The cruiser future in the RMN - another go

HungryKing wrote:Have not followed the entire thread but there is one thing I would like to put out there, of the 'current' RMN designs the only satisfactory one is the BC(L). Of the older designs, the Avalon is appearantly highly rated. If the RMN is looking for price efficiency, in a 'low threat' enviroment, i.e. one where nobody is going to be able to produce more than Catapheracts deployed from CAs, and assuming that the LERM can be mated with a CA killing head, they might consider producing a Keyhole-lite equipped Avalon, under the designation of escort cruiser, that or they might build more Kammerlings, if they Sag b tubes, after giving them keyhole lite and two weapons decks. Not that it is likely, but the RMN used to have loads of FGs for close to the same reasons.

You might build something the size of a Kammerling, but too much of the design and displacement of the class is specialized stuff towards enabling their Marine support mission.
That makes them expensive and underpowered for a normal combat role.

Can I play the bad guy and say that all the speculation is moot, Mr Weber has said the Honoverse will be wrapped up in the next 2 books, where does that leave time to develop anything else other that what will come out of Bolthole?

George J. Smith wrote:Can I play the bad guy and say that all the speculation is moot, Mr Weber has said the Honoverse will be wrapped up in the next 2 books, where does that leave time to develop anything else other that what will come out of Bolthole?

There might be time leaps, like the 4 years between end of AoV and start of WoH. The 3 between OBS and HotQ. The books themselves might stretch over a few years.

20 years is a bit steep to be speculating about new cruiser designs. After all, just compare CA Fearless in HotQ with a Saganami-C to see what 20 years of wartime development does in the Honorverse. Heck, the Gryphon and Invictus are about 20 years apart too.

But I'm sure people were speculating about what Haven could do to catch up to pod-layers and MDMs while WoH was being written.

George J. Smith wrote:Can I play the bad guy and say that all the speculation is moot, Mr Weber has said the Honoverse will be wrapped up in the next 2 books, where does that leave time to develop anything else other that what will come out of Bolthole?

The discussion is primarily about the military environment after the situation has stabilized. In other words, the environment existing at the beginning of the potential follow-on series David has talked about, set a few decades after the end of this series.

George J. Smith wrote:Can I play the bad guy and say that all the speculation is moot, Mr Weber has said the Honoverse will be wrapped up in the next 2 books, where does that leave time to develop anything else other that what will come out of Bolthole?

Depressingly little unfortunately!

We need the mainline story to take at least another 20 books, i´m sure of it!

HungryKing wrote:If the point is that a notional 300kt ddm equipped vessel is still not worth building on the grounds that the capability differential vis a vi its larger siblings for the potential duties it might be called upon to do is to much, then the solution might be to build something which is just as well, if not more so, defended, while being cheaper, and still more than any exSLN CA can tussel with. This is not a warship, this is a military escort vessel.

Or a police-focused scout/allrounder...

I very much agree with what Tenshinai has been saying.

It seems the discussion has been too 'combat' focused and some discussion does not take the concept of designing vessels to fulfil specific mission requirements into consideration.

Earlier I posted a proposed light cruiser design based on certain mission profiles.

Recalling what sort of defences the Manties use:
LACs in bases across the system
pre-deployed MDM pods across the system
Mobile warships either in planetary orbit or patrolling the system

Delving further into what various requirements would look like:

1. Scouting
Good Sensor Suites
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
High Mobility
Long deployment endurance (ability to function without resupply for extended periods)
Strong Stealth Ability
Anti-MDM defence (against overwhelming salvos the CL should just hyper out)
Anti-LAC capability (the ability to win an engagement against an equal mass of LACs)

2. Anti-Scouting
Good Sensor Suites
Anti-Stealth ability
Stealth Ability
High Mobility
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
Anti-LAC capability
Ability to engage light combatant warships (DDs, CLs, CAs)

3. System Patrol
Good Sensor Suites
Stealth Ability
High Mobility
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
Ability to engage light combatant warships (including pirates)
Long range communication ability
Ability to deploy small craft
Marine Complement?!?

