Ships of the wall

Dafmeister wrote:Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can remember we only know of eight forces that have SDs at all:...

Well the only maps so far are to the "North" of Sol. but Sol is in (or near) the middle. So it's somewhat safe to assume that other quadrants (& so far unmentioned star nations) exist in the other direction aswell.

SWM wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:What bring more $value$? Do they scrap all the reserve Sollie SDs for components and basic materiels or do they de-mil them and sell off the hulks as functioning unarmed very large starships?

There has to be a use for such expensive, but very old starships. Cheap long range colony ships? Might need a lot of those eventualy. Accommodation ships? Cheap forts? Expediant freighters?

Or are the components valuable enough to just recycle the hulls and use all the expensive parts for needfull projects, like a new fleet of very fast Sollie merchant hulls? Dunno. HB of CJ (old coot)

Not really. It would cost more to 'de-mil' them than they would be worth afterward.

And even then they'd be horribly inefficient in any other role. They don't have the ability to handle the standard cargo containers, so they'd make bad freighters. They have far less accomodation than a colony ship of their size should have because of all the internal subdivision, nor can they easily ship and offload all the heavy equipment a colony would need.

A well-designed warship is inevitably going to be very bad at being anything else, purely because the requirements of a warship (durability, internal subdivision, performance at the expense of cost control) are antithetical to the requirements of a civilian ship (large hauling capacity, ease of maintenance with a small crew, cost control at the expense of performance).

MAD-4A wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can remember we only know of eight forces that have SDs at all:...

Well the only maps so far are to the "North" of Sol. but Sol is in (or near) the middle. So it's somewhat safe to assume that other quadrants (& so far unmentioned star nations) exist in the other direction aswell.

I think those 'southerly' star nations may be appearing before too much longer. The GA has embraced a strategy that's going to encompass the whole of League space, which will inevitably impact on those star nations bordering on the League. The impact of trade from Lacoon is going to affect everyone to some extent, purely because of the disruption of the League's internal trade and the resulting realignment of the League's own-flag shipping. This could, potentially, bring some of the League's neighbours into the war on the League's side, while others see it as an opportunity to strengthen their own positions while the League's distracted.

Remember that Haven has had recent experience in dealing with Warlords in the former SS commanders who tried to keep thier former areas of command as seperate star nations. That was a long and hard campaign with peer level tech. I doubt very much if they would be in favor of letting that be set up again.
On the other hand, Haven doen't have ANY of the captured SL SDs or other ships. Even at 2nd Manticore, it is difficult to believe that Manticore would want to give up all that recyclable material (and a lot of currently usable smaller stuff) that is now sitting in their system. Haven has as little use for taking the SL ships into its own navy as does Manticore. Less actually since they still have thier entire shipbuilding infrastructure intact.

It could be that Manticore ships (or lets have fly them) SLN SDs to Haven building centers as materials sources for new construction but more likely that Manticore is bulding breaking facilities right along (or slightly ahead of) new equipment manufacturing and yard facilities to use the SLN ships as the raw materials for all of what they need just to replace their manufacturing infrastructure.
They are a better resource as source material.
Of course we will expect Manticore to share and even have Haven help with the inspection and stripping of information and equipment off the SLN ships. Amoung other considerations, Haven has the trained spacers and tech people available to do the work and can be used to help train the Manticore people who need to learn these skills.

Brigade XO wrote:Even at 2nd Manticore, it is difficult to believe that Manticore would want to give up all that recyclable material (and a lot of currently usable smaller stuff) that is now sitting in their system. Haven has as little use for taking the SL ships into its own navy as does Manticore. Less actually since they still have thier entire shipbuilding infrastructure intact.

Well, I would say that Haven is entitled to a share of the captured assets from Second Manticore(as is Grayson). Exactly how it would be divided up is unknown, as Grayson's first wallers came from ships surrendered to White Haven, who then turned them over to the locals - textev indicates he gave up a huge amount of prize money for himself and Second Fleet to do so.

Suggesting that the formation which forces the enemy to surrender takes possession. In Second Manticore's case, Grand Fleet, which was 10% RMN, 35% GSN and 55% RHN by SD(P) numbers.

I don't expect it to be a significant problem, as the assets aren't going to be bought into service. But some nitpicker like Gerald Younger might try to make waves if Manticore keeps the lion's share. And then some nitpicker in Landing City points out the 60 wallers in Sigma Draconis should count somehow. Cue squabbling until Elizabeth, Eloise and Benjamin unanimously agree to toss the ships into a star or expend them as practice targets.

