Your Nation's Warships, Batch 3

[Allanea]

The British Navy did away with the ship's cat due to concerns it might bring in disease.

This is not really a major concern in the modern day if the cat has been immunized etc. properly.

On the other hand there's no practical benefit to a ship's cat in terms of rats because modern hygiene, deratisation measures and refrigerated food storage do away with rats far more efficiently than a cat would. They're mostly only there as pets/mascots.

[The Selkie]

The British Navy did away with the ship's cat due to concerns it might bring in disease.

This is not really a major concern in the modern day if the cat has been immunized etc. properly.

On the other hand there's no practical benefit to a ship's cat in terms of rats because modern hygiene, deratisation measures and refrigerated food storage do away with rats far more efficiently than a cat would. They're mostly only there as pets/mascots.

Hm... I see. So, morale booster mostly, if at all, you say. That they don't really hunt rats anymore was clear to me, too, but I hoped, that there might be more uses to it as morale booster and funny kitteh pictures.
Thank you very much for your replies.

[Lamoni]

The British Navy did away with the ship's cat due to concerns it might bring in disease.

This is not really a major concern in the modern day if the cat has been immunized etc. properly.

On the other hand there's no practical benefit to a ship's cat in terms of rats because modern hygiene, deratisation measures and refrigerated food storage do away with rats far more efficiently than a cat would. They're mostly only there as pets/mascots.

Hm... I see. So, morale booster mostly, if at all, you say. That they don't really hunt rats anymore was clear to me, too, but I hoped, that there might be more uses to it as morale booster and funny kitteh pictures.
Thank you very much for your replies.

It is really bad PR, if the cat drowns when the ship sinks, in most RL western nations.

[Laritaia]

Hm... I see. So, morale booster mostly, if at all, you say. That they don't really hunt rats anymore was clear to me, too, but I hoped, that there might be more uses to it as morale booster and funny kitteh pictures.
Thank you very much for your replies.

It is really bad PR, if the cat drowns when the ship sinks, in most RL western nations.

you would also basically have to have a crew member assigned as cat minder to make sure it didn't wander out on the deck during missile firings and other cat endangering ship operations.

[New Aeyariss]

Good morning,
I have a question, which might seem a bit weird, but since we are talking about warships, we might as well have something cute along the way as well: Ship's cats.
My idea is to have a ship's cat on my vessels and shore installations even in MT both for combatting evildoers and pests, as well as a morale factor for the crew. It sounds like a good idea to me, but that of course begs the question, what is done by modern navies to achieve exactly the same thing and how well that works.
So.... thoughts?

Meanwhile, on the Kuznetsov...

Ah, the mighty CaT-78 carrier based rodent superiority fighter...

Kaigun hoses cats on most vessels.

[Pharthan]

Good morning,
I have a question, which might seem a bit weird, but since we are talking about warships, we might as well have something cute along the way as well: Ship's cats.
My idea is to have a ship's cat on my vessels and shore installations even in MT both for combatting evildoers and pests, as well as a morale factor for the crew. It sounds like a good idea to me, but that of course begs the question, what is done by modern navies to achieve exactly the same thing and how well that works.
So.... thoughts?

Between refrigerated ship's stores or locked away stores that are not refrigerated (previously mentioned) and rat guards installed on mooring lines (not previously mentioned), pests are not generally a problem. Even bugs have a hard time staying alive long on a regularly cleaned vessel.

I'd have loved to have a cat though. Crew members do occasionally smuggle small pets onboard that are of little consequence and easy to hide (M-Div had a Praying Mantis for a bit on my boat, and there isn't a mechanic/engineer alive who won't try to keep any crabs or fish they find in condensers).

[Taihei Tengoku]

I don't even want to think about the crannies they would have to fish the cat out of when the ship goes to condition X or something

[Allanea]

This sounds like grounds for an excellent post.

[Gallan Systems]

ship's crab cutest

[Ormata]

Here's another question (Since I seem to use you guys as sounding-boards or summat).

What issues would you see with using passenger liners (Think Normandie and such other vessels) as armed troop transports (Aside from issues with easily disembarking troops) in a modern war environment?

[Spirit of Hope]

Here's another question (Since I seem to use you guys as sounding-boards or summat).

What issues would you see with using passenger liners (Think Normandie and such other vessels) as armed troop transports (Aside from issues with easily disembarking troops) in a modern war environment?

