CLACs

Roguevictory wrote:In the past there was some role that Frigates were more effective at than Destroyers otherwise there would have been no point in designing Frigates in the first place. But we have no idea what that role was or what happened to make Frigates so ineffective at it that rather than design new Frigate models to compensate for the change the navies that could abandoned the type completely.

i don't think frigates were ever better than destroyers at anything except being more affordable. The did have a marginally better acceleration, but probably not enough to help all that much. And in any fight they were less capable than a similar year destroyer.

Roguevictory wrote:And frigates could react faster to changes in situation than a recon drone could plus have the ability to fight back if needed so frigates would still outclass them as recon units in hostile territory.

They could fight back, and didn't suffer from light speed lag from the recon drones. On the other hand, the recon drones let you detect the enemy further from your ships. That gives you a better chance to evade combat entirely, or at least minimize how deeply you're forced into their engagement envelope. And a frigate is going to be outgunned by anything it has to fight; so being able to fight back vs abandoning the recon drone doesn't strike me as a great advantage. (Although again, pre-laserhead that's not as critical since against an opponent or two it's got a chance to duck behind it's wedge while evading)

Roguevictory wrote:Also based on the Chanson class Destroyers, which were designed alongside the Star Knight Class, and still in service in 1920 pd even if a pre obsolescence Frigate required 10 times the crew of a LAC its crew would still only be roughly one third the crew of a Destroyer. 3 Frigates crewed for the crew on one Destroyer seems like a very good deal to e since three units can obviously cover more of an area than one, and form groups if needed. And the three frigates would have equal or greater firepower since a Chanson only had three Lasers and 3 Missile tubes in its broadside, and even its Javelin successor class, which ended up being disliked and retired before the Chansons only had 6 missile tubes and two lasers per broadside.

I think 3 for 1 is quite optimistic. Also an old-school LAC has a crew of around 20-25, so 10x that crew would be getting close to a destroyers (300-ish).

But the one example of a frigate we do have gives a crew size of 121, so more like 6x a LAC, but over 1/3rd of a DD. That example was from the Silesian Navy (from SITS book 2)

The Joachim Cheslav-class DD (1867 PD) vs the Gryf-class FF (1868 PD). (Almost the same introduction year, so it should be a pretty fair head to head comparison; but keep in mind the SCN isn't a first rate navy and these are probably overgunned)

The destroyer is about 1.8x heavier, 10g slower, and carries 2.5x the crew. In each broadside it's got an extra pair of tubes (8 vs 6) and extra pair of lasers (3 vs 1). Defensively it carries a total of 4 extra PDLCs (10 vs 6 - each of which appears to be bigger and more effective) and an extra 2 CM tubes (6 vs 4). And in it's magazines it has more than twice as many offensive and defensive missiles.

J6P wrote:Opens a can. Hey, maybe this Joe will open 6.

0) Scouting = information gathering; not fighting
1) Frigates are not faster than RD's.
2) Frigates are not stealthier than RD's
3) RD's do not have to fight at all
4) You are supposed to get the information out, not fight:
RUN mother CHICKEN!
5) If RD dies, no big deal. They are relatively cheap
6) RD's can stay in system and loiter far cheaper than FF
***** #6 should really be #1 *****

Your point 6 is more true of the micro-fusion powered recon drones that came out of the Ghost Rider program. Prior to that the normal tactical recon drones (capacitor powered) don't appear to have the endurance to loiter around for days to weeks. (The Havenite Argus net was a special case)

But your other points seem spot on.

While a frigate does have a smaller crew than a destroyer, one place it requires nearly the same number of people is the officer billets. A frigate still needs 6 - 8 officers, where a destroyer has 8 - 10. One of the places Manticore had a problem was the number of new officers Saganami Island graduated every year. After all, the year Honor graduated, there were only IIRC only 150. Not all made it to Ensign. We know a couple were killed, some cracked under the pressure of real life and some were Marine officers.

