Mars-class ship specs, especially the D series

Hate to waste a topic on a single ship, but I'm super curious.

Was over on the wikia, having read a couple different sizes for the Mars-D, some very close to the Sag-C, others at the 600k ton size mentioned earlier. HouseOfSteel and Shadow of Saganami I think both use the smaller size. So I went to Pearls which didn't resolve it, then read all the posts with the word "Mars" here, and saw a couple posts on it being "retconned" to 10K less than some weight...

Logically, my head still goes "that doesn't make sense", because you wouldn't mistake a 470k ship for a battle cruiser, even as far back as the Mars first pops up. I also don't buy the argument "well, ship growth in class, maybe the A's were smaller..." but the Sag-A to C growth was only a couple of percentage points.

Any news, RFC/MWW style, or other places where this has been semi-authoritatively resolved? If not, thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:Hate to waste a topic on a single ship, but I'm super curious.

Was over on the wikia, having read a couple different sizes for the Mars-D, some very close to the Sag-C, others at the 600k ton size mentioned earlier. HouseOfSteel and Shadow of Saganami I think both use the smaller size. So I went to Pearls which didn't resolve it, then read all the posts with the word "Mars" here, and saw a couple posts on it being "retconned" to 10K less than some weight...

Logically, my head still goes "that doesn't make sense", because you wouldn't mistake a 470k ship for a battle cruiser, even as far back as the Mars first pops up. I also don't buy the argument "well, ship growth in class, maybe the A's were smaller..." but the Sag-A to C growth was only a couple of percentage points.

Any news, RFC/MWW style, or other places where this has been semi-authoritatively resolved? If not, thoughts?

----------------

I believe the first descriptions of the MARS class came out before "the great resizing"; but they are still a large ship for their function, having been built, as I recall, in anticipation of acquiring / capturing (semi-intact) an example of the newer RMN / Grayson compensators.
Without the compensator, they had more engine than their design required; but they could tractor missile pods without significant loss of acceleration.

-- Stewart

The thing to remember is that initial assessments of a ship's type are based on information from the gravitic sensors, which measure the target's wedge strength. The Mars-class were built with overpowered wedges, in the expectation that the PRH would be able to capture and reverse-engineer the new Grayson-type compensators which could be retrofitted into the ships to take advantage of the extra wedge power.

stewart wrote:I believe the first descriptions of the MARS class came out before "the great resizing"; but they are still a large ship for their function, having been built, as I recall, in anticipation of acquiring / capturing (semi-intact) an example of the newer RMN / Grayson compensators.
Without the compensator, they had more engine than their design required; but they could tractor missile pods without significant loss of acceleration.

-- Stewart

I don't recall when the Mars class was first mentioned. But the Great Resizing did not change ship masses--it changed ship dimensions to better match the masses.

Dafmeister wrote:The thing to remember is that initial assessments of a ship's type are based on information from the gravitic sensors, which measure the target's wedge strength. The Mars-class were built with overpowered wedges, in the expectation that the PRH would be able to capture and reverse-engineer the new Grayson-type compensators which could be retrofitted into the ships to take advantage of the extra wedge power.

That might be the explanation. People thought they were nearly the size of battlecruisers because their wedge signature was that powerful.

SharkHunter wrote:Hate to waste a topic on a single ship, but I'm super curious.

Was over on the wikia, having read a couple different sizes for the Mars-D, some very close to the Sag-C, others at the 600k ton size mentioned earlier. HouseOfSteel and Shadow of Saganami I think both use the smaller size. So I went to Pearls which didn't resolve it, then read all the posts with the word "Mars" here, and saw a couple posts on it being "retconned" to 10K less than some weight...

Logically, my head still goes "that doesn't make sense", because you wouldn't mistake a 470k ship for a battle cruiser, even as far back as the Mars first pops up. I also don't buy the argument "well, ship growth in class, maybe the A's were smaller..." but the Sag-A to C growth was only a couple of percentage points.

Any news, RFC/MWW style, or other places where this has been semi-authoritatively resolved? If not, thoughts?

Nothing yet has given details specs on the newest Mars class varients.
SITS, Jaynes, and House of Steel all give specs on the Mars-B and those are all in agreement about tonnage, acceleration, weapons, etc. (Not always true; in some cases HoS changes the info from the older SITS and Jaynes books)

Jaynes Intelligence Review: The Havenite Republic Navy also includes specs on the Mars-A. At 451,750 tons its a bit smaller than the -B, but actually has the same acceleration. The -A also carries 6 fewer lasers in each broadside; but otherwise is pretty similar to the -B.

Incidentally when plugged into my accel curve spreadsheet the -B is on the curve, while the -A is a touch slower than you'd expect (I'm guessing that's the overpowered wedge penalizing it somehow for not having the matching compensator)

SWM wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:The thing to remember is that initial assessments of a ship's type are based on information from the gravitic sensors, which measure the target's wedge strength. The Mars-class were built with overpowered wedges, in the expectation that the PRH would be able to capture and reverse-engineer the new Grayson-type compensators which could be retrofitted into the ships to take advantage of the extra wedge power.

