc conversion.
A former CONFED warship at the CL or CA level is a different problem. Again, an early war SEM CA should be able to take one in a stand up fight. Sending a BC and at least one other warship would be preferable but depends on what you have available.
An SL warship -probably a CA or BC is another story. For that you are really going to want a 1st line at least CA with MDMs and just kill the bastard. No messing around.
At this point, neither a Haven raiding squadron nor an Aldermani one is going to suddenly show up and start ripping up convoys or attacking systems. it is POSSIBLE an SL force is going to show up but they have to physically get there and are so much further away than Have was durring the war that it is an unlikely event to occur. That doesn't mean that Adm. Sarnow shouldn't have someone work out what a potential response would be but that is just good tactical planning.

In Talbott Sector, you are faces with what is an open boarder and close access to 4 types of problems.
The SLN in its many forms is obvious. Several independt systems may decide to stretch their size or just take advantage of turmoil and nick things up to neighboring systems. There are the kind of state sponsored piracy that was rampent in Silesia and any independent that sees potential in chaos. There is the Alignment which is creating chaos and the planetary uprisings that Manticore wishes to support but which are going to draw off ships and resources.
Some mix of older and newer ships may work. The more modern ships the better but older and single drive missle ships will deal with almost any pirate on small (one ship) incursion from other local systems looking to prey on neighbors. The real problem is Alignment surrogates (like the exPeep mercenaries) who have DDMs and raiding parties of any size from FF or BF.
Take you pick and dole out your ships.

kzt wrote:No particular example, but just logic.

If you understand the traffic flow you can predict generally where a merchant will exit or leave a system. That's because time is money and fuel is money, so they will typically take a least-time transit directly to/from the destination or best grav wave.

On the Alpha side a typical hyperlimit is 40 light minutes wide and it's clear that you can typically spot a normal hyper transition at a very long range, several light hours on the real level. So on the Alpha side I'll guess that is visible at the 20LM maximum sensor range for hyper. But we'll assume only half that. So you can see about 6% of the total area of the hyperlimit, but significantly more of the area typically used by merchants. (Since the books say that approaches off the main plane of the system are unusual and expensive.)

So if we assume they transit roughly on the main plane of the system then you can see about 16% of the hyperlimit from one spot. If you have correctly determined where the merchant traffic is likely bound you should, at worst, be able to chase them.

If the system defender has done something like created a series of protected nodes that are defended by LACs and all the merchants use these to exit or enter the system then you have a much easier problem. Assuming that these areas are 20 LM wide you can sit on the other side and be in SDM range of a merchant crossing the wall, and the time of flight is too short for the hyperdrive of your target to cycle.

Now if the system defenses include hypercapable combat vessels constantly patrolling the region in hyperspace this gets a lot harder, though in theory you can also do this on the Beta side.

You could also, at least in theory, force the merchants to use highly suboptimal courses, exiting the hyperlimit out of the plane and going many light hours outside the hyperlimit before crossing the wall. Then a ship waiting on the Alpha side won't likely ever see anything.

The problem with that plan is that a hostile ship waiting a long way out in real-space can see the merchant puttering on out for many hours, so they can microjump on top of it in real-space or pace and wait for it on the alpha side.

If you escort each merchant out with LACs you limit microjumping ambushes, but you need hypercapable escorts to prevent being jumped on the Alpha side. Or you need the kind of hugely capable grav sensors that only extremely important systems usually get - that spots the hostile ship light hours/days out sneaking across the alpha wall in a downward transition.

One item you missed that throws a ringer in the hyper stalk idea - The geography of Hyper.

In short it has none. There are no permament land marks - no distant stars or pulsars to accurately fix your position. The Hyper limit gives no indication where it is without trying to translate down. If you miss - and if you're lucky, you'll just bounce off of it or translate on the far side of the star from where you intended. All you have to go by is the Hyper log - which is essentially a computer record of what you perceive your ship did after you left the last known reference point. We know there are lesser and greater grav currents, eddies and sheres in Hyper space - the grav waves are just the biggest.

So you want to stalk Planet X. You plug where you want to go into the computer with the Hyper log and it stops you where you "think" the translation point is (Hyper logs are pretty good - you are probably close).

