Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

This 15 page detour starting on page 25 of this thread is symptomatic of me saying that it is much too busy around the junction to fire on an LD that drops down a manhole cover in the emergence lane.

This snow has temporarily given me a bit more time for the forum. Yea!!! ???

penny wrote:But they cornered the market on the selling room floor enough to make a killing. Which is all they were trying to do. They certainly lacked the buying power of the Dukes.

tlb wrote:If you mean that they were one of the few groups selling OJ futures as the price was being driven up by the Dukes, then we are agreed.

penny wrote:They were the only group who were selling OJ futures; at least until/at a certain price/point. Winthorpe made sure of that by initiating the chaos at a certain point. "Not yet Valentine." There were other sellers, but their price could not match Winthorpe's and Valentine's.

When selling futures, the price is determined by the current market spot price plus small adjustments; which was NOT largely set by Winthorpe and Valentine, it was being set by the pressure on the spot price of the Dukes buying futures.

For commodities, the futures price is based on the commodity's current spot price, plus any costs the seller will accrue in the interim between the sale and the contract's expiration, such as transportation and storage fees, interest, and insurance.

tlb wrote:PS: You call Manticore's Merchant Marine "monopolistic", which does not seem to fit the case. Within the League (by their numbers):

"Better than two-thirds of our total interstellar commerce - the percentage is higher for freight, lower for passengers and information - travels in Manticore-registered bottoms at some point in the transport cycle, Innokentiy. Almost thirty percent of it travels in Manty ships all the way from origin to to final destination; another twenty-seven percent travels in Manty bottoms for between thirty and fifty percent of the total voyage. Another ten or fifteen percent of it travels in Manty bottoms for up to a quarter of the total transit."

That is a lot, but still over a quarter of their interstellar commerce never touches one of Manticore's ships. Plus this says nothing about the size of Haven's merchant marine, which will now have the same advantage in using the Manticore wormhole junction.

penny wrote:Two-thirds represents ~ 67%.

100% minus one-quarter = 75%.

Every website you posted accepts 60% as a dominating share.

.

Yes, by the League's figures Manticore was dominating its interstellar carrying trade. I will agree that is a lot, I even said so; but it does NOT represent a monopoly. Yes, I was aware that three-quarters equals 75%; a number I picked because the author's text said "Better than two-thirds".

tlb wrote:I found three articles that state that it requires market dominance, which you seemingly still deny. If I am so wrong, it should be easy to find articles to support that contrary position.

penny wrote:Gees. Those are articles tlb. Not a formal class in Business. Those articles, as I do myself, require a little understanding of business. And a thorough digestion of the article. I gave you two of the examples of the mechanisms (stated by each of your articles!) that may thwart having cornered a market. Market alternatives. And the buying power of consumers.

Since you seem to be saying that someone, like yourself, who has taken classes in marketing will know more than an analyst, who is writing professional articles about marketing; I have decided to look up the qualifications of at least one that I quoted: James Chen of Investopedia. Here is what I found from Finance Magnates:

Arnab Shome wrote:James Chen Joins JPMorgan as Wealth Content Studio Head
Friday, 12/03/2021 | 03:33 GMT

He spent the last two decades with many brokers, educating the traders.

Well-known financial industry analyst, James Chen has left Investopedia after three years to take up his new role at JPMorgan as Vice President. He will be the Head of Content Studio for the Wall Street Giant’s US Wealth Management division.

Chen is based in New York and spent the last two decades in the financial industry, spending most of his time with forex brokerage firms. The psychology-graduate started his career in 2000 as a trader and market analyst.

An Industry Veteran
As Finance Magnates earlier reported, he held the position of 'Director, Trading & Investing' at Forbes-owned Investopedia, the Wikipedia-like website focused on finance and economy-related subjects.

Before moving to Investopedia, he had a couple of years stint at Forex.com, the trading brand owned and operated by GAIN Capital. There, he oversaw research and analysis of the financial markets. Prior to that, he was the Chief Technical Market Strategist at City Index, another GAIN Capital brand.

He spent a large part of his career educating people about the forex industry and authored two books, 'Essentials of Foreign Exchange Trading' and 'Essentials of Technical Analysis for Financial Markets', both published by John Wiley & Sons.

Moreover, he was the director of research and education at FDD for a little over a year where he distributed daily analysis on Forex Trading and conducted several seminars for both retail and institutional clients, according to his Linkedin. Furthermore, he spent five years working as the Chief Technical Market Strategist at a company called FX Solutions, which is another New Jersey-based foreign exchange broker.

