Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Weird Harold wrote:Partly because training programs for technical military careers begin at a "Zero Level" -- they assume you can read at a fourth or fifth grade level and give you everything else you'll need to follow the theory.

Finally, I'd put civilians through military courses because the USAF gave me the equivalent of an associates degree in electrical engineering (minus two English credits of gaining certification as such) in 15 months or so; Civilian education would require two full years minimum.

The SEM needs manpower for the Army, Navy and Marines, plus ship yard and other skilled workers. Partly to replace those killed in the Yawata Strike, and partly because they're at war with the Solarian League. The Star Empire may not have a year or two to wait for Talboters to begin remedial education. Talboters will survive, but they may never get that remedial education if they can't contribute to the SEM's defense soon.

So why use SD's for educating people? It's just easier and cheaper to ship in a bunch of teachers and a truckload of handcomps + VR-sets preloaded with the necessary curriculum.

The other thing with using the SD's are that they will have big problems keeping them serviceable since the only way to get spare-parts are to cannibalize other SD's. And now you think "but they can use the machine-shops to refurbish/build new parts!", but that requires skilled people that is probably needed somewhere else. And no, I don't think they can use solly POW's for that.

The whole thing about trying to wring the last usability out of these SD's is a huge resource sink that is better spent somewhere else, like getting Manticore's manufacturing up and running at 100% ASAP.

Weird Harold wrote:Adm Rozhak in the Maya sector Frontier Fleet didn't seem to have any problem upgrading from "antiquated Solarian Crap" to Erewhon built mostly-manty tech. Most of his personnel were trained on exactly the same sort of systems I'm proposing to use for education. There doesn't seem to be any drawback to being trained on "different hardware and inferior designs"in evidence.

• Because he had the time and resources to do it in a leisurely fashion.
• He hasn't had his whole infrastructure blown away from under him..
• He had Erewhon helping with the transition.
• Frontier Fleet has been much better updated.

You can't compare the 2 situations at all.

Joat42 wrote:So why use SD's for educating people? It's just easier and cheaper to ship in a bunch of teachers and a truckload of handcomps + VR-sets preloaded with the necessary curriculum.

Use the captured ships -- no just the SDs -- because they are present and chock full of Solarian educational material and other educational opportunities.

It may well be easier to ship in a bunch of teachers, but how long will it take to ship those people and that equipment in and who is going to pay for it?

You have the opportunity to put seven to ten Solarian Universities in orbit around every Talbot Quadrant System that needs some degree of educational uplift.

Why is everyone so opposed to using those universities and insist that spending more money to import the same quantity of knowledge and support six months to two years from now is a better choice?

According to RFC, nobody in the Talbot Quadrant has a military grade shipyard to enable deconstruction, so the best any TQ system can do is unbolt the equipment and computers and take them dirt-side where they can be kluged together into some semblance of operation.

Why not use the equipment and computers where they are already interconnected and functional -- at least in one SD until proper facilities and power can be arranged for looted hardware from other ships?

Why are you so adamant that your solution will be cheaper than a purely civilian one? Why are you so adamant that systems in the Quadrant have no money whatsoever to spare?

Weird Harold wrote:

Joat42 wrote:So why use SD's for educating people? It's just easier and cheaper to ship in a bunch of teachers and a truckload of handcomps + VR-sets preloaded with the necessary curriculum.

Use the captured ships -- no just the SDs -- because they are present and chock full of Solarian educational material and other educational opportunities.

It may well be easier to ship in a bunch of teachers, but how long will it take to ship those people and that equipment in and who is going to pay for it?

You have the opportunity to put seven to ten Solarian Universities in orbit around every Talbot Quadrant System that needs some degree of educational uplift.

Why is everyone so opposed to using those universities and insist that spending more money to import the same quantity of knowledge and support six months to two years from now is a better choice?

According to RFC, nobody in the Talbot Quadrant has a military grade shipyard to enable deconstruction, so the best any TQ system can do is unbolt the equipment and computers and take them dirt-side where they can be kluged together into some semblance of operation.

Why not use the equipment and computers where they are already interconnected and functional -- at least in one SD until proper facilities and power can be arranged for looted hardware from other ships?

Fine - use SDs to educate people.

Wouldn't you use the ~255 Manty Pattern SDs in RMN and Grayson service first? The software is already the same, the work flow is the same, the parts commonality is the same, the.....

~100 of these are currently in Mothballs with zero damage and were upgraded to the top of the line Manty goodness when they were put into preservation. They will have top of the line ECM, they will run standard Manty programs, on standard Manty hardware, which uses standard Manty parts which can be replaced with standard Manty tools.

Why use 100 year old Sollie garbage when a 10 year old Gryphon is available to do the same job better?

I guess that if I had to pick a winner to this arguement so far it would be Weird Harold.

Let's face it gang... some of you are predisposed against any use of those SDs at all. That leads you to come up with objections which at times seem a bit far fetched when the truth of the matter is that virtually any project designed to accomplish something positive can generate the same sort of objections.

