?

Theemile wrote:

penny wrote:<snip> Another thing I never shared. Consider how large the SL is, and how much graft and corruption there was. Consider the hold the Alignment had on the SL. How many ships could the MA have diverted/stolen from the SL over the years. What I would like to know is how Theemile's tagline is applied to the MA and SL navy ships.

Theemile's tagline:
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships.”

How difficult would it be for the MAN to refit "acquired" SLN ships to their own standards?

It depends on what standards you are applying.

The Beowulf SDs were pretty much SLN tech - maybe different model - but same bits and parts for the most part. End result was something an SLN Admiral or Sailor would feel at home in.

In the same vein, a 1875 RMN SD would have felt much the same to an SLN sailor - but with RMN branded parts - Kinda like the differences between a BMW 5 series and Mercedes C class from the same year kitted out the same. and In 1905, putting a Peep (or SLN) ship into RMN service wasn't a big deal. Change out a few modules, write some new code and upload the RMN protocol standards - voila - you have a "Meh" Waller. However, it's still a SLN or Peep waller at it's heart, with better comms. ECM and upgraded missiles in it's tubes.

And her is where the difference lies - starting with it's multidrive and LRM missiles, the RMN built ships with different sized tubes. Fusion drives required a containment chamber in the feed tube to spin up the reactor. Different ratios of the ship were allocated to sidewall generators, propulsion, habitation, weapons systems. Base concepts were rearranged to optimize the ships for the combat they were destined for.

So taking even an RMN ship which had gotten some updates and trying to update it to the latest standards - effectively and cheaply - became impossible. It was quicker, cheaper, and less resource intensive to start fresh and build new. And the outcome was better.

So when I said it depends on the standards you are apply, the MAlign went a different path. Their missiles are designed to fit in standard missile tubes of Cruisers or Wallers, so a standard ship can be used to fire the missiles with little or no upgrades.

But

If you want to fire their massive capital missiles - you needs pods, which means a Podlayer. and that's a entire redesign of ship internals and armor - so it's not going to happen in a refit.

If you want to fire alot of missiles, you need to add more firecontrol, which mean rearranging the outside of the ship - doable, but it will only add so much without taking away something else without ripping off all the armor.

Similiar with anti missile systems - Modern RMN ships have 3-6x what their 1900 predecessors had - and that means rearranging the surfaces again - and ripping up the armor and moving all the existing weapons.

If you want spider drive - that's a whole other chassis - so no refit.

G-torp - you might be able to sling 1 or 2 per SD, but you will need to fire them before you enter combat because they will block sensors and weapons. If you want more, convert a freighter or build an LD.

I know you knew most of this, but if you want to use 1900s SLN stock, either you're taking a SLN Vega class SD with a few upgrades to add more firecontrol and comms in 2-3 months time, or doing a massive upgrade to an optimized state for the low end MAN or the RFN hardware and leaving the SD for at least 2-3 years in a yard, and getting a result that still will be junk when compared to one of the few upgraded Gryphons, and completely outgunned by a non keyhole Medusa.

You know I knew most of it??? Are you kidding me? I knew almost none of that, but thanks for the vote of confidence. And thanks for the post!

The only part I knew was being able to use their missile tubes. I thought they'd be able to accomplish mostly everything else on the outside. Like attaching the 3-second graser. And even though it wouldn't be a pod layer, I thought they could affix pods of g-torps to the outside. And they can always limpet pods inside the wedge like the older days for massive Alpha launches. And their revolutionary approach to CMs might be able to eat Manty launches for awhile. They won't be working alone. They do have their own modern wallers, plus the MAN's LDs raising hell as well. And the hyper raiders too. Dunno how they'd solve the accel problem or missile range though.

penny wrote:

tlb wrote:They did NOT need a powerful navy in the original plan, since they were going to be neutral in the war between the Solarian League and Haven. It was Haven's navy that was supposed to be as big and powerful as the SLN; this was to be accomplished by making the SLN obsolete and corrupt, while Haven grew by conquest. The two sides should then have been evenly matched and would fight each other to exhaustion, with the Renaissance Factor gathering in the remains. That plan did not need an RFN that was of any size and it was doomed the moment that the Manticore - Haven combatants developed the modern missile pod and multidrive missiles.

