Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

solbergb wrote:Well, to be fair, medical facilities for half a million people.

That'll help out a good sized city, and given that it's designed for war trauma, it may well be able to exceed the capacity of a continent's normal everyday mayhem....and the fact that there are about 40 units means you can spread them around to various population centers.

They'd not be full tier hospitals, but they'd be a hell of a trauma center to add to any existing medical facility. While supplies last, and assuming some of the trained Sollies decide to stay and help make them work.

I've no idea if the "good stuff" in the med bays is portable enough to remove without a major yard that doesn't exist, but that's a rare suggestion that might actually have some merit. Likewise the small craft and such are probably useful to some non-military organization.

A superdreadnought has only 6000 people. The medical bay is not going to be designed for a population a hundred times that. What was being proposed was distributing the ships, one here, one there, and so on.

SLN SDs might be crap for combat and impossible for Verge systems to keep combat capable.

However; they would make great scare crows. Keep one parked in orbit with power at stand by levels whereeveryvisitingmerchy can see it. Occassionally fire up the wedge to show off. Word gets out that you have an SD and pirates avoid you like the plague.

Boeing Commercial. IF one includes test division under R&D(I do and will as those actions take place elsewhere), and subtracts lifetime product engineers(I am and will), then the percentage of engineers that work production is less than 10% of the total. Add in the lifetime product engineers and the percentage is even higher. Of that 10%, 50% are no where near the production lines in question. Essentially they are also R&D where they are creating flow models, new process's, new production line techniques in a completely separate facility(Sometimes said engineers must work fairly closely with the production engineers). I do not count inventory procurement officers as engineers either.

So, offhand, I would have to agree with Wastedfly's assertion from my own personal experience. I believe the exact break down of engineers by division inside BCA is available over on SPEEA's website. Then again I get their pamphlets still even though I do not work for Boeing anymore and am certainly not a member.

I do not count technicians as engineers. I believe Direwolf is counting technicians as engineers. All sub assemblies are NOT tested by engineers. Technicians do all that. QA guys are NOT engineers. At best they are technicians and get paid like it as well. Just because there is a department for production engineering does not make it a large one typically.

Support engineers are only "on hand" when the pooch is screwed. You "see" them then and only then. As a percentage they make up a vast minority of those working on any project. This is like asking how many architects work at a job site? None. If a large job site it is 1 at most. Murphy has an appearance and you will now see up to 2, maybe 3 for a short period of time. They get the info and quickly leave to figure out what to do... elsewhere and then, show up once again to see if their new brain child works or not.

Manticore lost millions of technicians, crane operators, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, etc. This is NOT an easy talent pool to replace. Technicians get paid pretty darned well. There is a reason they get paid well. They can't be a complete idiot, they must be a hard conscientious worker who pays attention to detail, and the training for a large percentage of the work being done is NOT available in book form. It is handed down. It is learned ON THE JOB by coming up against odd weird aspects of their jobs forcing them to improvise or develop a new tool or step by step process to get the job done efficiently and done right.

PS. Haven't been around for a while, had lots to read and this one caught my attention. Probably because it was at the top of a new page and my fingers got twitchy to post something.

Now back to arguing about 100 year old starships!

Direwolf18 wrote:The actual building process of a ship is a miniscule part of the actual design work. Assembly requires effectively no engineers at all.

I work at Sikorsky Aircraft, we build helicopters. I can most definitely assure you this is NOT the case. There is an entire department of engineers who work production. Yes hypothetically the sub assemblies "should" work no problem and its a simple matter of bolting them in. Real world says not a chance in hell. That doesn't even include flight test once the aircraft is built.

Yes the R+D is a far larger group of engineers, but Murphy LOVES to rear his head in production, and there are a large number of engineers on hand to support production. I can only imagine this is the case for larger and vastly more complicated things like super dreadnoughts.[/quote]

smr wrote:I was reading A Call to Duty and realized what system or people could do with remnants of the destroyed and captured Solly fleets. The Grand Alliance could give the fleet to Torch, Marsh, and other systems in the Verge. Most of the systems do not have the ability to update these ships but some do. The trick is to find and convince the systems that it would be a good idea to update these ships. My reasoning is thus: to refurbish ships it takes almost the same equipment to build these ships. Once a system starts successfully refurbish warships, they can start building new ships. Granted, alot of new industry would be required to build new ships because many items would have to be manufactured from scratch rather than bought.
Ultimately, these type of mobile fleet giveaways could be helpful to build verge and shell space industries.