You would have a hard time arming them to be relevant in a sea battle, though you could probably use things like Phalanx and SeaRAM you could give it a minimum of protection.

Given the size of commercial air fleets modernly it would probably be easier to simply fly soldiers to the destination, rather than packing them onto a passenger liner. IIRC that is what the US planned to do in case of WWIII in Europe.

[Ormata]

Here's another question (Since I seem to use you guys as sounding-boards or summat).

What issues would you see with using passenger liners (Think Normandie and such other vessels) as armed troop transports (Aside from issues with easily disembarking troops) in a modern war environment?

You would have a hard time arming them to be relevant in a sea battle, though you could probably use things like Phalanx and SeaRAM you could give it a minimum of protection.

Given the size of commercial air fleets modernly it would probably be easier to simply fly soldiers to the destination, rather than packing them onto a passenger liner. IIRC that is what the US planned to do in case of WWIII in Europe.

Currently the size of my air fleet is incapable of being reused in a military capacity, and I think there is a lack of adequate airfields to be used.

In addition to this, they would, of course, be escorted by cruisers and the like, though I see your point.

[Taihei Tengoku]

If you can't have air power then you can't really have sea power

[The Selkie]

You would have a hard time arming them to be relevant in a sea battle, though you could probably use things like Phalanx and SeaRAM you could give it a minimum of protection.

Given the size of commercial air fleets modernly it would probably be easier to simply fly soldiers to the destination, rather than packing them onto a passenger liner. IIRC that is what the US planned to do in case of WWIII in Europe.

Currently the size of my air fleet is incapable of being reused in a military capacity, and I think there is a lack of adequate airfields to be used.

In addition to this, they would, of course, be escorted by cruisers and the like, though I see your point.

Isn't this what the Brits did during the Falkland War? It worked mostly.

Thanks to all those commenting on my question about the cats, you helped me quite a lot!

[The Akasha Colony]

Here's another question (Since I seem to use you guys as sounding-boards or summat).

What issues would you see with using passenger liners (Think Normandie and such other vessels) as armed troop transports (Aside from issues with easily disembarking troops) in a modern war environment?

It is better and faster to fly troops to the field rather than ship them by sea. Their equipment goes by sea, or in the case of the first wave of US troops expected to deploy to Europe, held in storage at bases in Europe ready to be dusted off and driven into combat.

Currently the size of my air fleet is incapable of being reused in a military capacity, and I think there is a lack of adequate airfields to be used.

In addition to this, they would, of course, be escorted by cruisers and the like, though I see your point.

Ocean liners are much, much rarer than passenger airliners and the infrastructure needed to operate them (deepwater ports) far rarer than a basic airfield.

[Spirit of Hope]

You would have a hard time arming them to be relevant in a sea battle, though you could probably use things like Phalanx and SeaRAM you could give it a minimum of protection.

Given the size of commercial air fleets modernly it would probably be easier to simply fly soldiers to the destination, rather than packing them onto a passenger liner. IIRC that is what the US planned to do in case of WWIII in Europe.

Currently the size of my air fleet is incapable of being reused in a military capacity, and I think there is a lack of adequate airfields to be used.

In addition to this, they would, of course, be escorted by cruisers and the like, though I see your point.

Your air fleet doesn't need to be large for conversion to military use, even a small air fleet will be much more efficient at carrying personnel than an ocean liner. Using the SS Normandie as an example, in normal load it can carry 2,000 people across the Atlantic in 4 days and 3 hours, using a crew of 1,300.

Obviously a modern design could probably go faster with a smaller crew and you can have your troops double or tripple bunk, but let's compare it to a 747.

a 747-8 can carry 500 or so passengers across the Atlantic in 7 hours, using a crew of 2. Even if it only gets 1 trip from home to the destination, because of the return trip, refueling, repairs, crew rest, etc, every 24 hours it will deliver 2,000 passengers in the same time frame. Meanwhile the SS Normandie still has to make the 4 day return journey before it can pick up any more passengers.

Which means for the total trip the SS Normandie delivers 2,000 passengers, and the 747-8 delivered 4,000, and that doesn't include the time the SS Normandie needs to take to restock supplies. With triple bunking the SS Normandie wins 6,000 to 4,000. However the SS Normandie needs 1,000 crew to the 747-8's 2 crew.

[The Akasha Colony]

Your air fleet doesn't need to be large for conversion to military use, even a small air fleet will be much more efficient at carrying personnel than an ocean liner. Using the SS Normandie as an example, in normal load it can carry 2,000 people across the Atlantic in 4 days and 3 hours, using a crew of 1,300.

