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Upcoming surplus of junior officers

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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Tim   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:10 pm

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ldwechsler wrote:
n7axw wrote:As I understood the deal at the end of ART, the Republic was going to be building warships for Manticore. That was one of the things that sending the r&d staff to bolthole was all about. If that is the case the RMN will continue to expand and will continue to experience shortages of commissioned officers, particularly after the hole that the first BOM annd Oyster Bay tore into both her enlisted and commissioned ranks.

What was specifically mentioned was building wallers in Haven yards and sending them to Manticore to install keyhole built in Beowulf. I hope we also see new hulls in the lighter classes.

Don

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It still doesn't add up. If thousands of middies are added to the fleet each year you need the vacancies. Manticore, which also trains Grayson cadets, has classes of 11,000 as of Ashes of Victory. Add to that Haven's trainees and you have a real lot of slots open.

Can they build ships THAT fast? You would need close to a thousand ships a year to handle that number of middies on their 'snottie' cruise. And, of course, after that as ensigns.

That would mean that each year they were producing as many ships as Manticore had at the Battle of Manticore. Each year.

Now granted that the LACs will take a very high percentage of the number, the problem in peacetime would become whether or not the shipbuilding nations would continue to build at that rate.

And, yes, a lot of the middies will serve a term and leave but I would guess they might go into the merchant marine, etc.

It is hard to get the people to support shipbuilding in peacetime. I know that the Conservative-Liberal coalition kept an Emergency going for the purpose of raising taxes but I would guess that might be harder in time of peace.




All of those highly educated middies are still in short supply. For quite some time there will not be enough junior officers to meet all the needs the GA has, especially Manticore.

Why? Let me count the ways. :)

1 Manning the Fleet. This point has been fairly well covered.

2 Manning the tech and training schools in the Talbert Cluster. A major program to integrating the cluster into the star empire is to improve the tech base and educational system. This project all by it self will swallow any excess to needs middies.

3 Manning an eyes and ears program to watch the Silsia officials mend their ways. There is nothing less threatening to those officials then a little midshipmen running back and forth learning to be an officer.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:21 pm

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Silverwall wrote:This also is assuming that the fleet is not currently badly in deficit for junior officers.

Given the losses in the Battle of Manticore and Oyster Bay coupled with the relentless expansion of the LAC force I would not be at all suprised if there isn't a major deficit of officers currently in the RMN, especially in the LT/Senior LT range which will have sucked up the recent ensigns from previous graduating cohorts.

A lot of those officers were lost WITH their ships. I don't think that there was that much construction to make it an extreme shortage.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:24 pm

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Tim wrote:

All of those highly educated middies are still in short supply. For quite some time there will not be enough junior officers to meet all the needs the GA has, especially Manticore.

Why? Let me count the ways. :)

1 Manning the Fleet. This point has been fairly well covered.

2 Manning the tech and training schools in the Talbert Cluster. A major program to integrating the cluster into the star empire is to improve the tech base and educational system. This project all by it self will swallow any excess to needs middies.

3 Manning an eyes and ears program to watch the Silsia officials mend their ways. There is nothing less threatening to those officials then a little midshipmen running back and forth learning to be an officer.



I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not but I don't think that anyone is talking about sending the middies to do the tasks you described. They are send to the fleet and more experienced officers are taken from the fleet to man those positions.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Silverwall   » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:47 pm

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Sigs wrote:
Silverwall wrote:This also is assuming that the fleet is not currently badly in deficit for junior officers.

Given the losses in the Battle of Manticore and Oyster Bay coupled with the relentless expansion of the LAC force I would not be at all suprised if there isn't a major deficit of officers currently in the RMN, especially in the LT/Senior LT range which will have sucked up the recent ensigns from previous graduating cohorts.

A lot of those officers were lost WITH their ships. I don't think that there was that much construction to make it an extreme shortage.


I am fairly sure the lost ships and crews were planned to man the approx 200+ python lump of wallers that were under construction so yes loosing that many officers (and enlisted) will have put a massive crimp in the manning schedule. I am sure the original plan was to use the python lump wallers to allow them to mothball the old SD's that were instead lost in BoM.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Sigs   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 2:08 am

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Silverwall wrote:
I am fairly sure the lost ships and crews were planned to man the approx 200+ python lump of wallers that were under construction so yes loosing that many officers (and enlisted) will have put a massive crimp in the manning schedule. I am sure the original plan was to use the python lump wallers to allow them to mothball the old SD's that were instead lost in BoM.


They also lost the ships they were supposed to man... right? The BoM cost the RMN a lot of Manpower and ships while OB cost the RMN a lot of manpower and ships. What the RMN already has build it crewed and what ships built in Bolthole are going to be Keyhole equipped which means that they would have to be split between the RMN, GSN and the RHN with the lions share going to the RHN until they can field a large enough force of them. So there would not be that much of a crunch for crews in the immediate future.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:29 pm

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pappilon wrote:I think the junior officer question, specifically the next 3 classes of Graduates from Saganami Island have no NEW ships to be assigned to. One flight left the slips just prior to OB/Yawata Strike. All the ones just laid dowm and all the ones docked for repairs wee destroyed. While that leaves need for replacement officers and enlisted, we have the issue of hulls not being in the pipeline for these shiny new kids to serve on.

