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SLN Ship improvement

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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Maldorian   » Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:09 pm

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To bring it to the point:

Thank goodness that nearby all sollies are Pavel Young / Elvis Santino clones!

All what them cares are themselfs! League? Battle Fleet? I AM much more important than that.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Sigs   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 12:20 am

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munroburton wrote:
The SLN? They can't deploy enough Cataphracts with enough fire control to make a difference. Even if they produced a Moriarty-type fire control platform/vessel, the RMN already has the technology, tactics and experience to handle it and most missile storms.



And the SLN has the industrial capability to build massive numbers of individually ineffective LAC's but as large groups relatively powerful. Combine that with the existing SLN fleet and backed by a powerful force of missile pods they could cause a lot of problems for the GA just because of sheer numbers. If you have 2-3 dozen heavily industrialized core systems producing simple anti-missile LAC's, Frigates, Destroyers and Light cruisers as well as Missile pods they could make a handful of systems very tough nuts to crack. There might be a shortage of shipyards in the League compared to their size but likely there isn't a shortage of construction capability for light shipping which could be converted to LAC's quickly.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Sigs   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 12:22 am

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Maldorian wrote:To bring it to the point:

Thank goodness that nearby all sollies are Pavel Young / Elvis Santino clones!

All what them cares are themselfs! League? Battle Fleet? I AM much more important than that.


How long would that last though? We are already seeing officers in the Marines, Gendermarie and the Navy doing quiet investigating. And there is bound to be at least a handful of senior officers who are not in bed with the MA and competent. And it looks to me that the Solarian Marines are the least corrupt of all the branches, basically the people with the guns on Solarian warships are the once most able to react and least corrupt.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 12:46 am

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Sigs wrote:And the SLN has the industrial capability to build massive numbers of individually ineffective LAC's but as large groups relatively powerful. Combine that with the existing SLN fleet and backed by a powerful force of missile pods they could cause a lot of problems for the GA just because of sheer numbers.


True to some extent. LACs do have some limited missile fire-control capability and some CM and PDLC capability even without the completely new designs you propose. Each LAC should be able to control a pod's worth of missiles and counter one or two Manticoran missiles. You just need far more LACs than the League has or can build.

You also have the problem of concentrating LAC numbers since they're not hyper capable and freighters are in short supply in the League at the moment.

Sigs wrote:If you have 2-3 dozen heavily industrialized core systems producing simple anti-missile LAC's, Frigates, Destroyers and Light cruisers as well as Missile pods they could make a handful of systems very tough nuts to crack. There might be a shortage of shipyards in the League compared to their size but likely there isn't a shortage of construction capability for light shipping which could be converted to LAC's quickly.


Again, building LACs will help only those systems who can build them and only to the extent that they can produce the numbers they need.

It seems to me that, despite the thread title, you're suggesting a complete reordering of the SLN's order of battle and beefing up individual systems' SDF forces. You're not improving ships, you're "improving" fleets.

In the case of the SLN, there's nothing they can do in the time they have, since they are the primary target of the GA.

In the case of "...a handful of systems very tough nuts to crack," there is really no need for defenses against GA Tech in the immediate future. Your proposed changes won't do a great deal against GA tech anyway. The GA has no real need or desire to attack individual League members. Unless a system openly and adamantly supports the Mandarins and SLN, the GA will use diplomacy to encourage neutrality or secession.

With the evidence of the Mandarins/SLN version of "commerce raiding" being devastation of anyone suspected of trading with the GA (or GA supporters) convincing most League members that the "League" is out of control and should be dissolved should be a piece of cake.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by munroburton   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:33 am

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Sigs wrote:
munroburton wrote:
The SLN? They can't deploy enough Cataphracts with enough fire control to make a difference. Even if they produced a Moriarty-type fire control platform/vessel, the RMN already has the technology, tactics and experience to handle it and most missile storms.



And the SLN has the industrial capability to build massive numbers of individually ineffective LAC's but as large groups relatively powerful. Combine that with the existing SLN fleet and backed by a powerful force of missile pods they could cause a lot of problems for the GA just because of sheer numbers. If you have 2-3 dozen heavily industrialized core systems producing simple anti-missile LAC's, Frigates, Destroyers and Light cruisers as well as Missile pods they could make a handful of systems very tough nuts to crack.