The Malign has not yet come up with a new plan and the RF has not come up with the new ships and technologies that may be needed for whatever that plan may be. Perhaps it will be the MAN and RFN conquering human space, but we will see.

Remain neutral? Against the remnants of a still much larger, arrogant, bully of an SLN? You don't think you're being a bit naive? The SL would have been furious about the RFN gobbling up their territory. The only reason the SLN don't kick the GA's arse now is that they can't. But a weak navy gobbling up their territory would be gutted.

At any rate, how can the RFN protect anyone if they cannot protect themselves???

You're likely right - the original Detweiler plan was ill-conceived and likely to fail.

And yet, "the Detweiler Plan had always called for the League’s dissolution" [UH], with the League - Haven war they'd planned to manipulate into existence both causing that downfall and killing off much of the two largest navies in existence. That would leave the SDFs of the 11 members of the Renaissance Faction a fairly sizable force to forms pools of stability is a post-League world. (Only later were they supposed to start merging into a new star nation -- step one was form 11 separate little peaceful enclaves)

They weren't intended to fight the SLN because by the time they started giving shelter to their neighbors there wasn't supposed to be a League or League Navy left; not as any coherent government or force. (And having SDFs powerful enough to stand up to any sizable fraction of the SLN would attract unwanted attention)
After all the Detweiler plan was far more a political and spy-craft plan than a military one.

penny wrote:You know I knew most of it??? Are you kidding me? I knew almost none of that, but thanks for the vote of confidence. And thanks for the post!

The only part I knew was being able to use their missile tubes. I thought they'd be able to accomplish mostly everything else on the outside. Like attaching the 3-second graser. And even though it wouldn't be a pod layer, I thought they could affix pods of g-torps to the outside. And they can always limpet pods inside the wedge like the older days for massive Alpha launches. And their revolutionary approach to CMs might be able to eat Manty launches for awhile. They won't be working alone. They do have their own modern wallers, plus the MAN's LDs raising hell as well. And the hyper raiders too. Dunno how they'd solve the accel problem or missile range though.

Their revolutionary approach to CMs required really big CMs. They're basically a Cataphract scaled down slightly and with both states having CM drives.

No way those things fit in standard CM tubes. Even Manticore had to switch to larger CM tubes with their latest CMs -- meaning their older ships can't fire the extended range Mk31s or Vipers.

As RFC has explained more than once switching to a larger missile is a painful refit on anything heavier than, maybe a light cruiser. (Ok, they're painful for different reasons, simply finding the room). But CAs and onward have hull armor, core armor, and armored interior bulkheads -- all to resist and contain damage.
To use a larger missile you've got to:
1) Gut and replace the missile handling equipment inside the magazines (annoying, but not too hard; and applies to all ships)
2) Rip out the existing missile transfer tubes that run from the magazine to each of the ship's missile launchers and fit larger tubes able to handle the new, larger missiles.
2a) This may require rerouting the paths, as they larger missiles may not fit in the available curvature or spaces the smaller ones used to fit through.
2b) This likely involved moving interior machinery around to free up additional clearance for these new larger paths -- and finding places for that moved stuff, and figuring out how to hook it back up to everything it needs to connect to.
2c) Every new or enlarged opening through the core armor or armored interior bulkheads involved slow work as armor resists being modified (and you have to be careful not to compromise the armors effectiveness in the process -- say be overheating it)
3) Rip out the existing missile launcher, enlarge the space for them (moving bulkheads around) and install the new larger launchers
4) Rip out the too small armored missile launcher hatches in the armored hull, enlarge the through armor openings, and then install new larger armored hatches.