The SD's are at best targets or resources for recycling. The CA's (Gladiator class) may form a basis of a Verge / Silician / Talbot "Coast Guard" / anti-piracy force and a training platform for Silicia and Talbot.

kzt wrote:The damn things are warships, if your idea for employment can be done as well or better by ships that don't mount SD grasers and multiple meters of armor then it's probably not a good idea.

Yes, they are warships. They are also "here," "now," and essentially "free." If the Grazers offend thee, they can be removed or disabled; otherwise ignore them except as training aids for future Grazer gunners or weapons techs.

The SEM of Manticore is currently short of building capacity to commit to building purpose-built ships, or repair/refit space to salvage systems from the captured ships. Any use that doesn't require more than positioning and manning is to be preferred.

SWM wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Why scrap them? The most valuable resource in those captured SLN ships is knowledge; knowledge that Nuncio, Dresden, et al need far more than they need scrap.

We have been through this dozens of times. The Talbott Cluster does not need training vessels at this time.

All Manticoran naval and marine personnel get years of training on the ground before they ever get shipboard time.

The Talbot Cluster needs training facilities and equipment. Whether those facilities are on the ground or aboard a captured SLN ship

The ground-side facilities do not currently exist; the captured SLN Ships do.

George J. Smith wrote:I can't remember who posted it up-line, but it seems to me that the best use for the Sollie ships in the quadrant would be to provide healthcare facilities that many of the systems there do not have.

Why restrict the "value" to one use?

The Hospital/Sick Bay facilities of even ten SDs are probably insufficient to serve as primary care clinics to even an under-populated planet like Nuncio. Those same facilities would serve well for training local medical students up to SLN Medical Corps standards -- provided instructors can be found among SLN POWs or elsewhere.

SWM wrote:It would be perfectly reasonable to pull out what useful hardware and portable stuff you can from the ships. But before you think that this would make a big difference on a Verge world, I would point out that a medical facility for 6000 people would be a bit overwhelmed on a planet of hundreds of millions or billions.

There are more than one ship/system available. They'd still be overwhelmed if they tried to directly serve as primary care facilities. However, as trauma centers and teaching clinics one to ten SLN SDs would be invaluable to a system like Dresden or Nuncio.

As for pulling out useful hardware -- Why? There is sufficient power and cubage to support the "useful hardware" where everything is now. How long and how many dollars will it take to supply the power and cubage required to put all that "useful hardware" back in service?

keylime314 wrote:How many Talbott recruits are you going to get when they're guaranteed to be on ships that can contribute nothing to an actual fight except being meatshields for the Mantis?

Who said anything about sending anyone into combat aboard "school ships."

Do cadets at Saganami Island expect to go into combat in the sailing ships they are required to learn to sail? Do they expect to fly into combat in air-breathing Javelins?

Field of Dishonor wrote:The RMN maintained a vast marina of small sailing craft, and every midshipman, regardless of eventual specialization track, was required to qualify not only in sailplanes and old-fashioned airfoil aircraft but in even more old-fashioned seamanship as well as counter-grav. Critics might sniff at the requirement as a throwback to the bad old days when starship captains navigated the grav waves of hyper space as much by instinct as instruments, but the Academy clung to the tradition, and Honor, like most of the Navy's better shiphandlers, firmly believed it had taught her things and given her a confidence no simulator could—which didn't even consider how much fun it was!

Theemile wrote:And while tactics and theory are universal, hardware and software are not. The ships and their sims are using Sollie hardware and Sollie software. No one in the modern workforce would train their users on a 1993 Macintosh and then drop them into a work environment using Windows 8 on a PC.

The archaic sailing ships and air-breathing Javelins don't translate directly to space combat, either.

Captured Solarian hardware and software are better than Haven started with in the first war. I'm not particularly talking about training students as fully qualified Naval Ratings, I'm talking about pulling farm-boys off Nuncio and Factory workers off Dresden and cowboys off Montana and turning them into the equivalent of first year Saganami cadets.

Theemile wrote:Yes, you can rewrite software and re-label a panel, but it will still be SLN hardware and not have the abilities current RMN ships will have. In essence you would get no training advantages you would not get using the current Talbott Quadrant hardware.

