cthia wrote:What proof is there that they were built at Galton? A lot of things don't sit right with me. Only 20 SDs. I don't recall any mention of there being any unfinished ships in the slips. Only 20 SDs were planned? For what?
Proof, none. But we have a lot of circumstantial evidence.
First, if the shipyards there aren't capable of producing the ships that are there, then the GA will wonder where they were built. Considering the whole point of the Alamo Contingency was to pretend that Galton was all there was to be seen, leaving this other big, gaping hole would have been stupid. And unlike the technology that Galton residents were not allowed to know about, they knew about the SDs and SD(P)s, maintained and ran them. So someone would know when they were delivered and who built them.
Second, that there were SD(P)s. 17 of them actually. Assuming the Carlucci Industry Shipyards in Erewhon finished their first 3 SD(P)s to both the ESN and MARSN, that means the Galton Navy possessed 85% of all the SD(P)s in the whole Galaxy outside of the GA. There is no other shipyard in the Galaxy capable of producing those ships. I'm sure that the ones in Darius have the technology, but the MAlign would not have shared this with anyone else, especially not Technodyne. If they had, then the SLN would have known much before now and would have risked the Plan.
Third, the pre-pod designs had to be built somewhere too. There were some 40 of them, which again makes the Galton System Navy the biggest Navy in capital ships in the Galaxy, aside from the GA and the SLN. I find it doubtful a single SD could have escaped notice of a known shipyard, much less 40 of them. So the only conclusion is that they were built at a secret shipyard, and that's what Galton was meant to be: a military-industrial system.
Fourth, that we weren't told there were unfinished ships in the yards does not mean there weren't.
Don't you wonder what capabilities those SDs had? Why build SDs if they are no more capable than the obsolete Solly junk? And if they are only on a par with SLN ships, then, again, why build them? Certainly not in anticipation to fight the SLN. The SLN couldn't have taken Galton even without the SDs.
For two reasons: first, because they had to build something. It's better to have an SD than to have none. Against the GF they're death-traps, sure, but they are good against anyone else. And you can bet they were more capable than the Scientist and Vega classes from the SLN, because the MAlign knew exactly what went into those and they were paying attention to the build-up in the Haven Sector, even prior to the first war. So I'd speculate that those ships were more capable than the PN DuQuesne- and Haven-class designs, though falling short of an RMN Sphinx or Gryphon class.
And if nothing else, they serve as platforms for training. The Galton Navy needed to train their spacers and officers somewhere.
Second, because they were likely built before the RMN and GSN SD(P)s were revealed. Unlike Darius, this is a system that had been building industry and shipyards for two centuries. They had always planned on building a Navy there. More importantly, they were building SDs when there was no spider drive yet, so SDs were the best that one could build.
So, I ask again, what was the meaning of those SDs? I suppose one could argue that Galton isn't aware of Darius and that they couldn't have come from Darius. But what about the Renaissance Factor? Where are the shipyards for the RF?
The RF couldn't have supplied this many ships. Or any ships. See above where I argue that a known shipyard could not accidentally lose a single SD, much less 40 or 60. They were built at a secret shipyard and there's no doubting this.
The RF also does not have the industry for this many ships. The Mannerheim Navy, which was the biggest in the RF, was also known to be "outsized" though likely smaller than the Beowulf one. That tells me they had maybe one or two squadrons of the wall, but it's still possible they had none and only had lots of battlecruiser squadrons (it was a BC squadron they sent to The Twins to await HMS Harvest Joy's transit). So that means that in the extreme case, the whole RFN now has four squadrons of the wall, which is about half of what the Galton Navy had. There's no way that the RF could have built 3x more ships than they used and no one would have noticed.