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RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)

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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:10 pm

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Theemile wrote:And it was stated that there were no war losses of either class.


Could you indicate where was that stated ? Thank you.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:25 pm

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Theemile wrote:
The Haven's are specifically a different class, as mentioned in the RMN area. And it was stated that there were no war losses of either class.


The HoS states about Haven-class SDs: "the last were sold to Grayson along with the Duquesnes." So probably 14 Duquesnes and 3 Havens or 15 Duquesnes and Havens were sold in 1917.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:26 pm

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Hegemon wrote:
Theemile wrote:
The Haven's are specifically a different class, as mentioned in the RMN area. And it was stated that there were no war losses of either class.


The HoS states about Haven-class SDs: "the last were sold to Grayson along with the Duquesnes." So probably 14 Duquesnes and 3 Havens or 15 Duquesnes and Havens were sold in 1917.


15 Duquesnes and 2 Havens
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Sun Jan 07, 2018 10:05 pm

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Hegemon wrote:
Theemile wrote:And it was stated that there were no war losses of either class.


Could you indicate where was that stated ? Thank you.


Well, it seems I am rememberiing wrong, The Havens and the Neuvo Paris never were in combat. As for the Duquesnes:

Along with the handful of captured dreadnoughts and smaller classes, these ships provided rear area security for a number of Alliance systems during the early stages of the war, but were relegated to mothballs as their crews were needed to man the new construction, while the ships in best condition were all sold at scrap value to Grayson in early 1917.


We found a number of mistakes with HoS early on, it seems no one noticed that the Havens never made it to the Grayson side. the Havens are >600 Ktons larger than the Dusquesnes, I doubt they would be rolled together.
Last edited by Theemile on Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:29 am

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Hegemon wrote:E) The inconsistency between the build rate of Alliance DNs and SDs (5 in 1905, 18 in 1806-1807, than 48-60 a year from 1908 according to High Admiral Wesley Matthews in Flag in Exile), the total number of wallers built by Grayson (25-27 SDs and 10 SD(P)s) between 1908 and 1913, and the number of Bellerophon-class DNs (23) and Gryphon-class SDs (127) built by Manticore between 1905 and 1913 according to House of Steel.

At the start of the war, RMN had in service (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/105/1) :
- 186 SDs, of which 1 Manticore-class, 7 Samothrace-class, 25 King William-class, 14 Anduril-class, 36 Victory-class, 67 Sphinx-class and the rest of 36 Gryphon-class
- 121 DNs, of which 11 Ad Astra-class, 21 Royal Winton-class, 34 Gladiator-class, 40 Majestic-class and the rest of 15 Bellerophon-class
- The remainder of 163 - 36 = 127 Gryphon-class SDs and 38 - 15 = 23 Bellerophon-class DNs were built during the war, as follows:
- According to High Admiral Wesley Matthews in Flag in Exile, 5 wallers were commissioned by RMN in 1905 ("They also added thirty-one capital ships [of which] five more from new construction.") and 18 new ones were commissioning in 1806-1807 ("They had eighteen of the wall under construction in the Star Kingdom itself from prewar programs; those units are now proceeding on a crash priority basis to commission over the next six months, and their new war program will start delivering additional units within ten months.")
- This leaves 127 + 23 - 5 - 18 = 127 DNs and SDs built by Manticore between 1808 and 1813*, and 22-25 SDs and 10 SD(P)s built by the Graysons in the same six years. Even adding the Solarian DNs bought and upgraded by Erewhon (let us say 5 DNs a year), this would mean that the Alliance as a whole built no more than 192 wallers between 1808 and 1813, or 32 wallers a year.
- However, High Admiral Wesley Matthews projects the Alliance would build 48-60 wallers a year starting from 1908 ("Second, the Alliance will get its industry fully cranked up. (...) Once we hit our stride, we'll be turning out four or five of the wall a month.")

* The first RMN SD(P) commissioned only in middle or late 1914
** The RMN, GSN and EN were the only Alliance Navies that had wallers.



