Why would the RMN bother with any new ship designs...

The RMN has been in a constant state of war, with a few short respites, for decades. Innovation is what allowed them to survive.

The RMN military-industrial complex isn't going to slow down on that front until they are at peace. Especially considering that they know they have an enemy in possession of ships with extreme stealth capacity, and at least one new weapon technology.

A great deal of their military-industrial complex went up in smoke after Oyster Bay, but they didn't lose their R&D backbone.

Weapons systems development:

1) Think tank of what one wishes
---- Handful of guys
2) Think tank of what one can apply through common knowledge
---- Handful of guys
3) Think tank, AKA DARPA, etc, then go to businesses who they think could fill in box 'A'.
4) Box 'A' specs are looked over by the business in question. If no prior experience with working for (DARPA) will require a prototype showing approximate technology along with a proposal for achieving specs in box 'A'.
5) DARPA, or equivalent, collects enough proposals, tech advances in various fields, that actually come close to specs, for 1)/2) then and only then do they try to kick off a new missile/bomb/aircraft/ship.

Basic building blocks in Honorverse that may require a new say, SAG-D.

1) Always start with POWER. Leaps in power technology, either overall efficiency, or power throughput density, create leaps in design. Horse to coal. (Industrial revolution) Going from coal to oil for instance for transportation. Ship design. Gasoline to Kerosene. ~Airplanes.
1a) Currently, we(readers) "think" about 15% of Honorverse ships are full of nothing more than Handwavium "fuel". Another 15% is nothing but "engine". Impeller/fusion plants. Will vastly smaller impellers/fusion rooms necessitate a new design? No. Not IMO.
1b) Fuel as a criteria is nebulous as 60% of power is siphoned across the alpha wall. If there is a large increase in power sucked across will this necessitate a major redesign? No. Not IMO.

2) Motivating power.
2a) Vastly smaller Impellers require a redesign? No
2b) Vastly more efficient compensator require a redesign? No. Missile interception basket effectively negates acceleration.
2c) Hypergenerator allowing far quicker reaction times to changing battlefield conditions? YES. Number one problem is information flow. Number two problem is having a finite number of ships.
2d) Far superior Warshawki sails? Uh, already get 100% from grav waves. So, it would be due to ease of maintenance. From the books it would appear W-sails have tens of thousands of hours on them before needing major repair or replacement. So, no, not a big deal going from 10,000 hours to 20,000 hours when a war will put a few thousand hours of wear on the W-sails. Maybe a dispatch boat.

New breakthroughs in weapon systems. Either capabilities or miniturization.

3) Sidewalls: Currently tech exists to match the throughput of MK-16G, but requires larger hulls and more power throughput. Miniturization would help. This thorny issue will require a redesign. DUH, RFC said so.
3a) Physical armor: Doubt any advance will be all that much greater than what they already have. Today we have effectively plateaued, but we simply cannot create enough of material 'x' to be all that useful. I am going to assume they can basically do what they will in 2k years and any advance here would be very minimal.

4) Major EW hull volume required breakthrough? No. Lorelie are drones kicked out of boat bay and frankly I think the reasoning behind them actually working is complete bunk. FTL drones completely destroy them. Only useful beating up on the plebs of the universe and not applicable to a peer navy.

5) Major CM volume eater requiring a new ship design? I would say YES. Total tubes needs to be vastly increased. Likewise need to use FTL drones to communicate with CM's requiring larger boat bays for the drones. No reason a ship is limited to the number of CM tubes it has. If you can stuff effectively 50-100 tubes on a broadside in an SD, you can do the same on a DD. DD will need to grow to accommodate the expanded CM storage, but is easily doable.

6) Mini Keyhole, fight on side: Already exist. Yet, DW would like to pull the wool over our eyes as if they do not. They are RD's. Even has video/voice feed bandwidth. More than enough bandwidth to update thousands of missiles in-flight. Assuming one removes the wool covering of ..... _______________________________________________________

So, need extra hull volume for new propulsion systems for hyper generator and possibly minor(in order of importance) updates for fusion rooms, impellers, compensator, W-sails. Need extra hull volume for stronger Sidewall generators to keep pace with missile laser head throughput. Need extra hull volume for more CM broadside tubes to keep pace with ships offensive saturation capabilities. Even if one shrinks total CM load-out per tube keeping total CM totals down, need more individual CM launch tubes. Need extra space for additional FTL RD's for talking with CM's creating a more responsive CM depth kill ratio at minimum. Need extra boat bay space for FTL drones talking with your offensive missiles as well.

As for worrying about MALIGN getting designs; doesn't matter because how the real world works, they will have at best only one 'box' in said tech tree to match the new ship. MALIGN would have to penetrate a LOT of R&D avenues and then put in all the work to cobble together all of these avenues. In some cases, simply throwing $$$ and inefficiency at a problem will work.

