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Can a Roland carry Marines?

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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by kzt   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 2:44 pm

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The ship is enormous, and the description of the ship is the books talked about how one of the main things that made it that way was the added flag bridge. Hence we are not talking about a small space. We are talking about a space designed to handle the full battle staff for a squadron or task force in a sustained combat operation.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 3:50 pm

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kzt wrote:The ship is enormous, and the description of the ship is the books talked about how one of the main things that made it that way was the added flag bridge. Hence we are not talking about a small space. We are talking about a space designed to handle the full battle staff for a squadron or task force in a sustained combat operation.



That would not take up THAT much space. Yes, space for the people there to bunk. However, if you're leading four destroyers, each of whom has its own staff, there are limits in terms of what you can do until you are a mere nuisance.

We tend to forget that there is a pyramid of flag power. Zavala was in charge of four destroyers but answered to Chatterjee who had his own four plus Zavala's,

When the Roland joined Gold Peak's group going back to New Tuscany they were under someone else, and possibly another level before getting to Gold Peak.

Zavala does not need as much staff as Gold Peak.

When Honor went to Grayson for the first time she carried a team of people under Admiral Corvoisier. And those were diplomats.

With a few ships, ships that have their own officers, a large staff might not be necessary.

What would Zavala's logistics officer do since there would be someone on each ship tasked with the job? Well, coordinate. But there are only four people who presumably know what they are doing.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by kzt   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:02 pm

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The flag accommodations are designed, per the text, to make up for the lack of flag accommodations in modern CAs and CLs. So it not to ran a DD section, it’s to run a task force. Last I remember a DD squadron in the RMN was 6 ships anyway.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by munroburton   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:22 pm

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kzt wrote:The flag accommodations are designed, per the text, to make up for the lack of flag accommodations in modern CAs and CLs. So it not to ran a DD section, it’s to run a task force. Last I remember a DD squadron in the RMN was 6 ships anyway.


The RMN retained Janacek's 6-ship squadrons for the most part, but the forces sent to Talbott appear to be restored to the 8-ship squadron arrangements.

As for the flag decks - I'm not sure they'd be quite up to task force capability. Task groups, possibly. What does HoS say?

The RMN had been caught short of suitable flagships for cruiser and destroyer service during the First Havenite War, and the Rolands were one attempt to address that shortage. Every member of the class was fitted with extensive command and control capability and, in essence, each can operate as the flagship of a destroyer squadron.


I do not believe this refers to the heavy cruiser flagship issue. That particular problem arose because the RMN built 25 Crusaders and 175 Prince Consorts, the latter with no flag decks at all.

I believe they took a similar approach with their light cruisers and destroyers - the RMN failed to build enough flagship variants within each class. Rather than all the calculations required to work out the proper flagship-to-ships ratio and worrying about whether every squadron has at least one flagship assigned, they went ahead and put a squadron level flag deck on every modern ship larger than a light cruiser(which the Roland is).

Also:
Additional advances in automation reduced the personnel and space required to build the same command and control capability into follow-on ships. With the Star Knight and Saganami classes and their variants being built in large numbers, the need for a class of lightly armed dedicated flagships was dwindling. Almost the entire class had been relegated to the Reserve by the time of Operation Buttercup, and [the Crusader] was finally scrapped during the Janacek build-down.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 7:48 pm

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munroburton wrote:The RMN retained Janacek's 6-ship squadrons for the most part, but the forces sent to Talbott appear to be restored to the 8-ship squadron arrangements.

As for the flag decks - I'm not sure they'd be quite up to task force capability. Task groups, possibly. What does HoS say?
For some reason I thought it was just the wallers that we’re 8 (and now 6) ship squadrons; that as you got lighter there were progressively more ships per squadron...
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by olddatsunfan   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 7:54 pm

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Well, with 60 odd crew, that's probably less than 20 officers and men per watch ... As for the destroyer unit organization, they seem to have Rolands in 8 ship squadrons divided into 2 x 4 ship divisions, one with division command staff and the squadron/division command staff for the other. If the command staff is say the senior officer, 5 specialty staff officers or warrant officers, and say a few enlisted, that's 9 extra people there. That would put the crew size of the "flagship" at over 70 people.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by saber964   » Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:19 pm

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Chatergee was most likely being sent out early to get the lay of the land. He was probably going to be CO of a Destroyer flotilla when the rest came forward. Much like Henke was sent forward in command of a BatCruRon. But was slated to become Tenth Fleet CO at a later date when the rest of her command arrived. I can also see Scotty being promoted in the very near future to CO CruRon 96 when the rest of his probable command arrives.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by munroburton   » Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:55 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:For some reason I thought it was just the wallers that we’re 8 (and now 6) ship squadrons; that as you got lighter there were progressively more ships per squadron...


