Aurora 4x

C# Fiction => General C# Fiction => Topic started by: El Pip on November 21, 2021, 12:00:54 PM

Title: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on November 21, 2021, 12:00:54 PM
Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
by
Dr Morgan Walsh, Lecturer of Imperial History at the University of Merlin

Introduction
It is said that for every ship of the Royal Navy there is a book, indeed for some parts of the fleet there are more books than ships; there are at least a dozen times as many books about the Royal Navy's Dreadnoughts than there are actual Dreadnoughts and the (mis)adventures of the Weapon-class have been covered in exhaustive, some might suggest excessive, detail in seemingly countless volumes.

This book is not about any of those ships, it is instead about the might-have-been and never-were designs that emerged from shipwrights, designers and optimistic serving officers across the Empire. For every design that was approved for construction or refit there were several other options that were considered by the Admiralty Board and a far larger number that never even made it onto the final shortlist. The unbuilt ships that are featured in this book are the more critical and hopefully more interesting designs that have been careful selected from amongst that vast multitude. All the designs mark inflection points in the history of the Fleet, some point towards a different path that wasn't taken, others are the opposite and are the conventional option that was rejected when the Admiralty decided, or had imposed upon it, a major change.

Being unbuilt ships there are no list of actions and battles, no reports on performance in service and hidden feature or vices that emerged during service. In general these are bare-bone designs and often not even that, many of the designs presented were never even finalised. A select handful were holo-simed and assessed by the Admiralty Tactical Office, but most of the designs presented were not and so any discussion on how they might have behaved will be speculative and qualitative. While such speculation is indeed presented, one of the lures of might-have-been designs is always the 'What If' questions around them, the fact is is speculation should always be acknowledged.

Overall it is hoped that this book will provide a better understanding of the options available and the designs not selected, in the hope that this knowledge will help to better explain the choices that were made.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on November 21, 2021, 12:06:45 PM
Chapter 1 The First Kill of the Tribals
To break with convention we will not begin at the beginning, to be blunt there is little to be gained by looking at the early unbuilt aether designs of the Royal Navy. A wide range of primitive attack skiffs and crude fighters were designed 'in case of emergency' and more practically to give naval architects experience in military designs. Small, slow and lacking effective weaponry they are not particularly distinctive and none of the ideas or features of those craft translated to the vessels that were eventually constructed, the first actual warships of the fleet, the Tribal-class destroyers.
Much has been written on the Tribal-class and rest assured we will not be diving into the many subtle variants and marginally different options that were considered for the first batch. Instead we will be looking at it's main rival and the original preferred design, the A-class, sometimes recorded as the Active-class

Code: [Select]
Active-class Destroyer      10,000 tons       319 Crew       1,517.9 BP       TCS 200    TH 600    EM 0
3000 km/s      Armour 5-41       Shields 0-0       HTK 63      Sensors 0/110/0/0      DCR 6      PPV 55
Maint Life 3.13 Years     MSP 569    AFR 133%    IFR 1.9%    1YR 87    5YR 1,307    Max Repair 126 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Falcon Mk.I ID-300x (2)    Power 600    Fuel Use 19.83%    Signature 300    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 262,000 Gallons    Range 23.8 billion km (91 days at full power)

Beardmore Mk.I 6" NUV Laser (11)    Range 128,000km     TS: 5,000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 30,000 km    ROF 10       
GEC Type 500 BFC 128-4000 (2)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Brown-Curtis Hydra Mk.I GFCR (2)     Total Power Output 40 kBTU/s    Exp 5%

Barr & Stroud Type 200MWS 1.5m/R1 (1)     GPS 84     Range 17.1m km    MCR 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20
GEC Type 1000LR 114m/R160 (1)     GPS 20160     Range 114m km    Resolution 160
Racal Type 400 ESM10-110 (1)     Sensitivity 110     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  82.9m km
The basic hull form should be recognisable along with the main components and the design shares the same strengths and weaknesses of the first batch of Tribal-class; strong armour, generous engineering space, solid sensor fit and far too slow. The main difference should also be obvious - the laser main armament in place of the familiar Vickers 8" rail guns. Developed by Beardmore, Lithgow and Company from an industrial cutting device the Mk.I 6" NUV Laser was seriously considered as the main weapon of the first destroyers. Indeed it was initially the preferred option, hence this design receiving the 'A' designation as there was an intent to have a formal naming system for the aether fleet and it was planned for the destroyers would get sequential letters of the alphabet for their class names.

The 6" Lasers did not need turrets or ammunition feeds in the same manner as a rail gun so the design lacked recognisable turrets, instead having a number of almost barbette like emplacements along the spine and flanks. These barbettes contained the laser aperture unit, the large capacitors that fed it and direct power couplings down to the Hydra reactors in the heart of the hull. With a shorter wavelength than industrial lasers (being near ultraviolet it was ~0.3micron compared to the ~1 micron in a typical laser cutter) and the resulting higher energy per photon the weapons could not maintain the constant output of an industrial unit. Or more precisely the laser aperture could, but the capacitors, reactors and cooling systems could not maintain constant output without catastrophic failure, so the units were limited to a single high energy shot every 10 seconds. The operational concept was intense and constant sniping, alternating fire from the barbettes to maintain a constant weight of fire and using accurate targeting to focus shots on exposed or vulnerable areas on the enemy vessel. The inexperience of the Admiralty in aether warfare should be apparent here, they had still yet to grasp that the combat ranges and speeds of aether combat made such a plan a pipe dream, to say nothing of the minor detail that the design would prove far too slow to even keep up with the enemy's the Empire would encounter, let alone dictate the engagement range.

Opposition to the design came from the nascent tactics division which had grave doubts about the operational concept. They highlighted the many uncertainties and instead support the rail guns on the basis of rate of fire, while the Vickers 8" Mk.I took longer to complete a firing cycle (15 seconds vs 10 for the laser) in that time it would fire four times not once. This great volume of shot allowed a degree of spread and scatter, while each shot may be less likely to hit there were a great deal more of them. Two factions formed, Team Laser under Rear-Admiral Kai Taylor and Team Rail led by Rear-Admiral Harry Hanes, the rivalry as much driven by the two men's desire to be the first 'aether' Vice-Admiral in the Fleet as their belief in the designs. Given the complete lack of hard data, or indeed any data, on possible opponents there was a great deal of holo-simming and a great deal of proving the golden rule of holo-simming "You can prove anything if you setup the scenario just right". Neither side was making any progress on convincing the other so Rear-Admiral Hanes took the fight 'up-stairs' and suggested the two groups make a presentation to the Minister and Cabinet on the rival proposals. Where Taylor focused on the technical details, the advantages of a relativistic weapon in allowing the target no time to doge, the lack of ammunition requirements and so on, Hanes took a different path. He instead appealed to one of the key tenets of Anglo-Futurism - Semper Ipsum, Numquam Obrutus (Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned). His entire pitch was the rail guns on the Tribals put out a superior weight of fire and had a higher theoretical damage per second (if they hit) and so were obviously better.

The Imperial Cabinet was convinced by this argument, cynically it was suggested this was because it was the only one of the two that they could understand, and this broke the deadlock, they came down in favour of the Tribal class, a success which also marked Hanes out as a future star. His promotion to Vice-Admiral followed shortly making him undisputed head of the aether branch and within a few short years he would be the inaugural First Space Lord and oversee the final decommissioning of the few legacy 'wet navy' ships left in active service. The preference for weight of fire over accuracy in warship design has remained a constant in Admiralty thinking, though not always a decisive one as we shall see in later chapters. The decision also broke the naming system before it has even begun, to the distress of the Ship Naming Committee who's efforts to impose a logical system on the naming of Royal Navy vessels remain unrewarded to this day.

Had Taylor and the A-class been successful the changes would have been fundamental and far reaching. The entire doctrine of the Royal Navy would have changed, particularly given the advances in sensor and tracking technology that were coming. At the time of the decision both the rail gun and laser were limited by the range of the GEC Type 500 fire control, so both had the same effective maximum range, a few short years later that would not have been the case. The longer range GEC Type 501, and the far superior Ferranti Type 502X, would have allowed the full range of the 6" Mk.I Laser to be used. Even if the 'sniping' doctrine had proved impractical, a long range shooting doctrine may have been feasible, particularly for the later Mark.III Tribal destroyers which had the speed to at least attempt to control the range. It is interesting to speculate what a fleet designed for long range shooting would look like, certainly substantially different to the one the Navy has today. As it was the Tribals won out and ambitious officers in the fleet learnt that while they could ignore politics, that didn't mean politics would ignore them.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on November 21, 2021, 01:31:38 PM
Excellent! Finally a Pip work to distract people from my own updating tardiness read and enjoy.  ;D

I was going to sit down and work through my backlog today anyways but this is certainly the right way to start my day.

Quote from: El Pip on November 21, 2021, 12:00:54 PM
It is said that for every ship of the Royal Navy there is a book, indeed for some parts of the fleet there are more books than ships; there are at least a dozen times as many books about the Royal Navy's Dreadnoughts than there are actual Dreadnoughts and the (mis)adventures of the Weapon-class have been covered in exhaustive, some might suggest excessive, detail in seemingly countless volumes.

I eagerly await links to where I may purchase these exhaustively detailed books so that I might assess their excessiveness as a neutral arbiter.

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While such speculation is indeed presented, one of the lures of might-have-been designs is always the 'What If' questions around them, the fact is is speculation should always be acknowledged.

And celebrated, for there are few things more enjoyable in life than reckless speculation.

Quote from: El Pip on November 21, 2021, 12:06:45 PM
Active-class Destroyer
10,000 tons
3000 km/s
Fuel Capacity 262,000 Gallons
Total Power Output 40 kBTU/s

Truly the Space Imperial system is a thing of beauty. I may even have shed a manly space tear.

The design is also quite characteristic and even without the exposition tells the story of naval architects desperately scrabbling about to figure out what a space warship is supposed to do. In addition to the points raised in the text, I also would draw attention to the quite curious sensor suite - sensors covering several resolutions, each rather larger than is needed for beam targeting purposes yet rather smaller than one would want for long-range target detection as might be found on a dedicated fleet scout or C&C vessel. Still, such things are not necessarily damning as sensor doctrine in fleet design can be quite extensively variable. More curious is the decision to mount a 500-ton EM detection sensor, in itself a perfectly capable type of sensor, yet reflective of a clear identity crisis (I suspect typifying Admiralty thinking during this period) as it would be better-suited on a fleet scout type of design, and curiously is not matched by any thermal sensor at all.

Overall this is a ship quite confused as to its intended role and doctrine, really just the sort of thing that one expects from an Admiralty suffering from the same conditions.

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the units were limited to a single high energy shot every 10 seconds. The operational concept was intense and constant sniping, alternating fire from the barbettes to maintain a constant weight of fire and using accurate targeting to focus shots on exposed or vulnerable areas on the enemy vessel.

This is an interesting idea, but as mentioned following not an effective one in practice at least as the Admiralty conceived at this time. Primarily, in practice this strategy proves ineffective when all weapons fired are of the same class, simply put there ends up being no real benefit. However the Admiralty cannot be faulted for failing to foresee the advent of energy shields which would later motivate a resurgence of this doctrine applied to a naval combined arms context.

(Also I am now going to try and see if this idea is feasible in any other useful ways in Aurora, because similar mechanics are central in other wargames and it is in my opinion a fun tactical mechanic.)

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Given the complete lack of hard data, or indeed any data, on possible opponents there was a great deal of holo-simming and a great deal of proving the golden rule of holo-simming "You can prove anything if you setup the scenario just right".

A rule I am sure both sides of the debate have cited selectively.

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As it was the Tribals won out and ambitious officers in the fleet learnt that while they could ignore politics, that didn't mean politics would ignore them.

An unfortunate truth of the world of military affairs. Or perhaps fortunate, depending who is asked about such matters.

On the whole this is quite the quality and tone I would expect from an El Pip work, and I look forward to the next entry in the series sometime next Spring.  :P
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on November 24, 2021, 02:29:43 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on November 21, 2021, 01:31:38 PM
I eagerly await links to where I may purchase these exhaustively detailed books so that I might assess their excessiveness as a neutral arbiter.
I briefly considered doing this as an anthology, each update from a different book and covering all sorts of other subjects. Then I realised that was ridiculously ambitious and scaled back to something (hopefully) more manageable.

