Bluesqueak wrote:CRC wrote:
Agreed on technological progress, but the expansion of production capacity to produce all of these things is my issue - not the technological progress itself. Yes, they are no-brainers when you have access to OWL's files, but that doesn't actually build the machinery that builds the bits and pieces.
Keep in mind we are going through the industrial revolution (say 1820)to pre-WWI capability - say late 1890's to early 1900's - in just 7 years.
Even today, if I want to order a lathe, a break and sheer or a mill that is not in stock, we are talking 30-90 day lead times - sometimes more. Not to mention if I need to order a couple hundred of them!
I would have preferred a conversation with Clyntahn prior to his "breaking" just to explore what he knew and then pursue it, but there was no indication of even that kind of evaluation. Now in all fairness, it could have happened, and the results, or non-results, revealed in the next book.
Your lathes are produced under peacetime conditions- not double-shift wartime production. The company that now has a thirty day lead time would expand geometrically as it trained new people to produce huge numbers of lathes - and get that lead time down. Because a lathe is a weapon of war, just as much as a gun - a 90 day lead time for the 'weapons' to build the weapons would be unacceptable.
Logistically, Charis also has access to much more industrial planning capacity than the church does, because OWL has access to the future equivalent of PRINCE type project planning. You can see the COGA struggling with developing production lines when they have no idea what they're working towards. Delthak's only problem is the same as yours - he doesn't have the tools to do a proper production line. Once Payter's inspiration gets him the tools, he's off.
Ditto for project planning, even though we don't really see that. Delthak has access to training on scheduling materials, labour, off site production most efficiently. The Church doesn't.
Ahh, that's what's been bothering me. Paityr's brainstorm using pneumatic "energy" distribution for production lines occurred in April 896 (Midst Toil...). ATSoT is in October of 897. Even Howsym mentioned at the time it would take several months to get something like that in place in a production line. That brings us to July-August 896.
The sheer volume of production just doesn't make sense. Even if OWL has access to planning software, you still have to have people inside the circle translate or transliterate that data to outside the circle personnel. And that takes trained project engineers, of which there are very few anywhere in this world - much less inside the circle.
You can compensate for that by sheer numbers of people swamping the inefficiencies - which is what COGA is doing - but COGA is concentrating on one model of rifle, for example, to the exclusion of others, while the ICN is transitioning through deploying 3 or 4 different rifle models and a pistol on the mainland in the same time frame - not to mention mortars, field kitchens, tents, uniforms, rations, kettles, shovels, skis, mess kits, ammo for all the above, artillery and balloons!
Even in Heirs of Empire Sean only used the Israel's manufacturing facilities to rifle the joharns, make a few other changes to items, but did not introduce anything as complex as a cartridge loading rifle or pistol. That process, as explained in the book, was much more believable - or as believable as a Sci-Fi book can be!
But as I said, its not really disappointment, just a little annoyance. RFC injects a lot of 'reality' into his books that allow for this type of analysis. Its actually fun to analyze something like this. Helps either dust off the old cobwebs or provide a bit of escape from the latest status report.