Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Jonathan_S wrote:

warspite1515 wrote:Since my original idea met the energy death of the universe (accurately, I might add), has anyone considered the idea of an "alternate" deployment method for pods? Yes, they can be limpeted to the hull, but there's a speed penalty there. What about stripping half to three quarters of the boat bays, add rails, and stuff them with flat-packs?

I haven't crunched the numbers, but my off the cuff estimate is that the entire volume of an SD's boat bays might be equal to about 8-12 pods.

Pinnaces just aren't that big when you start comparing them to capital ship MDMs.
A pinnace is roughly 30m long, while a bare Mk23 looks to be over 16m[1]; before you add in any extra length from the pod)

Even if I'm wrong and it's double that you're talking about 2 or so double stacked pod salvos. You can easily tractor (or bolt on Andie style) more pods that than without seriously screwing up sensors or firing arcs)

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[1] pixel counting off the non-square missile family picture MaxxQ rendered. So these Mk23 numbers could be off a fair bit. The Pinnace numbers were taken from Jayne's: The Royal Manticoran Navy.

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I would still argue the best use of the Spindle SLN SD's is to strip all weapons (PDLC / Laser / Grasers / sensors ); small arms can initially equip either the Tallbot Quadrant Guard or be shipped to Silecia or Torch.
PDLC's etc can be used as spares for any Gladiator class SLN CA's -- much closer to RMN / RHN standards approx. RMN Starknight / RHN Sword class level.

The SLN SD's and BC's are a great raw material source for a reclamation industry and possibly building lead to building RMN / RHN ships under license.

Galdiators can be turned over to Myers and other new-independent systems amenable to the GA as initial SDF.

-- Stewart

Jonathan_S wrote:

warspite1515 wrote:Since my original idea met the energy death of the universe (accurately, I might add), has anyone considered the idea of an "alternate" deployment method for pods? Yes, they can be limpeted to the hull, but there's a speed penalty there. What about stripping half to three quarters of the boat bays, add rails, and stuff them with flat-packs?

I haven't crunched the numbers, but my off the cuff estimate is that the entire volume of an SD's boat bays might be equal to about 8-12 pods.

Pinnaces just aren't that big when you start comparing them to capital ship MDMs.
A pinnace is roughly 30m long, while a bare Mk23 looks to be over 16m[1]; before you add in any extra length from the pod)

Even if I'm wrong and it's double that you're talking about 2 or so double stacked pod salvos. You can easily tractor (or bolt on Andie style) more pods that than without seriously screwing up sensors or firing arcs)

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[1] pixel counting off the non-square missile family picture MaxxQ rendered. So these Mk23 numbers could be off a fair bit. The Pinnace numbers were taken from Jayne's: The Royal Manticoran Navy.

Thanks Jonathan_S ... I don't think I ever realized how BIG those pods are in relation to a pinnacle (or other "small" object). Granted, when you're relating them to an 8.5-9 million ton SD(P) they are tiny, but trying to find places to stick said tiny objects is really a master class in engineering.

It really is a tribute to the robustness of an SD/D that the only meaningful thing that can be done w/ them is turn them into scrap vs. refit/conversion. Granted, that's speaking in the era of the SD(P), but I'm beginning to suspect that the same really held true in the First Havenite War -- while you could refit some items and hope the spares held out, once you had nothing else to use that nice little "addition" to your fleet really just floated in orbit taking up parking space.

warspite1515 wrote:It really is a tribute to the robustness of an SD/D that the only meaningful thing that can be done w/ them is turn them into scrap vs. refit/conversion. Granted, that's speaking in the era of the SD(P), but I'm beginning to suspect that the same really held true in the First Havenite War -- while you could refit some items and hope the spares held out, once you had nothing else to use that nice little "addition" to your fleet really just floated in orbit taking up parking space.

It's got a parallel in Honorverse towers: once the ceramacrete fuses, it's bedrock. You've got an artificial mountain with an extremely regular, human-convenient cave structure. You can shift around the additional walls you put in out of other materials for convenience, but the main load-bearing ones, you're stuck with, barring one extremely expensive, difficult, and time-consuming effort to tear down the mountain. (And then build another, which is much easier.)

With an SD though, the toughness is a matter of being densely built around specific capabilities. If you need to make major changes in the missile launcher shapes, you have a whole lot of architecture to take apart and put back together - architecture built specifically to be utterly hard to take apart under fire. Yard dogs don't have to penetrate active defenses - no refit is THAT unpopular! - but they have to be a lot more careful about what they are doing than enemy laserheads, too.

