Yet another (crazy) idea.

Belial666 wrote:

you'd be hard pressed to fit in bays for more than about 20-24 into a Reliant sized hull

Probably true, but you don't have to use standard bays.


A shrike is 72 meters long, 20 meters wide. The Reliant is 713 meters long, 91 meters wide. Assume a central compartment that holds all the LACs being 4 LACs long, 3 LACs wide and 4 LACs tall. Essentially you could fit 48 Shrikes on about 30% of the Reliant's volume.

I saw assuming that the central, non-tapered section, couldn't hold more that 2 LAC bays tall.
(Oh, and not that it matters much, but I was looking at the specs for the newer flight III-IV Reliants, 727m long, 92m wide, 82m tall)

Even if the LAC bay was the exact size of the LAC, 20m, the four of them you want are 80m tall, just 2m short of the entire height of the hull. But the hull isn't a cube, it a slightly fat oval. Your LAC bays, even a single cavernous one, can't really intrude into the curve of the hull. I was assuming that only the middle ~1/2 of that height is usable. And of course even with your single bay you still need clearance around the LACs to get them in and out, allow maintenance, etc.

I was notionally figuring on 2 LAC bays high, by 10-12 long, nose first orientation. So say 50x250m or 50-300m allowing for a tight 5m combined space, bulkhead, etc around each LAC. (And the structural impact of that big an area, even with bulkheads between the bays, is kind of scary; your cavernous bay would be even worse)

I just said they could probably fit - never said there weren't any problems!



Probably the best way to carry LACs in bulk to a new system would be freighters rather than a CLAC. Assuming they fit volume-wise, an 8-megaton freighter or ammunition ship could bring in 300 Shrikes plus 50.000 shrike-sized missiles plus a million tons of spares.

The supplies to build what is essentially a station made up of 300 pressurized boxes with big doors for the LACs to land in and refit could be found in pretty much any system worth mentioning once the Shrikes were there. Hell, even many backwater systems have stations miles in diameter that could easily fit that many LACs.

Belial666 wrote:I just said they could probably fit - never said there weren't any problems!



Probably the best way to carry LACs in bulk to a new system would be freighters rather than a CLAC. Assuming they fit volume-wise, an 8-megaton freighter or ammunition ship could bring in 300 Shrikes plus 50.000 shrike-sized missiles plus a million tons of spares.

The supplies to build what is essentially a station made up of 300 pressurized boxes with big doors for the LACs to land in and refit could be found in pretty much any system worth mentioning once the Shrikes were there. Hell, even many backwater systems have stations miles in diameter that could easily fit that many LACs.

They could, but a large prefab base for LAC service would likely be better, not terribly expensive, not terrible trouble to deliver and set up, and a lot faster to do so too. If you're going to invest the resources for the LAC's and the delivery, investing a little more to get them well-based soon isn't a hard decision.

But otherwise, yeah. A CLAC isn't built to be the only way to deliver LAC's or service them. It's built to be able to do that as conveniently as practical under conditions of immediate and effective hostility.

The LACs could be stowed in a similar way to what is normal now, but instead of "nose to nose" as it were with access between the LACs, they could be offset and have an overlap with access above and below to allow crews and techs to get to the ships. That might overcome the width to length ratio some posters are saying would be a problem with a smaller CLAC.

Just a thought...

Hi JeffEngel,

The large prefab bases already exist and were mentioned in SFtS etc, for the LAC squadrons being based in the TQ systems, the LAC's being shuttled to the system by CLAC's, then permanently based in their orbital prefab but evidently only 4-5 squadrons for now, so the CLAC's could deliver all that are initially needed to two systems, though I'd prefer more like 9 squadrons myself.

While RMN escort CLAC's aren't currently in the cards, RHN escort CLAC's are quite possible, using freighter hulls as small as 4-5 MT for only 36-48 LAC's which are more than enough to overwhelm most commerce raider TG's I can imagine.