Your last point is the major Error of this analysis. There was a fourth waller contributor, Talbot, the Star between Manticore and HaVenite Space. In one of the build counts, it was mentioned that it and the RMn Grendlesbane yard were adding to the waller count.

When trying to determine Manticore's construction capabilities after Oyster Bay, David told us that Talbot had mothballed their yard by the second war, and upset by Manticore's treatment of them in not sharring podlayer and other advanced technologies, as well as Haven's poisioning the well due to the diplomatic situation, Talbot stood neutral for the 2nd war.

So, in short, Talbot was a 1st war ally of Manticore, had a 1905 tech Waller build yard AND wallers in the first war and stood neutral in the second war. what their build rate, the number built, and the design of theor ships is unknown, other than they never got any advanced manty tech.

Next, you mentioned ships Completed during the first war. 35 Invictus class SD(p)s at Manticore, and 94 SD(p)s and CLACs at Grendlesbane were mothballed when over 60% complete. In addition, Grayson continued completing their wartime construction, having 115 in service by march 1920. Most of this construction work was complete during the 1st war, and completed later. remember, at the beginning of the series, the RMN took 36 -40 months to complete a SD, and at the Time of OB, they still took 22 months to build an SD(p). so literally, years of work is in the pipeline at any time, even though it is not "built", and any ramping up of construction capability is not seen for, sometimes, years.

In addition, you have not mentioned CLAC construction, which essentially replaced DN construction ( I believe the first RMN CLAC was purposefully limited to DN size in order to take advantage of the underutilized DN build slips after DN construction ceased. This allowed such massive prototype construction, without too much discussion of siphoning off SD resources.) 67 were laid down in the period you suggest, which could have been 67 Bellerophons.

After getting HoS and disecting it, we found several important points (and validated them with the authors) about the data, that is not mentioned in the book.

1) HoS is not dated co-terminus with the oyster Bay attack as many thought, but May 1st, 1921. Meaning there was ~9 additional months of construction not represented by this book.

2) The build numbers only represent ships accepted into service by a particuliar navy, not numbers built or under construction. Many light ships were built directly for Manticorian allies and are not represented here.(Grayson had 24 ships built in Manticore that were never in the RMN TOE.) Other times ships were so flawed they did not pass builders trials. Others, like Grendlesbane's, were destroyed in the stocks and hense were never completed, let alone accepted into service, despite the work and material they represented.

3) The stats shown are the most recent rebuilds of the class, not their original armaments, nor what they originally looked like.

4) the top acceleration stated, oddly enough, was their acceleration as designed, not as built, nor current acceleration.

There is an errata page for HoS online, but >50% of the errors we found never made it there.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Tue Jan 09, 2018 2:53 am

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Theemile wrote:We found a number of mistakes with HoS early on, it seems no one noticed that the Havens never made it to the Grayson side. the Havens are >600 Ktons larger than the Dusquesnes, I doubt they would be rolled together.


I don't know. Maybe GSN decided designing a new religious sounding name for a class of 2-3 old SDs was not worth it !
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Hegemon   » Tue Jan 09, 2018 2:54 am

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Theemile wrote: Your last point is the major Error of this analysis. There was a fourth waller contributor, Talbot, the Star between Manticore and HaVenite Space. In one of the build counts, it was mentioned that it and the RMn Grendlesbane yard were adding to the waller count.

When trying to determine Manticore's construction capabilities after Oyster Bay, David told us that Talbot had mothballed their yard by the second war, and upset by Manticore's treatment of them in not sharring podlayer and other advanced technologies, as well as Haven's poisioning the well due to the diplomatic situation, Talbot stood neutral for the 2nd war.

So, in short, Talbot was a 1st war ally of Manticore, had a 1905 tech Waller build yard AND wallers in the first war and stood neutral in the second war. what their build rate, the number built, and the design of theor ships is unknown, other than they never got any advanced manty tech.


