Spoiler(s) dangling threads

Brigade XO wrote:It occured to me to wonder why Beowulf was using (apparently) Manticorain Merchant ships as anti-missle screens for the various fabrication centers etc.

Manticore had all those lovely and mostly useless SLN SD's...

Manpower. A civilian freighter usually has a full crew of less than 50, a SLN SD takes at thousand just to ferry it through the WHJ.

this is what I was thinking too[/quote]

Actually, if your are ONLY going to take a ship thorugh the Junction and than park it relative to someting obital in the Beowulf system (no combat, not marines, not enviornemal but a couple of dozen people, not to much of anyting but running ONE power plant (or enough to run the impellers/wedge and the sails) then you wouldn't need a thousand. When you gently move it into position off the Beowuld fabrication location your are going to take the full crew off anyway.
So you put 90% of the systems into sleep/standby, have literally noting but enough to navigate, transit the Junction and maneuver--slowly- into a position near a Beowulf production facility. What, 200 tops for crew?

If you bring the tactical systems live but only hooked to local point defence with energy weapons plus station keeping when you pull the crews off, it's a remote fire battery that is also going to act as a missle sponge. An SD is an SD. It can spew off gobs of electronic signature and just be a massive target for any and all missles fired at the thing is protecting. And ABSORB a bunch of that if you suck the air out of miles and miles of corridors and rooms not being used for anything (like missle magazies and firing systems. How many missiles can a hulk with it's wedge between incomming fire and it's dedicated defence assignment absorb? Dam near all of them unless one get's lucky and caused the one or two active reactors to lose containment. These hulls can absorb Laser Head shots all day long with no people on-board to be killed and you don't care if the SLN SD is slagged or destroyed as long as it soaks up weapons fire that otherwise would hit a civilian habitat or a fabrication site.

Big honking and very tough DECOY.

Politicaly not so nice but, hey, SLN did send these things off to Manticore to capture or destory the system. Picture Winston Churchill raising a "V"......yeah, go blank yourselves.

Brigade XO wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:It occured to me to wonder why Beowulf was using (apparently) Manticorain Merchant ships as anti-missle screens for the various fabrication centers etc.

Manticore had all those lovely and mostly useless SLN SD's...

Manpower. A civilian freighter usually has a full crew of less than 50, a SLN SD takes at thousand just to ferry it through the WHJ.

this is what I was thinking too

Actually, if your are ONLY going to take a ship thorugh the Junction and than park it relative to someting obital in the Beowulf system (no combat, not marines, not enviornemal but a couple of dozen people, not to much of anyting but running ONE power plant (or enough to run the impellers/wedge and the sails) then you wouldn't need a thousand. When you gently move it into position off the Beowuld fabrication location your are going to take the full crew off anyway.
So you put 90% of the systems into sleep/standby, have literally noting but enough to navigate, transit the Junction and maneuver--slowly- into a position near a Beowulf production facility. What, 200 tops for crew?

If you bring the tactical systems live but only hooked to local point defence with energy weapons plus station keeping when you pull the crews off, it's a remote fire battery that is also going to act as a missle sponge. An SD is an SD. It can spew off gobs of electronic signature and just be a massive target for any and all missles fired at the thing is protecting. And ABSORB a bunch of that if you suck the air out of miles and miles of corridors and rooms not being used for anything (like missle magazies and firing systems. How many missiles can a hulk with it's wedge between incomming fire and it's dedicated defence assignment absorb? Dam near all of them unless one get's lucky and caused the one or two active reactors to lose containment. These hulls can absorb Laser Head shots all day long with no people on-board to be killed and you don't care if the SLN SD is slagged or destroyed as long as it soaks up weapons fire that otherwise would hit a civilian habitat or a fabrication site.

Big honking and very tough DECOY.

Politicaly not so nice but, hey, SLN did send these things off to Manticore to capture or destory the system. Picture Winston Churchill raising a "V"......yeah, go blank yourselves.[/quote]

They had a crew of over 6000, I am not sure 200 would be enough. Additionally I'm not sure GA could come up with the crews to move them given what had occurred during the Yawata strike. Where as a civilian freighter probably runs on what 20-30? Not to mention you already have crews on them and they can take themselves to Beowulf without any minders.

Brigade XO wrote:Actually, if your are ONLY going to take a ship thorugh the Junction and than park it relative to someting obital in the Beowulf system (no combat, not marines, not enviornemal but a couple of dozen people, not to much of anyting but running ONE power plant (or enough to run the impellers/wedge and the sails) then you wouldn't need a thousand. ...

Over several years discussion of what to do with the captured SDs, the consensus has been that it would take about a thousand crew to ferry an SLN SD -- i.e. "only going to take it through the wormhole to planetary orbit."

The Solarian SDs are the antithesis of automated -- or automatable. They are the next best thing to coal-fired steamships as compared to gas-turbine hybrid electric catamarans.

Weird Harold wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Actually, if your are ONLY going to take a ship thorugh the Junction and than park it relative to someting obital in the Beowulf system (no combat, not marines, not enviornemal but a couple of dozen people, not to much of anyting but running ONE power plant (or enough to run the impellers/wedge and the sails) then you wouldn't need a thousand. ...

Over several years discussion of what to do with the captured SDs, the consensus has been that it would take about a thousand crew to ferry an SLN SD -- i.e. "only going to take it through the wormhole to planetary orbit."

The Solarian SDs are the antithesis of automated -- or automatable. They are the next best thing to coal-fired steamships as compared to gas-turbine hybrid electric catamarans.

The freighter were clearly more economical.

roseandheather wrote:I still want to know if all that flirting between Lester Tourville and Michelle Henke is actually going to go anywhere. (Like a bed.) Come on, RFC, you can't just leave us hanging!! Do Eloise and I get our dreamboat Manticore-Haven unifying marriage or don't we??

I'm asking this at SphinxCon. Try and talk me out of it.

roseandheather wrote:

roseandheather wrote:I still want to know if all that flirting between Lester Tourville and Michelle Henke is actually going to go anywhere. (Like a bed.) Come on, RFC, you can't just leave us hanging!! Do Eloise and I get our dreamboat Manticore-Haven unifying marriage or don't we??

I'm asking this at SphinxCon. Try and talk me out of it.

Has anyone considered the consequences of making our Rose a full admiral? Yikes! Congratulations, Roseandheather...

Don

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