Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Whitecold wrote:Alizon, short answer no, and it has been all discussed to death.

SD's are full of stuff enclosed by armor, with little space for humans in between. Trying to repurpose them means cutting open the armor, to get all the useless combat systems out, at which point it is easier to scrap them and build new space stations.
SD's are built as combat ships, and combat ships only. They're useless in a fight now, so they are useless at all, except for scrap value.

It probably has been discussed to death which is what tends to happen when a subject is of some interest.

SD's are not the "armored walnut" that you are making them out to be. Yes, all that armor does pose certain problems in any large scale conversion of what they are and what they can do. It even gets considerably in the way of trying to salvage any large significant components from them because they you do have to rip through the armored hulls to get in and extract what you are trying to retrieve. But what I am proposing is nothing of the sort.

Not considering their use as combat vessels or really any type of vessel intended for the primary purpose of traveling into deep space, what does a SD have, just as it is with little or no conversion.

1) A heavy duty power core capable of producing quantities of energy far in excess of it's needs while simply sitting still and not shooting at stuff.

2) Environmental systems and quarters capable of housing upwards of 6,000 people. Facilities, mess halls etc ... needed to maintain same for extended periods of time.

3) Storage for supplies to maintain said personnel for that period of time including medical facilities, storage areas for spare parts and materials as well as ordinance.

4) Very large shuttle bays capable of handling a significant number of small craft both arriving and departing.

5) Effective communications systems, administrative space, conference and meeting rooms.

6) Mobility so that it can, if necessary, reposition itself independently either to shift orbits, reposition in-system, or reposition to other systems as necessary.

That is a lot of capability without any modification.

And these things are actually not armored walnuts. They have hard dock access points so that personnel, supplies and ordinance can be loaded and offloaded. They have large shuttle bays for lots of small craft. All of these require that the armored hull be pierced so it's more like a armored walnut with holes some of them reasonably large holes. In fact, if I remember correctly, most warships are only very lightly armored above and below since the drive fields protect them.

So where could you bring those capabilities together and use them gainfully. Certainly the whole orbital barracks or prison hulk idea is one such use. Some of the uses I've specified earlier could also be gainful provided the capacity of the SD is sufficient without the extensive modifications you've suggested. After all, you don't have to go around carving through armored bulkheads if the space and capabilities are adequate as is or with only minor modifications. The price is certainly attractive.

I've listed a few possible uses for these vessels earlier and I'd like to point out that simply as is, these SD's have a lot of capability. Certainly no one would build one to be an orbital transfer point or space station out on the fringe of things, but it's already built and if it's existing capacity can meet your needs, what do you care if you're not using 80% of it? It didn't cost you anything to build and you only have to actually maintain a fraction of it and ... as I said before, there's plenty of spare parts.

One interesting use that occurred to me yesterday was the possibility of using them as nodes in the reconstruction of Manticore's orbital infrastructure.

At the moment, if the information in the books is accurate, Manticore has virtually no industrial capacity remaining within the Manticore system itself. For various reasons practically all of the systems industrial platforms were in the orbital facilities which are now so much orbital junk.

Where do you even start to rebuild.

Well the first think you need are nodes, places where the construction crews live so you don't have to lift them in and out of a gravity well each day, a place where you can generate enough power not only to build but to operate what you build once it's built.

Now, you can either spend your limited remaining industrial resources on building these node from scratch, or you could simply park an SD in orbit and use it's capabilities to support your construction effort. You could park SD's at intervals and build segments of the stations between them. Sure, it wouldn't be as nice as building purpose built structures but in a situation like Manticore faces, those exceedingly rare resources could be better used to build something else if an alternative is available which can do what needs to be done.

Of course the SD's aren't a permanent solution. Eventually you are going to want a purpose built structure to replace them at which point you disconnect them from the station they've been building and move them on to the next place they are needed.

Now, I don't expect you'll actually see anything like this happening in the books, but it is interesting to think about.

Theemile wrote:

Dca wrote: Does this suggest another possible use of all these SDs besides scrap or prison habitat? That is, as a feint in a battle? A threat that must be honored, but doesn't have the crew ( or armament) to carry through?

A feint which could be just as easily accomplished by some DDs and Ghostrider drones ( at least until the missiles start to fly). Yes, a GR drone can't really ram, but a missile toe drone can make a heck of a mess. Remember, if it looks like an SD ( on your scope) and quacks like an SD, you're going to treat it like it's an SD.

