The following is an attempt to track French naval developments.
Ships and weapons by era:
Legacy ships and weapons
Major combatants: Konstantin and Kiev
Ordnance: Silka
2250's
Major combatants: Ypres
2270's
Major combatants: Suffren
System Defence Ships: Orage
Ordnance: Ritage-1
2280's
Major combatants: Richelieu
Minor combatants: Aconit
Fighters: Mistral, Riche, Bufer, Bonaparte, (Martel?)
Ordnance: DA-2290
2290's
Ordnance: Ritage-2
Major Combatants
On a general note, all major combatants detailed canonically have science sections and landing capability. They are very much "Enterprises", whereas most other nations major combatants seem to be much more like dedicated ship killers.
Battleships
The first battleship, Richelieu, was completed in 2293. It was also the first battleship anywhere (meaning the British and German BBs are also newly built). The names of four are supplied in canon (Richelieu, Tallyrand, Sainte Jeanne d'Arc and Napoleon) and at least one other, probably two and possibly 3-4 unnamed ships are in service. This means since 2293 the French have completed at least 5, and maybe as many as 7-8.
Since the first round were built in threes, it is perhaps indicative of the number of docks for such large vessels available. In this case the median figure of six completed before 2301 would be reasonable (meaning one additional BB outside of those listed in Invasion, probably flag of the Tirane squadron). This would imply another three have been laid down.
Richelieu: LD 2285, in service 2293 - subject of considerable delays and suspensions in building
Tallyrand: LD 2287, in service 2294? - again subject of considerable delays
Ste. Jeanne d'Arc: LD 2287, in service 2295?
"DeGaulle": in service 2299?
"Charlemagne": in service 2300?
Napoleon: in service 2301?
The armour value of 0 is a mistake, and seems to be a typo for 10.
It is worth noting that the Germans (and British) have built an intermediate type called a battlecruiser, and the American "battleship" Columbia and her two sisters (Intrepid and Hornet) are also in this category.
SotFA notes that doctrinally these vessels are meant to operate alone, and have the full range of capabilities to do so, or act as flagships of task forces (TF). It also notes the French suffered heavy losses in the Central Asian War. Given the apparent lack of a creditable Manchu battlefleet one wonders if this was against the Manchurian ground based defences.
Below we note the size of the landers, requiring a huge landing bay (at three volumes, 37,800 m3 for the landers alone - big enough, dimensions and bay doors permitting, to carry a Kennedy internally). If the ships carried fighters instead, then deckloads (at six volumes) would be in excess of 30 fighters. Hence the BB is also a major fighter carrier. The adventure hook here is that the French probably have a very large excess capacity for carrying fighters into action over their actual numbers of fighters. This leads to America and other nations basing fighter squadrons off the French ships.
Also, what about the fighter carrier? This may actually be an older type predating the modern Battleship. There are 61 fighters split between 2 BB and 1 CV at Earth.
Cruisers
Suffren
The Suffren is a 2270's design. It seems likely that improved Suffren's have been built and more modern systems installed during various refits. One should note the Suffren is probably more heavily gunned than you think, as 24 MW of unused power. Hence she probably has 30 turrets, but they didn't want to give her a second sheet.
As an aside, the landers are described as 35 x 15 x 4 m, which is bloody huge. The picture makes them blocky so they probably have an internal volume close to 2,000 m3. Platoon lander? That's a bloody great company lander, at least 50% larger than an LC-20, and with the same great inability to operate without a dirtside base (the landers lack wings for example). However, it can deliver an armoured company group to the surface. If one wished to grapple fighters there instead of the landers there is room to carry at least a six ship squadron.
While highly capable already, with upgrades she could be even more formidable. The baseline Suffren is a match for the BC Bismarck, suffering only from her lack of fighters (addressed above) and smaller complement of remote weapons. At the same time, she'd dominate a Bismarck at long range (more communicators, better sensors, and Bismarck's fighters will die horribly if they attack Suffren), and at short range her greater firepower would be telling (although the Bismarck is slightly better protected). With 2290's era screens, weapons, and perhaps an array of submunitions launchers, coupled with a fighter squadron, would make her unmatched. If built from 2280's materials (advanced composites) at the same protection level nearly 7,000 tons of mass could be saved and, combined with 2280's era improved engines, speeds would increase to well over warp 4.
