Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

kzt wrote:What could possibly go wrong with a plan to place SDs in orbit around all the talbott planets, manned by SLN personnel? It's not like the SLN people you are recruiting might know how to employ a 6 million ton warship as a warship, right?

This is why I have preferred to offer captured SLN SDs to former SL systems that secede and sign a peace treaty with Manticore. You can then segregate captured SLN crew by home system with verification by treecat then use these people to crew SDs that are given to their home system. Even if you can recruit only half a crew they will be cadre to train replacements. The captured SLN SDs are crap by GA standards but they will kick the crap out of SLN ships, pirates or probable independent SDFs that might attack. As missile production comes on line, you can gift them missile pods.

Giving them away isn't that bad an idea, and one that seems pretty reasonable to me. They might be a pain to maintain, etc, but such is life.

kzt wrote:Giving them away isn't that bad an idea, and one that seems pretty reasonable to me. They might be a pain to maintain, etc, but such is life.

They were captured with ammo ships and repair ships, so maintaining them might not be a huge problem

Actually, I think Weird Harold has offered a plan that could conceivably be implemented. The actual cost-benefit analysis would have to be situational. What would perhaps be redundant in systems like Montana or Rembrandt could turn out very beneficial in systems like Dresden or Nuncio, for example. And while it is true that these systems have survived without this sort of aid, most surely providing it in a timely manner without trying to exploit the natives can do a world of good in terms of binding the Talbot Quadrant's systems to the SEM.

The point about the SDs being useless is not really quite accurate, or perhaps I should say, not quite complete. I could stand subject to correction here, but I believe that the context of that discussion had to do with their utility as warships, as weapons platforms. In that context, they are antiquated death traps.

That is not to say that they couldn't serve other useful functions. It was suggested earlier up thread that they could provide dorm space for space workers rebuilding after the Yawatta Strike. Or Weird Harold's idea is at least a creative attempt at coming up with another use.

Finally, what it would come down to is cost-benefit analysis. It could be that when that is done it would turn out practical--or not. While I have seen a lot of bald assertions that "it isn't practical" or "it won't work", I have yet to see any textev, forum postings or info dumps that demonstrate the matter one way or the other.

To conclude, I'm not trying to tell David how to write his books. I have no idea how he would play this. But I do enjoy taking what David has written and running with it. Call it a thought experiment if you will. So telling me that RFC isn't going to do it that way really isn't very germaine to what I am doing because I don't expect him to do it my way to start with and enjoy the surprises he inevitably springs with his stories.

How long to the next mainline Honorverse novel...yearn, yearn...

Don

I say we give the ships to Mythbusters so they can test if an yacht squished between 2 SD's sublime into their armor.

There was this incident at Sankar (or was it Sherkan?) where this is supposed to happened. The captains (Lord John Whorfin & John Bigboote) of the 2 SD's had been drinking Saurian Brandy and egged each other into a stobor race. The myth also says that the yacht owner; Mr. Klaatu, was on his honeymoon trip and was at the time of the incident indecently delayed in bed by his wife; Mrs. Helen Benson-Klaatu. Mr. Klaatu's valet; Mr. Gort, had desperately tried to warn the pair of the 2 SD's bearing down on them but since his voice was muffled through the door the pair thought he was warning them about STD's. Mr. Gort had managed to flee the doomed yacht in a rescue pod instants before it was squished by the SD's.

So the story goes anyway...

Joat42 wrote:I say we give the ships to Mythbusters so they can test if an yacht squished between 2 SD's sublime into their armor.

There was this incident at Sankar (or was it Sherkan?) where this is supposed to happened. The captains (Lord John Whorfin & John Bigboote) of the 2 SD's had been drinking Saurian Brandy and egged each other into a stobor race. The myth also says that the yacht owner; Mr. Klaatu, was on his honeymoon trip and was at the time of the incident indecently delayed in bed by his wife; Mrs. Helen Benson-Klaatu. Mr. Klaatu's valet; Mr. Gort, had desperately tried to warn the pair of the 2 SD's bearing down on them but since his voice was muffled through the door the pair thought he was warning them about STD's. Mr. Gort had managed to flee the doomed yacht in a rescue pod instants before it was squished by the SD's.

So the story goes anyway...

Might work.. at least until the SDs brought up their wedges!

Don

Actually, he has advanced a couple of newish ideas. Both the medical and educational suggestions he made have merit. My objection to either proposal is leaving them aboard ship and using SLN personnel to man those ships. Both proposals would advance the infrastructure of what ever planets received them. The biggest problem I see with either one is the number of one-of-a-kind cables that would be needed. While Nuncio and Dresden might not be able to do that kind of fabrication, Rembrandt or San Miguel should be able to.

As for the small craft, give the armed vessels to the military and the unarmed ones to the civilians. Yes, there will need to be a logistics setup for spare parts, but most of it already exists, both civilian and military. All that is necessary is for the captured parts to be sorted and entered into that system. Even if in the long run they end up useless due to the lack of spare parts, some good will come from having them on hand and usable before then.

n7axw wrote:

Joat42 wrote:I say we give the ships to Mythbusters so they can test if an yacht squished between 2 SD's sublime into their armor.

There was this incident at Sankar (or was it Sherkan?) where this is supposed to happened. The captains (Lord John Whorfin & John Bigboote) of the 2 SD's had been drinking Saurian Brandy and egged each other into a stobor race. The myth also says that the yacht owner; Mr. Klaatu, was on his honeymoon trip and was at the time of the incident indecently delayed in bed by his wife; Mrs. Helen Benson-Klaatu. Mr. Klaatu's valet; Mr. Gort, had desperately tried to warn the pair of the 2 SD's bearing down on them but since his voice was muffled through the door the pair thought he was warning them about STD's. Mr. Gort had managed to flee the doomed yacht in a rescue pod instants before it was squished by the SD's.

So the story goes anyway...

Might work.. at least until the SDs brought up their wedges!

Don

Well... The whole incident occurred because they took down the wedges after accelerating up to .1c and nobody could remember how to use the maneuvering thrusters in their inebriated state, although the heads on deck 6 flushed real good for a while.. supposedly...

The E wrote:But you haven't demonstrated conclusively that these vessels are "here, now, and free". They're here, yes, but free? Not by a long shot. You also have so far failed to demonstrate why these measures are needed so desperately right now that you need to get almost a hundred thousand POWs to sign on with the SEM, or why half a year or so of delay before proper measures can be taken is completely inacceptible.

No, operating costs mean that the ships aren't truly "free" They are "Free" in the sense that they already contain resources that would otherwise have to be imported or constructed at additional cost, over and above operating expenses.

I have "failed" to demonstrate a "desperate need" because there isn't one. A half year delay in beginning remedial education and/or medical won't mean a damned thing to anyone except people who might benefit from the medical/trauma care.

The question isn't why do we need to do this, it is why not accelerate things by using the resources at hand.