Hyperspace Combat and the Solarian Leauge Navy

n7axw wrote:Haven didn't dup Mantie tech. What they did accomplish was to somewhat narrow the tech gap and come up with counters for some of worst disadvantages. They still haven't mastered miniaturization[ed], ghost rider, or lac advantages. They did manage a mdm with Erhwon's help along with clacs and sdps.

Haven's first-gen MDMs and LACs were designed and built prior to the alliance with Erewhon.

But another thing to consider is that Haven was trying to counter about 60 first-gen SD(P)s (and some of Grayson's fleet). The Grand Alliance has over ten times that, with over two hundred and fifty of them Apollo capable.

drothgery wrote:But another thing to consider is that Haven was trying to counter about 60 first-gen SD(P)s (and some of Grayson's fleet). The Grand Alliance has over ten times that, with over two hundred and fifty of them Apollo capable.

They also have at least 100 times as much industrial capability as Haven.

Given that haven was noted for having crippled their educational system, I tend to suspect that the SL has a rather significant edge on the appropriate scientists and engineers. So duplication might not take that long. This assumes they can buy the tech from one of the very large number of people who know critical details, which is not a safe assumption.

If they can get there act together on the political side and actually start issuing decent orders they have a fair chance of stealing/buying key components. It's really their best shot at this point.

Step 1 - Find out what you know. They have lots of agents collecting lots of info some of that will be very useful if they can solve the signal to noise problem that plagues intelligence agencies. At least they know what to look for. Look at how fast the USA was able to find out info post 9-11 and post Boston marathon once they knew what to look for and made it a priority. So step 1 find out what SL assets have already reported regarding GA tech.

Step 2 - Mine the corporations knowledge base. Technodyne and others SL military suppliers have been doing business with the Haven's military R&D for a long time. They have to have learned something useful. They have had more than enough time to cultivate sources within Haven's R&D establishment. To a certain extent the transfer of information will be a two way street. They'll be able to determine from what Haven is interested and not interested in buying as well as hints from procurement officers where the holes are in Haven's military tech and in what direction Haven is moving. So although they may not be privy to the latest greatest technology the GA has, they are probably well aware of the capabilities of slightly older Haven and Manticorian technologies. Successful military contractors, like any business will try to anticipate customer's future needs so that they can develop products which meet that need.

Step 3 - Open up the check book. There is always someone who can be bought for enough money. The challenge will be in finding such a person. Step 1&2 may help here.

Step 4 - Find useful idiots. Perhaps Edward Snowdon XXVI is working for Manty intelligence? Step 1&2 will help here too.

Step 5 - See what you can exploit from dissatisfaction on Beowulf. I don't remember the exact numbers but something like 70-80% of the population was in favor of the government's actions to leave the league. That leaves 20-30% of the population that are unhappy with the decision. If 0.001% of those who are unhappy decide to do something about it, that's a lot of people who the SL can use. However, Beowulf won't be a intelligence walkover. They've had a long cold war with Mesa and a lot of practice keeping secrets a secret. But still this is a new situation and it could well be worth the SL's while to see if people who supported Beowulf vs Mesa feel the same way about Beowulf vs the SL.

Step 6 - Kidnap some people. Technically challenging and tricky to pull of. But scientists/engineers etc aren't always the best at personal security. The stereotype of them dodging security details has a great deal of truth to it. The OFS probably has pulled this trick multiple times for various different reasons, so they most likely have some expertise that could be used here. It might not work, but they should at least try it.

biochem wrote:[Step 2 - Mine the corporations knowledge base. Technodyne and others SL military suppliers have been doing business with the Haven's military R&D for a long time. They have to have learned something useful. They have had more than enough time to cultivate sources within Haven's R&D establishment.

I can't find the specific textev, but Technodyne got involved at Monica because the information transfer to and from Haven was cut off when Erewhon shared Manticoran tech with Haven.

There are no tech transfers in either direction after the St Just regime was overthrown.

Weird Harold wrote:

biochem wrote:[Step 2 - Mine the corporations knowledge base. Technodyne and others SL military suppliers have been doing business with the Haven's military R&D for a long time. They have to have learned something useful. They have had more than enough time to cultivate sources within Haven's R&D establishment.

I can't find the specific textev, but Technodyne got involved at Monica because the information transfer to and from Haven was cut off when Erewhon shared Manticoran tech with Haven.

