Are Tincans and CL's obsolete to "modern" fleets?

SharkHunter wrote:

saber964 wrote:The reason why I speculatively put a company of marines on a CLAC is how do you board a a Pirate/Privateer with a LAC with a crew of ten. Yes the might have more LAC's but the question remains the same.

That is a great point! which I hadn't really considered. To another part of the point in your posts though, given the larger hulls, why wouldn't there be enough battle armor for every marine? It doesn't mean they'd use it for every marine in every operation (not every situation requires a hammer, sometimes a screwdriver or socket wrench will do). Thoughts?

I think it's doctrine lagging behind current realities.

Used to be, ship crews were large and space was at a premium. Marines plus armor take more space than marines without armor, and plenty operations won't require or even allow battle armor. Now, the bottleneck is warm, trained bodies - the ships don't take nearly so many and we need - and can build - so many, many ships. So sending out fewer Marines is the order of the day - but so should be being sure that every one of them is amply equipped for whatever, since he or she must do the work of ten!

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
(PNS Sultan vs RMS Roland-class a la Honor Among Enemies

Jonathan_S wrote:You might be right.

Of course in that particular scenario the other question (not addressed in the book) is what do base velocity vectors look like.

Sharkhunter wrote: The Sultan's top speed is listed as 490G, the Roland's max is 780G, meaning the Sultan's not going to get to energy range, this is a missile duel only.

The RMN DD will open fire as soon as they get bearings on any ship firing on their "shepherded ships", They have a free field of fire, salvo wise until the PN missiles arrive.

Jonathan_S wrote: That's acceleration, not top speed. If (and it's a big if) the Roland and Atlas have the misfortune of cruising along at 0.16c[1] directly at the Sultan and it opens fire at, say, 6 million km, then if they do nothing they'll slide past it in 123 seconds.

Assuming it sticks with the new 'safe' acceleration of 90%, so 702g, then in that 123 seconds a Roland can build a new vector of 846 km/s, and displace 52,041 km. That's wouldn't actually be enough to claw out of the energy range of the Sultan even if the Sultan didn't move either....

All that said, the Roland would be very likely to be able to keep its wedge interposed against a single BC the entire time it was within energy range.

I think we're in base agreement, given that the BC's were apparently lying "doggo" in the rift, which I take to mean in a somewhat stationary position, wedge down, until they launched that first set of missiles. At which point Artemis turns to a divergent course at max accel and the DD goes into defend mode at whatever accel gives the liner the best chance to escape.

If zero velocity in space is the case, the BC has to start building V and can't do it as quickly as the Manticoran ships, making it a matter of time before vector divergence ruins the ambush. Given that it was a mid-range missile duel, I think that would give every maneuvering advantage to the Roland and NONE to the BC at least long enough for 3-4 bigger Mark-16 stacked salvos to likely overwhelm the BC's CM fire and take it out. Yes/no?

I agree the BC is basically 'stationary', so it'll take time to build any useful vector. And as I said, there's no reason the Roland shouldn't be able to interpose its wedge between itself and the BC.


But my calculations above didn't have the BC move at all. They were just showing that if the Roland was unlucky and it's base vector (built over a couple hours of acceleration) was pointed too close to the BC that the Roland couldn't alter that vector enough before "sliding" past the BC to avoid passing within 100,000 km.


Sure, if the Roland and the BC started stationary with respect to each other then, yes, there's no way for the BC to ever chase down the Roland. But if the Roland starts out heading towards the BC at 47,966 km/s (0.16c) (as seems to be approximately the case with Hawkwing and Kerebin) that's quite a different scenario.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
(PNS Sultan vs RMS Roland-class a la Honor Among Enemies

...
If zero velocity in space is the case, the BC has to start building V and can't do it as quickly as the Manticoran ships, making it a matter of time before vector divergence ruins the ambush. Given that it was a mid-range missile duel, I think that would give every maneuvering advantage to the Roland and NONE to the BC at least long enough for 3-4 bigger Mark-16 stacked salvos to likely overwhelm the BC's CM fire and take it out. Yes/no?

I agree the BC is basically 'stationary', so it'll take time to build any useful vector. And as I said, there's no reason the Roland shouldn't be able to interpose its wedge between itself and the BC.

But my calculations above didn't have the BC move at all. They were just showing that if the Roland was unlucky and it's base vector (built over a couple hours of acceleration) was pointed too close to the BC that the Roland couldn't alter that vector enough before "sliding" past the BC to avoid passing within 100,000 km.

Sure, if the Roland and the BC started stationary with respect to each other then, yes, there's no way for the BC to ever chase down the Roland. But if the Roland starts out heading towards the BC at 47,966 km/s (0.16c) (as seems to be approximately the case with Hawkwing and Kerebin) that's quite a different scenario.

True. The picture in my head has Kerebin about 3-4MM Km off to the side, and Artemis and Hawkwing (or our test Roland) sail into the "valley of death" at a high portion of the .16C available) The battlecruiser launches it's first ambush salvo (which went after Artemis, and the liner had time to intercept most of those attack missiles), then lights up it's impellers and goes on the hunt, "firing as she bears". That's why Hawkwing was able to start firing back, but the DD got lamed and couldn't keep the range open, which is where the Kerebin goes to full accel and max rate fire.

