cthia wrote:I'm not so sure it failed. YMMV, but I still think Gram was more efficient when it had Home Field advantage than the shadow of its former glory it is now. There isn't anything I'm trying to take away from Bolthole, but nothing in Haven Space will ever be as efficient as Project Gram. And working in someone else's laboratory can never replace the Home Sweet Home of working in your own.
Bolthole certainly did not have the cutting edge technology that Weyland had, I agree. But that's a temporary problem: once the terms of alliance were signed and the researchers put aboard a liner to go to Bolthole, they brought all the software and blueprints for all that technology. Even if they had to build the tools at Bolthole using current Havenite technology to build the actual tools they wanted, it could probably be done inside of 6 months. After that, Bolthole would be the single most advanced build centre in the entire Settled Galaxy.
The only drawback that Bolthole has and will forever have is lag time on information. Project Gram was highly successful because it benefited of information from all over the Galaxy, brought in by Manticoran spies, merchants, and via regular news. Manticore was effectively the centre of Galactic information (and economy). Now, for that information to get to the teams making use of them, you have to add some 20 days.
Its remoteness also means that people taking vacations, sabbaticals and other types of leave will probably take longer to get back.
I don't think that matters.
They were never worried about collaboration of the two, no. What I'm saying is they would be worried even more, in hindsight, than they are now. I certainly would be. It is bad enough for the MAlign that they've come together. It would be considerably worse if they were putting their heads together in the MBS.
Has Bolthole ever been as efficient as the MBS once was?
In terms of raw output, it was definitely above the MBS even before the Alliance. The Bolthole yards can probably build anywhere between 300 and 400 SDs at a time, while the MBS ones probably top out at 100 or 150. The only other system I could even think of having a similar output would be Yildun and even then most of it was probably civilian, since the SLN probably doesn't buy more than 50 SDs a year and I doubt that Technodyne can sell 50 SDs to other powers, every year.
And that was before they had access to Manticoran technology. Now they do.