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. ...
Weird Harold wrote: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: That's very true for us now, but there's little showing that's true for the Solarian transtellars in the 20th century PD.If there was such a need to increase market share, then the shipping companies would have been pushing their own industries to build their own cargo ships so they would be bigger/better than MAnticore vessels. Remember most of the carows in the SL were shipped at one point on Manty hulls, not Solarian. It's one of the biggest reasons the SL dislikes Manticore; its merchant fleet controlls, directly or indirectly, such a large percentage of SL cargo.
While there may be some pressure to push technological development for competitive advantage, interstellar shipbuilding isn't one place where that's useful. The reason is that compensator efficiency starts falling off drastically once one gets to the size of an SD, which is also, oddly, the size of the largest freighters. Trying to push freighter size beyond what's been the largest size for the last few centuries isn't really a good idea.
And what do you get if you can get a larger freighter? Some improvement in staffing requirements per mega-ton of cargo. Those are already so low that the incremental improvement could well be eaten up by the hit you'd take on acceleration.
Even if it's possible, the lessons of the jumbo crude oil freighters here on Earth are instructive. They're mostly (all?) sitting in port being used as storage tanks for oil. They just didn't work out.
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. ...
Weird Harold wrote: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.
Zakharra wrote: That only works to a degree. The SL likely requires the plans of the SDF ships so they can verify that they are tech compatible. You can make ships downward compatible only to a certain extent without major differences popping up in hull design and layout, and suffering compatibility issues. There's the matter of spare parts, weapons, crew and training. in a time of war, the SDF ships have to be able to be supplied from SLN supply depots and naval bases. You cannot have SDF ships that can only be supplied from their home system. That puts a severe kink in any operations those ships can go on. Likely no one else in the SL, FF, BF or the SDFs have podlayers, besides the Maya sector government, they seem to have a handle in getting small vessel pod layers, or ships that can use/control missile pods.
Does the SLN actually work up with the different SDFs? I imagine it happens occasionally, but given the general attitude in Battle Fleet, I'd imagine that it's pretty rare, and that the ISLN, as a whole, just doesn't care about what a few hundred SDs from a dozen SDFs might be able to do to augment their 2000 ready duty SDs and the other 8,000 in the reserve.
Zakharra wrote: One thing I am wondering is how fast can the SL or the various SDFs (without Manticore/GA help) get a design for pod laying ships, the command and control capability, the pods and anti-missile pods up and running while trying to simultaneously build an entirely new fleet? We know they current SL can use Catapharats which are a primitive (compared to NA/GA tech) MDs, but they are basically pods that can only be towed. Podlaying ships themselves require a complete redesign of every vessel using them. It took Manticore about 2 years to build one SD, right? Or 1 year (if 1 year, that's damned good and fast construction). It takes the SL 2-3 years to build one SD, so even if they get the plans for a pod laying SD now, it's going to take 2-3 years for the GA to mess up the SLs economy. 2-3 years for the GA to make serious inroads into getting numerous SL systems to either join with the GA or declare themselves neutral in the conflict or secede from the SL (I think the secession issue is going to go on full bore after the SL sticks its hand in the woodchipper that is the Beowolf system defenses. When the SLN BF gets it's arse handed to it there, that's going to hammer SL pride very hard and send the SLN BF and the Mandarins scrambling to find a way, any way, to out the blame on someone else. I think the aftermath of that failed attack is going to be the blow that rips the SL apart.
It isn't just the design, it's the entire manufacturing system. Darius has most of the Manticore plans, but they've never been able to duplicate the efficiency of the Manticore ship-building system, and it hasn't been for lack of trying.
Pod-layers require the kind of manufacturing that can bring the cost of missiles and pods down to where you can build millions of the things cheaply enough to afford them. If you can't do that, trying to build pod-layers is irrelevant - you're not going to be able to build enough missiles to make them useful.