Zakharra wrote: I never really got the impression that the SL as a whole was interested in pushing the boundary of technology. ... In other words, it took outside influence to get Technodyne to do the R&D in the first place, on their own, Technodyne wouldn't have done anything.
By themselves, the SL corporations aren't driven to be the top dog in tech development. ...
There hasn't been any incentive to develop military tech, but the League's civilian sector has always had the same pressure from technophiles for the latest, greatest, newest toys that drives Apple to produce a new iPhone every few weeks. There has to be a constant drive for "more market share" and "new markets" to fuel innovation in the civilian sector.
Zakharra wrote: Yes the stealth tech to assassinate Cromarty was SL tech, and at the time, there was a basis on SL tech being very good, but now that simply isn't the case. It's several generations behind and it's going to be hard for them to catch up. Just getting close to the levels of miniaturization the Manticore Alliance and now the GA uses is going to be a -very- hard task.
I'm not claiming current Solarian tech is anywhere close to RMN or even RHN levels, just that Solarian civilian tech is better than solarian navy tech. The SDFs are better positioned to take advantage of better civilian tech than the SLN is, simply because of smaller numbers to upgrade.
Zakharra wrote:The individual SDFs are expected to work with SLN Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet, so they couldn't and wouldn't use anything that would clash with SLN tactical policy. Remember in times of war, SDFs can be merged with FF/BF so the systems on all of the ships, FF, BF, SDFs have be compatible across the board. ...
The SDFs only have to be downwardly compatible with the SLN. There's nothing to keep them from having additional capabilities they never use during ORI (Operational Readiness Inspections.) SLN inspections would tend to suffer from NIH syndrome and only care whether the equipment can launch SLN standard missiles and datalink with a SLN ship that can provide "competent leadership."
As long as SLN ships receive the proper signals from SDF ships, the SLN isn't going to care a great deal about who actually built SDF equipment or what bells and whistles the poor deluded SDF wasted their money on.
We have RFC's assertion that some SDFs are better than the SLN, so we have to accept that the SLN doesn't care about anything other than minimal compatibility with SLN command ships.