Solomani Confederation (Military)

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

Q. Battlecruisers give up armour protection for speed.

R. This is fairly easy, if you're looking at one armour factor taking up four fifths of a percent, and an acceleration factor one percent.

S. Outside of legacy designs, there's no constraint in giving battlecruisers factor nine thrust.

T. If minimum acceptable acceleration for the line of battle is factor five, six preferable for the Imperium, having to deal with thrust factor nine battlecruisers would really justify their existence.

U. In other words, outrun anything it couldn't outfight.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

V. If that Dreadnought moment occurs at technological level twelve, with the introduction of meson spinal mounts, jump factor three, standard fusion reactor, and let's say the line of battle at acceleration factor five.

W. The Victoryii would be the equivalent of the Invincible dreadnought armoured cruiser, though going by the Ghalalk armoured cruiser, that would require a military hull.

X. Battlecruisers would be at least one acceleration factor more than the standard line of battle speed.

Y. At technological level twelve, that would be acceleration factor six, possibly you could crank it up to seven, though you might expect that of light cruisers (or maybe we're still at protected or scout cruisers).

Z. On the other hand, since it's a technological level more, you might not need a military hull to have the equivalent armoured cruiser hull factor.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

1. Let's assume crystal iron factor ten armour, twelve and a half percent.

2. Factor three jump drive, thirty seven and a half percent.

3. Factor seven manoeuvre drive, seven percent.

4. Seven percent worth of standard fusion power plant.

5. Sixty four percent.

6. Presumably meson gun factor four at thirty kilotonnes

7. Of a thousand remaining hardpoints, five hundred triple turreted pulse lasers.

8. Fifteen hundred Combination Missile/Torpedo Launcher mounted fixtures at five hundred hardpoints.

9. Hard to say if they are post or ante bellum, but it seems a logical way to use up Confederation Navy hardpoints.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

A. Solomani Confederation founded in 871.

B. Solomani Rim War starts 990.

C. ... the oldest Victory class ship has been in service for 117 years ...

D. Launched 873, maybe begun 870, design finalized 869.

E. Though going by the timeline, there was a burst of construction directly after independence.

F. Or, plans, budgets, and so on, were prepared in advance.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

G. The Imperium Navy would unlikely have left anything but obsolete minor combatants after they withdrew their naval assets, which probably included technological level eleven battlewagons.

H. I don't think anyone was actually expecting a war between the two interstellar polities, until 940, when the autonomous charter was revoked.

I. The Confederation probably was more concerned with consolidating the systems within the Sphere.

J. A show of force to cow the local system government(s).

K. And some form of power projection.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

L. ... emerged from an extensive refit program in the last decade which saw their old TL-12 weapons, computers and power plants upgraded to TL-13 standard ...

M. That probably means it started in 975, which, all things considered, is rather late.

N. Could mean that the slips were cleared of the Zeusii, and there was enough slack for the shipyards to do the refits.

O. Personally, I don't think there's, or was, much point in replacing a major ship system, unless it's mostly, or entirely, destroyed.

P. Also, now you need to know when technological level thirteen became mainline in the Confederation.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

Q. Because that would tell us when the Zeusii would start mass production.

R. The Zeusii appear to be enlarged versions of the Victoryii, except that they would have a default technological level of thirteen, and apparently, a lower armour factor, in what I presume would be a more powerful set of secondary armament.

S. Because, performance in general seems exactly the same, despite the obvious move to make it faster to justify the sacrifice in protection.

T. The Zeusii would certainly be candidates to strip off the armour and replace it with bonded superdense, at their next refit, if the game allowed that.

U. Or any survived the war, though I believe they kept building them post bellum, to make up the numbers.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Battlecruisers

V. Promethii are ... The largest and most powerful ship in the Solomani Navy ... at a quarter of a megatonne.

W. My interpretation of the Dungeon and Dragonification specifications is that it's a factor slower than the Victoryii, has a parsec more range, but retains the same armour factor.

X. So fast, in this case, relates to range, not acceleration.

Y. I think we may be looking at the Hood.

Z. Considering it's a quarter larger than the standard Imperium battleship.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

1. Victory, launched 873.

2. Presumably refitted 975-976.

3. Original armament, and possibly acceleration factor, unknown.

4. It's likely that being the only capital starwarship that the Confederation Navy had, they'd have to stuff it with a factor four meson gun spinal mount, since factor three could at best be considered more as a powerful cruiser primary armament, or second class battleship.

5. Regardless of how free Confederation Navy doctrine is about throwing around tactical nukes, it's likely the vast majority of deployed nuclear tipped missiles and/or torpedoes would be onboard their battlecruisers, if only for security reasons.

6. Combination Missile/Torpedo Launcher would be the logical selection, since not only can it alternate between missiles or torpedoes, it can also be dual use, carrying anti missile or anti torpedo missiles in their magazines.

7. Pulse lasers also serve a dual purpose role, point defence and tertiary armament.

8. If there's any volume left, particle accelerator bays.

9. Considering the offensive nature of Confederation Navy doctrine, I don't think they'd actually bother installing sandcasters.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

A. Three hundred and ninety Marines are based on a Victory.

B. Promethii seven hundred and fifty, Zeusii four hundred fifty, Midway fighter carrier six hundred.

C. So for capital ships, three Marines for every thousand tonnes.

D. Cruisers zero to maximum three Marines per tonne, suspect three is exceptional, zero might be a mistake, and mostly one to two.