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Truly the Space Imperial system is a thing of beauty. I may even have shed a manly space tear.
It is indeed a thing of wonder. First draft even had weapon and FC ranges in yards (with some order of magnitude prefix) but that seemed a step too far

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The design is also quite characteristic and even without the exposition tells the story of naval architects desperately scrabbling about to figure out what a space warship is supposed to do. In addition to the points raised in the text, I also would draw attention to the quite curious sensor suite - sensors covering several resolutions, each rather larger than is needed for beam targeting purposes yet rather smaller than one would want for long-range target detection as might be found on a dedicated fleet scout or C&C vessel. Still, such things are not necessarily damning as sensor doctrine in fleet design can be quite extensively variable. More curious is the decision to mount a 500-ton EM detection sensor, in itself a perfectly capable type of sensor, yet reflective of a clear identity crisis (I suspect typifying Admiralty thinking during this period) as it would be better-suited on a fleet scout type of design, and curiously is not matched by any thermal sensor at all.

Overall this is a ship quite confused as to its intended role and doctrine, really just the sort of thing that one expects from an Admiralty suffering from the same conditions.
It is a mix of mistakes for plot/RP purposes and entirely genuine mistakes because I was still adapting from VB to C# Aurora. The change in 'normal' fleet speed and the sensor changes in particular were a surprise.

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(Also I am now going to try and see if this idea is feasible in any other useful ways in Aurora, because similar mechanics are central in other wargames and it is in my opinion a fun tactical mechanic.)
Do keep us informed about the results of your researches.

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An unfortunate truth of the world of military affairs. Or perhaps fortunate, depending who is asked about such matters.
I have noticed Aurora AARs tend to gloss over military/political differences, often entirely justifiably because a race is a military dictatorship or whatever. And of course even debates within a military can provide more than enough plot points to fill many an update, as your own work effortlessly demonstrates. The Royal Navy however has to deal with not only those arguments, but also their political masters who may be ill-informed but also hold the purse strings and have voters to worry about.

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On the whole this is quite the quality and tone I would expect from an El Pip work, and I look forward to the next entry in the series sometime next Spring.  :P
I'm afraid I must be the bearer of shocking news - it will probably be significantly earlier than that. I was amazed at how quickly that came together without the need to worry about research, the web of reaction and counter-reaction, and all the other things that slow down Butterfly. I can probably bash these out at quite the terrifying pace (relatively speaking).
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on November 24, 2021, 08:30:10 AM
Quote from: El Pip on November 24, 2021, 02:29:43 AM
I briefly considered doing this as an anthology, each update from a different book and covering all sorts of other subjects. Then I realised that was ridiculously ambitious and scaled back to something (hopefully) more manageable.

Quite reasonable, this isn't the Vicky2 board after all.

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It is indeed a thing of wonder. First draft even had weapon and FC ranges in yards (with some order of magnitude prefix) but that seemed a step too far

What could have been...

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It is a mix of mistakes for plot/RP purposes and entirely genuine mistakes because I was still adapting from VB to C# Aurora. The change in 'normal' fleet speed and the sensor changes in particular were a surprise.

The change in fleet speed is still surprising to me, not so much that the faster fleet speeds seem extreme but rather in wondering how the player base went through the entire VB6 era and never figured out that faster ships are good and fun. I suspect it may have something to do with the very different engine, fuel, and sensor mechanics (and the AI, thinking about it...) that made missiles in VB6 much stronger relative to their C# versions, since higher fleet speeds seem to be driven by beam weapon viability.

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I'm afraid I must be the bearer of shocking news - it will probably be significantly earlier than that. I was amazed at how quickly that came together without the need to worry about research, the web of reaction and counter-reaction, and all the other things that slow down Butterfly. I can probably bash these out at quite the terrifying pace (relatively speaking).

The world may not be ready for this terrifying pace.  :o
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on December 18, 2021, 10:51:50 AM
Chapter 2 - Industrial Tactics
There is an irony at the heart of the Tribal design, originally intended as do-it-all vessel that could cover a host of roles it ended up as the basis of a large family of variants and related specialist designs. While weapons, sensors and even engines have been changed the basic hull and layout has remained the same allowing a impressive degree of commonality between the seemingly very different ships. Indeed almost every destroyer in Royal Navy service is a Tribal variant, buildable in the same yards and sharing countless common components. Almost, but not all. The only exceptions are the D-class escort destroyers, the Defiant's four point defence turrets have a voracious appetite for ammunition and need clear arcs of fire to ensure rapid reaction times. These requirements means their internal layout is radically different to accommodate the gauss shot feed systems and the hull itself has to be reshaped to create better turret mounting positions, changes enough to make it no longer inter-buildable with a basic Tribal. It did not have to be this way though, at the birth of the escort destroyer project there was a rival design; the C-class.

Code: [Select]
C-Class Escort Destroyer      10,000 tons       287 Crew       1,596.7 BP       TCS 200    TH 600    EM 0
3000 km/s      Armour 5-41       Shields 0-0       HTK 63      Sensors 11/0/0/0      DCR 5      PPV 67.64
Maint Life 2.55 Years     MSP 548    AFR 145%    IFR 2.0%    1YR 118    5YR 1,769    Max Repair 153.6 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Falcon Mk.I ID-300x (2)    Power 600    Fuel Use 19.83%    Signature 300    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 330,000 Gallons    Range 30 billion km (115 days at full power)

Vickers 8" Mk.I Railgun V40/C4 (5x4)    Range 160,000km     TS: 5,000 km/s     Power 12-4     RM 40,000 km    ROF 15       
Sterling Mk.I Twin 0.303' Coil Turret (16k) (2x6)    Range 30,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Marconi Type 901 TFC 192-16000 (1)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
GEC Type 500 BFC 128-4000 (1)     Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 4,000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 38 30 22
Brown-Curtis Hydra Mk.I GFCR (2)     Total Power Output 32 kBTU/s    Exp 5%

Barr & Stroud Type 200MWS 1.5m/R1 (1)     GPS 84     Range 17.1m km    MCR 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20
Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Thorn Type 3000C IR-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  26.2m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes
Despite very different aims the C-class was partly inspired by the Weapon-class torpedo destroyers, a design which proved it was possible to significantly change the main armament on the ship but have it still be compatible with the original design. The Weapon-class also indicated the best way to make such radical changes while having a minimal impact on inter-buildability; focus on the amidships area. For this reason thee front and rear thirds of the C-class are mostly unchanged with the 8" rail guns in A, B and X turrets being retained along with the forward mounted bridge and sensor arrays and the auxiliary control and engineering section in the stern. In the mid section where the Tribals had C turret and the Weapon class mounted their two triple 15" torpedo tubes, the C-class fitted it's two point defence turrets in the P and Q positions. The Enfield 0.303' magnetically accelerated solidshot coil was well proven at this point and the twin mount developed by Sterling was considered the best compromise between the inevitable inefficiencies of the single mount of the Vickers 'K' turret and the shear size of the quad mounting proposed by Armstrong. Fitted in slightly offset bulges above and below the main hull the turrets had overlapping better-than-hemispherical fields of fire, ensuring at least one would always line of sight on an incoming missile even if the ship was unable to manoeuvre. These locations also kept them close to the main magazine, simplifying ammunition supply, and meant they able to tap directly into the main communications and power trunk routes through the ship, providing resilience and faster reaction times.

As a brief aside it's worth noting the proposed name, despite neither of the first two destroyer classes following their schema the Ship Naming Committee was persevering. This was not just bureaucratic inertia or pettiness, while seen as merely administrators they were Royal Navy trained administrators and as such did not consider a few defeats in opening skirmishes as reason enough for surrender to the forces of anarchy. Getting both the preferred and alternative option a compliant name ensured that whichever design won it would have a logical name. The name choice also indicates that the C-class was initially the preferred option with the D-class the backup, raising the question of how the Admiralty reached that conclusion and why they changed their minds.

It is something of a trite point to state that professionals study logistics, but that does not mean it is irrelevant. As discussed the C-class was inter-buildable with the then standard Tribal Mk.II design, meaning the same yard could in theory produce Tribal, Weapon and C-class destroyers with minimal re-tooling or re-training in between. Once in service this shared heritage translated to easier logistics (more common parts meant fewer needed to be carried) and easier crew rotations and transfers for most roles, as well as simplifying the training pipeline as there would be less ship specific training required. Operationally the lure of this approach should be obvious, the industrial and logistical reasoning behind it was sound. Ultimately however the escort destroyer was a reaction to the discovery of the Automoton Menace and their fearsomely prodigious use of exceptionally fast light torpedoes. Consequently the Admiralty were looking for a dedicated escort with as much anti-torpedo firepower as they could fit on it, in terms of this purely tactical requirement the D-class design mounted twice the number of Sterling twin turrets so was clearly superior, hence it was selected and the Directorate of Naval Construction was given the task of re-allocating shipyards accordingly.

For many the long and celebrate service of the D-class across many conflicts and against a wide range of enemies of the Empire is proof enough that this was the correct decision and on a tactical level the case is a strong one; it would require two C-class ships to produce the same dedicated firepower as a single Defiant and for many years the constant cry from the Fleet Admirals was for more anti-torpedo firepower to allow them to stand a chance against the Automoton threat. However there is a counter-point, in the twenty years since the decision was made it has never been repeated. There have been three new destroyer classes introduced since the Defiant's entered service; the Battle, Marksman and Eclipse and all have been Tribal variant, fully inter-buildable with whatever the current Mark of Tribal design was. As with all their backroom colleagues the logistics division staff are above all else Royal Navy officers and did not let a mere defeat deter them from continuing to fight their corner and in the long term they did indeed prevail.

A final interesting point is the proposed operational tactics for the C-class, while technically escorts their proponents did not see them as escorting Tribal class ships so much as replacing them. A hypothetical destroyer flotilla of the early 2010s had two Weapon class for anti-ship punch, two Defiant class to provide point defence fire and two Tribal class for general duties. Had the C-class entered service their supporters would switch that to two Weapon class and four C-class, providing the same weight of PD fire in the same number of hulls, but more tactical flexibility and greater resilience. Of course in reality no flotilla ever deployed in this hypothetical manner as 'flexible deployment' was the mantra for the 2010s, it was not until the 2220s that standardised flotillas came into fashion. Nevertheless it highlights that the C-class was a much better fit for the Admiralty's thinking at that time around not just logistics but also tactical operations and the lingering attraction of flexibility and multi-role ships. It is a testament to how deeply the first encounter with the Automoton and their massed torpedoes had affected the Admiralty that all of that was ignored in favour of the D-class and it's narrow focus on doing a single thing as efficiently as possible,
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on December 18, 2021, 11:35:58 AM
I must immediately complain of this rapid pacing, it has not even been a month since the last posting and such recklessness can only end badly.

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with the 8" rail guns in A, B and X turrets

I am glad to see that the proliferation across these forums of railguns being considered as turrets, in bald-faced defiance of the game mechanics, continues apace.

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This was not just bureaucratic inertia or pettiness, while seen as merely administrators they were Royal Navy trained administrators and as such did not consider a few defeats in opening skirmishes as reason enough for surrender to the forces of anarchy.

A wonderful sentence that conveys quite a lot in the subtext as to just how the Royal Navy typically experiences space naval warfare, particularly the promise of some opening defeats promises a thrilling narrative even if unlikely to ever be told in any way besides half-hints and allusions.

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Ultimately however the escort destroyer was a reaction to the discovery of the Automoton Menace and their fearsomely prodigious use of exceptionally fast light torpedoes.

Yes, like that.  :P

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Consequently the Admiralty were looking for a dedicated escort with as much anti-torpedo firepower as they could fit on it, in terms of this purely tactical requirement the D-class design mounted twice the number of Sterling twin turrets so was clearly superior, hence it was selected and the Directorate of Naval Construction was given the task of re-allocating shipyards accordingly.

This is really about what I expected, there always inevitably seems to be an urgent need for pure-PD ships in the face of the Automoton Menace, yet there is an equally inevitable desire among players The Admiralty to somehow prove that such things are unnecessary at the beginning of every new campaign.

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However there is a counter-point, in the twenty years since the decision was made it has never been repeated. There have been three new destroyer classes introduced since the Defiant's entered service; the Battle, Marksman and Eclipse and all have been Tribal variant, fully inter-buildable with whatever the current Mark of Tribal design was.