(Oh, and adding additional missile launchers, or CM launchers, beyond the number originally designed for is even worse -- because now you need all new paths and openings through all that armor and equipment to wherever you're squeezing in the new tubes)

None of this is outright impossible -- heck, they refit a handful of Gryphon-class SDs into Mk23 microfusion powered MDM launching SDs. (And that was even worse because they had to install additional armored copherdams around the launchers and run the plasma feeds to jumpstart the reactor while in the launcher. But what it is is slow expensive work.

So I tend to doubt that any existing MAN ship is getting refit with the 2-stage CMs from Galton. Even if they could carry enough of them (and magazine capacity is one reason the RMN had kept dismissing multi-drive CMs -- and theirs would be smaller than the MAligns design) the cost to install the much larger launchers would make it unattractive compared to simply building a new ship designed from the ground up to carry them.

tlb wrote:They did NOT need a powerful navy in the original plan, since they were going to be neutral in the war between the Solarian League and Haven. It was Haven's navy that was supposed to be as big and powerful as the SLN; this was to be accomplished by making the SLN obsolete and corrupt, while Haven grew by conquest. The two sides should then have been evenly matched and would fight each other to exhaustion, with the Renaissance Factor gathering in the remains. That plan did not need an RFN that was of any size and it was doomed the moment that the Manticore - Haven combatants developed the modern missile pod and multidrive missiles.

The Malign has not yet come up with a new plan and the RF has not come up with the new ships and technologies that may be needed for whatever that plan may be. Perhaps it will be the MAN and RFN conquering human space, but we will see.

penny wrote:Remain neutral? Against the remnants of a still much larger, arrogant, bully of an SLN? You don't think you're being a bit naive? The SL would have been furious about the RFN gobbling up their territory. The only reason the SLN don't kick the GA's arse now is that they can't. But a weak navy gobbling up their territory would be gutted.

At any rate, how can the RFN protect anyone if they cannot protect themselves???

Jonathan_S wrote:You're likely right - the original Detweiler plan was ill-conceived and likely to fail.

And yet, "the Detweiler Plan had always called for the League’s dissolution" [UH], with the League - Haven war they'd planned to manipulate into existence both causing that downfall and killing off much of the two largest navies in existence. That would leave the SDFs of the 11 members of the Renaissance Faction a fairly sizable force to forms pools of stability is a post-League world. (Only later were they supposed to start merging into a new star nation -- step one was form 11 separate little peaceful enclaves)

They weren't intended to fight the SLN because by the time they started giving shelter to their neighbors there wasn't supposed to be a League or League Navy left; not as any coherent government or force. (And having SDFs powerful enough to stand up to any sizable fraction of the SLN would attract unwanted attention)
After all the Detweiler plan was far more a political and spy-craft plan than a military one.

No, I am not being naive; but the Malign planners were. It is so easy to talk beforehand how the people will rejoice in peace and honor the government that was set up to support them. That they will completely turn their backs on the previous regime. We have seen too often that it does not work that way.

It was indirectly a military one, in the sense that it required a war between the two biggest navies in the galaxy, but one that the Renaissance Factor would not be expected to participate in. One wonders if the LD class was intended to slyly assist in shattering the political structures of the two combatants, to help create those remnants which would then opt for neutrality.

For the plan to work, neither combatant could be allowed to end up with the strength to act on any resentment toward the growing power of the Renaissance Factor. So one side might end up with a Pyrrhic Victory:

Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:They did NOT need a powerful navy in the original plan, since they were going to be neutral in the war between the Solarian League and Haven. It was Haven's navy that was supposed to be as big and powerful as the SLN; this was to be accomplished by making the SLN obsolete and corrupt, while Haven grew by conquest. The two sides should then have been evenly matched and would fight each other to exhaustion, with the Renaissance Factor gathering in the remains. That plan did not need an RFN that was of any size and it was doomed the moment that the Manticore - Haven combatants developed the modern missile pod and multidrive missiles.