The RoH ought to have a new small freighter class near the size of the 4.5 MT 'Dromedary' because like currency many less populated systems need smaller freighters moving around more frequently than a few larger ones that only arrive quarterly or semi-annually.

L

JeffEngel wrote:

Belial666 wrote:I just said they could probably fit - never said there weren't any problems!



Probably the best way to carry LACs in bulk to a new system would be freighters rather than a CLAC. Assuming they fit volume-wise, an 8-megaton freighter or ammunition ship could bring in 300 Shrikes plus 50.000 shrike-sized missiles plus a million tons of spares.

The supplies to build what is essentially a station made up of 300 pressurized boxes with big doors for the LACs to land in and refit could be found in pretty much any system worth mentioning once the Shrikes were there. Hell, even many backwater systems have stations miles in diameter that could easily fit that many LACs.

They could, but a large prefab base for LAC service would likely be better, not terribly expensive, not terrible trouble to deliver and set up, and a lot faster to do so too. If you're going to invest the resources for the LAC's and the delivery, investing a little more to get them well-based soon isn't a hard decision.

But otherwise, yeah. A CLAC isn't built to be the only way to deliver LAC's or service them. It's built to be able to do that as conveniently as practical under conditions of immediate and effective hostility.

re: RHN Lac construction. Didn't Eighth fleet trash alot of the LAC construction capability just prior to the Battle of Manticore?, and Havenite LACs are not much of the mix AT that battle nor at Filerata's Folly.

So I'm thinking "out loud" that Haven doesn't have a bunch of LAC building capacity rebuilt yet part of what they're sending off to Bolthole is the "this is how you build a Manticoran fleet covering LAC, a Shrike, etc.", the beta squared nodes, inertial compensator(s), etc.

lyonheart wrote:Hi JeffEngel,

The large prefab bases already exist and were mentioned in SFtS etc, for the LAC squadrons being based in the TQ systems, the LAC's being shuttled to the system by CLAC's, then permanently based in their orbital prefab but evidently only 4-5 squadrons for now, so the CLAC's could deliver all that are initially needed to two systems, though I'd prefer more like 9 squadrons myself.

Yep yep, I had those in mind - certainly that something's already done is evidence it can be! And that one seemed to work well and was (if memory serves) an economical proposition. (Janacek Admiralty, doing real military work, it had to be....)

While RMN escort CLAC's aren't currently in the cards, RHN escort CLAC's are quite possible, using freighter hulls as small as 4-5 MT for only 36-48 LAC's which are more than enough to overwhelm most commerce raider TG's I can imagine.

Does the RHN tend to do specialist hulls either? I'd peg that as likely to be excessive for most commerce raiders. And the RHN's commerce tends to be within the RHN, historically at least. Granted, trade with Manticore now and through the wormhole network, not to mention with the Manticoran Alliance members now, Erewhon, Maya soon enough or already, will all extend it, somewhat, but for the most part, Havenite trade is in Havenite territory, so distinct commerce protection is likely to be a lower priority for them than it has ever been for the RMN.

I wouldn't rule it out, mind you - I just figure that there are factors at work that may reduce the likelihood of it.

The RoH ought to have a new small freighter class near the size of the 4.5 MT 'Dromedary' because like currency many less populated systems need smaller freighters moving around more frequently than a few larger ones that only arrive quarterly or semi-annually.

L

Are less populated systems a norm for Haven? From what we've seen, they tend to be fairly large ones by population - just not by wealth, industry, economy, educational establishments. The region's been populated for a long time, and was from early on one of the most common destinations of migrants from the Core. Haven started colonizing directly a long time back, and, well, for all the planets with generations on the Dole, there was little disincentive against having families as large as one might: you didn't have to try to save up to get the kids a better future when it wasn't a realistic goal for even one.

It doesn't argue against plenty of 4 million ton freighters though, not to my mind: with plenty of population and no economy worth a damn, there may be more use for smaller ones than larger ones, and 4 million tons is not a tiny tramp in any case.

