SLN reserve possibilities

This is my first post and I'm pretty sure this idea hasn't been mentioned from a cursory search, but if I missed some similar idea, uhm sorry I supposed. Basically my idea is that the SLN have this gigantic reserve fleet that is about as useful to them in combat as nerf guns and that Manticore has closed the wormhole network to them and removed their merchant shipping to try and economically cripple the League. Well what if instead of trying to refit something like 8000 SDs they would probably have a hell of a time trying to find crews for and that it has been stated that it would probably be more practical to simply build new ships (can't remember which book probably A Rising Thunder or a Shadow of Freedom, during that meeting between Winston Kingsford and Innokentiy Kolokoltsov (I think)), so the reserve SDs could just be scrapped for raw materials to build new ships, or repurpose these ships to act as ad hoc freighters until the shipyards can start churning out enough ships to really reestablish the same level of interstellar trade as there was before.

I really doubt 8000 ships would be anywhere near enough to make up for the lost access to the wormholes and don't know just how large the Manticoran merchant fleet was, but it would help. It would still require work to be done on the ships make them suitable to carry cargo, removing the weapons, sidewall generators, redundant systems, crew compartments and so on, and I was thinking the simplest way to do that would be to simply cut the outer hull off the SD (I remember reading something about conventional SDs having both an outer hull and an inner solid hull where all the critical systems were kept) and building a new cargo space around it or attaching something docking rings where the equivalent of shipping containers could be attached to similar to the Silesian designed arsenal ships in the Battle of Torch.

I just wanted to throw that idea out there, does anyone else have any ideas how the Sollies might end up using their reserve fleet?

Cyn wrote:This is my first post and I'm pretty sure this idea hasn't been mentioned from a cursory search, but if I missed some similar idea, uhm sorry I supposed. Basically my idea is that the SLN have this gigantic reserve fleet that is about as useful to them in combat as nerf guns and that Manticore has closed the wormhole network to them and removed their merchant shipping to try and economically cripple the League. Well what if instead of trying to refit something like 8000 SDs they would probably have a hell of a time trying to find crews for and that it has been stated that it would probably be more practical to simply build new ships (can't remember which book probably A Rising Thunder or a Shadow of Freedom, during that meeting between Winston Kingsford and Innokentiy Kolokoltsov (I think)), so the reserve SDs could just be scrapped for raw materials to build new ships, or repurpose these ships to act as ad hoc freighters until the shipyards can start churning out enough ships to really reestablish the same level of interstellar trade as there was before.

I really doubt 8000 ships would be anywhere near enough to make up for the lost access to the wormholes and don't know just how large the Manticoran merchant fleet was, but it would help. It would still require work to be done on the ships make them suitable to carry cargo, removing the weapons, sidewall generators, redundant systems, crew compartments and so on, and I was thinking the simplest way to do that would be to simply cut the outer hull off the SD (I remember reading something about conventional SDs having both an outer hull and an inner solid hull where all the critical systems were kept) and building a new cargo space around it or attaching something docking rings where the equivalent of shipping containers could be attached to similar to the Silesian designed arsenal ships in the Battle of Torch.

I just wanted to throw that idea out there, does anyone else have any ideas how the Sollies might end up using their reserve fleet?

Hi Cyn,

Welcome to the forums. I hope you enjoy the rough and tumble that happens up here. As for your idea, the difficulty with is that even if possible probably would be pretty expensive to implement. It's probably cheaper to send the ship to the breakers and start from scratch building a freighter.

As for the reserve, I'm not aware of any current plans on what to do with it. The League's cash flow has taken a hard hit lately and they still have 1500 SDs actively in commission to try to intimidate anybody who doeesn't have access to RMN tech.

Don

To elaborate on n7axw's point, the problem with converting the Reserve SDs for moving cargo is that warships and freighters have diametrically opposing designs. Freighters need large, open spaces in which huge volumes of cargo can be stored and, crucially, moved around. Warships, on the other hand, are heavily subdivided to compartmentalise damage and minimise loss of atmosphere. In order to turn a superdreadnaught into an even remotely effective freighter, you'd have to open up cargo bays inside the ship. That would require you to remove a lot of bulkheads and cofferdamming, which means knocking big holes through structures that have been carefully (and expensively) designed to resist having holes knocked through them.

