Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't remember Loreleis against Raging Justice. Maybe my memory is faulty here. I do remember freighters pretending to be SDs deeper into the system, though.
[snip]

Jonathan_S wrote:Still, trying to use them to explain away a sting of pre-deployed pods seems like it's going to fall apart shortly after the enemy returns fire. Those "cruisers" can't simply disappear, nor can they outrun the return fire -- but their illusion will collapse when they seem to sit there fat, dumb, and happy to be blown apart by Cataphracts without firing a single CM or PDLC in defense.

True, but if you've managed to force a salvo towards those decoys -- particularly if that's an alpha strike -- you should consider that a win. Forcing the enemy to spend their best shot away from you is good tactics.

I now think this is plausible, or at least was in the war against the SL. Against Haven or when the tech gap shrinks, probably not.

First I agree that using Loreleis + pods to trick an enemy into wasting their first salvo is a useful trick if the situation allows -- and might even work against Haven if you could set conditions up correctly. (After all their RD's aren't anywhere near as capable as Manticores -- so you might well temporarily convince them that you've lured them into an ambush by another formation; at least for long enough for them to reflexively return fire)

I was only saying that trying to repeat the same trick multiple times in the same engagement is unlikely to keep fooling the enemy. (Though now that I say it I guess you could try to take advantage of that and set up 3 or 4 'fake' squadrons of Loreleis + pods in a row then place your real squadron plus pods at the end of it -- might let you get a 2nd salvo off before the enemy realizes you're not another decoy and actually returns fire. Plus of course they've almost certainly wasted at least one pod salvo on your decoys)

As for Loreleis during Raging Justice - I went and took a quick look. They do appear to have been used; but not the way I remembered. They seem to have been used as pure missile bait; not as part of the pre-combat attempt to intimidate and deter the SLN.

A Rising Thunder wrote:Five minutes wasn’t much time to be making changes, yet if the Sollies’ missile acceleration exceeded projections by this much, there was no telling how much better their targeting systems and penaids might be as well.
I think “a lot” is probably a pretty fair estimate, she thought tartly. Which suggests—
“It looks like we’re going to have leakers, Andrea. Get the Loreleis deployed. It seems we’re going to find out how well they work after all.”
“Deploying Lorelei, aye, Your Grace!”

Also here's the bit that I think I'd been misremembering -- I'd remembered the entire fake squadrons but was remembered incorrectly about when they'd been activated.

A Rising Thunder wrote:Conceptually, Lorelei was light-years beyond Halo. Powered with the same onboard fusion technology the RMN had developed for Ghost Rider, the Mark 23, and the Mark 16, the Lorelei platforms had independent energy budgets beyond the dreams of any Solarian designer. They needed no line of sight for broadcast power to drive their powerful EW systems, and their onboard AI was even better than the Mark 23-E’s.
Halo provided false targets to confuse an incoming missile, but those lures had to be relatively close to the missile’s actual target, and even with broadcast power available, Halo’s false targets were significantly weaker—dimmer—than a ship-of-the-wall’s actual emissions.
Lorelei didn’t need to be in close proximity to anyone, and its emitters were much more powerful than Halo’s. The false targets Lorelei generated were still far weaker than those of genuine superdreadnoughts, but they could be interposed between those superdreadnoughts and the threat. More, they could be physically separated from the ships they were trying to protect . . . and the signatures they generated had been artfully camouflaged. Yes, they were weaker and dimmer than a true starship might have produced, but what they looked like was an all-up starship using its own EW systems to make its signature as weak and dim as possible.
And, as a final touch, over a third of Andrea Jaruwalski’s Loreleis had been deployed to keep formation on one another as complete, false squadrons of ships-of-the-wall. Squadrons which maneuvered in perfect synchronization with Eighth Fleet’s real squadrons but lay on the threat axis, deliberately exposed to the incoming tsunami of Solarian missiles.
Those missiles took the targets they’d been offered.
Not all of them were spoofed. Not even Lorelei was that good.

I really don't think the Admiralty should invest in much building at this time. Unless as a precaution to the SLN putting on a lot of lean, the Admiralty increases its OOB.

What sense does building a lot of warships that may be rendered obsolete by the MA or the SLN 2.0

Specialty ships that fill a niche or need I can see.

cthia wrote:I really don't think the Admiralty should invest in much building at this time. Unless as a precaution to the SLN putting on a lot of lean, the Admiralty increases its OOB.

