new/old dead horse, futher beating requested

Over the years I have enjoyed the forums about what to do with all the captured Sollie ships and such, I would like to revisit this subject.
I accept that the Sollie SD are like WWI dreadnaughts up against guided missile cruisers. They are primarily gunships and missle armaments are strictly secondary. They are however cities in space like aircraft carriers are cities at sea. They have a number so systems that are very up to date and needed in the verge. They have heavy armor that precludes their use as merchantmen (hauling all that heavy stuff around is not fuel efficent) but the armor is good passive protection against cosmic rays and micro meteors and such.
Specific issues

(1) Small arms: Somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of a million marines have been captured with all their hardware. This includes weaponds, probably vehicles, armor (powered and unpowered), drop capabillity (nearspace and atmo). The Alliance will have little need to manufacture these things but they need to be checked out and at least for the armor refited.

(2) Space lift: A lot of "small craft" have been captured. This incluses pinnacles, shuttles, admirals barges and such. The verge can use this surface to space capacity well, The armor may make the suttles fuel hogs. but good for things like asteroid mining and transport.

(3) Medical tech/suppies/personel: Each SD and some of the battle cuisers have the equivalent of a modern level 1 trauma center on board and the people to man same. Eithe in orbit or transfured to the surface these assets could be very helpful. These people are some what likely to respond to the notion of prole to a "Drs without borders" sort of organization.

(4) Missles and tech to handle same: The sollie missles are reliques, but the components can be recycled, the machinery to handle and move them could be useful in a number of industrial applications.

(5) Space/warp capable shells: No one has any real idea how many people it would take to keep the lights on and the AC running in one of these ships. The engines and warp capability would take additional personel. Eliminating the folks to polish the glod toilets and man the guns would eliminate a lot of bodies. I proposed adding a SD shell to the LAC-base-in-a box avalable to provide power, hydrophonics, air tight maintance, rec rooms ect.

lelder5 wrote:<stuff deleted for brevity>
Specific issues

(1) Small arms:
(2) Space lift:

(3) Medical tech/suppies/personel:

(4) Missles and tech to handle same:

(5) Space/warp capable shells: .

I have a few thoughts on your various points, but the gist of most of it is the availability of the industrial plant to support the tech.

1) probably the best point. The tech base to support the small arms is probably fairly modest and more widely available, and these would make nice goodwill gifts to the independent systems of the verge.

2) The small stuff is ok until it breaks down or the maintenance cycle hits the red. Although for small craft the industrial needs may be reasonably available as well.

3) Depends on how self-contained the stuff is.

4 and 5) we are getting into areas where the gear is likely more useful as scrap for raw materials. RFC has said before that the tech base to support large ships such as wallers is well beyond most planets and only rich fully industrialized planets can do it. The missiles are a *very* specialized tech base, and w/o the necessary support structure the ships would not be operational very long, a couple of years at most.

lelder5 wrote:Over the years I have enjoyed the forums about what to do with all the captured Sollie ships and such, I would like to revisit this subject.
I accept that the Sollie SD are like WWI dreadnaughts up against guided missile cruisers. They are primarily gunships and missile armaments are strictly secondary. They are however cities in space like aircraft carriers are cities at sea. They have a number so systems that are very up to date and needed in the verge. They have heavy armor that precludes their use as merchantmen (hauling all that heavy stuff around is not fuel efficient) but the armor is good passive protection against cosmic rays and micro meteors and such.

Ok, here we go again. Still, if we have to wait more than a year for the next Honorverse book....

(1) Small arms: Somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of a million marines have been captured with all their hardware. This includes weapons, probably vehicles, armor (powered and unpowered), drop capability (near-space and atmo). The Alliance will have little need to manufacture these things but they need to be checked out and at least for the armor refitted.

The large number of Marines pre-suppose that those with Filareta were captured; the MWW never did tell us what happened to those support vessels, since all we ever saw was him advancing with his SD's. Still, it is a reasonable proposition. And agreed, that much gear would (alongside some Manty ECM/Tech)equip a lot of troops, possibly in the Talbott area (albeit they are developing their own industry for this) and for new Verge systems emerging from revolts and needing stuff to 'discourage' OFS-suporters/remaining troops.

(2) Space lift: A lot of "small craft" have been captured. This includes pinnacles, shuttles, admirals barges and such. The verge can use this surface to space capacity well, The armor may make the shuttles fuel hogs. but good for things like asteroid mining and transport.

Definitely a possibility, especially for the less-developed systems in the Talbott Cluster who need them to start improving things locally.

(3) Medical tech/supplies/personnel: Each SD and some of the battle cruisers have the equivalent of a modern level 1 trauma center on board and the people to man same. Either in orbit or transferred to the surface these assets could be very helpful. These people are some what likely to respond to the notion of prole to a "Drs without borders" sort of organization.

So help me, if you rekindle the Weird Harold argument for leaving these on-board ships, I will (figuratively) shoot you in the face with a Bazooka... .

Seriously, the medical stuff would be very useful, again with Talbott getting the initial benefits.

(4) Missiles and tech to handle same: The Sollie missiles are relics, but the components can be recycled, the machinery to handle and move them could be useful in a number of industrial applications.

Not sure if the missiles/missile components would be good for anything (strip-mining asteroids?), but your point on the handing and moving equipment is interesting.