TASK FAILED SUCCESSFULLY

- RN archivist assessment of the C-class, c.2300

Overall an interesting look at the continued development and history of the RN. It is still clearly a design of the same early generation as the previous A-class, but with a more refined doctrinal focus and understanding even if perhaps saddled with some of the less efficient decisions made for the parent Tribal class.

If I must file a second complaint, it would be regarding the lack of civilian political meddling, frankly the lack of a spurious 15" spinal laser added purely to make it easier for certain MPs to sell the concept to their constituencies is an egregious oversight, an assessment based in pure logic and in no way borne out of my position as head of the Aurora Space Society for Humongous Oversized Laser Emitters.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on December 19, 2021, 04:13:12 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 18, 2021, 11:35:58 AM
I must immediately complain of this rapid pacing, it has not even been a month since the last posting and such recklessness can only end badly.
That is a risk we must take I'm afraid.

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I am glad to see that the proliferation across these forums of railguns being considered as turrets, in bald-faced defiance of the game mechanics, continues apace.
Railguns belong in turrets so quite clearly it is the game mechanics that are wrong in this instance.

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A wonderful sentence that conveys quite a lot in the subtext as to just how the Royal Navy typically experiences space naval warfare, particularly the promise of some opening defeats promises a thrilling narrative even if unlikely to ever be told in any way besides half-hints and allusions.
I was pleased with it. I can reassure you that defeats and explosions will be described in more than hints and allusions, though perhaps not in the detail one would find in a conventional AAR I admit.

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This is really about what I expected, there always inevitably seems to be an urgent need for pure-PD ships in the face of the Automoton Menace, yet there is an equally inevitable desire among players The Admiralty to somehow prove that such things are unnecessary at the beginning of every new campaign.
It is something of RP cliche at this point I admit. That said Steve needs to implement a no-missile option for the game as there is clear demand for it.

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TASK FAILED SUCCESSFULLY

- RN archivist assessment of the C-class, c.2300
A reasonable conclusion. :)

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Overall an interesting look at the continued development and history of the RN. It is still clearly a design of the same early generation as the previous A-class, but with a more refined doctrinal focus and understanding even if perhaps saddled with some of the less efficient decisions made for the parent Tribal class.

If I must file a second complaint, it would be regarding the lack of civilian political meddling, frankly the lack of a spurious 15" spinal laser added purely to make it easier for certain MPs to sell the concept to their constituencies is an egregious oversight, an assessment based in pure logic and in no way borne out of my position as head of the Aurora Space Society for Humongous Oversized Laser Emitters.
There will be much more egregious and ill-advised civilian and political meddling in the next chapter, though I must warn you that spinal lasers of any size will not be making an appearance. I hope you can reconcile yourself to this news and will continue to read despite the obvious disappointment.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on December 19, 2021, 10:00:21 AM
Quote from: El Pip on December 19, 2021, 04:13:12 AM
Railguns belong in turrets so quite clearly it is the game mechanics that are wrong in this instance.

(https://i.imgur.com/DYAEiOu.gif)

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It is something of RP cliche at this point I admit. That said Steve needs to implement a no-missile option for the game as there is clear demand for it.

Demand, perhaps, but I do feel that a no-missile game would lack much of the interest found in Aurora's combat. Without missiles, the victor in a beam fight is assuredly the one with the fastest ships, coupled with either the biggest laser or particle lance they can build depending on tech level. Missiles do force interesting design requirements (balancing PD and offensive weapons) and allow slower fleets to be competitive allowing for greater diversity of engines.

Nevertheless, from a RP perspective no-missile games have some interest and certainly the, ah, Automoton Menace could use some variety particularly as their, ahem, literary inspiration is somewhat known for not using missiles anyways.

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There will be much more egregious and ill-advised civilian and political meddling in the next chapter, though I must warn you that spinal lasers of any size will not be making an appearance. I hope you can reconcile yourself to this news and will continue to read despite the obvious disappointment.

I shall endeavor thusly but cannot promise any success.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on December 20, 2021, 09:22:10 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 19, 2021, 10:00:21 AM
Demand, perhaps, but I do feel that a no-missile game would lack much of the interest found in Aurora's combat. Without missiles, the victor in a beam fight is assuredly the one with the fastest ships, coupled with either the biggest laser or particle lance they can build depending on tech level. Missiles do force interesting design requirements (balancing PD and offensive weapons) and allow slower fleets to be competitive allowing for greater diversity of engines.
A non-missile game would be different certainly and may require a tad more tweaking than just removing a couple of missile techs. My starting point was making beam fighters more of a practical choice and some sort of Jeune École vs Dreadnought option. As in only large ships can carry the very biggest long range guns, but they can never be fast, while the ships that can be fast cannot carry the biggest guns.

Honestly I know the realistic answer is just to do a multi-faction game of my own so I can impose some house rules on the tech. I have a half sketched out plan for;

With a plan for France to work on cloaks, ECM and maybe fighter only escort carriers, German to add destroyer screens and maybe regress towards mixed armament pre-Dreadnoughts, and the RN to probably go full Fisher and add Battlecruisers that are supposed to just hunt down French escort carriers and German destroyers, because if they try and tangle with a proper Battleship they get shredded and are also vulnerable to being swamped by FACs.
 
Where I would find the time to do this is a very different question.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: Garfunkel on December 20, 2021, 09:23:31 AM
Good stuff, keep it coming.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on December 27, 2021, 06:20:17 AM
Chapter 3 War(ships) by Other Means
The Palmerston class diplomatic ships did not lead happy lives, every single one was destroyed by the various new species they were attempting to communicate with. Indeed in the majority of cases it was the attack on the Palmerston that confirmed the alien in question was indeed hostile, the remainder being destroyed fleeing systems after a survey ship became the first victim. That said, the Palmerston class were not considered the most cursed ships in the Fleet. This was partly because the Navy resisted the idea of any ship being 'cursed' as being unduly superstitious and counter to the principles of Anglo-Futurism, but mostly it was because the ships were not technically in the Fleet. Instead they had a strange hybrid status; directed and paid for by the Foreign Office, but under the operational command of the Admiralty and they reported through the naval chain of command. Any blame for failure ended up with the the Foreign Office as would the credit for any success, though the later was something of a theoretical possibility.

The Admiralty were not actually xenophobic as the Ajax Affair demonstrates, but they had a very robust approach to first contact. In the early years of exploration there were hopes the galaxy might friendly or at least neutral, however the loss of many survey ships soon disabused them of this attitude. By the time of the Crusading Years the Admiralty had evolved the belief that there was no point bothering to talk to any new species until some Dreadnoughts had been about the Queen's business and dished out the good news to the species' homeworld. One this had been done, and both sides had a proper appreciation of the situation, then there could be time for productive talks. Naturally the Foreign Office fundamentally disagreed with this and had allies across the Imperial Parliament, their attitude was that just because every single alien species the Empire had met thus far had been initially hostile, it did not mean the galaxy was intrinsically hostile. As it was surely better to jaw-jaw than war-war then repeated efforts should be made to better communicate with future contacts, hence the Palmerston class of diplomatic ships.

This did not quite work out as intended and, after the destruction of the 3rd ship, the imaginatively named Palmerston III (the class were destroyed faster than they could be built, so additional names were not required), there was talk of revising the design. Just as the Admiralty had insisted on involvement in the class, as part of the general policy of trying to stop any other department operating aether vessels, so the main Britannia design office submitted a proposal.

Code: [Select]
Curzon class Diplomatic Ship      30,000 tons       774 Crew       5,255.5 BP       TCS 600    TH 3,600    EM 0
6000 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 8-86       Shields 0-0       HTK 151      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 37      PPV 81.6
Maint Life 3.06 Years     MSP 6,456    AFR 267%    IFR 3.7%    1YR 1,032    5YR 15,483    Max Repair 900 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 3   BRG   AUX   ENG   DIP   
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Morale Check Required   

Bristol Sabre Mk.II 30kt (3-50) MJD     Max Ship Size 30000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

Rolls Royce Griffon Mk.III MPD-1800 (2)    Power 3600    Fuel Use 50.31%    Signature 1800    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 3,209,000 Gallons    Range 38.3 billion km (73 days at full power)

Sterling Mk.I Twin Coil Turret (16k) (5x6)    Range 30,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Marconi Type 901 TFC 192-16000 (2)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

Barr & Stroud Type 200MWS 1.5m/R1 (1)     GPS 84     Range 17.1m km    MCR 1.5m km    Resolution 1
Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1

TRE Asprin Mk.I 10kMx ECM Projector
As the 'C' name implies the ship was based on the 30kt Cruiser hull, in this case a modified City class jump cruiser. At this point two of the Palmerstons had been lost to massed missile strikes, the other to heavy energy fire of a type which had not previously been encountered, with the benefit of hindsight we know this was from Sourmagh Combine particle beams. The design therefore focused on heavy armour to cover the energy weapon fire and massed Sterling twin coil turrets to protect against missiles. Records indicate there was talk of swapping the Sterling turrets out for Goalkeeper Mk.I CIWS systems, a more cost- and mass-efficient solution, but there was hope to keep the Curzon inter-buildable with a standard cruiser hull and the internal rearrangements required by the swap would have been a change too far. A moderately long range, considerable endurance, the latest TRE counter-measure system and a sensor suite focused on missile detection rounded out the design.

The Foreign Office was concerned that, despite the lack of offensive weaponry, the ship was still very clearly a warship. The Admiralty felt it wise to avoid mentioning that anyone who had been on the receiving end of a barrage of 0.303' solidshot would probably disagree about the lack of offensive weaponry point, but accepted that it was indeed very much a warship. The Imperial Parliament in contrast was aghast at the cost, the ship was over ten times more expensive to build and the annual operation and maintenance cost was estimated at almost 85x more than a Palmerston, while no MP would ever publicly agree that talk was cheap they had expected the ships to be so. The Admiralty conceded the cost point as well because their position on the matter was clear, they argued that by the time you put enough point defence and armour on a ship to protect it against a plausible strike the ship had become heavy cruiser sized (and priced) vessel. The naval architects could thin the armour and provide fewer turrets, but that would be worse than useless as such a vessel would still be expensive, still be a warship but would be destroyed by strikes of the size that had struck the first Palmerstons.

It was ultimately therefore cost that killed the Curzons, Parliament was unwilling to put up the extra money and the Foreign Office refusing to countenance cuts elsewhere to pay for them. The Palmerston class would therefore solider on, the Admiralty making an official objection and issuing warnings, but still taking on operational responsibility for them. This was not just Naval devotion to duty and respect for political control, there was a harsh and dark logic at play. An often overlooked fact is that it was not Royal Navy sailors being sent out in ships the Admirals thought were death traps, because diplomatic ships were manned by Foreign Office recruited crew and officers. If the mandarins of King Charles Arcology cared so little for those in their charge, and could somehow find a ready supply of volunteers to replace those lost, then the Admiralty were not going to waste valuable political capital fighting the issue and certainly not concede the point that anyone other than themselves were allowed aether ships.

This leaves us with the question of how the Curzons would have performed, certainly the missile barrage from the Vistonida cruisers that destroyed the Palmerston IV would easily have been resisted and the ships would have had the speed advantage to escape any attempt at an energy beam engagement. Equally the class would not have suffered the fate of the Palmerston V during it's disastrous first contact with the inhabitants of Hartha III, a more comprehensive sensor suite would hopefully mean the Surface To Orbit weapon emplacements would have been detected and, even if they had not, the heavy armour would have allowed a Curzon to survive at least the first barrages and so have time to flee. There is of course the question of how effective they would have performed as diplomatic ships, that being the actual reason for their construction. On the positive side their increased suitability would give them more opportunity to engage in diplomacy or at least bring home their crew alive so lessons could be learnt. But on the negative side the Foreign Office is likely correct that they would be viewed as warships and this would perhaps count against any diplomatic efforts. The example of the diplomatic module equipped Dreadnought Ajax is instructive, though of course in that case it is perhaps less surprising given the size of a Dreadnought. Bluntly however the Palmerston class never actually achieved any diplomatic successes, and as noted were all destroyed by enemy action, so it is hard to see how the Curzon class could have done any worse.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on December 27, 2021, 09:41:47 AM
Quote from: El Pip on December 27, 2021, 06:20:17 AM
yet another post

Confused Butterfly noises

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That said, the Palmerston class were not considered the most cursed ships in the Fleet. This was partly because the Navy resisted the idea of any ship being 'cursed' as being unduly superstitious and counter to the principles of Anglo-Futurism,

"It is not cursed as long as we say it is not cursed, but if we say it is cursed then it will be cursed" seems like a questionable understanding of how magic works.