You know, until you brought it up, I never realized that Talbot System (with one 't') was an independent polity ! There is barely any mention of it in the novels, and even the tidbits present would suggest it was another repair base like Grendelsbane, whose build capacity was tapped during the war to build wallers. So I searched to see how could I have missed that and here is what I found:
- SVW: The map indeed shows Talbot as an independent polity.
- SVW: "They've hit us—or prodded us, at least—all the way from Minorca to Grendelsbane, but aside from Yeltsin, they haven't hit any of our nodal fleet stations like Hancock, Reevesport, or Talbot.". We know that Hancock is an unoccupied system and Reevesport seems the same, so I wrongly concluded that Talbot was the same.
- SVW: Talbot was where Rear Admiral Edward Pierre's planned ambush resulted instead in the destruction of his four Sultan-class BCs.
- SVW: "The Poicters System was hardly crucial in military terms. The powerful base built at Talbot had reduced Poicters to little more than a flank guard for the task force stationed there". The text gives the impression it is just a RMN base.
- FiE: "Our own yards will complete our first home-built SD about the same time, and the Manty yards in Grendelsbane and Talbot will do the same." Again, no indication of an independent polity, and every suggestion of 'just' another manty base.

Now, there are several factors that would suggest that the Talbot Navy wall of battle is significantly smaller then either GSN or ESN:
- The 8th Fleet (apparently the most mixed Alliance formation) consists of: 26 RMN SDs, 8 GSN SDs, 3 GSN SD(P)s and 12 ESN DNs in 1913. No mention is made of any Talbot wallers, so either their Government decided to keep their wallers home, or some of their wallers are with other Alliance Task Forces, or they do not have enough wallers to afford sending some to the 8th Fleet. The third case is probably true.
- In AoV, Secretary McQueen says: "Raids on places like Zanzibar and Alizon may have profound morale effects, but they don't really hurt the Manties' physical war-fighting capability very much, and now that they realize we're on the offensive, the systems where we really could hurt them, like Manticore, Grayson, Erewhon, and Grendlesbane, are far too heavily protected for us to break into without taking prohibitive losses." Manticore, Grayson, Erewhon, and Grendlesbane just happen to be the systems where the Alliance gets its "physical war-fighting capability" aka. mainly wallers, but also the bulk of the other warships. Again, there is no mention of Talbot System as capable of generating much "physical war-fighting capability".

So even if in those six years they managed to two dozen wallers (which is generous), that would mean an addition of wallers 4 per year (from 32 to 36 a year).

Theemile wrote:Next, you mentioned ships Completed during the first war. 35 Invictus class SD(p)s at Manticore, and 94 SD(p)s and CLACs at Grendlesbane were mothballed when over 60% complete. In addition, Grayson continued completing their wartime construction, having 115 in service by march 1920. Most of this construction work was complete during the 1st war, and completed later. remember, at the beginning of the series, the RMN took 36 -40 months to complete a SD, and at the Time of OB, they still took 22 months to build an SD(p). so literally, years of work is in the pipeline at any time, even though it is not "built", and any ramping up of construction capability is not seen for, sometimes, years.


I specifically said I analyzed wallers entering service in the mid-war period interval 1908-1913 (which corresponds to the 1906-1911 of ships started). After that, there was a huge wave of construction that started coming into service in 1914, but most of it should have entered service in 1915 and some even in 1916: "According to Trikoupis' latest classified briefing on the subject, the Navy had close to two hundred new ships of the wall under construction simultaneously. At roughly thirty-five billion a pop, that came to the tidy sum of seven trillion Manticoran dollars, and that was an enormous bite out of anyone's budget. Nor did it include the price tag on all the escorts those ships would require, or the new carriers". That huge wave would have skewered the average for the mid-war construction, so I did not analyze anything about 1914 and afterwards. Remember, High Admiral Wesley Matthews could not have predicted that allies will have the capacity and political will to make a supreme effort to win the war (while the conquest of Trevor's Star and the new ship automation will free the needed personnel) starting in 1912, with the first ships delivered in 1914. He was discussing the immediate future, and he predicted 48-60 SDs and DNs (and also CLACs as you correctly pointed out) entering service each year starting in 1908, which did not seem to be borne out by my most generous estimations.