(5) Space/warp capable shells: No one has any real idea how many people it would take to keep the lights on and the AC running in one of these ships. The engines and warp capability would take additional personnel. Eliminating the folks to polish the gold toilets and man the guns would eliminate a lot of bodies. I propose adding a SD shell to the LAC-base-in-a box available to provide power, hydrophonics, air tight maintance, rec rooms ect.

Not sure what you are proposing here, you mean strip out a Sollie SD and make it a LAC base? Or just put it hear a LAC base to provide support such as you mention? Either way, it seems a lot of effort and manpower for something that could be built into your LAC base in-system (and also benefit the local economy by having them do as much of the LAC base building as possible). Still, something interesting.

We probably won't see any of this, but keeping things moving on the board is welcome (just don't bring up TWTMTBN).

I also at first believed that there had to be a good use for all the of new-but-old captured obsolete Sollie ships...from the dinky stuff all the way to the many intact SDs.

My first thought was that the GA needed to hang onto the intact ships of all classes because they might need them for any number of purposes ... primarily for refugee exac ships.

After all, would it not be safe to assume, (dangerous word!) that in a pinch a Sollie SD could easily endure over 30,000+ refugees crammed inside for a short 4 week hyper hop?

The thinking was that all the Sollies need to do to ruin the GA if the coming shoot-em-up gets bad is to just "high cee" a bunch of kinetic hits on about a dozen or so home GA worlds?

But...I forgot to think it through. Military hulls are very high maintenance. Things will break down and fail just because of the time clock. No actual usage is needed.

All of those captured Sollie hulls have a time stamp. After a couple of months, they might not even be able to move. After a year or so, they all would be just dead hunks of iron.

So...what to do with them all? Once past the expiration date, perhaps the only thing they would be good for is scraping. If nothing else it could employ lots of people.

HB of CJ (old coot) Cm. I love this forum. Very relaxing.

Really, the best use for the hulls is to strip out everything that can be used, specifically small arms and medical supplies, and then use them as high velocity station killers, simply aim them at a station, set impellers to maximum, hop off and watch the fireworks as several million tons of super-dreadnought smashes into a target. This will not work as a ship killer, but as stations are in fixed orbits they should be fairly easy to match trajectories with.

Ok, this may just me me hungering for some stupidly large explosions, but does this not sound awesome?

csilkenat wrote:Really, the best use for the hulls is to strip out everything that can be used, specifically small arms and medical supplies, and then use them as high velocity station killers, simply aim them at a station, set impellers to maximum, hop off and watch the fireworks as several million tons of super-dreadnought smashes into a target. This will not work as a ship killer, but as stations are in fixed orbits they should be fairly easy to match trajectories with.

Ok, this may just me me hungering for some stupidly large explosions, but does this not sound awesome?

This might make for an interesting Counter Ship along the lines of a Counter Missile. Getting it close enough to the ship you want to ram may be problematic, although using Manty EW might help. An unmanned SD should be able to accelerate pretty fast. It is the compensator that keeps the crew alive that keeps the speed down. It may not be missile fast but it might be Ghost rider fast or even a bit faster.

A 3000-5000G acceleration for a SD "fired" at any other ship would be pretty spectacular. It has a wedge up to 300 KM across and with 5-10 times the acceleration might be hard to miss. If nothing else it might make for an interesting CM.

Could even automate the PD and Laser & Grasers to fire at Missiles and if it does miss a Ship to fire its energy weapons at the ships and any in a million KM as it passes them. Plus it could turn around and power up behind them. It is accelerating 5 to 10 times as fast. Might be hyper space capable (which can help slow it down, turn around and give a speed boost coming out of hyper space) plus it won't be travelling as fast as a missile as it goes past.

Against other SD it might not be best but against smaller ships, BB on down it can raise havok. Out run them and out gun them. With an FTL remote control it could be an effective Energy based System defense craft.

"What the ......!" Houston, we have a problem...oh no!...You got to be kidding me"! No....no.....no.... NOOOOOOOO!!!" ..... .....BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!! The end. HB of CJ (old coot) Cm. Now that was fun!

As part of scrapping the ship they would take all that stuff and you are right a lot of it would be OK to use in verge systems.

The small arms equipment might be useful for arming the army Mike is looking to make in the Talbott Cluster. There's likely more than enough equipment to as many divisions as she needs. Any extra can go to planetary defense forces. For the Army units Mike wants to make though, it would save on the RMA to use the Solly equipment since it's so plentiful and more importantly, available. To equip the new divisions to Manticore standards might be a bit of a stretch given they are also pushing hard to rebuild their naval yards and industrial/manufacturing base. It also means they could use any captures Solly equipment with no loss combat power, and any that falls into their hands can be used by them.

Eventually the Talbott army would be equipped to the RMA standard and the excess arms could be sold off to planetary defense forces, but in the mean time, it would give them an immediate step up in combat readiness and preparation.

Zakharra wrote:The small arms equipment might be useful for arming the army Mike is looking to make in the Talbott Cluster. There's likely more than enough equipment to as many divisions as she needs. Any extra can go to planetary defense forces. For the Army units Mike wants to make though, it would save on the RMA to use the Solly equipment since it's so plentiful and more importantly, available. To equip the new divisions to Manticore standards might be a bit of a stretch given they are also pushing hard to rebuild their naval yards and industrial/manufacturing base. It also means they could use any captures Solly equipment with no loss combat power, and any that falls into their hands can be used by them.

Erm... didn't the text where the Quadrant Guard was introduced pretty strongly suggest that they could build their equipment locally without much difficulty?