Chapter 7 To Cruise or Not To Cruise Part IIITechnically 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.
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.
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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.