Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Manticore generates foreign exchange by:

Junction Fees.

Merchant Fleet,

Selling manufactured goods.

How much you bet that instead of concentrating on shipping consumer retail goods such as air cars, Manticore sells a lot of fabrication modules that can manufacture air cars?

If so, an awful lot of fabrication modules were in transit when Manticore implemented Case Lacoon. All of those cargo ships are returning with holds full of stuff including machine tools and consumer goods.

I would expect that none of theses include militarily significant tech. Second, they are based on a supply chain that no loger exists. So there are no spare parts and never will be any spare parts for the foreseeable future.

And lastly, you only get paid for deliveries. So there is a huge incentive to deliver the billion worth of gear in your hull before you get billed for the equipment yourself and also not paid for shipping.

Alizon wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Assuming the Honorverse wiki timeline is correct (I haven't tried to double-check it); it's about 8 months.
Feb 1922 PD - Operation Oyster Bay
June 1922 PD - The Second Havenite-Manticoran War officially ends / Filareta's attack
October 1922 PD - Events from last chapter of CoG

So the rebuilding is 5 months along before any SLN SDs become available in the Manticore System. OTOH the rebuilding is 5 months along before the Grendlesbane workers could have been returned.

I've no idea if, by that point, they'd rebuilt enough to make utilizing SDs as worker dormitories and power sources redundant. (Although given that 5 month span I do suspect if they were going to use SDs for that they would have already fired up some of the mothballed reserve RMN SDs)

Oh yes, that would be a better solution if, in fact, the RMN had any left. Remember High Ridge systematically went about scrapping the RMN for profit. Even relatively new non-pod laying SD's were turned into razor blades.

Now guess where the rest of the mothball fleet would have been located? That's right, docked to or very nearby the huge orbital stations and which were destroyed or badly damaged right along with them. As such, expect for older RMN SD's where were sold or loaned to their allies, I doubt there are more than a very few left.

Reserve SDs

We have the May 1920 Fleet list (post Janacheck) listing ~250 Manty conventional SDs (Sphinx and Gryphon classes)in the RMN and 60 in the Grayson Reserve(RMN Victory Class (30) and former Havenite Duquesne (27) and Haven Class (3) SDs).

In addition to these, Grayson had ~30 home built SDs in 2 classes in service at the beginning of the 2nd war.

High Ridge/Janachek Sold off the remaining Ring Wiliam and Anduril class ships to Erewhon and the above mentioned Victory and ex-Havenite SDs to Grayson at scrap value. The Royal Winton, Gladiator, Majestic, Ex-Havenite Neaveau Paris, and most of the Bellerophon DNs were all scraped prior to Thunderbolt - leaving Honor the last 11 Bellerophons at Sidemore - 6 were still on the RMN roster in May 1920, most likely the last active squadron at Sidemore.

Of these 346 ships, ~260 still exist after BoMA. Many are still in active fleet use.

As for their location, the 68 surviving Havenite SD(p)s captured at BoMA were available 2 months after OB to be returned to the RHN. Chances any RMN SD not under active maintenance @ one of the 3 stations was not located at the stations, but at whatever location the RHN SDs were located. The ship losses at BoMA have not been listed, and HoS information was intentionally dated April/May 1921 to avoid listing the consequences of BoMA AND OB for reasons of authorial "elasticity."

Other construction locations

While the Construction centers in Grayson and Manticore were destroyed, There was a mini-Hesphaetus station built at Basilisk and a construction level fleetbase built at San Martin between the wars. Hancock station's resources were not touched in either war, but never reached Grendslebane's construction capability. However, these resources are just capable of shouldering the burden of servicing the current fleet, but not producing more ships.

Silensia has dozens of shipyards, most only able to build merchie designs or low tech frigate/destroyer designs - 2 (most likely in Andy hands) are CA level yards, and 1 (most likely in Manty hands) is a low tech BC yard with BB capabilities.

Talbott has low tech DD/CL/merchie shipyards at Rembrant, San Miguel and Prarie, there may be others (like there WAS at New Tuscany), but they would be tech limited and have not been mentioned. Chances are the Lynx system may have had some advanced construction (since they formally joined the Star Kingdom in 1917 iirc), but it would be limited in size and capability, and definitiely not up to the job of replicating Manty 1st line ships.

A Personel habitation module like I mentioned is a low tech solution virtually any shipyard can build in job lots. Any Merchie tech solution can be ordered from any of these yards and delivered in a few months.

