How many Star Nations are there with Ships of the Wall?

Roguevictory wrote:You still need things like natural resources and food which cost money Skimper and if you are just printing money inflation is a nightmare.

Not to mention the cost of training the crews, then paying them and the workers in the support roles.
I used to do costings for complex weapon systems, and at one stage had a spreadsheet with 35 separate interlinked worksheets just for one aircraft class. You have to include the wages of the security guards on the base gates, along with the loss of Avtur through evaporation, and the depreciation of the facilities at the training academy; plus many other little inputs.
I'd imagine that sidelining so many highly skilled and energetic people would have an overall effect on the economy's efficiency.

Inflation only happens when you have multi currencies, this is a one currency system on a planet or in a system or a who set of systems. You might build inflation into the system but as it is an artificial currency it can be set and forgotten.

Paying people with a fake currency only requires time, the people have to eat either way, and paying people to work in space in Honorverse time is no different than paying them to work at Great Wall Mart or Boeing or the like now.

Now if you have the ability to make something you can make it or you can't. Cost doesn't enter into it when you don't have a based upon something currency. You just print more. Like the USofA right now. Yeah supposedly based on Gold but with the printing of Billions every month money isn't based on Gold anymore.

Remember no countries no competing currencies no Inflation to account for things, it is a static based economy that is just sort of made up. Kind of like Ancient Egypt, albeit they used slaves, but they didn't pay for the pyramids with gold they just said build them and they were built. Or Romans and roads, they didn't have the European Union gather together and say the road will cost this much and the rocks have to come from France and the sides rocks from Germany etc... they just built them.

It is funny how all the worlds in the Honorverse all have only one government and no countries.

Skimper, you have proved to be a smart person who sees things from a different angle, but you are so wrong in this I don't know where to start.
Money by itself is valueless, even gold as such has a limited value (too soft for tools etc). When a genuine authority produces money to represent wealth in a tradeable and portable way and guarantees it then it has value.
The resources of a country (or a whole Honorverse planet) have an intrinsic worth. The government then produces say a hundred trillion dollars to represent these resources, from which the market then says (for example) a ton of iron ore is $100. If the government then doubles the supply of money overall to two hundred trillion dollars, you will need to pay $200 for a ton of iron ore. Finite supply of iron ore, now twice as much money.


Building pyramids and temples cost the Pharaohs, just as building road and aqueducts cost the Caesars. They had to reallocate resources (manpower and materials) from other national tasks. They couldn't say "just build them" without copping a hit elsewhere in their economies. Why do you think that the North Koreans have wide spread starvation while building nuclear weapons?

Lord Skimper wrote:Inflation only happens when you have multi currencies, this is a one currency system on a planet or in a system or a who set of systems. You might build inflation into the system but as it is an artificial currency it can be set and forgotten.

Paying people with a fake currency only requires time, the people have to eat either way, and paying people to work in space in Honorverse time is no different than paying them to work at Great Wall Mart or Boeing or the like now.

Now if you have the ability to make something you can make it or you can't. Cost doesn't enter into it when you don't have a based upon something currency. You just print more. Like the USofA right now. Yeah supposedly based on Gold but with the printing of Billions every month money isn't based on Gold anymore.

Remember no countries no competing currencies no Inflation to account for things, it is a static based economy that is just sort of made up. Kind of like Ancient Egypt, albeit they used slaves, but they didn't pay for the pyramids with gold they just said build them and they were built. Or Romans and roads, they didn't have the European Union gather together and say the road will cost this much and the rocks have to come from France and the sides rocks from Germany etc... they just built them.

It is funny how all the worlds in the Honorverse all have only one government and no countries.

Daryl while I agree with your statements, your example of N. Korea starving due to Nuclear weapons is horrific.

N. Korea is not starving due to Nuclear weapons eating up manpower. They do not have fuel for mechanized farming(or the machines). They do not have fuel to create fertilizers for efficient mechanized farming. They are literally collecting human $hit and spreading on the fields by hand along with harvesting by HAND.

It is why N. Korea threatens nuclear bombardment, etc every "x" spring to get another "free" shipment of fuel as they have no other barter/threat to obtain the fuel needed to not starve. They used to obtain this "free" fuel from the Soviet Union. Well we all know what happened in 1990... What most do not know, or do not remember, is that when this happened and the fuel quit flowing, N. Korea had a quarter million to 3 million people starve to death, till we started sending them fuel. Yea, there were other factors(drought), but the driving factor for starvation is their centralized farming that required fuel. N. Korea has no domestic source for oil/fuel.