After that we agree that the DD is going to be able to keep it's wedge in optimal position, and that's where I think --sans a golden BB-- the conjectured Roland wins because of it's higher salvo, CM, and PDLC capacity.

SharkHunter wrote:The picture in my head has Kerebin about 3-4MM Km off to the side, and Artemis and Hawkwing (or our test Roland) sail into the "valley of death" at a high portion of the .16C available) The battlecruiser launches it's first ambush salvo (which went after Artemis, and the liner had time to intercept most of those attack missiles), then lights up it's impellers and goes on the hunt, "firing as she bears". That's why Hawkwing was able to start firing back, but the DD got lamed and couldn't keep the range open, which is where the Kerebin goes to full accel and max rate fire.

After that we agree that the DD is going to be able to keep it's wedge in optimal position, and that's where I think --sans a golden BB-- the conjectured Roland wins because of it's higher salvo, CM, and PDLC capacity.

Under that scenario that seems plausible.

It also occurs to me that a Roland has access to much better, and higher endurance, recon drones than the Falcon-class Hawkwing did. So there's a decent chance that while 'slowely' crossing a rift like that that she might have a shell of Ghost Rider drones out. If so they might well stumble across the BC before the Roland comes into the BC's missile range. And in that case there's really no question that the BC would be screwed.

A peep BC has MUCH better missile defenses than a SNL BC.

kzt wrote:A peep BC has MUCH better missile defenses than a SNL BC.

True. Though an old Sultan-class is still somewhat outmatched by Mk16s. And the Roland would probably be double-stacking salvos (if not more) so 24 or more missiles at a time.

But I guess its possible that it could be tough enough to survive (damaged) all the missiles a single Roland could throw at it. Don't know if it'd be in any condition to chase down any merchanmet, but it might still be semi-functional.

kzt wrote:A peep BC has MUCH better missile defenses than a SNL BC.

True.

However, in the hypothetical scenario of a Modern Roland-class DD against an interwar RHN Sultan Class BC, would it be able to withstand multiple double-stack salvos of Mk16G with "near capital missile warheads?)

A late-second-war RHN BC would doubtless fare better than an interwar Sultan, but the only difference would be whether it took four double-stacks or five.

SharkHunter wrote:

saber964 wrote:The reason why I speculatively put a company of marines on a CLAC is how do you board a a Pirate/Privateer with a LAC with a crew of ten. Yes the might have more LAC's but the question remains the same.

That is a great point! which I hadn't really considered. To another part of the point in your posts though, given the larger hulls, why wouldn't there be enough battle armor for every marine? It doesn't mean they'd use it for every marine in every operation (not every situation requires a hammer, sometimes a screwdriver or socket wrench will do). Thoughts?

It has been mentioned that part of the reason for not having battle armor for everyone is the cost of the armor (and, presumably, the support systems needed on the mother ship).

akira.taylor wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:To another part of the point in your posts though, given the larger hulls, why wouldn't there be enough battle armor for every marine? It doesn't mean they'd use it for every marine in every operation (not every situation requires a hammer, sometimes a screwdriver or socket wrench will do). Thoughts?

It has been mentioned that part of the reason for not having battle armor for everyone is the cost of the armor (and, presumably, the support systems needed on the mother ship).

At least with the accomplished assembly system Manticore had before OB, and with the manpower crunch, initial ship costs were less important than getting the most out of each person. That assembly efficiency factor may not apply quite so well to battle armor production. To the extent that building the armor and the systems to keep it is less of an issue than finding, training, and using here rather than somewhere else the people inside the armor, battle armor for every Marine would still make sense. If not, not.

Manticore, in particular, plus Haven and then Grayson have a number of both older DD/CL/CA (more DDs) and were building the more modern but not fully upgraded DD/CAs (At least RMN and GSN. Manticore and the IAN also have a number of legacy ships in Silesia.

At this point, the non-dual drive missile lighter ships have and will continue to have a roll in the commerce protection and anti-piracy patrols for quite some time. They will also continue to be adequate 2nd tier/interior lines patrol and protection ships. If you need something to either scare off pirates or engage your garden variety pirate (converted merchant) then even your older RMN light ships still in service will fill the bill. Going up against something like a SLN CA or BC is another discussion entirely but if Kingsford (or some OFS Admiral gone rogue) puts a mixed squadron of DD/CA/BCs into Silesia you will have to call for help anyway.

I very much doubt that SEM is going to take any of its smaller/older ships out of commission for 5 to 10 years. At this point they are not yet producing ANY replacements and would need to work hard to repair and mantiain the numbers and levels of ships they have now. Grayson will have fewer older ship (relative to Manticore who have some that are 50-100yrs old) but they are in the same boat. what you may see- once build and repair facilities/manufacuring/infrastructure comes back on line- is some of the older ships upgraded to handle more modern weapons and other techincal upgrades. With the ships like DDs and many of the Crusiers, you may be able to modify to take larger missiles, etc since you don't have the armor to deal with. They are recon and gun platforms. They scout or cruse. They are full-up warships and even a DD is a big stick against a system with nothing but old LACs.
When the infrastructure of Manticore and Grayson are rebuilt (and we hope protected against the Oyster Bay type attack), Manticore might want to start selling off old ships to system governments it trusts, but certainly no faster than it can actually place new construction of classes for the same mission parameters with the crews from the old ships. That would be actualy in commission and finished with work-up.