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Any blame for failure ended up with the the Foreign Office as would the credit for any success, though the later was something of a theoretical possibility.

Then again, it is the British way to pretend that reality is what they say it is, rather than what it is.

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the Crusading Years


An extremely enticing teaser, suggesting yet another worked-out proof of the famous theorem that all Aurora AARS, given sufficient time, become Warhammer 40K.

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This did not quite work out as intended and, after the destruction of the 3rd ship, the imaginatively named Palmerston III (the class were destroyed faster than they could be built, so additional names were not required),

A brilliant quip.

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Curzon class Diplomatic Ship
[...]
Rolls Royce Griffon Mk.III MPD-1800 (2)    Power 3600    Fuel Use 50.31%    Signature 1800    Explosion 15%

I cannot be sure, since I haven't seen the Palmerston class, but if this design is an evolution thereof I may have some inkling as to why the galaxy appears more hostile than it may otherwise have been. With military engines an NPR will see the ship as a military ship which carries a steeper penalty, per ton, for being present in a claimed system. With commercial engines the benefit from a diplomatic module is able to outweigh the penalty from having a ship present in a claimed system, with the most benefit from ships under 11,000 tons as someone has worked out elsewhere. I do regret polluting this thread with discussion of actual game mechanics but it did seem relevant.

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Records indicate there was talk of swapping the Sterling turrets out for Goalkeeper Mk.I CIWS systems, a more cost- and mass-efficient solution, but there was hope to keep the Curzon inter-buildable with a standard cruiser hull and the internal rearrangements required by the swap would have been a change too far.

I keep meaning to check this, but I am not actually sure if a CIWS is still superior to a Gauss turret + BFC combo since we have the single-weapon fire controls as of 1.13.

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The Foreign Office was concerned that, despite the lack of offensive weaponry, the ship was still very clearly a warship. The Admiralty felt it wise to avoid mentioning that anyone who had been on the receiving end of a barrage of 0.303' solidshot would probably disagree about the lack of offensive weaponry point, but accepted that it was indeed very much a warship.

Here we have a classic example of missing the point entirely.

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The Imperial Parliament in contrast was aghast at the cost, the ship was over ten times more expensive to build and the annual operation and maintenance cost was estimated at almost 85x more than a Palmerston, while no MP would ever publicly agree that talk was cheap they had expected the ships to be so.

Another good line, though I wonder if a MP has ever had a realistic expectation in the history of MPs?

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certainly the missile barrage from the Vistonida cruisers that destroyed the Palmerston IV
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Equally the class would not have suffered the fate of the Palmerston V

I see that the situation does not improve.

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Bluntly however the Palmerston class never actually achieved any diplomatic successes, and as noted were all destroyed by enemy action, so it is hard to see how the Curzon class could have done any worse.

There could have been a Curzon VI, granted only decades later at that price but as we are speaking hypothetically I can be allowed some light financial handwaving for the purposes of reckless speculation.

An excellent entry showing not only the delicate balance between military and political forces but also the true power behind the throne, this being economics. As always my only complaint is the continued reckless speed of updates, however this may be forgiven as given the holiday season the alternative would be to spend time with family which is of course even more reckless and upsetting, thus I reluctantly accept this lesser of evils.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on December 27, 2021, 12:35:52 PM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 27, 2021, 09:41:47 AM
Confused Butterfly noises
The best kind of noises.

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"It is not cursed as long as we say it is not cursed, but if we say it is cursed then it will be cursed" seems like a questionable understanding of how magic works.
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Then again, it is the British way to pretend that reality is what they say it is, rather than what it is.
Anglo-Futurism has strong views on the matter of self fulfilling prophecies and similar matters. The perception of reality can be as important, or more so, than the reality itself.

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the Crusading Years

An extremely enticing teaser, suggesting yet another worked-out proof of the famous theorem that all Aurora AARS, given sufficient time, become Warhammer 40K.
Well given where the game itself draws much of it's inspiration from this is hardly surprising. ;)

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A brilliant quip.
I thank you.

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I cannot be sure, since I haven't seen the Palmerston class, but if this design is an evolution thereof I may have some inkling as to why the galaxy appears more hostile than it may otherwise have been. With military engines an NPR will see the ship as a military ship which carries a steeper penalty, per ton, for being present in a claimed system. With commercial engines the benefit from a diplomatic module is able to outweigh the penalty from having a ship present in a claimed system, with the most benefit from ships under 11,000 tons as someone has worked out elsewhere. I do regret polluting this thread with discussion of actual game mechanics but it did seem relevant.
The Palmerston class were fairly boring 4,000 ton, commercial engined, inoffensive little ships. They just kept getting blown up.

The Curzons were an not entirely serious, dump a diplomatic module on the standard heavy cruiser and see what happens design.

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I keep meaning to check this, but I am not actually sure if a CIWS is still superior to a Gauss turret + BFC combo since we have the single-weapon fire controls as of 1.13.
I must admit I assumed that, another bit of inherited thinking from VB6 I've not challenged.

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Another good line, though I wonder if a MP has ever had a realistic expectation in the history of MPs?
In their specialist field (whatever that may be) then maybe? Though I agree once they leave that narrow lane, MPs do tend to veer into fantasy faster than a control group would.

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I see that the situation does not improve.
Maybe I was unlucky, or using them wrong, but Diplomacy really did not work out for me in that game.

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An excellent entry showing not only the delicate balance between military and political forces but also the true power behind the throne, this being economics. As always my only complaint is the continued reckless speed of updates, however this may be forgiven as given the holiday season the alternative would be to spend time with family which is of course even more reckless and upsetting, thus I reluctantly accept this lesser of evils.
I recognise these concerns and can reassure you that things will doubtless slow down come the New Year. Yet they will never be as slow as Butterfly, because in this work there is no need to research obscure details that everyone will ignore.

I mean there are still obscure details that everyone will ignore in these chapters, like the naming/detail on the ECM unit, but they don't need vast amounts of time consuming research.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on December 27, 2021, 10:08:28 PM
Quote from: El Pip on December 27, 2021, 12:35:52 PM
The Palmerston class were fairly boring 4,000 ton, commercial engined, inoffensive little ships. They just kept getting blown up.

In that case, a perfectly good design.

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The Curzons were an not entirely serious, dump a diplomatic module on the standard heavy cruiser and see what happens design.

In that case, an excellent design.

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I mean there are still obscure details that everyone will ignore in these chapters, like the naming/detail on the ECM unit, but they don't need vast amounts of time consuming research.

I'd forgotten it was possible to rename ECM components among others. Since they are pre-designed once you develop the technology they only have one entry in the DB and renaming them with a flavorful name renames them in all campaigns, usually this would be considered Bad For Roleplay™. A bit annoying when I have to remember to skip numbers in my JETDS series for ECM/ECCM, ELINT, the survey sensors, etc.

----

E: On the subject of CIWS versus proper turrets + SW fire controls, I've done a quick poke around and it looks like CIWS generally maintains a small tonnage superiority over proper turrets. This is because the CIWS seems to be modeled as firing twin 50%-size Gauss cannons, which are nominally 3 HS each for a total of 6 HS but for the CIWS only 5 HS are required. The other significant savings arise from the crew requirements, which at reasonably balanced tech levels (e.g., turret tracking speed tech equal to BFC tracking speed tech) seems to be just over half of what would otherwise be required from a normal Gauss turret. For a typical 12-month warship deployment time this corresponds to a roughly 14-ton (0.28 HS) reduction due to crew requirement.

There are a few other small interesting bits however, at least interesting to those who enjoy technical minutiae:
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on September 29, 2022, 12:41:15 PM
Chapter 4 - When is a Frigate not a Corvette?

If the Dreadnoughts are the avatars of the ideals of Empire, then frigates are the embodiment of the practical gritty realities. The frigates emerged as a response to the ever growing requirements for patrol squadrons and planetary guard ships to protect the new colonies of the expanding Empire. In theory the Army and their formidable surface-to-orbit gun batteries were supposed to cover such colonial defence duties, but the continued delays in large calibre railgun production precluded this. It should be admitted that this was in no small part due to the Admiralty refusing to share it's large calibre gun pits with the Army, prioritising production for it's own warships over deliveries to the Imperial Artillery. In fairness it should also be said that this was not just motivated by the typical lack of inter-service co-operation, but because the Admiralty believed it's existing railgun manufacturing capacity was woefully insufficient, a point illustrated by the armament of the new frigates.

The Leander class frigates were somewhat smaller than a standard Tribal class destroyer (8kT aether vs 10kT aether) and marginally slower, they also had thinner armour and were generally less robust with fewer redundant backup systems. What they did have was a considerably greater endurance, longer range and a wildly different weapons fit out, the design being cheaper both to procure and then to operate being taken as a given. Due to the bottlenecks in production of the standard Vickers 8" railguns the frigates instead mounted four twin 4.5" Molins light rail guns which provided both point defence and a coup de grace weapon against crippled foes. Controversially the main armament being fifty Hawker 5" 'light torpedo' tubes externally mounted around the hull. Very heavily influenced by the similarly sized weapons captured after the Sourmagh campaign, the 5" Brimstone light torpedo was the latest attempt to fix the increasingly blatant failure of the heavyweight 15" Tigerfish/Spearfish family of torpedoes and great things were expected of it. Though in fairness some of that was an expectation of another failure and great scandal.

As one would expect from such a deeply controversial concept there were many unbuilt alternatives. Leaving aside the numerous variants on the Leander theme that tweaked the ratio of railgun to torpedo tube or other minor adjustments, the most interesting of these alternatives was the Castle class. The design was another attempt to answer the same question but one which resulted in a quite wildly different outcome.

Code: [Select]
Castle Mk.I class Corvette      6,400 tons       196 Crew       1,263.6 BP       TCS 128    TH 640    EM 0
5000 km/s      Armour 4-30       Shields 0-0       HTK 42      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 4      PPV 40.32
Maint Life 2.74 Years     MSP 493    AFR 82%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 95    5YR 1,419    Max Repair 320 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Osprey Mk.II MPD-640 (1)    Power 640    Fuel Use 48.83%    Signature 640    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 561,000 Gallons    Range 32.3 billion km (74 days at full power)

Molins 4.5" Mk.I Railgun V50/C4 (8x4)    Range 50,000km     TS: 5,000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 50,000 km    ROF 5       
Sterling Mk.I Twin Coil Turret (16k) (1x6)    Range 30,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Plessey Type 900 TFC 192-16000 (SW) (1)     Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Racal Type 503XE BFC 240-5000 (1)     Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 5,000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B 25MW (1)     Total Power Output 25 kBTU/s    Exp 10%

Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a c for auto-assignment purposes

The Castle class took the frigate principles and followed them further, not perhaps to the extreme but certainly further than was wise. It was even smaller, even slower and so even cheaper to build. Being a single engined design it lacked any redundancy in the propulsion system while even the standard TRE 'Asprin' ECM magnetic flux jammer had been removed to save weight and cost. Interestingly it was these cost saving choices and not the lack of torpedo armament that prompted the first great fight over the concept, the frigate lobby wishing to disassociate themselves from such a compromised design while the more economically minded sections of the Admiralty insisted it was perfectly reasonable submission. There were many productive meetings and discussions about what classification to give these new ships, not productive in the sense there was any useful output but in the sense that it kept the people involved safely distracted and unable to ruin anything else. In the end the Admiralty Board quite sensibly ignored all those discussions and just threw the problem at the Ship Naming Committee, who were genuinely delighted to develop a new classification naming scheme. They decreed that the Castle design was indeed not a frigate but was actually a corvette, going so far as to produce the first classification system for the aether age;


The system was somewhat arbitrarily capped at 15kT, any warship larger being a cruiser or one of the capital ship classes. It is tempting to call the exercise something of a waste of time as the Castle class corvette was never built, but the system did endure and eventually corvettes would be built. The Admiralty of the time was spared any discussion on classification because a 'time honoured and traditional' system was in place, so it did eventually prove worthwhile.

