Growing your fleet

[Sjhernan3060]

So through an odd set of events I will soon have three Farragut’s! I am
A clan player primarily blood spirits and horses. Any fluffy story suggestions on how to use this unexpected bounty?

How’s this for fun? The stone lions fleet consists of three destroyers only how about one of my extra Farraguts becomes their new flagship?

[truetanker]

How’s this for fun? The stone lions fleet consists of three four destroyers only how about one of my extra Farraguts becomes their new flagship?

One of them is a CV... York -class Brimestone!

TT

[Sjhernan3060]

One of them is a CV... York -class Brimestone!

TT

Nice!

If the lions did want a new flagship what would their options be? Are there post reaving wrecks left to fix up? Or would it have to a new build?

[truetanker]

That's an unknown...

I'm afraid to even speculate on this... too many chances / choices.

TT

In hindsight, I'd take an old upgraded Avatar aka Liberator as the classic flagship if one was to go this route. Needs something heavier and more powerful to lead destroyers into battle and all...

Strength thru diversity and all...

TT

[Sjhernan3060]

Post wars of reaving in the homeworlds who has the capacity to build new warships? Is it the cobras?

I know the adders have the numbers but do they have the construction yards?

[Sjhernan3060]

What Snewsom2997 suggests is what I was thinking.  The clans will certainly use warships if another clan is attempting to attain control over an active warship.  But mothballed warships are another story, they are of little use to most clans in the short term, and most clans have trouble looking to the long term when they would be useful.  This, plus the idea that the clans don't think much of their warship forces, indicates to me that many clans will use smaller forces.  Now, there may very well be a warship nearby which could spoil an attack - this would become more and more likely if the attacks are targeting the dedicated defending forces.


Circiling back to this FM crusader clans and FMU Updates states that the ravens we’re alarmed by the adders big jump in naval strength. To blunt their new found power and to avoid obvious blame could the ravens supported the spirits and their naval
Focused friends kindraa mick kreese?

The mandrills and spirits could do the dangerous work of trialing for adder ships and the ravens could offer generous technical assistance and repair work.

[truetanker]

We got a slip over Niles and Bearclaw does have those factories in orbit that could make the items needed to make a WS... best bet would be another Lola III or even another York, but it'll take a few years of production with only one slip...

Our best option is to produce more PWS like a Outpost version of the Polaris... maybe we have the plans for the Outpost Defender? But with Barracudas instead of more Arrow...

TT

[rebs]

Post wars of reaving in the homeworlds who has the capacity to build new warships? Is it the cobras?

I know the adders have the numbers but do they have the construction yards?

No none of the Homies can build Warships as far as I know.  Some of them can repair existing warships, but none can build them. Even the Adders have no yards of their own. 

But that was many years ago, now.  I expect all of them will be building warships by this point.  But that's just my speculation. 

[Gaiiten]

The Adders have secured the Leviathan Prime yard from the annihilated Steel Vipers and have being been in the process of moving this huge facility from the New Kent system to Hoard system.

We will have to wait and see if there are still old Inner Sphere warships left (maybe updating them) or if they will construct new designs.

[rebs]

I was thinking the same thing as Gaiiten about new designs.  I would not be surprised at all to see new, never before seen designs when they do show back up. 

The Wars of Reaving were incredibly destructive, but they weren't quite to the lostech levels of the Succession Wars.  The Clans will take their tech base in a new direction.

[Sjhernan3060]

Goofy question if a khan got it into his or her head to sink a bunch of resources into a “ fleet of a thousand “ warships can the clan council veto that or can only a trial of grievance stop a Khan’s wishes?

To clarify I meant could anyone internally in the clan veto this

[Kit deSummersville]

I don't think anyone could stop that outside of just taking their WarShips in trials, but it's not like any of the Clans had the resources to do such a thing. There would be even less to do that with if a Clan is sinking most of their resources into stuff that won't be done for years and they start running out of forces they could actually use in defending their stuff.