Hi JeffEngel,

May I respond to your worthy points by numbering them?

1. The LAC bases described in War of Honor were pretty bad and far too basic for the RMN, but Janacek evidently didn't like the LAC's very much regardless of using them for system defense in too little batches etc.

2. Given the age and suitability of the SL Dromedary class, I'd expect the peep's to have copied the design at least a century ago, being suited to their polity which had dozens of systems even before they went conquistador in 1846.

3. One of my early posts at the bar @2006 pointed out there simply weren't enough peep escorts below the wall, or even using some of the 374 BB's, to provide escorts for around convoys even if Haven had only 100 systems [when the textev always mentioned 'over 100 systems'], especially given the size of the escorts mentioned.

So using the n X (n-1)/2 formula for 4950 one way convoy routes was far too many for just 1272 escorts [not counting the BB's] which was actually forty fewer than the far smaller RMN's 1312, who didn't have all those systems to patrol and convoys to protect; the RFC revealed there were what turned out to be something closer to 270 peep systems, not just "over a hundred systems" for ~36,315 separate and unique one way convoy routes.

My then proposed thesis to solve this problem was that over decades all peep escort warships less than 5/8 of the latest RMN class were 'retired', but really turned over to the Interior ministry for this critical convoy duty, since pirate swatting didn't need much in the way of the latest and best warships.

I pointed out that convoys generally cut the cargo carried by freighters to around half of non convoy peace time rates, and this drop in the face of increased piracy by the remnants of the system SDF's they conquered [which we learned about in EoH] may have had more effect on the peep economy than one might expect at first glance if it cost the peeps that much of their annual shipping capacity to properly protect what shipping they had [I didn't think they had 36,315 freighters, though a lot more than most], thus slowing their economy, ie a major reason the DuQuesne Plan wasn't working.

Granted not all systems have to ship immediately and all the time, and the largest and busiest routes would be those between the most industrialized systems [30-40], and others might be visited only monthly, quarterly, or even semi-annually; depending on their import needs and/or their exports etc.

If the peeps had conquered everything near them in a sphere of ~250 LY diameter, the average gap might have been only around 31 LY or ten days by freighter between systems, or a little over double that for the SL's 1784+ within 150-200 LY of Sol or ~14.717 LY radius.

Further, if these less industrialized systems were clustered, several plus might all be on a single route, and several of these might connect with the more industrialized systems, which might also act as transit nodes to considerably reduce the number of routes required to something far fewer and much more manageable than the numbers above suggested.

Alas, RFC may not have read my entire post but shot it down somewhat snippily by stating most star systems didn't need imports or exports [! while true, why is the MMM so big, etc?] or the peep freighters need many escorts etc, which I found passing strange but there may have been other issues [unknown to the bar posters] involved.

4. According to AAC, the RoH now has some 135+ systems, 30-40 being first class and contributing positively to the republic's economy, another 30-40 or so treading water or economically neutral, about the same needing support or subsidies, and the rest as colonies, strategic bases, securing critical materials, and outposts for future expansion etc.

So the second tier on down should require something in the Dromedary size range.

Estimates for the population of the peep's empire ran up to 600 billion for 270 systems, with the RoH about half that; with a quarter-plus of the above with very small populations a few millions at most, the rest average closer to 3 billion, or almost the size of the old SKM in 1900 PD when it was 3.4215 B [from UHH in MTH], and ought to be up to over 4 billion at even a low 1% growth rate over 22 years, not the barely 3 billion cited recently.

Freighters are like currency in a sense, the more they move around [ie their "velocity"], the more valuable they are; so as smaller tokens are more generally useful than larger notes, so lots of small 4.5 MT freighters visiting many more systems over a year would be more economically invigorating than far fewer large ones bogged down in a few.

