Hi PeterZ,
I'm not sure Charis's armor production is that limited, or will be, now that they know they can afford to expand their production, even if it'll take a couple of years to ramp up gold and silver production.
I suspect once Underhill accepted Merlin's vision, long lead items for more KH-VII's were ordered, which in part will keep the factories busy, and since the original plan was to build 7 simultaneously, more may start construction soon or already been laid down.
Bear in mind the cut to three was mid April in MTaT (chapter XI of XXII) and Nahrmahn's surprise was II of VI in LaMA added to the eleven in MTaT for about 2/3 of the way through July or just over three month's before they could start thinking big again.
Even if they waited until Baron Ironhill got Merlin's message by September (chapter II) to officially start considering ordering more ships, they've now had 4 more month's to begin construction of what may take ~9 month's, at least for the initial 3.
RFC has stated the ICN may put around a 100 KH-VII's into service, which it will certainly can afford now, though smaller cruisers like the Maikelberg also make sense.
Given Harchong, the Gulf of Dohlar, Hsing-wu's passage, West Howard, Desnar, and Trellheim, at least 6 active squadrons and supporting fleets will be needed post war, besides local squadrons for each empire member and reserve or home fleets (1 for Charis and 1 for Chisholm) plus a 15% refit and repair margin and ~100 is close enough.
The Comet class cruiser or something with more range etc might be built for messenger service or duty in the empire, operating in pairs for safety reasons, re-coaling at each end, and a sustained speed of less than 21 mph would enable message transfers in two days or less between Siddarmark and Iron Cape, while 23.6 mph would be required for the Emerald and Chisholm route (from Fallow Bay to Rock Coast Keep and back) to enable 2 day delivery putting the total message time to some ~70 hours from SC to Cherayth, while if the crossings between Siddarmark, Tarot, and Charis are limited to ~300 miles and the ship's speed to 25 mph, the total travel time for messages via the semaphore might be just 34 hours to Tellesburg, and Tellesburg to Cherayth in ~66 hours if my math is right, or about 4 days one way for SC via Tellesburg to Cherayth, with shorter distances and times for Zebediah and Corisande, all helping build an imperial identity by more quickly sharing news etc.
L
PeterZ wrote:Captain Igloo wrote:
IMHO the main bottleneck is armor plate production. The Homestead Works near Pittsburgh had, according to an old ad dated 1912, an annual ingot capacity of 2.275 million gross tons, but produced only 12,000 gross tons max in armor and vault plate or 30 tons per day.
There is a lot of statistics in that old booklet: in 1912 Homestead (including the Carrie Furnaces, Howard Axle Works and the Schoen Steel Wheel Works) produced 16 gross tons per minute, consumed about 5,900 tons of ore and 2,000 tons of coal per day and employed 10,000 workers. Looks like Deltak on steroids.
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4116&hilit=King+Haarald+VII&start=30#p94142Each KH VII has 3,030 tons of armour. Delthak Steel works produced all of that armour in less than 1 year. Whether Deltak had larger Howsmynizing facilities than the Homestead Works or not is something only RFC might answer. What can be inferred is that based on the exisiting capabilities Delthak alone could armour 4-5 KH VII sized a year. When the other facilities come on line, that number will likely increase to upwards of 11-12 KH VIIs per year.
Assuming the Maikelberg requires 1/3 the armour of the KH VII, the ICN could build 9 of each class once the other steel works get up to full speed. Odds are that some of that armour making capacity will be thrown at building even larger ships.
If one reviews RFC's comments in the post linked above, it becomes clear that establishing a qualitative superiority in all manner of hardare is a high priority. Charis will continue to deploy bleeding edge technology and show just how cutting their superiority is by making their enemies bleed profusely should they decide to fight. Between the KH VIIs and the M96s the Jihadists will have a innevitably simple choice, surreder or die.
Since promoting an increasing superiority is high on the inner Circle's list of priorities, a big chunk of the ICN will be devoted to defeating shore batteries. That is the one area where the mainlanders will believe they have a chance to fend off the ICN. If the ICN builds dreadnoughts capable of defeating any fortress guns and a fleet that can steam into any port city and destroy it, the mainland will have no alternative but to innovate of acquiesce to the Empire of Charis.