There are no tech transfers in either direction after the St Just regime was overthrown.

That's why they won't have the latest greatest technology. But they still have access to the old info, including likely at least some access to what Manticorian tech was at the time. i.e. we need something that can beat x, what do you have that will work. They also have access to people. The top people will have been purged but given the frequency of purges in Haven, a smart businessman (and Solarian businessmen were smart) would have cultivated a lot of contacts, so that they could have a foot in the door just in case their current purchaser got executed. And over time (we're talking decades here) contacts between military suppliers and the military purchasers get a lot closer than they should be. When relations are that close, secrets get told. So even after Erewhon, they'll still have that unofficial access. It would not be unexpected for the sales reps to continue to travel to Haven to try and get that business back. Who would just expect them to accept a thanks but no thanks for their best account? No sales rep in the galaxy would accept that without trying again and again to get that account back. And while they were there, they could pick up all sorts of intel from those unofficial sources they have known for decades.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Alizon wrote:I'm not so sure. I understand the argument but we're talking about shipyards working at full capacity and comparing them to other shipyards working at a peace time pace which very probably have a good deal of excess capacity available to them. We're also discounting a number of civilian yards which might be turned over to military production fairly rapidly not to mention yards used by various SDF's within the League. I'm sure that the League doesn't have anything comparable to the capacity that a place like Bolthole has or that Manticore or Greyson once had, but I have a feeling the League has a LOT more of them spread throughout the 1,200+ primary worlds that they possess.

Given what we've been told about the size of the SDFs (only a 3 or 4 with SDs; most with only LACs) and the glacial rate new ships are added to Battlefleet I think you're overestimating the number of current naval yards within the League.

As for converting civilian yards, you can, but you've still got to teach them how to handle the differences between civilian and military construction (armor, cofferdaming, redundancy, weapons mounts). Plus it's not like there should be a huge surplus capacity to build the military specific items that go into warships (mil grade hyper generators, mid grade particle shielding, sidewalls, armor, superior sensors suits, mil grade nodes and compensators, tactical computers, damage resilient fusion plants, etc, etc, etc).

So you need to drastically ramp up production of all the warship specific components that are fed into the shipyards (now the factories may be collocated, as they were in the Manticoran stations, or elsewhere - but without the components available building slips are useless. And civilian yards won't been geared up to produce that military equipment any more than they're trained to build warships.


All that is solvable, given time. But that seems more like it'd take years than months.

There is no point to using military rather than civilian grade compensators. The other side is still faster. A computer is a computer, thank Turing. OK, the grown armor is tougher. That's why we are using 30 feet of spaced steel armor. Yes, we are really slow. The other model uses no armor at all. It just has huge masses of point defense clusters.

Hi Alizon,

No they couldn't.

Please read the pearls, its obvious you haven't; and you keep ignoring what you should know if you had, so to keep rehearsing these stupid arguments is embarrassing.

No one has ever challenged the potential of the SL to be a giant military-industrial complex, RFC has made that point many times, we all have.

But RFC has also made the point many, many times that the SL is "doomed", its "collapse is inevitable" etc, since CoS more than ten years ago.

In other words its never going to get the chance to become a military-industrial complex, because someone is going to shoot it in the head several times with a flechette gun while its still sleeping very soon.

I wonder how you can read the books and keep missing the obvious.

But to suggest that in only a few month's and they'll be militarily outbuilding the GA, the AE and Beowulf combined?

What prohibited substances are you using?

Again I wonder how you could've read the pearls, since RFC has repeatedly stated the SL has only a half dozen or so shipyards that can build SD's [its possible there might be 7-9 including some SDF's], while depending on what pearl even that wasn't on a continuous annual basis.

His current thinking does appear to involve annual production, but only around 46-7 for the whole BF, when Haven commissioned around 300 last year at Bolthole and the SEM and Grayson commissioned another ~200 for 11 times as many as the whole league, which won't be allowed to gear up; again RFC has stated the SL doesn't have 5 years to even begin building let alone designing a SDP, which obviously goes for upgrading shipyards to military work, which does not take "only a few month's".

Show me the textev not this constant childish wishful thinking.

Clearly RFC isn't going to portray a SL renaissance in the next book the way you keep insisting.