Of course, the same problem faces the AE with only 462 listed escorts in the 1920 Fleet Strength chart, including the 11 BCP's, for 39 systems before getting its lion's share of Silesia [another 32+ systems], which RFC privately admitted to me at HonorCon One.

Rectifying that slight oversight is a problem for another time since this post is probably too long for too many.

Feel free to disagree, or add your own insights.

L


[quote="JeffEngel"][quote="lyonheart"]Hi JeffEngel,

The large prefab bases already exist and were mentioned in SFtS etc, for the LAC squadrons being based in the TQ systems, the LAC's being shuttled to the system by CLAC's, then permanently based in their orbital prefab but evidently only 4-5 squadrons for now, so the CLAC's could deliver all that are initially needed to two systems, though I'd prefer more like 9 squadrons myself. [/quote]
Yep yep, I had those in mind - certainly that something's already done is evidence it can be! And that one seemed to work well and was (if memory serves) an economical proposition. (Janacek Admiralty, doing real military work, it had to be....)
[quote]
While RMN escort CLAC's aren't currently in the cards, RHN escort CLAC's are quite possible, using freighter hulls as small as 4-5 MT for only 36-48 LAC's which are more than enough to overwhelm most commerce raider TG's I can imagine.[/quote]
Does the RHN tend to do specialist hulls either? I'd peg that as likely to be excessive for most commerce raiders. And the RHN's commerce tends to be within the RHN, historically at least. Granted, trade with Manticore now and through the wormhole network, not to mention with the Manticoran Alliance members now, Erewhon, Maya soon enough or already, will all extend it, somewhat, but for the most part, Havenite trade is in Havenite territory, so distinct commerce protection is likely to be a lower priority for them than it has ever been for the RMN.

I wouldn't rule it out, mind you - I just figure that there are factors at work that may reduce the likelihood of it.
[quote]
The RoH ought to have a new small freighter class near the size of the 4.5 MT 'Dromedary' because like currency many less populated systems need smaller freighters moving around more frequently than a few larger ones that only arrive quarterly or semi-annually.

L
[/quote]
Are less populated systems a norm for Haven? From what we've seen, they tend to be fairly large ones by population - just not by wealth, industry, economy, educational establishments. The region's been populated for a long time, and was from early on one of the most common destinations of migrants from the Core. Haven started colonizing directly a long time back, and, well, for all the planets with generations on the Dole, there was little disincentive against having families as large as one might: you didn't have to try to save up to get the kids a better future when it wasn't a realistic goal for [i]even one[/i].

It doesn't argue against plenty of 4 million ton freighters though, not to my mind: with plenty of population and no economy worth a damn, there may be more use for smaller ones than larger ones, and 4 million tons is not a tiny tramp in any case.[/quote]

lyonheart wrote:3. One of my early posts at the bar @2006 pointed out there simply weren't enough peep escorts below the wall, or even using some of the 374 BB's, to provide escorts for around convoys even if Haven had only 100 systems [when the textev always mentioned 'over 100 systems'], especially given the size of the escorts mentioned.

So using the n X (n-1)/2 formula for 4950 one way convoy routes was far too many for just 1272 escorts [not counting the BB's] which was actually forty fewer than the far smaller RMN's 1312, who didn't have all those systems to patrol and convoys to protect; the RFC revealed there were what turned out to be something closer to 270 peep systems, not just "over a hundred systems" for ~36,315 separate and unique one way convoy routes.

My then proposed thesis to solve this problem was that over decades all peep escort warships less than 5/8 of the latest RMN class were 'retired', but really turned over to the Interior ministry for this critical convoy duty, since pirate swatting didn't need much in the way of the latest and best warships.

I pointed out that convoys generally cut the cargo carried by freighters to around half of non convoy peace time rates, and this drop in the face of increased piracy by the remnants of the system SDF's they conquered [which we learned about in EoH] may have had more effect on the peep economy than one might expect at first glance if it cost the peeps that much of their annual shipping capacity to properly protect what shipping they had [I didn't think they had 36,315 freighters, though a lot more than most], thus slowing their economy, ie a major reason the DuQuesne Plan wasn't working.

