Ships of the wall

HungryKing wrote: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.

HungryKing wrote:...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.

runsforcelery wrote:The Manticore Binary System's GSP is lower than a handful of the League's core systems (like Beowulf) which have been settled for upward of a thousand years and have maybe 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 citizens to the Manties 3,000,000 or so. I was perhaps overly emphatic to say they far outrank both the SKM and the RoH beause of the point I was making, but that was also because I was thinking in terms other than simply the absolute number of dollars in the till. The Manties' per capita GSP is higher by a very significant margin (and, yes, I used the word "significant" deliberately here) than that of any other known system, which is the reason I'd italicized "per capita" in my original post. All other things being equal, per capita GSP is a much better measurement than raw GSP of how much investment can be freed up for any specific purpose on a continuing, ongoing, long-term, capital-intensive basis (like building and maintaining a navy), so long as the competing economies are at least in shouting range of one another in absolute terms. Obviously, I'm not saying that there isn't a tipping point at which a larger, less productive-per-citizen economy can simply plow the smaller population under . . . which was, in fact, if you'll recall, what the PRH was more or less in a position to do to the SKM in the earlier days of the Havenite Wars. The Manty tech edge (made possible largely by the fact that they'd had more to invest in R&D during their Cold War with the PRH) allowed them to leverage their higher per capita GSP into a war machine that plowed the PRH under, instead, but that was not a foregone conclusion. Without the basic R&D, without "Horrible Hemphill," and without King Roger starting the military buildup early enough, the big, clunky, ramshackle PRH would have defeated the Manties through sheer attrition. The problem for any Verge power trying to field a force of wallers (historically) is that the ISLN had not simply the numbers and the industrial base on them (by a literally unimaginable percentage) but also had the tech edge on just about everybody until the Manties upset the applecart.

Two other points probably should also be discussed at this point. One is that the reason you haven't heard a lot about other star nations in the same league as Manticore and the People's Republic of Haven is that there aren't a lot of others. The Anderman Empire, the nearest thing they had to a true peer in their own region, was a lot smaller than the People's Republic, and a lot poorer than the Star Kingdom of Manticore. The other multi-star polities in the vicinity (or anywhere else in the Verge) were substantially smaller and weaker than the Andermani. The reason that you've been seeing Manticore and Haven for so long is because they were the guys who were big enough to fight it out with each other with really-oh, truly-oh battle fleets (which is the reason I chose to write about them and you chose to read about them [G]).

That brings me to the second point I wanted to address, because someone raised the question of whether or not Verge star nations/star systems might not have one or two SD squadrons in order to fight off their neighbors. I addressed that point in my original post on this topic: Vietnam doesn't buy super carriers to prevent Cambodia from poaching on their fishing grounds. Neither one of them can afford ships of that size or complexity, neither of them has the infrastructure to operate ships of that size or complexity, and neither of them has to worry about fighting somebody else in their vicinity (aside, possibly, from the PRC or Japan) with significantly greater capabilities than they possess. There's a reason that Jane's Fighting Ships used to have sections listing "minor navies." They simply aren't in the major navies' league, they can't afford to be, and they don't need to be.

The Imperial Andermani Navy's wall of battle was substantially smaller than that of Manticore in 1905, and even at the height of its buildup prior to Operation Thunderbolt, it was going to be much, much smaller because the Andermani were operating on the "risk fleet" theory. They didn't have to be as big or as powerful as Manticore to extort political and economic concessions out of the High Ridge government; they only had to be big enough and powerful enough that he would be unwilling to risk simultaneous military confrontations with the Empire and a resurgent Republic of Haven. Even so, the Empire's military investment was putting a very heavy drag on the Andermani economy, which was one reason the Emperor was so willing to join the Manticoran Alliance . . . as long as he got his half of Silesia and access to current first-line Manty military technology.

I use the Andermani as an example because the reader will be familiar with the Empire, because the Empire did have a wall of battle, and because as a militant star nation founded by a retired mercenary, it was willing to invest quite a bit more of its available GSP in its navy than probably 90% or better of other Verge nations.

For those of you who want superdreadnoughts roaming the Verge, I'm sorry, but there simply aren't going to be very many of them, and most of them are going to belong to navies you've already met. The economic strength to support viable squadrons of superdreadnoughts on any long-term basis simply doesn't exist, and neither does the threat which would on the one hand justify building superdreadnoughts and yet be deterrable by any battle fleet of wallers a Verge system could build.

You'll find quite a few cruiser-destroyer level Verge navies, and you'll find more than a handful, let's say, which have battlecruisers as their capital ships. You may even find a small number of sadly obsolete battleships which have found retirement homes in Verge navies who feel a need to overawe potential aggressors (or victims). And I won't absolutely rule out the possibility of finding one or two isolated, ancient dreadnoughts or even superdreadnoughts drifting around as they molder away. After all, the Brazilian navy had the Vikcers-built Minas Geraes and Sao Paulo from 1907 to the 1950s, and Chile had the Almirante Latorre from 1919 through the 1950s, while Argentina had the American-built Rivadavia and the Moreno from 1911 until 1957 and 1947, respectively, while Turkey had the Yavuz Sultan Selim (ex-Goeben)from 1914 until 1971, fer cryin’ out loud! So, yes, there may be some similar relics floating around out there, but I very much doubt that any of them would remain combatworthy, and none of them would have the support infrastructure to make them truly effective as a unit in a wall of battle. It’s just not going to happen, folks.

Duckk wrote:David has already weighed in on the Alliance using the SLN ships in Alliance service. They're not useful in any capacity for Manticore.

Duckk wrote:David has already weighed in on the Alliance using the SLN ships in Alliance service. They're not useful in any capacity for Manticore.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4868

MAD-4A wrote:In any case, destroying those SDs (& Byng's BCs at New Tuscany) is just dumb - they may be obsolete by Manty (or even Haven) standards but are in no way out dated by SL standards - much less Silesian standards - several dozen of the wall is still several dozen of the wall which could be manned by Talbot crews & put on patrol there to protect against FF BC raids until better ships can be brought in.

MaxxQ wrote:What Talbot crews?

There aren't any. Not enough for low-manpower RMN ships, let alone the multi-thousands needed per SLN SD.

Theemile wrote:

HungryKing wrote: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.

HungryKing is correct. David mentioned awhile back that we have seen most of the major interstellar players and the other "sectors" are mostly populated by single star polities. Silensia and Haven were the 2 bigest polities outside of the SL. Haven was mentioned in OBS as having the 2nd largest fleet in the known universe. Manticore's ranking was never mentioned, but I doubt it was less than 5th at the time of OBS (and probably 3rd from what we've seen since).

We've seen just over 1/3 of the largest 25 Fleets, and only 2 of which are SDFs. It wouldn't suprise me if another 10 are SDFs, leaving only 5 or so slots for impressive fleets in the other 3/4ths of the map.