Implenting Case Lacoon I & II after Oyster Bay

Sidewall generators have a maximum strength based on wedge strength. This normally correlates to tonnage, with a few exceptions

1. Beta-Squared nodes, as used on Shrikes and some of the newer Alliance designs, kick your sidewall strength up a size category (where categories are "LAC", "DD", "CL","CA", "BC", "BB", "DN" and "SD", roughly.

2. Not having gunports seems to help, at least on small craft. A Shrike is actually 2 size categories larger in sidewall strength (CL sidewalls on a LAC), and that seems to be a function of beta-squared nodes combined with no side gunports.

3. Civilian wedges are pretty weak. The strongest sidewalls we've seen on converted merchants that use civilian impellers are "light" sidewalls, even on multi-million ton ships.

That is maximum strength. If you lose some sidewall generators, you'll lose sidewall strength even if the wedge is otherwise ok. BC and larger ships have redundant sidewall generators, allowing them to take damage and still keep a full strength sidewall. A few CA designs have this as well (Star Knight for sure, maybe the big ones like Mars and Saganami-C)

Impeller damage seems to have some ability to degrade the sidewall but it isn't 1-1. Usually if you take major impeller damage you also lose sidewall generators, so it is hard to distinguish. There have been cases of major impeller damage with near full strength sidewalls in the books. It is possible stored capacitor energy is helping, or, what I think is more likely, is that the amount you can bleed off your wedge to make a sidewall is a pretty small fraction of the overall wedge strength, so anything less than losing most of your impeller nodes won't damage the ability to make a sidewall if your generators are intact.

Here some things to consider about Lacoon I&II. Treat the MWJ as a canal much like the Panama and Suez canals. merchants plan there voyages on voyage times. The SEM will capture alot of merchants right at the termanus points because the merchies will have been in hyper and not heard that MWJ is closed. The SL merchants that avoid that fate will run into shipment loss of perishables ie foodstuffs. They will also run into the problem of non-ontime delivery problems ie factory shut down due to lack of supplies or sub-assemblies

Better yet, Sollie Merchants will be fair game to have their cargos confiscated. Manticore doesn't care about luxury food stuffs, but any consumer goods that could supply civilian needs so that civilian fabrication systems can be retasked to meeting military needs or rebuilding military fabrication systems would be valuable.

Better yet would be to capture ships loaded with machine tools and fabrication modules. These would certainly be in demand at new colonies. The Sollie export fabrication modules wouldn't be up to Manticoran standards, but they'd help.

Also consider the probability that Manticore is a major exporter of machine tools and fabrication modules. Any Manticoran Merchants who get the Case Lycoon warning will be bringing their cargos home.

Think about the probable fabrication capacity that might be in the pipeline. There are no doubt at least a thousand systems lagging behind Manticore who probably import machine tools and fabrication modules. Their goal will be to develop perhaps one/tenth of Manticore's manufacturing capacity over the course of perhaps 50 years.

Manufacturing Capacity Goal/ Years = capacity in transit during any given year.
1,000 systems x 1/10 Manticore / 50 = Double Manticore's Manufacturing base!!!

If Manticore can appropriate a large fraction of the machine tools and fabrication modules that are in transit when Case Lycoon is implemented, this will help to bootstrap Matnicore's rebuilding of its industrial infrastucture. At minimum Manticore will be able to build the lower tech components of ships using these systems plus these systems can be used to rebuild Manticore's far superior, military grade manufacturing modules.

john964 wrote:Here some things to consider about Lacoon I&II. Treat the MWJ as a canal much like the Panama and Suez canals. merchants plan there voyages on voyage times. The SEM will capture alot of merchants right at the termanus points because the merchies will have been in hyper and not heard that MWJ is closed. The SL merchants that avoid that fate will run into shipment loss of perishables ie foodstuffs. They will also run into the problem of non-ontime delivery problems ie factory shut down due to lack of supplies or sub-assemblies

A quick query, I was recently re-reading OBS and noticed something I hadn't considered before.

When Harrington approaches the Junction, she thinks upon the fact that the MWJ has one more termini then any other.

Wouldn't this therefore mean that there is at least one junction within Human space (and probably within the League)that has 5 termini.

Shouldn't this system be an economic powerhouse like SKM?
Also how will case Lacoon effect it, is it a member of the league or independent?

Garth 2 wrote:A quick query, I was recently re-reading OBS and noticed something I hadn't considered before.

When Harrington approaches the Junction, she thinks upon the fact that the MWJ has one more termini then any other.

Wouldn't this therefore mean that there is at least one junction within Human space (and probably within the League)that has 5 termini.

Shouldn't this system be an economic powerhouse like SKM?
Also how will case Lacoon effect it, is it a member of the league or independent?

Interesting question. I know the Asgard junction has 3 additional termini. But I don't know what junction has 5; I don't think it's come up elsewhere in the books.

Assuming it didn't get retconned out you'd expect it to be pretty prosperous. Though, depending on where the termini lay maybe nowhere near as prosperous as Manticore. The Manticoran Junction is quite lucky in where it's termini lay; allowing shortcuts around and into the center of the League. The Junction would be far less of an economic engine if all its termini reached farther out away from the League or the settled Verge.