I don't think it's that easy to fake up a SD's wedge as seen by a good gravitic sensor. If it was, everybody would be bluffing that way. Or at least everybody would know it could be done and factor the possibility into their tactics. And the possibility would definitely change tactics.

It might be more cost-effective and less manpower-intensive to scrap the SDs and put the nodes on freighters. Maybe.

Dca wrote:

Theemile wrote:A feint which could be just as easily accomplished by some DDs and Ghostrider drones ( at least until the missiles start to fly). Yes, a GR drone can't really ram, but a missile toe drone can make a heck of a mess. Remember, if it looks like an SD ( on your scope) and quacks like an SD, you're going to treat it like it's an SD.

I don't think it's that easy to fake up a SD's wedge as seen by a good gravitic sensor. If it was, everybody would be bluffing that way. Or at least everybody would know it could be done and factor the possibility into their tactics. And the possibility would definitely change tactics.

It might be more cost-effective and less manpower-intensive to scrap the SDs and put the nodes on freighters. Maybe.

While prior to ghost rider microfusion plants the decoys had very short lifespans if faking that powerful a wedge signature as far back as Flag in Exile we saw EW drones, launched from BCs, minic the FTL signature of Gryphon-class SDs. Remember that Honor used that as the final encouragement for Theisman's force to break off rather that closing for a death ride with her damaged Grayson SDs.

Flag in Exile wrote:The Peeps were running flat out for the hyper limit at right angles to their original course, and already Mark Brentworth and Courvosier were turning to pursue, though there was absolutely no chance of overhauling them. She could trust Mark to rotate replacement decoy drones into place smoothly enough for no one to notice when the new ones took over from the old, and with eight "superdreadnoughts" in pursuit, the Peeps wouldn't stop running now that they'd started.

And with ghost rider drones you can fake the signature a lot longer before you run out of power and have to risk being noticed trying to swap in a replacement decoy. (And the Lorelei drones Honor had in A Rising Thunder sound like they've even more capable than that)

Alizon wrote:

Whitecold wrote:Alizon, short answer no, and it has been all discussed to death.

SD's are full of stuff enclosed by armor, with little space for humans in between. Trying to repurpose them means cutting open the armor, to get all the useless combat systems out, at which point it is easier to scrap them and build new space stations.
SD's are built as combat ships, and combat ships only. They're useless in a fight now, so they are useless at all, except for scrap value.

It probably has been discussed to death which is what tends to happen when a subject is of some interest.

SD's are not the "armored walnut" that you are making them out to be. Yes, all that armor does pose certain problems in any large scale conversion of what they are and what they can do. It even gets considerably in the way of trying to salvage any large significant components from them because they you do have to rip through the armored hulls to get in and extract what you are trying to retrieve. But what I am proposing is nothing of the sort.

Not considering their use as combat vessels or really any type of vessel intended for the primary purpose of traveling into deep space, what does a SD have, just as it is with little or no conversion.

1) A heavy duty power core capable of producing quantities of energy far in excess of it's needs while simply sitting still and not shooting at stuff.

2) Environmental systems and quarters capable of housing upwards of 6,000 people. Facilities, mess halls etc ... needed to maintain same for extended periods of time.

3) Storage for supplies to maintain said personnel for that period of time including medical facilities, storage areas for spare parts and materials as well as ordinance.

4) Very large shuttle bays capable of handling a significant number of small craft both arriving and departing.

5) Effective communications systems, administrative space, conference and meeting rooms.

6) Mobility so that it can, if necessary, reposition itself independently either to shift orbits, reposition in-system, or reposition to other systems as necessary.

That is a lot of capability without any modification.

And these things are actually not armored walnuts. They have hard dock access points so that personnel, supplies and ordinance can be loaded and offloaded. They have large shuttle bays for lots of small craft. All of these require that the armored hull be pierced so it's more like a armored walnut with holes some of them reasonably large holes. In fact, if I remember correctly, most warships are only very lightly armored above and below since the drive fields protect them.

So where could you bring those capabilities together and use them gainfully. Certainly the whole orbital barracks or prison hulk idea is one such use. Some of the uses I've specified earlier could also be gainful provided the capacity of the SD is sufficient without the extensive modifications you've suggested. After all, you don't have to go around carving through armored bulkheads if the space and capabilities are adequate as is or with only minor modifications. The price is certainly attractive.