The Malign has not yet come up with a new plan and the RF has not come up with the new ships and technologies that may be needed for whatever that plan may be. Perhaps it will be the MAN and RFN conquering human space, but we will see.

penny wrote:Remain neutral? Against the remnants of a still much larger, arrogant, bully of an SLN? You don't think you're being a bit naive? The SL would have been furious about the RFN gobbling up their territory. The only reason the SLN don't kick the GA's arse now is that they can't. But a weak navy gobbling up their territory would be gutted.

At any rate, how can the RFN protect anyone if they cannot protect themselves???

Jonathan_S wrote:You're likely right - the original Detweiler plan was ill-conceived and likely to fail.

And yet, "the Detweiler Plan had always called for the League’s dissolution" [UH], with the League - Haven war they'd planned to manipulate into existence both causing that downfall and killing off much of the two largest navies in existence. That would leave the SDFs of the 11 members of the Renaissance Faction a fairly sizable force to forms pools of stability is a post-League world. (Only later were they supposed to start merging into a new star nation -- step one was form 11 separate little peaceful enclaves)

They weren't intended to fight the SLN because by the time they started giving shelter to their neighbors there wasn't supposed to be a League or League Navy left; not as any coherent government or force. (And having SDFs powerful enough to stand up to any sizable fraction of the SLN would attract unwanted attention)
After all the Detweiler plan was far more a political and spy-craft plan than a military one.

No, I am not being naive; but the Malign planners were. It is so easy to talk beforehand how the people will rejoice in peace and honor the government that was set up to support them. That they will completely turn their backs on the previous regime. We have seen too often that it does not work that way.

It was indirectly a military one, in the sense that it required a war between the two biggest navies in the galaxy, but one that the Renaissance Factor would not be expected to participate in. One wonders if the LD class was intended to slyly assist in shattering the political structures of the two combatants, to help create those remnants which would then opt for neutrality.

For the plan to work, neither combatant could be allowed to end up with the strength to act on any resentment toward the growing power of the Renaissance Factor. So one side might end up with a Pyrrhic Victory:

Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him.

That is brilliant! Because I am going to admit that I think the plan was doomed when thinking that Haven, as large as it was, could have taken the SLN. I don't think so. Haven didn't have the technical capability to overcome the huge SL. IMO. Now, with a little help from the MA, perhaps. But I still don't think the SL, even if it lost the war, would have been done away with completely. No way.

penny wrote:That is brilliant! Because I am going to admit that I think the plan was doomed when thinking that Haven, as large as it was, could have taken the SLN. I don't think so. Haven didn't have the technical capability to overcome the huge SL. IMO. Now, with a little help from the MA, perhaps. But I still don't think the SL, even if it lost the war, would have been done away with completely. No way.

Oh, I'm sure that the Malign's plan, once they figured out the stealth ships, was to to use them to put their thumbs on the scales as necessary to keep either side from getting too large an advantage in the war.

A few atrocities here or there to kill any public interest in a negotiated end of the conflict, wipe out a reserve formation, or yard, here or there to keep the League from simply overwhelming Haven by sheer mass, etc.

Prior to the spider ships they probably planned on some false flag operations just to make sure the war they'd kicked off, in no small part through their infiltration of both the League and Haven governments, didn't end prematurely. (And that might well still be part of their planning even with the spider ships)

Jonathan_S wrote:I was working on this post which slightly disagrees with the one tlb posted in the meantime. I think there are some further inefficiencies to the hybrid design.

But inefficient isn't the same an unworkable.

penny wrote:Do forgive my wording. That should have read "spider-drive ships" in impeller mode. You appear to accept that a spider ship may be able to produce a wedge. If so, that would technically make it a hybrid. A wedge-spider hybrid is what we are using in this discussion. The hybrid was suggested by Remontoire and tlb. Just so we are on the same page before we proceed.

Yes, it should be possible. But the only known way to make would would be inefficient.

