Rolands actually have plenty of room for Marines

Captain Golding wrote:I do think the every Roland DD having a Flag Bridge and associated accomodation is wasteful. A Software configurable Flag Bridge that can be swapped to other roles would make sense. So Flag Bridge, Emergency Bridge, School (Training) Bridge, Marine SQHQ, LAC SqHQ, Diplomatic space, etc.

Of course the "Staff" space is unknown. I think we can agree that the Flottila HQ staff would be a senior Captain as Commodore (eg Role not rank), with about 8 or 9 staff weighted towards officers and Senior NCO's - so single state room's and a Suite. That's a lot of space but not much in terms of mouths to feed. Flag Dinning Room to be excercise space Comm quarters to be Armoury and Marine Office, State rooms to be multi-occupancy (2 NCO or 4 other ranks). What of that can be built in rather than needing a yard conversion?

So room for 30-40 extra people in place of Flag should be no problem. If the Marines can fullfil shipboard roles then say about 20 of the ships crew could be replaced by Marines as well.

Skill currency would be the issue, what level of ship skills are lost by using marines who need to be duel trained? Given HO Training levels can we do that or is it a better use of resource to single train and deploy? (Of course in Peacetime we need fewer but more flexible crews so this changes).

So Across a Flottila of 8, 2 set up as Flag vessels, 2~4 with Marine contingents, 1 or 2 as School or Diplomatic. Perhaps one with the flag space configured for Med-evac Casualty clearing for Emergencies etc.

I do not believe that the "Flag Deck" on a destroyer is set up for the full staff of an Admiral. Perhaps a Commodore with 2 to 4 staff.

I do not believe that either the Navy or the Marines will accept requiring Marines to cross-train as crewmen. What happens when they go off on a mission?

Most emphatically I do not believe that a ship with a normal crew of 62 has the facilities for 30 to 40 extra people: that is about a 50% to 66% increase. I might believe that 12 extras might be squeezed in, but even that is a 20% increase.

Captain Golding wrote:Blocked Sensor arcs would be an issue, blocked targetting systems less so - don't need to target until the pods deployed. 12 pods @ 14 Mk16s is 168 missiles - a big uplift on the 240 internal (12tubes @20 reloads). 12 pods is 6 on the roof and 6 on the floor. A Roland has more than enough targetting channels to handle multiple salvo's of 30 (2 pods and full internal tubes).

You have to remember there's a loss of flexibility here. Because the firing arcs and sensors are blocked by the pods, the ship can't go into any battle where it may be targeted by enemy missiles without first deploying all of its pods. That is, the ship has to commit to a large Alpha Launch.

Take the Battle of Saltash, where 5 Roland-class DDs went against 3 Nevada-class BCs. Each Roland fired a double double-broadside against each BC. That is, 120 missiles total. And that was an overkill. My guess is that 168 missiles would require an opponent to be of the same quality as early-to-mid first war BC, like a Reliant, Redoubtable, or a Havenite Sultan. Going against an SD is inadvisable for a destroyer and for anything smaller the alpha launch is overkill.

We have not heard about recovering unused pods and re-attaching them. I suppose with enough time it is possible, but this means the DD must have won the engagement in the first place and now control the system. Though that should not be an issue, because the skipper shouldn't "underkill" his opponents by holding back some missiles during the launch. Better to be safe than sorry.

It's noted early in the Books that Manitcore's Marines are cross trained in shipboard tasks and form an active part of a ships crews unlike most other space navies. I don't recall which book exactly.

This has been true of Royal Marines since at least the 1800's and while it stopped for a while post WW2 the RN is once again shipping small RM sections of Marines who do have roles as part of the crew.

I agree that having a 50% increase in people would be a stretch and having 1/3 of the crew "Marines" would not leave a functional ship during a ground deployment. Ships's Marines would be trained to support boarding actions and similar off the ship while being part of weapons teams and Damage Control teams on it. You are not going to send boarding teams out while the missiles are flying. They are also part of Ships's Security against hostile boarding attempts, not something we've seen much of in the Honourverse.

So 2 marines performing 1 shipbard task is fine as long as the tasks are basic. You are not going to get Marines filling a WO post - which for Rolands with their high automation probably means there are few "other rank" crewmen to replace.

Also war time and peace time rules vary - Duel training takes time so in a wartime enviroment replacements would not be. During Peace time lots of time to train but limited numbers so Cross Trained people are much more common. It will be interesting to see the effect of Prolog on this - multiple lifetimes of training so multiple skill sets will become more common while the general slowing down of the promotion ladder will increase the amount of time in each role. After 40 years of Honourverse peace time promotion movement I suspect that a Roland's crew could all be cross trained as Marines and Ship crew. Still leaves the issue of how many can be deployed off ship at a time and for how long.

I wonder if BuShips left any room for crew growth through ship life?
Most ships get upgrades and new kit from time to time that require new crew and then as the reliability of the original kit declines over time often need more maintenance. Rolands could be stripped down to the wire and have no growth space as a wartime design or have an easy 10 or 20% design margin with crews so small because of wartime shortages rather than space limits. The extra space add war time resilience and possibly range - using spare crew space for storage for instance.

