2014 STGOD OOC Commentary Thread 1

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, in this case I more meant still uses them with no inclination to decommission them for good.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I find it amusing that despite all the "outrage" I now have four different offers for new battleships

[Skywalker_T-65]

Never underestimate the lure of money

Arcadia would always have offered anyway though, since we're already trading partners and all.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True, I suppose everyone want's a $40 billion export deal

[Beowulf]

Yeah I figured I'd be looking at $4 billion a ship, since there are only going to be 5 and i'm asking for a complete new design for a class of ships that haven't been built in decades. But $8 billion? Jeez, I could field two full battlegroup's worth of Type 45's for that.

It should be noted that Jiangnan doesn't really have a firm grip on the cost, simply because they haven't built one since pre-Great War. It might end up cheaper. A not small portion of the cost is for equipment on it that won't be used on any other class of ships (12" guns, rotary launchers, thick composite armor, reactors, etc). I assume part of the point of it being a battleship is to have armor. Otherwise, it'd be an over-large cruiser.

As a note, I doubt anyone has the capacity to build 5 of these ships at once. At least for export, anyways. I figure each of my shipyards might have a pair of dry docks large enough... but I've also got to support my carriers with those. So probably only have 2 actual slips to use. Only need 3 years from laying the keel to launching though. Most of the rest of the time is getting the long lead parts ordered, and for the first in class, getting the detail design done.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh this is marvelous fun.

[Thanas]

Rheinland has six major docks, of which one is always occupied by carriers in RICOH on carriers, two others are (slowly?) building new ships. Three others are available for commercial construction when not required by the Government and usually build large ocean liners/cruise ships/tankers . (Think St Nazaire, a larger Papenburg and Turku). So at best I could do two ships simultaneously as I just can't simply cancel the tanker/cruise ship contracts without it being a national emergency. But I think you'd want the ships to be purchased 1 after the other anyway to account for additional systems and having the user experiences help with upgrades (like fixing problems that only appear once the ship is already in use)

Oh, I had assumed 8 bil without armor. I mean, the Zumwalt was a small scale program and was projected to cost somewhere between 3-5 billion per ship, at 14.000 tons displacement (though it got shafted by the process so let's say 2.5-3 billion per ship had the original number of ships been ordered and the class not cut down). At that prize range and size it probably would cost 8 bill at least without armor. (I mean, 70 kt ships? Whooah).

So is it with armor or without?

[Eternal_Freedom]

It would indeed be armoured, because it isn't really a battleship otherwise. Unless of course there is some convincing argument against giving the ships heavy armour.

[Thanas]

Other that it is hilariously expensive, you mean?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Presumably, not having a few thousand tonnes of armour plate means i can fit in more machinery, equipment, munitions and so forth. Ok then, feel free to submit an unarmoured version and my Naval staff will review it.

[Simon_Jester]

Umeria has, at the moment, three capital ship-class drydocks, one of which recently got done refitting USS Skylark to a higher electronics standard, and one of which is being busily retrofitted to do reactor overhauls on the atomic rocket cruiser Guard-the-North, which was commissioned over twenty years ago and is coming due soon. The third is, at the moment, unoccupied and probably busy building a tanker or a really big hospital ship or something just to keep the dockyard personnel employed.

The Umerians might start work on a fifth carrier this year, I'm not sure yet because I don't have a firm handle on their naval procurement numbers.
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Anyway, my offer to the Hawaiians is not a 'battlecruiser' or anything of the sort. It's simply a large destroyer equipped with the Technocracy's answer to AEGIS, of a type I already have about twenty of, with more on the building slips. Basically, this is what the Umerian Navy came up with as a cute little sister for the Guard-the-North-class atomic rocket cruisers.

Picture it as a lengthened version of the South Korean Sejong the Great-class, with some of the forward VLS swapped out for heavier antiship missiles because of doctrinal differences between Umeria and the NATO-influenced design theory that went into the Korean ship.

Main armament is 80 VLS typically allocated to SAMs, 16 VLS allocated to ASROC, 16 VLS specifically allocated to a light Harpoon-class antiship missile (not flexible), and eight angled launch tubes forward for a medium Silkworm-class antiship missile heavier than pretty much anything that can be fired out of a 'Western' VLS cell.

Secondary armament is a pair of defensive torpedo tubes, the Perturbed-Hornet's-Nest CIWS system, and the 107mm cannon. The class is already under mass serial production, so aside from any refits the Hawaiians may want to carry out for their own reasons it would be very easy to get into their hands in whatever quantity they please.

In practice, my impression is that it falls roughly in the middle between the Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga-class AEGIS ships of the US Navy.

ALSO, as far as I can tell, the only ship offered so far that matches or can match the Hawaiian specifications in every particular.


EDIT: Fixed a few grammatical errors I missed last night and missing words.

[TimothyC]

ALSO, as far as I can tell, the only ship offered so far that matches or can match the Hawaiian specifications in every particular.

Ehhhh, so did the Dalian design.

That said, thank you for writing it up!

[Thanas]

Ship offers to Hawai'i are in, ship offers to Orion are coming. I am struggling a bit with the gun and armour thing.