Obviously a modern design could probably go faster with a smaller crew and you can have your troops double or tripple bunk, but let's compare it to a 747.

a 747-8 can carry 500 or so passengers across the Atlantic in 7 hours, using a crew of 2. Even if it only gets 1 trip from home to the destination, because of the return trip, refueling, repairs, crew rest, etc, every 24 hours it will deliver 2,000 passengers in the same time frame. Meanwhile the SS Normandie still has to make the 4 day return journey before it can pick up any more passengers.

Which means for the total trip the SS Normandie delivers 2,000 passengers, and the 747-8 delivered 4,000, and that doesn't include the time the SS Normandie needs to take to restock supplies. With triple bunking the SS Normandie wins 6,000 to 4,000. However the SS Normandie needs 1,000 crew to the 747-8's 2 crew.

A passenger liner in troop carrier service would be packed far more tightly than in revenue service. The RMS Queen Mary had a nominal passenger load of ~2,100 in revenue service but carried as many as 15,000 men (sometimes even more) in a single voyage during the war.

[Spirit of Hope]

Your air fleet doesn't need to be large for conversion to military use, even a small air fleet will be much more efficient at carrying personnel than an ocean liner. Using the SS Normandie as an example, in normal load it can carry 2,000 people across the Atlantic in 4 days and 3 hours, using a crew of 1,300.

Obviously a modern design could probably go faster with a smaller crew and you can have your troops double or tripple bunk, but let's compare it to a 747.

a 747-8 can carry 500 or so passengers across the Atlantic in 7 hours, using a crew of 2. Even if it only gets 1 trip from home to the destination, because of the return trip, refueling, repairs, crew rest, etc, every 24 hours it will deliver 2,000 passengers in the same time frame. Meanwhile the SS Normandie still has to make the 4 day return journey before it can pick up any more passengers.

Which means for the total trip the SS Normandie delivers 2,000 passengers, and the 747-8 delivered 4,000, and that doesn't include the time the SS Normandie needs to take to restock supplies. With triple bunking the SS Normandie wins 6,000 to 4,000. However the SS Normandie needs 1,000 crew to the 747-8's 2 crew.

A passenger liner in troop carrier service would be packed far more tightly than in revenue service. The RMS Queen Mary had a nominal passenger load of ~2,100 in revenue service but carried as many as 15,000 men (sometimes even more) in a single voyage during the war.

Well that is a higher increase than I imagined, note I did include numbers for triple bunking. The point is still the same though, one 747-8 can get rather easily get 4,000 troops across in the same time it takes the RMS Queen Mary to get 15,000 across. But it does so at a fraction of the crew and cost.

[Ormata]

Soo....the ocean liner is viable, then.

[Spirit of Hope]

Soo....the ocean liner is viable, then.

Not really. A 747 does 1/3 of it's load, while using 1/100 of the crew at 1/10th of it's price.

[Gallan Systems]

Soo....the ocean liner is viable, then.

Not really. A 747 does 1/3 of it's load, while using 1/100 of the crew at 1/10th of it's price.

It doesn't.

[Ormata]

Permit me to observe that, technically, an ocean liner can be equipped with cruise missile systems, and can therefore perform stand-off support for infantry landings.

Also, 15,000 per vessel makes me very, very happy.

[The Akasha Colony]

Well that is a higher increase than I imagined, note I did include numbers for triple bunking. The point is still the same though, one 747-8 can get rather easily get 4,000 troops across in the same time it takes the RMS Queen Mary to get 15,000 across. But it does so at a fraction of the crew and cost.

The real issues are flexibility and availability.

Crew cost and quantity are actually not very relevant because crew training is fixed within the timespan under consideration. If you've already got an ocean liner in revenue service, you already have crew to operate the ship and you can't feasibly just take these crew and suddenly turn them into qualified airline pilots. Likewise, you can't really expect an airline pilot to suddenly become a qualified merchant mariner. They're stuck in their roles and any "trade offs" between them are moot because they can't actually be switched.

Absolute journey cost is also moot as well. It's generally of secondary importance in an actual wartime scenario relative to other concerns like capacity, reliability, and survivability. The huge fuel costs incurred by jet travel would not be insignificant, either.