As to the Castle itself, it proved to be the peak (or perhaps low point) of the economical warship movement. Despite a whole host of compromises on capability and suitability the design was projected as barely 5% cheaper to build than a Leander while having a very fractionally larger crew. For these fairly minimal savings the result was a ship that the Tactical Office feared would be too slow and too weak for many of the projected missions. A flotilla of the design could probably have handled a jump point picket with reasonable confidence and as a planetary guard ship it would have been impressive enough to reassure most civilians. But there had been a good reason the Admiralty Board had raised the standard fleet speed and the Castles were just too slow, particularly for a warship with such short ranged beam weaponry. While much of the Admiralty had no problem with fobbing off the planetary guard ship mission onto cheap ships, they were adverse to building ineffective ones. It was correctly believed that at some point the army would get enough STO batteries in place that the guard ship mission would disappear, at that point the fleet would have to make use of the ships that were released. It was this that finally tipped the balance in favour of the frigates and marked the retreat of the economical warship faction, while price, strategic minerals and industrial capacity would remain important limits the faction had proved that certain savings were not worth the cost.

Considering the what-ifs is a challenge here, because the frigates that were built very rarely fired a shot in anger themselves. In the guard ship role or distant picket mission the design would doubtless have performed well, because such missions were about presence more than capability. Some have raised events such as the Vistonida Incursion into The Raj through a hidden jump point as an example of the sort of scenario a Castle would struggle with and certainly they would not have performed well in that case. Being far slower than the standard Vistonida destroyer they never could have caught them and would have been reduced to trying to withstand a missile barrage while defending the key points, hoping to outlast an enemy they could not harm. The issue is of course that The Raj never rated a frigate squadron as it was only ever a listening out post, at least until the discovery of the hidden jump point, so the Castles would not have faced that situation. If one uses hindsight then it is likely that the Castles would have been an acceptable choice, but without that benefit it is hard to find fault with an Admiralty that preferred a very slight increase in expenditure to get a considerably more capable design.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 01, 2022, 03:24:12 PM
It returns in the least surprising long delay followed by an unsolicited update in the history of this forum, as is traditional.

Quote from: El Pip on September 29, 2022, 12:41:15 PM
Chapter 4 - When is a Frigate not a Corvette?

If the Dreadnoughts are the avatars of the ideals of Empire, then frigates are the embodiment of the practical gritty realities.

Clearly the ideals of the Empire are centered on silly turret designs, ugly superstructures, and and mercurial admirals who grant +300% construction rate through sheer force of will.

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Controversially the main armament being fifty Hawker 5" 'light torpedo' tubes externally mounted around the hull.

Much of the controversy is due to the rather hilarious sight of 2.5-ton torpedoes which are only 5" in diameter but several dozen meters in length, giving the Leanders rather the appearance of an ammunition belt wrapped around a frigate hull.

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Though in fairness some of that was an expectation of another failure and great scandal.

Naturally.

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the most interesting of these alternatives was the Castle class. The design was another attempt to answer the same question but one which resulted in a quite wildly different outcome.

Despite the name, and the above-mentioned considerations regarding STOs and planetary defense, curiously this was not a design for a heavily fortified orbital platform in which an old-money nobleman would ensconce himself in the face of the alien menace.

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Castle Mk.I class Corvette
[...]
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B 25MW (1)     Total Power Output 25 kBTU/s    Exp 10%

I note approvingly that the confusion about proper Imperial units for things has reached new heights in this promising future you write of. (https://i.imgur.com/Z3wSg01.gif)

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There were many productive meetings and discussions about what classification to give these new ships, not productive in the sense there was any useful output but in the sense that it kept the people involved safely distracted and unable to ruin anything else.

The absolute best and most critical to society sort of production.

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Considering the what-ifs is a challenge here, because the frigates that were built very rarely fired a shot in anger themselves. In the guard ship role or distant picket mission the design would doubtless have performed well, because such missions were about presence more than capability.

NPR fleet doctrine in a nutshell.

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The Raj

Truly, some things never change no matter how alternate the history...

Aside, I begin to suspect that this AAR is actually being cobbled together from multiple campaigns, with a prodigious application of timey-wimey-flavo(u)red Handwavium used to disguise the joins. Such an approach would not only explain the sporadic nature of the work, not that such ever requires an explanation, but also would allow the author to stealthily partake of the latest updates with no great loss to the work itself.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on October 02, 2022, 01:30:19 PM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on October 01, 2022, 03:24:12 PM
It returns in the least surprising long delay followed by an unsolicited update in the history of this forum, as is traditional.[/quote]
Standards must be maintained. (https://i.imgur.com/Z3wSg01.gif)

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on October 01, 2022, 03:24:12 PM
Clearly the ideals of the Empire are centered on silly turret designs, ugly superstructures, and and mercurial admirals who grant +300% construction rate through sheer force of will.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, all may (or may) become clearer if a Dreadnought ever graces these pages.

[/QUOTE]
Much of the controversy is due to the rather hilarious sight of 2.5-ton torpedoes which are only 5" in diameter but several dozen meters in length, giving the Leanders rather the appearance of an ammunition belt wrapped around a frigate hull.[/quote]
Fortunately the British Imperial Space Inch is much larger than it's terrestrial counterpart, the reformation of the unit system was quite radical and perhaps not entirely thought through. But it is traditional now so the Empire sticks with it.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on October 01, 2022, 03:24:12 PM
Despite the name, and the above-mentioned considerations regarding STOs and planetary defense, curiously this was not a design for a heavily fortified orbital platform in which an old-money nobleman would ensconce himself in the face of the alien menace.
Such static defences would be quite counter to the spirit of naval doctrine. It's not quite The Legions "Fly me closer so I can shoot them in the face" but it is in a similar vein.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on October 01, 2022, 03:24:12 PM
Aside, I begin to suspect that this AAR is actually being cobbled together from multiple campaigns, with a prodigious application of timey-wimey-flavo(u)red Handwavium used to disguise the joins. Such an approach would not only explain the sporadic nature of the work, not that such ever requires an explanation, but also would allow the author to stealthily partake of the latest updates with no great loss to the work itself.
As it happens it is quite the opposite. I had to take a step away from the last game as it was sucking up more free time than I actually had, as is the way of Aurora. While the new version has got me tempted to dive back in, it also reminded me I have a very large pile of notes from that game. It seemed a shame just to abandon them so this work awoke from it's short nap and here we are.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on October 02, 2022, 02:04:29 PM
Quote from: El Pip on October 02, 2022, 01:30:19 PM
Fortunately the British Imperial Space Inch is much larger than it's terrestrial counterpart, the reformation of the unit system was quite radical and perhaps not entirely thought through. But it is traditional now so the Empire sticks with it.

Much like the British Imperial Space Ton, or the British Imperial Space Btu. Actually, given the identity of the game's developer this makes a lot of sense...

Quote
Such static defences would be quite counter to the spirit of naval doctrine. It's not quite The Legions "Fly me closer so I can shoot them in the face" but it is in a similar vein.

Faces are for infliction upon of violence, if this were not true why would politicians have two?
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on February 15, 2023, 03:14:23 PM
Chapter 5 To Cruise or Not To Cruise Part I
Not all of the Royal Navy's unbuilt designs are flights of fancy or the mildly deranged visions of people who should have known better. Some are just not as good as the alternative or are potentially good concepts killed by politics or doctrine. The rash of cruiser designs from late 2227 are a good example of these latter types.

We begin in the aftermath of the First Hartha Expedition, the prompt for many an unbuilt warship. After the destruction of the Palmerston V Parliament demanded a punitive expedition to deal with the issue and, from a naval perspective, the expedition entirely met it's objectives: the 1st Cruiser Squadron had suppressed then destroyed the enemy STO weapons; the Montgomery and Round Table class troop ships had gravchute dropped the Hartha Expeditionary Army without loss; and finally the fleet had recovered the battered survivors of said Army (the remnants of 2nd and 4th Armoured and the 5th Infantry Divisions) when the evacuation order was given. While it was the Army's review that attracted the most political and popular attention, not least the heated debate about the future of the Holloway Reforms and the quite alarming technological gap between the Army's forces and those found on the planet, the Admiralty conducted it's usual post-campaign review, which is where we find our interest for this chapter.

It was noted that the County class cruisers of the 1st Squadron had been out-ranged by the ground defences and had taken a degree of armour damage while closing in. None of the ships had been in danger, but half the squadron had been order into dock after their return to get their armour repaired. Various options for long range fire power were discussed and much of the report was bogged down with old arguments about the desirability or otherwise of plasma cannons as either a secondary or main weapon on a second line cruiser or dedicated planetary assault/support ship. Towards the end the report's authors noted that had the cruisers been protected by shields then such repairs would likely would not have been required. As this idea did not involve yet more circular discussion about plasma weapons, a subject that was hurled back to the weapons doctrine sub-committee with almost unseemly haste, it was only the part of the document the Fleet Lords particularly wanted to talk about. Of course they would have preferred not to talk about the report at all as they considered the Hartha Expedition a perfectly successful operation, marred only by the apparent inability of the Army to defeat a foe that could shoot back. Sadly Parliament was in the throes of a deep panic and thus incapable of such discernment, they only saw a failure and were demanding action. Therefore to appease the defence committees and avoid them imposing any ill-advised action of their own the possibility of shielding the cruiser fleet evolved into a specification for a prospective new cruiser design. That the Admiralty lacked the budget to build a worthwhile number of brand new cruisers was something their political liaisons hid in the minutes until it was used to ambush the Treasury in the annual discussion on the Naval Estimates.

The specification itself was quite broadly written, an upper limit of 30kT was specified, to maintain interoperability with the City class jump cruisers, and the same minimum patrol time, operational range, sensor capability and engine provision were required. It is unclear if the Admiralty deliberately left the scope broad to attract new ideas or if they just neglected to do so because they only expected minor tweaks to be suggested, regardless of their expectations the specification would attract wide interest. An argument in favour of the former point is that there were a number of new technologies emerging from the various research institutions and establishments of the Empire that had not yet been integrated into the fleet and a design contest would lure such ideas out of the lab and into practical designs. While this did indeed occur give the track record of the Admiralty around new technologies it would be rash to assume that this was actually one of the intended outcomes.

The Centurion Project
The Britannia design office made two submissions to the competition, the first was was an evolution of the County Mk.IVB design that was the backbone of the cruiser fleet. This design slightly thinned out the standard armour scheme to make space for a light shield generator set and improved electronics, this design would eventually be built as the County Mk.V (if admittedly only as a refit of existing Mk.IVs and in limited numbers before itself being replaced by the improved Mk.VA design) so will not be discussed in detail here. Our focus is on the second design, developed as the design office was concerned they were reaching the end of what could be done with the standard Type 'C' 30kT ceramic cruiser hull. As mentioned the Mk.V was an incremental improvement and the shield generator installed was a small 30 Farad unit so in raw figures the class actually had less protection than the Mk.IVs, though this was arguably compensated for by the other advantages of the shield. Shield generation however was not a linear exercise, doubling the size of the core flux coils and projector would more than double the strength of the resulting shield. The problem was that stripping off enough armour to fit in a larger shield system while still keeping within the 30kT aether tonnage limit would break inter-buildability with the existing cruisers and there really wasn't much else that could be taken off; stripping of a turret of main guns would save enough mass but would be rejected out of hand. The Britannia team therefore took the opportunity to redo the entire hull and armour scheme of the class, incorporating one of the new technologies that the Admiralty had been interested in seeing; ceramic composite armour.

Developed by EDEN (Empire Defence Establishment Nimrod) ceramic composite armour interleaved layers of graphene between the ceramic neutronium plates to increase heat and energy dissipation. This meant the plates were no longer thermally limited so they could be thinner while providing the same nominal protection as the ticker ceramic only armour system. In practice this meant the same protection for less mass, that space and volume could be put towards other systems. The Centurion design made full use of this new armour system but also thinned out the effective armour protection, from 8yd HDAE (Duranium Armour Equivalent) down to only 6yd HDAE, almost all the saved space going towards the large GKN Rampart shield generator. There were also a few upgrades to the sensor system and the arguably long overdue addition of two ILIC (Iterative Loop Integration Control) ECCM system that could cut through enemy jamming and be slaved to any of the onboard fire control systems.

