Logic behind splitting Lacoon?

Zakharra wrote:

Hutch wrote:*quote="Zakharra"*That's something that has always bugged me a bit. For Manticore to have control of a majority of the shipping in the League, that is an immense number of hulls and crews to have in space. Literally hundreds of thousands up to millions of ships, large and small are plying the space lanes hauling cargo and passengers. That would mean Manticore has more people in space than many planets have in population (I would think.) Millions and millions of ship crews.*quote*

Lyonheart has done a lot of work on calculating how many merchant ships there would be. To use a real-world view, according to this site (http://www.worldportsource.com/), there are about 4,764 ports on Earth, and about 30,000-50,000 or so ships servicing them, depending on the source. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_transport or http://www.statista.com/statistics/2640 ... e-by-type/).

Even doubling that due to transit times (even with the wormholes) gives us about 100,000 ships max, with maybe 55-60,000 with Manticore registry.

so...I think hundreds of thousands or million+ may be a bit much.


*quote*Does anyone have any exact quote to what percentage Manticore of control did have of League shipping? I don't have A Rising Tide before me atm.*quote*

I've added the applicable quote in my above post. In sum, Wodoslawski states later that "As you can see, simply pulling their own shipping out of the loop will reduce our avaialble interstellar lift by better than half."*quote*

Probably a fair point there.


*quote**quote*Either way, even with the parts of the SL that become one of the SEM's allies/friends, they should all be very careful to make sure that the SEM isn't in a position to economically devastate them like it did the SL.*quote*

Good intentions, but it would be costly to do so and you would face having to break into the MMM monopoly in many Verge and (ex)-Protectorate systems. Is the cost worth it, especially if the MMM has played nice before and has not been a grasping, greedy, corrupt group.

Still, we shall see.*quote*


The thing is, they can't be sure that the SEM will always play fair. It elected a High Ridge government once (and likely has done so in the past), and the SL is getting a real close look at what damage letting someone else control most of your shipping can do to your economy. Remember that just because the SEM is nice now, doesn't mean they will always be so. If the systems and new polities are smart, they will take steps to make sure that the SEM doesn't have a stranglehold on their economy. Having enough shipping to offset that would go a long way to easing that concern. And I'd think the SEM would understand that. After all they wouldn't like it if someone else controlled most of their shipping, so unless they are going to engage in economic warfare to actively keep control of every one elses shipping, I think they will let the matter lie rather than actively try to take over all or most of the lines.


*quote="drothgery"**quote="Zakharra"*Either way, even with the parts of the SL that become one of the SEM's allies/friends, they should all be very careful to make sure that the SEM isn't in a position to economically devastate them like it did the SL.*quote*The reason why the SEM can economically devastate the League is because the 2/3 of its revenue that aren't based on exploiting the verge is mostly fees related to interstellar commerce. Any League successor states will generate most of their revenue from their domestic economy (unless they're sitting on a major wormhole junction or the equivalent). So they won't be anywhere near as vulnerable.*quote*

It's a little more than that. The SEM dominated the shipping. So when they pulled the ships out of SL space, they stranded a LOT of cargo and people. With no way to get goods to market and back, the SL economy is stalling and breaking apart. The revenue the SL got from exploiting the Verge/Protectorate didn't necessarily go to the official federal budget (as far as I know). It paid for the bureaucracies that worked around the SL constitution. I could be wrong though, but I am sure that its not the loss of the fees that's killing the SL (although that is hurting), but the loss of hulls to haul everything that's really killing the SL simply because nothing can move.

Hutch wrote:

Zakharra wrote:The thing is, they can't be sure that the SEM will always play fair. It elected a High Ridge government once (and likely has done so in the past), and the SL is getting a real close look at what damage letting someone else control most of your shipping can do to your economy. Remember that just because the SEM is nice now, doesn't mean they will always be so. If the systems and new polities are smart, they will take steps to make sure that the SEM doesn't have a stranglehold on their economy. Having enough shipping to offset that would go a long way to easing that concern. And I'd think the SEM would understand that. After all they wouldn't like it if someone else controlled most of their shipping, so unless they are going to engage in economic warfare to actively keep control of every one elses shipping, I think they will let the matter lie rather than actively try to take over all or most of the lines.

