Navy "workhorse"

Hi Drak

Maybe you are right but even 3inch armoured ships would be quite a handful

I wonder how many of those they could build in a year?

But I guess you are right with so many pressing demands for steel building a better navy Right Now when the navy you have is already the best would be a bit of an overkill.

Still at some point they will build smaller mass produced ships that are a Corvette at the smallest or a light cruiser at the biggest to fill that escort/picket etc gap

I wonder how DW will go? -A steam powered Flower class corvette maybe or a bigger destroyer cruiser?

I suspect the bigger more powerful platform but I will be interested to see

My guess is that other than keeping older sailing vessels around to act as escorts/Coast Guard/Revenue Cutters, the workhorses of the fleet will, at most, be only slightly smaller than the KH VIIs. Why? Because their enemies are unlikely to produce anything that can't compete with the KH VIIs. Unless they decide to continue with their armored galley idea, and develop it into small gunboats and later into torpedo boats. They need to defend their harbors somehow, and when the time comes to think offensively they need to be able to break out. Nothing short of an equivalent battleship or a swarm of torpedo boats will allow that. That is when you will want cruisers to protect your convoys from enemy raiders. Otherwise your sailing vessels should suffice against any enemy sailing vessels that are cruising the seas in search of prey. Once your blockade of any enemy port has been broken, then in theory long-range cruisers and even battleships could be unleashed, meaning you need large ships to escort your convoys anyways.

Alistair wrote:What (if any) ship is Charis building as a "workhorse?" I guess what we would call today a Corvette/ Frigate/ destroyer /light Cruiser.

I can't imagine Charis building a 100 King Harald's to just do escort duty picket show the flag etc.

They do need troop and supply transports with engines - LAMA just demonstrated why. Salvage tugs as well.
The other item is landing craft or landing ships - these need a totally different design to cruisers with a flat shoaling hull to minimize displacement depth to permit beach operations - you can't always count on an amenable port. (The other item landing ships need is kedging anchors and winches to get off the beach).
This raises the possibility of merchant cruisers and armed trawlers as used in the second world war for convoy defense if needed against smaller intruders.

Hi Airtech,

RFC has posted his reasons for the ICN to prefer KH-VII's to anything else, but he also offered some interesting alternatives a year back IIRC.

Given RFC's previous posts on the subject, building nothing but KH-VII's would also be quite as political statement, now they know they'll have the money.

Even laying down only one new new hull every month would be quite a message to the CoGA, if and when they find out, given how far behind they are and their inability to build anything in response, the ICN would have dozens in commission when they tried to build their first.

Though I suspect Charis will build something closer to one every 2-3 5days.

You're quite right the ICN will need other kind of ships, particularly for cargo, troop transport, including amphibious operations, remembering how important Merlin and Cayleb made of it in that late night meeting in SC, so steam LST's and LSD's come to mind.

I still see the combined sail-steam design of the original KH-VII important for economic reasons, since regular merchant shipping houses will want something more familiar and cheaper than full steam designs.

NTM a freighter with a few 6" RBL's would make quite an armed auxiliary merchant cruiser (AMC).

L

AirTech wrote:

Alistair wrote:What (if any) ship is Charis building as a "workhorse?" I guess what we would call today a Corvette/ Frigate/ destroyer /light Cruiser.

I can't imagine Charis building a 100 King Harald's to just do escort duty picket show the flag etc.

They do need troop and supply transports with engines - LAMA just demonstrated why. Salvage tugs as well.
The other item is landing craft or landing ships - these need a totally different design to cruisers with a flat shoaling hull to minimize displacement depth to permit beach operations - you can't always count on an amenable port. (The other item landing ships need is kedging anchors and winches to get off the beach).
This raises the possibility of merchant cruisers and armed trawlers as used in the second world war for convoy defense if needed against smaller intruders.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Airtech,

RFC has posted his reasons for the ICN to prefer KH-VII's to anything else, but he also offered some interesting alternatives a year back IIRC.

Given RFC's previous posts on the subject, building nothing but KH-VII's would also be quite as political statement, now they know they'll have the money.

Even laying down only one new new hull every month would be quite a message to the CoGA, if and when they find out, given how far behind they are and their inability to build anything in response, the ICN would have dozens in commission when they tried to build their first.

Though I suspect Charis will build something closer to one every 2-3 5days.

You're quite right the ICN will need other kind of ships, particularly for cargo, troop transport, including amphibious operations, remembering how important Merlin and Cayleb made of it in that late night meeting in SC, so steam LST's and LSD's come to mind.

I still see the combined sail-steam design of the original KH-VII important for economic reasons, since regular merchant shipping houses will want something more familiar and cheaper than full steam designs.

NTM a freighter with a few 6" RBL's would make quite an armed auxiliary merchant cruiser (AMC).

L

There will be a couple of limitations regarding the KHVIII's, such as availability of steel, shipyard workers, construction slips, crews to man them, and finally, the supporting infrastructure.

As a result, I would be surprised if more then a dozen KHVIII's are being built at any one time, and if more then 20 to 30 will be in service in total. (After all, manning even 30 of them is equivalent to half the entire pre-imperial Charisian Army - not to mention the support staff that would be required to construct them in the first place, manufacture the ammo and spare parts, and then to move these items from the islands to where the ships are serving....)

