What If? Make the UNN Great Again!!! (The Expanse).

Spartan303

In Captain America we Trust!
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Staff Member
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Osaul
Hello Director. At one point in time the United Nations Navy was the pinnacle of power and technological might within the Sol System. The most sophisticated and impressive Navy the humans of Sol had ever seen amongst the stars.

Those days are long gone!

Today the UNN is the butt of many jokes; most of it crude and involving farm animals and or garbage scowls (most of that coming from the MCRN but also within our own ranks). And after the fiasco that was the Earth/Mars war the United Nations Security Council finally coughed up the intestinal fortitude and funding for the development of a Next Generation fleet. It is your job to make the UNN great again!!!

...curious but you don't seem too enthusiastic about this?

Have no fear. This will not be a fleet designed by committee! Earth has learned that lesson well from the ill-fated Leonidas Battleship. And all ships currently in service will not get a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP). The ENTIRE FLEET is getting replaced! Not only that, the fleet is to be expanded to replace lost units from the war with the MCR but also to cover an expanded 'Area of Operations' with Earths new Extra Solar Colonies and resource and mining operations.

To that end YOU have been given final say over all aspects of designing this new fleet.

Everything from concept, design and testing of new technologies (or evolutions of already tried and true technologies so long as they're not already obsolete to cover expenses and save a buck. Seriously those assholes on the Leonidas committee should have been shot for that).

Your budget is not unlimited, mind you. The UN in all it's bureaucratic glory will give you the money you need for advanced weapons, defenses, snesors/communications and or propulsion systems. Anything that improves Combat capabilities and survivability for these new ships. They can easily justify these expenses to their respective constituents. But the UN is considerably less generous when it comes to crew comfort, morale and even updated training programs for the fleet (Security Council feels what we have is 'good enough'. Shocking they would take such a short sighted approach, I know.). So in order to procure funding for that, in addition to what you have, you'll have to fight the Security Council for additional funding. And they'll likely be spoiling for a fight too.

You are also hamstrung by the fact that the bigger and more power the ship you design (in particular Dreadnoughts and Battleships) the more they're going to eat into your budget. You'll have to justify your expenses.

And as if this isn't challenging enough there are two scenarios you can utilize to achieve your ends.

1.) Completely In-Universe development. Anything Earth has access right now or in development is on the table. Mars tech is unfortunately still a no go. Not only will the Security Council string you up my your entrails for suggesting it, but Mars is still Butthurt about our decrepit fleet kicking their backsides.

You can use protomolecule but considering how exotic and unpredictable the technology is, should something go wrong to ground the fleet or needlessly get sailors killed, you will be stripped of your rank, the blame thrown on you and if you are lucky you'll spend the rest of your life in jail. No pressure or anything.

Time frame for this is Season 4 if Expanse.

2.) You may still use any and all In-Universe technologies for development of the UNN fleet. However you get a lucky break in being allowed to purchase technologies from alternate 'peer' universes. How this is achieved is *INFORMATION REDACTED*.

Just know you'll get it, but in doing so this will vastly increase the cost of production and like result in less overall units constructed...which will see gaps in your expanded area of operations from Sol to the Extra Solar Colonies.

Peer Universes are listed below by code name to throw off MCRN spies.

NBSG
Babylon 5.
Star League: BattleTech
Firefly


The Choice is yours Director! Make the fleet great again!
 
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Sailor.X

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Founder
I will purchase hard from NBSG. I will put in an order to build no less than 10 Pegasus Class Battlestars. Complete with all the Nuke Tanking Goodness they hold. For air wings I will build Both Vipers and Minbari fighters. For frigate type ships I will build 100 of the various Colonial Frigates that were pre second Cylon War. If I had access to Macross tech I could really go wild lol.
 

Spartan303

In Captain America we Trust!
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Osaul
I will purchase hard from NBSG. I will put in an order to build no less than 10 Pegasus Class Battlestars. Complete with all the Nuke Tanking Goodness they hold. For air wings I will build Both Vipers and Minbari fighters. For frigate type ships I will build 100 of the various Colonial Frigates that were pre second Cylon War. If I had access to Macross tech I could really go wild lol.

Macros is not selected as a Peer universe. And 10 Mercury class Battlestars might just bankrupt the UNN for the next....decade. that is if there willing to sell their prized Battlestar to us.
 

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
Founder
Macros is not selected as a Peer universe. And 10 Mercury class Battlestars might just bankrupt the UNN for the next....decade. that is if there willing to sell their prized Battlestar to us.
I will sell them Heillum 3 from the moon. That stuff will be as good to the Colonials as Crude oil is to us.
 

Spartan303

In Captain America we Trust!
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Osaul
I will sell them Heillum 3 from the moon. That stuff will be as good to the Colonials as Crude oil is to us.