4. Convoy Escort
Good Sensor Suites
Anti-stealth ability
High Mobility
Long deployment endurance
Ability to engage light combatant warships
Anti-LAC capability
Anti-MDM Defence (including area defence of nearby vessels)
Ability to engage in gravity-wave combat

5. Commerce Raiding
Good Sensor Suites
Strong Stealth Ability
High Mobility
Long deployment endurance
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
Anti-MDM Defence
Anti-LAC capability
Ability to engage light combatant warships

6. 'Peacekeeping'/'Flag showing'
Long deployment endurance
Marine Complement
Ability to deploy small craft
Sensor and Drone capability
Ability to engage light combatant warships

7. Messenger Duties
Good Sensor Suites
Ability to engage in gravity-wave combat
Long range communication ability
High Mobility
Strong Stealth ability

8. Anti-Piracy / Anti-Slavery
Long deployment endurance
Good Sensor Suites
High Mobility
Strong Stealth ability
Ability to engage in gravity-wave combat
Ability to engage light combatant warships
Ability to deploy small-craft
Marine Complement
Surplus life support



Out of all the missions described above the only ones where these ships would be called upon to potentially battle 'to the death' with other warships are convoy escort, anti-scouting or system patrol. In pretty much every other case such a Light Cruiser would either back off in the face of superior firepower or call in the big guns. It may also be possible that a careless or reckless captain may screw up in commerce raiding and go in too deep against a Q-ship or an overwhelming escort, but that should not affect planning too strongly.

It seems to me that the future CL will be the workhorse of the navy, going everywhere on almost any mission that requires a hyper capable ship, apart from ones that involve heavy combat.

It would be quite rare that these ships will be called upon to fight battles like Monica, Basilisk I or Yeltsin I & II.

That's why I think the emphasis should be on missile defence so it can survive a few system defence pods and engagements with any vessel up to Battlecruiser weight. Either EDM or DDM depending on mass requirements so that they can fight both warships and also shoot down opposing LACs before they can enter range. I think the light cruiser needs enough missile tubes to ensure victory against Pirates and equivalent mass LACs (taking them out while staying out of range). I don't think it needs to cram as many missile tubes as possible - after all it is unlikely to win against a modern BC (such as a Nike or Courvoisier II) anyway and a sensible captain wouldn't try such a suicidal task.

Stealth and Sensor capability will be central to success in almost all of their roles.

They will need a good endurance for long deployments and be able to deploy both small craft and marines (armoured marines).

Gravity waves are also a situation where such a ship can be forced into combat, so the strongest chase graser armament you can fit is called for to address this possibility.



If you keep adding additional combat capability you drive up the price, operating cost, manpower requirement and ultimately drive down the numbers deployed. These types of ships are too fragile to send into serious combat situations. They should not be part of offensive fleets, except for scouting and messenger duties. They should not be raiding deep into enemy systems - once they are past the hyper limit they can easily be mousetrapped by MDM pods (such as pre-deployed system defence pods). To get them to the point where they can perform these roles effectively you will probably need a Nike Class BCL.

Optimise them for the job they are designed for, don't over design them. At most add some limited MDM control capability so they can direct MDM fire from limpet pods or system defence pods etc.



Light combatants before the MDM era could stay out of missile range with their higher acceleration. This is no longer possible, therefore post-MDM light combatants should not attempt to enter heavy MDM combat situations.

BobfromSydney wrote:Delving further into what various requirements would look like:

1. Scouting
Good Sensor Suites
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
High Mobility
Long deployment endurance (ability to function without resupply for extended periods)
Strong Stealth Ability
Anti-MDM defence (against overwhelming salvos the CL should just hyper out)
Anti-LAC capability (the ability to win an engagement against an equal mass of LACs)

That last is probably asking a bit much. The LACs have a much higher percentage of their displacement dedicated to weapons because they don't have to 'pay' for hypergenerators, alpha nodes, supplies for months of cruising, etc. So an equal tonnage of LACs should have a significant advantage in weapons tonnage. Given roughly equal tech levels that give advantage to the LACs.