I've listed a few possible uses for these vessels earlier and I'd like to point out that simply as is, these SD's have a lot of capability. Certainly no one would build one to be an orbital transfer point or space station out on the fringe of things, but it's already built and if it's existing capacity can meet your needs, what do you care if you're not using 80% of it? It didn't cost you anything to build and you only have to actually maintain a fraction of it and ... as I said before, there's plenty of spare parts.

One interesting use that occurred to me yesterday was the possibility of using them as nodes in the reconstruction of Manticore's orbital infrastructure.

At the moment, if the information in the books is accurate, Manticore has virtually no industrial capacity remaining within the Manticore system itself. For various reasons practically all of the systems industrial platforms were in the orbital facilities which are now so much orbital junk.

Where do you even start to rebuild.

Well the first think you need are nodes, places where the construction crews live so you don't have to lift them in and out of a gravity well each day, a place where you can generate enough power not only to build but to operate what you build once it's built.

Now, you can either spend your limited remaining industrial resources on building these node from scratch, or you could simply park an SD in orbit and use it's capabilities to support your construction effort. You could park SD's at intervals and build segments of the stations between them. Sure, it wouldn't be as nice as building purpose built structures but in a situation like Manticore faces, those exceedingly rare resources could be better used to build something else if an alternative is available which can do what needs to be done.

Of course the SD's aren't a permanent solution. Eventually you are going to want a purpose built structure to replace them at which point you disconnect them from the station they've been building and move them on to the next place they are needed.

Now, I don't expect you'll actually see anything like this happening in the books, but it is interesting to think about.

I think one important point you are missing is that most of the 6000 berths are used by crew necessary just to have the ships function. Merchies are designed with smallish crews in mind, and have small inhabited spaces compared to their 8Mton bulk. SDs on the other hand are built with redundancy in mind. Each of those 6 Fusion reactors has an oversized crew. Drive room are compartmentalized, with each node having its own drive controls. All this space requires more environmental systems, which require more maintenance. More Cofferdaming = more hatches = more maintenance. More maintenance = more techs = more support personnel. etc, etc

Look at Honor’s forces at Cereberus – even for short term use, there was a minimum crew of hundreds required for the ship to move and fight – and you can be assured that no one was think about long term maintenance.

Yes, if you ignore the warfighting capabilities, you can shrink the crew necessary to man an SD. A Skeleton crew of 2-300 may be able to move an old SD from star to star, but for long term use, you will need a crew of 1500-2000 men just to keep the ship in working order and move it around with zero warfighting capability.

Merchie parts are built with cost efficiency and reliability as a primary concern – Warships are built for ruggedness and performance. And the cost for that performance has typically been higher maintenance costs and manning costs.

I think of the difference between the 2 as the difference between a professional race car and a performance sedan. The race car is literally rebuilt every 500 miles with tires replaced every 250 – The Performance sedan is lucky if it’s owner replaces it’s oil every 5000 miles and tires are expected to last 40-60,000 miles, and no major components are expected to fail in the first 50,000 miles. The sports car has a driver and a 5-6 man pit crew on hand for the entire 500 miles, while the Sedan has a driver and shares a mechanic with 1000 other cars.

You can’t think of any use of the SDs without considering the manning costs.

His main idea was to use the SDs as worker dormitories/staging points for the people building the new stations.

Which is, from my POV, not a good idea, for a few reasons.
While these ships are capable of carrying several thousand people, they are probably not all that well-suited to serving the needs of a large construction site. Sure, if someone is desperate enough to do it, they can be pressed into service, but the SEM isn't that desperate. There are repair ships and facilities at the Junction, at Beowulf, Basilisk, San Martin, or in andermani and havenite space. All of that capability is more suited to the task at hand than a bunch of obsolete superdreadnoughts. And, let us not forget, all of that capability has been mobilized weeks if not months before Filareta appeared. The reconstruction projects are already well under way, adding complications like finding a use for those SDs will just delay them.

Hi Theemile,

I think that there is a yes, but lurking here somewhere. Understanding that we're both guessing, I wonder how much your numbers could be reduced by automating routine chores. Remember that there is a huge degree of redundancy built into manning and fighting these ships which you have already recognized with your 1500 figure. Perhaps with some properly installed computers, that figure could be reduced to 500. Also, warships such as this have hugely redundant life support. So let's say they could comfortably house 10,000 people rather than 6,000 which would be its normal crew. Would it be worth it?