[Colt Ward]

For warship, jumpship and dropship fleets the Clans are living off the 'capital' of the Star League.  While they did make a few new dropships, jumpships and warships they did not even come close to building enough to completely replace what came with them let alone a significant portion of what the SLDF brought.  For example, the Leviathans, Nightlords, new build Yorks, Fredasas and the retired ships from the Golden Century are a drop in the bucket compared to the McKenna, Texas, Black Lion, Aegis, etc from the SLDF in exile.  And we know there were still ships in the caches (3 Kimi per the fluff) going into the 3060s.  Jumpships?  I do not recall reading anywhere the Clans were building any of the standard jumpships like the Monolith, Star Lord, Invader, Tramp, Merchant or Scout.  They build some small ones like the Hunter, Odyssey,and Comitatus but only a few of these designs compared to how many they ended up with from the SLDF.  Dropships is probably the closest they come to matching what they inherited- new build Overlord Cs, Union Cs, Sassanids, Carriers, Miraborgs, Mercers, Arcadias, Broadsword, and Outpost might match some of the numbers of what they inherited.  But most of their transportation comes from the Star League- the Clans as a whole, even pre-Reaving do not have the support structure to build what they currently use.

[Wotan]

Right - but for all the time until WoR there was no need to build new ships en masse. They could maintain all the active ships and could build enough to replace regular losts. There was just no need to do more.
But we also need that the clans were able to design and build new ships in short time. The Noruff was a direct answer to the new naval battles the clans had to fight. The Miraborg is new too, but we dont know how long they needed to design it as it was first planned with a different name. Arcadia, Mercer and Outpost are more examples of the '60s. And the Steel Vipers were able to build such a monster like the Leviathan Prime in secret.
Sure the WoR wasn't good for all the naval yards. But the clans still have all the needed knowledge to build new yards and ships. Whether they want to do so or what other priorities they have is another question.

[Kit deSummersville]

There's a world of difference between a few ships, no matter how big they might be, and hundreds of WarShips.

[Colt Ward]

Noruff!  I knew I was forgetting a dropship!

And you are citing dropships . . . which is where I said it was possible they had replaced/added a significant number next to what they inherited.  The Clans lack the economic/industrial base to do like the Star League and churn out 400 SovSoy for a building program- such a build program is like a pyramid, it needs a huge base to get to the point.  I listed what warships the Clans built from scratch, pretty sure the number was lower than 50 and probably lower than 30.  Was the combined Clan warship fleet even reaching the number of just SovSoy the Star League produced?

Never denied they lacked the knowledge, afaik no one except Falcons really ran around killing scientists.

[Vition2]

1000 warships eh?  **3D prints 1000 miniature warships from various eras of history**

Hopefully by that point the khan realizes he/she was a moron, and only kills whoever had the 3D printing idea - then takes it as a win, since his order was technically carried out.

I counted the number of warships the clans built from scratch and the total number is, at minimum, 43 with a total tonnage of a somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000,000 tons.  Most of these seem to have been built during the earlier part of the Political and the Golden centuries, but we don't know the specifics for sure.  This means that the entirety of the clans produced roughly 120kt of warships per year, it could be argued that 500kt could be produced per year continuously, but I doubt they could produce more than that, and would likely peg the number closer to ~300kt.  Using the 500kt number as a starting point, and a growth factor based partially on their available population, they are still looking at decades or even centuries to produce 1,000 warships.

It would be vastly more reasonable to upgrade and overhaul the warship forces of the clans to more effective vessels - look towards marauder648's FRAM program for a potential first couple of steps in this situation.

[Colt Ward]

43?

How many did that break down by class?

I know . . .

Leviathan-  3
Nightlord-  9?
York-  we know of only 1 absolute new build
Fredasa-  13
Peregrine- 'only a few built during the Golden Age' @ 200kt and 'lightly armed'
Molynir-  Singleton?

So yeah, barely 30

[rebs]

The description of York destoyers indicated abatch of them were built during what would be the Political Century. 

And don't forget the 2 Conquerors.

[Vition2]

43?