That just shifts the proportions of quality and quantity around - and not by enough.

The RMN/GSN already has a "space superiority" LAC(the Katana). And it's developed an anti-LAC countermissile which can be fired from its most modern shipboard CM launchers. They can carry enough of these to deal with the aforementioned missile storms!

Members of the GA have also developed LAC doctrine, technology and experience to handle large numbers of enemy LACs(with varying degrees of success). RFC only knows what kind of LAC improvements the Hemphill-Foraker team will produce.

There might be a shortage of shipyards in the League compared to their size but likely there isn't a shortage of construction capability for light shipping which could be converted to LAC's quickly.


What light shipping? LACs are ~10-20,000 ton ships. They sit awkwardly between the two kinds of commercially more useful ships(100-1000 ton atmosphere-capable shuttles) and 40,000-8,000,000 ton hyper capable hulls. There's a good bit of textev in WoH about the differences between those kinds of scales(when the Cimeterre's design process is explained to us).

I do not know of any reason for the SL to have built truly large numbers of LAC-sized production facilities. We know from an infodump that approximately two thirds of the League's member systems have defense forces containing no hyper-capable warships(ie, LACs and/or forts).

At most, they have one or two bases in each of those systems optimised for LAC maintenance. The vast majority of them probably imported their LACs from places like Yildun. If these systems build their own LACs, then they are not set up for mass production in the volumes now required of them - think about it, until now those systems only needed a few dozen at most and could operate each LAC for fifty years. That's a replacement rate of one every two years. They would have to do it this way to preserve continuity of shipbuilding skills and practices, rather than starting from scratch after decades-long hiatuses.

~1800 member systems. ~1200 have only LACs. A new one for each every two years on average. The entire League might only produce as few as 600 LACs per year. And why wouldn't they? The League's members have not been attacked for centuries. Virtually zero combat losses to replace.

In comparison, Operation Thunderbolt destroyed over 900 RMN and over 700 RHN LACs. The Battle of Manticore alone saw more than seven thousand LACs destroyed(and Home Fleet's LAC strike had... debatable success. It annihilated the Havenite screen, but didn't do much to the battle wall - for 90% losses).
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by lyonheart   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 9:22 am

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Hi Sigs,

No one questions that suitably motivated, the Core worlds could eventually make dramatic improvements to their system defenses, which most have neglected for centuries, but given the apparent brevity of the war, and how crushing the the GA's easy victory was/is many hundreds of ex-members may not even try.

TheEmile reminds us at the end of each of his posts that RFC has said said it'd take 6 years for the SL to build and launch a new SDP, once they figure out how to build one.

If the war ends in 6 monthes the pressure for many SL members to arm themselves could drop considerably, even to preferring to rely upon the GA, as they did on the SLN because its far cheaper, besides putting them nearer to the past 'normal'.

While star system A could indeed build lots of LAC's and defensive frigates and destroyers, the six years required for launching the first SDP means they could have considerable offensive power in a couple more years, with offensive units like BC's, CA's and CLAC's years earlier, so they should be seeking a more balanced force than one so focused on defense LAC's etc, that cannot protect its presumed growing merchant marine or be shared with possible allies, that such lone star systems now need in the post 'SL uber alles' future.

All successful pioneers had good neighbors, so too the pioneers [former SL members] of the post SL future will need them.

Of course the SEM/GA intends to be very good neighbors indeed.

But before System A can effectively improve its missile defenses, they have to do much more than just increase SD missile defense by 50%, or 100%, or 200%, or even 500%; they need net paradigm improvements of 1000% or better, like the GA, in things like sensors and fire control, fusion miniaturization, multi drive shielding, AI, software, EW, RD's, etc which will generally be long in coming; because they can't overcome a 60+ year lead effort in military R&D overnight, or in 6 years or 12 or even 20 etc.

That's a hint the RMN and GA should still have a considerable military tech lead in the new story arc.

The obvious solution to your suggested tactical problem is that the other star system could have simply invested in 1000 times as many missile pods, so they can tractor ~40 times as many to their hulls as Filaretta had, or carry in their new SDP's since the 6 year time limit will have gone by years earlier, so the 50% improvement in SD missile defense you cited for A is meaningless; just by firing four times as many missiles or whatever overkill the fleet CO chooses, as Hamish did; just as the early response to missile pods in the Haven sector.

