found a use for the ex-Sollie SD.

Greentea wrote:I agree. Oneof the better uses for some of the captured Solly SDs would be to re-purpose them as the initial cores of Yawata II, Weyland II, etc. Another good idea would just be to salvage materials from thm and use it to build more ships orbuild 3 purpose-built space stations.

The "core for new stations" idea to replace Weyland, Vulcan and Hephaestus is good, but there's a small issue with it. Namely, that by the time those SDs are available, construction work has already been under way for a few months, following plans which were already finalized and which explicitly aimed to avoid the whole wildly grown hodgepodge issue that the prior stations were suffering from. Adding random SDs to the mix would not improve matters, and given the amount of work that would have to be done in order to adapt these vessels for their new role, it's likely not practical.

The RL analogy of this would be to take a nuclear submarine and turn it into the core of an offshore oil rig; while this is something that isn't impossible, it's not exactly practical either, and will cause issues further down the line.

Yes, it might be a bad idea to use them intact as the core, but there would be salvageable material which will make rebuilding the three destroyed space stations cheaper, particularly since even the intact SDs are only good as scrap.

The E wrote:

Greentea wrote:I agree. Oneof the better uses for some of the captured Solly SDs would be to re-purpose them as the initial cores of Yawata II, Weyland II, etc. Another good idea would just be to salvage materials from thm and use it to build more ships orbuild 3 purpose-built space stations.

The "core for new stations" idea to replace Weyland, Vulcan and Hephaestus is good, but there's a small issue with it. Namely, that by the time those SDs are available, construction work has already been under way for a few months, following plans which were already finalized and which explicitly aimed to avoid the whole wildly grown hodgepodge issue that the prior stations were suffering from. Adding random SDs to the mix would not improve matters, and given the amount of work that would have to be done in order to adapt these vessels for their new role, it's likely not practical.

The RL analogy of this would be to take a nuclear submarine and turn it into the core of an offshore oil rig; while this is something that isn't impossible, it's not exactly practical either, and will cause issues further down the line.

Greentea wrote:Yes, it might be a bad idea to use them intact as the core, but there would be salvageable material which will make rebuilding the three destroyed space stations cheaper, particularly since even the intact SDs are only good as scrap.

Well, then you run into issues where the parts you take off those SDs won't be what the specs for the station says to use. You can't reuse any system from these things because you're going to run into maintenance issues down the line (i. e. replacement parts you'll have to reverse-engineer, software protocols that're incompatible with the rest of your systems, hardware that noone's trained on etc etc); your best bet is to melt everything down into raw materials and feed it into your own fabricator units. Which is probably unnecessary, given that the raw material industry hasn't been touched at all by Oyster Bay.

BobfromSydney wrote:Has no-one considered the merit of turning those warships into retirement villages for the elderly instead?

Or Casinos?

I suggested making a mall and museum out of them, with built in doctors offices, various stores, and movie theatres etc... Casino is similar. All things a cruise ship could have!

I like the ideas of the space stations funny you all thought that this as a core for Silesian system stations was Bad but perhaps it just took some time to sink in.

I understand you all would be stationed on your own various ships, or maybe all on the same Havok.

But the various and most certainly newsies would love to see how these battles take place. Plus all the civies who want to relive the best histories of the Salamander. Past battles and how it was on the ships. One bets there must be at least a dozen history buffs who would like to follow the illustrious career of Lord Pavel Young!

Practically speaking, there must be dozens of good purposes the old Sollie intact SDs could be put too. Perhaps the GA will just hang onto them for the time being. The scrap value alone must be very great.

After all the shooting stops and the entire human galaxy drops back into a dark age, some of those hulls might be useful for large colony ships, or like already said, orbiting facilities of whatever nature.

The problem, like already said also, is that they are old warships. They are not special built special duty hulls. Their only value is for shooting up stuff. Also just too darn big for practical use otherwise.

HB of CJ (old coot) Lt.Cm.

HB of CJ wrote:The problem, like already said also, is that they are old warships. They are not special built special duty hulls. Their only value is for shooting up stuff. Also just too darn big for practical use otherwise.

The real problem is that, because they are warships, with a warships cofferdams plus internal and external armor, it takes a shipyard capable of building one to dismantle one.

Or...

it takes a demolition charge capable of destroying one which would destroy any salvage value other than basic materials and still leave chunks that need a shipyard. Also, demolition charges tend to spread the surviving pieces in every direction.

Since there aren't many spare shipyards for the next decade or so, that leaves Test Target as the only viable use.

I do wonder if the tools and machines used to disassemble asteroids for mining might be able to treat a captured warship as a particularly tough asteroid and separate out the useful elements.

HB of CJ wrote:Practically speaking, there must be dozens of good purposes the old Sollie intact SDs could be put too. Perhaps the GA will just hang onto them for the time being. The scrap value alone must be very great.

After all the shooting stops and the entire human galaxy drops back into a dark age, some of those hulls might be useful for large colony ships, or like already said, orbiting facilities of whatever nature.

The problem, like already said also, is that they are old warships. They are not special built special duty hulls. Their only value is for shooting up stuff. Also just too darn big for practical use otherwise.

HB of CJ (old coot) Lt.Cm.

Not or are?

The good news is once you remove the missiles and cut the magazines into missile sized pieces, you can remove them the same way. Keep two per broadside functional. Then bring in prefabed staterooms. One per five missiles, will give all the needed state rooms for the passengers. The crew can bunk in the normal crew quarters, made larger of course. 5 to one ratio should keep everyone happy, even civie crews.

Everything else can be kept mostly the same. Might have to add carpets and fancy decorations and the like, but as a themed cruise ship, not too much.

It can employ idle freighter crews and disposes of a problem. If the ships are to be refurbished later, they are going to need new missile systems anyway, so it isn't a problem removing these systems.

Lord Skimper wrote:The good news is once you remove the missiles and cut the magazines into missile sized pieces, you can remove them the same way. Keep two per broadside functional. Then bring in prefabed staterooms. One per five missiles, will give all the needed state rooms for the passengers. The crew can bunk in the normal crew quarters, made larger of course. 5 to one ratio should keep everyone happy, even civie crews.

We have been over this dozens of times. NO YOU CAN'T.

The missile magazines are armored, to reduce damage in case a missile explodes in the magazine. You can't just open them up and pull pieces of equipment out. The have one or two armored hatches for maintenance purposes. And there are numerous other structural supports, armored firewalls, and critical conduits throughout the ship, which you can't just cut through willy-nilly. It would take a full shipyard and a year or two to convert one into any kind of civilian use, and even then you could never run them with the small crews you can get away with on civilian ships. And they would cost far too much to run to make a profit as a civilian ship.

I am reminded of how the United Nations was appropriately repurposed in DYDEE TOWN GIRL. The SLN SDs could be converted into space going brothels.