Forex (FX) refers to the global electronic marketplace for trading international currencies and currency derivatives.

James Chen Joins JPMorgan

I am aware that both market alternatives and consumer buying power can thwart an attempt to corner the market, which is why it is necessary to achieve market dominance, which those articles clearly stated (and which you refuse to accept). You might consider that people who write articles on markets have probably taken a few classes on markets themselves.

PS: Before we go through this again; there are lower levels of market dominance that will not lead to cornering the market. Cornering the market requires a very high level of market dominance. So market dominance does not imply cornering the market (because too low) whereas cornering the market does imply market dominance (because high required).

The Manticore Merchant Marine isn't the major leader in the buying and selling of goods in the League, they transport a massive amount of the goods on at least some portion if the shipping of those goods from seller to buyer.
These are SHIPPING COMPANIES. The carry goods, sometimes people and probably always "mail" between the systems on their routes
Yes, sometimes an owner-on-board partner may buy goods on speculation of when they see an opportunity to meet a recurring need at home or at a regular port. They may also have an interest in either a manufacturing company mercantile business and carry goods at an agreed discount with the approval of the shipping companies board. But, primarily they are interstellar long distance trucking companies and typically are servicing regular routes and are also dependent on fright brokers to acquire and aggregate loads for them. It's moving goods from point A to Point B at a competitive price that will make them money.
What supercharges them is the price break(s) they get as Manticore flagged merchant shipping using the wormholes Manticore owns or is part owner of.
Except for that wormhole pricing, they have to compete on all other legs of the traveling with other shippers in the League. If they operate more efficiently and can beat the prices of others, they will get the loads.

Brigade XO wrote:What supercharges them is the price break(s) they get as Manticore flagged merchant shipping using the wormholes Manticore owns or is part owner of.
Except for that wormhole pricing, they have to compete on all other legs of the traveling with other shippers in the League. If they operate more efficiently and can beat the prices of others, they will get the loads.

And we know the average Manticoran freighter is a bit less optimized for cargo capacity and flexibility over all else than the average Solarian freighter -- so that implies that all else being equal the Solarian-style freighters should be have a competitive advantage for shipping within the League (even ignoring any discounts they might receive for being Solarian flagged.

Of course the Manticoran flagged freighters have such an overwhelming advantage for anything using most wormholes that even for some trade routes into the League the cargo still moves of Manticoran hulls. But I think the fact that they should be a bit less efficient for the League legs of those trips emphasizes your point that they're just shippers and they're not dominant except where enabled by their favorable wormhole discounts.

That said, all else might not be entirely equal. Manticoran freighters might also use a bit more automation than the Solarian counterparts; which might help reduce costs. But they all seem to use the same drives, particle shielding, and hyper-generators -- shipping in the Honorverse appears to normally be a cost-driven commodity service.

Oh, and here's my basis for the original statement (I didn't want to break up my thoughts by putting this in the middle of the post)

Shadows of Saganami wrote:designers had placed the essential systems along the spine of the hull to provide the maximum possible unobstructed hold space. The holds themselves were designed to be quickly and easily reconfigured to make the best possible use of the available space, but tucking the power systems and life-support up out of the way provided the optimum degree of flexibility.
Yet that design philosophy had certain drawbacks. By pulling those systems up out of the core of the ship, the designers exposed them to potential damage. Manticoran civilian designers had a tendency to sacrifice some cargo-handling flexibility by moving things like fusion plants and hyper generators closer to the center of a ship, rather than leaving them exposed, but Solarian designers were less concerned, by and large, about such design features.

Why would anyone bother redesigning a freighter for a bit more survivability? I suppose a bit more would matter if it was attacked by a cutter or pinnace?

penny wrote:Why would anyone bother redesigning a freighter for a bit more survivability? I suppose a bit more would matter if it was attacked by a cutter or pinnace?

Also helpful if you run into a space rock just a bit too big for your particle shields to handle.

Would your rather it punched through your life support or hyper generator, or though the impromptu spaced armor whipple shields of all those cargo containers and their contents?

Sure, if there a full up pirate warship on your tail slight differences in freighter survivability aren't going to matter. They've the delta-v to chase you down and the weapons and boarding parties to ensure your capture.

But not all pirates can be that well equipped. Some pretty much have to be no more that freighters with mining equipment (lasers or small mass drivers) strapped on -- where the ability to tank a hit or two while running might matter. Especially if there might actually be some kind of armed patrol ship or LAC in the system to come investigate if you can string things out long enough.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Why would anyone bother redesigning a freighter for a bit more survivability? I suppose a bit more would matter if it was attacked by a cutter or pinnace?