Given the weakness in energy weapons by all the LAC's, frigates, and destroyers that have only counter-missile weapons, B should exploit it with lots of energy weapon heavy SD's, BC's and heavy cruisers going through the LAC's and frigates armed only with missile defenses like fat through a goose, or if discovering the graser armed Shrike, might build many copies of their own to be the rather faster edge of the spear that could kill many defensive LAC's each with virtual impunity.

Since A apparently didn't improve its compensator efficiency, focusing only on missile defense, this might be another area B might exploit to break up and destroy the missile defense ships.

Harkness and Abby both noticed how inexperienced if not inept the SLN was with its EW at NT and Spindle, just one of many areas the SLN are too far behind to catch up quickly if ever, a major reason being the SLN EW operators only get one chance against the GA, in which they lose, so the SLN essentially never learns from its mistakes.

I don't expect that to change in the next six monthes.

Given how much the GA is holding back in fighting the SL now, the SL or whatever rump remains might still be quite ignorant of the GA's present true military superiority when the new story arc begins around 20 years from today.

Against the GA, system A would find itself woefully outclassed, since decent espionage and recon would discover the doctrine and ships making it a reality, so the GA force has plenty of missiles to overwhelm the missile defenses, if not shred them by attacking multiple targets simultaneously to thin out the defense even further.

OTOH, its hard to figure what System A could have done to tick off the GA given its inward looking attitude that would also be reflected in its foreign, economic and trade policies.

If system A isn't bothering the GA, then why, given all the other calls on it, would the GA attack it?

Regarding the notion of SLN Marines being less corrupt than the rest of the SLN, that's probably more due to a much smaller budget that any innate superior integrity, since as noted in CoS, the line marines were essentially mercenaries, albeit very experienced and effective ones.

Since RFC is trying to be realistic, I suspect we're going to lose at least some of those honest SL investigators, though we may learn more of what they've learned that is forever lost to the rest of the galaxy or at least the SL.

Given the years until the new story arc, we must be patient, even when RFC tempts us into new false projections of the next book.

There's more but I don't have the time except for best wishes,

L


Sigs wrote:
Maldorian wrote:To bring it to the point:

Thank goodness that nearby all sollies are Pavel Young / Elvis Santino clones!

All what them cares are themselfs! League? Battle Fleet? I AM much more important than that.


How long would that last though? We are already seeing officers in the Marines, Gendermarie and the Navy doing quiet investigating. And there is bound to be at least a handful of senior officers who are not in bed with the MA and competent. And it looks to me that the Solarian Marines are the least corrupt of all the branches, basically the people with the guns on Solarian warships are the once most able to react and least corrupt.
Last edited by lyonheart on Mon Oct 16, 2017 5:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Sigs   » Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:45 pm

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True to some extent. LACs do have some limited missile fire-control capability and some CM and PDLC capability even without the completely new designs you propose. Each LAC should be able to control a pod's worth of missiles and counter one or two Manticoran missiles. You just need far more LACs than the League has or can build.


I am not proposing new designs so much as amending historical designs that the SLN already has. You have LAC designs that the SLN build 20,50 or 100 years before the war. They most likely still have those designs somewhere. Simply strip all offensive weapons and either simply put pure anti-missile weapons wether they are missile only or energy only.





Weird Harold wrote:You also have the problem of concentrating LAC numbers since they're not hyper capable and freighters are in short supply in the League at the moment.


I would disagree with this statement on one level. True the SEM withdrew their freighters and closed the WHJ’s they could reach but they represented about 1/4 of all shipping in the League if I’m not mistaking. The League will need more than the freighters the SEM took to restore trade within the League to pre-war levels because of the closed off WHJ’s but how much of that shipping is truly vital for the survival or any one system? If we are talking basic necessities then yes use freighters to supply those systems in need but rank trade routes based on necessity, the least necessary get frozen for the time being. Those judged to be vital to the League get priority.







Weird Harold wrote:Again, building LACs will help only those systems who can build them and only to the extent that they can produce the numbers they need.