What I am suggesting is that Alison has a valid point. What one would be willing to put up with in a situation in thich Manticore currently finds itself is vastly different than the normal ideal. Were I a Manticoran decision maker, I would at least explore the practicality of the idea to see if it could accelerate the rebuilding process.

Don

n7axw wrote:Hi Theemile,

I think that there is a yes, but lurking here somewhere. Understanding that we're both guessing, I wonder how much your numbers could be reduced by automating routine chores. Remember that there is a huge degree of redundancy built into manning and fighting these ships which you have already recognized with your 1500 figure. Perhaps with some properly installed computers, that figure could be reduced to 500. Also, warships such as this have hugely redundant life support. So let's say they could comfortably house 10,000 people rather than 6,000 which would be its normal crew. Would it be worth it?

What I am suggesting is that Alison has a valid point. What one would be willing to put up with in a situation in thich Manticore currently finds itself is vastly different than the normal ideal. Were I a Manticoran decision maker, I would at least explore the practicality of the idea to see if it could accelerate the rebuilding process.

Don

Adding automation will take time and money. Probably not a SD class shipyard, but definately a shipyard's machine shops and molycirc support. As has been pointed out earlier - you can get the same features anywhere in the Honorverse for lower upfront and longterm costs in more convenient packages. Standardized housing modules could be easily built at any civilian shipyard in Silensia or Talbott, many of which are probably already turning them out as a standard product.

Power output is one of the best uses for the SDs, but the cost to keep up the reactors (in the ships) in manpower would make them prohibitive. What we are discussing is akin to buying a car just to provide power for a power tool at a remote worksite - no matter how cheap the car, you still need to maintain almost the entire car so it still runs - long term it would be more effective to purchase a speciality generator to do the job. Yes, you could rip out the Fusion reactors from ths ships and mount them in a more efficient station body, but by the time you get them out of the ships and into a more manageable situation, standardized Manty power sources will be avalable again or on the near horizon.

n7axw wrote:Hi Theemile,

I think that there is a yes, but lurking here somewhere. Understanding that we're both guessing, I wonder how much your numbers could be reduced by automating routine chores. Remember that there is a huge degree of redundancy built into manning and fighting these ships which you have already recognized with your 1500 figure. Perhaps with some properly installed computers, that figure could be reduced to 500. Also, warships such as this have hugely redundant life support. So let's say they could comfortably house 10,000 people rather than 6,000 which would be its normal crew. Would it be worth it?

What I am suggesting is that Alison has a valid point. What one would be willing to put up with in a situation in thich Manticore currently finds itself is vastly different than the normal ideal. Were I a Manticoran decision maker, I would at least explore the practicality of the idea to see if it could accelerate the rebuilding process.

Don

Automating is not just a matter of installing different computers. You also have to install the connections between those computers and the hardware elsewhere on the ship that they are to control, and modify the hardware to even allow that kind of automation. In some cases, it may require replacing the hardware. This requires at least a little yard time.

Manticore is already working on the new shipyards, and has been for quite a while. Some of the smaller shipyards are probably nearly completed. Manticore does not appear to need more housing for construction workers. By the time the superdreadnoughts could be modified to allow the use proposed, the new shipyards will already be working on ships.

SWM wrote:

n7axw wrote:Hi Theemile,

I think that there is a yes, but lurking here somewhere. Understanding that we're both guessing, I wonder how much your numbers could be reduced by automating routine chores. Remember that there is a huge degree of redundancy built into manning and fighting these ships which you have already recognized with your 1500 figure. Perhaps with some properly installed computers, that figure could be reduced to 500. Also, warships such as this have hugely redundant life support. So let's say they could comfortably house 10,000 people rather than 6,000 which would be its normal crew. Would it be worth it?

What I am suggesting is that Alison has a valid point. What one would be willing to put up with in a situation in thich Manticore currently finds itself is vastly different than the normal ideal. Were I a Manticoran decision maker, I would at least explore the practicality of the idea to see if it could accelerate the rebuilding process.