What sense does building a lot of warships that may be rendered obsolete by the MA or the SLN 2.0

Specialty ships that fill a niche or need I can see.

So you think it's better to stick with operating ships that are already obsolete rather than risk your new ships becoming obsolete?
That's a novel approach.

(Actually no, that's a very historic approach -- just usually one forced by lack of funding, rather than by deliberate naval policy)


And one of the things we know from that history is that it takes longer than expected to rebuild the skills and supply chains when naval construction resumes. Better to work those kinks out and get the new yard workers experienced now, when it isn't an emergency, then wait until an emergency comes up and you desperately need to build ships.

cthia wrote:I really don't think the Admiralty should invest in much building at this time. Unless as a precaution to the SLN putting on a lot of lean, the Admiralty increases its OOB.

What sense does building a lot of warships that may be rendered obsolete by the MA or the SLN 2.0

Which is exactly why they have to keep building. Quite aside from the discussion that the GA fleet strength is too lopsided towards war time activities, not peace time, paying attention to what everyone else is doing and trying their ideas out is a good thing. If the SLN is planning on doing something to render the GA tech obsolete, the GA simply has to get it at around the same time.

SL building will continue to leak like a sieve. Losing a war will not remove all corruption -- hopefully it'll stamp out the egregious ones -- so I am sure that the GA will still have some espionage activities that will let them know of any juicy technology that is going into production.

Whether they will or, as Jonathan says, naval budgets are cut, only time will tell.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I really don't think the Admiralty should invest in much building at this time. Unless as a precaution to the SLN putting on a lot of lean, the Admiralty increases its OOB.

What sense does building a lot of warships that may be rendered obsolete by the MA or the SLN 2.0

Specialty ships that fill a niche or need I can see.

So you think it's better to stick with operating ships that are already obsolete rather than risk your new ships becoming obsolete?
That's a novel approach.

(Actually no, that's a very historic approach -- just usually one forced by lack of funding, rather than by deliberate naval policy)


And one of the things we know from that history is that it takes longer than expected to rebuild the skills and supply chains when naval construction resumes. Better to work those kinks out and get the new yard workers experienced now, when it isn't an emergency, then wait until an emergency comes up and you desperately need to build ships.

I am not saying existing ships that are ready to be retired shouldn't be retired and replaced. I am saying that an all out quest to build NEW DESIGNS for the hell of it doesn't seem smart.

What GA ships are obsolete?

Non podlayers are on my wait and see list. As I said earlier, they may be more survivable against the MA, if taking hits from an unseen enemy is unavoidable.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So you think it's better to stick with operating ships that are already obsolete rather than risk your new ships becoming obsolete?
That's a novel approach.

(Actually no, that's a very historic approach -- just usually one forced by lack of funding, rather than by deliberate naval policy)


And one of the things we know from that history is that it takes longer than expected to rebuild the skills and supply chains when naval construction resumes. Better to work those kinks out and get the new yard workers experienced now, when it isn't an emergency, then wait until an emergency comes up and you desperately need to build ships.

I am not saying existing ships that are ready to be retired shouldn't be retired and replaced. I am saying that an all out quest to build NEW DESIGNS for the hell of it doesn't seem smart.

What GA ships are obsolete?

Non podlayers are on my wait and see list. As I said earlier, they may be more survivable against the MA, if taking hits from an unseen enemy is unavoidable.

Obsolete?
* Any waller that isn't a Keyhole II equipped Apollo capable SD(P). non-podlayers of course, be even the 1st gen podlayers need either a long refit (8-9 months) to add Apollo or should be retired in favor of new builds.

* Any BC that lacks Keyhole. (So all the Reliants and older, plus any first flight Agamemnons that didn't get refit). Now they may find that a 2.5 mton BC(L) is too expensive for the number of peacetime hulls they need, so maybe scale down to a 1.6 or 1.7 mton BC(medium) -- though that probably gives up too much capability in a tube firing design.

* Any CA older than Sag-C

* Any CL older that Avalon (though Avalon herself may be considered obselecent and they may want to consider a new design.

* Any DD older that Roland or Wolfhound. (Though both of those designs are seen as problematic, and they stopped Wolfhounds after, IIRC, just 19 -- so again this may require a new design).

