munroburton wrote:n7axw wrote:So whether you are talking about commerce raiding or piracy, stronger more capable escorts are going to be needed to counter those BCs. That could turn out to be a challenge.
Don
JeffEngel wrote:Well - at least in terms of Manticoran shipping, the smallest recent warships they have built can handle SLN BC's with a numerical advantage favoring the BC's easily. So a Roland isn't too small for that mission.
Only if the enemy doesn't get devious or lucky.
If you're a bunch of (even modern) DD's having to take on a similar number of (even SLN) BC's, we can suppose luck is on their side already, but that that much luck won't matter. If you find more of them, even larger enemies (!), or more advanced than that, well, you're still in an all right position to run for home and help.
The thing is, there aren't so many SLN BC's out there. They are very rarely seen in Meyers or Saltash. After the League dissolves, most of those few BC's are going to get sucked into respectable successor state fleets, SDF's, and mercenary groups. A minority of that small number of BC's will go into disrespectable services, and most of those will get captured before long.
The StateSec refugees aren't a good example of typical pirate origins either, since StateSec had a peculiar preference for CA's and BC's for its private navy - a weakness and idiosyncracy noted by PHN officers. The few CL's and few to none DD's were a problem for it if/when it had to act like a real navy, as much as the (prior to near the end) absence of a wall of battle.
The Battle of Monica shows that a few second rate Solarian BCs(without cataphract, without halo, etc.) is capable of hammering a collection of mostly older RMN light units, given a bit of tactical surprise. I have no doubt that if Hexapuma wasn't a Sag-C, the Monicans would have maintained control of their system, at least until Hercules got there, although the plan to take the Lynx terminus would certainly be cancelled.
That's probably part of the reason Zavala went for those BCs so hard.
That, and the Mark 16-G is so much more powerful and not previously used in battle against the SLN. His salvoes were much more devastating than he'd expected.
But Monica was mixed advance SLN gear (still better than was supposed to be exported) with too-new crews against mostly older Manticoran vessels. We're talking about the Manticoran smaller hyper-capable warships of the next couple decades vs. the less-than-major-fleet units of disrespectable sorts of the next couple decades. So the Saganami-C would represent the
minimum level of advance there, and quite possibly be around the
low end of the tonnage range.
It's a problem with this discussion. It's like 'destroyer' and 'light cruiser' name natural, fixed kinds that may or may not have a use. They do not. They name
functional kinds at best, at least following RMN conventions. They're applied to ships that are built for certain jobs. If there are ships built for those jobs, those names are likely to land on them. Those names are likely to land on ships far larger than the ships that used to get named 'destroyer' or 'light cruiser'.
It's possible that different names will get used. 'Frigate' would have been a great label for units doing these jobs, but in the RMN, it did get fixed to a tonnage range which is obsolete. It's also possible that, with certain combinations of jobs defining a class getting broken apart, a given navy will quit using that name. In-system, immediate anti-missile screening used to be something for DD's and cruisers to help handle, from the outer edges of the wall. (Mostly for lack of anything else to do with them there.) Now, LAC's are doing that as a central function forward. If the RMN judges that that was a defining part of 'destroyer', then "destroyers" are obsolete. I doubt it'd play out that way, but it's a real possibility.