Granted not all systems have to ship immediately and all the time, and the largest and busiest routes would be those between the most industrialized systems [30-40], and others might be visited only monthly, quarterly, or even semi-annually; depending on their import needs and/or their exports etc.

If the peeps had conquered everything near them in a sphere of ~250 LY diameter, the average gap might have been only around 31 LY or ten days by freighter between systems, or a little over double that for the SL's 1784+ within 150-200 LY of Sol or ~14.717 LY radius.

Further, if these less industrialized systems were clustered, several plus might all be on a single route, and several of these might connect with the more industrialized systems, which might also act as transit nodes to considerably reduce the number of routes required to something far fewer and much more manageable than the numbers above suggested.

Alas, RFC may not have read my entire post but shot it down somewhat snippily by stating most star systems didn't need imports or exports [! while true, why is the MMM so big, etc?] or the peep freighters need many escorts etc, which I found passing strange but there may have been other issues [unknown to the bar posters] involved.

4. According to AAC, the RoH now has some 135+ systems, 30-40 being first class and contributing positively to the republic's economy, another 30-40 or so treading water or economically neutral, about the same needing support or subsidies, and the rest as colonies, strategic bases, securing critical materials, and outposts for future expansion etc.

So the second tier on down should require something in the Dromedary size range.

Estimates for the population of the peep's empire ran up to 600 billion for 270 systems, with the RoH about half that; with a quarter-plus of the above with very small populations a few millions at most, the rest average closer to 3 billion, or almost the size of the old SKM in 1900 PD when it was 3.4215 B [from UHH in MTH], and ought to be up to over 4 billion at even a low 1% growth rate over 22 years, not the barely 3 billion cited recently.

Freighters are like currency in a sense, the more they move around [ie their "velocity"], the more valuable they are; so as smaller tokens are more generally useful than larger notes, so lots of small 4.5 MT freighters visiting many more systems over a year would be more economically invigorating than far fewer large ones bogged down in a few.

Of course, the same problem faces the AE with only 462 listed escorts in the 1920 Fleet Strength chart, including the 11 BCP's, for 39 systems before getting its lion's share of Silesia [another 32+ systems], which RFC privately admitted to me at HonorCon One.

Rectifying that slight oversight is a problem for another time since this post is probably too long for too many.

Feel free to disagree, or add your own insights.

L

Based on some bits RFC has dropped somewhat later than those old discussions on the bar (I think relating to Silesia) I believe that most shipping within Haven, even during the war, was able to proceed unescorted.

Even in Silesia, a piracy hot spot, ships proceeded independently for much of their runs. But since intercept in hyper requires special circumstances (Selkar drift) or really good intel, ships using a modicum of care over most routes are very unlikely to get intercepted between star systems.

So as long as the arriving system is secure, and has a large enough force to chase off any raiders or pirates, the freighters are fairly safe just popping in and out without a convoy or an in-hyper escort.


Now supplies going to the front are usually escorted because there's a risk that the system they're going to has been lost (or at least that an active battle might be taking place) so they need direct protection and scouts to mitigate that risk. But in the first war nobody was making heavy raids into rear systems, battlecruiser probes seem to be about as heavy as it was. So you didn't have the same concern about arriving in a rear area system to find it's defenses destroyed and hostile forces waiting for you.

That seems to mean that most peep commerce protection could be done simply by assigning units to protect their 250+ systems - rather than requiring convoys.


(Of course this doesn't address your other points about the number of merchant hulls they should still need, just how they would, or wouldn't, need escorts to protect them)

lyonheart wrote:Hi JeffEngel,

May I respond to your worthy points by numbering them?

1. The LAC bases described in War of Honor were pretty bad and far too basic for the RMN, but Janacek evidently didn't like the LAC's very much regardless of using them for system defense in too little batches etc.