Fredasa       14+
Peregrine      2-4+ (stated as "a few")
Carrack        2+ (unknown number but SO states they were the first warships built by the Diamond Sharks and Nova Cats)
Molniya        1+ (first warship built by the Wolves according to SO)
Corone         1+ (first warship built by the Snow Ravens according to SO)
York          13+ (Warden clans page 46, a dozen were built, and a new one commissioned by the Coyote which appears in their fleet in FM:Updates)
Nightlord      8+
Leviathan      3

So that's actually 44 - I had forgotten about the extra new York-class the Coyotes had built, and when I did my count before I was primarily looking at before the invasion, so while I had 2 Leviathan's listed, the Leviathan Prime wasn't included, nor was the above mentioned York.

The Conquerors don't count as they were overhauls of an existing ship - while the overhauls are absolutely massive, they weren't technically scratch-built.  If we were to include major overhauls, then you could probably add roughly another dozen (spit-balling here, it could be a fair bit less).

[Colt Ward]

Problem is the Yorks started off as conversions and we know of only 1 absolutely new build.  For the Fredasa, I dropped one named ship from Sarna's list because I thought it had been what the Blues had formerly been called- but none of those names worked out.  How many Fredasa were lost when their creating Clan, Jags, were destroyed- the FMU listing?

As far as the Carrack, I forgot about the transports . . . but the Carrack was a Star League design, so unfortunately it falls into the same problem category as the York.  So at least two were Clan built, but not a Clan design.  I stretched the point with the York b/c the Clans did a massive redesign- the like cruisers that became carriers for WWII.

[Vition2]

Problem is the Yorks started off as conversions and we know of only 1 absolutely new build.  For the Fredasa, I dropped one named ship from Sarna's list because I thought it had been what the Blues had formerly been called- but none of those names worked out.  How many Fredasa were lost when their creating Clan, Jags, were destroyed- the FMU listing?

There are 14 Yorks listed in FM:U, per TRO3057 only 6 Rigas survived the exodus civil war, at minimum this means 8 were new builds.  Though "Though new Yorks have not been built since a dozen were produced more than a century ago..." (FM: Warden Clans, pg 46) suggests those dozen were built, not retrofitted.

Edit: 2 Fredasas were captured by the Star League during their assault on the Smoke Jaguars, so there's 14 which are actually listed in FMU.

As far as the Carrack, I forgot about the transports . . . but the Carrack was a Star League design, so unfortunately it falls into the same problem category as the York.  So at least two were Clan built, but not a Clan design.  I stretched the point with the York b/c the Clans did a massive redesign- the like cruisers that became carriers for WWII.

As far as construction potential, where the design originated from doesn't matter, all that matters is the industrial capability of the clans.  That 2 (or more) Carracks were built indicates there was industrial capability to build them, thus that capacity could be used to build other types of warships - with some re-orientation of infrastructure.

[Vition2]

Honestly though Colt, you and I are just nitpicking here, while agreeing on the idea that the premise of building 1000 warships is absurd. 

Even using my upper end limit of 500kt/yr (which I admitted straight out was a stretch), the clans still need 200 years (assuming industrial stagnation) to create 1,000 100kt warships.  And this is the entire aerospace industrial might of the clans being focused on this - not a single clan.

[Colt Ward]

Oh, sort of now I am curious about the off the top of my head number.  Sarna lists 14 named, none were Jag . . . I also want to say a Fredasa bought it at Huntress would would not have been listed in FMU- so 16?  16+?

Either way, its not a lot of warships for nearly 250 years- even throwing in the refits to keep the worker's skills sharp.

[Vition2]

Oh, sort of now I am curious about the off the top of my head number.  Sarna lists 14 named, none were Jag . . . I also want to say a Fredasa bought it at Huntress would would not have been listed in FMU- so 16?  16+?

That does appear to be the case... not that an extra 360kt is going to throw off my expectations much.

Either way, its not a lot of warships for nearly 250 years- even throwing in the refits to keep the worker's skills sharp.

On the other hand, this comment got me thinking.  The Ravens put together the first (only?) Corone-class in 2915, with most of the other  clans' "First Warships" being built in the 3rd part of the same century.  The first Nightlord was introduced in 2932, while the first York and Fredasa were introduced in 2947 and 2962 respectively.  This suggests to me that the entirety of the warships that were actually built from the ground up started in roughly 2913 (+/- a year or two), leaving the construction window to be (and I'm stopping with the Leviathan Prime) roughly 160 years - it also means that all the Yorks were built over the course of about 15 years.  If just this time span is used that averages out to close to 180kt per year, a 50% increase over my previous estimation.  I'm still not willing to push the yearly sustained maximum production to more than about 600kt, but even with that number you are still looking at nearly 2 centuries (assuming industrial stagnation, of course).

