Cold War Comments Thread

[Garfunkel]

That reminds me, are there no dreadnoughts in Starfire? It would be weird to not have the BC-BB-DN-SD escalation. I think Weber had them in the HH books at the start of the first war before they were later eclipsed by Supers.

[Andrew]

There are versions of the starfire tech tree which rename SD as DN and call what used to be Light Monitor SD, and ups the size bracket of everything else. However the original versions from when David Weber wrote some of the starfire rules had no DN just BB and SD
David Webers HH Books are unrelated to starfire, so his use of the terminology there is not related to its use in Starfire.

[Kurt (OP)]

Just a quick one today, more tomorrow!

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Honestly, it's probably more true to how the terms were used in real life.

Battleships were a thing for decades. They had a mix of big guns in turrets and smaller weapons.

Then the British built the HMS Dreadnought ("fear nothing"), which dropped the smaller weapons for all large caliber turrets. And everyone decided that was better, so they started building "dreadnoughts" instead of the old style battleships. But they were still battleships!

Then people started building "super-dreadnoughts," which were just giant frakkers that were bigger and better than dreadnought style battleships.

So while "Dreadnoughts" as a separate size and role than battleships isn't terribly historical, using superdreadnoughts to refer to a "bigger than a battleship" ship is fairly reasonable.

I'm sure a lot of the details in this are wrong.

[Andrew]

The evolution of the terms starts with
Ship of the Line of Battle (1st-4th rate) often known as Liners or Battleships these were wooden sailing ships
The first Iron and Steam ships (Warrior and Gloire) were single deck ships so were listed as frigates inititally until this became obviously silly as they could beat any battleship, they were then imaginitavly known as ironclads, as turrets started to be fitted they were Barbette or Turret ships . (Sometimes with the qualifier Coastal defense, bbigger and more seaworthy than the american monitors)

The term battleship is first used for the 1889 Royal sovereign battleships, which were also the first ships to settle on the predreadnought armamant scheme of 2 heavy turrets and a bunch of 6 inch guns . America calls some smaller ships battleships in 1889 and the first french battleship is also 1889.
Dreadnought comes along in 1905 and the larger faster battleships which follow it are called Dreadnoughts, incidentally Battlecruisers come along with dreadnough and like the earlier armoured cruisers are comparable in size or larger than Battlships but faster and longer ranged at the expense of armour and weapons
The first ship to be considered a Super Dreadnought was the Queen Elizebeth  faster and more heavily armed than any earlier dreadnought and with better protection launched in 1913 and nearly double the displacement of dreadnought, the end of this line of development is the Battlecruiser/Fast battleship hood a third again larger than Queen Elizebeth, After this treaty limits mean new battleships are rarely built for 20 years and are the size of Queen Elizebeth , Hood being an exception to the treaties.
These treaties also finally limited the size of cruisers keeping them smaller than dreadnoughts .

Finally the last surge of battleships are the WW1 Style Bismarck and the more modern Iowa's, Vittorio Venito's and Yamato's all of which except the Iowa;s were built in violation of treaty limits making them larger than the British and Early WW2 American battleships which were laid down as treaty ships.   Without the treaty limits you would probably have had continued ship growth in size and armament and those ships like the American and Japanese Giants would probably have earned another naming convention,

Then of course carriers,  modern subs and Nuclear weapons made battleships obsolete

[Kurt (OP)]

The evolution of the terms starts with
Ship of the Line of Battle (1st-4th rate) often known as Liners or Battleships these were wooden sailing ships
The first Iron and Steam ships (Warrior and Gloire) were single deck ships so were listed as frigates inititally until this became obviously silly as they could beat any battleship, they were then imaginitavly known as ironclads, as turrets started to be fitted they were Barbette or Turret ships . (Sometimes with the qualifier Coastal defense, bbigger and more seaworthy than the american monitors)

The term battleship is first used for the 1889 Royal sovereign battleships, which were also the first ships to settle on the predreadnought armamant scheme of 2 heavy turrets and a bunch of 6 inch guns . America calls some smaller ships battleships in 1889 and the first french battleship is also 1889.
Dreadnought comes along in 1905 and the larger faster battleships which follow it are called Dreadnoughts, incidentally Battlecruisers come along with dreadnough and like the earlier armoured cruisers are comparable in size or larger than Battlships but faster and longer ranged at the expense of armour and weapons
The first ship to be considered a Super Dreadnought was the Queen Elizebeth  faster and more heavily armed than any earlier dreadnought and with better protection launched in 1913 and nearly double the displacement of dreadnought, the end of this line of development is the Battlecruiser/Fast battleship hood a third again larger than Queen Elizebeth, After this treaty limits mean new battleships are rarely built for 20 years and are the size of Queen Elizebeth , Hood being an exception to the treaties.
These treaties also finally limited the size of cruisers keeping them smaller than dreadnoughts .

