Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

Given the Senior Staff aboard, and various probable "diplomatic" missions, SDs are going to need Marines if for nothing more than ship security and possible shore patrol. So, some Marines but not a battalion.....and the Marines not required (as per Naval Regulations) the rest can be attached to other ships as needed.

My recollection -from early in the series- is that Marines were assigned to various weapons mounts at action stations. Clearly, with the advances in automation we are told of, the need for that would drop with the numbers of TRAINED personnel not required for weapons operations. I do recall that some of that was to operate said weapons "in local control" should it be cut off from -whatever- systems controls what suffered damage but did not keep the mount from being fired.

Yes, those ships which are going to be (normally) regularly tasked with commerce protection or other cruising duties will need Marines for things like boarding, local security on stations, accompany officers or crew (where deemed appropriate ) down to planets and "augmenting" customs and Astro Control.....yeah, think you might have to deal with a hard-case, a couple of Marines in unpowered or powered armor could certainly make you point.

Want to board an uncooperative ship....that is what Marines are trained to do.

Need to 1st pacify and then manage a captured planet? That is what RMA or the Talbot Guard is for....back to basics (Honorverse Basics for Ground Pounder) infantry with heavy weapon and air support -and blessed with orbital overwatch and communications coverage with intercept capability. Like being done on Mesa....sure, there is a Marine General in charge (and she will have Marines available (for the Things They Are Truly Good At), but most of her troops are Army working in a planetary environment and so runs the logistics, basing, etc. That includes atmospheric flight missions.

Theemile wrote:One of the biggest needs for warships was for the extra crew to man weapons- but that changed with Modern ships, An SD went from having 100 lasers and grasers to 25 massive grasers, 80-100 Tubes to 12 or none. Yes, CMs and PDLCs went up, but these require integrated master computer control to do everything but hit the reset button - which if properly designed can be done remotely for 95% of issues that havn't cut the weapon off from the master control computers. Besides modern combat has taken the Graser dual from the Main Show to a rarely seen, avoid at all cost sideshow. So why plan massive crews for something they are never going to use - plan instead on redundant control systems and larger roaming repair teams.

Apparently you need thousands of people on an Apollo ship to do all the calculations on their sliderules and abacus then two finger type them into Apollo command circuit.

The author (all hail), did a remarkable job of building his universe 20 odd years ago. The made up physics and such still holds up today, despite the legions of train spotters who daily argue over the equivalent of the medieval "how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin".
However, a few of the aspects jar.
The concept of a secret society of supermen, begs the question of why didn't they just head out for a very long way and build their own society?
Another is the IT progress, or lack there of. My estimate is that IT has evolved more in the past 20 years, than in thousands of years in the Honorverse.
The obliteration of the second law of thermodynamics, with essentially free energy is needed for plot purposes, but doesn't really seem to be fully exploited.
Finally, reading how British housewives gave up their aluminium cookware to facilitate the building of Spitfires, illustrates how a country fights with its back to the wall. Manticore doesn't seem to have the same sacrificially all or nothing ethos.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:One of the biggest needs for warships was for the extra crew to man weapons- but that changed with Modern ships, An SD went from having 100 lasers and grasers to 25 massive grasers, 80-100 Tubes to 12 or none. Yes, CMs and PDLCs went up, but these require integrated master computer control to do everything but hit the reset button - which if properly designed can be done remotely for 95% of issues that havn't cut the weapon off from the master control computers. Besides modern combat has taken the Graser dual from the Main Show to a rarely seen, avoid at all cost sideshow. So why plan massive crews for something they are never going to use - plan instead on redundant control systems and larger roaming repair teams.

Apparently you need thousands of people on an Apollo ship to do all the calculations on their sliderules and abacus then two finger type them into Apollo command circuit.

munroburton wrote:Hmm. That hasn't been so unusual, though. Filareta, Crandall and Tourville's fleets are the big three, but the RMN's record stretches back all the way to First Hancock and Third Yeltsin. HoS indicates they captured a further 21 wallers in good enough condition to reuse during those early days.

They might not carry as many marines as they did during those pre-pod days but they're not going to pull a Roland and throw them all away.

Those are also very good counter-examples.

Third Yeltsin, Spindle and Second Manticore are examples of a very outmatched SD fleet coming unawares against the RMN getting its ass handed to it. It isn't supposed to be the typical case, because those things should happen only once, and then they wise up (provided there isn't interference, and taking comm delays into account).