Also helpful if you run into a space rock just a bit too big for your particle shields to handle.

Would your rather it punched through your life support or hyper generator, or though the impromptu spaced armor whipple shields of all those cargo containers and their contents?

Sure, if there a full up pirate warship on your tail slight differences in freighter survivability aren't going to matter. They've the delta-v to chase you down and the weapons and boarding parties to ensure your capture.

But not all pirates can be that well equipped. Some pretty much have to be no more that freighters with mining equipment (lasers or small mass drivers) strapped on -- where the ability to tank a hit or two while running might matter. Especially if there might actually be some kind of armed patrol ship or LAC in the system to come investigate if you can string things out long enough.

Ah, that makes sense. And we nce you mentioned the cheap insufficiently armed pirate, said pirate may have just a single low yield missile that does not quite hit its mark.

Question. If a freighter, any ship even, is damaged and it is leaking atmosphere, does that affect acceleration? If vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. No? But is it possible to damage a ship so badly that it is leaking atmosphere without damaging/affecting the compensation? I suppose I'm overthinking it.

penny wrote:Question. If a freighter, any ship even, is damaged and it is leaking atmosphere, does that affect acceleration? If vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. No? But is it possible to damage a ship so badly that it is leaking atmosphere without damaging/affecting the compensation? I suppose I'm overthinking it.

Yeah, if vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. It's not like an ocean ship were if it's taking o water the extra mass will slow it down and the opening likely increase it's hull drag anyway, further slowing it down.

And it would certainly be possible to damage a ship sufficient to cause (some) loss of atmosphere without necessarily damaging the compensator or the impeller nodes. (Likely easier to happen on a ship with little to no armor, like a freighter or a destroyer, as even a relatively low power laser or projectile could punch a small hole deep enough to reach a pressurized compartment)

Now if a warship is expecting combat they depressurize many of its outer compartments (storage/maintenance areas, access ways, etc.) Except for the on-mount crews (who'd be sealed up in their suits) there isn't anyone stationed out there at battle stations and removing the atmosphere helps limit the damage for a strike (hard to get a fire without any atmosphere). So hitting a warship that's already at battle stations hard enough to leak atmo is a bit harder. But even then you can hit the midsection of a destroyer a fair bit without taking out anything propulsion or power critical.

How hard you have to hit a freighter to reach a pressurized area depends on the design. A Solarian design with the working space right up against the outer hull you don't need to penetrate deeply to hit them. An Mantie freighter with most of it's stuff along the centerline you'd have to punch through a lot of unpressurized cargo bays unless you were lucky enough to hit one of the few spots where pressurized passages run out to the hull (such as to airlocks where it can dock to a station, or the accessway to its shuttle bay)

That said, only a limit about of its atmosphere should leak out. Even in a freighter there should be automatic pressure doors that'll slam closed if one area gets too much of a pressure drop. And on a warship many airtight hatches would be routinely closed except when someone is actively passing through them (even more should move to that status if they've gone to battle stations) So if the ship is leaking atmo for a prolonged time then you've probably battered it quite heavily, significantly raising the chances that you've also damaged its propulsion.

penny wrote:Question. If a freighter, any ship even, is damaged and it is leaking atmosphere, does that affect acceleration? If vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. No? But is it possible to damage a ship so badly that it is leaking atmosphere without damaging/affecting the compensation? I suppose I'm overthinking it.

It is possible and that might be indeed what sets the Manticore-built freighters more rugged. Those won't be dedicating any more mass to hull than precisely what's needed to keep atmosphere in and radiation out, so even a cheap pirate's laser could breach them. Therefore, any freighter could be leaking atmosphere after some shots from popguns. That's not dangerous to the crew, in general, if they'd been wearing shipsuits when the pirate actually took the shots. Fixing hull holes isn't very difficult.

But if those shots went through engineering spaces? Yeah, then they could ruin the ship's day. They could affect internal gravity, compensators, impeller rings, or hypergenerator. Solarian-built ships, with their equipment all on the outside, would be more vulnerable, while a Manticore-built ship with those all on the inside (except for impeller rings, which can't be) could just shrug off, leak atmosphere, water, or hydrogen, and keep running for the hyperlimit or towards a friendly LAC.

The passage above was out of context, but it must have been discussing how Manticore-built freighters do dare to tread where Solarian ones don't.