And are Dormatories really necessary for Orbital work? An honorverse shuttle can land at any point on the planet in less than 45 minutes from an low orbital position - the commute in most large cities is worse than that.

Thanks Theemile for the nice summary. It helps put things into perspective.

Don

The GA certainly has no need for all those Sollie ships, that has been beaten into the ground, but that does not mean they could not be used elsewhere. In particular I am thinking of Maya. Currently as a loyal member of OSF, Governor Berregios (SP) has at his disposal a number of fleet units, but to the best of my knowledge, and I may very well be wrong here, he is currently limited to OSF battle cruisers and has no ships of the wall. His partnership with Erewhon will lead to him getting modern SD(P)'s in 2 years, but until then he has nothing. Which leaves him in the position of hoping that the wheels don't come off before then, and that he has no need of anything heavier if things do go pear shaped on him.

Those ex Sollie ships would do him a world of good in a lot of ways. First off, while they are obsolete and nothing more than floating targets against podnaughts, the only one who has said podnaughts are the GA, who he is not at war with, and is on somewhat friendly terms with in fact. So it's not likely he has to worry about a fleet of them showing up on his doorway. What he does have to worry about is OSF getting wind of his plans, or the disintegration of the SL and his neighbors getting adventurous. And having a solid core of SLN SD's would go a long way toward blunting either of those threats.

Second, they would be invaluable as training platforms for the navy that he is going to need to build. To have his ship captains and crews go from commanding BC's to SD's requires training, and for this those SLN ships would be invaluable. Both to get his personnel intimately familiar with the capabilities of said ships (the easier to defend against) and in maneuvering and fighting a SD in general. And the Maya sector is certainly well of enough that it can afford to maintain those ships, he is already planning on doing just that after all.

Certainly he is not going to want to flaunt his owning those ships to OSF/SLN forces, but having them in his back pocket just in case is an excellent insurance policy for him. And increasing the number of BC's he has is again, not something I see him turning down either. And with those he can play a shell game with at least, hiding them just by changing the transponder codes to match ships he already has, and more aggressively patrolling his sector.

gmg2dave wrote:The GA certainly has no need for all those Sollie ships, that has been beaten into the ground, but that does not mean they could not be used elsewhere. In particular I am thinking of Maya. Currently as a loyal member of OSF, Governor Berregios (SP) has at his disposal a number of fleet units, but to the best of my knowledge, and I may very well be wrong here, he is currently limited to OSF battle cruisers and has no ships of the wall. His partnership with Erewhon will lead to him getting modern SD(P)'s in 2 years, but until then he has nothing. Which leaves him in the position of hoping that the wheels don't come off before then, and that he has no need of anything heavier if things do go pear shaped on him.

Those ex Sollie ships would do him a world of good in a lot of ways. First off, while they are obsolete and nothing more than floating targets against podnaughts, the only one who has said podnaughts are the GA, who he is not at war with, and is on somewhat friendly terms with in fact. So it's not likely he has to worry about a fleet of them showing up on his doorway. What he does have to worry about is OSF getting wind of his plans, or the disintegration of the SL and his neighbors getting adventurous. And having a solid core of SLN SD's would go a long way toward blunting either of those threats.

Second, they would be invaluable as training platforms for the navy that he is going to need to build. To have his ship captains and crews go from commanding BC's to SD's requires training, and for this those SLN ships would be invaluable. Both to get his personnel intimately familiar with the capabilities of said ships (the easier to defend against) and in maneuvering and fighting a SD in general. And the Maya sector is certainly well of enough that it can afford to maintain those ships, he is already planning on doing just that after all.

Certainly he is not going to want to flaunt his owning those ships to OSF/SLN forces, but having them in his back pocket just in case is an excellent insurance policy for him. And increasing the number of BC's he has is again, not something I see him turning down either. And with those he can play a shell game with at least, hiding them just by changing the transponder codes to match ships he already has, and more aggressively patrolling his sector.

I suspect the risk (and fear) of OFS/SLN hearing rumors that he's got the ships is too high for him to be willing to grab the security they might offer.

After all, about the worst outcome for him would be for the SL to begin seriously looking at the Maya sector before the wheels finish coming off. Even now the SLN can more that deal with every SD left from Filleretta's fleet, so even if Maya has time to get them all returned to service and crews trained up they're no guarantee of their ability to remain free. The Erewhones built Podnaughts, yes, a hundred or so ex-SLN SDs, no.

So why increase the risks if the upside isn't sufficient?

