JohnRoth wrote: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.
Maybe not in the size of the ships, but why not looking for better compensators? That could be explains them not seeing different ways to do it since it took the R&D boffins of Grayson to find a better way because no one would tell/show/give them inertial compensators of their own to build. But the ship building companies could push for pore efficient ships, better automation (less crew), better shuttles, computer control systems. There's any number of ways that improvements could be looked for. Not to mention being at the bleeding edge of technology means you will almost always have products to sell to other systems and this earns your system money.
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. ...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.
That could very well be, but it seems the Beowulf SDF was worried about SLN inspectors and I'm assuming that they are fairly competent; the techs have to be otherwise people would die when systems failed because of clumsiness and stupidity. For what it's worth SL technology is solid and reliable. It IS good, It's just outdated by now. I assume that some SDFs are inspected more than others even if only rarely from incompetent SLN leadership.
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.
There's that too There's an entire industrial manufacturing infrastructure that has to be built before they can build the ships and the weapons in the numbers the SLN needs to fight the war. The SL needs time. A lot of time. Time in which the GA's R&D people are going to be pushing their efforts to make the next improvement/upgrade/advancement. Time the SL doesn't necessarily have anymore. It's hard to hold something together when you have several someones on the outside aiming to break it apart.