Konstantin
Probably a representative of an older French cruiser, pre 2250's (when France developed workable fusion reactors).
Desarge Liners
On another note, in the shape of the Desarge class of liner, France has 26 reserve cruisers.
Destroyers and the Ypres
There are no French Destroyers listed. The Kiev might be an older French DD.
However, a Ypres type ship is rated as a DD by the Australians. I contend that French DD's are of this type. In fact I contend that the Destroyers are dedicated ship killers and the name derived not from the old "torpedo boat destroyer", but rather something like "croiser destructeur".
A French "Maréchal" probably looks something like a Kennedy with armour and a heavier weapons load. Essentially a "half-Suffren" without the troops, but with 24 Ritage-2 and a larger array of communicators.
One notes that the Castiglione and Austerlitz frigates in Invasion have "battle" names like the Ypres (and there is a conflict on the name of the one remaining Ypres, which according to Lone Wolf is the "Ypres", the Ypres "Foudroyant" is in Invasion). The Castiglione forms a division with the Maréchal Suchet, indicating she indeed is a Ypres or similar.
Patrol Ships, Aconit et al.
The Aconit and Orage are reason for puzzlement. One should note they are longer ranged than you think. The Aconit carries 14 MW-weeks fuel, and is unlikely to need to fire her guns continuous for this time. Hence she can cruiser at 2 MW for 7 weeks, and longer if she goes slower. Moreover, if you give her a solar power array her insystem time is effectively unlimited by fuel. Something similar goes for the Orage (simply not powering her guns gives her 15 weeks endurance!).
One should note that "MHD and sail" is probably the standard power arrangement for smaller craft, and older ones.
These should really be thought more of "coast guard" ships rather than combatants, freeing up the real warships and allowing them maintenance and training time instead of chasing merchants. The Aconit does not need fleet speed to achieve this, only more speed than a typical freighter.
There are four French Aconits named in SC, Aconit and Vaquelin didn't survive 1st Tithonus, Duperre and Kersaint did. The SC counter mix gives two German Aconits (Kassel and Hessen), two Ukrainian (Kirovograd and Azov) and three Russian. Popular ship, with only the Martel (16 counters, two eight fighter squadrons) being more common.
(Others named are Pluton (Contagion, Challenge 46), and possibly Faucon (Lone Wolf, Challenge 33)
One needs to wonder why four Aconits were in the front line at Aurore. The Aconit is obviously inspired by the Floréal class and A69 type Aviso, and her primary mission isn't high intensity combat, it's chasing suspected smugglers and escorting merchants. Indeed, in wartime France supplements these patrol flotillas with armed merchantmen. Arguably these may have been there to there to conduct patrols, but why send more to the front Ukraine?
One of the major advantages of the Aconit, not often considered, is the darned thing can be built on a planetary surface and launched to orbit....
Fighters
One wonders why at least five different fighter classes, all of which came into service nearly simultaneously?
The Martel is obviously the principle anti-ship fighter. The French have scores of these.
The Mistal appears to be a surface based fighter with a role of lofting a single nuclear missile up the gravity well, no mention of numbers.
The Riche and Bufer are essentially "missile bombers", the former being bought "in quantity" whereas there are few of the latter. Again the primary mission is lofting missiles (or other launched weapons) out of the gravity well.
The Bonaparte is essentially the planet based equivalent of the Martel.
Invasion presents the problem of not mentioning fighters based on planetary surfaces. Only non-streamlined fighters (Gustavs and Martels) are mentioned. Given the German deployment of 20 Udets at BCV-4, and approximately 50 Wespes deployed along the arm (probably 4 groups of 12) we can conclude large numbers of planet based fighters exist.
The point of said fighters? Probably as a method of launching stutterwarp missiles from a planets surface against an intruding blockader.
Ordnance
One "brain bug" that developed in SotFA was that in the 2270's the French abandoned missiles, which is not what the original source (Ritage-1 writeup in boxed set) said. Indeed, this was projected back to the 2250's Ypres (!).