But our lack of knowledge about other major junctions means we've no idea how this 5 remote termini one is affected by Lacoon. (bring on the speculations )

Another point to consider is how long the various bridges are. IIRC, it is mentioned that the MWJ has a couple of the longest bridges yet discovered. If all the bridges for this 5 terminal junction are between, say 50 and 150 LY long and they all lie in roughly the same direction, there would not be that big of an advantage to be gained by using it. If they are close enough together, there might not be enough of a time savings to offset the cost of the transit, especially if the originating and destination planets are far enough away from the actual termini. If they are far enough from the termini, the transit time to and from the wormhole could approach the actual hyperflight time. If they are close enough, it might actually be cheaper and faster to fly direct via hyperspace.

It would still be important strategically, but not necessarily economically.

We are back at our usual problem of not knowing enough and/or haven't been told. Places like Asgard, it has 3 termini, one of which leads to the Aldermani Empire. NO real information on the Asgard republic/kingdom/empire/whatever. Asgard has a connection to Matapan. Other than being the same name as a T-stop in the Boston area, no information, including what arrangements Manticore does or does not have for the Astro Control of that terminus and any defenses. Nothing on trade. The third terminus from Asgard is Midgard. Same thing, there is a wormhole; the map would indicate it is being used but nothing else. All of that is a relatively lot of detail with "important" trade routes but not much else. Is this an area that is going to become important? Is (or was) it going to be for challenges between the Aldermani and Manticore? Is Darius somewhere out there or is there a wormhole bridge out there that leads or links into the Alignment shadow wormhole network?

There is dam little in the way of detail "down" from Sol on the various maps. In the real world, there appears to be at least as much in that direction within our arm of the galaxy as "above" and to the "sides" of it.

We also don't know if there are some or any termini that don't go anywhere useful. At first look, the Lynx terminus is not at a usable (in terms of colonization) system although there might be mineral deposits (viable for development or not) but it IS a gateway to the Talbott Quadrant that has a good number of already human inhabited systems and so both opens a trade route and existing potential markets. If there had been nothing in the way of habitable planets (let alone already colonized ones) the volume of space that holds the systems that joined Manticore, Lynx might have been a low use alternative rout to the Verge systems in the direction of Monica. That, however, would have needed to be defended by Manticore and an Astro Control presence maintained for safety. Depending on who produces what and where, it MIGHT have then developed as part of a VERY long trade loop cycling through Manticore.


That system that Manheim holds that is nominally useless but that has the wormhole connection to the Alignment shadow network is another indication that there are wormholes that don't lead directly to anything "useful" other than a transportation bridge of one sort or another.

Are there any wormholes that have been explored (and known to the universe at large if by nothing more than cataloged reference) that really don't go anywhere useful? Like right out to by a star just outside our arm of the galaxy but there has been NOTHING worthwhile found within 200 LY of it (such as NOTHING in the direction of the next arm at all) and no indication of stars with habitable planets as far as any research sweep by hyper capable research & exploration ships in the direction of our galactic arm.

There is the stuff only Murphy can come up with. Obviously the Alignment has the capability to search out and explore wormholes. They have this nice little shadow network that includes some wormhole oddities. One could presume that they (not being really worried about costs) are checking for more both in the systems they already link to and other termini for the wormholes they have. What happens if an Alignment explorer ship goes through a new terminus at one of their shadow wormholes and pops out somewhere like Solon on the "far side" of Haven from the rest of known space? Or at the next inhabited system in the direction of Sol from Joshua? What happens if there is someone who observes the event and runs like hell for the local politics/military power to report it. Might even be a ship in somebody's navy of SDF and the Alignment ship can't do anything to stop it. Could be fun!

Jonathan_S wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:A quick query, I was recently re-reading OBS and noticed something I hadn't considered before.

When Harrington approaches the Junction, she thinks upon the fact that the MWJ has one more termini then any other.

Wouldn't this therefore mean that there is at least one junction within Human space (and probably within the League)that has 5 termini.

I think Felix does, but since that's not known outside of the Alignment, that can't be the one they're talking about ...

Brigade XO wrote:We are back at our usual problem of not knowing enough and/or haven't been told. Places like Asgard, it has 3 termini, one of which leads to the Aldermani Empire. NO real information on the Asgard republic/kingdom/empire/whatever. Asgard has a connection to Matapan. Other than being the same name as a T-stop in the Boston area,

I grin every time I notice that on the starmaps.

Brigade XO wrote: no information, including what arrangements Manticore does or does not have for the Astro Control of that terminus and any defenses. Nothing on trade. The third terminus from Asgard is Midgard. Same thing, there is a wormhole; the map would indicate it is being used but nothing else. All of that is a relatively lot of detail with "important" trade routes but not much else. Is this an area that is going to become important? Is (or was) it going to be for challenges between the Aldermani and Manticore? Is Darius somewhere out there or is there a wormhole bridge out there that leads or links into the Alignment shadow wormhole network?

Do they really have a 'network'? They've got the Mesa–Visigoth bridge that everybody knows about, and the Mannerheim junction that almost nobody knows about, but are there any others?

Actually David has given us some details about Matapan. Pretty much it was on the edge of explored space when discovered and most of the dozen or so colonies in the area were colonized through the wormhole in the last 100-150 or so years, and have fairly low populations and industry. Manticore is the primary power in the area and has an arrangement with the colonies in the region similiar to the relationship GB had with the Trucal States around 1900 CE.

The terminus has a cruiser based defense fleet and DD-CA level piracy patrols in the region.

I have a feeling that Matapan was origionally supposed to be in the place that Talbot currently has in the story, but Eric's speed up of the story line has caused it to disappear into the background.