Yes they will be needed, yes probably more than they can scrape together will be needed. Which does not solve the problem of what to do with tomorrow's officers today. Which are the next 3 classes from SI.

IIRC about Haven ships + keyhole: Since for the near future all ships will be coming from Haven and all keyhole platforms are being fabricated on Beowulf, all ships coming out of the yards at Bolthole will be sent to Beowulf for Keyhole and other equipment installations. which would be a good place to put those young graduates

If this year's graduating class isn't any bigger than last year's you don't normally need lots of new hulls for them. Last year's graduates will have completed their snotty cruise and been reassigned, freeing up the snotty rows for this year's class.

From the standpoint of rising graduates the problem with Oyster Bay is less that the yards aren't there to build new construction as that so much more existing construction was lost (and with it the existing slots for the snotty cruise). The Python lump, completed just before OB, might not have created as many slots for snotties as were lost in Thunderbolt + Battle of Manticore + Oyster Bay so there might be a short term shortage of ship berths to assign them to.

But normally you don't need to build enough ships to provide 10,000 new bunks in snotty rows for each year's 10,000 person Sag Island class.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by n7axw   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 4:06 pm

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Sigs wrote:
n7axw wrote:As I understood the deal at the end of ART, the Republic was going to be building warships for Manticore. That was one of the things that sending the r&d staff to bolthole was all about. If that is the case the RMN will continue to expand and will continue to experience shortages of commissioned officers, particularly after the hole that the first BOM annd Oyster Bay tore into both her enlisted and commissioned ranks.

What was specifically mentioned was building wallers in Haven yards and sending them to Manticore to install keyhole built in Beowulf. I hope we also see new hulls in the lighter classes.

Don

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Yeah but many of the Keyhole wallers will be going to the RHN. I doubt that they would try to keep the Keyhole platforms concentrated in the RMN and the GSN.


Right, but so what? Haven's capacity to provide new hulls is huge. Manticore will be getting only a portion of those hulls. Perhaps not as many as prior to OB, but probably enough to absorb the bulk of the personnel available until her own yards have been rebuilt. Then too, remember that Manticore's perennial problem has been a shortfall of personnel, not a surplus, although recruits from Silesia and Talbot might turn that around.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by kzt   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 4:12 pm

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A ship built by Haven is not going to be just like a ship built by Manticore. It’s like the USN getting give a bunch or Kiev class cruisers. It might be a great ship, but it doesn’t work like any other USN vessel. There will some period, possibly extensive, where you learn how it works and how to maintain it.
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by Tim   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 4:33 pm

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Sigs wrote:
Tim wrote:

All of those highly educated middies are still in short supply. For quite some time there will not be enough junior officers to meet all the needs the GA has, especially Manticore.

Why? Let me count the ways. :)

1 Manning the Fleet. This point has been fairly well covered.

2 Manning the tech and training schools in the Talbert Cluster. A major program to integrating the cluster into the star empire is to improve the tech base and educational system. This project all by it self will swallow any excess to needs middies.

3 Manning an eyes and ears program to watch the Silsia officials mend their ways. There is nothing less threatening to those officials then a little midshipmen running back and forth learning to be an officer.



I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not but I don't think that anyone is talking about sending the middies to do the tasks you described. They are send to the fleet and more experienced officers are taken from the fleet to man those positions.


All three of those option would provide middies experience. The training officer would have a lot of information available to him or her to determine their suitability as an officer.

Remember not all officers are destined for daring do and glory. A lot of officers manage logistics and train aspiring spacemen.

Option 2 and 3 would also give you a leg up on identifying those middies with a flair for unorthodox and out of the box thinking not directly tactically based. Identifying those out of the box thinker and quickly bringing them along is well worth any downside.

Oh and by the way was not a sarcastic post. :) My sarcastic posts usually start something like, Please.........
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Re: Upcoming surplus of junior officers
Post by zyffyr   » Tue Oct 10, 2017 8:26 pm

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pappilon wrote:Valid or invalid assumptions: (1) Whomever is running Saganami Island does not have the common sense to contact Admiral Cortez and find out how many brand spanking new middies he will be needing. (2) has not the brains or authority to slow the academic load to its original level thus stretching out the time of deployment. (3) A while shipyard of new construction got sent to Tevor's star for workup just before OB/Yawata Strike. That will take up some of those slots. (4) None of the next flight of construction from Haven can/will be sold to Manticore and Grayson. (5)Snotty cruises MUST be taken immediately following graduation. No reason they can't be used to make the installations of Keyhole platforms, work crews building the new orbitals, etc. then when nslots are available, make their cruise and start climbing their career ladders.

I realize it will slow them down but if they can't take a joke they should never have enlisted.


Assumption #5 is pretty valid - we have explicit textev (somewhere in Shadows of Saganami, iirc) that the snotty cruise determines whether or not the individual actually receives a commission. Until they do the cruise, they don't have a proper place in the rank structure.
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