Theemile wrote:In addition, you have not mentioned CLAC construction, which essentially replaced DN construction ( I believe the first RMN CLAC was purposefully limited to DN size in order to take advantage of the underutilized DN build slips after DN construction ceased. This allowed such massive prototype construction, without too much discussion of siphoning off SD resources.) 67 were laid down in the period you suggest, which could have been 67 Bellerophons.

You are correct that I have ignored CLAC construction, but most of those 67 CLACs were delivered in 1914 or later. Indeed of the 67 CLACs, 18 RMN Minotaurs were delivered in 1912-1914 (I remember reading that the second ship of that class was delivered more than a year after the lead ship), 6 GSN Minotaurs delivered in 1914, 24 Hydras delivered in 1914-1915 and 19 Hydras to be delivered 1915 but destroyed at Grendlesbane. So even including those 18 Minotaurs along with ,say, 24 Talbot wallers in the six years I discussed, the average would go up from 32 to 39 a year, still pretty short of 48-60 a year. Remember, out of 39 a year, 21 are RMN SDs and DNs, 3 are RMN CLACs, 6 are GSN SDs and SD(P)s, 5 are ESN modernized Solarian DNs and 4 are Talbot wallers,

Theemile wrote:After getting HoS and disecting it, we found several important points (and validated them with the authors) about the data, that is not mentioned in the book.

1) HoS is not dated co-terminus with the oyster Bay attack as many thought, but May 1st, 1921. Meaning there was ~9 additional months of construction not represented by this book.


I knew that HoS was in May 1921.

Thank you for taking time to respond.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by kzt   » Tue Jan 09, 2018 3:41 am

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Hegemon wrote:You know, until you brought it up, I never realized that Talbot System (with one 't') was an independent polity ! There is barely any mention of it in the novels, and even the tidbits present would suggest it was another repair base like Grendelsbane, whose build capacity was tapped during the war to build wallers. So I searched to see how could I have missed that and here is what I found:

I'm pretty sure David forgot about it too until we reminded him.
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:40 am

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kzt wrote:
Hegemon wrote:You know, until you brought it up, I never realized that Talbot System (with one 't') was an independent polity ! There is barely any mention of it in the novels, and even the tidbits present would suggest it was another repair base like Grendelsbane, whose build capacity was tapped during the war to build wallers. So I searched to see how could I have missed that and here is what I found:

I'm pretty sure David forgot about it too until we reminded him.


Definitely the feeling I got too. Remember, he first responded with a description that Talbott (the cluster) was so far behind technologically that they had nothing to add. Then when we defined our question further, the answer came out as a version of "oh snap, I forgot about that one..."
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: RMN SD numbers (built, sold and lost in Thunderbolt)
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jan 09, 2018 12:08 pm

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2 More factors that alter the mathematics of contruction:

1) most of the "Buttercup" construction (as we've been calling it) was built in Grayson style yards. Instead of the "hard" Manticorian style with slips and the like, the Graysons just hauled the needed parts out to point x and started bolting stuff together. It alloewd a huge increase in shipbuilding in Manticore durng buttercup and the 2nd war construction because Manticore wasn't limited to the # of build slips.

2) Fleet maintenance and repair. Normally, the RMN has 15% of it's navy in refit at any time. During the first 2+ years of the war (up until the fall of Trevor's Star really) Manticore let maintenance levels drop and had less than 5 % of the fleet in maintenance at any time. It's normal caring for it's ships allowed the fleet to continue it's operational tempo with more ships than usual for longer than the Havenites could. Unfortunately, this meant that ships were repaired sloppily in the field, suffered small maintenance issues growing to huge engineering issues, and a force with various levels of upgrades at a time where new technology was available every month.

After Trevor's star, 25% of the fleet was under the knife for the next ~1.5 -2 years to catch up with maintenance. This drop in available ships allowed McQueen's counterattacks.

So for the first part of the war, more slips were available for construction, and I doubt many were allowed to sit long. After Trevor's star, every available slip was required to repair the existing ships, freed construction resources were probably used to rush maintenance of the fleet, so production would have dropped during this period in lieu of maintaining the current fleet.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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