Making changes to add in a missile pod core, for instance, is just out of the question.

A refit to reduce shipkilling missile launching capability and increase CM fire rate and control massively wouldn't be as radical as some others one may consider, and it could get you a platform with something useful to do in modern combat. Call it the escort superdreadnought. But even then, modifying it that severely, and bringing it up to current SEM automation standards for a dinky crew, would require a whole lot of time expense, and effort to deliver a platform that represents a less ideal use of those personnel than crewing one more SD(P).

I've come around to the conclusion that the Solarian SDs should be scrapped as much as it offends my waste not, want not impulses. They are too dated and the upkeep on the things too expensive to be worth maintaining.

However, anything BC and down could be a different story. Presuming the up keep issues can be resolved, I can see where the presense of some Nevadas or Indifatigables could have a detering effect upon ill intentioned visitors to one's system.

Don

n7axw wrote:I've come around to the conclusion that the Solarian SDs should be scrapped as much as it offends my waste not, want not impulses. They are too dated and the upkeep on the things too expensive to be worth maintaining.

However, anything BC and down could be a different story. Presuming the up keep issues can be resolved, I can see where the presense of some Nevadas or Indifatigables could have a detering effect upon ill intentioned visitors to one's system.

Don

It's not a waste when any other use represents a higher cost in effort-minus-return.

Although... with THAT many ships captured, of a small number of designs, there's some impetus to invest some research effort into specific modifications to get use out of them with minimum changes. Most of the upkeep is in crew training, salaries, care and feeding. If you worked up some standard packages for extreme automation, and refits that didn't require profound structural changes but still delivered something useful as a result, you may get something worth the bother.

I'm coming up empty asking myself if you're more likely to get that below-the-wall rather than above it.

For that matter - maybe the thing to do with that specific research is a program for the very best recycling of the materials of the ships rather than refitting them at all.

n7axw wrote:I've come around to the conclusion that the Solarian SDs should be scrapped as much as it offends my waste not, want not impulses. They are too dated and the upkeep on the things too expensive to be worth maintaining.

However, anything BC and down could be a different story. Presuming the up keep issues can be resolved, I can see where the presense of some Nevadas or Indifatigables could have a detering effect upon ill intentioned visitors to one's system.

Don

That is a point upon which we all agree, which is why we keep trying to find some useful conversion such as cutting the ship back to bare bones (hull form, impellers & upgraded compensators, and minimal weaponry, etc.) and replacing all that cubage and probably the armoring with something useful, even if it's just for one outlying star system at a time, even if it qualifies as a make-work, train more starship building personnel project.

For example, use minimal crewing to get one to Nuncio or Dresden, park it in orbit with minimal "here's how to repair a starship" instructions, instructors, and supplies to perform "X" conversion. Let's make that plus building an in system support station a ten thousand person project, with Manticore planning to accept 20% of the workers into service back in "Home Space" 8-10 months later, those being say 25% of the cream of the crop at any one time from the planetary work force that have qualified for the "work/study, get prolong and go to Manticore U" program. At the end of the program, Nuncio or Dresden, etc. have a better mini-shipyard for maintenance station and many more loyal and trained workers, and the SEM has a useful _________________. Even if we don't now what goes in that fill-in-the-blank.

SharkHunter wrote:

n7axw wrote:I've come around to the conclusion that the Solarian SDs should be scrapped as much as it offends my waste not, want not impulses. They are too dated and the upkeep on the things too expensive to be worth maintaining.

However, anything BC and down could be a different story. Presuming the up keep issues can be resolved, I can see where the presense of some Nevadas or Indifatigables could have a detering effect upon ill intentioned visitors to one's system.

Don

That is a point upon which we all agree, which is why we keep trying to find some useful conversion such as cutting the ship back to bare bones (hull form, impellers & upgraded compensators, and minimal weaponry, etc.) and replacing all that cubage and probably the armoring with something useful, even if it's just for one outlying star system at a time, even if it qualifies as a make-work, train more starship building personnel project.

