Positroll wrote:First, the biggest component for getting from point A to point B as fast as possible is the hyper generator. While there's no indication that SL military hyper generators are inferior to anyone else's military hyper generators, there's one big honking exception: the MAlign's Streak Drive, and there's a guy named Simoes, currently headed for Bolthole (I think), who's going to be working on a project to make that available to the GA. In other words, the window where the SL hyper generators would be useful is going to be fairly short, and there is a severe shortage of yard space to do the refits in that same window.
Streak drives
- are not yet available for the GA
- will be very expensive
I'm not sure whether even the MA will bother installing them on any freighters. Even if that's possible, there still will be lots of jobs auxiliaries without streakdrive can do well - e.g. sitting in orbit as repairships or as LAC bases. They'll usually be on their stations for years - who cares whether they could have gotten there a week earlier? (for fast freighteres going out on offensives with a streak drive equipped fleet as its fleet train things may be different - but that's justa small number of the auxiliaries required in the future ...
The second component in getting from Point A to Point B is the compensator, and SL military compensators are decidedly inferior, which precludes using them for refitting freighters as fleet train.
See above.
Also, Solly SD compensators for 7 million ton SDs should be good enough for e.g. 4 million ton fast freighters to keep up with the fleet on strategic deployments ...
These are also not standard GA parts, so the proper care and feeding is going to be somewhat of a mystery.
As far as understanding the tech is concerned, that shouldn't be an issue, since its mostly an old version of current Mantie tech (cf House of steel - King Roger and friends went out hunting for new ideas in Solly papers ...). BTW, every price crew has the same Problem and they have to figure it out on the fly ...
As far as getting the necessary parts is concerned:
- in the short run, just build 70 such ships and use the other 30 SDs (and those that were damaged beyong repair - another 40 or so?) to build up a depot of spare parts.
- Beowulff should have a bunch of those components (and technicians actually trained on them) on hand, as they use the same SDs
- over time, just produce new parts or replace with better Manty tech.
There is something I pound on every time this comes up - this is a design they have been using for over 200 years. Does that mean the ship completed by technodyne yesterday is identical to the original one? Absolutely not. The exact opposite. You have 200 years of parts drift, as vendors go out of business or are resourced as tech changes. In essence, EVERY SHIP is a unique malange of ancient and new. Every ungrade probably involves a unique fitting and compromise to install it.
Ask any sailor or aircraft mechanic. Even though ships and planes of a design are built over just a handful of years, each is unique. And a design built over 200 years by multiple manufacturers will have a dizzying array of changes.
Think I'm kooked, go to an auto parts store. Pick a year and a model and have them look up break pads or another normal item, then change the year up and down 1 and see if the parts are the same. Ever see a parts catalogue for the classic Volkswagon Beetle? Its the size of a metropolitan phone book.
My point is you can't just strip a set of x SDs (which needs to be done in a SD class shipyard by the way, since every part of it is designed to resist damage by the toughest weapons available - and each ship being stripped blocks a active ship being maintained or built) and get x compensators; you get a couple of this kind of comp, a couple of that and a few of a third and a couple unique ones. The same with EVERY thing on the ships you want to strip.
If you build with these, you will not get a class of whatevers, you will have dozens of unique ships- at best you may get a handful of "standards" and spares will be limited.
Why not just buy from Haven or wait 12-24 months for Beowulf/Manty/Grayson construction slips to be available.
I will say it again: strip the ship's armories and small craft, repair bays and medical facilities. Give the armories to newly freed planets, sell the de-milled small craft and repair bays to Talbott/Silensian/Havenite small businesses at cut rate prices, and donate the med bays to the poorest worlds in Talbott/Silensia. After you offload the satellites (and deploy them for traffic control/weather/comm sats at poor planets)and the rest of the fungables you don't need a shipyard for, you slag the rest.
bases. They'll usually be on their stations for years - who cares whether they could have gotten there a week earlier? (for fast freighteres going out on offensives with a streak drive equipped fleet as its fleet train things may be different - but that's justa small number of the auxiliaries required in the future ...