There are enough freighters with non essential cargoes that the SLN can commander to act as carriers. There likely is some ship building capabilities on any number of systems that would allow the construction of freighters as well. The SLN does not need a carrier, it needs a transport. There is a difference between the USN sending 50 F-35’s in an aircraft carrier ready to enter combat at any moment and sending 50 F-35’s in a freighter to be offloaded at a base and used from that base. What they need is a vessel that can get a number of LAC’s from point a to point b nothing more, they don't need the vessel to be able to fight, or sustain damage they need it to transport. There is likely some remaining fleet train of the SLN however limited it is, if it were utilized in such a way as to avoid sending it to useless battle that end up getting it captured or destroyed it could be utilized for movement of those units.

Weird Harold wrote:It seems to me that, despite the thread title, you're suggesting a complete reordering of the SLN's order of battle and beefing up individual systems' SDF forces. You're not improving ships, you're "improving" fleets.

We improve the SLN’s SD’s by adding LAC’s and other anti missile units. Those SD’s get a new lease on life until someone gets around to designing ships that are individual at least within shouting distance of the GA. Granted those SD’s would be used in a new way, to support the LAC’s rather than to face the enemies wall. This is an act of desperation, but it might be a lot easier to build 1,000 LAC’s than modify an SD to make it survivable in battle with the GA.
Weird Harold wrote:In the case of the SLN, there's nothing they can do in the time they have, since they are the primary target of the GA.

They are the primary target, but they are also so big and the GA has to tread carefully that they have the time. And they have to do something, they can't sit and wait.



Weird Harold wrote:In the case of "...a handful of systems very tough nuts to crack," there is really no need for defenses against GA Tech in the immediate future. Your proposed changes won't do a great deal against GA tech anyway. The GA has no real need or desire to attack individual League members. Unless a system openly and adamantly supports the Mandarins and SLN, the GA will use diplomacy to encourage neutrality or secession.

What the GA want’s and what the GA gets are two very different things. If I were the MA I would make damn sure that there are some atrocities wherever the GA stops in the core worlds. I suspect the MA would do anything and everything to poison the GA’s reputation with the core. And more importantly they might decide to support the League against the GA on account that they can manipulate the League at a later date better than they can manipulate the GA’s members.



Weird Harold wrote:With the evidence of the Mandarins/SLN version of "commerce raiding" being devastation of anyone suspected of trading with the GA (or GA supporters) convincing most League members that the "League" is out of control and should be dissolved should be a piece of cake.
Unless the MA has something to say about it. Do you think they would let the League collapse and have the GA grow more powerful? They know they have to face the GA eventually to more core worlds they can convince that the GA is the boogeyman the more core worlds they can get on their side eventually. If everyone sees the GA as the good guys the MA might have some problems pulling off their plan.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Sigs   » Sat Oct 14, 2017 12:08 am

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munroburton wrote:
The RMN/GSN already has a "space superiority" LAC(the Katana). And it's developed an anti-LAC countermissile which can be fired from its most modern shipboard CM launchers. They can carry enough of these to deal with the aforementioned missile storms!

But this gives the SLN a chance. What are the other options for the SLN? They have 1,800 SD's that are nothing but missile magnets that have no chance against 100 SD(P)'s let alone 1,000 SD(P)'s.

Members of the GA have also developed LAC doctrine, technology and experience to handle large numbers of enemy LACs(with varying degrees of success). RFC only knows what kind of LAC improvements the Hemphill-Foraker team will produce.

The League SD's are powerful units. Keep the LAC's close enough to the SD's and the rest of the fleet and it will be very expensive for the GA to destroy those LAC's. Can Alliance LAC's survive against ready SLN SD's and BC's?



What light shipping? LACs are ~10-20,000 ton ships. They sit awkwardly between the two kinds of commercially more useful ships(100-1000 ton atmosphere-capable shuttles) and 40,000-8,000,000 ton hyper capable hulls. There's a good bit of textev in WoH about the differences between those kinds of scales(when the Cimeterre's design process is explained to us).
So a yard that builds commercial vessels from 40,000 tons and up will be stumped enough and won't be able to adapt? We are not taking about them building Katana's or SD(P)'s we are talking about building a ship that has been around for hundreds of years. Hell a 40,000 ton Frigate with out hyper capability would do just as good a job as a LAC with a lot more in the way of capabilities.

I do not know of any reason for the SL to have built truly large numbers of LAC-sized production facilities. We know from an infodump that approximately two thirds of the League's member systems have defense forces containing no hyper-capable warships(ie, LACs and/or forts).