Code: [Select]
Centurion Mk.I Prototype class Cruiser      30,000 tons       1,025 Crew       6,305.2 BP       TCS 600    TH 3,600    EM 3,570
6000 km/s      Armour 6-86       Shields 119-476       HTK 200      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 20      PPV 225.28
Maint Life 1.08 Years     MSP 2,379    AFR 686%    IFR 9.5%    1YR 2,045    5YR 30,675    Max Repair 900 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Griffon Mk.III MPD-1800 (2)    Power 3600    Fuel Use 50.31%    Signature 1800    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,100,000 Gallons   Range 25 billion km (48 days at full power)
GKN Rampart Mk.II Epsilon Band/119 Farad Shield Generator (1)     Recharge Time 476 seconds (0.3 per second)

Vickers 10" Mk.I Railgun V50/C4 (20x4)    Range 250,000km     TS: 6,000 km/s     Power 15-4     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20       
Sterling Mk.II Twin Coil Turret (20k) (4x8)    Range 30,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Marconi Type 903 TFC 160-20000 (2)     Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 20,000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Racal Type 502 BFC 320-6000 (2)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B (4)     Total Power Output 100 kBTU/s   Exp 10%

Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20
Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1

Anderwave ILIC Mk.I ECCM (2)         
TRE Asprin Mk.I 10kMx ECM Projector

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
While some of the ideas in Centurion would eventually make their way into the main cruiser line, ultimately it was too big a change for not enough benefit. The County Mk.V filled the low-risk, upgradeable, niche while other designs had taken full advantage of not being inter-buildable to make more radical changes. The Britannia design office was far from upset by this, they retained a certain distrust of shields as they felt at anything below pre-Dreadnought scale they were too space inefficient compared to armour. The limited deployment of the County Mk.V and the swing away from shields in the later far more widespread variants suggest the Admiralty at least somewhat agreed.

As befitting a design from the main fleet design office the Centurion had been holo-simed and the Admiralty Tactical Office assessed it as broadly similar to a CountyMk.V. There were certain scenarios were the shield was more or less effective than an addition armour plate but given the variety of enemies the Empire had and was facing this was hardly decisive. Consequently in considering any what-ifs then it is likely it would have performed on average just as well as the actual cruiser squadrons that were deployed. Against the actual prompt, the Hatha Expedition, the Centurion's shields would certainly have saved the dockyard time for the repairs but were arguably overkill as the County Mk.Vs would also have been fine. While not a lost opportunity the Centurion is a vision on where the standard fleet cruiser line could have gone had the Admiralty not stuck to the path of gentle but sustained evolution of the County and it's sibling classes the City and Colony.

A lack of radical change is not something that the other submission to the competition can be accused of, as we shall see in Part II.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
I am, of course, the very least surprised member of these forums to see this work return to form.

Quote from: El Pip on February 15, 2023, 03:14:23 PM
Part I

And in fact we are now setting new precedents of form imported from the other forum. Excellent.

Quote
from a naval perspective, the expedition entirely met it's objectives:

And thus all involved were satisfied, for what better objectives could there be?

Quote
Various options for long range fire power were discussed and much of the report was bogged down with old arguments about the desirability or otherwise of plasma cannons as either a secondary or main weapon on a second line cruiser or dedicated planetary assault/support ship.

Clearly the report writers peruse these forums.

Quote
Towards the end the report's authors noted that had the cruisers been protected by shields then such repairs would likely would not have been required. As this idea did not involve yet more circular discussion about plasma weapons, a subject that was hurled back to the weapons doctrine sub-committee with almost unseemly haste, it was only the part of the document the Fleet Lords particularly wanted to talk about.

And clearly, the First Lords are not members of these forums.

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a perfectly successful operation, marred only by the apparent inability of the Army to defeat a foe that could shoot back.

Simply maddening, that.

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It is unclear if the Admiralty deliberately left the scope [...] they just neglected to do so because they only expected minor tweaks to be suggested,

Me, every time I forget that shield generators actually take up a lot of tonnage.

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Developed by EDEN (Empire Defence Establishment Nimrod)

It always amuses when a perfectly serious company purporting to be the height of competence names itself "Nimrod". I realize there is a certain precedent for a rather more impressive connotation to the name than what the general public perceives, but as a member of the general public I choose to perceive the less impressive one.

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Code: [Select]
GKN Rampart Mk.II Epsilon Band/119 Farad Shield Generator

The use of Farads as the unit for shield strength is quite ingenious, not least because no one, including the actual scientists and engineers who work on capacitors, actually knows how much a Farad is other than "gesturing broadly a lot".

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Against the actual prompt, the Hatha Expedition, the Centurion's shields would certainly have saved the dockyard time for the repairs but were arguably overkill as the County Mk.Vs would also have been fine.

It is worth putting a stick in this bit, in all honesty it is not as if the dockyard time was a terrible strategic problem from the perspective of the Admiralty, after all the Expedition was already properly resolved by that point anyways, and the cost of repairs surely serves to justify a budget increase in the next set of talks.

Quote
A lack of radical change is not something that the other submission to the competition can be accused of, as we shall see in Part II.

Excellent. Next summer's update should be properly exciting, then.  ;D
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on February 16, 2023, 03:10:20 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
I am, of course, the very least surprised member of these forums to see this work return to form.
As it should be.
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
And in fact we are now setting new precedents of form imported from the other forum. Excellent.
I will raise standards here, just at a suitably slow and majestic pace.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
And thus all involved were satisfied, for what better objectives could there be?
The Admiralty cannot imagine, yet some scruffy ground types keep trying to complain about something. Fortunately the Royal Marine guards are keeping them outside.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
Clearly the report writers peruse these forums.

And clearly, the First Lords are not members of these forums.
This may be why they have time to run the Admiralty.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
Me, every time I forget that shield generators actually take up a lot of tonnage.
They are surprisingly large aren't they?

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
It always amuses when a perfectly serious company purporting to be the height of competence names itself "Nimrod". I realize there is a certain precedent for a rather more impressive connotation to the name than what the general public perceives, but as a member of the general public I choose to perceive the less impressive one.
For the US general public perhaps, I think the less impressive definition didn't survive crossing the Atlantic as I've no idea what you are talking about. Or I am entirely out of touch with popular culture, also possible.

Quote
The use of Farads as the unit for shield strength is quite ingenious, not least because no one, including the actual scientists and engineers who work on capacitors, actually knows how much a Farad is other than "gesturing broadly a lot".
It is a wonderfully vague unit for such things.

Quote
It is worth putting a stick in this bit, in all honesty it is not as if the dockyard time was a terrible strategic problem from the perspective of the Admiralty, after all the Expedition was already properly resolved by that point anyways, and the cost of repairs surely serves to justify a budget increase in the next set of talks.
The problem was that the Army were demanding lots of budget to deal with this nasty enemy that can shoot back and which their current guns can't shoot through. So if nothing else the Admiralty needed very expensive plans for new ships that can, reluctantly, be cut down and end up with what they wanted in the first place.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
Excellent. Next summer's update should be properly exciting, then.  ;D
I do hope to get Part II out this year. I'm not saying when this year, but if you take an 8/9 month gap as typical then I think it should just squeak in.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on February 16, 2023, 08:47:55 AM
Quote from: El Pip on February 16, 2023, 03:10:20 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 15, 2023, 07:39:31 PM
It always amuses when a perfectly serious company purporting to be the height of competence names itself "Nimrod". I realize there is a certain precedent for a rather more impressive connotation to the name than what the general public perceives, but as a member of the general public I choose to perceive the less impressive one.
For the US general public perhaps, I think the less impressive definition didn't survive crossing the Atlantic as I've no idea what you are talking about. Or I am entirely out of touch with popular culture, also possible.

Must be unique to the Freedom Hemisphere, then; around these parts a "nimrod" is a stupid person, generously. I'm honestly not sure why, but I think it might be the fault of Looney Tunes.

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The problem was that the Army were demanding lots of budget to deal with this nasty enemy that can shoot back and which their current guns can't shoot through. So if nothing else the Admiralty needed very expensive plans for new ships that can, reluctantly, be cut down and end up with what they wanted in the first place.

This is reasonable enough I suppose. If it wasn't the Army it would be the Air Force or something, and that would make even less sense in this bold and bright future of naval aviation.

Quote
I do hope to get Part II out this year. I'm not saying when this year, but if you take an 8/9 month gap as typical then I think it should just squeak in.

 ;D
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on August 06, 2023, 06:43:44 AM
Chapter 6 To Cruise or Not To Cruise Part II

The Challenger project emerged from the Daedalus design office in the Laconia system which had a complex relationship with the rest of the Empire. As an example of the issues in the system even the name of the office had been controversial. The Admiralty had vetoed a dozen suggestions as 'insufficiently British', 'ridiculously pretentious' or in one caustic case 'named after a pathetic failure their Lordships have absolutely no desire to be associated with'. With the name Daedalus having a long tradition in the Navy, particularly for 'stone frigates' (the baffling archaic way the Admiralty persisted in classifying anything that was a ship or space station), this was finally agreed as acceptable. Along with the usual selection of paper projects, none of which are interesting enough to detain us here, the Daedalus office had produced the Bellerophon battle-cruiser design (though that was more of a modification than an actual design) and more relevantly the Leander-class frigates. The Challenger fell somewhere between the two, being in part a redesign for local preferences but in part a radical fresh approach. It is also worth noting the name, the contest was held at the end of Laconia's Spartan phase and the Ancient Greek obsession of that system was subsiding, hence why the ship did not have a name from classic antiquity but was named after a survey cruiser that had been lost in Epsilon Indi, the home of the ancestral foe - the Automaton Menace. This was not just another affectation as we will see.

Code: [Select]
Challenger Mk.I Prototype Cruiser      30,000 tons       825 Crew       5,662.5 BP       TCS 600    TH 3,600    EM 7,140
6000 km/s      Armour 5-86       Shields 238-476       HTK 157      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 21      PPV 217.85
Maint Life 1.10 Years     MSP 2,297    AFR 655%    IFR 9.1%    1YR 1,914    5YR 28,709    Max Repair 900 MSP
Magazine 375   
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required 

Rolls Royce Griffon Mk.III MPD-1800 (2)    Power 3600    Fuel Use 50.31%    Signature 1800    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,087,000 Gallons    Range 24.7 billion km (47 days at full power)
GKN Rampart Mk.II Epsilon Band/119 Farad Shield Generator  (2)     Recharge Time 476 seconds (0.5 per second)

Vickers 10" Mk.I Railgun V50/C4 (10x4)    Range 250,000km     TS: 6,000 km/s     Power 15-4     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20       
Sterling Mk.II Twin Coil Turret (20k) (5x8)    Range 30,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Marconi Type 903 TFC 160-20000 (1)     Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 20,000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Racal Type 502 BFC 320-6000 (1)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B (2)     Total Power Output 50 kBTU/s    Exp 10%

Hawker Mk.I 5' External Torpedo Tube (75)     Missile Size: 5'    Hangar Reload 111 minutes    MF Reload 18 hours
Shorts Type 901 MFC 72m/R160 (3)     Range 72.1m km    Resolution 160
Brimstone Mk.I (75)    Speed: 28,560 km/s    End: 23.4m     Range: 40m km    WH: 7    Size: 5    TH: 209/125/62

Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20
Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1
GEC Type 1000LR 114m/R160 (1)     GPS 20160     Range 114m km    Resolution 160

Anderwave ILIC Mk.I ECCM (3)         
TRE Asprin Mk.I 10kMx ECM Projector

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The heritage of the Leander-class design is clear in the Challenger, the removal of half the main turrets to make space for the twenty five pentuple 5' Torpedo Tubes is hard to miss. The choice of where to place the tubes is interesting, despite in theory being able to launch from any aspect the tubes are all forward facing and concentrated on the front third of the hull, an aggressive choice to prioritise a very slight missile advantage (not having to course correct post-launch) over the effective coverage of the main guns. The standard County-class boasted an all round 3-2-2-3 turret arrangement (3 fore, 2 amidship on both flanks, 3 rear), the removal of the B, C, P, Q and W turrets left the Challenger with 1 fore, 2 amidship and 2 rear. As you might expect this was not a choice which endeared the design to the more traditional Admirals, particularly as despite the entry of the Leander-class into service at this point the Brimstone Mk.I was still unproven in actual combat. With the class solely deployed on patrol and internal security duties there had been an unfortunate lack of anything to shoot at. It would not be until the belated introduction of the jump and command capable Captain-class Frigate Leaders that the class and their torpedoes would see combat.

