How many missiles can an Invictus control...

Well, I did say "as I recall". I had the pre-pod numbers right but misremembered the Pod Layers by a couple of hundred.

Still, around 400 pre modern Waller would be a lot more realistic than 4,000 plus which have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

And kzt, the idea behind a SD is a ship that can dish out and take enormous punishment. This means a SD has to be able to take on it's counterparts with a reasonable chance of survival. If a SD can pump out 350 - 400 missiles per salvo then things get hairy but manageable for modern CM's and PD systems. If missile salvo densities jump for that level by a factor of 10 into the 4,000 range then this is something that no modern defense system can even blunt.

When you reach that that point, it doesn't matter how powerful your sidewalls are, how thick the armor or how good your CM's and PD lasers are, they are going to do you zero good and you're going to be destroyed. In that case, it's a waste of resources time and money to invest in heavy defensive systems and you might as well go with unarmored and largely unprotected missile launching platforms because it doesn't matter if you're heavily protected or not in such a scenario, you ship will be just as dead.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Life is hard. If the options are survival of the government or making rich people richer the government pretty much chooses to survive all the time.

Without making up the losses in shipping capacity -- or at least as much as they can -- they won't have the money to build anything; warships or freighters.

Yeah, it was a shock when in 1943 the Nazis and Japanese ran out of money and had to stop all war production. Oh, wait, they didn't do that.

As a matter of fact, has anyone stopped fighting a war when they "ran out of money"?

All out War has everything to do with resources.

Other than public moral money does not come into it.

Now political stability AFTER the war has everything to do with money.

kzt wrote:Yeah, it was a shock when in 1943 the Nazis and Japanese ran out of money and had to stop all war production. Oh, wait, they didn't do that.

The Solarian League isn't on a war economy -- Yet. The Mandarins have allocated all civilian shipyards for building civilian freighters. They may eventually change their minds and start converting civilian yards to military priorities but they have to actually admit they're in a real war with a real risk of losing before they start running up a war debt: which will require a declaration of war and war-time economic measures.

Good luck with getting that package through the Solarian Senate without a veto from somebody.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Yeah, it was a shock when in 1943 the Nazis and Japanese ran out of money and had to stop all war production. Oh, wait, they didn't do that.

The Solarian League isn't on a war economy -- Yet. The Mandarins have allocated all civilian shipyards for building civilian freighters. They may eventually change their minds and start converting civilian yards to military priorities but they have to actually admit they're in a real war with a real risk of losing before they start running up a war debt: which will require a declaration of war and war-time economic measures.

Good luck with getting that package through the Solarian Senate without a veto from somebody.

Through Solarian Senate? Probably no. Though people are driven by fear more than by anything else. Depends on the fear factor.

On a different note. SL worlds tax system is based entirely via local usage. Only internal SL trade is based on taxes to the SL federal government. Many SL worlds will read the writing on the wall opening the government spigots producing at least a credible local defense initiative.

J6P wrote:Many SL worlds will read the writing on the wall opening the government spigots producing at least a credible local defense initiative.

Many will read that writing and do a credible imitation of rats on a sinking ship, too.

Based on textev, the Mandarins are as concerned about their financial situation almost as much as the military technology gap.

TheMonster wrote:Actually, that doesn't seem like a joke at all. What if you design a pod-laying freighter with maximum automation, and have a couple of pinnaces tractored to its hull (either of which could carry the entire crew of the freighter to rendezvous with one of the wallers), but try not to need them...

I'm not sure why you are suggesting mounting pinnaces on the freighters to evacuate the crew. If an enemy ship starts chasing the freighter, the freighter can accelerate a lot faster than the pinnaces. Pinnaces have no chance of getting away.

J6P wrote:All out War has everything to do with resources.

Other than public moral money does not come into it.

Technically that's only true to the extent you can run a war economy on internal resources, or resources you can capture. If you can't be self-sufficient in critical resources then you've got to buy them from neutral 3rd parties.

And by and large they don't care about your moral, they want to be paid for their material or supplies. Now to some extent, if you look like a good risk, you can get external debt to raise money to purchase those critical resources. But that's not a infinite supply either.

But if the resource is truly critical then it's lack would (by definition) seriously hamper your ability to effectively fight the war. Which tend to lead you to lose in relatively short order.


Now that situation should apply to the League if they collectively buckle down and get serious about trying to fight. There's no basic resource that their combined planets shouldn't have in abundance.

But it does kind of apply if the League Government tries to fight the war without the support of most of the League members. In that scenario suppliers on those planets aren't going to want to provide materials, equipment, or ships to the SLN without being paid. But without a change to the constitution (not possible without massive support) the League government has very restricted ways to raise that money. And blatantly violating those parts of the constitution, when there's no popular support for the war, is likely to drive member worlds away - totally denying their resources and industry to the League Government.

SWM wrote:I'm not sure why you are suggesting mounting pinnaces on the freighters to evacuate the crew. If an enemy ship starts chasing the freighter, the freighter can accelerate a lot faster than the pinnaces. Pinnaces have no chance of getting away.

No, if someone starts to chase you you have lots of tools to convince them to stop. An entire cargo hold full of them.

The problem is surviving a battle. Given the example of Home Fleet, the survivability of heavily armored massively defended ships seems highly questionable, so putting your missile barge into autonomous and running like hell seems like a viable plan.

SWM wrote:

TheMonster wrote:Actually, that doesn't seem like a joke at all. What if you design a pod-laying freighter with maximum automation, and have a couple of pinnaces tractored to its hull (either of which could carry the entire crew of the freighter to rendezvous with one of the wallers), but try not to need them...

I'm not sure why you are suggesting mounting pinnaces on the freighters to evacuate the crew. If an enemy ship starts chasing the freighter, the freighter can accelerate a lot faster than the pinnaces. Pinnaces have no chance of getting away.

I don't think that true any more; not if you're talking about a military pinnace.


Remember that at Nuncio, in SoS, Hexapuma's "new Mark 30 Condor-class pinnaces" pulled 600 Gs under impeller!

That's about what a BC with a latest generation Manti compensator should be able to pull at 90% power (10% compensator safety margins seems to be the new standard). So you'd need a quite small freighter with a top of the line military drive to equal that performance (however smaller ships, like for example a Roland, should be able to beat it handily without sacrificing safety margin)