Finally the last surge of battleships are the WW1 Style Bismarck and the more modern Iowa's, Vittorio Venito's and Yamato's all of which except the Iowa;s were built in violation of treaty limits making them larger than the British and Early WW2 American battleships which were laid down as treaty ships.   Without the treaty limits you would probably have had continued ship growth in size and armament and those ships like the American and Japanese Giants would probably have earned another naming convention,

Then of course carriers,  modern subs and Nuclear weapons made battleships obsolete

For the most part, terms like battleship or superdreadnought are used in Starfire or Aurora because they sound cool, they evoke cool images of dangerous warships from the past, and because they are a nomenclature that many people understand, at least at a basic level.  I have played around with the idea of having different names for every size class for each race, perhaps based on intended function rather than something historical, but this just led to confusion.  Right now, if I say that the enemy has six heavy cruisers, everyone who has played Starfire knows pretty much what I am talking about, in general.  If instead I said that I'm bringing six heavy missile carriers and four anti-missile screen ships to a battle, while the enemy is bringing six battle line vessels, that is going to take a lot of explanation every time.  It might be more accurate, but it is cumbersome and bogs down the writing, in my opinion. 

Kurt

[misanthropope]

behold the Faustian bargain in full!  behold also, "it sucks to have a small fleet in starfire"

the d'bringi are being too agreeable about the mintek withdrawal, in my view.  we're in "20 to one, surround" territory, here, and the alliance has enough DDs and CTs to do that.  pursue with the cruisers, get past the mintek with the DDs, and force the mintek to choose between a closing battle with the DDs and letting the cruisers get into range.

i get preserving your fleet, but DDs are flirting with obsolescence, so you ought to be aggressive when a real use for the things is found.

[Gyrfalcon]

So the Mintek turned out to be paper tigers it looks like. From a narrative standpoint, we’ll have to see if they gave the humans a fighting chance once the Alliance turns back around and goes to wipe out Sol.

[Black]

Yeah, it seems they compensated their lack of skill with big ships. But I think that we do not know how many ships they actually have, right? So this may not be over yet.

[Gyrfalcon]

Kirt indicated that when they ran the D’Bringi out of the system the first time that it would mark the only time they would have a superior amount of tonnage in action. Given that they either don’t outtech the D’Bringi or they let their warships become hopelessly obsolete, then I doubt they’re going to survive much longer.

[StarshipCactus]

Maybe the Humans can sue for peace while they have the chance? I suspect not though, their enemy has no reason to accept since they have defeated the only threat that might have tipped the balance.

[Starslayer_D]

I thought federal Theocracies had average as crew grade? They must have send their newly build ships out to do battle. Ouch.

Smart thing would have been to have a collier along with even a small minefield, bunching the foes up on the warp point, and allowing you to avoid point blank untill your ships are active. Then move close and deliver. Those 3 roudns before minesweepers can really go into action (Transit, activate scanner, find mines before going into minesweeper mode) are priceless.

The more things like gunboats and sbmhawks come into play, the further the point blank defense of warppoints gets... uneconomical. Point blank really works best when you have enough firepower about to be certain to obliterate each wave as it comes in, even in the first round of activation, as you then have the advantage  as the transiting enemy is still transit addled. Else its machine guns at ten paces.

[Andrew]

The Mintek almost certainly have more ships in their homefleet plus mines, DSB-s and probably forts so the D'Bringi will have trouble attacking into their system. It will take the Mintek time to replace these ships but they can also improve their designs and avoid being caught in a bad situation a battle in open space with the Mintek SD's at action stations would have hurt much more. Although elite point defense crews help a lot vs long range missile fire.

I was always tempted by allowing ships at the WP to engage automatically in the first turn with their weapons firing under computer control , say -2 to hit until the crews reach action stations. After all most of the targetting must be done by computer anyway so an automatic engagement should be possible.

[Kurt (OP)]

behold the Faustian bargain in full!  behold also, "it sucks to have a small fleet in starfire"

the d'bringi are being too agreeable about the mintek withdrawal, in my view.  we're in "20 to one, surround" territory, here, and the alliance has enough DDs and CTs to do that.  pursue with the cruisers, get past the mintek with the DDs, and force the mintek to choose between a closing battle with the DDs and letting the cruisers get into range.

i get preserving your fleet, but DDs are flirting with obsolescence, so you ought to be aggressive when a real use for the things is found.

I tend to get conservative about splitting up my fleets, but you do have a point here.  Still, with DD's you'd only have a one point speed advantage over the BC's, and it would take a while to catch up. 

In any case, the D'Bringi aren't too worried about six BC's armed with a weird mix of short and long range weapons.  That might be a mistake, but I guess we'll see. 

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

So the Mintek turned out to be paper tigers it looks like. From a narrative standpoint, we’ll have to see if they gave the humans a fighting chance once the Alliance turns back around and goes to wipe out Sol.

Yes, their attack definitely didn't work out as well as they had hoped.  Of course, they didn't count on the D'Bringi being allied with another race, and both races being at the end of a long arms build up. 

The D'Bringi Alliance isn't finished in the Phyriseq system, though.  They can't leave the Mintek behind them, free to make more trouble.  Before they can deal with the humans, they have to remove this threat, or make sure its bottled up for good.

Kurt