Don

Automating is not just a matter of installing different computers. You also have to install the connections between those computers and the hardware elsewhere on the ship that they are to control, and modify the hardware to even allow that kind of automation. In some cases, it may require replacing the hardware. This requires at least a little yard time.

Manticore is already working on the new shipyards, and has been for quite a while. Some of the smaller shipyards are probably nearly completed. Manticore does not appear to need more housing for construction workers. By the time the superdreadnoughts could be modified to allow the use proposed, the new shipyards will already be working on ships.

I am challenging your sense of time here. From Ywatta Strike until final scenes in COG is a matter of months, probably less than a year. To be sure Haven returned those workers captured at Grendlesbane and I am sure they went right to work, but your notion of current progress sounds a wee bit optimistic to me.

As for the sds, most of their basic functions are already being controlled by computer. For such things as maintaining life support and orbital station keeping, they would do as is. My notions of automotion had more to do with routine maintenence tasks normally performed by humans. I wouldn't defend that very strongly because you might be right. Energy use is a valid concern. But what we are talking about is a temporary expedient not a permanent solution.

Don

What I am hearing here from many posters is that there is ample construction capacity available from any number of sources which make the use of an SD impractical. For whatever it's worth, this is certainly not the picture painted following the Alignment's attack.

What is depicted is the utter destruction of all of the significant orbital constructs and orbital industrial infrastructure, an infrastructure which too generations of remarkable effort to build in the first place. Worse, if the books are to be believed, practically all of Manticore's heavy industry was located in these orbital bases.

And the Manticore's system represents as majority of the industrial capacity of the Empire ... and it's gone. This includes pretty much all of the shipyards and of those that survive, all of the industries which made the parts that those shipyards assembled are gone.

Yes, you probably have some light industry and possibly just a little heavy industry on the surface of the planets, and other areas of the Empire probably also have some excess capacity that they can use to help. Of course all if it has to be built, then shipped and reassembled on site. Even if you take this route, and Manticore really doesn't have much choice, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what has been lost and something that took generations to build isn't going to just reassemble itself in a couple of years.

So yes, if that's the situation, then things really are that desperate.

And I'd beg to differ on how much crew it would take to operate a SD in the construction support role. A LOT of the crews time while in service will be spent operating and maintaining the most finicky systems devised by man, specifically it's electronics suites, sensor arrays, weapons systems and ordinance maintenance as well as your propulsion system. Very little or any of that is actually needed in the role I've proposed.

Also in service you're going to have backup crews for your backup crews, Marines and any number of other personnel which simply aren't needed in this role. Yes, if you want to move the thing under it's own power for any distance, you'll need more people, but since that would be pretty rare that's not really a consideration.

The power cores would be the most difficult system to maintain but Solly vessels are specifically designed to use more people that is needed even for their level of automation and it's not like you're going to need to be running them to an extent needs to power sidewalls, inertial compensators, tracking systems, grazers etc ... ... so you really aren't going to need to push them to their limits. That and including the fact that the design used has been around literally for centuries probably means that the whole bleeding edge of technology problems in the designs are a long long time into the past. What you probably have is a pretty rugged, pretty reliable system whose qualities and operations are pretty well known.

I'd be surprised if you needed more than a couple of hundred personnel, tops, to operate and maintain the vessel long term in this role.

And it's a lot more than a floating barracks. As has been noted it's reactor and power sources are going to be very useful, certainly the berthing and support capabilities are going to be useful as well but so are the small craft interface capabilities and the SD's built in storage bays which can accept materials and personnel shipments and then effectively route them to where they are needed.

So yes, in these conditions and with minor easily implemented modifications, you should be able to use them in this role.

Just one more thing. Let's say you are Manticore and you can order these housing and power modules to be shipped in from Silesia or Talbot San Martin, even Haven ... if these represent only a fraction of your pre-strike industrial capacity, are you sure that these are the best use of these assets if you have an alternative which can be pressed into service?

Now maybe Manticore's situation isn't even close to being as bad as White Haven's report would make you believe, and if so then, and you can easily divert industrial production to that purpose without depriving yourself of the things you really really need, then the counterargument makes sense. But if things are as desperate as they would appear, then possibly those SD's might find a use.

Whatever is done with them, I'm sure there are people in the Admiralty who are wracking their brains as to what they can do with all of these assets just floating around their star system.

I'm sorry, a few repair ships and other manufacturing capabilities out system are