Rebuilding Manticore's infrastructure

Manticore took a body blow when their infrastructure was blown away. The question is just how quickly it can be if not replaced at least making a start to doing so. Immediately after the strike the consensus was very gloomy because ALL of the trained workers had been killed. Plus how do you replace the infrastructure when there's no infrastructure in place to replace it? Sort of like the chicken and the egg thing. Fortunately Pritchart brought back the 42,000 shipyard workers captured at Grendlesbane, but how much is that going to help if they don't have anyplace to work at? Relief should be relatively easily moved in, in the form of foreign manufactured assemblies brought in by the multi million ton freighters.

My question is how quickly do you think a decent amount of capacity can be rebuilt. Remember some of those 42,000 will be going to Bolthole to bring them up to Manticoran standards and efficiencies, but I suppose that could consist primarily of supervisory and educationary personnel, and leave the construction types back in Manticore orbit.

So, one year, two? What do you all think?

Mycall4me wrote:Manticore took a body blow when their infrastructure was blown away. The question is just how quickly it can be if not replaced at least making a start to doing so. Immediately after the strike the consensus was very gloomy because ALL of the trained workers had been killed. Plus how do you replace the infrastructure when there's no infrastructure in place to replace it? Sort of like the chicken and the egg thing. Fortunately Pritchart brought back the 42,000 shipyard workers captured at Grendlesbane, but how much is that going to help if they don't have anyplace to work at? Relief should be relatively easily moved in, in the form of foreign manufactured assemblies brought in by the multi million ton freighters.

My question is how quickly do you think a decent amount of capacity can be rebuilt. Remember some of those 42,000 will be going to Bolthole to bring them up to Manticoran standards and efficiencies, but I suppose that could consist primarily of supervisory and educationary personnel, and leave the construction types back in Manticore orbit.

So, one year, two? What do you all think?

Decades. The infrastructure we saw in _At All Costs_ took over a century to build.

Well yeah, rebuilding to where they were sure, I understand THAT. I just wonder how long before we're going to be at least able to repair our existing ships, battle damage after all. I realize that our missile production is mainly going to be handled elsewhere (Beowolf) but isn't it true that Grayson was able to start building small craft dextroyers and cruisers, maybe battlecruiser relatively quickly. If we accept the fact that Bolthole can get tooled up within a few years to produce components while Manticore's fledgling yards concentrate on getting the basic ships built, surely 3 or 4 years will see that happening. And the GA will surely need smaller vessels much more than superdreadnaughts.

I would post an example from OTL.
At the end of WW2, Germany's and Japan's car factories were flattened. Those in the UK has suffered damage but were mainly OK, while the US if anything had benefited from the rise in industrial activity.
Fast forward 20 years to 1965, BMW and Mercedes were producing new models with alloy heads and OHC, which Nissan and Toyota were busy copying.
Meanwhile the US and UK still had their old factories with the old jigs. They continued to produce iron headed pushrod engines, with old style parts. I remember having an Austin Healy sportscar with a three bearing crank, that had second rate slipper bearings that Cooper rejected for their Mini Cooper S.
Losing your industrial capacity isn't necessarily a bad thing. It enables the engineers to get ahead of the bean counters. "No need to replace that jig, it has served us well for decades".
RFC has said that the main base had grown exponentially without planning. Opportunity to get optimim internal connections.

I always assumed Manticore and Haven would take advantage of trade opportunities. And trade does not have to be limited exclusively to materials and hardware, but can extend to warm bodies too.

Haven needs the economic boost that such an agreement would bring to their economy, and Manticore needs and can certainly afford it.

And what about Beowulf? Their infrastructure is still intact isn't it? The MA should have tried to take out Beowulf's ability to make an impact on the GA's war machine.

This is why I have always said that sooner or later Beowulf will be targeted by the MA.

penny wrote:And what about Beowulf? Their infrastructure is still intact isn't it? The MA should have tried to take out Beowulf's ability to make an impact on the GA's war machine.