Lets look at a vastly superior example: Fall of Soviet Union. Even this, "fall", took decades. They accomplished a lot by effectively conquering millions of people and turning them into slaves, but this only lasted for "so" long before rebellion, anarchy, took over.

In some respects, Germany during WWII could be used, but honestly does not count as they were severely limited due to actual number of men/fuel as they were leading the tech edge but failed in the mass production of military equipment. It was not due to $$$. Not even close.

Short term, say, half a decade to a decade, Skimpers point about finances mean nothing, is a very prudent point. BUT, this position ONLY holds if the populace is BEHIND the government. WWII, Japan/Germany had no problem with finances during the war. Leading up TO the war, when they had to actually PAY for outside resources, they did, but during the war? Nope. Look at post war Germany/Japan, yes the allies implemented top down executive orders, constitution, etc, but honestly the common populace were completely worn out by war and didn't care who was in charge, as long as they were not at war anymore. You have to remember that by 1945, both Japan/Germany had been on a constant war footing for 10+ years(more in Japan's case than Germany's). In both instances $$$ meant nothing as their internal economies simply "printed money". This only last a short time, before the propaganda does not work anymore. Then it all falls apart.

Want another example? There are hundreds. Fall of Rome, ACW, etc, just about any war for that matter. It is only when a country is dependent on outside sources that $$$ becomes a time critical issue. Less than a decade we are talking about. Local economies will fall back on the barter system. Now you can argue that the barter system is less efficient and because of this causes efficiency problems as a % of the population GDP. Now that I will agree 100% with.

Ugg sorry for rambling post, if I had more time it would be shorter. Gotta go to bed.

Old soviet joke: "Comrade, have you heard the USSR has conquered the Sahara Desert?"
"No, I hadn't. What happens now?"
"Oh, nothing for the next 20 year, then there will be a shortage of sand...."

Relax I agree with you that "N. Korea is not starving due to Nuclear weapons eating up manpower".

Totally different manpower, what I was clumsily trying to say was that they spent money/resources sourcing the means to produce those weapons along with the delivery systems and such, that would have been better spent on buying fuel for their agricultural equipment or even food for that matter.

Daryl wrote:Relax I agree with you that "N. Korea is not starving due to Nuclear weapons eating up manpower".

Totally different manpower, what I was clumsily trying to say was that they spent money/resources sourcing the means to produce those weapons along with the delivery systems and such, that would have been better spent on buying fuel for their agricultural equipment or even food for that matter.

Ug woke up with a headache and took a look.

Your modified example explanation is still incomplete from my understanding of N. Korea. Not that many actually know much about N. Korea at all anyways.

N. Korea for the most part, per my understanding, not that I have made a giant study of their nation, made all those parts internally for the nuclear material extraction and payload delivery systems. They did not buy them from outside sources. One thing N. Korea does have are minerals. So, yes, they could have bartered minerals for food, but the other facets? Hrmm. Super glossed over couch uh, "finance advisor" from 10,000km away.

Relax wrote:In some respects, Germany during WWII could be used, but honestly does not count as they were severely limited due to actual number of men/fuel as they were leading the tech edge but failed in the mass production of military equipment. It was not due to $$$. Not even close.

Short term, say, half a decade to a decade, Skimpers point about finances mean nothing, is a very prudent point. BUT, this position ONLY holds if the populace is BEHIND the government. WWII, Japan/Germany had no problem with finances during the war. Leading up TO the war, when they had to actually PAY for outside resources, they did, but during the war? Nope. Look at post war Germany/Japan, yes the allies implemented top down executive orders, constitution, etc, but honestly the common populace were completely worn out by war and didn't care who was in charge, as long as they were not at war anymore. You have to remember that by 1945, both Japan/Germany had been on a constant war footing for 10+ years(more in Japan's case than Germany's). In both instances $$$ meant nothing as their internal economies simply "printed money". This only last a short time, before the propaganda does not work anymore. Then it all falls apart.

Want another example? There are hundreds. Fall of Rome, ACW, etc, just about any war for that matter. It is only when a country is dependent on outside sources that $$$ becomes a time critical issue. Less than a decade we are talking about. Local economies will fall back on the barter system. Now you can argue that the barter system is less efficient and because of this causes efficiency problems as a % of the population GDP. Now that I will agree 100% with.

Ugg sorry for rambling post, if I had more time it would be shorter. Gotta go to bed.