And then there's the problem of getting the cargo in and out. Based on what we saw of HMAMC Wayfarer, Honorverse freighters have a small number of cargo bays accessed by huge doors, with the principal door being at the stern just aft of the impeller ring. To do that on a warship you'd have to cut off the aft hammerhead and build the door structure on the end. You'd also have to remove the core hull, because it's in the way, and move the bridge, reactors, intertial compensator and hyper generator to more suitable positions.

So, all in all, to convert an SD into a freighter you'd essentially got to pull the ship apart like a Lego kit and put it back together again in a different arrangement, except that this Lego kit is built to take hits from capital ship energy weapons. It will almost certainly be quicker and cheaper to scrap the SD for raw materials and build a new freighter from scratch; you'll definitely get a better ship for your trouble.

That said, there is one warship type that could, perhaps, be turned into a mediocre freighter in relatively short order: the CLAC. The LAC bays could be used as cargo bays in a pinch, though you'd have to install the cargo-handling gear in each one. Unfortunately, no-one forwarded the memo on CLACs to the SLN...

Those ships are "dead" in terms of the current conflicts, zero possibility of resurrecting them. Most of them have been mothballed for decades while the corrupt upper echelons of the SLN have siphoned money off to cronies, etc. There's no money to mobilize enough crew to activate even a small chunk of them, and Gold Peak's Tenth Fleet is forcing a wedge between the Talbot cluster and the majority of the league, and Frontier Fleet -- which is supposed to be WAY closer to state-of-the-art tech, can't even fight effectively against Roland destroyers: at Saltash a set of Rolands blew away four SLN battlecruisers from about 3-5 times the BC's missile range.

The problem is also that the "mandarins" know that. They've preached their invincibility because of the Reserve etc. for decades, and know that their ONLY strategy is commerce raiding, because at least "" (Frontier Fleet) already has enough ships to maybe keep the RMN busy and uppity independence-minded Verge systems looking over their shoulder in fear. It's also one of their only ways of trying to get a bypass around the stranglehold which the RMN and RMMN now has on intergalactic freight and information flow.

The Solarian League Navy is now like a hundred times larger "Spanish armada" going up against a single 20th Century aircraft carrier task fleet. They can go bombard a whole bunch of basically unarmed "islands", but are TOAST the moment a metal ship with radio finds out what they are up to.

The other problem is the crewing requirements. There simply aren't enough trained spacers in the SL that are not already employed elsewhere to crew the things even on a skeleton basis.

There is one part of the reserve fleet that may be useful however. If whoever designed the thing in the first place wasn't a complete idiot (not necessarily a good assumption with the SL), some of those ships should be supply ships. Textev indicates that SL civilian ships have been advancing technologically even though the military hasn't, so those old supply ships won't be nearly as good as a new built modern civilian ones. But they could help fill the gap until new ships get built.

For the shipping of the whole Solarian League, without the use of wormhole junctions, it'd be at best a tiny drop in a huge bucket, but if there's a will to drop that much at least....

The Reserve may well include some of the fleet train units Battle Fleet would need for extended operations outside the core worlds. Those would have, presumably, military grade compensators, hypergenerators, and particle shielding, and would otherwise be built mostly for carrying supplies and personnel. They may well be built with some defenses too, although that last would be ludicrously outmatched by modern weaponry, so not bothering to count it at all is perfectly defensible.

Those units would be helpful. There may even be crews to find for them - only because they'd likely represent too small a portion of the Reserve to be much of a help anyway.

JeffEngel wrote:For the shipping of the whole Solarian League, without the use of wormhole junctions, it'd be at best a tiny drop in a huge bucket, but if there's a will to drop that much at least....

The Reserve may well include some of the fleet train units Battle Fleet would need for extended operations outside the core worlds. Those would have, presumably, military grade compensators, hypergenerators, and particle shielding, and would otherwise be built mostly for carrying supplies and personnel. They may well be built with some defenses too, although that last would be ludicrously outmatched by modern weaponry, so not bothering to count it at all is perfectly defensible.

Those units would be helpful. There may even be crews to find for them - only because they'd likely represent too small a portion of the Reserve to be much of a help anyway.

