Warship "Conversions"

[Hellraiser]

Warship Conversions:

So, the SLDF turned the Quixote into the Volga IIRC
They turned the Lola-II into the M5-Caspar
The Davion into the Whirlwind  (or was that clans?)

The clans refit every ship they had from the SLDF to use Hull Sealant technology like elementals.
And then they stuck LFBs on most everything too.

The clans also flat out converted Rigas into Yorks for the 1st 6 & converted 6 Avatars into Liberators.

I think there were even a few armor Type changes that required a full stripping of the "skin".

So my question is, how much effort is it to "rebuild" a ship?

Like for instance, if the FS actually had a Fox fleet still & ever got around to making a Fox-II,  how much effort is it to swap out 10 NAC10s for 8 NAC20s to increase firepower & cargo space?
Or increasing fighter/shuttle bays the way the clans change all those 6/18 SLDF figures to 10/20/30?

I'm just curious what you all think, if it takes a year? to make a Warship from scratch, how long is some of those conversions going to take?
More/Less/Much Less?   30-60-90 days?   6-12 Months?

[Alan Grant]

The answer is "it depends."

Let me give you a real world example. When the Royal Navy decided to build HMS Dreadnaught, the first modern Battleship basically. It didn't just turn heads because of what it was. They also decided they were going to build it in record time. Up to that point it usually took the Royal Navy 24-48 months to roll out a Battleship.

For HMS Dreadnaught they brought more manpower on-site. They brought a lot of the component manufacturing on-site. They built multiple things at the same time, on-site. They got it done in about a year.

Allocate more resources, get it done faster. Saw the same general premise play out during World War 2 once the allies ramped up military production of everything.

Want to do it cheaper? With fewer people and fewer simultaneous tasks at fewer places? Go slower.

And there is absolutely an economy of scale at play here. Do something you've never done before once. Can take longer. Get it going like an assembly line, the process speeds up.

It depends. For major stuff we're probably talking a year or years.

EDIT: I should note it probably varies a lot by faction and era too. I bet the First Star League, before the Amaris Coup, absolutely had the ability to do a lot of work very fast. They were just that enormous and had so many facilities and got the best of everything. Everything they did was big. But the Davions in say the 3060s, yeah they don't have as much. So a project like upgrading multiple Fox-class warships probably would have taken them years while the First Star League could have probably upgraded every single Fox in the 3060 Davion fleet at the same time in a year.

The Great Houses and the Clans, it's much harder. They just don't have as many shipyards and have never really been geared toward mass production. The production of the Fox class and the FWL Zecs are the closest we see to something akin to true mass production and they do feel like they devoted a lot of resources to that.

The Combine tried to go fast, but quality always seemed to suffer too much.

The Clans largely never had warships as a super timely priority. They were probably ok if upgrading all the Avatars into Liberators took years. They were probably ok if installing portable HPGs, LFGs and hull sealant technology took years and would be completed one hull at a time. It feels like the Clan naval buildup of their fleets was a mostly gradual process across the Golden Century and into the pre-Revival years, and regarded by most Clans as a secondary priority. Also at least some Clans seemed to at least partially outsource their major naval work to the Ravens' Lum Shipyards. So that brings politics and Trials and trading/commerce into the picture as well. Which probably often slowed things down.

[Hellraiser]

The Great Houses and the Clans, it's much harder. They just don't have as many shipyards and have never really been geared toward mass production. The production of the Fox class and the FWL Zecs are the closest we see to something akin to true mass production and they do feel like they devoted a lot of resources to that. 

Yeah, at 2 Dozen Foxes from 2(3?) shipyards, they had quite a bit of potential there to truly go with massive production to the point of "not totally rare" to find one if it had continued.
 
The Zecs were coming from just one but they did do 11 of them in a decade or so, so like 1/year.
Solid #s for a single shipyard from 1 house.

[Minemech]

 The Zechetinu and Eagle were both mass produced. Theras by nature could not be since the fighters were not there to man them. I suspect that the Venturer was intended for mass production.

 Avalons themselves appear in high numbers. After the Fox fiasco, the Suns aimed to be highly reliant on PWS, which was a cheaper, if questionable choice.

