On Tue, 10 Jul 2012, Onno Meyer wrote:
A space police might use destroyers. They need a ship that is mightier
then a frighter comandeered by criminals, with propably some impovised
weapons attached. They need to carry enough space marines, to secure a
freighter. Anything larger is overkill for their mission.
Hello Johannes,
I believe we're getting a situation like the 1870s or 1880s. The
warships had heavy armor, and sails for safety and range reasons.
Commercial ships optimized for the shorter routes could outrun
them. For a steamer, furled sails would cost 1.5 knots or so.
1869: The Cutty Sark is launched. She could get 17.15 knots with
a favorable wind.
1872: The White Star liner Adriatic crosses the Atlantic at an
average 14.53 knots.
1875: HMS Shannon is launched. She has 12.25 knots top speed.
That is listed as the top speed, not the sustained speed ...
My TL15 4,000,000-ton cruiser can do 5 pc/day and 25 G. My TL15
30,000-ton freighter, running light, can make 12 pc/day and 4 G.
She consists of a big stardrive and power plant, contragrav and
a relatively small sublight drive, and thin armor. A destroyer
to catch such a ship would be so lightly armed that it becomes
useless in a fleet action.
If it's mission is to fight rouge civilian ships, lightly armed might be
enough. The question just would be if such a ship would have the right
size to be converted in a tramp freighter.
Otherwise maybe you can come up with assumption about FTL scanning and
communications, where a fleet of destroyers might catch freighters with
drive hunt tactics. (Which would mean you need more destroyers, which
again is good in context of the tramp freighter orign thread)
Alternativly one or more goverments might adopt the strategy to put their
power in very few super dreadnoughts, and keep a relativly large fleet of
destroyers, for scout and patrol missions.
Those destroyers would have little combat value.
The wet navy memes include aircraft carriers, submarines, and
submarine weapons (torpedoes). Imagine a situation where you
have just wet navy surface ships and guns. The destroyer would
be back to the gunboat configuration (for colonial service,
gunboat diplomacy, and shore bombardment).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_class_gunboat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilant_class_gunvessel
Regards,
Onno
Depending on FTL scanning assumptions propably destroyers could be used
similiar to submarines. Hang about traderoutes, attack passing freighters
and civilian ships, run when a warship is sighted.
But my original idea here was indeed pretty much a gunboat. The purpose of
the ship being scouting (so the navy can check itself, what happens in their
own territory), carrying some marines and spare crew, in case some
smuggler or similiar had been cought and needs to be transported to port
for processing, and to formaly establish a military presence (look you are
in our territory, we are a military ship. If you attack us this is a
definite act of war, and we will send our bemoths to your homeworlds).
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