So becoming a net supplier of a cheap alternative and superior form of energy to the Colonies in exchange for not just technology but direct military hardware?
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
I vote we buy a bunch of Hyperion class Cruisers from the Earth Alliance Mind you I'll have them fix the obvious structural weakpoint they have admidships and buy gravity plating and jump drives(and strip out their hyperdrives to make room for other stuff like improved point defenses, more missile(and torpedo)tubes, more cargo capacity,and if we can get away with it some better crew quarters, heck maybe add a some railguns)from the 12 Colonies to make them capable of long term and extra solar patrols in addition to being available for a rapid response anywhere in the Solar System. If we still have the budget left over do the same with as many Nova Class Dreadnoughts as possible. Since said classes are the EA's older ships and thus shouldn't be too expensive to purchase or difficult to get them to sell to the ships to us. Both classes are also tough as old boot leather and since they are armed with primarily energy weapons our logistical costs will be massively lower.
 
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Spartan303

In Captain America we Trust!
Administrator
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Osaul
I vote we buy a bunch of Hyperion class Cruisers from the Earth Alliance Mind you I'll have them fix the obvious structural weakpoint they have admidships and buy gravity plating and jump drives from the 12 Colonies to make them capable of long term and extra solar patrols. If we still have the budget do the same with as many Nova Class Dreadnoughts as possible. Both classes are the EA's older ships and thus shouldn't be too expensive to purchase or difficult to get them to sell to the ships to us.


You assume incorrectly. Both ships are an order of magnitude larger and more massive. And directly buying military hardware that you have to refit for your own needs ends up eating a tremendous amount of money. Unless you can find an alternative means of payment, about a dozen Hyperions might be 'it' in terms of your fleet.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
You assume incorrectly. Both ships are an order of magnitude larger and more massive. And directly buying military hardware that you have to refit for your own needs ends up eating a tremendous amount of money. Unless you can find an alternative means of payment, about a dozen Hyperions might be 'it' in terms of your fleet.
Well....I suppose we could always sell the EA the protomolecule research we have in exchange for 30(plus whatever we can afford on our own budget) or so hulls since they really do seem like the nation who would like to really look into the stuff given how desperate they are for an advantage over the Minbari.

Oh and sell the Colonies Helium 3 as @Sailor.X proposed in order to pay for a production license for Jump drives and gravity plating. The economic benefits of having such technology as related to resource extraction(among numerous other applications for the gravity plating in particular )will help boast the economy of Earth considerably which will boast our budget and enable us to buy more ships and maybe a production license for them down the line. Said technology will also make extra solar colonies and resource extraction possible. Moreover since the EA and the Star League are always hungry for more resources we can probably make money selling what we don't need a few years down the line

Hell if we're being extra smart we can sell Jump Drives and Gravity Plating (or act as a go betweens at a decent markup between the Colonies and the EA and the Star League if our license forbids us making them for export)to the EA and the Star League in order to pay for the infrastructure we'll need to build for our new ships
 
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Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Hmmm thinking about it I think we'll ditch the Nova class Dreadnoughts from my plan since with the upgrades I want the Hyperions shall be massively more capable than anything Mars has and far more affordable as well when compared to the Novas. Moreover since EA ships include FTL coms technology(which will again massively help out our economy which is rather good since it needs love and will probably get us a larger budget in the future) we get the luxury of keeping the bulk of our ships in friendly space and still be effectively covering all of UN assets in the Sol and nearby systems thanks to the jump drives which are a massive force multiplier.
 
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Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Alright assuming we can get 60 Hyperions from EA and our own construction(assume its probably a 50/10 split on how many we got from the EA vs. how many we built ourselves)in the first decade of my heading the UNN via our budget and my proposed economic plans here's how they will be distributed on a routine basis.

16 ships will form the 1st Fleet more commonly known as the Home Fleet which will serve as Earth's shield and where all ships will work up after leaving dockyard hands.

At least 6(and up to 12) ships will be in dockyard hands at all times in order to ensure we have an active refit and upgrade cycle.

16 Ships will form our 2nd Fleet which will serve as Earth's Sword and as our patrol force in the Sol System

12 ships will form our 3rd Fleet which will patrol and explore outside the Sol System

4 to 10 ships(depending on how many ships are in Dockyard hands) will form our 4th Fleet which will be our stragetic reserve.

Any future hulls will probably be used to establish a 5th Fleet composed of around 10 ships (which will join the 3rd Fleet outside the Sol System but will be moreso focused on protecting our colonies and shipping and less so on exploration) and reinforcing our existing fleets.

By the time we commission out 80th hull which will enable these plans to be fully carried out I presume I'll probably have recently retired,hailed as the man who rebuilt the UNN and who enabled the recovery of Earth's economy(and if we're lucky the idiots in charge will have used some of that money to start fixing the ecosystem) and the spreading of mankind throughout the Stars
 
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