Just to carry this out further, let's take the above number of 100,000 hulls moving passengers and freight in Known Space (YMMV). If, based on your conclusions (which I agree, are hard to argue with if you're the body politic on a Core planet that lives through a severe economic downturn brought on by the MMM departure), 500 Core systems decide to build 100 frieghters each for their own purposes--well, that gives you 50,000 new frieghters, or an increase of 50% (not counting ships Manticore, Haven and others are building a part of natural growth/replacement) of the merchant fleet. Now where is that additional 50% cargo going to come from?

Building like that may lead to more economic troubles than solutions. NTM the most cut-throat competition would be between those 500 'newbies', since the Manties are now (and will continue) to dominate the Verge and other systems in their region (I suspect that the Huaptman cartel will be announcing new deals and mergers with Haven shippers any day now).

Still...I can;t argue your logic in why they would want to build freighters. We'll just have to see if RFC deals with this in the books (he does have a few other things to worry about, after all...)

Duckk wrote:Not quite that:

“Damned near twenty percent of our total gross product depends entirely on our interstellar commerce,” Quartermain said in a flat tone. “Another fifteen percent will, at the very least, be seriously impacted.”

Theemile wrote:

Hutch wrote:*quote="Zakharra"*The thing is, they can't be sure that the SEM will always play fair. It elected a High Ridge government once (and likely has done so in the past), and the SL is getting a real close look at what damage letting someone else control most of your shipping can do to your economy. Remember that just because the SEM is nice now, doesn't mean they will always be so. If the systems and new polities are smart, they will take steps to make sure that the SEM doesn't have a stranglehold on their economy. Having enough shipping to offset that would go a long way to easing that concern. And I'd think the SEM would understand that. After all they wouldn't like it if someone else controlled most of their shipping, so unless they are going to engage in economic warfare to actively keep control of every one elses shipping, I think they will let the matter lie rather than actively try to take over all or most of the lines.
*quote*

Just to carry this out further, let's take the above number of 100,000 hulls moving passengers and freight in Known Space (YMMV). If, based on your conclusions (which I agree, are hard to argue with if you're the body politic on a Core planet that lives through a severe economic downturn brought on by the MMM departure), 500 Core systems decide to build 100 frieghters each for their own purposes--well, that gives you 50,000 new frieghters, or an increase of 50% (not counting ships Manticore, Haven and others are building a part of natural growth/replacement) of the merchant fleet. Now where is that additional 50% cargo going to come from?

Building like that may lead to more economic troubles than solutions. NTM the most cut-throat competition would be between those 500 'newbies', since the Manties are now (and will continue) to dominate the Verge and other systems in their region (I suspect that the Huaptman cartel will be announcing new deals and mergers with Haven shippers any day now).

Still...I can;t argue your logic in why they would want to build freighters. We'll just have to see if RFC deals with this in the books (he does have a few other things to worry about, after all...)

And to add to your point, Hutch, even if you have the cash, those 100 ship are not going to appear tomorrow.

First you have to identify you have the need - In the Honorverse, the realization of the MMM's departure and what it will mean will take another 3-6 months.

Then, if the inertia that plagues most human decisions does not crop up, you must start building the ships. And no one will have the capacity to build a lump like what is needed, so money must first be invested in larger shipyards and manpower. Asuming the technology and knowledge is available, it will be at least a year before production is ramped up.

And even then it takes at least a year to produce an empty freighter.

So those 100 freighters fleets won't be fully available until at least 2025 (with the knowledge that some freighters from this build which were laid in existing shipyards will be becoming available in early 2024).