With the frantic pace Manticore was building new ships, they were strapped for experienced officers at all levels. One of the places they could improve was to build fewer, larger ships. They could provide crews ( with officers) for ten DDs vs. 12 - 15 FFs. The crunch in officers only got worse as the war neared. Even though the Island was graduating new officers at a faster pace, they were inexperienced. Another point to keep in mind is that a smaller ship with fewer officers needs for those officers to be more experienced and better at their jobs than a larger ship, where the responsibilities are spread around.

I would guess that quite a few of us grew up reading C S Forrester and later Patrick O'Brien. With and the frigates in the late 18th and early 19th century being the primary action ships for the stories and for what they could get into- and out of- like sailing around the world, we have a very fair spot for "frigates".

Reality in the WW II era, late 20th century and the Honorverse (as defined by the author) puts the class in the Honorverse called a frigate is a very poor-man's Destroyer or DE and we are not going to see any beyond the Torch ships unless some system will a bit more than a pot to pee in gets dragged into the story line trying to defend itself (or, like Masada, attack some other system).

The only group we have been shown that is working with new frigates is Torch. These were designed, built and ,for all intents and purposes, donated to Torch my the Hoffman Cartel.

This is a very wealthy person with enough resources and a very deep feeling about and commitment to the Anti-Slavery movement. Klaus has a number of reasons for creating this very potent little hyper-capable warship class. They have been described as latest versions Shrikes with bow AND stern Grasers. These are much more than Shrikes on steroids and are purpose designed to do things like hunt down and capture slave ships as well as take on light combat units of what are genearly SLN older model DDs and system defence boats/LAC (not ships).

There was some earlier discussion about the Torch FFs in the books and now we see the practical application in a piece of Cauldron of Ghosts.

This would not be the first industrialist (fictional or otherwise) who has poured treasure and serious equipment (including weapons) into a moral cause that they believe in. That he also happenes to be a primary design contributer and builder of the current Maticorian LACs along with his shipyards doing naval warship construction including prototype work for Manticore (and Grayson) gives him all sorts of advantages. Tony Stark comes to mind…big smile.

Think of the Torch FFs as very special weapons systems like the British X-craft subs in WW II. They are HIGHLY specialized pocket warships designed and built to take the anti-slavery fight directly at Manpower. They are not intended to go up against a SEM or RHN destroyer but they are going to be just as effective as a destroyer in anti-slavery work. That obviously includes raiding spaceborn slave stations along with slaver freighters even if the freighters may be armed with relativly light weapons. There is the added advantage that the crews are also HIGHLY motivated. These are very special-purpose ships built for a role that no other navy presently has a need for.

Brigade XO wrote:
Think of the Torch FFs as very special weapons systems like the British X-craft subs in WW II. They are HIGHLY specialized pocket warships designed and built to take the anti-slavery fight directly at Manpower. They are not intended to go up against a SEM or RHN destroyer but they are going to be just as effective as a destroyer in anti-slavery work. That obviously includes raiding spaceborn slave stations along with slaver freighters even if the freighters may be armed with relativly light weapons. There is the added advantage that the crews are also HIGHLY motivated. These are very special-purpose ships built for a role that no other navy presently has a need for.

The question is: How much pressure will politicians apply in their quest to trim defense budgets? Politicians can always find someone within the military who will advocate for a pure anti pirate ship justifying their reduced expenditure on hulls, maintenance, yadda infendada. There are always Housemanns out there. Most of humanity are Housemanns at heart.

Brigade XO wrote:I would guess that quite a few of us grew up reading C S Forrester and later Patrick O'Brien. With and the frigates in the late 18th and early 19th century being the primary action ships for the stories and for what they could get into- and out of- like sailing around the world, we have a very fair spot for "frigates".

Reality in the WW II era, late 20th century and the Honorverse (as defined by the author) puts the class in the Honorverse called a frigate is a very poor-man's Destroyer or DE and we are not going to see any beyond the Torch ships unless some system will a bit more than a pot to pee in gets dragged into the story line trying to defend itself (or, like Masada, attack some other system).

