Rob:
That's what we tend to do around here if someone can't quite make up their mind right away.
I have no qualms about the Submariners having their own assets. Hell, given my reconsiderations, they'll most likely be the first, and they'll already have undersea bases to launch from. That's hella more useful than the behemoth I had in mind. That, and with a fleet of Blue Six-, TDD-, Seaview-, Seaquest-, and Nautilus-class subs... That's a force to be reckoned with.
Anywho, we can say that the Roughriders and Chris Marsden contracted out their subs to the people that really knew how to build a kick-ass sub.
Star Ranger:
It's tough to make an all-in-one package like this. Setting the flight deck between two rows of gunnery stations makes for a very wide ship with a very narrow flight deck. That, and you only have one. Two sounds better to me.
Besides, who said that you'd be doing gunops at the same time as flightops? Sure, there'd be planes in the air, but you can bet that the instant they gotta launch or recover someone that they're gonna put all mounts on a safe firing bearing. Common sense applies. (It also makes for a nice weakness in a seemingly all-powerful platform - not exactly Death Star level, but hey...)
As for the torpedoes, VLAs only lift the Mk 46 - a light weight torpedo weighing in at a mere 740 lbs. I know because I help load the suckers every time we get underway. Those things are small fry compared to the Mk 48 torpedoes used by submarines - a 3,900 lb. monster! Mostly we wouldn't expect a Mk 46 to be able to take down a sub, mostly because of range issues - hence why we decided to stick a rocket motor to the ass-end. And even then, it's be difficult to get even a 'soft-kill' on a an adversary sub.
BTW: How hard is it to score a hard kill on modern naval vessels? Answer: pretty damn hard. Hard kill means that you've destroyed that asset and there is no hope of it ever becoming a problem again. That means sinking the ship. Big Navy once conducted an experiment - they removed the gasket seals off of all the ventilation and door fittings, set material condition Zebra (all doors in all compartments shut, and a good deal of ventilation and plumbing fittings closed), then hit that sucker with a Mk 48. It didn't sink right away. So, they hit it with everything else. Mostly five-inch, and then another Mk 48. Even then, the ship refused to sink. Oh, don't get me wrong, she would have eventually gone down, but not before she drifted and became a navigational hazard for other ships. So, they had to get some SEALS to come in and break her keel in several places with explosive charges to speed things up.
Mounting the ability to launch a Fen equivalent/upgrade to a Mk48 says clearly to other submariners that this ship has the capability to retaliate. With twelve tubes they can do so with definitive overkill.
Fun thought. With Fen comms-tech, think that a sub-surface version of AEGIS is possible? It'd be like the German Wolf Packs all over again. *Evil Grin*
Besides, I forgot to mention one other thing the VLS Launchers would be packing: anti-orbital missiles. Similar to BMD, but longer range to reach orbit and with actual warheads for larger targets... or just making sure that 'near misses' aren't so near. After all, fragmentation's a bitch, especially in orbit.
Fnord:
Hooyah! I would love to see a group out to actively protect whales that didn't come off looking like a bunch of idiots in bat-boats. Really, though, a more political solution must be enacted before we can really start treating the whalers of certain countries (ie: Japan) like pirates.
Norway:
What can I say? I got a share and share alike attitude. Besides, with everyone else having same/similar hardware it makes inter-factional operations go that much more smoothly.
Also, I feel the scientific approach can be best handled by an Atlantis-style mobile city-base, but a small fleet of submarines would be very-much useful. Have to be insanely well built, though - liquid methane is not friendly stuff to sail in!
Timote:
Indeed! The Submariners definitely have access to resources ground-pounders do not have. I mean, they could even extract gold from salt-water! How cool is that? So, they got money, raw materials, and even a stable food supply if you're smart enough... yeah, they got it made. It won't be long until we start seeing undersea cities.
Bob:
I can see it as it potentially being a 'You scratch our back, we scratch yours' setup. Being based out in international waters (soon to become territorial waters) they can do remarkable things like building a space-tether to facilitate trade. After all, Australia can't have the monopoly as the sole trading nation with Fenspace. (BTW: That could also be a goal of the Solomon Space Agency) Also, I can only imagine the political uproar that will take place once areas that used to be considered 'International Waters' becomes the territorial waters of nascent undersea nations. This is where the Fen would be able to help out the most - in making sure nobody starts shooting at people over this matter.