I suspect any such resolution may be a long time coming, as every Havenite slip should be busy building SD(P)s, not tearing SDs apart. Grayson and Manticore's industrial platforms are 100% focused on rebuilding and shouldn't be diverted to recycling efforts, especially as their resource extraction operations were not targeted in Oyster Bay.

It's possible the Andermani might have free slips by now, assuming they aren't still on a maximum-rate SD(P) construction program to bolster their own strength for the coming chaos, but they wouldn't want to draw the League's attention further by finishing the destruction of the SLN's largest fleet and paying the GA for the pleasure of doing so. The same applies for any ostensibly neutral party.

I don't expect it to be a significant problem, as the assets aren't going to be bought into service. But some nitpicker like Gerald Younger might try to make waves if Manticore keeps the lion's share. And then some nitpicker in Landing City points out the 60 wallers in Sigma Draconis should count somehow. Cue squabbling until Elizabeth, Eloise and Benjamin unanimously agree to toss the ships into a star or expend them as practice targets.

Tsang's force went home. It wasn't captured.

My question is, when breaking down a ship do they really need a yard or slip to do it? It's not like they are using cutting torches to tear up the ship. (Although Grayson still was up through at least SVW.)

In SVW, when Nike was in the body and fender shop, Paul mentioned how the armor was 'grown' and difficult to replace, which is why he replaced the bad reactor by accessing it from the bottom. He had the tools to go through the armor just fine, it was the putting it back that was the issue. So just taking the ship apart wasn't the problem.

Using the catalytic cutters, tractor and pressor beams, and undoubtedly some form of nanite device that directly converts items to their molecular components to be gathered up and fed back to the building slips, I would almost expect to see the hulks moored just outside the new construction yards as they are slowly 'dissolved' and reconstituted.

Duckk wrote:

I don't expect it to be a significant problem, as the assets aren't going to be bought into service. But some nitpicker like Gerald Younger might try to make waves if Manticore keeps the lion's share. And then some nitpicker in Landing City points out the 60 wallers in Sigma Draconis should count somehow. Cue squabbling until Elizabeth, Eloise and Benjamin unanimously agree to toss the ships into a star or expend them as practice targets.

Tsang's force went home. It wasn't captured.

I suspect munroburton was referring to Alice Truman's force. It could be argued that those ships played a part in the battle by holding off the SLN's intended reinforcements, even if they didn't atually engage the main SLN fleet.

Duckk wrote:

I don't expect it to be a significant problem, as the assets aren't going to be bought into service. But some nitpicker like Gerald Younger might try to make waves if Manticore keeps the lion's share. And then some nitpicker in Landing City points out the 60 wallers in Sigma Draconis should count somehow. Cue squabbling until Elizabeth, Eloise and Benjamin unanimously agree to toss the ships into a star or expend them as practice targets.

Tsang's force went home. It wasn't captured.

What I meant was the tonnage of the RMN ships diverted to Sigma Draconis could be counted as part of the GA forces deployed for Second Manticore. The specious argument is their blockade of Tsang's forces contributed to 11th Fleet surrendering. Even though the description of Honor's prize money from Hancock suggests only ships in the system at the time of surrender counts.

This is the possible viewpoint of a petty bureaucrat(definitely not mine!) in a budgetary office. The same sort of person who delighted in selling entire classes of ships to Grayson during the ceasefire at low prices.

As I said, it's a minor issue and I can't see it ever causing serious friction between the nations involved, but it could become a bone of contention for opposition politicians.

In A Grand Tour we saw an aristocrat from one of the more distant, relative to Manticore, star nations...

More to the point, the PRH was the only star nation that even vaugely in the League's weight class, for the matter, the Haven Octet was a major star nation, and the Haven 'Sector' pretty much defines the most well developed area outside the League.

In short, we pretty much know all the major players outside the league, yes there may be a dozen more places outside the league with battle squadrons, but they may probably can only kick loose a dozen or so for foreign use, each, in short, they are out gunned by tenth fleet alone.

Dafmeister wrote:

MAD-4A wrote:Well the only maps so far are to the "North" of Sol. but Sol is in (or near) the middle. So it's somewhat safe to assume that other quadrants (& so far unmentioned star nations) exist in the other direction aswell.

I think those 'southerly' star nations may be appearing before too much longer. The GA has embraced a strategy that's going to encompass the whole of League space, which will inevitably impact on those star nations bordering on the League. The impact of trade from Lacoon is going to affect everyone to some extent, purely because of the disruption of the League's internal trade and the resulting realignment of the League's own-flag shipping. This could, potentially, bring some of the League's neighbours into the war on the League's side, while others see it as an opportunity to strengthen their own positions while the League's distracted.