The French switched to the Ritage in the 2270's, and before that they used a det-missile. This is likely to be the Silke (i.e. Silka). The Ritage-2 is essentially a bigger, more modern Silke that has replaced the Ritage, to the point that in 2297 the French were dumping stocks of these weapons. However, the Ritage-2 doesn't fit the missile ports for the standard 1 m missile.
As an aside, det-missiles have to be fission devices, because fusion reactions don't produce X-Rays, they mainly produce neutrons. Also, because we want to collimate the X-Rays down thin lead based wave guides the nuclear "physics package" must be behind the collimator. Most SF imagines the collimator waveguides surrounding the physics package. This is unlikely. The nuclear X-Ray "laser" (which, BTW is not a laser, it is not monochromatic amongst other things) is more like a nuclear shaped charge. The fact these weapons created multiple hits is an artifact of the damage system, which is why you roll once for a missile hit/miss decision, not for individual strikes. The idea is a single "hit" that burns so deeply into a ship it effects multiple compartments.
Whether this is realistic is another matter. However, some very recent advances in diffracting high frequency waves indicates some very hard X-Rays, or even gamma rays (which probably aren't good weapons) can be focused. This is good for turrets, as hard X-Rays are needed to make the range work without handwavium. Pushing things to the theoretical limit, using near gamma rays and the beam holds together quite well, a 1 cm spot at just over 1x 600,000 km hex (1.366 to be exact). This is not likely possible but it means a shooting and damage model similar to the standard turret is reasonable, upsetting my previous thinking on the matter.
Back to the French. The "no missiles" Ypres is easy to deal with, 3 communicators and 15 Silke installed, like a Kiev. Done. Probably these were replaced with Ritage missiles in the 2270's.
The French, of course, retained some det-missile capacity, designing the DA-2290 in the late 2280's based on CAW experience that these devices were useful. This of course implies they used such devices during the CAW, possibly improvised types. The most obvious improvisation would be to fix a submunitions disperser or two to a drone.
The Ritage-1 itself has room to replace the fixed weapon with a 7x2 det-warhead. The FRG appears to have sawn the front off a Ritage-1 and replaced it with a det-warhead to make the SR-10 (the SR-9 appears to be a similar job on a Manchurian Glowworm, one guesses the allies captured a lot of these weapons), so conversion seems reasonable.
Ritage-2 can't replace Ritage-1 in the fleet because the darned tubes are bigger. Hence a simple expedient is sawing the front off the R-1 and putting a R-2 warhead on.
So around 2300AD stock are probably:
Silke (legacy missile, mostly sold on)
Ritage-1, with fixed weapon
Ritage-1, with say a 5x2 det-warhead
Ritage-1, with the front fully replaced, no sensors but 10x2 det-warhead
DA-2290, mostly in service with ground based fighters
Ritage-2, mostly confined to newer ships, and larger ones that can take conversions or packs.
The French Fleet compared with the American, German, British etc.
The French Fleet thus consists of a high-low mix, with Aconits, Orages and perhaps other old patrol vessels, which don't form part of the real fighting arm of the French fleet, provided by BBs, Suffrens and ship killing destroyers.
It is useful to compare this to the most detailed fleet in canon - the American one.
They have a very large patrol arm, lots of MHD powered patrol vessels, and canon is replete with various ASF patrol cutters, close escorts etc. The ASF ship killing arm is almost entirely in the hands of their Kennedys, of which there are about 9, and the new Columbia BCs, of which one is available in 2301. Thus in 2301 the US fields about 10 principle combatants to Frances (when Desarges are armed) ca. 75 (ca. 50 without).
Their allies, Australia, have a mere handful of ships, a Ypres type, Kiev type and Aconit type, and like the Japanese, no ships at home.
It is also useful to compare with her principle rival in Europe, Germany.
In 2301, they have a BB, 2 BC, 7 cruisers (say 3 Hamburgs and 4 Konstantins), 7 DDs (we don't know what type) and 17 FF (a mix of Sachsens and Aconits), a much greater threat than the ASF.
The British have a large fleet (second only to France of those we have definite information), but not a huge amount is known about it (4 or 5 heavy capital ships, 7-9 heavy cruisers, 12+ destroyers and 26+ frigates).