The problem is that there is no "current Talbot Quadrant Hardware." Mention is made in the books several times that the main stumbling block to integrating the Talbot Quadrant is bringing the educational establishment up to Old Kingdom standards.

I'm not proposing to use the captured SLN Ships in combat, nor am I proposing to train anyone up to RMN operational standards. I'm not even proposing to train anyone in purely military applications -- see comments above about using medical facilities as a "university hospital" rather than a "Primary Care Clinic."

The main emphasis of IMSS (Imperial Manticore School Ship) Babbage would naturally be space oriented, but SLNS Babbage has aboard the facilities and training syllabi for everything from "Spacer Basic" to "Admiral's Board" and "Sick Berth Attendant" to "Fleet Surgeon" and "Apprentice Machinist" to "Master Chief Machinist" and thousands of other career advancement courses. It probably has study materials for numerous civilian college courses from "Introductory Flower Weaving" to "Doctor of Tolkien Studies."

The SLN ships are about as useful in spaceship terms as emergency evacuation bubbles, but they have the information, equipment, and ready power to stand-in for the higher education facilities the Talbot Cluster currently lacks. Best of all, the SLN ships are Here, Now and Free. There would be no delay for a campus to be constructed and equipped. The only lack is instructors and there are thousands of those getting sunburned on a remote island somewhere on Flax, a drain on SEM/Talbot Cluster resources.

That all assumes that Manticore lacks simulators to send to the Talbott quadrant. LAC's have been distributed, with simulators, to train the few existing Talbott navies up to decent standard, and for the general educational problems you need teachers, not naval hardware.
But even if you want an SD as training ship, why not use old, mothballed Manty wallers, which resemble more current front-line hardware, and your instructors happen to know already?

Whitecold wrote:That all assumes that Manticore lacks simulators to send to the Talbott quadrant. LAC's have been distributed, with simulators, to train the few existing Talbott navies up to decent standard, and for the general educational problems you need teachers, not naval hardware.

So remove or disable -- aka De-mil -- the ships before turning the into schools. The suggestion isn't about "naval hardware" it's about the knowledge contained in the ships and the facilities for passing on that knowledge.

Teachers/Trainers are the biggest stumbling block, but one of the advantages to using captured ships...


Using captured SLN ships means that teachers/instructors can be hired from POW ranks with no retraining(as using mothballed Manty SDs would require.) And no drain on Manticoran manpower.

Whitecold wrote:But even if you want an SD as training ship, why not use old, mothballed Manty wallers, which resemble more current front-line hardware, and your instructors happen to know already?

Because the SLN Ships are Here, Now, and Free.

Pulling Manty ships out of mothballs will take time, money and Manticoran personnel; none of which Manticore has to spare at the moment. Same thing for providing simulators for incorporation of locals into LAC wings.

The SEM doesn't currently have the manufacturing capacity or money to provide more than one simulator per LAC squadron (or possibly even per LAC wing) Providing facilities for remedial education via local enlistment in a LAC wing is self limiting.

Using captured SLN Ships means no cash outlay for a wide variety of equipment, facilities, construction or power -- all of that is covered by using the ships as ready-made school campuses.

There are thirteen systems in the Talbot Quadrant; Three of which have educational systems even close to Old Kingdom standards. There are seventy captured SLN SDs plus the screening elements. That works out to a dozen or so ships per system that needs an educational and/or medicinal boost. Reserve a few for cannibalization to keep the rest habitable -- not in service, just habitable. That's around five to ten times what Manticore can afford to provide in the near term.


Would it be preferable to hire Manticoran educators and build them (ten) ultra-modern campuses with up to the minute technology? Of course it would, but that pipe dream isn't here; it isn't now; and it isn't free.

PS: Picture a University that can handle a population of six thousand (students, faculty, and support combined) and then put that University in an armored shell. Nearly every subject/course you would find at a ground based University could be supported from a SD's resources. (I suspect agriculture and animal husbandry is likely to be difficult, but otherwise...)

When did the Quadrant become a zone where any little bit of humanitarian aid is needed so desperately that even extremely subpar measures have to be used right now?

Cos that's kinda the vibe I'm getting from all these "use them as hospitals!" suggestions.

I mean, did the people on those worlds suddenly forget how to construct buildings? Or how medicine works?

