Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Relax wrote:Duckk: Deleted for trolling/flaming. Warning issued for infraction.

Aw common. Anyone who actually postulates going to geostationairy orbit at 22,000+ miles verses stripping the med gear for groundside hospitals with at most a couple hundred mile ambulance transport distance needs to have their buns flamed. Not to mention the financial implications of how expensive to operate a hospital in space is compared to groundside where all the population is.

A hospital is a very basic structure. The tools and machines are all easily moveable. What is more important is the knowledge base. If someone was postulating co-opting the SLN doctors that might make sense. But co-opting thousands of personnel to operate a hospital requiring more personnel than a groundside hospital(who will only do it so they can get paid) that is also far more distant to get to and costs more per bed by a gigantic amount?

kzt wrote:What could possibly go wrong with a plan to place SDs in orbit around all the talbott planets, manned by SLN personnel? It's not like the SLN people you are recruiting might know how to employ a 6 million ton warship as a warship, right?

Bad action movie plots aside, I doubt ships cooks are going to stage a break-out in a stolen SD.

It would be a little irresponsible to turn tactical officers and missile techs loose in a fully functional warship.

It should be obvious that the personnel to be recruited would be cooks, environmental techs, electricians, machinist mates, and all the other enlisted non-combat ratings who keep the ship livable.

It should also be obvious that some TQ/SEM security force would have to be included at least in the beginning.

If the idea of an enemy warship in the high orbitals, you can spend the money and effort to truly "de-mil" the ships instead of just pulling the circuit breakers on the energy weapons and off-loading the missiles. Personally, I consider that an unnecessary expense -- just disable the offensive and defensive systems and only parole troops who wouldn't know how to use them effectively in the first place.

wholf359 wrote:Honestly I always thought they would make good training ships for the Marines. Practice in search and rescue and in securing SLN SD's that have surrendered. It seems like after all that there will be many times in the future that the Royal Marines will be boarding similar ships in the future.

This too.

I would expect that the remains of Adm Filareta's fleet might be more useful in this role as the RMMC's training establishment(s) are in the Old Kingdom where Filareta's ship are.

However, Army and Marine service is expected to be the first use of Talboters in the SEM military and those Talboter formations could use at least familiarization with boarding actions.

namelessfly wrote:The captured SLN SDs are crap by GA standards but they will kick the crap out of SLN ships, pirates or probable independent SDFs that might attack. As missile production comes on line, you can gift them missile pods.

This is a case where the argument that the SEM has more modern ships in mothballs is a good argument. If you're going to give obsolete warships to new allies, why not give them ships that can defeat the immediate threat?

RFC has said the captured ships are useless as warships. That applies to giving them away to breakaway shell or verge systems (or to Torch) because they are too manpower intensive and expensive to operate as warships.

For years before computers and computer simulators, the military used the old equipment to train personal. The trainee's would be used to maintain the ships and vehicles. Nothing like on the job training. In the beginning of WW2, the US had soldiers learning to shoot holding broomsticks with nails for iron sites. They did not have enough rifles to go around!

n7axw wrote:Actually, I think Weird Harold has offered a plan that could conceivably be implemented. The actual cost-benefit analysis would have to be situational. What would perhaps be redundant in systems like Montana or Rembrandt could turn out very beneficial in systems like Dresden or Nuncio, for example.

Thank you.

I have been thinking mostly in terms of Dresden and Nuncio and excluding Montana, Rembrandt and the other more modern systems, but I made that point several pages back so it got mostly ignored.

KNick wrote:Actually, he has advanced a couple of newish ideas. Both the medical and educational suggestions he made have merit. My objection to either proposal is leaving them aboard ship and using SLN personnel to man those ships.

AS I've tried to point out, everything works where it is without any need for specialty cables or power adapters.

Why introduce more cost into a project conceived to reduce expenditures?

As for SLN POWs as crew, see above re: cooks retaking a ship single-handedly.

Relax wrote:Aw common. Anyone who actually postulates going to geostationairy orbit at 22,000+ miles

Don't put words into my mouth.

I have never specified orbital details because I thought it would be obvious that I was talking about "LEO" distances.

So, for the record: Putting ships used as trauma centers or hosting "commuter-students" should be in the lowest orbits consistent with economical station keeping.

Weird Harold wrote:It would be a little irresponsible to turn tactical officers and missile techs loose in a fully functional warship.

It should be obvious that the personnel to be recruited would be cooks, environmental techs, electricians, machinist mates, and all the other enlisted non-combat ratings who keep the ship livable.

It should also be obvious that some TQ/SEM security force would have to be included at least in the beginning.

If the idea of an enemy warship in the high orbitals, you can spend the money and effort to truly "de-mil" the ships instead of just pulling the circuit breakers on the energy weapons and off-loading the missiles. Personally, I consider that an unnecessary expense -- just disable the offensive and defensive systems and only parole troops who wouldn't know how to use them effectively in the first place.

No, you can't really demill it. Without an SD capable shipyard, which they don't have. You could remove parts, but I seem to remember you wanted them to be fabricating stuff, so they can build spare parts...

In order to make your plan work, you'd need pretty much every single crewman to volunteer once you eliminate the weapons crews, marines, tactical section, weapon techs, etc from eligibility. Not to mention that 10%+ of the crew are officers.

This also assumes you can screen these effectively, which seems doubtful.

smr wrote:For years before computers and computer simulators, the military used the old equipment to train personal. The trainee's would be used to maintain the ships and vehicles.

That is true, but I'm NOT advocating "military training." I'm advocating using obsolete military hardware to augment basic literacy/space operations education.

Leaving the equipment aboard ship means some "space operations" oriented material is mandatory if only for emergency procedures. It would be wasteful to exclude other space based course tracks when the school is in space.