Shipyards are built only if they're going to used.

The huge impact the withdrawal of the MMM to the SL ought to indicate to you that relatively few SL systems build and operate all that many freighters, ie their space infrastructure isn't geared toward much shipbuilding of any kind, being 'satisfied economies' as RFC has put it; NTM the difficulties of shifting to such specialized work as naval warships.

If you've never 'grown' armor before, don't know how, never tried etc, let alone built shield generators or naval engines even before getting into weapons, how is all that to be accomplished in a few month's?

Especially given the lethargy we continue to see throughout the SL and especially in Old Chicago; there is nothing to support your daydreams of the SL somehow avoiding the avalanche its created for itself.

Dream away but don't keep wasting our time here ignoring the facts of the honor-verse, please.

If a quarter [possibly representing a third of the member systems] of the Executive Council voted against the mandarins' wishes, its likely many that do build freighters and warships side with Beowulf already, reducing your potential builders even further.

Its pathetic to keep pushing this, let's move on, please.

L

Alizon wrote:

drothgery wrote:**quote="Alizon"**No, I don't think you do understand correctly when estimating construction rates. With the yards and supporting industrial infrastructures gutted both at Manticore and Greyson, only the Andermani and Haven yards remain active and operational. While these yards can still produce a number of vessels, their production would pale beside the capabilities of the League. Whether they continue to build current designs is a question, but there's really not much of a debate that the League could, if it mobilized, swamp Alliance production. Even only partially mobilized as it is now, it shouldn't have much trouble keeping up with current Alliance production rates if they had anything worth producing. **/quote**

Haven (alone) almost certainly has far more existing warship construction capacity than the League. They were, last time we checked in on them, building hundreds of wallers in parallel at Bolthole and their other yards, which, needless to say, the SLN is not doing. In fact, they would need to build new yards if they wanted to do that.

Now, it's true the League's economy is far larger than the Grand Alliance's. But their war economy is far smaller, and if they don't want the Grand Alliance to capture or destroy their new yards before anything gets built at them, they need to be built in complete secrecy (and no, they can't shotgun enough 'boltholes' that one will have to survive long enough; the League can't afford it). Which seems extremely unlikely given the nature of the League.

I'm not so sure. I understand the argument but we're talking about shipyards working at full capacity and comparing them to other shipyards working at a peace time pace which very probably have a good deal of excess capacity available to them. We're also discounting a number of civilian yards which might be turned over to military production fairly rapidly not to mention yards used by various SDF's within the League. I'm sure that the League doesn't have anything comparable to the capacity that a place like Bolthole has or that Manticore or Greyson once had, but I have a feeling the League has a LOT more of them spread throughout the 1,200+ primary worlds that they possess.

It's also interesting to think about to what degree the reconstruction of Manticore's and Greyson's infrastructure and even just the production of basic essential good which Manticore and Greyson can no longer produce, is going to have on the amount of resources which can be pumped into the wartime construction in Anderman and Haven. Even under the pre-Battle of Manticore estimates it wasn't know if Haven could continue it's pace of military construction without collapsing their economy. How much burden can it take if it tries to do the "Pritchard Plan" to rebuild Manticore and Greyson that those worlds will desperately need.

Of course, here I'm talking about theory assuming no GA task force is going to be showing up to blow my shipyards away but the question was essentially about capacity of the League under a first step conversion to war time economy vs that existing in Haven and Anderman and I think given a few of months, the League could, if they wanted to, exceed the combined production of Haven and the Andermani.

What prohibited substances are you using?

Be nice.





Is is likely that the SL will dig itself out of the hole it is in in time? NO But it is possible. Stranger things have happened. However, it would take almost an inverse perfect storm for the SL to survive.

biochem wrote:That's why they won't have the latest greatest technology. But they still have access to the old info, including likely at least some access to what Manticorian tech was at the time.

The reference I can't find is specific to Technodyne and/or the MAlign and lamented that they could make no progress on MDMs or FTL comm without further input which they could no longer get.

Some other military tech company might be having better luck, but the text is rather specific that TIY and the MAlign do NOT have any access to Haven sector tech (or Andermani tech.)

lyonheart wrote:What prohibited substances are you using?

I think he found the stash I was using years ago when I theorised in the Free Range Topics that merging the USA and the UK might be a worthwhile option...