Ships of the wall

1) There are plenty of RMN tube wallers in mothballs that would be much more efficiant at fighting against SL ships than SL ships would be. There is no way they would use the SLN ships until every single old Manticoran or Grayson built ship was already online.

2) The RMN does not have thousands and thousands of additional trained sailors sitting around with their thumbs up their butts doing nothing, and it takes 6000 sailors to man one single SLN SD.

3) The Star Empire is now a partner with the Republic of Haven, and Haven has SD manufacturing lines that have been untouched.

3A) If they need SDs in Talbott quickly, for the short term, they can ask Haven to station some of the Hundreds of SD(p)s that they have out there. In the medium term, Manticore could buy or lease SD(p)s from Haven and crew them with Manticoran Sailors. In both of these cases you have ships out there that outclass Solarian SDs almost as much as RMN SDs do.

3B) In the long term, the Havenite yards are going to start producing Alliance SDs, that will combine the tech from both star nations, on a design made by the best minds of both star nations.

MAD-4A wrote:

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.

Sure they are - the Mantys my turn there nose up at them, as I pointed out they still match or beat anything the SL can send against them & with the yards gone - something is better than nothing! crew them and put them on the Talbot cluster to protect against SL incursions (SDs with same tech are still SDs)

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. its like the story of the 2 hikers:

Two hikers were walking threw the woods. They come to a large clearing. On the other side of the clearing they see a huge rabid grizzly bear foaming at the mouth & running strait at them. One drops his pack, pulls out a pair of sneakers and sits down on a log to put them on. His friend looks down at him & says "what are you doing? you can't out run him!" the other jumps up & says "I don't have too - I just have to out run you!"

The ships don't have to out class everyone they just have to out class those they fight. a quick upgrade of the sensors & ECM to Manty standards & maybe retrofit Gayson nodes & they will out-class even the rest of the SL Navy & on the cheap! Byngs BCs would out-class anything else in Silesia & with Manty EW upgrades would out class any ships the SLN could send to Silesia for raiding (even other SL BCs).

I dislike those "I just have to outrun you" analogies, because if the bear/lion/dragon/cthulu is within danger distance, then I doubt someone could change from hiking boots to running shoes quickly enough to benefit from the increased top speed made possible.

So the person who does sits down to change his shoes is the one who gets eaten. The companion who keeps running, even with heavy boots, is the one who survives.

Manticore and Grayson also don't have spare shoes or logs to sit on, thanks to Operation Oyster Bay. No shipyards and no factories - nowhere to refit and no equipment to put aboard.

MAD-4A wrote:

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.

Sure they are - the Mantys my turn there nose up at them, as I pointed out they still match or beat anything the SL can send against them & with the yards gone - something is better than nothing! crew them and put them on the Talbot cluster to protect against SL incursions (SDs with same tech are still SDs)

And as David Weber pointed out, you don't have training, logistics, or supplies to keep those SLN ships in service.

Their computers are different, their software is different, their components are different. Heck I don't think Manticore captures more than the day to day maintenance manuals; anything depot level or above is unlikely to have been on the ships.

And that's ignoring major things like their ammo is different. So they've got whatever missiles are in their (collective) magazines and that's it.


Exactly how long do you think you can keep something as complex as an SD in useful service without access to the full repair manual and the replacement necessary when something breaks or wears out? Stuff is always breaking on the ship and it's a non trivial task to keep one operational even when it's the one you've trained on, have first class experience maintaining, and have full access to repair / replacement parts for it.

I suspect that he was talking about Talbott, not Talbot. I also suspect that you knew that.

kzt wrote:

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.

Well, the fleet of SDs they built during the first war tends to suggest that they can in fact do that. The main thing they were lacking (and greatly annoyed them) was the technology upgrades, which could well be supplied.

kzt wrote:

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.

Well, the fleet of SDs they built during the first war tends to suggest that they can in fact do that. The main thing they were lacking (and greatly annoyed them) was the technology upgrades, which could well be supplied.

He's talking about the Talbott Quadrant, not the Talbot System.

[edit]ah, ninja'd again.[/edit]

munroburton wrote:Manticore and Grayson also don't have spare shoes or logs to sit on, thanks to Operation Oyster Bay. No shipyards and no factories - nowhere to refit and no equipment to put aboard.

The fact of the matter, which David seems to ignore since it bores him, is that the mostly mothballed yards at Talbot are perfectly capable of doing refit work on SDs. The problem is they are lacking the ability to fabricate modern systems because Manticore refused to provide them the data.

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:Manticore and Grayson also don't have spare shoes or logs to sit on, thanks to Operation Oyster Bay. No shipyards and no factories - nowhere to refit and no equipment to put aboard.

The fact of the matter, which David seems to ignore since it bores him, is that the mostly mothballed yards at Talbot are perfectly capable of doing refit work on SDs. The problem is they are lacking the ability to fabricate modern systems because Manticore refused to provide them the data.

Well, that and the fact that Talbot is no longer a Manticoran ally...

SWM wrote:He's talking about the Talbott Quadrant, not the Talbot System.

This is my shocked look.

SWM wrote:Well, that and the fact that Talbot is no longer a Manticoran ally...

Unlike others, at least they didn't join the other side.

IIRC we have roughly 100 Scientists in the bag?

Considering the aftermath of the Yawata strike and the fact that the GA will have to support operations in a huge area fighting the SLN, I think they should strip the Scientists for parts to build additional auxiliaries in Rembrandt and StMiguel
- mostly as transports along the lines of Backfish's Pirates Bane
- but also in other versions (repair ship and / or general suport ship (like the one the SS Star Knight got its mines from in "An Act of War"; CVE-LAC for newly liberated systems like Meyers; arsenal ship as in ToF); Troyan II Q-ship to surprise Solly raiders)

(You might want to send some of the returned Grendelsbane shipbuilders there to get back in the business fast and to Train the Talbotters while the yards in the SKM get rebuilt ...)

Use their engines, compensators, sensors, environmental plants etc for the basic hull. Yes, they require more work as merchant ships - but they'd get a navy crw anyway. And yes, they'd need more crew than SEM modells, but you get them for free, freeing up lots of production capacity which the Manties at least don't have much atm.

Add some of the grasers/lasers. WRT missiles, it might make sense to use some of them, too; they are good enough against all kind of pirates and the auxiliaries won't use many of them during normal operations, so the missiles captured from the sollies would last a while. Later, the missile systems can be replaced with newer, Beowulf made missile systems.