This is why I have always said that sooner or later Beowulf will be targeted by the MA.

True that the Malign did not attack Beowulf's manufacturing capability; but clearly Beowulf has ALREADY been targeted by the Malign to the tune of about 40 million deaths. So their orbital infrastructure has massively attacked, while leaving their industrial capacity alone.

It makes me wonder what Beowulf will design as replacement orbitals? Will they realize that the bombs were in undelivered freight and make sure that there is no long term storage in any replacement orbital designed for people. Will they replace the few big orbitals with many much smaller ones that can be evacuated in a reasonable amount of time?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:And what about Beowulf? Their infrastructure is still intact isn't it? The MA should have tried to take out Beowulf's ability to make an impact on the GA's war machine.

This is why I have always said that sooner or later Beowulf will be targeted by the MA.

True that the Malign did not attack Beowulf's manufacturing capability; but clearly Beowulf has ALREADY been targeted by the Malign to the tune of about 40 million deaths. So their orbital infrastructure has massively attacked, while leaving their industrial capacity alone.

It makes me wonder what Beowulf will design as replacement orbitals? Will they realize that the bombs were in undelivered freight and make sure that there is no long term storage in any replacement orbital designed for people. Will they replace the few big orbitals with many much smaller ones that can be evacuated in a reasonable amount of time?

Dunno why it reminds me of the mistake the Japanese made when they attacked Pearl but left the oil fields intact. Oh yeah, now I know why!

ISTR textev or discussion about the makeup of those 40M deaths, but I can't recall. Was a big % of those deaths critical people to the war effort?

penny wrote:ISTR textev or discussion about the makeup of those 40M deaths, but I can't recall. Was a big % of those deaths critical people to the war effort?

What war effort? Beowulf wasn't in any war at that point and didn't join any afterwards. We didn't hear of any BSDF units joining the GF during the attack on Galton... probably because the SD(P)s they'd receive hadn't arrived yet.

We do know the industries were still running, though.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:ISTR textev or discussion about the makeup of those 40M deaths, but I can't recall. Was a big % of those deaths critical people to the war effort?

What war effort? Beowulf wasn't in any war at that point and didn't join any afterwards. We didn't hear of any BSDF units joining the GF during the attack on Galton... probably because the SD(P)s they'd receive hadn't arrived yet.

We do know the industries were still running, though.

What war effort???

Thinksmarkedly, are you still trying to cover up for Beowulf in case it gets back to the SL? I am sure the League has already figured out that Beowulf was sleeping with the enemy and making missiles for them.

Over in the "Beowulf the Karma Suitsya" thread I found out that Beowulf was making the Mk-23. Then Weird Harold dropped this revelation on my head ...

Weird Harold wrote:It's worse than that! Beowulf is building Mk25 missiles and the four drive ACM's to go with the Mycroft control platforms they're seeding the Sigma Draconis system with!

And they're not even sharing the specs, let alone the technology, with the SLN!

Which prompted the author to chime in and say that Beowulf was under no obligation to inform the antsy SL that they were sleeping with the enemy and supplying them missiles.

That cat's already outta the bag. So give it up.

penny wrote:ISTR textev or discussion about the makeup of those 40M deaths, but I can't recall. Was a big % of those deaths critical people to the war effort?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:What war effort? Beowulf wasn't in any war at that point and didn't join any afterwards. We didn't hear of any BSDF units joining the GF during the attack on Galton... probably because the SD(P)s they'd receive hadn't arrived yet.

We do know the industries were still running, though.

There was a war conference of the Grand Alliance happening in one of the orbitals. The only reason Jacques Benton-Ramirez and Chou and Hamish Alexander-Harrington were not included in the count is that they were off in Jacques' new runabout. On page 677 of the hardback copy of UH is a partial list of military leaders (twelve including Patricia Givens and Thomas Caparelli) that died in the explosions.

The reason no BSDF units participated in operations is that they were all constructed to Solarian standards (despite Beowulf knowing better), so as to not give away secrets of the Grand Alliance.