New Manty ship ideas.

SWM wrote:Building a steel factory is a bit different from building a high-tech plant to build molycircs, precision nuclear weapon parts, or impeller drive components, especially when you don't have any factories left to build the manufacturing equipment you need in this new factory. It's not going to happen in a month.

This is why you send the RMN and GSN out with freighters to raid the more advanced SL worlds. After seizing the orbitals, you dismember their space stations so you can load up their fabrication modules on the freighters to take them home. Do not forget to load upmthe skilled workers to help replace the people lost in Oyster Bay. As you are living, blow the still occupied habitat sections of their space stations to dust bunnies so that the SL understands why the RMN and GSN might be a bit angry about the SLN trying to exploit OB by sending Adm Fillarta and hundreds of SDs to invade while their defenses were presumably crippled.

namelessfly wrote:

SWM wrote:Building a steel factory is a bit different from building a high-tech plant to build molycircs, precision nuclear weapon parts, or impeller drive components, especially when you don't have any factories left to build the manufacturing equipment you need in this new factory. It's not going to happen in a month.

This is why you send the RMN and GSN out with freighters to raid the more advanced SL worlds. After seizing the orbitals, you dismember their space stations so you can load up their fabrication modules on the freighters to take them home. Do not forget to load upmthe skilled workers to help replace the people lost in Oyster Bay. As you are living, blow the still occupied habitat sections of their space stations to dust bunnies so that the SL understands why the RMN and GSN might be a bit angry about the SLN trying to exploit OB by sending Adm Fillarta and hundreds of SDs to invade while their defenses were presumably crippled.

Basically, enslave thousands of engineers?

Nah. I could see seizing the equipment and shipping it home, but not the people. Besides, it's difficult to coerce thousands of high-tech people to do a job they don't want to do.

It's like saying Shanghai was taken out by a nuclear attack, causing the Chinese to raid the USA for replacement workers. Or maybe it was North Korea, given the Solly's perception of Manticore as a neobarb star nation?

Would Manticore even want the industrial machinery? Given that the SKM took a broad-based approach to pushing its R&D, it's basic industrial plant must be significantly in advance of what the SL has in place. It's a bit like the discussion in the other thread about what to do with captured SLN warships; do you want to spend the time training your people to use equipment that's obsolete by your standards, only to have to retrain them again when the proper equipment becomes available?

munroburton wrote:Basically, enslave thousands of engineers?

Nah. I could see seizing the equipment and shipping it home, but not the people. Besides, it's difficult to coerce thousands of high-tech people to do a job they don't want to do.

It's like saying Shanghai was taken out by a nuclear attack, causing the Chinese to raid the USA for replacement workers. Or maybe it was North Korea, given the Solly's perception of Manticore as a neobarb star nation?

namelessfly wrote:

SWM wrote:Building a steel factory is a bit different from building a high-tech plant to build molycircs, precision nuclear weapon parts, or impeller drive components, especially when you don't have any factories left to build the manufacturing equipment you need in this new factory. It's not going to happen in a month.

This is why you send the RMN and GSN out with freighters to raid the more advanced SL worlds. After seizing the orbitals, you dismember their space stations so you can load up their fabrication modules on the freighters to take them home. Do not forget to load upmthe skilled workers to help replace the people lost in Oyster Bay. As you are living, blow the still occupied habitat sections of their space stations to dust bunnies so that the SL understands why the RMN and GSN might be a bit angry about the SLN trying to exploit OB by sending Adm Fillarta and hundreds of SDs to invade while their defenses were presumably crippled.

Actually, it would probably be a better choice to talk to the Ballroom, find out where the largest numbers of slave engineers are being kept, and go actively liberate them and the portable equipment they were forced to work on, if it's of any value.

Freeing someone from slavery is a powerful motivation for that person to help you. Oh, wait, there's a whole planet of folks a lot like that already. Maybe they don't know tech to Manty standards, or even Haven standards, but I bet they would be more than willing to learn if asked, and paid well, or perhaps even if asked and paid poorly, with promises of future payment when Manticore recovers it's economy.

namelessfly wrote:

SWM wrote:Building a steel factory is a bit different from building a high-tech plant to build molycircs, precision nuclear weapon parts, or impeller drive components, especially when you don't have any factories left to build the manufacturing equipment you need in this new factory. It's not going to happen in a month.

This is why you send the RMN and GSN out with freighters to raid the more advanced SL worlds. After seizing the orbitals, you dismember their space stations so you can load up their fabrication modules on the freighters to take them home. Do not forget to load upmthe skilled workers to help replace the people lost in Oyster Bay. As you are living, blow the still occupied habitat sections of their space stations to dust bunnies so that the SL understands why the RMN and GSN might be a bit angry about the SLN trying to exploit OB by sending Adm Fillarta and hundreds of SDs to invade while their defenses were presumably crippled.

By the time the RMN could do this, they won't really need foreign fabrication modules any more. Consider the timing:

Filareta arrives about 3 and a half months after the Yawata Strike. If the RMN sent out ships to capture fabrication units, they might get them back and installed 6 months after the Yawata Strike. In MoH, Manticore expects to start getting new missiles 9 months after the Yawata Strike, and new cruisers 2 years after the Yawata Strike. [edit]And this is before Beowulf officially becomes a production center for Manticore in ART.[/edit] I don't recall how long it was taking the RMN to build a cruiser. But it seems to me that Manticore must already have components being manufactured at 6 months if they are going to meet the production schedule predicted. So they obviously can scrounge enough fabrication to get things started without needing to travel far away and capture enemy fabrication units.