That about covers it.

PS. Think about the breakthroughs required for EXCALIBUR artillery rounds to work. Even if say Russia/China had stolen part of the tech, they need the other avenues because without it, they have nothing. PPS. They already have the GPS, but do not have anything approaching the accelerometers to withstand the 20,000g's shock load for INS.

SharkHunter wrote:... for the foreseeable book future?

Yes, I realize that am choosing to fall on my sword and commit forum heresy er-- hara kiri, or some such terribly dark and horrible thing.... But... at this point in the book series, HonorVerse, MAlign, SLN, etc.:

Logically, why introduce a new ship type (primarily the CL) at all? As fun as it is to think about, wouldn't the RMN just crank out as many Sag-C's as possible for the foreseeable future, augmenting with the Roland DD's, then start rebuilding at the SD(p) level, and thence down to Nike(s)?

Keep in mind, it's not only shipyard space that the RMN lost, it's all those workers. Wouldn't there be a whole lot of space for mischief in the new ranks (read MAlign troublemakers...) if you don't go with a thoroughly vetted, mostly cast-in-stone ship design that can't get fudged up during construction?

"Foracker and Hemphill have been talking for the last two hours. These are the minor changes in missile design that double the missile's range, acceleration, and smiting power, all with the same improvement. However, the missile is now a cube of the same mass, if you ignore the green running lights, and the improved ship is also a cube."

They have nobody experienced in building any of the modern RMN ships. Or any components for those ships. So no matter what they build, it will be a goat rope for the first few. They will be grossly over budget and horribly late, with the RMN acceptance trials a total disaster. All the mistakes that inexperienced fabrication and construction crews can make will be made. So why not fix obvious flaws anyhow?

kzt wrote:They have nobody experienced in building any of the modern RMN ships. Or any components for those ships. So no matter what they build, it will be a goat rope for the first few. They will be grossly over budget and horribly late, with the RMN acceptance trials a total disaster. All the mistakes that inexperienced fabrication and construction crews can make will be made. So why not fix obvious flaws anyhow?

Excellent points. What makes sense given that logic also is that existing locations that did not get clobbered by OB (Hanock, Trevor's Star, Sidemore, the Grayson orbital yards) and their tech base have already gone to full production anyway, upgrading whatever they have to get in the building game as well. The RMN is also going to distribute their building capacity an additional amount, perhaps a new fleet construction base in Spindle along with "Talbott U.", also known as Saganmi Island lite. Perhaps those become our "current tech builders" plus I'd be thinking seriously saying to Erewhon "you want back in our good graces? fine. We'll cut your junction fees back to normal in return for Carlucci and company delivering X number of Y hulls at cost Z. We'll send you crews to deliver them to our new fleet bases once you've got the shells (impeller and armoring, navigation, etc.) completed to spec level 'A' as follows __________."

Then you concentrate on the new ship types in the new bases built in Manticoran and Grayson space, and upgrading Haven's Bolthole to "partnering capability" fairly quickly. I have a theory about why Bolthole's location is still quite well hidden even in the RoH by Theisman & co. by the way. It keeps anyone inside the Havenite power wannabee groups from getting too shirty and going after the Pritchart administration. "Thinking about messing with our new and decent leaders? Here's Shannon!"

SharkHunter wrote:

npadln wrote:Sorry if I am veering off topic here but this thread got my mind wandering over to the desperate straights the SL and THEIR ship designs are in and pondering what lengths they would or could go to solving that quality gap. As already mentioned here their building capacity isn't the problem. And also as was mentioned there is the nefarious ubiquity of the MAlign.
A question for those here, would it be in the MALign's interest to aid the SL in mounting a military operation for the sole purpose of corralling/stealing a singular fighting ship? Or perhaps to put it another way, COULD the MALign with its "nefarious ubiquity" help the SL accomplish such a thing?

They're using the GA as the wolves to take down the bison (the SL), so better ships would be changing the bison to a sabre tooth. Giving the sabre tooth tiger longer claws before you try to kill the darn thing strikes me as bad tactics. So I don't see them doing much more than the cataphract(s) [likely a 2nd line MAlign weapon, yes/no?]

I guess the question(s) for SLN ship improvement have to do with the 'ticking time bomb' of the GA and split off systems reaching economic parity with the League AND whatever nefarious nastiness is still waiting in the wings.