But anything older than those simply lacks the missile defenses, or missile range, to hope to be useful against MAlign designs or even things we'd expect to see shortly out of the rebuilding SLN. (Now they're still better than pretty much anybody else's design; but that margin can be pretty small especially in the light units which are most likely to end up in dangerous situations during peacetime -- and so those should, IMO, have priority on new builds once they've got a design the Admiralty is happy with)

So building those replacement hulls will be quite a bit of shipbuilding; even is most of it seems concentrated in the smaller units below the wall.

Tough to design and build new ships to counter the MA since nobody has any idea what any of the MA ships either look like nor what they have for weapons. The LD's are simply not known to anybody in the GA let alone the SLN Mostly what information is had on MA ships comes from what was done in Oyster Bay and that is primarily that they were able to sneak whatever delivered the various ballistic packages into the MBS and Grayon with the only really novel weapons is the GT- which is also only known by what it did and had been undetectable till it fired.

Certainly reconstituting the various logistics streams for SEM (and Grayson) needs to be done and probably needs to include ability to deal with larger missiles (presuming that what is also in development) and figuring out how to rebuild weapons and stairs supply and distribution. We know that as various ship type (specific models) will be phased out but how fast is the question. You don't want to invest in specifically building missiles and spare parts for things that will be scrapped in the near future but right now there is a lot of space (literally) that used to be more or less/sort of patrolled or controlled by FF couple with OFS but all of that is now not covered.

What of the most current designs the the members of the GA think they need to build to transition away from the older designs in the next 5 to 10 years- because even if SLN's shipyards and supplies start building any existing "new" models for anything, it's going to be a few years before they start to catch up to where the new builds can match the GA on a one-to-one basis.
At least were you are talking about the typical much higher levels of automation for RMN, you are going to have a general freeing up of crew even if you are replacing within class on a one-to-one basis.
The other thing to remember is that RMN is going to want to provide ships capable of doing that commerce protection and related missions at the same time as bringing along younger officers learning in those various roles.

For a counter point, since general forum consensus seems to be settling on DDs are good for little more than anti-piracy... why would the GA change destroyers at all? They'd keep their destroyers lean and mean, with few if any Marines, and focused entirely on war-efficiency.

For true anti-piracy duty, Grand Alliance could actually use more Armed Merchant Cruiser variations, whether full up Havenite style Q-ships like the one from Basilisk Station, or more like the ships Bachfish used in Silesia which were also purpose-built for combat but had enough cargo-capacity to make freighting profitable AND none of the 3 designs feature a warships distinct hammerhead. Wayfarer-class (or a modernized and purpose-built cousin), Sirius with her SD-grade impellers, or just Ambuscade/Pirate Bane being an unspecified naval auxiliary class with heavy cruiser grade impellers, hyper generator and sidewalls/particle screens.


And mentioning Bachfish is important, since he personally owned two ships and he still pulled in enough profit off both ships to maintain them and he'd 'gone native' in Silesia so long, everybody forgot he was a disgraced half-pay naval officer... so everybody underestimated him. Manticore and Haven are going to have large merchant fleets with more than considerable reservists being released back from naval service who could benefit from that same tactic.

This allows your Reservists to handle all the normal civilian freighter work, while also handling part-time anti-piracy duty which keeps them semi-current on naval hardware and tactics. You're also blooding Marines and LAC crews, both of which benefit from hands-on experience which is quite important. Also any cargo that doesn't expire still gets moved around which brings the money in and allows your true freighters to handle perishables.


If you leave them on standard routes long enough, they've seemingly 'gone native' and nobody realizes until it's too late how they're still naval officers, much like both Captain (Reservist Admiral) Bachfish in Silesia, or Lev Wallenstein in ART somewhere in the Solarian League. Both of whom were thought of as merchant skippers first and only, nobody really clued in to their naval status until it was waved in their face.

War of Honor, Ch28 wrote:"At any rate, I don't think the squadron CO realized I was a Manticoran myself when he ordered me to deliver my prisoners to him. He certainly didn't realize I was a half-pay Navy officer, anyway! -snip- but I have to admit that I didn't much care for his attitude, myself. Interesting how it changed when he realized he wasn't talking to a Silesian after all.

"On the other hand, I don't think he was especially pleased to realize he'd allowed anyone who might be connected with the Star Kingdom close enough to get a good look at the after hammerhead of his flagship. Under the circumstances, I didn't think it would be especially wise of me to pull out a pocket camera and snap a few shots, and the Andies were pretty careful to keep their bow towards the Bane after I got back aboard her, so I couldn't get any good visuals from her, either.