That's what we tend to do around here if someone can't quite make up their mind right away.
I have no qualms about the Submariners having their own assets. Hell, given my reconsiderations, they'll most likely be the first, and they'll already have undersea bases to launch from. That's hella more useful than the behemoth I had in mind. That, and with a fleet of Blue Six-, TDD-, Seaview-, Seaquest-, and Nautilus-class subs... That's a force to be reckoned with.
Anywho, we can say that the Roughriders and Chris Marsden contracted out their subs to the people that really knew how to build a kick-ass sub.
Star Ranger:
It's tough to make an all-in-one package like this. Setting the flight deck between two rows of gunnery stations makes for a very wide ship with a very narrow flight deck. That, and you only have one. Two sounds better to me.
Besides, who said that you'd be doing gunops at the same time as flightops? Sure, there'd be planes in the air, but you can bet that the instant they gotta launch or recover someone that they're gonna put all mounts on a safe firing bearing. Common sense applies. (It also makes for a nice weakness in a seemingly all-powerful platform - not exactly Death Star level, but hey...)
As for the torpedoes, VLAs only lift the Mk 46 - a light weight torpedo weighing in at a mere 740 lbs. I know because I help load the suckers every time we get underway. Those things are small fry compared to the Mk 48 torpedoes used by submarines - a 3,900 lb. monster! Mostly we wouldn't expect a Mk 46 to be able to take down a sub, mostly because of range issues - hence why we decided to stick a rocket motor to the ass-end. And even then, it's be difficult to get even a 'soft-kill' on a an adversary sub.
BTW: How hard is it to score a hard kill on modern naval vessels? Answer: pretty damn hard. Hard kill means that you've destroyed that asset and there is no hope of it ever becoming a problem again. That means sinking the ship. Big Navy once conducted an experiment - they removed the gasket seals off of all the ventilation and door fittings, set material condition Zebra (all doors in all compartments shut, and a good deal of ventilation and plumbing fittings closed), then hit that sucker with a Mk 48. It didn't sink right away. So, they hit it with everything else. Mostly five-inch, and then another Mk 48. Even then, the ship refused to sink. Oh, don't get me wrong, she would have eventually gone down, but not before she drifted and became a navigational hazard for other ships. So, they had to get some SEALS to come in and break her keel in several places with explosive charges to speed things up.
Mounting the ability to launch a Fen equivalent/upgrade to a Mk48 says clearly to other submariners that this ship has the capability to retaliate. With twelve tubes they can do so with definitive overkill.
Fun thought. With Fen comms-tech, think that a sub-surface version of AEGIS is possible? It'd be like the German Wolf Packs all over again. *Evil Grin*
Besides, I forgot to mention one other thing the VLS Launchers would be packing: anti-orbital missiles. Similar to BMD, but longer range to reach orbit and with actual warheads for larger targets... or just making sure that 'near misses' aren't so near. After all, fragmentation's a bitch, especially in orbit.
Fnord:
Hooyah! I would love to see a group out to actively protect whales that didn't come off looking like a bunch of idiots in bat-boats. Really, though, a more political solution must be enacted before we can really start treating the whalers of certain countries (ie: Japan) like pirates.
Norway:
What can I say? I got a share and share alike attitude. Besides, with everyone else having same/similar hardware it makes inter-factional operations go that much more smoothly.
Also, I feel the scientific approach can be best handled by an Atlantis-style mobile city-base, but a small fleet of submarines would be very-much useful. Have to be insanely well built, though - liquid methane is not friendly stuff to sail in!
Timote:
Indeed! The Submariners definitely have access to resources ground-pounders do not have. I mean, they could even extract gold from salt-water! How cool is that? So, they got money, raw materials, and even a stable food supply if you're smart enough... yeah, they got it made. It won't be long until we start seeing undersea cities.
Bob:
I can see it as it potentially being a 'You scratch our back, we scratch yours' setup. Being based out in international waters (soon to become territorial waters) they can do remarkable things like building a space-tether to facilitate trade. After all, Australia can't have the monopoly as the sole trading nation with Fenspace. (BTW: That could also be a goal of the Solomon Space Agency) Also, I can only imagine the political uproar that will take place once areas that used to be considered 'International Waters' becomes the territorial waters of nascent undersea nations. This is where the Fen would be able to help out the most - in making sure nobody starts shooting at people over this matter.