Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:You're correct. I did assume that there were many available on half-pay, scattered throughout the galaxy looking for work and a meaningful life -- as Bachfish.

I never thought that half-pay officers were among the pool of warm bodies that BuPers ever used. I would think that is the pool of last resort. If indeed that well has already been tapped, then it seems BuPers will have a hard time crewing any significant number of new ships constructed.

Why didn't BoM put BuPers into Code Black!?

What makes you think it didn't put them into a crisis situation? They had all these new (admittedly highly automated) ships under construction and the losses during BoM included a significant number of the older more manpower intensive designs.
Although comparing raw manpower numbers is a little misleading, because you probably can't get more that one and a fraction command or engineering staffs from an old-style 4-5000 man SD for your < 1,000 man SD(P). So decommissioning legacy designs leaves you with a relative overabundance of lower level ranks and enlisted.

There's have been some good officers put on half-pay during the ceasefire for political reasons, or just due to downsizing the legacy forces without correspondingly building up modern units. And there would be more officers loaned out on diplomatic or other postings that might be recalled to service. And of course some of the half-pay people are officers who irredeemably blotted their copybooks through screw-ups of one kind or another. Some few of those might be worth a second look and pulling back into service, but many are there because they're too incompetent to be allowed active duty.


I'm sure BuPers was scrambling to find sufficiently seasoned officers and crew to man the python lump construction. (Though I'm assume it helped that by the time that construction was actually completed they were getting PoWs returned by Haven)

Duckk wrote:You said the Torches "have training and experience in space construction, military service, ship handling (merchant marine) and just about any skill needed to jumpstart a ship-building industry."

Either I was unclear or you misread. The skills needed are in the wider population of ex-slaves and children of slaves that Torch has access to -- in much the same way that Israel theoretically can call on the entire Jewish population of the World.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:You're correct. I did assume that there were many available on half-pay, scattered throughout the galaxy looking for work and a meaningful life -- as Bachfish.

I never thought that half-pay officers were among the pool of warm bodies that BuPers ever used. I would think that is the pool of last resort. If indeed that well has already been tapped, then it seems BuPers will have a hard time crewing any significant number of new ships constructed.

Why didn't BoM put BuPers into Code Black!?

What makes you think it didn't put them into a crisis situation? They had all these new (admittedly highly automated) ships under construction and the losses during BoM included a significant number of the older more manpower intensive designs.
Although comparing raw manpower numbers is a little misleading, because you probably can't get more that one and a fraction command or engineering staffs from an old-style 4-5000 man SD for your < 1,000 man SD(P). So decommissioning legacy designs leaves you with a relative overabundance of lower level ranks and enlisted.

There's have been some good officers put on half-pay during the ceasefire for political reasons, or just due to downsizing the legacy forces without correspondingly building up modern units. And there would be more officers loaned out on diplomatic or other postings that might be recalled to service. And of course some of the half-pay people are officers who irredeemably blotted their copybooks through screw-ups of one kind or another. Some few of those might be worth a second look and pulling back into service, but many are there because they're too incompetent to be allowed active duty.


I'm sure BuPers was scrambling to find sufficiently seasoned officers and crew to man the python lump construction. (Though I'm assume it helped that by the time that construction was actually completed they were getting PoWs returned by Haven)

Well, because they never acted as if they felt the pinch. Other than the redesign of a more automated platform. And a shortening of the quality training given to students at Saganami.

Even if BoM didn't happen, where would all of the bodies continue to pour from? How many ships were destroyed in the building slips that needed crewing? Storyline always mentioned the personnel shortage in passing, but BuPers always came through somehow - that how is beyond me. Because the RMN's butcher was killing them much faster than they could gestate and train them. The more automated designs should have simply meant a temporary fix - a band aid that was completely blown off at the BoM.

What happened to all of the somewhat trained personnel freed from Hades?

Weird Harold wrote:Either I was unclear or you misread. The skills needed are in the wider population of ex-slaves and children of slaves that Torch has access to -- in much the same way that Israel theoretically can call on the entire Jewish population of the World.

And you're missing my (well, David's) point: that such a pool does not exist in useful numbers.

Third, the population of Torch is going to increasingly consist of refugees from other places. Now, this is going to bring in some ex-slaves (or children [of] slaves and ex-slaves) who do have skills which would be useful to a new navy, and it's probably going to bring in some who actually have military training, but they are still going to be far too short of trained, experienced officers and senior enlisted to crew even one or two wallers. And it's also probably going to result in a population which is increasingly skewed towards unskilled citizens, or at least citizens whose technical skills and training are going to be minimal. These people are going to have attitude and motivation out the ying-yang, but they are going to consist in no small part of the refuse of the galaxy (which, after all, has spent several centuries more or less pretending the problem of genetic slavery doesn't really exist), traveling steerage (or on bare-bones transports, probably subsidized by the ASL and people like Klaus and Stacey Hauptmann [and maybe a few donations from Skydomes of Grayson, I suppose]) from places like the slums of Old Chicago. You are going to get at least some highly skilled and probably quite successful and well-off people who are coming to help build the kibbutzes, as it were, but I suspect that the majority of the descendents of slaves who fall into that category are going to tend to support Torch financially and politically from where they are already located as successful citizens rather than emigrate to Torch themselves.

cthia wrote:Well, because they never acted as if they felt the pinch. Other than the redesign of a more automated platform. And a shortening of the quality training given to students at Saganami.

Even if BoM didn't happen, where would all of the bodies continue to pour from? How many ships were destroyed in the building slips that needed crewing? Storyline always mentioned the personnel shortage in passing, but BuPers always came through somehow - that how is beyond me. Because the RMN's butcher was killing them much faster than they could gestate and train them. The more automated designs should have simply meant a temporary fix - a band aid that was completely blown off at the BoM.

What happened to all of the somewhat trained personnel freed from Hades?

This is explained in SftS and MoH. After Thunderbolt, they remobilized everything they had in mothballs and called up basically all the people placed on reserve by Janacek. Once the python lump reached completion, they shut down all the old manpower intensive ships and transferred them to the new construction. Once that happened, BuPers was completely tapped out.

Duckk wrote:And you're missing my (well, David's) point: that such a pool does not exist in useful numbers.

[i] ...[b]they are still going to be far too short of trained, experienced officers and senior enlisted to crew even one or two wallers. ...

You and David are talking about several thousand needed to crew Wallers. I'm talking about a couple hundred to take on apprentices and build a ship-building industry -- not even one to build ships for the Torch Navy in the beginning; just "baby steps" to build up a cadre capable of eventually training up ship-builders and semi-skilled naval crews.

The Torch wormhole is eating ships. Could it be that the MAlign knows why and have solved the problem?

Of course they know why. They're the ones who shot down the survey vessel.

Duckk wrote:Of course they know why. They're the ones who shot down the survey vessel.

kzt wrote:

Duckk wrote:Of course they know why. They're the ones who shot down the survey vessel.

Wait. What! Huh?