Actually finding crews for them might no be too difficult. Given that all of the SDs in service are so much moving scrap metal, decommission a few of them to provide the crews for your supply ships.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:For the shipping of the whole Solarian League, without the use of wormhole junctions, it'd be at best a tiny drop in a huge bucket, but if there's a will to drop that much at least....

The Reserve may well include some of the fleet train units Battle Fleet would need for extended operations outside the core worlds. Those would have, presumably, military grade compensators, hypergenerators, and particle shielding, and would otherwise be built mostly for carrying supplies and personnel. They may well be built with some defenses too, although that last would be ludicrously outmatched by modern weaponry, so not bothering to count it at all is perfectly defensible.

Those units would be helpful. There may even be crews to find for them - only because they'd likely represent too small a portion of the Reserve to be much of a help anyway.

Actually finding crews for them might no be too difficult. Given that all of the SDs in service are so much moving scrap metal, decommission a few of them to provide the crews for your supply ships.

That's true, but it may cause a wee bit of morale and public relations problem. Beating your swords into plowshares in the middle of a war, just because your swords are useless and all your farm equipment's been taken away just won't play well out there.

JeffEngel wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:For the shipping of the whole Solarian League, without the use of wormhole junctions, it'd be at best a tiny drop in a huge bucket, but if there's a will to drop that much at least....

The Reserve may well include some of the fleet train units Battle Fleet would need for extended operations outside the core worlds. Those would have, presumably, military grade compensators, hypergenerators, and particle shielding, and would otherwise be built mostly for carrying supplies and personnel. They may well be built with some defenses too, although that last would be ludicrously outmatched by modern weaponry, so not bothering to count it at all is perfectly defensible.

Those units would be helpful. There may even be crews to find for them - only because they'd likely represent too small a portion of the Reserve to be much of a help anyway.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Actually finding crews for them might no be too difficult. Given that all of the SDs in service are so much moving scrap metal, decommission a few of them to provide the crews for your supply ships.

That's true, but it may cause a wee bit of morale and public relations problem. Beating your swords into plowshares in the middle of a war, just because your swords are useless and all your farm equipment's been taken away just won't play well out there.

Which is why you don't decommission all of the SDs, just a few to supply the crews, and you do what the mandarins do so well, you lie about why you are doing it.

Hi Cyn,

Welcome to the forums, please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forum.

This idea isn't new given almost a decade of fans trying to figure out what RFC is going have happen next, but it isn't as dead as some of the dead equines around here that too many try to resurrect, so buck up.

Given that the BF reserve is going to be debris in 2-3 month's, nope even Kingsford and the BF high command doesn't have a clue what to do with such dinosaurs.

Keep smiling, and feel free to share some other ideas, we've all missed horribly over the years.

L

Cyn wrote:This is my first post and I'm pretty sure this idea hasn't been mentioned from a cursory search, but if I missed some similar idea, uhm sorry I supposed. Basically my idea is that the SLN have this gigantic reserve fleet that is about as useful to them in combat as nerf guns and that Manticore has closed the wormhole network to them and removed their merchant shipping to try and economically cripple the League. Well what if instead of trying to refit something like 8000 SDs they would probably have a hell of a time trying to find crews for and that it has been stated that it would probably be more practical to simply build new ships (can't remember which book probably A Rising Thunder or a Shadow of Freedom, during that meeting between Winston Kingsford and Innokentiy Kolokoltsov (I think)), so the reserve SDs could just be scrapped for raw materials to build new ships, or repurpose these ships to act as ad hoc freighters until the shipyards can start churning out enough ships to really reestablish the same level of interstellar trade as there was before.

I really doubt 8000 ships would be anywhere near enough to make up for the lost access to the wormholes and don't know just how large the Manticoran merchant fleet was, but it would help. It would still require work to be done on the ships make them suitable to carry cargo, removing the weapons, sidewall generators, redundant systems, crew compartments and so on, and I was thinking the simplest way to do that would be to simply cut the outer hull off the SD (I remember reading something about conventional SDs having both an outer hull and an inner solid hull where all the critical systems were kept) and building a new cargo space around it or attaching something docking rings where the equivalent of shipping containers could be attached to similar to the Silesian designed arsenal ships in the Battle of Torch.

I just wanted to throw that idea out there, does anyone else have any ideas how the Sollies might end up using their reserve fleet?