The changes to the defence side of the triad are less obvious but in their own way just as major. The design also used the EDEN ceramic composite armour from the Centurion project, but thinned it out even further down to only 5yd HDAE (Hi-density Duranium Armour Equivalent) versus 6yd on Centurion and 8yd on a County Mk.IVB. The space instead was used for two GKN Rampart shield generators, while this is sometimes described as a redundancy choice to have a way to generate shielding even if one generator was battle damaged, in truth it was a technical limitation - at this time the Empire was unable to build a larger shield generator without burning out the flux coils. The preference for shields reflects the way the Automaton loomed large in Laconian thinking, against spaced out waves of torpedoes a defence system that could regenerate was more valuable than a simple defence/ton analysis would indicate. This thinking can also be seen in the additional Sterling twin CG turret that has been squeezed onto the design, further improving the organic anti-torpedo capability of the design and therefore making it a better match against a torpedo heavy foe, such as the Automaton.

Ultimately the Challenger committed one too many heresies; it relied too heavily on an unproven main weapons system, heavily compromised the remaining tried and true Vickers 10" railgun turrets and optimised it's defences for one foe at the cost of poorer performance against everything else. While never officially assessed by the Admiralty Tactical Office the design was holo-simed and became a regular feature in Academy exercises both on Sparta and back at Britannia, though admittedly for somewhat different reasons. Many an officer cadet would come to curse the class, either as an unexpectedly dangerous simulated foe or as an unwieldy challenge to try and command. What emerges from those exercises is a class that in some respects met it's intentions, against a missile opponent it was indeed more durable and better able to weather the storm, but as an offensive platform was somewhat lacking. Taking the classic check of balance - two of the same class attacking each other - the 75 missile Brimstone salvo was indecisive. While there is always a degree of uncertainty around the precise performance of a PD system, on average enough of the salvo survived the gauss gauntlet to batter down the shields and punch one or two penetrating holes in the underlying armour. This left the target damaged, but not especially weakened, meaning the matter would come down to a gunnery duel of the type the design had compromised on. Other matchups had similar outcomes as the missile 'punch' was potent but rarely decisive, defenders of the design are often keen to point out that the County Mk.IVB fared quite badly against the Brimstone salvo but that is to somewhat miss the point. The whole point of the design contest had been to produce a replacement for that design, being 'better' than the Mk.IVB was the absolute bare minimum requirement not a noteworthy achievement. In fairness it should be noted there were certain scenarios were it shined, the multiple fire controls allowed salvos to be split across targets so gunboat/FAC swarms could be dealt with effectively at standoff range, but this was a fairly niche capability. A relevant comparison would be that the 8kt-aether Leanders had mounted 50 tubes, scaling that up Challenger should have had 200 or more. Overall the conclusion must be that the designers lacked the courage of the convictions, in trying to appease the gun lobby by leaving half the turrets on they merely ensured the resulting hybrid was compromised in both roles.

Some unbuilt designs can be seen as missed opportunities or at least visions of an alternate path the Navy could have taken. Challenger is neither of those things because of it's confused hybrid nature, even if the Admiralty had decided to embrace torpedo warfare it is hard to imagine the First Space Lord of the time, Admiral Haynes, doing so in such a half hearted manner. A lack of self belief and conviction is not a problem the designers of the final submission suffered from, as will be discussed in Part III.

---
OOC Notes: Look a summertime update. It's even the same summer. And for the low, low price of stretching this out to a 3 part update.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: Warer on August 10, 2023, 03:28:34 PM
Quote from: El Pip on October 02, 2022, 01:30:19 PM
Fortunately the British Imperial Space Inch is much larger than it's terrestrial counterpart, the reformation of the unit system was quite radical and perhaps not entirely thought through. But it is traditional now so the Empire sticks with it.
Clearly the empire maintains an aEther Inch (EIn) and a Terrestrial Inch (TIn), after all space is big so the measurements used for it should be big as well! Alas this leads to some confusion as torpedos, as primarily space based weapons, use EIn while railguns, which are really just regular old cannons that some bofin got frisky with when you think about it, and other such weapons use TIn to reflect their ancient and honored past of use in warfare on Earths surface.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on August 11, 2023, 01:54:23 AM
Quote from: Warer on August 10, 2023, 03:28:34 PM
Clearly the empire maintains an aEtherInch (EIn) and a Terrestrial Inch (TIn), after all space is big so the measurements used for it should be big as well! Alas this leads to some confusion as torpedos, as primarily space based weapons, use EIn while railguns, which are really just regular old cannons that some bofin got frisky with when you think about it, and other such weapons use TIn to reflect their ancient and honored past of use in warfare on Earths surface.
This is absolutely the explanation I should of used and I thank you for providing it. :)
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on November 22, 2023, 01:38:51 PM
I note, in a fashion no way belated, that my prediction of a summer update was in fact correct. I have the next pegged for Spring '24, we shall see if my intuition is any good.

Quote from: El Pip on August 06, 2023, 06:43:44 AM
The Challenger project emerged from the Daedalus design office in the Laconia system which had a complex relationship with the rest of the Empire.

Ah, yes, the nominative determinists. One notes that the Challenger was as it says on the tin, although in this case the determinism more likely worked in reverse.

Quote
As an example of the issues in the system even the name of the office had been controversial. The Admiralty had vetoed a dozen suggestions as 'insufficiently British', 'ridiculously pretentious' or in one caustic case 'named after a pathetic failure their Lordships have absolutely no desire to be associated with'.

A rare brash moment from the normally quite British Admiralty. The readership clamors for further details, unless the details are already contained in the companion piece and this is not a reference to any new material, in which case the readership clamors for new material.

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particularly for 'stone frigates' (the baffling archaic way the Admiralty persisted in classifying anything that was a ship or space station),

(https://media.tenor.com/puJ7gimCWr0AAAAd/chaim-topol-tevye.gif)

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Along with the usual selection of paper projects, none of which are interesting enough to detain us here,

Aww.

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Vickers 10" Mk.I Railgun V50/C4 (10x4)    Range 250,000km     TS: 6,000 km/s     Power 15-4     RM 50,000 km    ROF 20
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B (2)     Total Power Output 50 kBTU/s    Exp 10%

I am pleased to see that Space Imperial Units continue to become ever more convoluted and nonsensical. Truly there is nothing greater than fine traditions like this. (https://i.imgur.com/Z3wSg01.gif)

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The heritage of the Leander-class design is clear in the Challenger, the removal of half the main turrets to make space for the twenty five pentuple 5' Torpedo Tubes is hard to miss.

Perhaps here it has been taken too far, though. The idea that 25 x 5 = 75 is more a question of basic arithmetic than units of measurement, though I have no doubt the Admiralty is equally terrible at both.

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The choice of where to place the tubes is interesting,

Jorgen approves of this discussion.

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The space instead was used for two GKN Rampart shield generators, while this is sometimes described as a redundancy choice to have a way to generate shielding even if one generator was battle damaged, in truth it was a technical limitation - at this time the Empire was unable to build a larger shield generator without burning out the flux coils. The preference for shields reflects the way the Automaton loomed large in Laconian thinking, against spaced out waves of torpedoes a defence system that could regenerate was more valuable than a simple defence/ton analysis would indicate.

It would not be until several decades later that Imperial naval theorists would fully abandon the defence [sic]/ton analysis, after the groundbreaking work of the esteemed military statistician and occasional game show host Monty Karlow established that even if solid armour [sic] contributes more defence [sic] per ton, only a fraction of those defences [sic] would contribute to actually protecting a ship from internal damage, typically on the order of ~50%.

There is an interesting, though minor, historical debate as to whether Dr. Karlow did this work himself, or cribbed his papers from posts written on ancient "Internet Forums" by now-unknown authors.

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Other matchups had similar outcomes as the missile 'punch' was potent but rarely decisive, defenders of the design are often keen to point out that the County Mk.IVB fared quite badly against the Brimstone salvo but that is to somewhat miss the point.

Indeed, since if there were ever a scenario in which the County Mk.IVB and the Challenger were actually shooting live ordnance at one another, there would be rather greater concerns to occupy the time and energy of the Admiralty.

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Overall the conclusion must be that the designers lacked the courage of the convictions, in trying to appease the gun lobby by leaving half the turrets on they merely ensured the resulting hybrid was compromised in both roles.

Once more we see the vicious ravages of politics whenever the politicians deign to interfere with the noble art of war.

Quote
OOC Notes: Look a summertime update. It's even the same summer. And for the low, low price of stretching this out to a 3 part update.

I have addressed my commentary at a time befitting the majestic pace of this work, that is my story and I am sticking to it.

I do hope that the Spring '24 update, one hopes this will be the promised Part III but accepts that there are no guarantees, will include a more prodigious helping of the political and economic nonsense that usually constrains these designs. While a lack thereof is perhaps eminently suitable for a Sparta-based ship design, if nominative determinism is to be considered at all tenable as a theory anyways, it will not do for this AAR to diverge too far from tradition.
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: El Pip on January 27, 2024, 01:02:29 AM
Chapter 7 To Cruise or Not To Cruise Part III

Technically the winner of the cruiser contest was the County Mk.V, a gentle evolution of the standard design that allowed the existing hulls to be retained without refits that would cost more than a new build. In practice it was the Tiger-class design from the Chatham design office that won, officially and in part because of some innovative features but mostly because of an entirely administrative feature - it was designated as a Strike Cruiser not a Cruiser. While this seemingly trivial detail would occupy a surprisingly large amount of parliamentary and Admiralty time, the design itself cause a stir, because Chatham was in the Ilford System and the governing Quorum of that system was known to be excessively keen on Plasma in all it's variations. The previous effort of the Ilford Plasmasmiths had been the Prometheus class Battlecruiser, a powerful ship built around a large main battery of Plasma Cannons she had a long and victorious career, however she never had any sister-ships as the Admiralty continued to prefer the 'standard' railgun armed Renown-class. Given their well known obsessions another plasma based design had been expected from the Chatham designers, so the railgun armed Tiger-class was a pleasant surprise to many in the Admiralty. However, to use an appropriate metaphor the leopard had not changed it's spots and the Chatham team still believed a plasma cannon based design was the best option but had chosen to play the political game with their entry to the contest. The Tiger-class was put forward to build the system's reputation as designers and hopefully shipwrights, that reputation would then be used to argue for the follow up batch to be their actual preferred design, the Lion-class. As should be obvious this plan failed because the Tigers were too good and the Admiralty still unconvinced by Plasma weaponry, dooming the Lions to be an unbuilt design and thus eligible for our consideration.

Code: [Select]
Lion Mk.I class Strike Cruiser      30,000 tons       865 Crew       5,040.1 BP       TCS 600    TH 3,600    EM 7,140
6000 km/s      Armour 5-86       Shields 238-476       HTK 218      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 30      PPV 217.36
Maint Life 1.02 Years     MSP 2,050    AFR 720%    IFR 10.0%    1YR 1,983    5YR 29,748    Max Repair 900 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 4   BRG   AUX   ENG   CIC   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Morale Check Required   

Rolls Royce Griffon Mk.III MPD-1800 (2)    Power 3600    Fuel Use 50.31%    Signature 1800    Explosion 15%
Fuel Capacity 2,026,000 Gallons    Range 24.2 billion km (46 days at full power)
GKN Rampart Mk.II Epsilon Band/S119 Farad Shields (2)     Recharge Time 476 seconds (0.5 per second)

Elswick 14"/4keV Mk.I Plasma Cannon (14)    Range 320,000km     TS: 6,000 km/s     Power 32-4     RM 10,000 km    ROF 40       
Beardmore Mk.II Quad SBGC Turret (20k) (12x16)    Range 30,000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5       
Marconi Type 903 TFC 160-20000 (2)     Max Range: 160,000 km   TS: 20,000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38
Racal Type 502 BFC 320-6000 (2)     Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 6,000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Brown Curtis Gorgon Mk.I SFR-B (3)     Total Power Output 75 kBTU/s    Exp 10%

Ferranti Type 600SR 46m/R20 (1)     GPS 1680     Range 46.6m km    Resolution 20
Racal Type 250EMWS 700k/R1 (1)     GPS 21     Range 8.6m km    MCR 771.7k km    Resolution 1

Anderwave ILIC Mk.I ECCM (3)         
TRE Asprin Mk.I 10kMx ECM Projector

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
An obvious question on reviewing the design details should be, why is it a Strike Cruiser? Having the same speed and displacement as a standard C-class and with the same role within doctrine as a County-class by all rights it should be a cruiser. There were of course cruiser variants in service but they all had rational justifications; the City-class had jump engines so were Jump Cruisers, the Colony-class had traded half their main guns for additional coil gun turrets so were Escort Cruisers. This was not the designers or the Admiralty being lax with designations, as discussed in previous chapters the Ship Naming Committee had an entire classification system and had to be heavily pressured to accept the 'new' class. The answer to the importance of the title, and why it attracted so much attention, is not in the details of the design but in politics.