E. Texas is four per thousand.

F. I doubt that these formula are actually helpful.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

G. Harking back to Starship Troopers, I think that battlecruisers should host half a battalion of Marines.

H. That means a Fleet Division of battlecruisers would have a complete battalion, with assets split between the two battlecruisers.

I. The Promethii would each have a complete Marine battalion onboard, with a Fleet Division of fast dreadnoughts having two battalions.

J. That removes the rather arbitrary allocation of Marines, based on tonnage and whatever formula is in fashion.

K. Each Fleet Squadron has a brigade of Confederation Marines, spread out amongst it's assigned assets; the brigade may vary in size.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Marines: Deployments


Battalion - dreadnoughts, super carriers

Semi battalion - battlecruisers, fleet carriers

Company - heavyish cruisers, battle riders, battle tenders, light carriers

Platoon - lightish cruisers, escort carriers

Squad - destroyers, frigates, corvettes


In the tradition of Aliens, I doubt any unit smaller than a squad, with a sergeant in command, would be normally stationed on a Confederation Navy starwarship; destroyers might have reinforced squads.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

L. Hangar capacity is listed at five hundred tonnes.

M. Don't really expect any fightercraft, mostly utility smallcraft and assault shuttles.

N. However you look at it, fuel shuttles in that small a capacity would be a waste, since it would take forever to refuel.

O. Which is probably why you have a streamlined hull configuration.

P. If the jump drives had excess capacity, you probably would dock extra craft externally.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Victory class battlecruisers

Q. Secondary armament would be hundred tonne bay particle beam.

R. This would allow a range upto long distance with a regenerable power supply.

S. Seems unlikely that this would be upgraded in a refit to technological level thirteen.

T. Unless it was a case of replacing an inoperable bay, or possibly customized technological level fourteen.

U. Fusion is probably too short, while additional meson weapon systems probably weren't as useful as particle beam.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

1. My initial inclination is to go for thirty five tonnes.

2. This is the minimum volume for two firmpoints, and therefore the preferred flight path for a crow.

3. However, examination of the current conflict has made me reconsider.

4. As well as what appears to be a snapback of High Guard two point five to version two point zero, regarding cockpits and hull volume.

5. So what we want is a universal hull size and configuration, built across a range of technological levels, that you can plug and play standard configured modules, or even pods.

6. This sounds like a variant of the modular cutter, but it's more being able to reconfigure a spacecraft into either a fighter, a fighter bomber, or an assault shuttle.

7. Originally, the idea was to an advanced weapon system module into an old fighter.

8. And I'll credit the genesis of that to discussions of whether to supply modernish weapon systems, or dig up Cold War era ones that the protagonist military is familiar with.

9. And that plug and play aspect resolves the issue of introducing new weapon systems that are compatible with whatever hull is currently utilized, as you run out of stock of the old ones.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

A. Thirty five tonnes is usable within the framework of the concept, and does allow stuffing in more fightercraft in a given hangar space.

B. Doesn't leave much space for growth.

C. And the Confederation navy does seem to emphasize that since they are a technological level behind the Imperium, they need to be able to upgrade their spacecraft as and when their military industrial complex can mass produce those higher teched components.

D. And that if you can use an older, lower teched hull, it would be nice just to be able pop in a modern module to upgrade it's performance.

E. Or, instead of having a large number of specialized hulls, have a specific mission module that can allow that hull to become capable of carrying out that mission.

F. Without the compromises that the Littoral Combat Ships had.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

G. There are a number of approaches to this.

H. Breakaway hulls could sort of substitute for modularization, plus engineering comes into play.

I. Podularization is a tad vague on possibilities and restrictions, but cheaper than breakaways.

J. At this microscale, actual potential number of firmpoints becomes an open question.

K. Though like the spinal mount, fiat just restricts the number to total volume of design.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

L. While there is a maximum percentage of volume utilization for modularization, there is no minimum.

M. By which I mean tonnage, percentage on an ultralite fighter hull, let's say five tonnes, would be at one percent fifty kilogrammes, or seven hundred cubic centimetres; or the percentage might even be lower.

N. Making a modular hull increases the cost of the overall hull by the percentage designated as being modular. For example, a 100-ton hull normally costs MCr2. If 30% of the ship’s hull is to be made modular, then the cost of the hull is increased to MCr2.6, which is 130% of the original cost.

O. My interpretation being this is what you pay for the hull sans module, as the module cost is mentioned separately.

P. So basically, the modularization costs twenty five kilobux per tonne, plus dedicated percentage of modified hull configuration to modularization, though, though that percentage is a one time cost.

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

Q. As far as I can determine, you can stuff any ship component into pods, except the spinal mount.

R. You still need a sort of superstructure to attach the pods to, the primary hull.

S. I suppose you can borrow the seventy five percent rule from modularization.

T. Though I would guess the primary twenty five percent would be spread out to provide that framework for podularization.

U. How far the pods' configuration strays from that of the primary hull to incompatibility, who knows?

 

[Condottiere]

Confederation Navy: Standardized Medium Fighters

V. Breakaway and podularization are direct attachments, which could be directly controlled from the primary bridge, if that accounted for, normally through additional costs for wiring.

W. External cargo and docking clamps are secondary attachments, in that there's no default control of their systems by the primary bridge, and for all intents and purposes, are autonomous, unless specifically wired to do so, even if only wirelessly so, to the primary hull.

X. As far as we know, drop tanks are unarmoured and carry only liquids, or maybe gas.

Y. Which works if it's for the reactionary rockets, and/or the power plant.

Z. Unknown, if you want to turn them into ammunition carriers, or directly, weapon pods.