[Colt Ward]

But where some of those numbers run into problems would be . . . how many of those weapon systems were stripped off ships in the caches?  How much of the systems were stripped from the ships?

A interesting question would be does the jump core on any of the 'new' ships correspond to the size of a old SL or TH ship?  Basically could the Molnyia, which for some reason I remember being given around 400kt?, be built using a stripped down Vincent jump core?  Sure, its a bit oversized and thus inefficient for the mass of the core to the ship but . . .

Additionally, before the new ships were constructed I would expect the work was done on the Avatar-to-Liberators, fixing the Camerons, upgrades to compact core cargoships, working on SovSoys (Wolves extra collar on Dire Wolf), and other refits.  Heck, adding the LF batteries to the existing JS fleet would still be steady activity.

[Vition2]

But where some of those numbers run into problems would be . . . how many of those weapon systems were stripped off ships in the caches?  How much of the systems were stripped from the ships?

My guess (and all it is is a guess), is that very few if any weapons would have been stripped off the caches.  With the clan's emphasis on live-fire training and combat, there's going to be significant enough wear and tear to see a need for either new built or virtually new built weapons - what I mean by virtually built is that there's manufacturing able to replace all parts of the weapon and over time everything gets replace (I liken this to the favorite axe story, the shaft splinters so you replace the shaft, a year later the blade cracks so you replace the blade - is it still the same axe?).

A interesting question would be does the jump core on any of the 'new' ships correspond to the size of a old SL or TH ship?  Basically could the Molnyia, which for some reason I remember being given around 400kt?, be built using a stripped down Vincent jump core?  Sure, its a bit oversized and thus inefficient for the mass of the core to the ship but . . .

First, I don't expect any of the 3 unknown ship types to be larger than 500kt, but I also didn't include them in my calculations for yearly output at all, if there's only 5 warships between the three classes it's not going to make a difference, if there's much more than that then I'm probably going to need to rethink the warship industrial potential of the homeworlds.  I have the Peregrine stuck in my head as being ~200kt (that's probably a carry-over from Dragon Cat's AU though), and have the idea of a small carrier for the Corone (but I don't have a reason for that other than the Ravens built it) and think it could be based on the Samarkand-class carriers, the Peregrine could be based on the Mako.  If the Molniya is about the size of a Vincent, that certainly could have been where the design originated.  But all that is speculation, I'm pretty sure there's been no canon references to the actual sizes of these classes.

Additionally, before the new ships were constructed I would expect the work was done on the Avatar-to-Liberators, fixing the Camerons, upgrades to compact core cargoships, working on SovSoys (Wolves extra collar on Dire Wolf), and other refits.  Heck, adding the LF batteries to the existing JS fleet would still be steady activity.

I actually forgot about the LF battery refits  :-[.  But had figured that more normal refits and the major class changing refits would have been the first things to happen.  Like you mentioned earlier, this would allow them to continue having experience in working with warships, while at the same time giving them a reason to build the surrounding infrastructure to support the creation of warships.  This might have been why there seemed to be a boom in warship construction in the 3rd quarter of the 30th century - the infrastructure was finally there to start thinking about building warships again... then they realized how quickly such a resource intensive project could be lost to another clan, so virtually stopped producing new ones - just a hypothetical.

[marauder648]

Re refits and updates I kind of went into this with my FRAM stuff here

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=61404.0

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=61530.0

[Gaiiten]

An advantage of the Wor was that the almost whole bunch of old SL warships was destroyed/disabled.

Before that the Clans did not have the need for a serious capital ship building program. After the Wor and espeically after the experiences of the batles, wherein capital ships were more than often THE decisive battle factor for victory, I think the Homeclans know they will need a new serious building program for warships.

New warship designs which take account of the lessons of the WoR and the role of the Homeclans as Far-Far-Away interstellar power.

[Knightmare]

Enjoying this thread. Keep it coming fellas...