When we look at the Flag Bridge and Staff we only see the officer's in the books but a "Captain" has his own Steward, there will be people on the Staff filling duties for logistics, communications, inteligence, flag leftenant etc. These might not be "officers" for a Senior Captain/ Commodore but senior NCO's and WO's but probably still rate a steward between them if not one each. Consider the NON combat roles of the Flag.

Again looking at the Flag Staff that represents a lot of Senior ranks compared to a Marine Squad, therefore a lot of Space. Carrying Flag and Marines - No Way. Squeezing in marines in place of the Flag, yes, With intelligent design of pull down extra bunks etc. and yes a squad of 20-30 in the place of the flag should be no problem. Also carring a "school" party of that size on a training run later in the ships life would be possible. (Perhaps a Talbot sector Roland acting as guard ship running training for people transfering from Local Planatary Navies ? Need an uptodate ship on station and you might as well help out with the cross training/ graduation cruise requirements while you are there :->)

Captain Golding wrote:It's noted early in the Books that Manitcore's Marines are cross trained in shipboard tasks and form an active part of a ships crews unlike most other space navies. I don't recall which book exactly.

This has been true of Royal Marines since at least the 1800's and while it stopped for a while post WW2 the RN is once again shipping small RM sections of Marines who do have roles as part of the crew.

We normally see Marines at battle stations and helping in repair and rescue after a battle, when anything that they do for the ship is emergency work under the supervision of the Navy. This is from the Pearls of Weber (found at the top of the forum page under FAQs): Marines Aboard Ship

One of the problems conceptually are the problems forced by the Great Resizing. This truly screws things up.

The great resizing set the compensator VOLUME to 0.25t/m^3

So, a Ships compensator Volume is DIRECTLY = to its tonnage

So: If you wish to maximize acceleration: On one hand we have the compensator hugging the ship to MINIMAL depth to increase rates of acceleration and maximize structural tonnage of materials allowed the 0.25t/m^3. Great, makes perfect sense, and how the books started out...

On the OTHER hand: Pods require attachment on surface inside the compensator field to maximize acceleration(canon before the great resizing) and for particle shielding(very useful on long deployment), but only shows up in "modern" designs post great resizing... where all of a sudden, you CANNOT place them there for a LONG deployment as they run out of pwoer...

By the great resizing does this mean the ships "tonnage" increase is in fact NOT REAL? CA's etc are same size, but compensator field increased allowing pods to attach without acceleration loss? Because tonnage remember is now tied to COMPENSATOR Field VOLUME, not an actual MASS of physical material!!! Is it actually just empty space waiting for a pod to attach which somehow blocks sensors which is clearly DUMB?

And said pods cannot stay there without running out of power(clearly DUMB as we are supposed to pretend APU's do not exist... even when said POD description SAYS It exists to begin with!!!) Back to blocking: Just place the POD above the sensors and it blocks NOTHING, but apparently like an extension cord, or conduit for plasma(which all exist already) going to an APU to start up a pod of Fusion based micro reactors, on a THROW AWAY device like a POD, a physical STAND placing a pods attachment ABOVE the sensors at the turn of a ship is too "advanced" for the people over 2000 years from now.

YES: Due to Prolong, all navy people SHOULD be cross trained on simple Marine deployments: BUT, it does require a different mentality. On top of this we have a MAJOR problem. Military hardware is PURPOSEFULLY designed, Specifically Designed DUMB for Joe 18 year old Bob to be able to pick up military hardware and use right out of basic training. WHY? Because in a war you MUST surge your personnel numbers with Joe Bob 6 months out of basic who 6 months ago used to be a kid in high school, or a janitor, or in desperation an accountant or gasp! a Bureaucrat who has never held a plasma rifle carbine before let alone knows ANYTHING about a ship in space.

Ok, off to bed now that I had my meeting from other side of the world end and typed this rambling hopefully cognizant(partially?) "post"

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
We have not heard about recovering unused pods and re-attaching them. I suppose with enough time it is possible, but this means the DD must have won the engagement in the first place and now control the system. Though that should not be an issue, because the skipper shouldn't "underkill" his opponents by holding back some missiles during the launch. Better to be safe than sorry.

David mentioned on here that pods can be maintained with shipborne resources, it required a refueling and a replacement of an unmentioned wear item or 3 - the replacment item(s) is either small enough to be carried in sufficient quantities, or can be made out of ship resources. So refueling and refurbishing a pod is not an issue, it just takes downtime and a spacewalk. So it cannot be done in transit or in combat.