The real serious analysis comes in taking an idea seriously enough to visualize what it would really look like in place and how the obstacles to its implementation might be overcome. Then the questions as to whether or not it is worth the effort should be addressed. This is a bit different than dismissing an idea out of hand which seems to me to be happening here.

Just one comment on the subject itself...Weird Harold is right to point out how difficult it is going to be for Manticore to both rebuild itself after the Yawatta Strike and wage war. Talbot is going to be sucking hind teat for a quite a while. Harold's notion of using all of the resourses -- including the SDs-- for productive purposes seems pretty cogent to me. Sometimes the perfect can be the enemy of the good.

Don

I will say that I am with Don on this one. Weird Harold has come up with some new twists on old ideas. While I don't think all of his implementation is the best possible, his ideas are feasible and mostly thought through. I do think, however that he is over-estimating some of the problems, while under-estimating others. I do like the idea of keeping one ship intact and functional while the others are cannibalized for usable systems. Perhaps with the remote access he suggested.

I also like the suggestion that each system be allowed to do it's own determination of what it needs. The is probably a middle ground in there somewhere that is actually worthwhile.

The E wrote:Why are you so adamant that your solution will be cheaper than a purely civilian one? Why are you so adamant that systems in the Quadrant have no money whatsoever to spare?

Because the captured SLN ships are available now at only the cost of fueling and enough crew the keep them habitable and needed systems functional.

The Talbot quadrant can go out and buy everything from Manticoran approved source, but that money would be spent on something they already have instead of utilizing resources at hand.

Eventually, civilian resources are going to be needed, but why wait for them to be the first resources applied to the problems?

It might not be cheaper than a purely civilian solution. I don't know exactly what either option would cost, so I can't compare. What can be demonstrated is that it would be faster -- by anywhere from six months to two years (I lean to the longer figure, but didn't propose any of them.)

The ship's facilities are available NOW and classes can be started as soon as a ship settles into orbit -- if not on the approach to orbit. ANY other option has a time lag and a price tag.

Theemile wrote:Fine - use SDs to educate people.

Wouldn't you use the ~255 Manty Pattern SDs in RMN and Grayson service first? The software is already the same, the work flow is the same, the parts commonality is the same, the.....

No. I don't know how many ways I can make this point: I don't give a damn about the military nature of the ships, I care about the educational database and systems.

The ships may be a century old and two centuries out of date, but the information in the database was up to the minute with whatever the ship downloaded from it's last port of call.

Adm Crandal's task force is HERE, in the Talbot Quadrant where I propose to to use them; at most ten days from even the furthest system that might find the database or facilities useful.

The Manticoran reserve is in the Manticore Binary system; one wormhole transit and two weeks away from Spindle -- plus transit time to the receiving system.

Adm Filereta's survivors are also in the Manticore binary system and I'm not proposing to move them to the TQ either.

Haven has a huge reserve fleet as well and in many ways they would be better for the School Ship role because they have courses specifically tailored to bring conscripted Dolists up to minimal modern world literacy.

But none of those resources are HERE!

Theemile wrote:~100 of these are currently in Mothballs with zero damage and were upgraded to the top of the line Manty goodness when they were put into preservation. They will have top of the line ECM, they will run standard Manty programs, on standard Manty hardware, which uses standard Manty parts which can be replaced with standard Manty tools.

Because Manticore has better uses for those ships? Especially since I don't suggest training anyone to USE captured Warships

The surrendered ships from Adm Crandal's task force I propose using are undamaged, too, BTW.

Theemile wrote:Why use 100 year old Sollie garbage when a 10 year old Gryphon is available to do the same job better?

Because "100 year old Sollie garbage" is available, has the database equivalent of Landing University in it's databanks (at least,) and "100 year old Sollie Garbage" isn't good for any military purpose. (I suppose the mere presence of a squadron of SDs might deter a pirate or two, but I wouldn't really call that a "military purpose." )

Also because "100 Year Old Sollie Garbage" is a century more modern than pre-war Grayson which is comparable tech-wise to the systems I propose giving them to.

KNick wrote:I do like the idea of keeping one ship intact and functional while the others are cannibalized for usable systems. Perhaps with the remote access he suggested.

Remote access wasn't my suggestion originally. It was suggested as an alternative to student-body size limitations imposed by fixed berthing size.

Why keep only one ship functional? Keep as many functional as can be kept functional to provide as many interim facilities as possible; only take a ship offline when ground-side facilities are ready for whatever is going to be transferred.

One facility that hasn't been mentioned -- probably because it wouldn't be economically feasible on its solo merits:

One of Nuncio's problems with the PNE ships was they didn't have any space surveillance capability that could even detect their hyper footprint. Any of the captured ships have sensors far better than Nuncio pre-hexapuma. I don't know what sensor capability has been added, but maintaining a sensor watch while you're maintaining a harbor watch status should add too much workload.