We know that Haven went from producing few if any LAC's to producing quite a few LAC's in a relatively short amount of time. What is possible for Haven is certainly possible for any number of Core worlds with better technology to start with. We are talking about LAC's and not particularly good LAC's just in large enough quantities to overcome their Qualitative disadvantage. If the Mandarins are worried about pissing off some shell or core world because they can build pretty sizeable fleets out of their own resources why can't we assume that some can? More than that why do we assume that all of the Core worlds will be happy to Leave to League? Many might want to remain a part of the League or a rump state... if 100 Core worlds desire to remain in the League or form a new state based around the League what will the GA do? Raze them to the ground? Pour salt on their whole planets?

At most, they have one or two bases in each of those systems optimised for LAC maintenance. The vast majority of them probably imported their LACs from places like Yildun. If these systems build their own LACs, then they are not set up for mass production in the volumes now required of them - think about it, until now those systems only needed a few dozen at most and could operate each LAC for fifty years. That's a replacement rate of one every two years. They would have to do it this way to preserve continuity of shipbuilding skills and practices, rather than starting from scratch after decades-long hiatuses.
So you are saying that Haven can turn their entire economy and education system around inside 5 years, fight a multisided war, build an entire secret fleet of hundreds of SD(P)'s and lighter combatants with thousands of LAC's in 1 system in 5 years while not 1 of 1,700+ League members can build LAC's in any sort of quantity?


In comparison, Operation Thunderbolt destroyed over 900 RMN and over 700 RHN LACs. The Battle of Manticore alone saw more than seven thousand LACs destroyed(and Home Fleet's LAC strike had... debatable success. It annihilated the Havenite screen, but didn't do much to the battle wall - for 90% losses).
We don't know how developed Bolthole was before Theisman got his hands on it, but Haven managed to build ~320 SD(P)'s, 48 Carriers and probably close to 60,000 LAC's in one system in 5 years having had to develop many technologies from scratch while fighting a multisided civil war, enacting economic changes, rebuilding the infrastructure and industry of the nation and reeducating a large segment of the population to dramatically improve the efficiency of the Havenite industry all at the same time. And they build the new fleet with most likely resources from that one system... Gee the League must be full of idiots if 1,700 systems can't scrape together at least some industrial capability to build a bunch of low tech LAC's.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by Sigs   » Sat Oct 14, 2017 12:52 am

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I am not talking about building pods and LAC's as the be all end all. I am talking abut building LAC's and pods to buy you time to research. Otherwise you end up with your systems being exposed for however long it takes you to get technological parity.

Let's say that there is a successor state, call it nation ABC.

If nation ABC knows they are militarily inferior because they are technologically surpassed the enemy and that their entire military capability is now completely useless they will look for anything to improve their ship capabilities. Nation ABC has 20 Core systems which are heavily industrialized. Their options are pretty limited their population will not accept them leaving the nation defenceless for a decade while they try to gain parity so they can build a military?

Here is how I would do it, and I am using my logic, understanding and beliefs for this.

1)I would put the industries of the new nation into LAC's building mode, they will pump out as many LAC's as they can.

2)I would build as many pods as I can, and I will make command stations to be able to control a hell of a lot of missiles at the same time.

3) I would start building up my ship building capability. Build from FF on up to SD's with focus being on point defence over offence.

4)Start research on how to overcome all of my current shortcoming. With 20 industrialized systems with a large well educated population I can field a large research and development organization.

5) As I develop new technologies I would incorporate them into my fleet.

6) I would start building my military manpower and doctrine as well as logistical base.

Now some will ask why build warships from FF on up to SD's with focus for PD? Simple, I would do that to build up my industry, get kinks out of introducing designs getting production going etc... If I manage to get parity 10 or 15 years from now then so be it but when I finally have technology that can stand up to the GA I will have the shipyards and industry to use them, the manpower to operate them and the logistics to support them. Starting to build up your capabilities after you have the technology seems like a bad idea to me. Having an industry that has 10-15 years experience building LAC's, FF-SD's seems like a good idea to me. Having SD's and below would allow me to trim my people before we get the technology thereby allowing me to incorporate new weapons and ships quickly.


