tech gap

Somtaaw wrote:It's not just time and acceptance, but also money. Without money, you can't pay your scientists, unless you are going to put a pulser to their head to force them to research.


And research by force, will never be as efficient as scientists working on their own free will, with incentives.


And even the SLN acceptance is only partial, the very top admirals, CNO and such are just barely accepting that there might be a tech gap. They are more like Haven, right about the time before First Hancock. They know there's some imbalance in technology, but they still believe quantity trumps quality. We haven't had a Solarian version of Pierre do a Harris Assassination and manage a coup.... yet.

And the entirety of the rest of the League believe the lies coming from their version of Public Information, that there isn't truly a tech gap, it's because of Manticore's cheap and dirty tactics. Manticore's tech isn't really better, they just made Filareta self-destruct his pods, that they truly had Superdreadnoughts and not just heavy cruisers at Spindle, etc etc.

But isn't this essentially what was happening in the League anyways? It isn't like Scientists were being paid what they are worth in the League. I always thought they were working for peanuts. Except perhaps, scientists of Sol proper?

Besides, take a fast talking used aircar salesman to sell fairy-tale promises of projected obscene increases in the standard of living funded by owning the lucrative Manticoran wormhole junctions. The same empty bag of promises sold by Haven to its citizens to support expansionist policy.

And isn't this essentially what the Russians did to many German scientists?

The Soviet Union exploited the technical expertise of the German specialists who were resident in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany as well as POWs held in the USSR. In October 1946 the Soviet NKVD forcibly deported from East Germany "a few hundred" selected German experts to work in the USSR. They were held under favorable conditions and most were released by 1948. They worked in the aviation industry and the development of submarines. A selected few remained in the USSR until the early 1950s including German scientists who worked in the Soviet Union on the development of ballistic missiles, Helmut Gröttrup was among this group.[48] They were not directly involved in the missile program but were only consulted by Soviet engineers.

I was under the impression the SLN are tantamount to bullies to its member states and that that fact is fundamental to why the Salamander's plan of divide and conquer by dangling candy will work.

crewdude48 wrote:Grav Coms) They is textev that they have it, but can't get it in something smaller than an SD. It would probably take at least two (probably 4 to 5) years before they get it small enough and fast enough to use it tactically, not to mention in recon drones.

Anyone can do FTL com, at the bandwidth of smoke signals -- just wiggle your wedge, in a pre-arranged code.

Their R&D will be the same as the Soviets and Chinese. They will steal the tech. Far too many people know critical elements, and they are spread across far too many places.

cthia wrote:But isn't this essentially what was happening in the League anyways? It isn't like Scientists were being paid what they are worth in the League. I always thought they were working for peanuts. Except perhaps, scientists of Sol proper?

Eh? I would imagine there's certainly a wide range of earnings amongst scientists anywhere. Granted, military R&D might not have been the most lucrative field, but it's hardly going to pay peanuts - and due to Havenite needs for improvements, may even have become more competitive. Now Haven isn't buying any more and the SLN is desperate for anything - it's a boom industry.

cthia wrote:I was under the impression the SLN are tantamount to bullies to its member states and that that fact is fundamental to why the Salamander's plan of divide and conquer by dangling candy will work.

In the Verge and Protectorates, certainly. But those aren't proper members of the League. Battle Fleet didn't go around intimidating Core members and rarely ventured outside that Core until recently. Although it did enforce the Eridani Edict a few times early on, it later ended up functioning as a sleeping dragon, keeping the peace in the Core through the threat of being.

The Harrington Strategy does rely on this changing. And the League seems to be cooperating in that it's now prepared to send task forces after even the oldest of members.

I think something is being missed here: The Transtellers..

By this I mean - after centuries of nepotism and crony capitalism how much military research is actually done by the navy and how much of it is done by transtellers for their own profit?

The transtellers are likely to be quicker to recognize new technology and try to emulate it (Technodyne), whereas in the past they were content to focus on improving the tech they knew they could sell. If multiple transtellers realize they could make a fortune if they could solve the FTL or Compensator or MDM problem, they would through more money at it than 'Gram' ever had.

On the other hand, those transtellers are also solely out for their own profit. So, even if they come up with a great emulation of a Manty tech (or even a new idea/improvement), whether or not the Sollies actually get it is likely to come down to how stable the transtellers view the League compared to any other option they have. For example, if a transteller starts to see something like the Maya Sector as a safer bet than the League, I can guarantee that they will milk the league dry why avoiding selling it their new creation.

They can close the gap-- with enough time, but they've got dual problems: the GA can take out all of the current build fleets several times over so they've got the external enemy.

Bigger problem is that they also has the MAlign which has invested hundreds of years in making sure the League rotted from within. So you've got MAlign agents calling the tune for the dance designed to break the league into disfunctional small chunks they can take over, at the very time that Manticore, etc. want to break the League into MAlign enemy states that are GA friendly.

Worst problem yet: given that Manticore is less corrupt than the Mandarins and bureaucracy AND control the trade, there's no reason for even the core systems to want to keep the League as a super-entity any more.

Came to the thread late and saw a number of items that I wanted to respond to. But I want to apologize for the resulting wall of text.

kzt wrote:That is simply wrong. They have a very long history of carrying out covert actions. What exactly would you call what was going on in Talbott and vicinity?

I'd tend to categorize that as (somewhat clumsy and heavyhanded) agent provocateur actions.
And yes, those do usually fall under intelligence services.