 The DCA performed miserably in both ship design and quality control. Their battleship in particular was an unmitigated disaster.

[Hellraiser]

The Zechetinu and Eagle were both mass produced. Theras by nature could not be since the fighters were not there to man them. I suspect that the Venturer was intended for mass production.

 Avalons themselves appear in high numbers. After the Fox fiasco, the Suns aimed to be highly reliant on PWS, which was a cheaper, if questionable choice.

1.  The Zech, Eagle, & Thera were all from the same shipyard
I actually have a hard time fathoming how the Illium Shipyards at Ionus can produce the volumes they do compared to every other shipyard in the IS.
To pull off 11, 10, & 6 of each class respectively in a decade is something worthy of the SLDF Shipyards.

2.  Which leads me to "Mass Production".
As good as that shipyard is, I don't really see any of them as "Mass Produced" since they are barely hitting double digits for the smaller 2 ships.
The fact that the shipyard is devoting resources to 3 different ships for that matter kind of implies that no single ship is "Mass" produced.

3.  If Ionus yards focused on a single hull type the production #s would incredible for that hull, IMO.

4.  The only reason I even consider the Fox as an example of "Mass" production is the fact that it was from 2 houses, using 3? shipyards, & had 2 dozen hulls completed.  It was on it's way to being mass produced anyway.

5.  The Avalon only had 7 hulls, I not bad at all but still not where I see them as "Mass" either.
Every WS has an escort of DS really per FM fluff for most nations.

6.  What Fox fiasco?  Player opinions aside, it didn't have a bad rep.

[Daryk]

No discussion of "mass production" of ships is complete without talking about the Liberty ships: https://www.mathscinotes.com/2018/05/liberty-ship-production-data/

[Alan Grant]

Don't forget in comparing shipyards that not all shipyards are created equal.

Maybe the Illium Shipyards are 3 times the size and 3 times the production capability of any in the Fed Suns. Yes, Illium is making a lot. But maybe it's also just that big an operation. Maybe it's not even really just one shipyard. Maybe it's more like a cluster of them that all happen to be in the same solar system. Capable of simultaneously running 3 separate warship production lines in the 3050s and 3060s.

Much of what I just wrote above could not be true. But that's also my point. I feel like you are invoking 1-1 comparisons with these shipyards. You are thinking Galax has the exact same facilities and capacity as those found at Ionus. That's probably a bad assumption.

And BTW "Mass Produced" is a very subjective concept. I'm not sure it's worth really debating. I know it doesn't sound subjective, but it is.

I've met people who would absolutely agree with the idea that the Fox and Zec and perhaps the Eagle even hit Mass Produced Status based on the number of hulls produced. I also know people who would say any warship class that established a production line and rolled more than 1 hull off the line achieved Mass Produced. Then I also know people who would say, given the size of the Inner Sphere, the scale of the economies, none that none of the classes built in the 3050s-3060s achieved Mass Production status, because by their specific brand of math, the Great Houses were capable of building a lot more than they did.

Very Very Subjective concept. Not a lot of consensus. You trip over a lot of the Fasanomics stuff that people can argue over until they are blue in the face. You also just face many different definitions of "Mass Produced" that don't all agree on criteria for that term.

[Daryk]

If you can't count the interval between commissioning each ship in days, your claim to "mass production" is tenuous at best...

[Hellraiser]

Don't forget in comparing shipyards that not all shipyards are created equal.

You are thinking Galax has the exact same facilities and capacity as those found at Ionus. That's probably a bad assumption.

And BTW "Mass Produced" is a very subjective concept. I'm not sure it's worth really debating. I know it doesn't sound subjective, but it is. 

Oh I'm aware, and I'm not making any assumptions.
When I read what Ionus produces I'm inclined to think its the largest shipyard outside of Terra.
But, IIRC, I think Galax already lays claim to that "title" from some sourcebook quote.
Even if I'm remembering that right, the FWL "as a whole" has more total shipyards, developed industry, & overall good economy.