Weird Harold wrote:

Whitecold wrote:That all assumes that Manticore lacks simulators to send to the Talbott quadrant. LAC's have been distributed, with simulators, to train the few existing Talbott navies up to decent standard, and for the general educational problems you need teachers, not naval hardware.

So remove or disable -- aka De-mil -- the ships before turning the into schools. The suggestion isn't about "naval hardware" it's about the knowledge contained in the ships and the facilities for passing on that knowledge.

Teachers/Trainers are the biggest stumbling block, but one of the advantages to using captured ships...


Using captured SLN ships means that teachers/instructors can be hired from POW ranks with no retraining(as using mothballed Manty SDs would require.) And no drain on Manticoran manpower.

Whitecold wrote:But even if you want an SD as training ship, why not use old, mothballed Manty wallers, which resemble more current front-line hardware, and your instructors happen to know already?

Because the SLN Ships are Here, Now, and Free.

Pulling Manty ships out of mothballs will take time, money and Manticoran personnel; none of which Manticore has to spare at the moment. Same thing for providing simulators for incorporation locals into LAC wings.

The SEM doesn't currently have the manufacturing capacity or money to provide more than one simulator per LAC squadron (or possibly even per LAC wing) Providing facilities for remedial education via local enlistment in a LAC wing is self limiting.

Using captured SLN Ships means no cash outlay for a wide variety of equipment, facilities, construction or power -- all of that is covered by using the ships as ready-made school campuses.

There are thirteen systems in the Talbot Quadrant; Three of which have educational systems even close to Old Kingdom standards. There are seventy captured SLN SDs plus the screening elements. That works out to a dozen or so ships per system that needs an educational and/or medicinal boost. Reserve a few for cannibalization to keep the rest habitable -- not in service, just habitable. That's around five to ten times what Manticore can afford to provide in the near term.


Would it be preferable to hire Manticoran educators and build them (ten) ultra-modern campuses with up to the minute technology? Of course it would, but that pipe dream isn't here; it isn't now; and it isn't free.

First off, you're assuming that the Sollie POWs would even *want* to train people from the star nation that *made* them POWs. I think that's a bad assumption. Sure, you might get a few, but nowhere near as many as you seem to think.

Secondly, you're missing a major point (which has already been stated): The equipment is different between Sollie ships and Mantie/Havenite/Grayson ships. Go ahead and train all these newbies on obsolete Sollie equipment, and when they get better ships from the RMN, RHN, or GSN, theyll need to be *retrained* on the different equipment. It's like being originally trained on Russian fighter aircraft and then being expected to work on U.S fighters - not going to happen until they go through retraining, which will be pretty much just as long as the original training, which...

...will take long enough for the first new ships (mostly lighter units at first - a little longer for BCs and up) to come off the new yards being built right now in the Manticore system.

TBH, it's not necessary to have separate training ships anyway, because new RMN trainees go aboard RMN ships, either as new enlisted personnel, or as middies. There's always an experienced crew there, and usually it's only a few at a time for each department. No one is going to crew an entire ship with newbs, and there are enough ships between Grayson and Manticore to spread out any new trainees on similar systems, and Haven could probably take on more for *their* systems. Eventually, new construction will merge the designs and systems of all three. For that matter, Haven is *still* in the shipbuilding business (as well as Erewhon, for that matter), so newbs can go there.

Which brings us to... training these people from the Talbott sector to the standard edumacation levels of the SEM, Grayson, or Haven. These people are fairly undereducated to begin with, and will need extra education (at the start) to reach those levels. By the time they've gotten to that point, and are ready to enter their version of Saganami Island, there will be plenty of new construction coming out of the yards.

No, they can't be refitted with Mantie hardware (by hardware, I mean *anything* aboard the ship that has physical dimensions) and software, because that would take up yardwork that the RMN doesn't have to spare, and would take almost as long to do as building a brand-spanking new ship that has all the equipment and systems the newbies would be working with anyway.

Lastly, David has already said that these ships are useless (I disagree - even targets and scrap have uses ). Why do people feel the need to think they know more than the author about how his universe works?

I suggest spending a few days going through The Pearls ( http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/series/Harrington/ ) to see stuff from David that isn't in the books, including info on this particular subject. As has been stated before in this thread, what you're talking about has been hashed over quite a few times over the past couple of years, and it all comes down to: It ain't happenin'.

