Ships of the wall

Positroll wrote:IIRC we have roughly 100 Scientists in the bag?

Considering the aftermath of the Yawata strike and the fact that the GA will have to support operations in a huge area fighting the SLN, I think they should strip the Scientists for parts to build additional auxiliaries in Rembrandt and StMiguel
- mostly as transports along the lines of Backfish's Pirates Bane
- but also in other versions (repair ship and / or general suport ship (like the one the SS Star Knight got its mines from in "An Act of War"; CVE-LAC for newly liberated systems like Meyers; arsenal ship as in ToF); Troyan II Q-ship to surprise Solly raiders)

(You might want to send some of the returned Grendelsbane shipbuilders there to get back in the business fast and to Train the Talbotters while the yards in the SKM get rebuilt ...)

Use their engines, compensators, sensors, environmental plants etc for the basic hull. Yes, they require more work as merchant ships - but they'd get a navy crw anyway. And yes, they'd need more crew than SEM modells, but you get them for free, freeing up lots of production capacity which the Manties at least don't have much atm.

Add some of the grasers/lasers. WRT missiles, it might make sense to use some of them, too; they are good enough against all kind of pirates and the auxiliaries won't use many of them during normal operations, so the missiles captured from the sollies would last a while. Later, the missile systems can be replaced with newer, Beowulf made missile systems.

OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Well,
IF the subject comes up in the books, I think Whitehaven and others at that level will probably decide that Haven can have whatever percentage of the SLN ships captured at 2nd Manticore it wants based on a formula worked out based on participation.
Essentialy they are now just powered barges (albet potentialy dangerous ones) which are mobile sources of fabrication materials needing to be reporcessed.

Manticore is going to be more than happy to let Grayson (that long term strong partner in the Havenite Wars) have a number of the SLN SDs for scrap. It is long past the time when Grayson needs to refit ships as technicaly old as these to add to its navy. This, of course, presumes that Grayson still has recovery facilities and they were not all lost in the Oyster Bay strike. If they were, Grayson will need to build new ones right along with rebuilding its manufacturing and shipyard related infrastructure. In some ways I think Grayson has relatively more of the debris from Oyster Bay available to reprocess since the production was not orbiting a planet and wasn't going to fall into that kind of gravity well to mostly burn up in the atmosphere. I recall that they were searching and taggeing (with transponders) everyting they could see in the chance that there was anyone alive and to recover at least the bodies. I suspect they will want to drag the larger (leave the definition of that to RFC) pieces they have not already parked someplace in for reprocessing. If you can skip the steps of mining the ore and then "smelting" out the usefull materials, you save both time and money in rebuilding.

All of Crandall's ships (except what were taken back to Manticore for ONI study) are still somewhere around Spindle. If not already being rendered down there, they probably won't get much further than out by whatever operations the Navy might be setting up near Lynx for yard facilities. I suspect that Spindle is a more logical place for new fabrication though a repair facility near the Linx terminus would make sence.

Both Haven and Grayson should be able to navigate any SLN SDs home. Those are normal hyper-space trips and they don't have to be made at any significant speed. Heck, both could probably even hire Manticore Merchant Marine crews (remember all those idle freighters?) to keep from stripping warships of engineering and command people. They don't have to fight them. They have to keep them powered, run the environmental systems (for a vastly reduced number of people) navigate them. Ok that is oversimplification but essentialy these are now little more than self powered hulks. It is also unlikely that SLN is going to show up in the short term to intercept them heading either for Grayson or Haven.

This would also be a way to move the soon-to-be-reclamed materials to Haven's yard locations to be reprocessed and fabricated into stuff for Manticore (and probably Grayson).

Theemile wrote:
OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

1) I can understand your dread - but for me it's a new one ....

2) Somehow I get the impression I somewhat displeased the Admiral. Luckily, he is not in my chain of command ...

Positroll wrote:

Theemile wrote:
OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

1) I can understand your dread - but for me it's a new one ....

2) Somehow I get the impression I somewhat displeased the Admiral. Luckily, he is not in my chain of command ...

Imagine you went to a tyre manufacturer with a new design of wooden wheel.

Or offered the USN a hundred sailing galleons immediately after Pearl Harbour.

Then imagine the idea being proposed a hundred times. That's why the old-timers are so tired of the topic.