Maya doesn't need them, and they are dangerous to have. People would talk.

Jonathan_S wrote:

gmg2dave wrote:The GA certainly has no need for all those Sollie ships, that has been beaten into the ground, but that does not mean they could not be used elsewhere. In particular I am thinking of Maya. Currently as a loyal member of OSF, Governor Berregios (SP) has at his disposal a number of fleet units, but to the best of my knowledge, and I may very well be wrong here, he is currently limited to OSF battle cruisers and has no ships of the wall. His partnership with Erewhon will lead to him getting modern SD(P)'s in 2 years, but until then he has nothing. Which leaves him in the position of hoping that the wheels don't come off before then, and that he has no need of anything heavier if things do go pear shaped on him.

Those ex Sollie ships would do him a world of good in a lot of ways. First off, while they are obsolete and nothing more than floating targets against podnaughts, the only one who has said podnaughts are the GA, who he is not at war with, and is on somewhat friendly terms with in fact. So it's not likely he has to worry about a fleet of them showing up on his doorway. What he does have to worry about is OSF getting wind of his plans, or the disintegration of the SL and his neighbors getting adventurous. And having a solid core of SLN SD's would go a long way toward blunting either of those threats.

Second, they would be invaluable as training platforms for the navy that he is going to need to build. To have his ship captains and crews go from commanding BC's to SD's requires training, and for this those SLN ships would be invaluable. Both to get his personnel intimately familiar with the capabilities of said ships (the easier to defend against) and in maneuvering and fighting a SD in general. And the Maya sector is certainly well of enough that it can afford to maintain those ships, he is already planning on doing just that after all.

Certainly he is not going to want to flaunt his owning those ships to OSF/SLN forces, but having them in his back pocket just in case is an excellent insurance policy for him. And increasing the number of BC's he has is again, not something I see him turning down either. And with those he can play a shell game with at least, hiding them just by changing the transponder codes to match ships he already has, and more aggressively patrolling his sector.

I suspect the risk (and fear) of OFS/SLN hearing rumors that he's got the ships is too high for him to be willing to grab the security they might offer.

After all, about the worst outcome for him would be for the SL to begin seriously looking at the Maya sector before the wheels finish coming off. Even now the SLN can more that deal with every SD left from Filleretta's fleet, so even if Maya has time to get them all returned to service and crews trained up they're no guarantee of their ability to remain free. The Erewhones built Podnaughts, yes, a hundred or so ex-SLN SDs, no.

So why increase the risks if the upside isn't sufficient?

Manpower is another factor Maya has to deal with. Roszak official SLN force is 18 DDs and 3 CLs at somewhere around 400 people per ship, or 8400 people. Roszak obviously needed more manpower for the "official" new construction, so Roszak probably was able to double his manpower from the SLN to 17,000 or so.

The Erewhonese construction has Manty level automation, The Star Knight based Rifleman CLs had crews of just over 200 in a ship which traditionally carry a crew of 800-1000 (350 of which would be marines). So their SDs will have crews between 1 and 2 thousand. SLN SDs have crews of over 6000. For every Scientist, they can crew ~4 new podnauts.

It will be a lot easier for Maya to find or hide the manpower for for Erewhonese ships - crewing just 1 SLN squadron will require a 6x growth in manpower from their original #s. That same growth will man 4 Erewhonese squadrons, with each of the 16 divisions more powerful than that 8 ship squadron.

Pull the needed internals and use them for FF(P) and FF(CLAC). Fast Freighters. They don't need be new Manty tech fast to be better than Civy tech Compensators Wedges....

Even with the 200 Sollie SD Talbot and Raging Justice fleets. The 200 Gryphon Sphinx that survived Manticore 1. Another 100-300 Dreadnaught and Grayson SD. Plus the 100 FF that were around after Manticore 2.

This can give 500 FF(P) and 200 FF(C).

More than enough reserve ships. Add in 10,000 Shrike and 10,000 Katana and you have a great training fleet, system reserve or System Guard.

Everything of a modern SD except the armour and some telemetry.

Will you shut up about your stupid fast freighters? No one is going to be pissing their time and resources away literally rebuilding your freighters into not-even-half-assed warships. Honor makes it very clear in HAE that any attempt to upgrade the drives of her Q-ships was a monumental waste of time.

Her biggest weakness was that it had been impossible to upgrade her drive without literally tearing her apart and starting over.

So stop flogging this deceased equine. It is not happening, just like all your other moronic ideas.