After the construction of the KHVIII's have started, the conversion of more ships of the same type as the Rottweiller, and the construction of the rest of the armoured steam barges, then I would expect to see steam merchant ships (some converted to be LSI's/troopships) and other miscellaneous ships (i.e. tugs, couriers, coaling ships, survey ships, etc.) that are required in any navy.

Rafan wrote:In this topic page 6 RFC wrote about something like that

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4116&hilit=king+harald+VII&start=50

It may be helpful now.

Hello Rafan. Welcome to the forums. Hope you enjoy yourself here. I certainly have.

Of the 3 designs here, the Maikelberg class seems to be best suited for the role of all around general workhorse. It has equal armor to the Comet class and has superior top speed (31 knots vrs 28.8 knots) and firepower(Maikelberg class has 4 6"/45 BL & 12 4"/45 BL --- Comet class has 2 6"/45 BL & 8 4"/45 BL). Furthermore while it is slightly more expensive, the difference in cost (539,000 marks for a Maikelberg class vrs 497,000 for a Comet class) is not that great. I don't see that relatively small savings in cost being worth the difference in capability between these 2 designs.

The 3rd design here, the Hurricane class is a heavy cruiser. It has 8" guns and thicker armor than either of the other 2 designs. If Charis was facing an opponent with equal or near equal capabilities, this might be the best of the 3 potential designs. But as the situation stands, any one of the 3 is going to outclass anything they run into in the immediate future.

RFC says the Hurricane class would cost 814,000 marks. Therefore, Charis could build 3 Maikelberg class ships for slightly less than the cost of 2 Hurricane classes. Since the thread is about a general workhorse ship, this makes the difference to me. The Maikelberg seems to be the best blend of capability and cost.

DrakBibliophile wrote:Things to consider

While Charis has major advantages in producing iron or steel over the other nations of Safehold, they do have limits on how much iron or steel they can produce so IMO they couldn't replace all of their wooden sailing ships with armored ships quickly.

In addition, IIRC Charis couldn't build steam powered ships (even ones with sails) in enough numbers to replace all of their wooden sailing ships.

To draw a comparison, the British Royal navy used sailing vessels (usually dismasted) as floating warehouses, barracks, etc for many years after steel hulls ruled the waves. There is a painting I have seen before but can't find right now that shows a British battleship passing a dismasted formerly famous sailing ship in either WWI or WWII, I think in Gibraltar harbor, that shows the contrast quite well and just how long some sailing ships stayed afloat.

Chemechie wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:Things to consider

While Charis has major advantages in producing iron or steel over the other nations of Safehold, they do have limits on how much iron or steel they can produce so IMO they couldn't replace all of their wooden sailing ships with armored ships quickly.

In addition, IIRC Charis couldn't build steam powered ships (even ones with sails) in enough numbers to replace all of their wooden sailing ships.

To draw a comparison, the British Royal navy used sailing vessels (usually dismasted) as floating warehouses, barracks, etc for many years after steel hulls ruled the waves. There is a painting I have seen before but can't find right now that shows a British battleship passing a dismasted formerly famous sailing ship in either WWI or WWII, I think in Gibraltar harbor, that shows the contrast quite well and just how long some sailing ships stayed afloat.

You are forgetting that there is ONE sailing ship still in commission and afloat. Namely USS Constitution commissioned 1797

Hi Henry Brown,

Yup, I believe the Maikelburg was the consensus on that thread.

L

Henry Brown wrote:

Rafan wrote:In this topic page 6 RFC wrote about something like that

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4116&hilit=king+harald+VII&start=50

It may be helpful now.

Hello Rafan. Welcome to the forums. Hope you enjoy yourself here. I certainly have.

Of the 3 designs here, the Maikelberg class seems to be best suited for the role of all around general workhorse. It has equal armor to the Comet class and has superior top speed (31 knots vrs 28.8 knots) and firepower(Maikelberg class has 4 6"/45 BL & 12 4"/45 BL --- Comet class has 2 6"/45 BL & 8 4"/45 BL). Furthermore while it is slightly more expensive, the difference in cost (539,000 marks for a Maikelberg class vrs 497,000 for a Comet class) is not that great. I don't see that relatively small savings in cost being worth the difference in capability between these 2 designs.

The 3rd design here, the Hurricane class is a heavy cruiser. It has 8" guns and thicker armor than either of the other 2 designs. If Charis was facing an opponent with equal or near equal capabilities, this might be the best of the 3 potential designs. But as the situation stands, any one of the 3 is going to outclass anything they run into in the immediate future.

RFC says the Hurricane class would cost 814,000 marks. Therefore, Charis could build 3 Maikelberg class ships for slightly less than the cost of 2 Hurricane classes. Since the thread is about a general workhorse ship, this makes the difference to me. The Maikelberg seems to be the best blend of capability and cost.

Yeah i think you are right

I wonder how many Maikelburg they can build?

need around 40-80 if you want to have 1-2 per convoy and still have a few spare for concentrated fire brigades.