Captain Golding wrote:Again looking at the Flag Staff that represents a lot of Senior ranks compared to a Marine Squad, therefore a lot of Space. Carrying Flag and Marines - No Way. Squeezing in marines in place of the Flag, yes, With intelligent design of pull down extra bunks etc. and yes a squad of 20-30 in the place of the flag should be no problem. Also carring a "school" party of that size on a training run later in the ships life would be possible. (Perhaps a Talbot sector Roland acting as guard ship running training for people transfering from Local Planatary Navies ? Need an uptodate ship on station and you might as well help out with the cross training/ graduation cruise requirements while you are there :->)

The flag officer aboard a destroyer is not going to be an admiral. That's a commodore's post, or maybe even a senior-grade captain frocked to commodore. As discussed before, DesRon 301 of 5 Rolands was commanded by Commodore Chatterjee, then by Commodore Zavala, who was even later referred to as Captain Zavala. In the latter's case, he was just the senior-most captain among the squadron's remaining captains.

The staff for a commodore is not going to be that big either. The wiki only lists three positions known: chief of staff, operations and communications. I assume there are a couple more, like a flag lieutenant (who is an ensign, like Helen Zilwicki was for Terekhov) and an intelligence officer, because otherwise why would you need a chief of staff in the first place? Plus the steward. That's 7 people.

Many of whom could and would also substitute for the regular crew's job of the same position: for example, if the ship is carrying a flag communications officer, the ship doesn't need another one such in the main bridge. They can also stand watches where necessary, complementing skills that the cross-trained marines couldn't.

Theemile wrote:I think of the old anti-piracy role like an old beat cop. no one was "Scared" of the beat cop. He didn't carry a gun, all he carried was a Bobby stick and a whistle. What criminals were afraid was that he could have called other cops with that whistle. And if someone got to him before he blew his whistle, More, mad cops would flood the area searching for who accosted him. That's what the FF was - the Beat Cop. and if you hurt an FF, the Manties would fall on you with squadrons of CAs and BCs, so you respected what the FF represented, you laid low, and let him (and what he was protecting) pass.

What probably happened in the late 1880 is pirates and privateers suddenly had enough firepower to cleanly take out 1-3 Frigates, and did so repeatedly. It's not stated, but with the rapidity with which the RMN got rid of the class, something had to prove their lack of survivability without a shadow of a doubt - and losing a few dozen ships in a year or so might have been it.

Though FFs had been about as heavily armed as the average pirate, and a first world FF would have better ECM and sensors than a pirate giving them a fair edge in a fight.

But I suspect that it was laserheads which helped doom the frigate. You suddenly needed lots better anti-missile defenses to stop laserheads before they reached their standoff range. Also the MAlign was on and off giving assistance to various Silesian pirates, freedom fighter, breakaway groups, etc. to keep the place stored up. So the pirates there were probably better quipped than most.

But even then I seem to recall RFC saying the main reason the RMN scrapped their FFs so quickly was economic. In King Roger’s buildup they just couldn’t afford to “waste” money or manpower on naval ship that wouldn’t be useful in the looming peer combat with the Peeps.
They needed those crews for new DDs and CLs and if that meant reduced anti-piracy coverage in Silesia then that was the cost of preparing to meet an existential threat.
Scrap them now and free up money that would have gone to their operations and maintenance.

Having trouble with quotes
On this device; so here are some general thought after catching up with the thread.

* I get the impression that a ship can “flex” its compensated volume, but doing so would reduce its accel and increase the detectability of its wedge. So it’s a tradeoff but you might be able to compensate attached pods without parts of them sticking out and causing “shear”

* I suspect that power isn’t the only issue for long term towing. Pod tractors likely aren’t rated for months of continuous operation and you’d get failures. Even ship tractors might not be designed for long endurance towing. (So long patrol pods might require some physical mounting attachments like the Angie half-pods did)

* I think Silesia was an anomaly in terms of DD based anti-piracy. If you were picketing a system to provide ongoing anti-piracy (without modern LACs) I’d think you’d need about a DesRon. You’d have maybe 3-5 spread out at various point along the hyper limit; on active patrol, at east that again pulled back on low alert (because your crews can’t always be on high alert), a few more pulling whatever maintenance you can do locally, and some fraction rotated back to the yards for more intensive maintenance. And so while the squadron flag might never exercise tactical combat control over the unified squadron you still need that higher level person on-site to provide administrative support, coordinate squadron level logistics and maintenance schedules, and provide operational orders. And that’s easiest if they can fly their flag from a DD within the squadron. (Though in WWI the RN did often assign a light cruiser as the flag for a destroyer squadron; and in the interwar period various navies built destroyer leaders (which weee larger more expensive destroyers) to fill that same role.)

* Also a DD based convoy escort would have been designed around at least 6 DDs. So there definitely were uses of numbers between singletons and directly fleet attached squadrons. (Though a convoy escort probably just has one of the captains designated as active commodore over the destroyer formation - though a round trip convoy run might last a couple months)

Jonathan_S wrote:Having trouble with quotes
On this device; so here are some general thought after catching up with the thread.

* I get the impression that a ship can “flex” its compensated volume, but doing so would reduce its accel and increase the detectability of its wedge. So it’s a tradeoff but you might be able to compensate attached pods without parts of them sticking out and causing “shear”

That would make rational sense, I agree, but the canonical text says no acceleration is lost when you attach these pods inside its compensator field.

EDIT: Would expect more power required, stressing the fusion plants ultimately effecting range