That's at least 2.5 years in the future. By that point the war could be over, and the 50,000 new hulls could drive down shipping costs to the point where shipping is unprofitable. OR, the war could continue to wage and "liberty ship" shipyards are being errected in every available gravity well and corn field because 50,000 hulls was not enough to replace the withdrawn MMM and the other 50,000 merchies destroyed by commerce raiding Rolands.

No matter what, any reaction to the shipping changes the SL can do is a slow, almost glacial response, and most likely the incorrect decision, since no one has a crystal ball.

wastedfly wrote:Even at the height of WWII, Merchant shipping numbers were many times the number of warships.

Honorverse has HOW many warships? (active only) Manticore has ~2000 alone. Haven has at least that many as well. SLN, at least 10,000. Add in everyone else and number of warships in the Honorverse has to be around 100,000.

Merchant shipping totals must be several times this number. This is for most of the Honorvse peacetime.

Earth today there are roughly 40,000 merchant ships(not boats) and roughly 3000 "warships" of which very few are actually what one would call a true "warship". Maybe about 1000 are actually "warships". At height of WWII, USA had roughly 1000 warships and another 5000 auxilleries, amphibs, patrol, mine hunters while England had another 500 + auxilliers. Both had several thousand merchant marine. Everyone else has been sunk.

It should be noted that today, the total number of naval ships is historically LOW. At least IMO. Then again, both Merchant ships and Naval ships have all increased dramatically in size, so maybe this point is a complete wash.

Zakharra wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:In the second case, the captain is talking directly to the commander of the SLN warship giving her the news. We don't know what she dropped in the locadtion she was having the discussion but it didn't appear to be at a wormhole (or he would have sent her thought it if it lead back to friendly space) She has a lot of cargo going to X which is sort of in the direction of the wormhole she will have to use to go home. The Officer lets her divert from a direct flight to the wormhole in order to deliver the major (it would appear portion of her remaining cargo ) and THEN she will go home.

A minor nitpick. The captain the merchant ship talked to was a RMN captain, not a SLN one.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Zakharra,

Kudos for some excellent points.

The MMM can charge less because of its lower operating costs due to more automation, but the WHJ and other WHB discounts really seal the deal.

Trying to beat the economic advantages the MMM has always had is going deter most competitors from trying initially if they think there will be quick restoration of service.

So building new freighters will be delayed in many if not most SL systems because they see it as a losing proposition.

Given that Raging Justice was blown, most systems would wait until they had news of the results before risking such investments.

Depending on their location most SL members wouldn't find out until July or possibly August, but then given how effortlessly the GA won, is investing in SL preferred projects all that wise right now?

If Beowulf is going to secede, should they, and will they get a better deal from the GA if they do?

Such questions and negotiations will take more month's [2-3 minimum] so for those that insist on building them [without government subsidies] it may not be until now [October 1922] that construction starts, and at least a year will be probably needed in a good experienced yard if SLN construction times are any indicator.

Given their higher operating costs, the MMM/GA could eventually drive or buy the supposed competition out.

The new solarian polity might have the equivalent of the US monopoly on its coastal traffic, ie local or direct neighbor-to-neighbor traffic might be a local monopoly as well.

We have to wait until 2016 to find out?

Rats.

L


*snip*

Zakharra wrote:*snip*

I understand that to a point, but unprofitable or not, the entire SL and Verge is getting a very up close and personal example of what happens when someone else controls your shipping and economic strings. Unless the systems join the SEM/RHN/AE, I don't see them as wanting to hand control of their economy to the anyone else since there is no guarantee (even if it is unlikely) that the SEM will become less than friendly and more domineering (all it takes is another High Ridge becoming the Prime Minister and he/she could wreck a LOT of the goodwill the SEM has). Haven and the Andermani have well established reputations for being openly expansionist, and the SEM's recent activities might not be reassuring in that it to has expanded drastically in the last decade.

that said, idff the new polity is a msall one, it might not have any choice in who hauls cargo to form from it, but the larger ones, I can see making a determined effort to make sure -they- control their shipping within their borders at least so if the SEM yanks its freighters, its economy isn't crippled.