The Royal Navy is funded by parliament through a system Naval Estimates, officially annual requests from Admiralty to the Imperial Parliament for the funds required for the next year. It is sometimes claimed the name of 'Estimate' is an acknowledgement from Parliament that it is not possible to know how much the Navy will spend in any given year until after the year is over. All bar the most economically minded agreed the Navy should respond to new threats as they emerged and not limit it's action to those that the budget had allowed for, hence the budget was not fixed as the exact amount that would have to be spent on fuel, ammunition, repairs and other consumables would vary. This is a fine theory and the facts are correct, indeed it may even have once been true, however by this point the Naval Estimates were so called because that was name they had always had and there was no obvious reason or need to change them. A key part of the Naval Estimates was the authorised strength and the fleet establishment, figures set by Parliament which limited the number of ships that would be funded and the amount of personnel available to crew them.

In the late 2220s the establishment allowed for 28 'C' class cruisers, based on a nominal target of 7 cruiser squadrons, the make up of the squadron also being defined. This was something of a fiction as while on paper a cruiser squadron was a City-class jump cruiser, a Colony-class escort cruiser and two County-class cruisers, in reality only the 7th Cruiser squadron out on Halifax Station matched that pattern. The five other cruiser squadrons were all of wildly different sizes and compositions, many still had Daring-class destroyers attached for extra anti-missile firepower and of course the 4th Cruiser Squadron continued to not exist after it's 'temporary' amalgamation with the 3rd at the start of the decade. With this background in place the reasoning should be obvious, if the Tigers had been cruisers they would count against this limit and the Admiralty would have to either sacrifice some existing tonnage or convince Parliament to expand the cruiser establishment, a task they had been attempting without success for a number of years. As Strike Cruisers the Tigers were technically a new class of ship which would need an entirely new establishment which would be in addition to the existing cruiser establishment. Parliament was not quite as foolish as it's reputation suggested so this subterfuge did not go unnoticed, however it did provide a rationale (or excuse) for many waverers to alter their position without anything so gauche as 'changing their mind' or worse 'compromising'. As the Lions were intended to fill out the Second Strike Squadron they too had to be Strike Cruisers, hence their designation.

Looking at the design itself the key feature is obviously the large bank of axially mounted  Elswick Plasma Cannons, arranged in seven twin mounts. As with all Ilford plasma designs of this era the relatively small reactor output (smaller than on a County class) are supplemented by direct taps from the Magneto-Plasma engines to build the plasma pressure. It was this feature that often caused concern in the Admiralty as it meant a fault in the tap system could disable weapons and engines, yet it is undeniably tonnage and size efficient. The cannons themselves formed a 14" plasma ball that had sufficient flux density to stay at least somewhat coherent out to the maximum range of the standard fire control systems, as was typical of plasma weapons the short range damage was considerable but so was the fall off in damage with increasing range. Despite using the latest Dowty 4keV charge inverters the plasma fill rate was another weak point, the resulting rate of fire did not compare well with the baseline railgun system. The other interesting system was the choice of the Quad SBCG coil gun turrets in place of the standard Twin Sterling turrets. SBCG stood somewhat unimaginatively for Small Bore Coil Gun, essentially the turret was built around cut down coil guns which had shorter barrels and so traded a decrease in mass for decreased accuracy, both of which were considerable, the intent being the increase in number of firing barrels would more than make up for each shot being less likely to hit. The SBCG was also found on the successful Tiger-class but this was not the Chatham design office taking a position in the Accuracy vs Weight of Fire wars that were a regular feature of Admiralty bureaucratic warfare. It was something even more political as the key feature of the turret was not it's capabilities but it's manufacturer; WM Beardmore and Daughters.

At this time the Sterling Amalgamated Aether Armaments Company, almost always shortened to Sterling, had an effective monopoly on coil gun turrets. A proven design with well established supply chain it worked and while commanders would occasionally wish they had more of the weapons they had no issues with the weapon itself. The group who did have a problem was the procurement department, for almost everything else there were a variety of suppliers and so some ability to compare costs and keep prices competitive. There was no in-service alternative to the Sterling Twin and so the Procurement Board just had to accept their prices which had been gently rising year on year, never anything egregious and always with a plausible reason, but the well known benefits of large volume mass production never seemed to result in any efficiencies or decrease in cost. They were ultimately naval officers so were not going to knowingly order something sub-standard, but they were pre-disposed to look very favourably on any alternative coil gun turret manufacturer. This internal Admiralty support, along with Beardmore committing their substantial resources to a lobbying campaign in support of the Tiger-class, and thus their turret, the Ilford Quorum was showing it had learnt that success was as much due to 'soft' political factors as any 'hard' technical capabilities. Sadly for them even this mastery of the political game was not enough to get the Lion-class built.

Turning to the potential of the class in combat, after the success of the Tiger-class the Chatham office had built enough reputation for the design to be taken seriously and so officially holo-simed and assessed by the Admiralty Tactical Office. These assessments did not yield any unexpected results and to the disappointment of the Ilford Quorum broadly vindicated the existing views of the Admiralty about plasma weaponry. Aside from the armament much of the rest of the equipment (engines, sensors, defence systems) was common to other cruisers and so had similar capabilities in those areas, leaving only the weapons as a point of difference. To simplify somewhat at any kind of range the Lion-class was inferior to an County-class cruiser and especially a Tiger-class due to the lower rate of fire and decoherence of the plasma field with time. At very short ranges (engagement distances in the low tens of thousands of km) things changed as the shear brute power of a fully cohered plasma ball was devastating and more than compensated for the slow rates of fire. Point blank ranged engagements also meant the 'wall of lead' effect of the massed SBCG was particularly pronounced; at such short ranges even the short barrel coil gun was highly likely to hit resulting in dozens of 0.303' solidshot rounds impacting a second, each individually minor but cumulatively highly damaging. Situationally the class could dominate, however the tactical officers were concerned that the Lion-class lacked the speed to be sure of controlling the engagement range or even being able to get close enough, fast enough, for it's advantages to count. On the positive side it was noted that the design's armament was well suited to jump point assault or defence, however the Renown-class had literally been built for assaulting heavily defended jump points and were both far more capable and already in service, while the existing C-class cruisers classes had proven perfectly capable at jump point defence when required.

Overall the Admiralty assessed the designs as being inferior as general purpose cruisers, but not specialised enough in any niche roles to justify procurement on those grounds and it is hard to argue with that conclusion. Had they been built it is likely they would have been moderately successful ships because they were not bad designs, just not as good as the alternatives in most situations. A bolder design would have sacrificed some 'general purpose' qualities like range or endurance for a substantially higher speed, committing to short range engagement tactics and optimising for that rather than trying to be a match for the Counties in all things. The Ilford Plasmasmiths would continue to develop warships built around enormous plasma cannons but would at least make an effort to address the Admiralty Tactical Office judgements on the Lion-class. It is perhaps unexpected given their vastly different sizes and intent, but the notorious Dark-class sloop-of-war (essentially a battery of plasma cannons, a targeting system and a massive engine) was the most tangible legacy of the Lion-class, for all it's lack of capability elsewhere few could argue that it lacked the speed to very rapidly close the range with any possible opponent.

---
Notes:
The middle of this this chapter inspired by wondering about whether including a mass production bonus for ships and components would improve the game. It does seem odd that I built probably hundreds of twin gauss turrets all with identical stats, but the last unit cost the same as the first, thus a mild detour into Admiralty procurement policy to consider this anomaly. For the rest I did build the Tiger-class and did designate them as Strike Cruisers as it seemed cooler, but I cannot articulate how they were different from a normal Cruiser in any meaningful way. Clearly therefore the explanation had to be politics and bureaucracy. (https://i.imgur.com/DYAEiOu.gif)
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: Andrew on January 27, 2024, 04:25:34 AM
Not than any real navy would play  games with names to get a ship through procurement I mean the Invincible class through deck cruiser and the Hyuga Helicopter Destroyer are both definetly not carriers in any way
Title: Re: Books of the Imperial Library: Unbuilt Warships of the Royal Navy
Post by: nuclearslurpee on January 27, 2024, 01:35:43 PM
Once again you are early, however I note with approval that at least you have not been brief.

Quote from: El Pip on January 27, 2024, 01:02:29 AM
- it was designated as a Strike Cruiser not a Cruiser.

One wonders what the difference is, and for once as we shall see one need not wonder for too long.

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The previous effort of the Ilford Plasmasmiths had been the Prometheus class Battlecruiser, a powerful ship built around a large main battery of Plasma Cannons she had a long and victorious career, however she never had any sister-ships as the Admiralty continued to prefer the 'standard' railgun armed Renown-class.

I realize this is a tome about unbuilt ships, but a singly-built ship is quite nearly as interesting and to be frank I am curious here, not only why the Chatham office favors plasma so heavily, but even more so why the Admiralty approved the design at all given their hesitancy and chronic conservatism.

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Elswick 14"/4keV Mk.I Plasma Cannon (14)

Far be it from me to doubt the Chatham fellows, but 4 keV does seem a bit on the low end for a highly destructive weapon, though it seems to work out in practice and more importantly, I am sure, this is actually a British Imperial Space keV which bears only historical relation to the present-day units.

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however by this point the Naval Estimates were so called because that was name they had always had and there was no obvious reason or need to change them.

(https://c.tenor.com/puJ7gimCWr0AAAAd/tenor.gif)

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This was something of a fiction as while on paper a cruiser squadron was a City-class jump cruiser, a Colony-class escort cruiser and two County-class cruisers, in reality only the 7th Cruiser squadron out on Halifax Station matched that pattern. The five other cruiser squadrons were all of wildly different sizes and compositions, many still had Daring-class destroyers attached for extra anti-missile firepower and of course the 4th Cruiser Squadron continued to not exist after it's 'temporary' amalgamation with the 3rd at the start of the decade.

Here we see a further exercise of tradition, indeed each exercise is as iron as the last in its certainty.

Quote
Parliament was not quite as foolish as it's reputation suggested so this subterfuge did not go unnoticed, however it did provide a rationale (or excuse) for many waverers to alter their position without anything so gauche as 'changing their mind' or worse 'compromising'.

Indeed.

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but the well known benefits of large volume mass production never seemed to result in any efficiencies or decrease in cost.

Labour party members have noted an increase in efficiency of wealth transfer to the Sterling shareholders, but as no one listens to Labour party members this finding has yet to come to light.

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however the Renown-class had literally been built for assaulting heavily defended jump points and were both far more capable and already in service, while the existing C-class cruisers classes had proven perfectly capable at jump point defence when required.

Further tantalizing adventures I am sure we will never hear of again.

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A bolder design would have sacrificed some 'general purpose' qualities like range or endurance for a substantially higher speed, committing to short range engagement tactics and optimising for that rather than trying to be a match for the Counties in all things.

Conversely, a rather more conservative design could have replaced only a few of the railgun batteries of the Tiger class with plasma cannons, perhaps 2-4 as a forward/chase armament. Such a relatively minor alteration could have seen at least minimal acceptance, not least if it could be interbuilt from a shipyard tooled for Tigers.

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For the rest I did build the Tiger-class and did designate them as Strike Cruisers as it seemed cooler, but I cannot articulate how they were different from a normal Cruiser in any meaningful way. Clearly therefore the explanation had to be politics and bureaucracy. (https://i.imgur.com/DYAEiOu.gif)

At least you are honest about it and that is what really separates us from the politicians at the end of the day.

Much like the Naval Estimates, the El Pip Update Estimate has long since lost all real meaning, nevertheless we persist for the sake of tradition. I currently am pegging sometime in late summer for the next one, but I admit that early autumn is within the realm of plausibility, though surely sometime as soon as early summer would be far too much of a rush. (https://i.imgur.com/DYAEiOu.gif)