They also don't want the GA to end up powerful enough to take the place of the SL. IIRC, that was part of the reasoning behind Oyster Bay. Giving them a few improvements (as was already done through Technodyne) could serve to lengthen the war, grinding down both the SL and the GA so both end up weak enough to be taken out at the appropriate time.

kzt wrote:They have nobody experienced in building any of the modern RMN ships. Or any components for those ships. So no matter what they build, it will be a goat rope for the first few. They will be grossly over budget and horribly late, with the RMN acceptance trials a total disaster. All the mistakes that inexperienced fabrication and construction crews can make will be made. So why not fix obvious flaws anyhow?

With our period digital milling machines, etc., and a valid set of plans, this is already a non-issue for making parts. Except of course, for the possibility "Manticore uses French Imperial SI units, Gryphon uses American units, and Sphinx uses British Imperial units". A spaceship would appear to be adequately complicated that assembly consists of 'let the manual tell you exactly what to do'. The main obstacle will be some number of layers of 'building the tools to build the tools".

SharkHunter wrote:... for the foreseeable book future?

Yes, I realize that am choosing to fall on my sword and commit forum heresy er-- hara kiri, or some such terribly dark and horrible thing.... But... at this point in the book series, HonorVerse, MAlign, SLN, etc.:

Logically, why introduce a new ship type (primarily the CL) at all? As fun as it is to think about, wouldn't the RMN just crank out as many Sag-C's as possible for the foreseeable future, augmenting with the Roland DD's, then start rebuilding at the SD(p) level, and thence down to Nike(s)?

Keep in mind, it's not only shipyard space that the RMN lost, it's all those workers. Wouldn't there be a whole lot of space for mischief in the new ranks (read MAlign troublemakers...) if you don't go with a thoroughly vetted, mostly cast-in-stone ship design that can't get fudged up during construction?

Well, with a new workforce for the most part, you may not be better off with old designs than with new ones in that case, so why keep building dated models that won't be built any better than the fresh ones?

They do have most of the crackerjack designers still around, thanks to the Weyland evacuation, and now they will have a freer exchange of ideas among the Manticoran, Havenite, and Beowulf design communities. They'll also have a better appreciation of the service environment with the conflict with the League, some vague ideas at least about how to counter spider drives, and strengths and shortcomings of the newest designs. With some time before construction restarts in Manticore - or, for that matter, before the current cutting-edge construction starts in Beowulf or Havenite yards - they've got a wonderful opportunity to work out new designs and so much reason to.

All that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the new generation RMN fleet were composed of tweaked Saganami-C's (as the new oh-call-it-cruiser), tweaked Nike's, tweaked SD(P)'s, waller CLAC's with LAC's optimized for missile defense, and some small class of Rolands for duty more-or-less strictly near the fleet. (Not because there's something wrong with the Rolands, but just because what they end up doing so much would be better done by something that almost may as well be done by a Saganami-C, and the number of them required for operations in closer support of the wall, or beyond-the-hyper-limit system defense, is limited.)

If there is going to be a fourth below-the-wall class, it'd be a light cruiser built along the lines of a smaller Saganami-C or a larger, longer-endurance, better-staying-power Roland. The no-Marine Rolands, the few-Marine, too-conventional Avalons, and the just-Marine Kamerlings are too much a violation of RMN traditions and evolving needs, and I would figure that the next generation is going to go back only a few specialists like the Kamerlings and some Marines or naval ratings better able to double as Marines aboard more cutting edge light cruisers.

You always need improvements in design. Mostly it is incremental improvements in existing equipment which you may or may not be able to either incorporate into existing designes for next production run or upgrade on existing equipment.

The GA and friends have two basic needs beyond Manticore and Grayson recovering their manufacturing capacity and workers. 1) is repair/maintaining existing ships plus expanding the numbers of present generation ships to meet their current needs. 2) is creating new designs based on where they seen needs taking them.

Even if they don't have any of the Alignment tech at the moment, they are going to have to replace ship looses (they are fighting a war) and most improvements are going to continue to be incremental or based on what they are discovering in the current operations. That would include the need to add capasity to carry or increase the ability to carry Marines on various classes of ships.

You never stop lookng for ways to improve.

All true thoughts! but I just realized we've sort of neglected what may be the most dangerous system in space to the MAlign's plans: Grayson.

While we know that the Blackbird Yard's were lost, we've got at least Judah Yanakov (new High admiral), Brent Matthews (related to the martyred last high admiral), and a distinct enough genome that there's no way that the MAlign can penetrate it. Then you add the remaining GSN brain trust who were already building slightly different ships than Manticore, plus Alfredu Yu, Gregory Paxson, Honor herself. and the fact that the Protector's Own pretty much belongs to Benjamin Mayhew and is one of the most powerful formations in space.

Does anyone seriously think that Protector Benjamin is going to take a number and stand in line for anyone when it comes to ripping out the the throats of any collected ship force related to the Detweiler's minions through said minions proverbial backsides?