Does Manticore Have its Own Bolthole?

I think the slowest part about involving Talbot would be the negotiations.

They've already bailed on the Alliance, and I can't see any reason why they'd want to get mixed up in a conflict with the SLN. You can dangle some economic carrots perhaps, but if I was Talbot I'd stay the hell out of it unless my economy needed a shot in the arm.

solbergb wrote:I think the slowest part about involving Talbot would be the negotiations.

They've already bailed on the Alliance, and I can't see any reason why they'd want to get mixed up in a conflict with the SLN. You can dangle some economic carrots perhaps, but if I was Talbot I'd stay the hell out of it unless my economy needed a shot in the arm.

Depends on how much you look forward to your new SL masters. Because if they take down Haven and Manticore nobody gets left out.

Funny, I can't find any single mention that the Unicorn facility was even targeted in OB, much less hit by OB. All purely military shipyards were hit, but no mention of civilian targets. Even though Hauptman was making Frigates for Torch there.

All civilian slips were building military vessels. There have been a couple infodumps in that regard. Ergo they would have been targeted. We also know that all ships under construction were either flat out destroyed or too damaged to make it worth continue building. We also know that there is effectively zero construction capability left in the Home System aside from what was hanging out by the Junction. Then there's the fact that when everyone's going on about Trevor's Star, no one says "By the way, we have even more construction ability right here in Manticore-B". So what evidence is there that the Unicorn Belt yards are still there?

Yes Duckk,we have no hard yards and almost zero construction. But you also have fifteen dispersed orbital slips that were empty and not hit.Unicorn yard is not a hard yard.(as far as i can tell.)My thread thought was Unicorn yard in Marticore B is the best place to start rebuilding.Marticore B seem to be first place to start because the Unicorn Belt was in better shape than any other place in home system.ie,Gryphon's people,Unicorn'belt and yard;fifteen dispersed orbital slips. TKS EFG

Well, given that there was absolutely no mention of the Unicorn yard ever being targeted in any book, and it's concentration was mainly civilian, it would be an open question. Being civilian, there would have been little to no military construction - as to many civilian eyes being able to watch and Hauptmann and other builders would still need to supply the Manti Merchant Marine with ships and parts as well as selling those same items to others in order to keep the economy flowing. It could not be closed off like the other purely military stations.

So we are to assume Unicorn was targeted, without being mentioned, yet all others such as Blackbird yard, etc. were all mentioned by name?

Nor would any military consider a purely civilian yard as much use. Sure, freighter's are large, but there would be extensive re-tooling for them to be able to produce any military vessels, especially an SD(P). In the same way US manufacturer's had to re-tool for a year or more to produce weapons(and some never made a successful conversion in 4 years during WWII). They could produce stop-gaps, such as Q ships (eggshells with hammers), but not truly dedicated warships until they had re-tooled. Which would not speed up any new construction by much.

Given that I'm running on about an hour's worth of sleep, here's the most obvious one I can find. I'll post more later. EoH chapter 21:

"You're building all this and civilian ships too?" Caparelli demanded.

"Why not?" Matthews shrugged. "We're close to the limit of what the government can afford on our current warship programs, but thanks to Hauptman's initial investment—and Lady Harrington's, of course—our total building capacity is considerably higher than that. So we divert some of our labor force to civilian construction and build the ships for about sixty percent of what it would cost to build them in the Star Kingdom—assuming that any of your major builders could find the free yard capacity for them—and then Hauptman gets brand new freighters from us for eighty percent of what they would have paid a Manticoran builder. The cartel's actual out-of-pocket cost is only forty percent—the other forty percent goes towards retiring their investment in the yard—but that's enough to cover Blackbird's actual expenses, since the Sword has exempted the transaction from taxes in order to accelerate the buy-out. Meanwhile, the workers' wages go into the system economy, and everyone's happy."

"Except, perhaps, the Manticoran builders who aren't building the ships," Alexander observed in slightly frosty tones.

"My Lord, if you could find the free civilian building slips back home, then you might have a point," Matthews said without apology.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... ngton/91/1

And it's also probably worth noting that there have been references in the books to non-Hephaestus construction sites in the Manticoran home system at places like the Hauptman Cartel's Unicorn Yards. In other words, don't get too fixated on the notion that all Manticoran naval construction was even initially concentrated solely in Her Majesty's space stations or that those space stations were purely dedicated to military uses.
...
First, they will fill all of the available slots in the nodal yards. Then they will begin building additional units in dispersed yards, up to the limit their resources and manpower for crews will permit. And they will not spend limited funds and manpower on further expansion of the main space stations at a time when the need for new hulls is paramount.