The Japanese have a pretty small fleet (in fact merely a task group in French terms, and it seems to be integrated into the French system), and French allied Ukrainians and Russians have 3 old French cruisers, had 3 old French DDs, and 12 Aconit and Tula frigates.
The big unknown is the Manchurian fleet. A lot depends on how the Central Asian War was fought, so lets think about that.
Domination of Earth Space
For all our thoughts about defending the colonies etc., real war has a major focus - control of Earth orbit. If we take two hypothetical fleets both at or near Earth at the beginning of hostilities, the options are essentially for one to flee (and abandon Earth) or to fight a major battle in near Earth space. Think of it this way, all the bases and shipyards are within weapons range of each other, analogous to the Grand Fleet and High Seas Fleet being dumped on a lake with their ports under each others guns. No messing around, it's a winner takes all battle royale.
Such a battle seems never to have occurred (it would have dwarfed Beowulf). In the wars between the Argentines and Brazilians, France may simply have said no fighting, and enforced a neutral zone (although in practice this will turn into a blockade by one side). However, when France fights Manchuria and Imperial Germany this is off the table.
The German war is easy to explain. The French blockaded Earth and only two colonies (Hochbaden and Halbinsel) supported Imperial Germany. There is very limited space war. At the far end of the French arm it is mainly focused on the intimidation of Dunkelheim, which was invaded and occupied by Hochbaden, and the French attempts to lift the occupation of Dunkelheim, and the blockade of Aurore with local forces. Nearer to Earth Imperial Germany sent its fleet (2 Sachsens) away to Grosshiddenfaden (DM+ 35 2436) and launched the odd raid. More on Grosshiddenfaden below.
Where the two Hamburgs and a Sachsen that attacked Alpha Centauri came from is anyones guess, but the only one I have that makes sense is they were prepositioned on the Chinese Arm. In fact, it would indicate the Hanover/ Imperial Germany prepositioned all their fleet to raid before the attack on Bavaria/ Federal Germany, remembering that the Federal German fleet remained loyal to the FRG and hence France. Their dilemma after the war is similar to that of the French Navy under Vichy.
The war near Earth is one of a nation holding a major fleet overhead, fighting with the ground based weapons, which will be the story of the CAW. The Manchus, if they had a fleet it either hung around at Earth and got swallowed or buggered off way up the Chinese Arm. If so it got pretty dispersed, as by 2287 the French are sending lone Suffrens to swallow up Manchu bases, and the Manchus can do nothing about it.
One of the odd things about the SC scenarios is that many simply can't go the "historical" way. DeGrasse will slag the arms shipment to Joi in no time flat for example, and there is no way Xiuning Station was relieved.
The "heavy losses" the French took were probably fighting Manchurias ground based weapons, or may have been a major fleet engagement at Earth. However, the latter doesn't explain why the French (and Germans) didn't ortillery strike their way to Beijing. Strong ground defences with particle beam weapons (which cut through atmosphere really well) explains why this didn't happen. Note the defences of Hochbaden destroyed several Kafer battleships and took days for the Kafers to take down. I'm stop there.
Grosshiddenfaden
Is a really, really stupid idea. For a start it's not far off the beaten track, and its strategic position is so obvious no one wouldn't have considered using it. Its obvious utility in trading alone, bypassing BCB and Dunkelheim and creating a shorter BCV-4 to Hochbaden (and Aurore), would justify ESA placing an outpost there.
What's more, the backstory makes no sense. For Manchurian raiders to get there they have to run the gauntlet of the Earth-QAS corridor, then probably via the fortress that is BCV-4. Like trying to reach a secret base in the Black Sea from the Atlantic via an enemy held straits of Gibraltar and the Bosphorous.
Conclusion
The French are more of a hegemon than many suggest. Remember, about a fifth of humanity are French citizens (and damn the extra zeros on the end of Manchurias and Central Asias populations, don't people ever read demographic breakdowns?). However, there was a very large movement in the fanbase trying to cast France as the bad guy, even to the point of rewriting which side Bavaria was on during the WoGR (BTW it was Frances, they were invaded by Imperial Germany and annexed). When the navies are closely examined you find the French may in fact be capable of taking on the erst of the world combined.
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