Lacöon I

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:Freighters are cheap and easy to build. Every core planet can build them and now needs a bunch. The result will be that Manticore will never again be the leading shipper in the SL or former SL areas. It will be a pretty unpleasant year or so and things will take longer to ship, but it will work.

Modeling the markets and economic impacts of this long term would be fun. As I see it there will be the following periods:

1) Market pause due to Manties.
Wormholes close and manticoran freighters disappear. Everybody waits for freight that doesnt come.

2) Market reaction to Manties
Economies contract due to shipping issues. Commerce warfare begins, destroying hulls on both sides. "Liberty ship" type merchant hulls are laid down by SL in droves.

3) Stagnant war period?
Commerce warfare continues either between the SL and Manticore or amongst the fragments of the SL. "Liberty ship" hulls are in use and the economies are working again, but are being replaced in droves.

4) War over, wormholes opened
Glut of hulls makes shipping cheaper than ever. The Verge is better serviced than ever before.

5) Aftermath
Some major shipping cartels collapse. 3rd parties buy up cheap freighters, creating new trading houses.

Anybody think we would see any other economic periods?

I don't have any other economic periods, but I notice that you don't mention all the other independent governments who aren't in the Grand Alliance or under the power of the Solarian League. What will happen to them?

kzt wrote:Freighters are cheap and easy to build. Every core planet can build them and now needs a bunch. The result will be that Manticore will never again be the leading shipper in the SL or former SL areas. It will be a pretty unpleasant year or so and things will take longer to ship, but it will work.

I have to take issue with some of that, friend kzt. Compared to warships, I concur that freighters are easier to build, how 'cheap' they are to a Core economy is a matter of discussion.

I most take issue with the "Every Core planet can build them", because that pre-supposes that all the hundreds of Core Worlds have yards, fixtures, tooling and personnel available to build these ships.

Most of the "first powers" today have limited shipbuilding capacity (note this website: http://www.statista.com/statistics/2638 ... de-by-cgt/ and the absence of the "First World", except for Japan and Germany). I am not sure why this would be different in the future.

If you have, say, 16 major corporations with shipyards for building freighters, and they average 72 ships/yr (6 per month) each, that's 1,152 new freighters/year with a probable life-span of 50-60 years use.

There is simply no reason for most Core systems to have facilities to build new freighters--most of which are owned by corporations, after all, not the planetary governments. Now, they CAN acquire those facilities and begin building, but I think it will take a bit more than one year.

And the GA is going to work hard to convince those systems (carrot and stick approach) that rather than going to the expense and bother, making a treaty with the GA and resuming normal trading relations will be much more profitable and less stressful.

We shall see, eventually.

How long does it take Manticore to rebuild their entire industrial infrastructure from scratch, including training an entirely new staff to run it?

kzt wrote:Freighters are cheap and easy to build. Every core planet can build them and now needs a bunch. The result will be that Manticore will never again be the leading shipper in the SL or former SL areas. It will be a pretty unpleasant year or so and things will take longer to ship, but it will work.

Given the reality that Manticore has been dominating the carrying trade, this doesn't make any sense. The dynamics of the League's rules were favoring Manitcore's shippers. That in turn means that there really not a lot of building slips in place for building freighters.

If you're a business dependent on the export trade, you are going to be in a world of hurt, maybe even bankrupt before those building slips are built and the new freighters start showing up.

Even given your notion of a year or so which sounds highly improbable, how many businesses could afford to "take a year off?" This isn't even considering what the chokehold the Manties have on the wormhole network is going to mean for the League's internal markets. I think we are going to see a lot of very lean financial centers.

Another way this whole discussion seems divorced from what is going on, does anyone believe that after the League attacks Beowulf and the RF declares itself that the League is even going to last long enough to feel the pain?

Don

Reality cares not a whit whether your business will survive a year of limited transport. It will or it won't depending on what it is and how clever the people running it are. However there will still be a need later, whether any given company survives or not.

The transtellars wont stand for the wormholes denied to them for the duration, they have dependent on them to minise costs. So the transtellars are sure to suffer.

the independant nations will attempt to use the situation to their advanctage, some to get out from the threat of the frontier fleet, others to make power plays or deals. Some might have done well under the league, but that has to have come at a cost. If the league were to fall, or at least weakened and occupied for a time, chance for them to improve their position.

The manties are likely building as fast as they can, and buying stuff from both haven and the andies. IT might not be top level goods to their standard, but it will suffice till they repair and refit everything for themselves.