We're told that a starship's impeller nodes have to be in specific placement relative to the ship's length and width, and that they force hulls not to stick out past the classic double-taper shape (lest the protruding bits get mangled when the wedge starts up).

We're also told that the compensated acceleration of a ship is based primarily on the volume of its compensation field. not its actual mass. (Which is why Tom Pope once gave me for why CLACs which are "fatter" than other ships don't have quite as much acceleration as more classically shaped ships of the same tonnage and tech).



So, seemingly, the only known way to get Alpha nodes successfully onto a spider ship is to basically draw the smallest optimized hull form you can that fully encloses the actual triple-skeg spider ship; look at where the impeller rings for that sized conventional ship go and put the spider-hybrid's nodes there. (Whether permanently, assuming that didn't interfere with the spider drive's operation; or run out on rams or something when you want to switch to wedge)
Note that to keep the skegs from poking out past the outline's taper you might end up with an optimized hull form that's significantly larger and longer than the actual spider ship -- potentially forcing you to put the impeller rings out beyond its normal bow and stern.

And you get the compensated acceleration of whatever size optimized hull fits around you; which, as noted, may be much larger than your actual mass.

* A Ghost which, IIRC, should be less than 60k tons might only fit entirely within, say, the hull outline of a 120k ton light cruiser. (On ships that small isn't too bad; a 120k ton CL is only about 2% lower accel than a 60k ton large frigate or small DD)

* A 4M ton Shark might only fit within the hull outline of a 7M ton DN; if so then a spider-hybrid Shark would suffer a nearly 7% hit to max compensated accel compared to a notional 4M ton wedge-only ship. (But still be comfortably more than twice as quick as under spider drive)

* A Lenny Det, OTOH, isn't likely to be usefully hybridized -- they're already so large that they're well beyond the "compensator cliff". So massive that a wedge and compensator is going to provide no acceleration benefit over what their grav plates already provide.[/b]

What about for defense? I can never remember if a wedge is needed for a bubblewall or sidewall. I was thinking for quite some time that in an emergency no other alternative scenario, an LD can pull in its horns like a turtle and become like an impenetrable fort???

penny wrote:But on top of that, afterwards during a full-scale invasion with a brand new enemy represented by the RFN barreling down on you, that is when these new purpose built ships play their real game. That would draw LACs away from the real battle. If the RMN can even spare the LACs. And how can LACs be sent to investigate so many ghost images during the heat of battle. And even if the repurposed hyper raiders remain, remember they cannot be readily seen because they are stealthy. Drones will be shot down alerting the RMN that something is definitely out there. But these raiders have deposited little toys, and the 1-3 second firing ship mounted energy weapons will make short work out of the few LACs that can be spared and spread out to chase so many ghosts.

Note I wasn't talking about sending LACs from the inner system to investigate. In a Tier 1 or 2 system, a hyper emergence a light-hour or so out is investigated by the ready squadron of destroyers, because they are hypercapable ships. And because they are, they can follow the raider through hyperspace. Hopefully given the absurdly short distance they'd arrive at, they can even see the translation upwards and follow, just like the hyper-raider idea itself. So this tactic has again the danger of being used on itself.

Even if they can't see the translation upwards, they will see the new hyper emergence or be told about it via FTL comms. At this point, the DDs have an acceleration advantage in hyper and top speed does not matter. And if the hyper-raider is the size of a cruiser, it takes even longer to translate than the destroyers, which means they would close the gap every time they really tried to insert (as opposed to translating in, recharging and translating out before the destroyers come to investigate).

And remember that GA destroyers can outfight SLN battlecruisers, so they should be plenty for a stealth-optimised MAN cruiser even with whatever updates the MAN can apply in the next decade. Moreover, they don't need to destroy the raider, they just need to compromise its stealth. That's mission-kill.

In the face of a full scale invasion by the MAN and the RFN's ships hypering in, I doubt the RMN would have the time or resources to investigate ghost images happening all over the system at the same time so many impeller signatures are hypering in.