Rheinland ships are absurdly expensive, but that is part of Rheinland's overall strategy to go for a smaller, more capable Navy in the future. After all, the Navy needs to do just two things - keeping the sealane open and defeating an opponent in battle near home shores.

[Eternal_Freedom]

On the armour matter, I would say that protection equal to the Derfflingers should be sufficient, although on a 70kt hull we have enough room for ample CIWS systems.

[RogueIce]

So, tossed my hat in the ring. As should be pointed out, not only does the Flight III DDG fit the Hawai'ian proposal, it's also already in service with the RHN from a previous order made with the Shinra Republic.

[RogueIce]

I for one am interested in what our neighbors in the Pacific have to think about this. At the very least, we should hear what Cascadia and Hawai'i have to say first before we proceed with any course of action.

I'm not a neighbor in the Pacific?

[Steve]

You weren't in tthe war.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, but they still have a strategic interest at stake here.

[Thanas]

On the armour matter, I would say that protection equal to the Derfflingers should be sufficient, although on a 70kt hull we have enough room for ample CIWS systems.

Then you don't need a 70kt hull. What you need then is precisely a Derfflinger with cannons. (well, really not even cannons, just a Derfflinger, but you Orions love big guns...).

[Steve]

On the armour matter, I would say that protection equal to the Derfflingers should be sufficient, although on a 70kt hull we have enough room for ample CIWS systems.

Then you don't need a 70kt hull. What you need then is precisely a Derfflinger with cannons. (well, really not even cannons, just a Derfflinger, but you Orions love big guns...).

No no, let him spend millions more on a larger hull he doesn't need, I'll spend the same on my strike aircraft and we'll see who comes out the better.

BTW, as my news post shows, there are groups hostile to Nippon that are protesting the idea of Nippon being freed (left unsaid is that it would be seen as another case of Rheinland coddling them), but the Cascadian government is completely in favor of it. For one thing, it means we can trade with them without having to transship the goods so that they're on Rhenish ships.

[Eternal_Freedom]

On the armour matter, I would say that protection equal to the Derfflingers should be sufficient, although on a 70kt hull we have enough room for ample CIWS systems.

Then you don't need a 70kt hull. What you need then is precisely a Derfflinger with cannons. (well, really not even cannons, just a Derfflinger, but you Orions love big guns...).

Yeah we do love big guns. It's a cultural thing. Ok then, give me an armoured version, because being protected against 1000 lb bombs sounds good, but I just know some git will load up his planes with 2000 lb bombs just to spite me

[Thanas]

If such armor were possible Rheinland would have it. I'll put some ideas up soon however.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Thank you. As I've said, I already sort-of have an in-house design, I'm just interested in seeing what others can come up with.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah we do love big guns. It's a cultural thing. Ok then, give me an armoured version, because being protected against 1000 lb bombs sounds good, but I just know some git will load up his planes with 2000 lb bombs just to spite me

There is such a thing as armor against thousand pound freefall bombs, the level of deck armor required is somewhere between 3" and 6," and it's at least possible to armor a seventy thousand ton ship to that scale... but dear God does it cost in weight, and especially weight high up above the waterline where it's bad for stability.

Thing is, when it comes to serious weapons for firing at ships in the modern era, 500 kg freefall bombs are for wimps. There are a variety of antiship missile designs for which the warhead, the actual pile of explosive that blows up, not just the metal bit, weighs that much. Plus, occasionally, a side order of burning jet fuel. And some of these missiles are powered by rocket motors or ramjets or something and crash into your hull at Mach 3, a lot faster than a freefall bomb ever will.

Umerian Navy antiship weapons include the 750kg subsonic "Vicious-Hawk" (Harpoonski, basically), the 2-3 ton "Scrubbrush" supersonic cruise missile (Silkworm-analogue), the ten ton "Shipwreck" missile in extreme cases, and recently the high speed "Thunderbolt" air-launched missile (still the Mach 3.5 version; the hypersonic version is not remotely ready for prime time, though Umeria hopes to have the bugs hammered out by 2020 or so). Many of these weapons can be dropped from aircraft, fired from surface vessels, launched from land-based shore batteries, or even fired from submarines (maybe; I'm still not sure if my navy has dedicated SSGNs).

In addition, if a Umerian carrier is nearby, an enemy ship can expect to be shot at by two-ton guided torpedoes slung under jet strike fighters that come in as close as possible to wavetop level, and can launch from points that gun-type weapons on a ship's deck can't even fire at, due to the ocean being in the way. Because the torpedo has a twenty-kilometer range and that's over the horizon.

Or, if a Guard-the-North decides you're important enough to spend fifteen million dollars a shot on you, by antiship ballistic missiles. I don't even want to think about what you'd do to armor against those; it makes my brain hurt.

And none of this is in my opinion implausible, since the real-life Soviet and Chinese navies have developed exactly these capabilities.

My advice: go to that Helix expedition and load up on their nastiest ship-killers; the secret to modern naval warfare is "do unto others."

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh I definitely will be loading up on evil shipkilling weapons.