I don't disagree that the cruiser needs to be capable of defending itself from LACs - just that it's probably no realistic to stand up to an equal tonnage of them.

But, aside from that nitpick, interesting and thoughtful post. I definitely agree that with your approach of defining the desired missions and then looking at the capabilities necessary to accomplish them; while resisting the impulse to keep adding extra capabilities as "nice to haves".

Great, "applause worthy, take a bow" post.

--lotta snips but with a smile -- total agreement with the following:

BobfromSydney wrote:
It seems the discussion has been too 'combat' focused and some discussion does not take the concept of designing vessels to fulfill specific mission requirements into consideration.
...
It seems to me that the future CL will be the workhorse of the navy, going everywhere on almost any mission that requires a hyper capable ship, apart from ones that involve heavy combat.
...
If you keep adding additional combat capability you drive up the price, operating cost, manpower requirement and ultimately drive down the numbers deployed.
...
Optimize them for the job they are designed for, don't over design them. At most add some limited MDM control capability so they can direct MDM fire from limpet pods or system defense pods etc.

Light combatants before the MDM era could stay out of missile range with their higher acceleration. This is no longer possible, therefore post-MDM light combatants should not attempt to enter heavy MDM combat situations.

One add: I'd give the CL- as much DDM/MDM control capability as possible; heck I'd love to give it Medusa-class missile control.

Consider: by itself, ONE Sag-C with an ammo ship loaded with Mark-16's would have likely won every battle up to task group level (outside of a grav wave: aka the action where Helen Zilwicki (sr) won the PMV) in any of the early Honorverse books up to maybe Echoes of Honor, without the Peep ships being able to close to attack range. Look at Rozak's cruisers in T of F:

from the Wikia wrote:Affiliation: Solarian League Navy, Erewhon Navy
Date Introduced: 1921PD
...
Mass: 286,750 tons

Rozak's men and women successfully fought a task group size engagement using two ammo ships to back them up, even though they were sort of "counter ambushed" by the PNE having DDMs.

Picture our notional CL- in action with a convoy delivering LACS and dual use flat-pack pods (system defense or ship- ), getting jumped in-system by a raiding squadron coming in from the hyper limit (like Yeltsin or ToF) from a latter "SLN" break-off, even in the Cataphract age. That's a "must stand" combat situation, but with 400 pods on a freighter, the CL-s own missiles plus the LACs, they'd have a good chance of staying in the game long enough to prevail.

Thoughts?

--snipping, bolding mine--

Jonathan_S wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:Delving further into what various requirements would look like:

1. Scouting
Good Sensor Suites
Ability to deploy, monitor and control sensor drones
High Mobility
Long deployment endurance (ability to function without resupply for extended periods)
Strong Stealth Ability
Anti-MDM defence (against overwhelming salvos the CL should just hyper out)
Anti-LAC capability (the ability to win an engagement against an equal mass of LACs)

That last is probably asking a bit much. The LACs have a much higher percentage of their displacement dedicated to weapons because they don't have to 'pay' for hypergenerators, alpha nodes, supplies for months of cruising, etc. So an equal tonnage of LACs should have a significant advantage in weapons tonnage. Given roughly equal tech levels that give advantage to the LACs.

I don't disagree that the cruiser needs to be capable of defending itself from LACs - just that it's probably no realistic to stand up to an equal tonnage of them.

Disagree, though respectfully. The only reason Minotaur's LAC wings survived was that the PN didn't know they were there, nor their capabilities. So they reached a winnable ambush range in combination with the other forces.

An equivalent weight of LACs would never survive to reach attack range against an alerted RMN cruiser; even a PD1921 Roland-class DD would wipe them from space.