The unnamed Andy thought he was talking to a generic Manty 'gone native' and pretty much crapped himself when he realized how he messed up. But Bachfish really had practically gone native, so it worked heavily in his favor while using the Bane and Ambuscade.

Lev Wallenstein in ART wrote: Don’t forget, Sharon, I hold a reserve commission. When I get back to Manticore, I’m likely to find myself called to active duty. If this thing goes as badly as it could, I’m I may just end up hauling something besides freight back into the Solarian League.”

Somtaaw wrote:For a counter point, since general forum consensus seems to be settling on DDs are good for little more than anti-piracy... why would the GA change destroyers at all? They'd keep their destroyers lean and mean, with few if any Marines, and focused entirely on war-efficiency.

For true anti-piracy duty, Grand Alliance could actually use more Armed Merchant Cruiser variations, whether full up Havenite style Q-ships like the one from Basilisk Station, or more like the ships Bachfish used in Silesia which were also purpose-built for combat but had enough cargo-capacity to make freighting profitable AND none of the 3 designs feature a warships distinct hammerhead. Wayfarer-class (or a modernized and purpose-built cousin), Sirius with her SD-grade impellers, or just Ambuscade/Pirate Bane being an unspecified naval auxiliary class with heavy cruiser grade impellers, hyper generator and sidewalls/particle screens.


And mentioning Bachfish is important, since he personally owned two ships and he still pulled in enough profit off both ships to maintain them and he'd 'gone native' in Silesia so long, everybody forgot he was a disgraced half-pay naval officer... so everybody underestimated him. Manticore and Haven are going to have large merchant fleets with more than considerable reservists being released back from naval service who could benefit from that same tactic.

This allows your Reservists to handle all the normal civilian freighter work, while also handling part-time anti-piracy duty which keeps them semi-current on naval hardware and tactics. You're also blooding Marines and LAC crews, both of which benefit from hands-on experience which is quite important. Also any cargo that doesn't expire still gets moved around which brings the money in and allows your true freighters to handle perishables.


If you leave them on standard routes long enough, they've seemingly 'gone native' and nobody realizes until it's too late how they're still naval officers, much like both Captain (Reservist Admiral) Bachfish in Silesia, or Lev Wallenstein in ART somewhere in the Solarian League. Both of whom were thought of as merchant skippers first and only, nobody really clued in to their naval status until it was waved in their face.

That kind of relies on

And of course we saw what happens to AMCs if they have the misfortune to tangle with real warships -- they might win but tend to get the crap kicked out of them in the process.

(Admittedly the Peep Q-ships being the exception, since they build a freight that cost as much as as BC and had the firepower and survivability of at least a CA -- but then it couldn't operate profitably as a freighter due to having too much of its volume taken up with armor, magazines, and the like)

But usually their lack of armor, redundancy, the limited amounts of point defense you had conceal, etc. They're generally a special operations ship or else an emergency expediency.


Also, piracy in Silesia is essentially dead (amazing how quickly it goes away when there are now standing RMN and IAN patrols in every system and the corrupt governments that turned a blind eye are out of power or too closely monitored to get away with that). Without that kind of perfect storm for piracy I don't think Bachfish or folks like him are likely to be able to keep turning a profit. To do so required people willing to pay significant extra to ensure their supplies arrived -- generally more than they'd pay to for delivery and insurance on a normal freighter (even accounting for the higher insurance rates there due to Silesian piracy).
I don't know that any other area would be able to quickly spring up and support piracy on the level of Silesia -- and without that AMC are unlikely to be profitable. (The risks would be too low to justify the extra costs -- most people would be willing to simply pay the slightly higher insurance rates for normal freighters)

And for navies, Wayfarer took more crew than a modern DD. Which meant her total operating costs would have been higher. Hell, more than a modern CA -- it'd be cheaper (over the ship's lifetime) to do anti-piracy patrols exclusively with Sag-Cs!
House of Steel even said the existing "Trojans were listed for disposal shortly thereafter, freeing up their overly large crews for the new construction".

The Trojan-class AMC wasn't designed to hunt pirates, much less to do so economically. It was designed to very quickly, and without tying up critical yard space, create a war expedient very nasty surprise for any Peep BC squadrons that tried raiding the RMN's fleet train.
And an avalanche of missiles from rolled pods would definitely do that; even if the AMC didn't survive administering that lesson.

