Beating up Frontier Fleet, mercilessly

JeffEngel wrote:

Bill Woods wrote: Henke sent a CLAC to Mobius, to serve as the base for an amphibious (space/ground) Marine force. What do the Marines normally use?

Broadsword CA's, Kamerling CL's - both specialized marine transports with warship weaponry still on hand. Or a bunch of (older) cruisers and/or battlecruisers with their classic marine complements. Or a troop transport not based on a warship, accompanied by a warship escort.

The RMN has a 4 Mton dedicated Troop Transport for the Marines and Armny called the Roark's Drift Class Marine transport. It's around 4 mTons and carries 20,000 troops. In HoS, there is mention of a future troop transport design, currently under the planning name LPX, based on a Battle Cruiser Hull. It is intended for high speed transport to trouble spots.

Relax wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:They're two missions, at least, and the Minotaur and Covington classes are each better at one than they are at the other. But I don't think either navy intends either class as a fully satisfactory answer to either mission in particular. The fleet defense CLAC doesn't need speed better than an SD/SD(P), and it does have a use for all the defenses any other part of the wall can use. (A variation on it may operate from near the wall but behind it, where lighter defenses are all right.) And I'm not sure how often you would want or need a dedicated "assault" CLAC, as opposed to a BC, several DD's/CL's/CA's, and/or a handful of small hypercapable warships and one CLAC of any type.

For all those planets where you want extra missile defense with your BC's. Medium planets. The "not sure what the have, but gotta probe and we know they have had pods previously" planets.

Why? You know full well the BC's + CL etc do not have enough missile defense to take on the pods + ships, but a CLAC or two full of LAC's along with their missile defenses should do the job.

That's not a job for the "assault" CLAC as described - that's a use for the fleet defense CLAC, just in a count of one instead of several and with cruisers instead of the wall.

It may, however, be an argument for using a DN-range CLAC instead of a SD-range one - granularity is an important point if you won't need more than 100-125 LAC's and you may need to do this many different places at once, and the DN accel advantage may be relevant.

JeffEngel wrote:

Relax wrote:For all those planets where you want extra missile defense with your BC's. Medium planets. The "not sure what the have, but gotta probe and we know they have had pods previously" planets.

Why? You know full well the BC's + CL etc do not have enough missile defense to take on the pods + ships, but a CLAC or two full of LAC's along with their missile defenses should do the job.

That's not a job for the "assault" CLAC as described - that's a use for the fleet defense CLAC, just in a count of one instead of several and with cruisers instead of the wall.

It may, however, be an argument for using a DN-range CLAC instead of a SD-range one - granularity is an important point if you won't need more than 100-125 LAC's and you may need to do this many different places at once, and the DN accel advantage may be relevant.

Actually the best example for the use of them is the Wormhole raids. You have 7 CA(l)s, 1 CLAC and 1 Ammo ship sitting on a wormhole at the far end of nowhere, knowing that someone's going to try to knock them off their perch, and it's going to get messy. The Resonance zone is small enough that a sharp navigator and daring captain could jump in at the far end of energy range and engage the "defense" force at point blank range, and even a cautious commander can jump them at SDM range. In a situation like this, you need a ship that can take a punch and look after itself - and having the fire control to salvo pods itself while sitting ontop the wormhole, and allowing the "small frys" to maneuver is a big plus.

Theemile wrote:Actually the best example for the use of them is the Wormhole raids. You have 7 CA(l)s, 1 CLAC and 1 Ammo ship sitting on a wormhole at the far end of nowhere, knowing that someone's going to try to knock them off their perch, and it's going to get messy. The Resonance zone is small enough that a sharp navigator and daring captain could jump in at the far end of energy range and engage the "defense" force at point blank range, and even a cautious commander can jump them at SDM range. In a situation like this, you need a ship that can take a punch and look after itself - and having the fire control to salvo pods itself while sitting ontop the wormhole, and allowing the "small frys" to maneuver is a big plus.

I imagine the fire control there is likely as much from the 7 CA's as the one CLAC itself. In that situation, what I think will really shine is the 100 Shrikes and their fast-emptying missile racks and big honkin' graser. But yeah, a CLAC that doesn't neglect armor and strong sidewalls will be handy for that kind of nasty melee. The LAC's would help you with impromptu, do-it-yourself astro control there in between terrifying fights for your lives.

Relax wrote:"kzt"]"JeffEngel"]
So, yeah. The CLAC ends up being appropriate for the Mobius job primarily as a make-do thing - the LAC's may not have had all that much to do. It's just that, in 10th Fleet's inventory, it was something with the space for the Marines and a capital ship boat bay was probably a better home for the assault shuttles than those cruisers and destroyers. If there were any old SD's or DN's in 10th Fleet, they'd've likely been much better. A couple old Star Knights, perhaps as good. One Kamerling or Broadsword, much better.