But the skills necessary to foment enough unrest to provide a fig-leave for OFS to come in and seize control to "provide safety" seem a far cry from the skills necessary to ferret out technical intelligence on military technology. (Especially since their agents are used to having a significant tech edge against their targets)


So I agree they have a history of carrying out certain covert actions. But I'm not sure those skills are transferable to what they probably need to do now. (Though I guess SL Intel can try turning loose their provacateurs to see what trouble they can stir up in Talbott and/or Silesia. See if they can distract Manticore. But I'd still bet that the attempt... doesn't go well... shall we say)

Somtaaw wrote:Hmm, just bucklers I think. Single, and dual stage. And the single stage is dirt easy to make, it's just they need to think of it as an application.

The double stage would take a little more thought, but again something they need to actually think about, and/or see in action and actually comprehend what they saw. From the time they see it, and it gets reported to some form of BuShips, no more than 5 years for the first generation to start getting built in ships.

Single stage is probably fairly straightforward, but SoS gave us the tidbit that on older ship it takes an impeller room rebuild to fit a bow wall. (When Hexapuma's captain was talking about if they'd rebuilt the target Mars class enough to add bow walls they'd have replace the buggy Goshawk III fusion plants)

I'm guessing you need nodes able to deal with the new grav interactions from the sidewall generators. (Which could explain why it was possibly to do a field mod to add a stern wall to a Shrike -- it's nodes were designed to handle the extra 'walls)

The math for calculating that, and the engineering necessary to implement it is probably fairly straightforward. But its probably not quite as trivial as the original talk aboard HMS Minotaur made it seem.

Bill Woods wrote:Anyone can do FTL com, at the bandwidth of smoke signals -- just wiggle your wedge, in a pre-arranged code.

Actually at a far slower rate than smoke signals. A normal wedge seems to take multiple minutes to "flicker" on and off, and even non-trivial amounts of time to greatly alter it's power level / acceleration.

Still possible, but with unmodified nodes it might take several minutes to type out even very short pre-arranged codes.
Still, if your sensors can see the wedge at 15 lightminutes and it takes 5 minutes to send a 4 character alert code that's still 3x as fast as the light-speed signal could get there.

kzt wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:League 'covert operations' is non-existant. They were so tied up in "we have the biggest navy, we have the best technology, nobody else can match us" they literally cannot conceive of a reason to spy on any other nation. Meanwhile.... in the Haven quadrant, Haven and Manticore have been spying and counter-spying, and counter-counter-spying for almost 50 T-years. The League is going to lose hundreds of agents who literally have no idea how to operate, against the seasoned Counter-Intelligence agencies of the Grand Alliance.

That is simply wrong. They have a very long history of carrying out covert actions. What exactly would you call what was going on in Talbott and vicinity?

Well, there's covert action, and covert ops. You are thinking of the Gendarmerie, which is a totally seperate organization, and is actually part of OFS, is more about covert action. Provoking X reaction, to justify OFS stepping in and seizing control.

What we're discussing is spies. Someone who can acquire intelligence, whether technical or otherwise, and sending it back to their handlers, without being caught. Except they haven't actively practiced anything even remotely like that in decades, if not centuries.


IF the Solarian League Navy actually tried to restart covert intelligence gathering, it's going to be even worse than the Havenite Ambassador's network from before First Hancock. When Admiral Givens, Admiral Caparelli, and Admiral Hamish Alexander set up the trap that screwed Parnelli, Coatsworth, and the rest of the opening strike of Operation Perseus. Except this time, Manticore (and Haven) would easily be slipping double agents into the chain without even trying.

Yep, only a small - an influential small, but small - portion of the population of the RF worlds is in on the Alignment plot. If the covers are pulled off the alignment to early, it could spell trouble for the leadership on those worlds as their populations rise up... or not, it just remains to be seen.

I expect the SLN's first Tech advancements will be ... stilted to say the least. We know there are hundreds, if not thousands of companies with developed the trying to sell it to the SLN.

The first thing I would do as the SLN leadership is find out who sold what to the Havenites in the 1st war, and look to field any improvements in that field and what, if any, could lead to a MDM.

The second thing I would do is call back EVERYONE who submitted a proposal over the last 2 decades - we know that a company developed that stealth killer missile used on the Queen Adrianne, which was turned down by the SLN - like the Laser Head before.

Probably only 1 in 10 items will be deployable, and 1 in 10 of those will have any real use. Most of those that will work will be ... asymmetric to modern warfare. A new kind of stealth or ECM perhaps. A new short ranged weapon or missile killer. Something potentially different and revolutionary.

The question as always will be will the SLN have time to find, refine, and deploy these new technologies.

And I think the answer will be not in any quantity, in the time they will be allowed.[/quote]



The big problem with calling back everyone who ever submitted anything to the SLN would be MA agents.
If I was going to set up the SL for a fall the second place I would put covert agents is R&D.
That way I can steal anything that looks good, possibly get the SLN to pay for some of my research, and misdirect anyone who might be on the track of something good.
It would also let me waste the SLN's resources by spending money, time, and energy on things I know won't work.
Anyone remember the "Crippler"?

exiledtoIA wrote:

The big problem with calling back everyone who ever submitted anything to the SLN would be MA agents.
If I was going to set up the SL for a fall the second place I would put covert agents is R&D.
That way I can steal anything that looks good, possibly get the SLN to pay for some of my research, and misdirect anyone who might be on the track of something good.
It would also let me waste the SLN's resources by spending money, time, and energy on things I know won't work.

Anyone remember the "Crippler"?

who and what they want are two of the biggest loose ends involved with charles and his plans. he screwed the PRH twice and somehow escaped andermani custody.

Malign would make just about perfect sense but it seems to easy for that to be the correct answer