"Pretty bad" may be a bit harsh, and "far too basic for the RMN" tends to mean "already festooned with more bells and whistles than any other navy enjoys in their wildest dreams". So yeah, if they could do that easily under Janacek, they could do quite well enough under anyone else. With the LAC groups as the standard for system defense moving forward in Talbott, I think we can assume that even bellsier and whistlier such bases are a norm.

2. Given the age and suitability of the SL Dromedary class, I'd expect the peep's to have copied the design at least a century ago, being suited to their polity which had dozens of systems even before they went conquistador in 1846.

All right. We're not really in much disagreement here anyway: I'm just claiming that the Republic probably has plenty of use for larger freighters too, and their use of "smaller" freighters of the 4m ton range may be due less to small system populations than small system economies, especially for what is imported and exported from them.

[snipping extensive trade route speculation]
Alas, RFC may not have read my entire post but shot it down somewhat snippily by stating most star systems didn't need imports or exports [! while true, why is the MMM so big, etc?] or the peep freighters need many escorts etc, which I found passing strange but there may have been other issues [unknown to the bar posters] involved.

Jonathan_S has that addressed below, with the chief protection being based in star systems (by all those battleships, I imagine, as the core of it) rather than between them.

As to why Manticore does have so much shipping: "most systems didn't need imports or exports" is still compatible with a whole lot of systems that DO (space is big, and it's got a lot of human systems in it), and those that don't need them may have a lot anyway as luxuries/bonuses. All a system really needs is food and light industry. Almost any planet feeds itself, and light industry is a low bar too. But almost any system can do with heavier industry, luxury goods, different food, etc. And many of them may be able to feed themselves but are not immediately configured to do so. (Think England's fields raising sheep for wool instead of crops, with cheaper food being imported normally.) A perennially underperforming Peep system economy won't be generating much for export and won't afford much for import, so Haven's freighter requirements may have been remarkably low, while Manticore's freighters service the wealthiest systems anywhere.

4. According to AAC, the RoH now has some 135+ systems, 30-40 being first class and contributing positively to the republic's economy, another 30-40 or so treading water or economically neutral, about the same needing support or subsidies, and the rest as colonies, strategic bases, securing critical materials, and outposts for future expansion etc.

So the second tier on down should require something in the Dromedary size range.

Estimates for the population of the peep's empire ran up to 600 billion for 270 systems, with the RoH about half that; with a quarter-plus of the above with very small populations a few millions at most, the rest average closer to 3 billion, or almost the size of the old SKM in 1900 PD when it was 3.4215 B [from UHH in MTH], and ought to be up to over 4 billion at even a low 1% growth rate over 22 years, not the barely 3 billion cited recently.

I think first-world systems in the Honorverse tend to reach zero population growth at around 3.5 to 4 billion people, depending on how pleasant the planet is. (Gryphon will never, ever have that many.) When a tower can keep that many people in such good condition, when access to so many other people can make for such excellent opportunities (assuming the government and economy are decent; Old Terra is a place to leave if you can), why they seem to leave or stop at one child per family is a curiosity to me, but there you go.

Anyway, that's a tangent.

Freighters are like currency in a sense, the more they move around [ie their "velocity"], the more valuable they are; so as smaller tokens are more generally useful than larger notes, so lots of small 4.5 MT freighters visiting many more systems over a year would be more economically invigorating than far fewer large ones bogged down in a few.

They would, but that 4.5 MT freighter costs very nearly as much to operate as the 8.5 MT one, so anywhere that can support the large one will crowd out the smaller one.

This is getting really off any point though, since that freighter-conversion escort LAC (new-model Q-ship) could be about as easily based on the 8.5 MT freighter as the 4.5 MT one in any case. They have freighters. They can build more freighters. They can put LAC's in them - ready to go even, not simply cargo. If it's useful. Is it? Maybe.