Or in the pre Honor works. If what I've read on the Honorverse wiki is correct the Manticore Ascendant series will start only about 50 years after the RMN is formed and 120 after Manticore was colonized so logically both the RMN and any enemies it has at that point would be using Frigates, especially since the Manticore System Navy, which became the RMN started as a group of frigates and seems to have been a force composed primarily of Destroyers and Frigates. Given that the RMN still had some frigates in service around 350 years later I seriously doubt they, and their various foes of the period didn't have some during the series. The question is will they appear in the books or short stories in the era?

The insystem pure anti-piracy ship is a LAC.

One reason frigates don't work as described in the Honorverse is that the marginal cost to have hyperdrive is quite high. It is something like 40kt minimum to have a ship that can jump, and the frigates as described were 50-55kt, just barely enough to mount minimal weapons and little or nothing in the way of defenses beyond a sidewall (which courier ships don't generally have, or if they do it is a "light sidewall")

A DD by contrast was 65-80kt in the first war, which means even the smallest had nearly double the tonnage of a frigate to devote to weaponry and defenses, and the larger had something like 3-4x as much...without any significant change in the size of the impeller and hyperdrive systems until you start to pass the 100kt size range.

It's much cheaper to add weapons to an existing hull than to have two hulls. So the cost argument doesn't stand up, especially if that hull is more survivable. Yes, it's good to be in two places at once, but not if you just die in both places instead of being able to fend off attackers and live to report back (or simply win the fight).

Two frigates die against a single DD in 1905. They're actually outgunned, both offensively and defensively. 1st Yeltisn showed this pretty well - the Masadan DD's were beam-oriented frigates with missile defenses only adequate against reaction drive contact nukes. Against a "modern" frigate more would survive to close to killing range, but that was against a DD that had propulsion crippled. Had it been able to hold the range, the only thing that would have stopped it from killing frigates would have been running out of ammo.

Pre-laserhead, the wedge and sidewall was 95% of what you needed for defense, so it didn't make sense to pack in more weapons. If you get into beam range and get a lock, you kill your enemy. More weapons are just overkill, and more defenses don't greatly improve your odds. In that period Frigates would do the anti-piracy stuff and DDs would screen larger ships, because without more weapons they can't measurably help the defenses of those larger ships.

With laserheads, suddenly you need more than a sidewall, a few pdlc's and a beam weapon. Hence larger ships. With MDMs, you need both much larger missiles and a crapload of improved missile defenses (missiles come in at .8C, meaning you get only one shot at them, and your primary generator of misses is your ECM)

cthia wrote:Military entities and government agencies love acronyms. And they like practical acronyms that can be pronounced as a single word. Therefore CLAC would be Clack. IMO

Funny thing though, during informal 'field use' it would be Clack, but in formal requisition orders and reports it would be Carrier Light Attack Craft. It gives them an opportunity to hide the reality of costs within the verbose bullshit.

There's consideration of devloping a different close-in-combat CLAC? That saddens me, because I like the necessary tactic of having to hold back your CLACs. You don't want to strand those many LACs. It just doesn't seem possible to properly armor a LAC for close-in operation. That would be one huge S.O.L! Wouldn't it?

Question:
Can anyone who has played the game tell me if LACs and CLACs are used?

Clack is too close to click for military use. The possibility for confusion would make clack a poor choice of pronunciation.


I think David is nerfing LACs because they became too over powering. Of course the simple truth is that the best weapon against a LAC is another LAC. That means that two opposing forces both with LACs will find using theirs offensively far more difficult. Against a navy without them, you can send them against any force they can realistically engage.

Most likely, LACs were a limited time force projection for that part of the story line, and now are falling to more support roles like basic system defense and policing. Especially with Apollo missiles.

swalke813 wrote:Against a navy without them, you can send them against any force they can realistically engage.

Most likely, LACs were a limited time force projection for that part of the story line, and now are falling to more support roles like basic system defense and policing. Especially with Apollo missiles.

The fact that 2nd fleet's SD(P)s killed something like 90%-95% of the RMN LACs that closed on them and took no damage in the process is a kind of significant data point.

Yeah, they did a lot of damage to the screen, but they just died against the wallers.