Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Sometimes the best thing to do is just let it go. These things are pretty much worthless - with 670 posts, I still haven't seen a good suggestion other than target practice. Time to extract whatever might be useful from them (gourmand victuals from the Captain quarters, etc), and then use them for target practice, or drop them into the nearest sun, or convert one of them into a museum to show how you don't want to design a modern warship or something.

stewart wrote:

warspite1515 wrote:Still like the idea of the hospital ship ... if nothing else it's a way to use the ships "as is" and any modifications are within the existing armor structure of the ship.

There's just GOT to be a way to use these damn things without turning them into slag -- or really large target drones.

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I respectfully disagree.
Compartmentalization for a warship, especially a design like the Scientist / Vega classes which are very manpower intensive will have too little return for the effort spent.
Better to modify some of the Hauptman cargo liners (see Artemis in Honor Among Enemies).
The concept is similar to the USN's Hospital ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy which are converted bulk carriers.

-- Stewart

Maybe the best way to get a hospital ship is to build one from the ground up...

Don

The problem is, DW has obliquely suggested that he may have a use for the ships, although it being definitely not a warship position. We know there are heaps of cons to pretty much every idea, but we need to figure out which one has the least problems given the material situation post oyster bay, and as to how the GA could extract any use from them at all, as most ideas require a slip for refit. So the question then is: what does DW consider a respectable tradeoff for using these ships?

fallsfromtrees wrote:Sometimes the best thing to do is just let it go. These things are pretty much worthless - with 670 posts, I still haven't seen a good suggestion other than target practice. Time to extract whatever might be useful from them (gourmand victuals from the Captain quarters, etc), and then use them for target practice, or drop them into the nearest sun, or convert one of them into a museum to show how you don't want to design a modern warship or something.

Spacekiwi wrote:The problem is, DW has obliquely suggested that he may have a use for the ships, although it being definitely not a warship position. We know there are heaps of cons to pretty much every idea, but we need to figure out which one has the least problems given the material situation post oyster bay, and as to how the GA could extract any use from them at all, as most ideas require a slip for refit. So the question then is: what does DW consider a respectable tradeoff for using these ships?

I suppose one "easy" one would be the play a shell game with the SLN when they come for Beowulf. Utterly minimal crews, prepared to evacuate in a hurry, and automated control systems to pick up all the remaining slack, with nothing more expected of them than to look like a Beowulf SDF SD. You could have several apparent SDF's, so the SLN has to maneuver under the supposition that any of them could be it - helping the BSDF draw them to missile pods, mines, and/or GA forces out by the hyper limit.

It doesn't play into narrative fun so well, but practically, a couple museum ships are a use that (1) does play exactly to their current condition, and (2) doesn't rely on them being effective weapons any longer. There's just a definite cap on how many such things anyone can use.

I think the take them apart for parts function is one of the best. Even looking at it as a training exercise, it's going to have about as much value as most refit ideas, and the results can certainly be put to use in other ships. Some forts may even have a use for large, single drive missile launchers; lightly defended fleet auxiliaries are likely to use scavenged armor, sensors, PDLC's, and CM launchers in different proportions. Large fleet train units may be built around those impeller nodes and hypergenerators. A lot of the means of building all those parts for Manticore or Grayson went boom with Oyster Bay; having these around can help cover the interim period while systems for manufacturing better and/or more ideally appropriate counterparts are being rebuilt.

I don't think all the refit ideas are hopeless, and when you want to make it an exercise specifically in capital ship refitting, well, here are capital ships not getting used otherwise. But you really do have to play on the utility of specifically refit practice there and figure out the least useless refit goal - it's unlikely to suck up many of them profitably.

I had the notion that you could rig the transponders on the captured SLN ships and use them as Trojan horses in some specific circumstances. That's the best idea I could come up with.

AHA. Got one. Seriously. Okay maybe not so seriously...

Auction off naming rights for the ships one at a time here on the forum for charitable purposes. Each winner gets to decide what to do with precisely ONE ship, which must never to be heard from again, unless RFC wants to borrow the old thing for some nefariously tum te tum tum reason.

Good, no?

SharkHunter wrote:AHA. Got one. Seriously. Okay maybe not so seriously...

Auction off naming rights for the ships one at a time here on the forum for charitable purposes. Each winner gets to decide what to do with precisely ONE ship, which must never to be heard from again, unless RFC wants to borrow the old thing for some nefariously tum te tum tum reason.

Good, no?

I wonder if the treecats could get any use out of them...

Don

--snipping--

n7axw wrote: Maybe the best way to get a hospital ship is to build one from the ground up... Don

That just about goes without saying. There's no economic viability to anything we'd suggest. Point of dismantling the Solarian SD(s) to do something else with them is more like the High School auto shop version of training warship repair crews to a higher mechanical level, and getting something fast and useful out of it in the mean time.

It wouldn't make economic sense to acquire and take apart a WW-II deuce and a half apart, but if someone gave me one, I'd most certainly enjoy the process of restoring it for my own uses (and better tech), By the time I got all the new bits to work with the old ones, I'd be pretty good at some forms of truck repair, and have a nifty "ole big arsed truck" to boot.

It's easier to train crews to build something if they've taken something similar apart and put it back together first.

SharkHunter wrote:That just about goes without saying. There's no economic viability to anything we'd suggest. Point of dismantling the Solarian SD(s) to do something else with them is more like the High School auto shop version of training warship repair crews to a higher mechanical level, and getting something fast and useful out of it in the mean time.

I seriously doubt that it's possible to turn any of the captured SL ships into HS-shop-project hot-rods, but they could probably be usefully employed training Damage Control Crew after they're used for target practice.

Spacekiwi wrote:The problem is, DW has obliquely suggested that he may have a use for the ships, although it being definitely not a warship position. We know there are heaps of cons to pretty much every idea, but we need to figure out which one has the least problems given the material situation post oyster bay, and as to how the GA could extract any use from them at all, as most ideas require a slip for refit. So the question then is: what does DW consider a respectable tradeoff for using these ships?

You interpret DW as suggesting that he may have a use for the ships. Many of the rest of us interpret him as saying pretty clearly that this is a dead topic. [shrug]