For example, use minimal crewing to get one to Nuncio or Dresden, park it in orbit with minimal "here's how to repair a starship" instructions, instructors, and supplies to perform "X" conversion. Let's make that plus building an in system support station a ten thousand person project, with Manticore planning to accept 20% of the workers into service back in "Home Space" 8-10 months later, those being say 25% of the cream of the crop at any one time from the planetary work force that have qualified for the "work/study, get prolong and go to Manticore U" program. At the end of the program, Nuncio or Dresden, etc. have a better mini-shipyard for maintenance station and many more loyal and trained workers, and the SEM has a useful _________________. Even if we don't now what goes in that fill-in-the-blank.

Better to simply start Nuncio off by enlisting them in the care and feeding as well as the operation of the LAC groups already sent out there along with training on up to date stuff which Admiral Khomulo has already proposed and is already under way.

Don

SharkHunter wrote:

n7axw wrote:I've come around to the conclusion that the Solarian SDs should be scrapped as much as it offends my waste not, want not impulses. They are too dated and the upkeep on the things too expensive to be worth maintaining.

However, anything BC and down could be a different story. Presuming the up keep issues can be resolved, I can see where the presense of some Nevadas or Indifatigables could have a detering effect upon ill intentioned visitors to one's system.

Don

That is a point upon which we all agree, which is why we keep trying to find some useful conversion such as cutting the ship back to bare bones (hull form, impellers & upgraded compensators, and minimal weaponry, etc.) and replacing all that cubage and probably the armoring with something useful, even if it's just for one outlying star system at a time, even if it qualifies as a make-work, train more starship building personnel project.

For example, use minimal crewing to get one to Nuncio or Dresden, park it in orbit with minimal "here's how to repair a starship" instructions, instructors, and supplies to perform "X" conversion. Let's make that plus building an in system support station a ten thousand person project, with Manticore planning to accept 20% of the workers into service back in "Home Space" 8-10 months later, those being say 25% of the cream of the crop at any one time from the planetary work force that have qualified for the "work/study, get prolong and go to Manticore U" program. At the end of the program, Nuncio or Dresden, etc. have a better mini-shipyard for maintenance station and many more loyal and trained workers, and the SEM has a useful _________________. Even if we don't now what goes in that fill-in-the-blank.

Passenger liner! Like Artemis but bigger! Wooo!

Fleet hospital ship. Basic defenses mean that it's a doozy for wicked raiders to hurt. The opulent Solarian quarters should be good for recovery, and presumably the existing medical bays do represent as good or better than Manticore has. (Although they aren't likely to reflect recent and extensive experience with combat-related injury and field treatment conditions.)

A training command. Chances are many places will be working with SLN-grade equipment for a long time - because it's available in such quantity and many places will have so much more need for a military in coming decades. Talbott particularly won't have to make do with SLN grade gear, but will have lots and lots of people contributing to the RMN and/or local defense forces. You may have to do a lot more work to get it full of simulators and good-enough-for-some-training-value facsimiles of RMN gear, but when it's half make-work project for training the builders anyway, that's livable.

I'd recommend leaving the armoring for most projects, and coming up with plans for which that armoring isn't an absolute waste. That's not because I think it's a precious and wonderful thing, but that pulling it out is the most time and trouble consuming part of the refit process. For refits that are really attractive and demand getting into the guts for major work anyway, that can be disregarded, since that armor may have to come out just to get the gut-changing done in practical fashion.

--snipping--

JeffEngel wrote:Passenger liner! Like Artemis but bigger! Wooo! Fleet hospital ship. Basic defenses mean that it's a doozy for wicked raiders to hurt. The opulent Solarian quarters should be good for recovery, and presumably the existing medical bays do represent as good or better than Manticore has. (Although they aren't likely to reflect recent and extensive experience with combat-related injury and field treatment conditions.)

... Maybe not better than Manticore, but likely a darn sight better than the outland systems. Maybe training med staff up to high GA standards is the best usage, or if the prolong treatments could be done on a big ship vs. travel back to a GA or SLN planet.

JeffEngel wrote:I'd recommend leaving the armoring for most projects, and coming up with plans for which that armoring isn't an absolute waste. That's not because I think it's a precious and wonderful thing, but that pulling it out is the most time and trouble consuming part of the refit process. For refits that are really attractive and demand getting into the guts for major work anyway, that can be disregarded, since that armor may have to come out just to get the gut-changing done in practical fashion.

My brain went "oh duh, lightbulb on, aren't we all missing a major point": given that two sides of any starship are basically or nearly unarmored because when the wedge is up, those sides are unattackable by any present technologies.