You have to differntiate between the SL as a collection of Star Systems and the buracracy as represented by the Mandarins and the rest of the "civil servants"

If the Mandarins can't control - by "law", regulation, fiat or just outright force (parking a BF squadron in a system to foce compliance) then they won't be able to get companies in the regional banking centers to stop doing business with an anyone. By the way, I don't recall the SL sending out ANY instructions for businesses or individuals to stop doing business with SEM or any of its corporations.

The Transtellars may or may not be headquatered in the SL. I don't recall that Technodyne is a MEMBER of the SL even if the system we seem to think is it's HQ - where they build all those SLN warships- is within the geographic boundries of the SL. Is the Technodyne- as owner of that system- a Member System in the SL the way the Corporation that is Beowulf is a Member System in the SL. As I recall, Technodyne's primary construction area doesn't have an habitable planet. I don't think Technodyne is or has been building much for Manticore (or its registered businesses) for a long time.

The transtellars- all the ones (and that is most) of what we have been shown- have given the planets and systems they hold through the usual (OFS) type of acquisition a lot or reason to want them out. Manticore represents a viable option to get them out. As the League crumbles and the various transtellars are not able to call on FF to provide the force to keep them in power, things are going to accelerate with Systems breaking out of the control of SL/OFS. That is one reason Firebrand was doing what he was doing. At the same time the Transtellars are losing the protection of FF/OFS, they are going to have to evolve in how they deal with Manticore and others.

As far as the SL Member Systems gearing up to pump out commercial freighters to take up the loss of the Manticore flagged ships, just when do you see a significant number of SL flagged ships comming out of the yards?
Firstly, they have ships already building -no idea the mix- but unless they are willing to just dump any non-freighter hulls under construction out of the yards- they would have to staff up and start from scratch on new consuction in EMPTY or soon to be empty slips.

Secondly, If the building time is "only" a year that is one thing it is going to be more. Then there is the not insignicant challenge that unless they produce ALL of the materials and componants in the same system (each one) doing the building, they are going to face bottle necks in transport getting those parts to the yards.

Thirdly, it would appear that the SLN has suddenly realized that they need to develope and build ships that have at least have a chance of surviving against RMN/RHN warships. So they are also going to also start building ships of the ships types they think they can now use (CA, CH, BB) to project both as raiding forces (and yet not engage the RMN since they will be buzzing around as commerce raiders, not as war fighters) and fill those suddenly open holes in the ability of FF and BF to provide "security" (aka Mafia style Protection) to SL Members systems and OFS Protectorates out in the edges who might just quietly leave. I have NO PROBLEM seeing SLN taking over control of corporate ship manufactuing operations to build new warships---by force.

So the places in the SL that could be building your new SL freighter are probably not going to be able to do that for the short term. In the long term it is going to get very messy and if they still have yards after three years they may be building warships for themselves (or their new owners) anyway.

Interesting times

kzt wrote:Reality cares not a whit whether your business will survive a year of limited transport. It will or it won't depending on what it is and how clever the people running it are. However there will still be a need later, whether any given company survives or not.

Yes, there will still be a need later. But under what regime? Who will fulfill it? The point is that the "any given company" we are dicussing represents huge numbers of companies with literally astronomical amounts of capital threatening to blow away like the leaves on the trees subjected to a fall gale.

Such a dislocation will eventually be overcome. But will the League even be around to witness it?

Don

The businesses not only need to build a shiping fleet, but with the wormholes closed, a far larger and longer ranging one. They also need to deal with multiple delivery failures and other contract breeches. Any available shipping will cost vast fortunes. Also, theyt will need to pay the premium price due to the current hostilities. They will be competing for crew with the league navy.

are there even logistics for long distance shipping with out wormholes? or even shipping lanes. if the league navy cant emforce their supremacy, pirates, raiders and verge forces would be free to act against them.

SYED wrote:The businesses not only need to build a shiping fleet, but with the wormholes closed, a far larger and longer ranging one. They also need to deal with multiple delivery failures and other contract breeches. Any available shipping will cost vast fortunes. Also, theyt will need to pay the premium price due to the current hostilities. They will be competing for crew with the league navy.

Yes, it will be a bad time for a while. Depressions often are.

No, it's a trivial number of crew. Lets say a core world of 30 billion needs 1000 new freighters. Even with the inflated SL crews, that is 60,000 people. Out of 30,000,000,000. I think they can find them.

are there even logistics for long distance shipping with out wormholes? or even shipping lanes. if the league navy cant emforce their supremacy, pirates, raiders and verge forces would be free to act against them.

You are going from SL system to SL system. Remember how people can't do mid-flight intercepts in hyper? So yeah, when you reach the point where you can run a pirate around the Sol or Beowulf system then you can pirate their trade. I'd suggest going elsewhere. There are SL systems that have light defenses, but they won't be both almost defenseless and inviting targets for long.