The E wrote:When did the Quadrant become a zone where any little bit of humanitarian aid is needed so desperately that even extremely subpar measures have to be used right now?

Cos that's kinda the vibe I'm getting from all these "use them as hospitals!" suggestions.

I mean, did the people on those worlds suddenly forget how to construct buildings? Or how medicine works?

Of the thirteen systems in the Talbot Quadrant, only three or four have medical establishments capable of producing and administering Prolong. Some of the more hardscrabble systems are just relearned germ theory.

Secondly, how is first-line Solarian medicine "sub-par?" The capacity of captured SLN ship's medical department may well be numerically inadequate, but the quality is far from "sub-par."

MaxxQ wrote:First off, you're assuming that the Sollie POWs would even *want* to train people from the star nation that *made* them POWs. I think that's a bad assumption. Sure, you might get a few, but nowhere near as many as you seem to think.

I'm guessing that 10-20% of the ratings and petty officers would be willing to make a buck living back aboard ship as opposed to getting sunburned on a desert island -- filled with an over-abundance of disgruntled admirals.

MaxxQ wrote:Secondly, you're missing a major point (which has already been stated): The equipment is different between Sollie ships and Mantie/Havenite/Grayson ships. Go ahead and train all these newbies on obsolete Sollie equipment, and when they get better ships from the RMN, RHN, or GSN, theyll need to be *retrained* on the different equipment.

So what? I'm NOT advocating training naval ratings and officers to operate a warship. I'm advocating using the general knowledge base and training aids for a general education establishment.

MaxxQ wrote:It's like being originally trained on Russian fighter aircraft and then being expected to work on U.S fighters - not going to happen until they go through retraining, which will be pretty much just as long as the original training, which...

*Snerk* I'm a retired aircraft electronics tech -- retraining to work on a foreign fighter ain't all that difficult; at least not as long as the tech manuals don't have to be translated.

MaxxQ wrote:
...will take long enough for the first new ships (mostly lighter units at first - a little longer for BCs and up) to come off the new yards being built right now in the Manticore system.

Plans are afoot to give the Talbot Quadrant some in-house shipbuilding capability of it's own. Students who went to high-school/junior college aboard a spaceship will require less retraining than ground-lubbers.

MaxxQ wrote:
TBH, it's not necessary to have separate training ships anyway, because new RMN trainees go aboard RMN ships, either as new enlisted personnel, or as middies. There's always an experienced crew there, and usually it's only a few at a time for each department.

Again: I am NOT advocating training spacers. I'm advocating using the general knowledge base and equipment to provide a general/remedial education for ANY career.

MaxxQ wrote:Which brings us to... training these people from the Talbott sector to the standard edumacation levels of the SEM, Grayson, or Haven. These people are fairly undereducated to begin with, and will need extra education (at the start) to reach those levels. By the time they've gotten to that point, and are ready to enter their version of Saganami Island, there will be plenty of new construction coming out of the yards.

You would have a point if I were advocating training students to operate the ships in combat. I'm advocating the problem of "under-education" to prepare students for Saganami Island as first year cadets -- or whatever other entry level career position they might wish.

MaxxQ wrote:No, they can't be refitted with Mantie hardware ...

Where have I suggested that they should be? The knowledge base aboard Solarian ships should address the potential remedial educational needs of verge or shell system recruits -- much as Haven had to address the problem of under-educated dolist draftees.

MaxxQ wrote:Lastly, David has already said that these ships are useless (I disagree - even targets and scrap have uses ). Why do people feel the need to think they know more than the author about how his universe works?

RFC has said that the ships are useless as weapons. That is not the same thing as "totally useless." The computers weren't dumped, so the ships are filled with computers several centuries better than most of the Talbot cluster has available. More importantly, those computers should contain all of the training syllabi and extra-curricular college courses for career or personal advancement.

MaxxQ wrote:I suggest spending a few days going through The Pearls ( http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/series/Harrington/ ) to see stuff from David that isn't in the books, including info on this particular subject.

I have read a good bit of the info-dumps.

MaxxQ wrote:As has been stated before in this thread, what you're talking about has been hashed over quite a few times over the past couple of years, and it all comes down to: It ain't happenin'.

Apparently, you've rehashed this often enough you don't feel a need to read new ideas.

If you had read my posts, you'd understand that I'm not advocating using the captured ships as warships, but am advocating using them as campuses for a non-military school to address the "under-education" problem.