So the "wedge sides, wedge down" are likely the missile and supply loading ports, etc. etc.. So for conversion purposes, you could conceivably carve up alot of that cubage "between the sidewall and hammerhead armoring schemes" for whatever purposes you want except for anything involving battle conditions. Which means that the shape of the hull for the ship has to remain the same, i.e. there's no useful "pod layer conversion/configuration", no easy way to cut different tubes for RMN missiles, dig out the old PDLC and replace them with new ones, etc.

Granted, for most conversions we've thought of (fleet transport, etc.) pulling out all the old tubes "behind the hull line", and rerouting all the useful wiring, etc. to put something else useful inside would still be a copper or super-ceramic plated bi-otch, but "we're training workers here so that they can fix our broken warships in the future or build new ones, so what the hey?"

You're stuck with an SD shaped "whatever" after the conversion, but if my logic is correct, the armoring problem just became moot, yes/no?

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

JeffEngel wrote:Passenger liner! Like Artemis but bigger! Wooo! Fleet hospital ship. Basic defenses mean that it's a doozy for wicked raiders to hurt. The opulent Solarian quarters should be good for recovery, and presumably the existing medical bays do represent as good or better than Manticore has. (Although they aren't likely to reflect recent and extensive experience with combat-related injury and field treatment conditions.)

... Maybe not better than Manticore, but likely a darn sight better than the outland systems. Maybe training med staff up to high GA standards is the best usage, or if the prolong treatments could be done on a big ship vs. travel back to a GA or SLN planet.

For Manticore's medical base, we have going for it:
M1 - Per capita wealth, for a high standard of living and particularly interest in and will to fund medical care.
M2 - Proximity to and friendly relations with Beowulf
M3 - Contacts throughout known space, sucking up technical advances (in this case, medical related ones) from everywhere
M4 - General spin-off effects of the space warfighting push
M5 - Trauma experience and preparation after the decades of warfare
M6 - Sheer absolute wealth (for a single star system)

For the League's medical base - and assuming there's no reason the SLN would stint on using it fully in their sickbays:
L1 - Pretty good per capita wealth in the Core Worlds
L2 - Beowulf too
L3 - BEING most of known space
L4 and L5 - omitted, no counterpart for the League
L6 - VAST absolute wealth in the League as a whole - and note that while the League government income is chump change in comparison to the League, nothing is keeping the whole League from working on better health care or the SLN from taking advantage
L5 - Some bits of Mesan medicine leaking in that Manticore eschews

Manticore's tech base impresses us most with the M4 effects, specifically for fighting wars. But that's going to have very little effect on their medicine. I'd bet that L6 trumps the Manticoran effects or ties it easily, where the rest is about a wash.

JeffEngel wrote:I'd recommend leaving the armoring for most projects, and coming up with plans for which that armoring isn't an absolute waste. That's not because I think it's a precious and wonderful thing, but that pulling it out is the most time and trouble consuming part of the refit process. For refits that are really attractive and demand getting into the guts for major work anyway, that can be disregarded, since that armor may have to come out just to get the gut-changing done in practical fashion.

My brain went "oh duh, lightbulb on, aren't we all missing a major point": given that two sides of any starship are basically or nearly unarmored because when the wedge is up, those sides are unattackable by any present technologies.

So the "wedge sides, wedge down" are likely the missile and supply loading ports, etc. etc.. So for conversion purposes, you could conceivably carve up alot of that cubage "between the sidewall and hammerhead armoring schemes" for whatever purposes you want except for anything involving battle conditions. Which means that the shape of the hull for the ship has to remain the same, i.e. there's no useful "pod layer conversion/configuration", no easy way to cut different tubes for RMN missiles, dig out the old PDLC and replace them with new ones, etc.

Granted, for most conversions we've thought of (fleet transport, etc.) pulling out all the old tubes "behind the hull line", and rerouting all the useful wiring, etc. to put something else useful inside would still be a copper or super-ceramic plated bi-otch, but "we're training workers here so that they can fix our broken warships in the future or build new ones, so what the hey?"

You're stuck with an SD shaped "whatever" after the conversion, but if my logic is correct, the armoring problem just became moot, yes/no?

If you mean that you're going in through the unarmored tops and bottoms of the ship, then yes, insofar as you can access things that way, armor is out of the way. But it's still wrapping up large parts of the interior, and shaping them into specific missile launcher, CM launcher, and PDLC shaped portions for which other purposes will not have so much use.