True, you somehow reminded me of this pearl: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/59/1

I would highlight the note at the bottom, which explains that the RMN doesn't necessarily have an overlap between tactical and administrative units.

The Pearl is reconfirmed in HoS:
Squadrons in the RMN are permanent administrative units, not necessarily tactical units, although there is a distinct tendency for squadrons of cruisers and larger warships to be kept together as much as possible. Thus a Destroyer Squadron might consist of sixteen destroyers operating in four separate divisions of four ships each, deployed light-years apart on an as-needed basis. The fact that light units routinely need to be detached as escorts, scouts, couriers, etc., helps to explain why their unit organization is so much more flexible than that for larger units, which are not so likely to be detached.

Cruisers fall into a special category as the medium combatant jack-of-all-trades. Cruisers very seldom operate as complete squadrons unless assigned to a task force or fleet organization, and, even there, the task force or fleet commanding officer has a distinct incentive to detach individual heavy cruisers or divisions of light cruisers for all sorts of tasks.

Prior to 1902 PD, both heavy cruisers and battlecruisers were organized more according to their mission than their type. The two most common squadron sizes are eight-ship squadrons integrated into the screen and twelve-ship squadrons tasked for independent operations, though recent years have seen frequent changes in these sizes, often to match the smaller battle squadrons.

Ships of the wall have historically been organized into eight-ship battle squadrons, a practice which was phased out in favor of a six-ship squadron during the Janacek Admiralty as a largely political maneuver, though (unlike most Janacek “reforms”) the practice has been maintained due to the increased tactical flexibility the smaller squadrons offer.


So a Roland's flag capabilities are designed for a destroyer squadron containing up to sixteen ships.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by JohnRoth   » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:40 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:For some reason I thought it was just the wallers that we’re 8 (and now 6) ship squadrons; that as you got lighter there were progressively more ships per squadron...


munroburton wrote:True, you somehow reminded me of this pearl: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/59/1

I would highlight the note at the bottom, which explains that the RMN doesn't necessarily have an overlap between tactical and administrative units.

The Pearl is reconfirmed in HoS:
Squadrons in the RMN are permanent administrative units, not necessarily tactical units, although there is a distinct tendency for squadrons of cruisers and larger warships to be kept together as much as possible. Thus a Destroyer Squadron might consist of sixteen destroyers operating in four separate divisions of four ships each, deployed light-years apart on an as-needed basis. The fact that light units routinely need to be detached as escorts, scouts, couriers, etc., helps to explain why their unit organization is so much more flexible than that for larger units, which are not so likely to be detached.

Cruisers fall into a special category as the medium combatant jack-of-all-trades. Cruisers very seldom operate as complete squadrons unless assigned to a task force or fleet organization, and, even there, the task force or fleet commanding officer has a distinct incentive to detach individual heavy cruisers or divisions of light cruisers for all sorts of tasks.

Prior to 1902 PD, both heavy cruisers and battlecruisers were organized more according to their mission than their type. The two most common squadron sizes are eight-ship squadrons integrated into the screen and twelve-ship squadrons tasked for independent operations, though recent years have seen frequent changes in these sizes, often to match the smaller battle squadrons.

Ships of the wall have historically been organized into eight-ship battle squadrons, a practice which was phased out in favor of a six-ship squadron during the Janacek Admiralty as a largely political maneuver, though (unlike most Janacek “reforms”) the practice has been maintained due to the increased tactical flexibility the smaller squadrons offer.


So a Roland's flag capabilities are designed for a destroyer squadron containing up to sixteen ships.


As well as to serve as a flagship for cruiser squadrons; most cruiser types don't have their own flag decks. That may be administratively messy since the commodore or rear admiral might not really want to have cis flag on a destroyer.
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Re: Can a Roland carry Marines?
Post by WLBjork   » Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:32 am

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JohnRoth wrote:As well as to serve as a flagship for cruiser squadrons; most cruiser types don't have their own flag decks. That may be administratively messy since the commodore or rear admiral might not really want to have cis flag on a destroyer.


Light cruisers, yes. However, textev was clear that all Star Knights were also built as flagships due to the mess with the Crusader/Prince Consort programme.

Whether that extended to the Saganami's, I can't recall, though I'd expect those to be as well.
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