SEM and Grayson might- just might- go after technodyne as a source of equipment but only if there was no other option. Both would not strip SL systems of their industrial capacity and kidnap/enslave the populations.
Much more likely that they would be buying up equipment from a lot of SL and other sources through varioius blind transactions. At this point they are working with Beowulf for fabrication of weapons and other things needs.
There is no way these two systems are going to start pillaging others.

TheMonster wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:And compartmentalisation that allow for a station to break apart or explode without taking the living quarters with it. On the other hand the stations could be made mobile and small, with wedge support and hyper drives. Making it hard for anyone to target the moving stations and when distant hyper footprints happen their shields go up and they start jumping into hyperspace, or perhaps they just parked in some part or parts of empty space for a little while.

Assuming arguendo that something as large as a space station could mount a hyper field... "moving stations" is oxymoronic. If it's moving enough to complicate targeting, it's not a station... it's a ship.

Granted, Honorverse "forts" do have wedges, but they don't have inertial compensators, so they're limited to much lower accel, sufficient for station-keeping or moving strategically, but not tactically. The superior mobility of actual ships means that you can't move a fort (or fort-sized mini-"station") far enough during a battle to make a difference.

Add the fact that the stations would be parked in orbit around the habitable planet means that they are well inside the hyper limit (and therefore cannot just jump into hyper) for most worlds (Sphinx is somewhat of an exception in that the planet orbits close to the hyper limit of Manticore A's star). So you would first have to move the station outside the hyper limit before it would even be possible. And your system better not lie in a gravity wave, because then your station had better mount Warshawski sails before translating to hyper or be immediately destroyed upon translating into the alpha band.

If you park a station that can go into hyperspace outside the hyper limit, it is an open invitation for an enemy to raid it, as the attacking forces can jump into normal space and attack the station before it could bring its hyper generator up to the point where it could translate into hyper, even from a warm start (remember how long Filareta's SD hyper generators took to recover - from a warm start - from translating into normal space to a point where they could actually translate the SDs back into hyper in At All Costs, despite the fact that it was an engineering priority straight from the fleet commander).

No, this idea of having construction stations that can go into hyper is a non-starter. The RMN does have mobile repair units (they are called repair ships) as part of the Fleet Train, but their primary capability lies in repair, not major unit construction.

Cheopis wrote:Actually, it would probably be a better choice to talk to the Ballroom, find out where the largest numbers of slave engineers are being kept, and go actively liberate them and the portable equipment they were forced to work on, if it's of any value.

Freeing someone from slavery is a powerful motivation for that person to help you. Oh, wait, there's a whole planet of folks a lot like that already. Maybe they don't know tech to Manty standards, or even Haven standards, but I bet they would be more than willing to learn if asked, and paid well, or perhaps even if asked and paid poorly, with promises of future payment when Manticore recovers it's economy.

Unless you know something I don't (certainly plausible), I think 'slave engineers' are unlikely to be all that common. Slave sub-types for highly specialized work, sure, but seems to me that training significant numbers of slaves to handle high-tech work is just asking for trouble.

7thsealord wrote:

Cheopis wrote:Actually, it would probably be a better choice to talk to the Ballroom, find out where the largest numbers of slave engineers are being kept, and go actively liberate them and the portable equipment they were forced to work on, if it's of any value.

Freeing someone from slavery is a powerful motivation for that person to help you. Oh, wait, there's a whole planet of folks a lot like that already. Maybe they don't know tech to Manty standards, or even Haven standards, but I bet they would be more than willing to learn if asked, and paid well, or perhaps even if asked and paid poorly, with promises of future payment when Manticore recovers it's economy.

Unless you know something I don't (certainly plausible), I think 'slave engineers' are unlikely to be all that common. Slave sub-types for highly specialized work, sure, but seems to me that training significant numbers of slaves to handle high-tech work is just asking for trouble.

It was never clearly stated just how much education they received, or how many there were, but it was clearly stated that there were slave engineers. If I remember correctly, Web was one.

Cheopis wrote:Actually, it would probably be a better choice to talk to the Ballroom, find out where the largest numbers of slave engineers are being kept, and go a

Unless you know something I don't (certainly plausible), I think 'slave engineers' are unlikely to be all that common. Slave sub-types for highly specialized work, sure, but seems to me that training significant numbers of slaves to handle high-tech work is just asking for troubl
[Snip]

They were called technicians, not engineers, and were a very popular line for Manpower.( They were called the J-line, iirc. ) After all, they were working in a high tech society, and every job had high tech tools which needed run and repaired.

Like much of the slavery in the Honorverse, it doesn't make sense to me either, because, in reality, you can find a worker to do just about every dispicable job EXCEPT those guaranteed to kill you swiftly. Yes, the more dispicable, the harder to find the worker, and the more that may need to be paid, but it has got to be cheaper than raising a clone for 12-15 years, training him, and smuggling him 400 light years (with custom ships with 50% loss rates and over priced crews to compensate them in case they get caught and killed.). Not to mention, you still need to provide the basic necessities to the slave (food, shelter, deodorant, etc) while you own him, and need to have an overseer monitor him so he doesn't escape, slack off, sabotage something, or kill you. And a clone, bred for intelligence and given engineering training, can be exceptionally devious and dangerous.