In summary, during a full scale invasion spider-drive ships don't really need to worry about prolonged insertions.

Doing this during a pitched battle is another story. No one is going to investigate hyper footprints a light-hour or two away from battle if the ships are necessary for defence. But again the same problem applies to the invaders: they are dividing their forces and are therefore inviting defeat in detail. This scenario assumes that the invading force does not have overwhelming superiority to simply take the system by conventional means. They wouldn't engage in the game of cat and mouse if they did. For want of a nail...

Unless you're proposing to use a large force from the MAN or RFN as a distraction. Are you? Remember Operation Fabius, where less than a third of 400 battlecruisers sent to smash Beowulf came home, even with the help of the Mycroft stations being destroyed. It's not too difficult to imagine a scenario where the invading force gets itself smashed by the system defence MDMs: all that needs to happen is they arrive within their hyper-generators' cycle time from a shoal of missile pods.

If the objective is to arrive, leave "presents" behind, and leave, then you don't need this convoluted plan. Instead, have the LDs arrive two light-hours out, deploy the torpedoes, and leave. This is a good use of their design.

penny wrote:If the RFN is to the MAN as Galton could have been, then when the war begins Darius will share tech and the RFN will be supported properly. Why should Darius not give the RFN the latest warships. Technically they are allies. And why should Darius not use the experienced officers and manpower of the RFN?

Because they are not as competent. You're the one saying that Alphas are so much better; well, the MAN is entirely made up of Alphas and Betas, with some Gammas as crewmembers. The RFN population has a few Alphas in leadership positions, including the top of their Navies, but the rest of the officer and enlisted corps aren't such. The RFN does not have the doctrine or, quite frankly, the ships to be an effective fighting force for some two decades.

They're technically allies, but 99% of the RFN does not know that. You can't crew a brand, new SD(P) that arrived out of the blue (or the dark) with 6000 people who aren't in on the secret. You could spin a story that they have something like Bolthole, but the story needs to be believable, which means there needs to be some people who know that there has been R&D, construction, etc. The only thing the RF has going for it now is that each member system could say "it comes from that other one over there."

None of which would fool the GA intel services. The moment the first SD(P) arrives and bears a striking resemblance to the Galton classes, the charade is over and Mannerheim gets a nice visit from Admiral Gold Peak with Tenth Fleet behind her, asking pointed questions.

If the RFN can't work up those ships in their own systems, they'd have to do so in Darius, which means the RF is sending competent people on a one-way ticket. This may go unnoticed for some time by the GA intel or the League Ghost Hunters for that matter, but the RFN itself will start talking that competent people are disappearing, the quality of the remainder will begin to decline, and then it's noticed.

So, no, the RFN cannot get this amount of covert support from the MAN. The RFN needs to be entirely above-board for as long as the MAN is hidden, and possibly for some time after that.

Hurt the GA economy? The MA will be going for a short victorious war.

Because that worked so well the last time? Maybe ask Hereditary President Harris what he thinks of it. Oh, wait

But it will hurt outlying system's economies. Those newer systems taken in by Manticore. Requiring the RMN to redeploy and possibly even subsidize these systems whose economies are now hurting because they were attacked simply because they are now associated with Manticore.

That makes some sense.

But mind the timeline again: those systems are only poor and dependent on the central ones for the next decade. If the MAN has the time to create such a big fleet, then the SEM has had time to turn the economies around of those systems and deploy sufficient defences to them.

I suppose I will accept that he gave hints of the MAN. If you want to call what he portrayed as the MAN a hint. That is why I had to argue for months if not years with a certain poster that the Mesan Alignment even had a navy. RFC made it look like all the MAN was was a few ragtag quickly thrown together ships that could only sneak in a system and sucker punch. I don't recall a warning before Oyster Bay.

Right, it was not a hint. He came out and said "there's a Mesan Alignment Navy." There was no "he made it look like:" again, it was very explicit that the MAN was very small at the time but they were building very capable ships. We didn't get any hint of what the strategies to be employed were, but Captain Gowan Maddock seemed to think they could take on anyone's navy.