But did you completely stop? How do you know? If you have any velocity you didn't account for, you are still moving - even if just milimeters per second. (and let's face it, if you don't know exactly where you would translate, you have to have SOME velocity variable you have only accounted for in your error factor).
If there is a gentle current in that area of hyper, you also will soon be pulled off that point. The more time you spend in theat one "place", the longer any initial velocity and any currents will be pulling you off the intended point.

That's one of the reasons for the "Paul Revere" destroyer for Hyper Defenders - it is also a beacon for the entry locus for the fleet to use. If not, they would have no idea where they were relative to the hyperlimit to translate down.

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:All I said is that the question of superdreadnought survivability is irrelevant to the question of whether 300kt becomes the smallest RMN ship. Please tell me how that is BS?

DDs are suddenly made to face a test that is unrealistic for them, while SDs are not made to face the same test even though for them it could actually be considered relevant.

First, I never said that superdreadnoughts were not made to face the same test. In fact, I stated that their defenses are being upgraded so that they can survive better, just like the smaller ships. I even showed you the quotation from David saying exactly that.

Second of all, destroyers are not "suddenly" being given this test. It is the same standard that Manticore has always used. They had to give it up during the war in order to bring the new offensive weapons into play as quickly as possible, but they never liked it. Up until the late-war tech advances by Manticore, all RMN ships were measured to that standard. And BuWeaps is looking ahead to the peacetime era when they will need better defenses, and they need to go back to that standard.

SWM wrote:Yes, seriously. I do believe that. I disagree that tractored pods should be counted in the hypothetical test, because you would only carry those pods when you knew exactly when and where you were about to enter battle.

And if the Sag-C and Nike had not been specifically designed with areas on the hull for Flatpack pods, you would have a point.
For other ships, tractored pods is an improvisation, a temporary addition beyond normal.
For those 2 ship classes, it´s what they were DESIGNED to carry.

Even the Saganami-C and the Nike do not carry pods around all the time, because it blocks some of their sensors. A ship on a normal peacetime cruising mission cannot be dropping its pods whenever it sees another ship, just so it can open up its sensors to see if it is an enemy. They only carry those pods when they are on a specific combat mission.

Every nation has to decide where the right balance is between offensive strength and defensive strength on a ship. Manticore decided long ago what that balance should be, and has aimed at that balance as much as possible. They have not always been successful, and the new technology has thrown it way off for now. But they have always had this standard, and intend to move back to their ideal balance as soon as they can. The standard is not mathematically exact. They don’t have ships fire at each other to see whether they can survive. It is just a guideline for designing new ships and appraising how balanced they are. In their current projections of a future environment in which DDMs are common, they believe that a ship will need some kind of Keyhole to provide sufficient defenses. They also believe that the smallest ship they can build a mini-Keyhole into is 300,000 tons. That becomes the minimum viable size for a destroyer. In that paradigm, a light cruiser is 500,000.

David has said that it is possible Manticore will decide that the destroyer class may disappear in the RMN. If that comes true, then the 500kt light cruiser becomes the smallest ship in the Manticoran navy. The missions destroyers used to do are even now being done by light cruisers or LACs, so technically they already do not have a mission. Their only advantage is that they are slightly cheaper. You are concerned that Manticore will not have enough small ships if they get rid of destroyers. I feel confident that the number of platforms Manticore needs will be an important part of Manticore’s (David’s) analysis. Manticore will be much richer than before, with numerous new systems, a still-growing economy, and a radically changed galaxy in which they will be the biggest merchant fleet. With no need to keep a large wall of battle, they will lots of money to invest in small ships. They will decide that they need X ships to perform all the duties they want. If they can afford X 500kt light cruisers, then there is no need for them to build destroyers. If they cannot afford that many light cruisers, I am quite certain that they will continue to build destroyers. I’m sure you agree that BuWeaps and BuShips are smart enough to figure out whether they can build enough ships. If they can afford to build as many light cruisers as they need, there is no need to build destroyers.

Does that satisfy your concerns about not having enough small ships? Manticore isn't going to get rid of destroyers if it will leave them with insufficient platforms. As for the nature of the standard, you are welcome to disagree on exactly where the best balance between offense and defense lies. After all, not every nation in the Honorverse agrees on where that balance should be. But Manticore has chosen their standard, which has served them well for hundreds of years.