But all those and First Manticore are also examples of not needing large prize crews to man those ships. In all but Third Yeltsin, the RMN didn't want the ships anyway, which is going to be highly correlated with having such an overwhelming victory in the first place. If your tech is so good that you can capture SDs almost intact, those SDs are probably well below what you are fielding yourself. And in the case of Third Yeltsin, that was only possible because it was the home system and thus a target juicy enough to have Parnell screw up badly, but that also means they had the local manpower to provide prize crews.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:Hmm. That hasn't been so unusual, though. Filareta, Crandall and Tourville's fleets are the big three, but the RMN's record stretches back all the way to First Hancock and Third Yeltsin. HoS indicates they captured a further 21 wallers in good enough condition to reuse during those early days.

They might not carry as many marines as they did during those pre-pod days but they're not going to pull a Roland and throw them all away.

Those are also very good counter-examples.

Third Yeltsin, Spindle and Second Manticore are examples of a very outmatched SD fleet coming unawares against the RMN getting its ass handed to it. It isn't supposed to be the typical case, because those things should happen only once, and then they wise up (provided there isn't interference, and taking comm delays into account).

But all those and First Manticore are also examples of not needing large prize crews to man those ships. In all but Third Yeltsin, the RMN didn't want the ships anyway, which is going to be highly correlated with having such an overwhelming victory in the first place. If your tech is so good that you can capture SDs almost intact, those SDs are probably well below what you are fielding yourself. And in the case of Third Yeltsin, that was only possible because it was the home system and thus a target juicy enough to have Parnell screw up badly, but that also means they had the local manpower to provide prize crews.

Specifically, Yeltsin is in the middle of a Grav wave, you're not leaving if you don't have intact sails. If the rest of your fleet has been destroyed or left the system, do you continue to fight with your damaged dozen ships, knowing 70+ Enemies will beat the snot out of you, or do you surrender?

When escape isn't an option, surrendering almost intact craft against a numerical superior enemy isn't cowardice.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

munroburton wrote:Hmm. That hasn't been so unusual, though. Filareta, Crandall and Tourville's fleets are the big three, but the RMN's record stretches back all the way to First Hancock and Third Yeltsin. HoS indicates they captured a further 21 wallers in good enough condition to reuse during those early days.

They might not carry as many marines as they did during those pre-pod days but they're not going to pull a Roland and throw them all away.

Those are also very good counter-examples.

Third Yeltsin, Spindle and Second Manticore are examples of a very outmatched SD fleet coming unawares against the RMN getting its ass handed to it. It isn't supposed to be the typical case, because those things should happen only once, and then they wise up (provided there isn't interference, and taking comm delays into account).

But all those and First Manticore are also examples of not needing large prize crews to man those ships. In all but Third Yeltsin, the RMN didn't want the ships anyway, which is going to be highly correlated with having such an overwhelming victory in the first place. If your tech is so good that you can capture SDs almost intact, those SDs are probably well below what you are fielding yourself. And in the case of Third Yeltsin, that was only possible because it was the home system and thus a target juicy enough to have Parnell screw up badly, but that also means they had the local manpower to provide prize crews.

The RMN got through Spindle by essentially landing the SLN crews upon an island using their own evacuation equipment, briefly used the SLN themselves as skeleton crews for their own ships and threatening to treat them as pirates instead of PoWs.

You can't always count upon the enemy coming to your capital systems and surrendering there. Consider the very first known example of captured wallers: Chin's dreadnoughts at Hancock Station, an uninhabited system. There were only five of them, but that also means something on the order of 20 to 25,000 Havenite prisoners to process. The fleet base there had about fifty thousand personnel total.

In order to deal with that, Danislav probably needed to do a lot of juggling with some of the Havenite crews being moved off those dreadnoughts to make room for prize crews and his Marines would have been spread all over the place with those Havenite crews, on and off their ships. Then all that has to go, either directly to Manticore or via one of the local systems Hancock was covering.

Sure, Parks relieved Danislav shortly afterward but then they all went to fight at Seaford Nine, another uninhabited system - where they possibly captured some of those additional 21 wallers HoS shows. Now they've got to process up to or even over 100,000 more Havenite spacers and scrape up perhaps another 20,000 of their own for prize crews.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
But all those and First Manticore are also examples of not needing large prize crews to man those ships. In all but Third Yeltsin, the RMN didn't want the ships anyway, which is going to be highly correlated with having such an overwhelming victory in the first place. If your tech is so good that you can capture SDs almost intact, those SDs are probably well below what you are fielding yourself. And in the case of Third Yeltsin, that was only possible because it was the home system and thus a target juicy enough to have Parnell screw up badly, but that also means they had the local manpower to provide prize crews.