Guys... a pause for dramatic effect let me let you in on a little secret. This is sci-fi. Contrary to what all of you believe, it does not take years to build a large navy in relative sci-fi time. In real time, yes. But time in sci-fi is all relative. In real time it takes years. In relative time it takes mere hours, minutes and or seconds. Or however much time it takes the author to bang it out on his laptop. Granted, it may take days if the author is actually banging on his old and trusted Remington. An entire system and navy was created out of thin air and pixie dust in the form of Galton. The author is a god of his universe.

Indeed and he has chosen to keep the timelines realistic. He could of course break the rules, but we have good evidence from the past 30 years that he won't. Moreover, he's also very fair in that both sides get the same breaks: if the MAN can build 500 cruisers in 5 years, then so can the GA.

The only alternative is conjuring up an existing but never before mentioned base that has been doing that for a century. That can't be Darius and the MAN because we know what they had. He'd have to pull a Galton card again, and it's not likely because Benjamin Detweiler would probably have had musings about his other secret military base when travelling to Galton.

And I didn't mean it literally that so many systems will be attacked. What I meant is that it will be happening randomly all over as many systems.

For what gain? What's the path from this strategy to winning the war? The RMN is not going to deploy Battle Fleets to support those systems. Spreading out CruRons and Desrons in penny packets will not reduce the overall defence of the main systems. And if they main systems aren't becoming less defended, how does that lead to victory?

You are assuming that these poor systems have any kind of significant sensors.

Yes, because we're talking about systems with something significant to be taken out in the first place.

The Nuncio system won't have good hyper detectors, but what is there in the system for the MAN to attack in the first place?

Unless the objective is the planet itself and directly commit an Eridani violation by targeting the capital city.

Also, as far as Yachts and dispatch boats, this commerce raiding strategy is predicated on opportunity. If the opportunity presents itself, any and everything will be shot. A yacht could be carrying someone important.

Don't forget the cost of opportunity.

Sending your 100 hyper raiders to systems to wait for 3 weeks for anything interesting to happen is a waste of resources. Those 100 cruisers are ships not screening a major fleet and are inviting defeat in detail.

Do you have any idea how long it took to build Galton and it's infrastructure?

About 200 T-years. See above for the discussion on why it's highly unlikely that we'll get Yet Another Galton.

Another thing I never shared. Consider how large the SL is, and how much graft and corruption there was. Consider the hold the Alignment had on the SL. How many ships could the MA have diverted/stolen from the SL over the years. What I would like to know is how Theemile's tagline is applied to the MA and SL navy ships.

Sure, they could have tucked away even a thousand SL cruisers.

What good are they? They are SL tech. Admittedly, those would be Frontier Fleet units, which were actually useful in combat, unlike the Battle Fleet ones. But they are completely outclassed by the GA tech these days. And they're not stealthy at all.

How difficult would it be for the MAN to refit "acquired" SLN ships to their own standards?

As long as building their own, by the same logic. And Theemile's quote was about Beowulfan SDs, which were hopefully the best that SL tech could come up at the time. Not surplus stuff that was being decommissioned.

Jonathan_S wrote:It's not impossible that he'll surprise us with some off-screen naval build-up that the MAlign or the RF has been working on unmentioned for years. But he's shown some things about their build-up and navies -- and in ways that seem incompatible with entire other unmentioned building programs. (If there were hundreds of hybrid-spiders already on the ways then the various Detweiler conversations about naval building would have no logical reason not to mention them. They'd definitely know of any such massive build-up of their navy; and they're discussing what forces they have now or will have in the next several years. Failing to mention what would be the numerically most significant part of your future navy would be bizarre in that context)

Unless they don't know about that. Which means the Inner Onion at Detweiler Level doesn't know about it. That would mean there's some other force manipulating the Mesan Alignment for their own unrevealed purposes.

Maybe it's the Alphanes making a comeback!