Hi PeterZ,
It's good to read your posts again.
Quite aside from most of Manticore's civilian industry surviving OB, since a lot was on the surface because that's where the customers will use it; Beowulf, Haven and Silesia have all of theirs, and while Manticore had down market or cheaper versions foe those unable to afford their top end, Manticore can certainly line up other producers for customers since they've been doing that for centuries.
The early textev mentioned more than a few times that the MMM, ie the Manticoran Merchant Marine, was the biggest shipper beyond the SL, only gradually did we read that the MMM had become the largest shipper in the SL, Beowulf being one of the four largest in the SL at the same time.
We still don't know how far humanity has spread beyond Sol since the advent of the Warshawski sails unleashed people from the light speed chains
If mankind managed to travel over 600 LY from Sol to colonize new star systems during the sub-light cryo era, how much further have we gone in over 6 centuries when those pioneers can travel 200, 800, or 1400 times etc, beyond that former limit at much lower costs in much greater numbers?
Manticore was able to maintain effective contact with civilization in the SL, if not Sol itself, even though it was a five-plus year round trip; today that same ~5 year round trip could mean some star systems or colonies could easily be 3000+ years from Sol, if not Manticore and the wormhole network.
Obviously the Sollies aren't interested in them, and they're too new to be wealthy as Beowulf or Manticore are, but there must be a minimum of tens of thousands within 200 LY of all the dozens of known warp termini beyond the SL and the verge (2505 each if the same density as the SL, although Silesia is half again as dense), despite how sparse those known wormhole termini are scattered among so many billion cubic LY's.
I use the 200 LY radius around wormhole termini as it seems to be common for freighters since OBS, and freighters visiting humanity beyond the SL via those WHB's could visit several systems and return to the GA in reasonable times ie the same as the past while spreading the latest news among their many products.
I suspect once the current war simmers down, all major governments will have large civilian manned fleets [because corporations couldn't afford the long intervals between discoveries for decades] like Manticore's, searching for wormholes, not just to find the MAlign's hidden access within the SL (because the GA already figured that out), but to open and secure access to new markets with humanity beyond the SL [HBtSL or Mankind BtSL?], which may be the best way to ensure economic growth given the intensity of competition within 500-600 LY of Sol, now that the old SL/transtellar shackles have been broken forever.
Financially, I'm not too concerned about Solarian confiscation of Manticoran assets, because they'd first have to find them, and given the animosity Mainticore has been receiving for decades if not centuries, I suspect Manticore has been burying its investments through third party fronts in other SL systems or transtellars etc it secretly controls, the number of which will probably stun the Sollies when they find out.
Hiding some assets might be as simple as publicly buying Manticoran shares by a third party transtellar secretly owned or controlled by Manticore, essentially shifting the money from one pocket to another; which deep Manticoran financial and business agents might still be doing right now or some other variation, NTM all the other myriad ways.
Of course, Beowulf may have been doing this even earlier since its a great intel avenue against Mesa or corruption in general.
The fact that the Solarian financial and business sectors are soon to be charging the SL 50% higher interest to fight the war, indicates their likely reaction to any attempts to seize Manticoran assets, perhaps partly on pure principle; besides a probable expectation of what the RMN will do when it reaches any such system and discovers what's been done; I suspect holding the system's orbital infrastructure to ransom (like the British did to Alexandria in 1814 among other examples) might recover those assets and then some [sum?
] rather quickly, if not from an economic boycott or blockade after the war until said investments with interest are recovered or repaid.
Then there's the fact that Kolokoltsov mentions the RMN already controls around 80% of all wormhole termini, as far as he then knew, enabling trade to be restored to those regions, once the SLN has been cleared from those sectors, which shouldn't be that hard.
Given the production rate previously noted in HoS, in the ten monthes since the June 1920 Fleet Strength Chart, which was obviously considerably exceeded in the ten monthes before OB, the MA probably added over a thousand warships below the wall in those 20+ monthes [NTM including the IAN], while the RHN with nearly 40 industrialized systems could and probably did assign several systems to produce each warship class besides the 3-4 including Haven, that built 400 more SDP's by mid-February 1922 [from AAC, for 1200 less 300+ lost], so a couple plus thousand new RHN hyper units below the wall built over the last 3 years is also quite possible when we get House of Lies (although RFC may make it less, probably on financial grounds, to make the story-line more dramatic), for a total of something around 4200, or half of the FF's ~8400+ [after losing some 200 to the RMN so far] though the number and type of BF's escorts are still unknown [ASU] or undetailed to add into the mix.
Given how far superior the GA's warships are over those of the FF, even those left from the first war (especially thanks to tractored pods) up to a third should be able to search for more 'Operation Janus' victims; apparently something over a dozen with only 7 named so far, while eliminating the FF throughout the protectorates over the next few monthes [50 TG's of 12-16 ships, visiting 3 systems per month on average would take only 4 monthes], NTM the shells which are beginning to be swept by waves of secession; which might require up to 100 such TG's to search, while a pair of old SD's with up to 580 tractored pods from the 230 remaining in the RMN alone could easily handle a pair of SL SD squadrons, but the RHN might send a pair of its to demonstrate it is the GA etc; since there could be 1400-1700 systems tired of the SL's rule, it might take 5-6 monthes.
The main battle fleets should soon take out the BF reserves [1000-1200-1400+ each in the 6-7 systems] while seizing the wormhole termini in the old league as well.
Besides lots of LAC's, the RHN alone could have 50-100,000 by now since Lovat built some 10,000 in 15-16 monthes; since CLAC's don't require armor etc, they could be built in commercial yards far faster than SD's, so there should be hundreds of CLAC's in both the RHN and the RMN/GSN as well, besides those being built in Beowulf now etc.
Once the scale of the GA's military superiority becomes clear, the IAN ought to be making itself known besides belatedly showing up at Mesa.
Given that the RMN's superiority over the SL is far greater than the MAlign predicted, and the SLN is still ignorant of the true scale of its weakness compared to the GA, such as triple drive MDM's with FTL guidance and the LAC in attack etc, the war may be over far sooner than it predicted so the Renaissance Factor may be too late to grab all that it expected, and may not be the power or arbiter the MAlign intended.
So sad their plans aren't working very well after all those centuries of planning.
Best regards,
L
PeterZ wrote:kzt wrote:quote="PeterZ"Did you read RFC's comments? They have sufficient revenues to payoff their debt, their massive debt. Even so the SEM is better off than ANY other polity in the Honorverse. So, no, they are not either Germany nor the USSR after WWII. They are the US after their shipyards and weapons factories are destroyed, but still have almost all their non-weapons factories. They still have their merchant ships and control of the best shipping routes.
quote
Grayson has their non-military factories. Manticore has nothing. Everything other than their field repair facilities in ships or major bases got all blowed up.
So assume there are only 2500 planets and you only assign 10,000 people to them. Which is mighty small force. So you need a mere 25,000,000 people deployed. Plus 50 million to manage the 1/3 forward ratio. So yes, I think this is totally unaffordable, not to mention politically impossible. Manticore wasn't willing to deploy a fraction of that much manpower when their very existence was doubt.
The SKM didn't deploy those 1.2 million soldiers, Talbot did. Those 2,500 planets are not going to side with the SEM. Of those that do, they will contribute to their own defense as they can. The goal is to secure as many systems as they can now, so down the road those systems will be firm allies when they have become wealthier. How many systems can the GA gather together in their Sphere of protection? Each system they succeed in gathering is one more successful system deterring SL or RF aggression in the future.