By building LAC's and missile pods you start up your industry and buy some minor level of protection. By building larger ships you build your shipyards up and allows you to develop ship design teams etc etc etc... When you get technological breakthrough and build the new ships you have the LAC crews for your version of the Katana's, the SD crews for your SD(P)s, the fleet bases to support nd supply your fleet and the officers able to lead your fleet effectively.
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Re: SLN Ship improvement
Post by pappilon   » Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:27 am

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Sigs wrote:I am not talking about building pods and LAC's as the be all end all. I am talking abut building LAC's and pods to buy you time to research. Otherwise you end up with your systems being exposed for however long it takes you to get technological parity.

Let's say that there is a successor state, call it nation ABC.

If nation ABC knows they are militarily inferior because they are technologically surpassed the enemy and that their entire military capability is now completely useless they will look for anything to improve their ship capabilities. Nation ABC has 20 Core systems which are heavily industrialized. Their options are pretty limited their population will not accept them leaving the nation defenceless for a decade while they try to gain parity so they can build a military?

Here is how I would do it, and I am using my logic, understanding and beliefs for this.

1)I would put the industries of the new nation into LAC's building mode, they will pump out as many LAC's as they can.

2)I would build as many pods as I can, and I will make command stations to be able to control a hell of a lot of missiles at the same time.

3) I would start building up my ship building capability. Build from FF on up to SD's with focus being on point defence over offence.

4)Start research on how to overcome all of my current shortcoming. With 20 industrialized systems with a large well educated population I can field a large research and development organization.

5) As I develop new technologies I would incorporate them into my fleet.

6) I would start building my military manpower and doctrine as well as logistical base.

Now some will ask why build warships from FF on up to SD's with focus for PD? Simple, I would do that to build up my industry, get kinks out of introducing designs getting production going etc... If I manage to get parity 10 or 15 years from now then so be it but when I finally have technology that can stand up to the GA I will have the shipyards and industry to use them, the manpower to operate them and the logistics to support them. Starting to build up your capabilities after you have the technology seems like a bad idea to me. Having an industry that has 10-15 years experience building LAC's, FF-SD's seems like a good idea to me. Having SD's and below would allow me to trim my people before we get the technology thereby allowing me to incorporate new weapons and ships quickly.


By building LAC's and missile pods you start up your industry and buy some minor level of protection. By building larger ships you build your shipyards up and allows you to develop ship design teams etc etc etc... When you get technological breakthrough and build the new ships you have the LAC crews for your version of the Katana's, the SD crews for your SD(P)s, the fleet bases to support nd supply your fleet and the officers able to lead your fleet effectively.


The bigger problem is all those OFS Governors. Yes Barregos actually cares about the planets and people in his Maya Sector. Makes him a banevolent dictator with a very big and very modern-by Manticore standards- navy. There are others who will be somewhere between Warneke and him looking to become their own emperors and picking on their neighbors.

Another issue is the SL itself has probably tamped down long standing resentments and hostilities between and/or among neighboring systems who would welcome the opportunity to unleash their SDF on their neighbor.

Haven had a wartime economy and a wartime manufacturing base across its multi-system republic decades before Basilisk Station. Heck it was a regional power at the Call to Duty series timeline. So comparing it to some very wealthy system with its own SDF and NO combat experience, no actual knowledge of what the GA actually has, how to develop what it doesn't know becomes ... problematic. haven had the advantage of being at near par technologically with blooded fleets, and a wide quantitative advantage. it actually obtained RMN tech after combat during the first war. it had a great jump in tech when Erewhon handed them everything short of FTL- apollo etc. and they still couldn't duplicate it only find almost-as-good-but-more-of-it.

Not to mention the machinations of the MAlign and its renaissance Factor. Ya think its not finding those little simmering resentments and squirting a little hydrogen on the embers of resentment priming systems for conflict with neighbors to increase the general feeling of a galaxy going to hell for its own motives?

Systems with no hyper capable SDF that they are building themselves without importing from TIY etc. are effectively starting a 100 meter dash from -40m. Systems with little info beyond news reports will not catch up to Manticore.

The Core and Shell worlds will have to band together in small clumps and pool resources to defend themselves from the renegade OFS governors and their ex-FF navies first and the survivors then can turn their developed tech and anger toward SEM and the GA. Certainly not going to happen in 6 years, maybe not in 60.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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