Specialization is intelligent and it works. We've been told by the GM we can either continue focusing on making our ground troops as powerful as possible or we can focus on building up a bigass navy, and that trying to do both will likely be suboptimal - jack of all trades and master of none. We have literally the best ground army in the Trust, and I see no reason to change that since nobody else can fill that role better than we can.
If an ant can't stay with its hive it is a dead ant. Warp storms are an issue here.
Even in the absence of warp storms removing vital specialist support from the Trust at random, the rest of the Trust seems to have no interest in developing the sort of fleet that can support our ground forces. I think the multiplier the Avernite ground troops would get from a fleet that can support from the high ground of orbit is far greater than the multiplier Avernite ground troops would get from yet more resources being lavished upon them.
By passing up a genius level admiral for Avernus, we've made taking the orbital high ground more expensive (when it isn't plain impossible against heavily defended orbits).
Moving forward, I think the importance of finding ways to get Rotbart the elder and Rotbart the younger experienced in naval combat has become more important. Both of them will be starting with a -15 to their effective martial, and that's assuming Syr goes to naval school next - I'm not entirely sure if she should or not. Finding ways to gain experience and not gut our fleet or cripple our economy with repair bills is also good.
In the short run, if everything goes according to plan, we'll be working with the rest of the trust. Of course, thing rarely go according to plan--see the time period when almost the entire Trust navy was stuck behind warp storms, or how Garkill split us from the rest of the Trust and had unquestioned orbital supremacy. In the long run, odds are excellent we'll eventually have split operations as Trust members will have different interests.
On the issue about lack of Syr not being key for a strong navy, my impression is that military force = (Command Quality) * (Crew Quality) * (Equipment Quality) * (Numbers). Right now, on the ground front we've got strong everything--lots of well-equipped troops of excellent quality and a deep roster of talented commanders. Adding Syr might up the command quality slightly (maybe change that multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15), but in anything approaching a fair fight we're absolute bullshit already. However, adding her there won't give our ground troops the ability to deal with an enemy that has orbital supremacy--we'd just steadily lose troops to orbital bombardment--and any enemy that would pose even a slight risk to us on the ground would quickly establish orbital superiority. On the Navy front, we've got great equipment quality, and our crew and command quality is mediocre, and our numbers are a bit low. Yeah, we need to get our numbers up, but getting a really strong commander would still have a disproportionate impact (using above example but going from a 1.5 multiplier to a 2.15 multiplier)--especially as we have no real way to improve crew quality without experience--and it would greatly simplify gaining that experience without paying a large economic cost, as it costs a lot of resources to improve both numbers equipment quality, as well as to repair/rebuild after getting that experience.
I really think you've hit the nail on the head here Reynal.
This would actually be an interesting challenge. Can anyone design a fleet that would be good at both planetary assault and handle a fast fleet?
Maybe... Carrier based?
@fasquardon This seems like it might be in your wheelhouse.
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Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) | Page 1428
Honestly, at this level of detail, my mind simply rebels against the utter silliness of most of the ships in the graveyard. Not to mention the silliness of WH40k naval combat itself (well, at least 40k is relatively good, compared to most space opera).
I mean, who in their right mind would develop battlecruisers that can't keep up with their own escorts? The fastest battlecruiser has a speed of 5, the fastest escorts speed 7 or 8. It means that the battlecruisers can't actually be used as battlecruisers.
The same goes for all the size classes of the graveyard ships. Big = slower seems to be how it works. That's not how you make an effective fleet. You want each portion of the fleet to be able to move at the same speed. All raiders - whether they are escort raiders or capital ship sized raiders - should move at the same speed. All planetary assault - whether big grand cruisers or tiny frigates - should move at the same speed.
And again, the ship graveyard has too many ship classes. Using all these designs together would not only be a quartermaster's nightmare, but it would be a nightmare in a battle as fleet and ship commanders fought to keep the diverse craft organized and able to effectively engage in their specialty. Real navies found that fewer and more flexible ship designs were what was effective in the real heat of war
So at this point I am trying to ignore the (to me) cringe-worthy details and have been thinking on what the QM is saying the fleets would act like.
With a carrier based fleet, the question is: what would carriers be good at? The graveyard has carriers at every size class from light cruisers up. (I really have no idea what the DAoT navies needed 12 different classes of carrier vessels for! I suspect it was a jobs program.) Probably these carriers have very different specialities. An American super-carrier is an air superiority platform - it is poorly adapted for escort duty (which is better left to light carriers) or supporting landings (which are better left to what we now call amphibious assault ships). Some of the ships in the graveyard clearly correspond to the three ship-types mentioned above. But many of them don't, so we'd need to figure out what those others were for.
Add to that: I'm not clear on what exactly carrier-based craft are good for in 40k. The case for carriers in space (real space, not space opera) is a poor one if you are able to build ships that can tough out multiple weapon strikes (which is certainly true in 40k). On the other hand, how fleets work in 40k generally seems to follow what blue-water navies were doing in the period between 1890 and 1945. For most ship-types, this gives you a good idea of what a ship design is supposed to do. But for carriers, it doesn't, since carriers changed so dramatically through this period.
Both of you seem to have a great love for a fast Sniper Division. My question is, why do the Snipers need to be fast? Space is way too big for enemies to block shots on orbital platforms or flagships, and if they by some miracle manage to do it, then we still kill the ship trying to block. As long as we out-range them, they have to come to us to stop the bombardment, and then our heavily armored battle line will mulch them.
Snipers need to be fast because they need to run toward an enemy that is retreating, to harass them, and they need to run away from an enemy closing with them, so they don't get destroyed in a close-quarters brawl. Really, a better simile to use would be "horse archer units". Sniper units depend on hiding in order to avoid being closed with, and it's not really possible to hide in space.
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A thought on larger fleet design issues: What fleet design is good against Orks and Nids?
The current designs from all parties seem to be good against defenses, monitors and slower fleets like Imperial and Chaos fleets. How do they stack up against what will probably be our main threats though?
fasquardon
Sigh, dumb priests.