That might be the explanation. People thought they were nearly the size of battlecruisers because their wedge signature was that powerful.

That's true and likely. My understanding is that wedge strength was partially related to compensator strength, and the overpower simply allowed the mars to tow more without degradation in speed. Good calls!

SWM wrote:

stewart wrote:I believe the first descriptions of the MARS class came out before "the great resizing"; but they are still a large ship for their function, having been built, as I recall, in anticipation of acquiring / capturing (semi-intact) an example of the newer RMN / Grayson compensators.
Without the compensator, they had more engine than their design required; but they could tractor missile pods without significant loss of acceleration.

-- Stewart

I don't recall when the Mars class was first mentioned. But the Great Resizing did not change ship masses--it changed ship dimensions to better match the masses.

The ambush at Adler; part Tourville's raiding force. In Enemy Hands.

Rob

SharkHunter wrote:Hate to waste a topic on a single ship, but I'm super curious.

Was over on the wikia, having read a couple different sizes for the Mars-D, some very close to the Sag-C, others at the 600k ton size mentioned earlier. HouseOfSteel and Shadow of Saganami I think both use the smaller size. So I went to Pearls which didn't resolve it, then read all the posts with the word "Mars" here, and saw a couple posts on it being "retconned" to 10K less than some weight...

Logically, my head still goes "that doesn't make sense", because you wouldn't mistake a 470k ship for a battle cruiser, even as far back as the Mars first pops up. I also don't buy the argument "well, ship growth in class, maybe the A's were smaller..." but the Sag-A to C growth was only a couple of percentage points.

Any news, RFC/MWW style, or other places where this has been semi-authoritatively resolved? If not, thoughts?

I did some of that for Marksman/Maya/Erewhon. You waded through a lot of speculation.

How big a ship is, depends on the navy and the mission.

In TOF, the second chapter, Luiz Roszak is talking to one of Barregos' civilian minions about ship sizes being inflated by both sides in the Havenite Wars; and the fact that no one on Old Earth was paying attention.

A good question here is, what constitutes a battlecruiser in the Honorverse? RFC has made the point about the new destroyers not being light cruisers; did you notice that the Wolfhound is almost exactly the size of the older Apollo? Even though Roland is the ship he is writing about, the gravitic signature of the Wolfhound is going to lead someone into a fatal mistake.

The purpose of the battlecruiser is to have a ship to kill the armored cruiser. The Sword class is listed in the teaser for SITS on the CD; RMN vessels not in the stories are in HoS. They seem to fall mostly into the 200 to 300K ton range. Roszak is kind enough to mention that his Marksman (286K tons) is larger than most Sollie heavy cruisers. All things being equal, that would make most of those older cruisers similar to the Truncheon or Prince Consort classes for weapons fit; with 5-8 missiles, a similar number of beam weapons, and some degree of point defense (which may be skewed toward defense against contact nukes).

A ship to kill those could well be a somewhat more heavily armored cruiser with a 50% increase in offensive systems and armor, and in the pre-RMN universe, that ship with 12 missiles and 12 Beam weapons would probably be around the sizes given for the Saganamis and the Mars classes.

It was only the Manti miniaturizing of tech that let them put that offensive power into the (two-decker) Star Knight. The original Mars was a Havenite attempt to duplicate the offensive power of that ship; against a Saganami in their same tonnage range, a Mars doesn't do so well.

How many navies have ships like that will be up to RFC; but the existence of ships of that size/capability might be why the Sollies deployed a ship as large and heavily armed as the Indefatigable in the first place; if nothing out in the Verge could match a heavy cruiser, they wouldn't have bothered with battlecruisers.

Well, maybe they would have, just for the ego boost.

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:--snip--
How big a ship is, depends on the navy and the mission.

In TOF, the second chapter, Luiz Roszak is talking to one of Barregos' civilian minions about ship sizes being inflated by both sides in the Havenite Wars; and the fact that no one on Old Earth was paying attention.
...
A good question here is, what constitutes a battlecruiser in the Honorverse? RFC has made the point about the new destroyers not being light cruisers; did you notice that the Wolfhound is almost exactly the size of the older Apollo? Even though Roland is the ship he is writing about, the gravitic signature of the Wolfhound is going to lead someone into a fatal mistake.

The purpose of the battlecruiser is to have a ship to kill the armored cruiser...
Rob

That is a brilliant analysis. In fact it ties perfectly into Thurgood's fatal error in Flag in Exile, and in Shadow of Freedom, the battle action at Saltash, where the Frontier Fleet Vice admiral (who we presume can at least tie her own shoes, compared to Battle Fleet), assumes that Zavala's forces are light cruisers, but still has NO clue how obsolete her ships have become. In her mind, of course the Manty's will be crushed; that's what BC's do to cruisers.