A CLAC, 4 very modern CA's, 8 similar DD's - decidedly overkill for anything in Mobius, but if you can spare it, it's a lot better side to err on.

You pull a 20,000 ton LAC out of a bay you can fit several 500-1000 ton assault shuttles in its place. So pull a squadron or four, you have the marines in the LAC crew and support crew quarters.[/quote]

Would expect any ship with 3000 people on it is going to have pretty large boat bays as it is. It is not easy as replace LAC with shuttles. Shuttles have to be tied down somehow and collars for LAC's do not hold shuttles. Can be modified? Yup. Easy? Yup. Makes sense? Not sure. Why would a large ground marine contingent need 100 LAC's? Take over a planet orbitals + a tiny portion of the ground and stay a while? Take over orbitals but not sure if you can really stay so must keep the CLAC around to collect all the pieces in case your intel went into the crapper.[/quote]


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We don't have any info (AFAIK) on the size and capacity of a CLAC's boat bays, however, I suspect that Marine Assault Shuttles will be able to operate out of the CLAC's boat bays instead of a full compliment of pinnaces. If I remember correctly, the old BC Nike (now re-named 1st Hancock) had 3 boat bays, as did Ransom's Warlord class Tepes.
I would assume that a CLAC would have at lease 3 bays for integral small craft and space for visitors.
Clear one (or two) bays on the CLAC for Assault Shuttles, the pinnaces can either crowd into the remaining bay or be temporarily transferred to other ships.
A CLAC should have no problem being a short term Assault Ship.

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:We don't have any info (AFAIK) on the size and capacity of a CLAC's boat bays, however, I suspect that Marine Assault Shuttles will be able to operate out of the CLAC's boat bays instead of a full compliment of pinnaces. If I remember correctly, the old BC Nike (now re-named 1st Hancock) had 3 boat bays, as did Ransom's Warlord class Tepes.
I would assume that a CLAC would have at lease 3 bays for integral small craft and space for visitors.
Clear one (or two) bays on the CLAC for Assault Shuttles, the pinnaces can either crowd into the remaining bay or be temporarily transferred to other ships.
A CLAC should have no problem being a short term Assault Ship.

-- Stewart

Tepes was equipped with 2 extra boat bays, for a total of 5, since it was a Warlord-class BC redesigned to drop StateSec goons on enemies of the Committee For Public Safety.

stewart wrote:

kzt wrote:You pull a 20,000 ton LAC out of a bay you can fit several 500-1000 ton assault shuttles in its place. So pull a squadron or four, you have the marines in the LAC crew and support crew quarters.

We don't have any info (AFAIK) on the size and capacity of a CLAC's boat bays, however, I suspect that Marine Assault Shuttles will be able to operate out of the CLAC's boat bays ...

I'm pretty sure kzt was proposing launching the assault shuttles from a LAC bay or ten rather than using the boat bay(s). Since most of a LAC bay is in vacuum, I'm not sure the idea would work without significant modification to the LAC bays, but it would provide more assault shuttle capacity than the equivalent of a LAC wing could make use of.

Pretty much. I'm sure they could improvise a pressurized entry for one or two, but most would parked out on the deck. Given that marines normally fight in armored skin suits and the shuttles are normally stored and serviced in vacuum I'm not seeing any issues here. You could also transport outsized gear that won't fit in the ship elevators.

Not sure how many you could fit, the LAC bay is over 20m high, shuttles are much lower. Hence a lot of the capacity is unusable without a LOT of work

kzt wrote:Pretty much. I'm sure they could improvise a pressurized entry for one or two, but most would parked out on the deck. Given that marines normally fight in armored skin suits and the shuttles are normally stored and serviced in vacuum I'm not seeing any issues here. You could also transport outsized gear that won't fit in the ship elevators.

Not sure how many you could fit, the LAC bay is over 20m high, shuttles are much lower. Hence a lot of the capacity is unusable without a LOT of work

Well, you still want to have them locked down for maneuvers. I'm sure the 41st century still has duct tape.

I think the larger problem will be where you put the grunts. Ten officers and ratings to a LAC and 40ish to a marine platoon? Not to mention the supplies for said grunts.

Kizarvexis wrote:I think the larger problem will be where you put the grunts. Ten officers and ratings to a LAC and 40ish to a marine platoon? Not to mention the supplies for said grunts.

You're not counting the LAC support troops -- another 5-7 per LAC, or thereabouts. That is, however, why I said you could carry more assault shuttles than you had troops to fill.