I agree that money as money can become short term irrelevant during a war (even if the country doesn't have sufficient domestic resources they can usually scrape up the hard currency or a trade item to get what they need as long as external trade isn't interdicted)

But even a fiat economy still has to deal with resource allocation. They only have so many tons of steel, steel used for tanks can't be used for ships. Aluminum used in rockets can't be used for fighters. Copper used for bullets can't be used for electromagnets (amusing side note; that's why Oak Ridge's electromagnetic uranium isotope separators were built with silver wire electromagnets, using tons of silver borrowed from the US Treasury reserve. Silver wasn't a strategic material like copper was). And for that matter men working as miners to extract more resources can't be used to build weapons or used as infantry.

So the mechanism used to allocate the materials likely becomes something like a war resource planning board, rather than market economics. But just because you don't have to pay cash doesn't mean the allocation choices don't have economic impacts.

Back to the main subject of this thread:

A couple of quotes (which I can't assign to an actual book) come to mind (and which I might be paraphrasing, or outright mis-quoting).

1- "approx 2/3rds of SDFs had nothing larger than LACs" (based on this, the SLN's view of SDFs as "second-string amateurs", is probably fairly reasonable)

2- "having even 1 squadron of the Wall put you in the top 10% or so of naval forces"

3- "counting the reseve the SLN had 11,000 SDs, discounting the 1000s more maintained by SDFs"" (this probably contradicts #1 above and definitely contradicts #2)

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From what we have seen, the following navies have a Wall of Battle (in order of numbers of "SDs"):

1- SLN *
2- RHN
3- RMN
4- IAN **
5- GSN (including Protector's Own Squadron) **

from this point on numbers become mere speculation, so are no longer in order

6- Erewhon
7- Beowulf
8- other members of the Manticoran Alliance
9- Mannerheim ***
10-other Rennaissance Factor navies
11-Mesan SDF (?)
12-Mesan Alignment Navy (none yet but building)
13-Maya Sector Navy (doesn't actually exist as a real navy yet, and doesn't have Wallers, but soon will)

* we know the Scientist class is defined as an SD but weighs only 6.8m tonnes, and would probably only be rated as a DN in any Haven Sector navy; the question of what exactly differeniates a DN from an SD is an entirely different question which I won't answer here
** 4 and 5 may be the other way around
*** the Mannerheim admiral's flagship is described as a DN but we don't know anything about it to judge what his navy's definition of a DN may be; it may be a locally modified variant of an SLN Scientist class


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Now to start inferring things:

-12 and 13 are "secret" navies and therefore shouldn't be considered in relation to quote #2 above
-from Albrecht Detweiler's thoughts, we know the RF navies are intended to form the bulk of the Allingnment's strength above and beyond the MAN, and therefore collectively will be larger than MAN

-the Royal Navy was so large in order to protect the British merchant navy (at least theoretically), or at least to patrol the shipping lanes through which the merchant navy sailed
-likewise one of the functions of the RMN is to power project in defence of the Manticoran merchant fleet
-Beowulf has a Wormhole and a large merchant fleet, and built (or bought) battle squadrons to defend them

-from these, we can infer (fairly safely) that SDFs with a Wall of Battle are the ones with a Wormhole and/or a large merchant fleet to defend
-if the RF SDFs are intended to provide the bulk of the Alignment's power it is likely they are amongst these navies (wny go to the trouble of subverting the governments of SL members who don't have large fleets and then suddenly building large navies for which no obvious rationale exists)

-Erewhon bought it's Wall of Battle from Solarian shipyards before it joined the Mainticoran Alliance and then Manticoran SDs before (only) very recently going to the trouble of building its own shipyards
-It is therefore likely that Beowulf and the RF worlds did similarly. They may have given the builders their own requirements for variations on the basic SLN designs, but the RF (especially) won't want SLN to have too much idea where their combat doctrine dictates great differences from SLN's "expert knowledge"; furthermore, what refits they carried out once they had the ships and what weapons they chose to put aboard them is entirely conjecture.

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Looking 10 years in the future, (IMO) the navies with a Wall of Battle will looks more like this (again in order of size):


1- RHN
2- RMN
3- RF collectively
4- MAN
5- IAN
6- GSN (they can't really afford the ones they have, and certainly can't afford to continue increasing their strength)
7- other GA members collectively
8- Erewhon
9- Maya Sector
10-Beowulf
11-other former League members

SLN will likely have none left, and probably won't even exist as a coherant entity.

IIRC, I don't think that the Mesan System Defense (Forces or Navy, whatever it is called) (and definitely NOT to be confused with the Mesan Alignment Navy) has anything larger than battlecruisers.