But even if you don't want the ships you still need to put enough people aboard to secure their crews as prisoners, ensure proper medical care for same, secure the ship for your intel folks to dig through, ensure it doesn't catastrophically fail on you, and generally corral all the ships into a convenient holding area for later disposal -- so they're out of the way of system traffic, not flying out into deep space or on a collision course with anything.

And generally the POWs aren't required to help with any of that (beyond the medical and performing search and rescue any of their crewmates trapped in damaged sections of the ship); so you can't count on their assistance. (Spindle being a bit of a special case)

Those boarding crews presumably won't be detached for as long as if they had to fly the captured ship back to a friendly system for processing by an Admiralty prize court, but you still need competent warm bodies to do all those tasks while not fatally weakening your normal ship company; which needs to be doing post-battle repairs, resupply from the fleet train, and getting ready in case another attack occurs.

Jonathan_S wrote:But even if you don't want the ships you still need to put enough people aboard to secure their crews as prisoners, ensure proper medical care for same, secure the ship for your intel folks to dig through, ensure it doesn't catastrophically fail on you, and generally corral all the ships into a convenient holding area for later disposal -- so they're out of the way of system traffic, not flying out into deep space or on a collision course with anything.

Agreed, but there's no way you're going to be able to do that from a small pool of ships. Only if you had a comparable number of superdreadnoughts staffed with marines would you have had such manpower on hand. Even if you need only 1 (armed) marine for 10 captured crew and even if you consider that 50% of the enemy crew has died in the fighting, you're going to need 300 marines per SD. That's three companies, maybe a battallion. Just how many marines would an SD carry?

But as we said, a battle fleet will come with a fleet train, so they could have one or a dozen marine transport ships with them. Those marines don't need to serve aboard the SDs.

And besides, never in the history of warfare (and probably never again) had someone captured 50 superdreadnoughts intact with nothing more than half a dozen cruisers. No wonder that created logistical problems.

Those boarding crews presumably won't be detached for as long as if they had to fly the captured ship back to a friendly system for processing by an Admiralty prize court, but you still need competent warm bodies to do all those tasks while not fatally weakening your normal ship company; which needs to be doing post-battle repairs, resupply from the fleet train, and getting ready in case another attack occurs.

Managing the ships themselves after they've been secured doesn't need that many people. If you're not going to try and operate those ships, you move them one by one to a stable, out-of-the-way orbit where you can guard them with destroyers. The most difficult part is keeping them intact enough so your intel teams can do their work.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But even if you don't want the ships you still need to put enough people aboard to secure their crews as prisoners, ensure proper medical care for same, secure the ship for your intel folks to dig through, ensure it doesn't catastrophically fail on you, and generally corral all the ships into a convenient holding area for later disposal -- so they're out of the way of system traffic, not flying out into deep space or on a collision course with anything.

Agreed, but there's no way you're going to be able to do that from a small pool of ships. Only if you had a comparable number of superdreadnoughts staffed with marines would you have had such manpower on hand. Even if you need only 1 (armed) marine for 10 captured crew and even if you consider that 50% of the enemy crew has died in the fighting, you're going to need 300 marines per SD. That's three companies, maybe a battallion. Just how many marines would an SD carry?

But as we said, a battle fleet will come with a fleet train, so they could have one or a dozen marine transport ships with them. Those marines don't need to serve aboard the SDs.

And besides, never in the history of warfare (and probably never again) had someone captured 50 superdreadnoughts intact with nothing more than half a dozen cruisers. No wonder that created logistical problems.

Those boarding crews presumably won't be detached for as long as if they had to fly the captured ship back to a friendly system for processing by an Admiralty prize court, but you still need competent warm bodies to do all those tasks while not fatally weakening your normal ship company; which needs to be doing post-battle repairs, resupply from the fleet train, and getting ready in case another attack occurs.

Managing the ships themselves after they've been secured doesn't need that many people. If you're not going to try and operate those ships, you move them one by one to a stable, out-of-the-way orbit where you can guard them with destroyers. The most difficult part is keeping them intact enough so your intel teams can do their work.

Fleet trains also carry (some) spare crew, why not include a 1/2 dozen skeleton crews and POW provisions on attacks?

Depending on how large of a device a Spider drive detector may ultimate be, the GA may need purpose built ships that are mainly detectors. Like an AWACS plane. To make it fair it will probably be limited in range and availability, by the time the manure hits the sewer.