Nor does that mean that any capital ships were being built in the Unicorn yards or had been built. Military grade fast-freighters, etc. since they are not armored much better than a normal freighter. They were just smaller. Nor could I see even Rolands being built in such an open yard - at least before BoM. The construction of any warship in Honor's world is vastly different than civilian construction on even more levels than in the US during WWII. Welding or bolting a steel-hulled freighter in a slip is altogether different than producing and working with armored steel of varying thickness's. There is a larger difference between making and working with the far thicker new armor 'sandwiches' of a Honor-era warship - and that of a freighter hull. Same with the Alpha and Beta nodes between military and civilian, sensor's, etc. I truly doubt the Unicorn yard - even if it did build smaller warships - also produced the military hardware used. They would have been produced at the stations and brought over, which was now economically more expensive once the Grayson style dispersed slips started being used. So if the Unicorn yard still exists - it doesn't help much - other than being usefull to continue to produce merchant ships and maybe some small fry - but not until after it is re-tooled to produce military grade nodes, armor, etc. It would most likely be best used to help in rebuilding truly dedicated military production equipment and helping to provide trained workers. That would still mean any new capital ship production - is still 2 - 3 T-years away.

I just had a thought, if Manticore's civilial ship building capacity has been converted to military uses by the time of EoH, how much of Grayson's civilian ship building capacity will have been converted to Military uses by the time of AAC and MoH. My point being that by that late date as they try to rearm after Haven resumes the war in WoH, all of their available shipbuilding capacity will be converted to military uses. However; they remain dependant on their merchant marine to support their economy. Where are they getting the ships? My guess is that just as Manticore exported relatively low tech, merchant ship building to Grayosn at the time of EoH, Manticore and Grayson will be exporting civilian ship building to somewhere else by the time of AAC and MoH. The most logical location would be some of the newly allied systems in Silesia, particularly Marsh. They might not know how to build military ships, but they have all of the basic machine tools and production facilities. With a lot of advice from Manticore and Grayson they could learn how.

BHW, Even after reconstituting the production capactiy to roll heavey armor prior to WW-II, capacity was severely limited. This is one of the reasons why the ESSEX class carriers weren't armored. We simply couldn't have built enough of them if we'd added 10k - 20k of armor to each hull. USN then went to a carrier design that was far smaller than the two BC conversions we had prior to WW-II (can't recall both names, one was LEXINGTON ) carried more planes, but had essentially no armor. Hmm, sounds analagous to putting KH-II on a BC(P) to enable APOLLO. It is a stupid thing to do because and SD(P) is so much more survivable and packs more ammo, escept Manticore is no longer capable of building SD(P)s.

Duckk wrote:Given that I'm running on about an hour's worth of sleep, here's the most obvious one I can find. I'll post more later. EoH chapter 21:

"You're building all this and civilian ships too?" Caparelli demanded.

"Why not?" Matthews shrugged. "We're close to the limit of what the government can afford on our current warship programs, but thanks to Hauptman's initial investment—and Lady Harrington's, of course—our total building capacity is considerably higher than that. So we divert some of our labor force to civilian construction and build the ships for about sixty percent of what it would cost to build them in the Star Kingdom—assuming that any of your major builders could find the free yard capacity for them—and then Hauptman gets brand new freighters from us for eighty percent of what they would have paid a Manticoran builder. The cartel's actual out-of-pocket cost is only forty percent—the other forty percent goes towards retiring their investment in the yard—but that's enough to cover Blackbird's actual expenses, since the Sword has exempted the transaction from taxes in order to accelerate the buy-out. Meanwhile, the workers' wages go into the system economy, and everyone's happy."

"Except, perhaps, the Manticoran builders who aren't building the ships," Alexander observed in slightly frosty tones.

"My Lord, if you could find the free civilian building slips back home, then you might have a point," Matthews said without apology.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... ngton/91/1

And it's also probably worth noting that there have been references in the books to non-Hephaestus construction sites in the Manticoran home system at places like the Hauptman Cartel's Unicorn Yards. In other words, don't get too fixated on the notion that all Manticoran naval construction was even initially concentrated solely in Her Majesty's space stations or that those space stations were purely dedicated to military uses.
...
First, they will fill all of the available slots in the nodal yards. Then they will begin building additional units in dispersed yards, up to the limit their resources and manpower for crews will permit. And they will not spend limited funds and manpower on further expansion of the main space stations at a time when the need for new hulls is paramount.

This thread has become a case of ,is this glass half full or half empty.We know that Hauptman Cartel has built,LAC's,Frigates and freighters and personal ships out this yard. Unicorn yard does not sound like a very big yard but they have built some very interesting crafts to date. This is SEM best place to start rebuilding,and it would be just like DW style to do something this.OR DW could do a 180 from this thread.His is the choice.