Theemile wrote:

OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Let's try a little story that may underline the point so well made by your sig line (I can learn...eventually).
Barnum and Bailey Circus used to travel from town to town in beautiful painted and carved wagons. But when train freight rates got low enough, the circus moved to rail travel. The wagons were dumped in rail yards as they were not useful anymore. Whatever value they had one day, they had none the next. They went from centerpiece of the operation to scrap almost overnight. I got the story from the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL. Highly recommended. Any junk had value once, just not anymore. SDs are too big to use as lamps, so scrap or target practice (or both) is about what's left.

pldew wrote:

Theemile wrote:

OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Let's try a little story that may underline the point so well made by your sig line (I can learn...eventually).
Barnum and Bailey Circus used to travel from town to town in beautiful painted and carved wagons. But when train freight rates got low enough, the circus moved to rail travel. The wagons were dumped in rail yards as they were not useful anymore. Whatever value they had one day, they had none the next. They went from centerpiece of the operation to scrap almost overnight. I got the story from the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL. Highly recommended. Any junk had value once, just not anymore. SDs are too big to use as lamps, so scrap or target practice (or both) is about what's left.

Were I First Lord Hamish Alexander-Harrington, First Space Lord Thomas Capperelli or the rest the Queen Elizabeth's government, I am afraid I would find this discussion a horrible distraction. My plate would already be full enough without fussing over how to dispose of junk. Of course if they don't get around to it soon enough, perhaps a few of them could be sold to museums as historical novelties.

Don

munroburton wrote:
Imagine you went to a tyre manufacturer with a new design of wooden wheel.

Hm, as an avid reader of the 163x universe I find that idea absolutely sensible ...

Yeah, I'm afraid you have stumbled into another of those topics which have been beaten on repeatedly positroll. Ah well, we've come to expect it to rise from the dead.

One problem with your suggestion is that every Solarian ship being refitted is a new Manticoran ship which isn't being built. They use exactly the same kind of yard space. There is also no evidence that Manticore has a shortage of support vessels.

The topic of how Manticore could use the captured Solarian ships has come up so often that Duckk went to RFC to get the official Last Word (which naturally spawned a 25 page thread ). See viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4868

SWM wrote:Yeah, I'm afraid you have stumbled into another of those topics which have been beaten on repeatedly positroll. Ah well, we've come to expect it to rise from the dead.

One problem with your suggestion is that every Solarian ship being refitted is a new Manticoran ship which isn't being built. They use exactly the same kind of yard space. There is also no evidence that Manticore has a shortage of support vessels.

The topic of how Manticore could use the captured Solarian ships has come up so often that Duckk went to RFC to get the official Last Word (which naturally spawned a 25 page thread ). See viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4868

Um, maybe we got a slight misunderstanding here?

I read what RFC wrote - which is why I don't want to reuse the ships as such, just a lot of components the breakers will rip out of the SDs. Those components will be put into new hulls for fast freighters. Basically the same technique the Havenites used to build their navy after Buttercup ...

A for "no shortage of support vessels": there is ALWAYS a shortage of support vessels ...
At the very least the GA will need a bunch of ships that can be used to shelter and resupply LACs in newly liberated Solly protectorates (unless of course you go with my BB(P/CV) idea ... )
And there are hundreds of systems to be liberated ...

[edit] Finally, I don't think the Talbott Quadrant yards are up to building real warships yet. So there is no "crowding out" problem.
Instead, building auxiliaries with salvaged components and input from Mantie experts would do a lot to get them closer to that capability. And if in the future most SEM auxiliaries could be produced in Talbott, that would free up quite some capacity for building new Sag-Cs, Nikes etc in the SKM ...

Positroll wrote:

Theemile wrote:
OH MY GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS BACK!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

1) I can understand your dread - but for me it's a new one ....

2) Somehow I get the impression I somewhat displeased the Admiral. Luckily, he is not in my chain of command ...

One of the reasons this topic keeps coming back is because to someone who has never been a squid does not realize just how much work and danger is really involved. Just one example might help people understand why such work on unfamiliar ships is hazardous. On the last ship I served on there was a blower fan that needed to be serviced at a minimum of every thirty days. Simply go in an grease the bearings and shaft. Now, this fan was in a sealed compartment. To someone whom had never served on a ship, it might sound like a simple task, yet it took a 6 man crew to complete. 1 machinist with a cutting torch and a welding rig, 2 safety men, 2 corpsmen and 1 man to lube the fan. Most people would say install a hatch for easy access. However, the low end of the temperature scale in the compartment was 160 degrees, oxygen content (high end) was 2% and CO2 and CO was up there, along with all the gases that leaked in from the stack. An unprotected person might last a couple of minutes, maybe. So, the compartment where the access was, was evacuated, everyone donned breathing gear, the machinist cut the hole, one man went in and serviced the fan while 2 men stood by in case something went wrong (to go in and get the man doing the servicing), the corpsmen stood by for the same reason and when everything was done the machinist sealed the hole again. Approximately 6 man hours for a two minute servicing job. All that time was invested so that no CO ever had to tell a family your kid died because he was to stupid to follow the rules. And on any given vessel, wet- or space- navy, there are going to be jobs that require that kind of effort because of the same reason. And that was on a ship that everyone involved was trained on. What kinds of situations are going to be found on a ship you know nothing about?