The real issue is that mustering the 15,000+ troops needed to properly fill a large superliner takes a long time. Longer than the actual voyage. For the US in WWII, this was not a huge concern as it could easily muster 15,000 to ship off to Europe once mobilization peaked. But nowadays it would be very hard to find and muster the 15,000 men needed to fill a ship, and that's after all the work involved in converting the ship to maximum capacity. There is also today only a single ocean liner left in service. Ocean liners as a category of ship are no longer very economical, so any ocean liner intended for this purpose would need large government subsidies to remain in business. Cheaper cruise ships are not as suitable as they are not intended for high-speed ocean voyages.

In comparison, filling a few hundred seats on a plane is easy and there are plenty of planes. If your nation is short of planes, it is far easier to purchase or charter additional planes than additional ocean liners. And early delivery of the passengers means they can start doing other tasks while waiting for their equipment to arrive (if it isn't already there for them in storage), like setting up a base facility and becoming acclimated to the local area.

Permit me to observe that, technically, an ocean liner can be equipped with cruise missile systems, and can therefore perform stand-off support for infantry landings.

Also, 15,000 per vessel makes me very, very happy.

This is technically true of literally any ship bigger than like 500 tonnes displacement.

Unfortunately, ocean liners have no way to actually deploy landing forces so this is irrelevant.

[Ormata]

I have an army of 500,000 troops.

I can fill an ocean liner with a single Division of my Lagunari.

Though I can see the issues. Finding an ocean liner would be difficult, though they are not so rare in my region as they are in real life (Due to...reasons...?) so I can confiscate some vessels for my use.

[Spirit of Hope]

Well that is a higher increase than I imagined, note I did include numbers for triple bunking. The point is still the same though, one 747-8 can get rather easily get 4,000 troops across in the same time it takes the RMS Queen Mary to get 15,000 across. But it does so at a fraction of the crew and cost.

The real issues are flexibility and availability.

Crew cost and quantity are actually not very relevant because crew training is fixed within the timespan under consideration. If you've already got an ocean liner in revenue service, you already have crew to operate the ship and you can't feasibly just take these crew and suddenly turn them into qualified airline pilots. Likewise, you can't really expect an airline pilot to suddenly become a qualified merchant mariner. They're stuck in their roles and any "trade offs" between them are moot because they can't actually be switched.

Absolute journey cost is also moot as well. It's generally of secondary importance in an actual wartime scenario relative to other concerns like capacity, reliability, and survivability. The huge fuel costs incurred by jet travel would not be insignificant, either.

The real issue is that mustering the 15,000+ troops needed to properly fill a large superliner takes a long time. Longer than the actual voyage. For the US in WWII, this was not a huge concern as it could easily muster 15,000 to ship off to Europe once mobilization peaked. But nowadays it would be very hard to find and muster the 15,000 men needed to fill a ship, and that's after all the work involved in converting the ship to maximum capacity. There is also today only a single ocean liner left in service. Ocean liners as a category of ship are no longer very economical, so any ocean liner intended for this purpose would need large government subsidies to remain in business. Cheaper cruise ships are not as suitable as they are not intended for high-speed ocean voyages.

In comparison, filling a few hundred seats on a plane is easy and there are plenty of planes. If your nation is short of planes, it is far easier to purchase or charter additional planes than additional ocean liners. And early delivery of the passengers means they can start doing other tasks while waiting for their equipment to arrive (if it isn't already there for them in storage), like setting up a base facility and becoming acclimated to the local area.

Even in their hay day ocean liners weren't very economical, and were often supported by government subsidies, specifically because of their use as troop transports and potential use as warships. There are unlikely to be any significant number of ocean liners around for a government to call upon unless they make significant efforts to support those ocean liners existence. At which point considerations like cost and crew should be considered, because the government should realize that for a smaller cost they can get the same troop ferrying capability, but in a more flexible package.

Yes if you happen to have ocean liners laying about it makes sense to use them. But that begs the question of why there are ocean liners like that around.

Permit me to observe that, technically, an ocean liner can be equipped with cruise missile systems, and can therefore perform stand-off support for infantry landings.

Also, 15,000 per vessel makes me very, very happy.

While it can carry and fire cruise missiles, it would require some retrofitting, especially if you want it to control those missiles in any meaningful way. Dedicated warships can simply do that job better.

I have an army of 500,000 troops.

I can fill an ocean liner with a single Division of my Lagunari.

The problem isn't just having the troops, but also getting them to the transport ship. Moving 15,000 men to a harbor isn't going to be an easy logistical feat. Especially if they aren't stationed together or close to the coast to begin with.