But for long term anti-piracy work, you want survivable ships which are economical to operate. Yes, even old DDs and CLs can do that for quite a while yet. But you'd prefer to downsize the crews some (though not to the extent of a Roland or Wolfhound) while beefing up their survivability in case they need to face something nastier than a run of the mill pirate. And a tweaked new DD or CL design will do that far more economically, over its lifetime, than an AMC or Q-ship.

Jonathan_S wrote:And for navies, Wayfarer took more crew than a modern DD. Which meant her total operating costs would have been higher. Hell, more than a modern CA -- it'd be cheaper (over the ship's lifetime) to do anti-piracy patrols exclusively with Sag-Cs!
House of Steel even said the existing "Trojans were listed for disposal shortly thereafter, freeing up their overly large crews for the new construction".

The Trojan-class AMC wasn't designed to hunt pirates, much less to do so economically. It was designed to very quickly, and without tying up critical yard space, create a war expedient very nasty surprise for any Peep BC squadrons that tried raiding the RMN's fleet train.
And an avalanche of missiles from rolled pods would definitely do that; even if the AMC didn't survive administering that lesson.

But for long term anti-piracy work, you want survivable ships which are economical to operate. Yes, even old DDs and CLs can do that for quite a while yet. But you'd prefer to downsize the crews some (though not to the extent of a Roland or Wolfhound) while beefing up their survivability in case they need to face something nastier than a run of the mill pirate. And a tweaked new DD or CL design will do that far more economically, over its lifetime, than an AMC or Q-ship.

Trojan's were designed and manned prior to the Medusa/Harrington podnoughts introduced the enhanced automation, and BuShips finally bite the missile and accepted that "large crews for the sake of tradition is bad". So they had the crew of a heavy cruiser due to BuShips not willing to change, I'd put money down that a Trojan II-class could have a crew size closer to that of the Wolfhounds, and they'd still be a better choice because you'd still have all those empty cargholds to pack cargo into. Seal the cargoholds that actually hold the LAC bays or graser mounts using some form of "bonded cargo" to prevent foreign Custom Parties from inspecting them and you'd be set.


That's also why I specifically mentioned Bachfish's ships. They had only slightly larger than normal freighter crews (manning the guns still took bodies) but Manticoran fire control removed having multiple crew on each gun so running an Ambuscade or Pirate Bane, you'd have almost 1:1 crew to a freighter because they were freighters. They just gave up a tiny fraction of their total cargo capacity for the guns... a 6 M-ton armed freighter would still have upwards of 4 M-tons of cargo capacity.

Bachfish plus Pirate Bane did take on a proper warship; granted yes he did get the crap kicked out of him, but that wasn't because the modern Havenite destroyer knew what he is. Bachfish just chose not to use his usual operating procedure... namely wait for the pinnaces to be inbound and then blowing away the hypership behind them. You'd take little to no damage because from literally EVERY possible way short of pulling a McKeon and doing a very detailed radar hullmap from very close range, you literally could not tell Pirate Bane from a genuine freighter externally.


So... split the difference between the Trojans and Pirate Bane. Bane started life as an auxiliary for the Silesian Navy, had military hyper, sidewalls and a slightly better than usual internal damage control system... but pair it with the general armaments of the Trojans. You now have a roughly 6 million ton freighter, that visually appears to be an actual freighter (deceptive camouflage since they don't need hammerheads), has the firepower of a CA if not BC, a few LAC squadrons, and still has upwards 4 million tons for "general freight use".


That gives you a quasi-military ship for your merchant crews who are naval reservists to stay current. This means in an emergency you no longer need to give them a refresher course, they kept their skills sharp on the AMC; while still handling their primary job of being freight haulers. And their reputation as a long-time freight hauler would conceal their status as naval officers, people talk more freely in front of 'lowly' merchies than they would a uniformed officer who may or may not belong to a navy you're not too friendly with. That lends an Naval Intelligence angle to those reservists in addition to their helping BuPers noting they're staying trained.

That's a lot of angles in favor of a merchant cruiser rather than a true warship. similar crews, experience & training, large cargo movement, feeding ONI any stories they overhear.

If someone is blowing away merchies without allowing them to surrender, you're still going to be ahead of the curve because anything smaller than a Sag-C would also be very likely to get blown away and you'd be down a full warship instead of an armed merchy. But the warship would be more useful kept at a nearby naval station for when/if you identify the base of the psychotic person who is blowing away merchant ships, and not getting shot up as well.