I'm also not trying to debate what "Mass Produced" means really.
I have my own theoretical definition, which basically comes down to some combination of "Major Focus for that Yard &/or the Faction",  "Multiple Yards", & "Raw # of ship hulls" in the decade leading up to the Jihad.

As for what makes up each yard, yeah, I don't even try to figure that out.
I recall Galax started out w/ 1 slip for the Fox Prototype & then expanded to like 3 & then set up shop in another system in FS & then moved over to the LC half at Alarion.
In turn Alarion had a single slip for the Fox & after making it they built a 2nd for Foxes & upgraded the first one to Mjolnir construction.
But those are quotes I've read somewhere & I'm not that familiar with the history of Ionus.

As for # of companies & shipyards as a whole, from what I've read most of the "Shipyards" in that system have multiple names & companies that started out as conflicting fluff in the early sourcebooks.
In later books it seems to be pretty common to clarify that the entirety of the Shipyard is partially owned by multiple companies who share the yards.

Like the Shipyards at "Alarion" are named the "Port Simon Naval Shipyards" but often just referred to by the system name, or, might be called the Ioto Galactic Enterprise Shipyards, or the Bowie Industries Shipyards, because both of those companies are part-owners in the "Port Simon Naval Shipyards".
Its odd but it works, I was personally hoping we'd find out there were actually like 3 different locations in the system, hehehe.

[Minemech]

1.  The Zech, Eagle, & Thera were all from the same shipyard
I actually have a hard time fathoming how the Illium Shipyards at Ionus can produce the volumes they do compared to every other shipyard in the IS.
To pull off 11, 10, & 6 of each class respectively in a decade is something worthy of the SLDF Shipyards.
 
2.  Which leads me to "Mass Production".
As good as that shipyard is, I don't really see any of them as "Mass Produced" since they are barely hitting double digits for the smaller 2 ships.
The fact that the shipyard is devoting resources to 3 different ships for that matter kind of implies that no single ship is "Mass" produced.

For a variety of in-universe reasons, that would be mass production. The key one being that the Illium shipyards were the most secretive of the sites that ships could be produced from.

4.  The only reason I even consider the Fox as an example of "Mass" production is the fact that it was from 2 houses, using 3? shipyards, & had 2 dozen hulls completed.  It was on it's way to being mass produced anyway.

5.  The Avalon only had 7 hulls, I not bad at all but still not where I see them as "Mass" either.
Every WS has an escort of DS really per FM fluff for most nations.

6.  What Fox fiasco?  Player opinions aside, it didn't have a bad rep.

The Fox forced the production of the Overlord A-3 since it was too valuable of an investment to lose, but then ended up as the primary warship of the Federated Commonwealth's successor states due to extenuating circumstances. The ship itself performed as its stats allowed. It was also supposed to have extremely poor living conditions for the crew.
 It is peculiar that the Overlord A-3 fluff brags about a pair running off a Fox. This highlights some of the problems of the Fox, that is its lack of PD, and overreliance on popguns. It furthermore lacks acceleration which should have prevented the Fox from escaping, and its armor is not beneficial against modern ships when only armed with such popguns. It was a ship designed to fight as one of Yesterday's warships rather than to deal with them. Now all of the early warships had flaws, with the Impavido mounting Single Heat Sinks for one example. Let's not get into the Kyushu.

[Nerroth]

For a thread with the words "Clan", "Fox", and "Conversion" in it, I'm surprised there hasn't been a reference to the Clan Sea Fox deployment of ArcShips and CargoShips.

According to ISP3, the then-Diamond Sharks seized control of an old Rim Worlds Republic-era orbital facility in the Chaine Cluster, which they subsequently expanded upon significantly. While data on that region of space is difficult to update for anyone not part of Clan Sea Fox (or, as of the IlClan Era, the Scorpion Empire), it would not be unreasonable to imagine the Foxes continuing to expand upon the capacities of said facilities - to include adding the capacity to convert their WarShips into their new floating homesteads.

Things don't appear to have gone quite as well for the Snow Ravens as of late, however; their lingering economic issues appear to have prevented them from making as much of the Quatre Belle facilities as they would have liked, at least per Field Manual: 3145.