new/old dead horse, futher beating requested

drothgery wrote:The thing is that it's not a better solution than much. It can't fight anything resembling a modern waller or even a modern BC squadron (and I'm not even talking BC(P)s or Nikes here), because its missile defenses are horrible. It can't fight lighter stuff except by accident because it can't catch them, since Sollie compensators suck so badly Manty ships of the wall can out-accelerate SLN destroyers. And that's with experienced Solarian personnel running them. It's true that a Scientist in orbit would scare off two-bit raiders, but any real warship would do that.

If you have sufficient trained personnel to run the thing, they're almost certainly better off running what you trained them for (you probably don't have sufficient trained personnel to run the thing unless you already have BCs or quite a lot of lighter stuff, in which case an SD playing scarecrow is of very little value to you). And if you don't have sufficient trained personnel to run the thing, then it's useless.

Drothgery, I don't think kzt, zakharra, or I are arguing that they will be of any use as weapons platforms (and it I have mis-understood you gentlemen, please correct me).

What we are saying is the recoverable technology and the associated ships (pinnaces, shuttles, etc.) are worth something and can help upgrade a poor systems' economy, something that Manticore (between OB and War requirements) would be hard-pressed to do.

The equipment doesn't have to last that long....it only has to last long enough to give Pequod, Nuncio and other Talbott System economies a boost.

And of course several regiments' worth of body armor, weapons, and such won't hurt.

The Sollie SD's are useless as weapon systems. I do not believe they are useless as resources.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hutch wrote:
The Sollie SD's are useless as weapon systems. I do not believe they are useless as resources.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

I completely agree.

As long as the resource needed is targets. Or scrap.

No, my position is that they are useless for any active function other then local defense of places that have no better alternative. They make a terrible warehouse or anything else like that. If your proposed use doesn't see having meters of armor and huge grasers as a useful feature they it's probably not a good use.

But yeah, there is a lot of useful stuff on them that you can loot.

This discussion is turning into the same argument we had before when Weird Harold was arguing to use the medical facilities aboard them as trauma centers to back up groundside hospitals in the Quadrant. There is what I call a world view difference that creates the dissonance among us. I see it as the difference between the "fix and repair" mindset and what I call the "gotta have the latest and greatest" point of view."

There are merits to both sides, I suppose. It can be less frustrating to have the latest and greatest, but there is a price to be paid for that in terms of having to continuing to have to update your investment and suffering the effects of depreciation of value on what you have purchased. Consider both computers and cars.

Now think of the scientists. As warships, the latest and greatest perspective is right. It would certainly be a disaster to send them up against Invictuses or Medusas or as we learned at Spindle, even Sag-Cs. In that role, they are nothing but antiquated death traps.

But here is where IMNSHO the latest and greatest perspective goes off the rails by going ideological. Some of you guys are assuming that because the scientists are outdated as warships, they are junk when in fact there are dozens of uses to which they could be put for which they would be less than ideal, but also for which they could be made to serve the purpose when the capital for what is really needed is not available. Here is where us fix and repair guys come into our own.

The objection raised in the previous post is that you might not have people to maintain them. The answer to this is obvious. You train them. My bet is that if you placed a scientist in orbit at, say, Split or Nuncio, you could assemble classrooms of people who could be taught the basics of what they would need to know to keep it in orbit and maintain it indefinitely. And those folk wouldn't need to be paid the going rate on Manticore for it to be a significant step up as well as a nice infusion into the economy. You keep a number of these things on hand for spare parts as well as training people to fabricate the electronic and mechanical parts needed for when things fail.

Finally, some us are assuming that because the scientists are out of date as warships, they are junk. My contention is not so. "Obsolete" and "junk" are two very different words. The scientists have up to two centuries on the design and many of them had over a century of useful service, functioning reliably without unbearable amounts of maintenance. That was true right up to Spindle when their vulnerability as warships was exposed.

To close out guys, it hasn't been all that many years ago when computer shopping for me was on the bone pile of local shops where I would keep looking until I found a useable motherboard to put the rest of the stuff on. Frustrating? Sometimes. But I made it work. Even now I have on hand a 15 yr old computer with a windows 98 system on it that serves in my ham shack for digital communication. Same with cars. My vehicles are 98, 2000, and 2001 respectively. But they are maintained and I would be willing to take off and drive anywhere with any one of them. Further, by the tine you factor in insurance, depreciation and car payments, I can maintain all three a whole lot cheaper than it would cost me to replace new with one vehicle.

Don

n7axw wrote:...snip...
The objection raised in the previous post is that you might not have people to maintain them. The answer to this is obvious. You train them. My bet is that if you placed a scientist in orbit at, say, Split or Nuncio, you could assemble classrooms of people who could be taught the basics of what they would need to know to keep it in orbit and maintain it indefinitely. And those folk wouldn't need to be paid the going rate on Manticore for it to be a significant step up as well as a nice infusion into the economy. You keep a number of these things on hand for spare parts as well as training people to fabricate the electronic and mechanical parts needed for when things fail.
...snip...
Don

Who are going to teach the classes?
Who are going to pay for the classes?
Where are the pupils going to come from? (If they rob the civilian sector in those system of competent personnel it's going to play havoc with the economy).
Who are going to pay for maintenance and replacement parts?
Who are going to pay salaries to the crewmen?

There will be no infusion to the economy, just a drag unless someone subsidize everything surrounding the SD's.

n7axw wrote:There is what I call a world view difference that creates the dissonance among us. I see it as the difference between the "fix and repair" mindset and what I call the "gotta have the latest and greatest" point of view."

Don

Why how diplomatic.

Undiplomatic is:

In short, it is Snobbery point of view.

It is the government drone point of view. The "Sorry, Sir, I am not allowed to hand out file number P3060, even though I know Damned well this is the file you wanted, but as you did not state the name exactly to me, and since my superior is not present, you will have transfer to another line and wait, and wait, and wait, to sort out this "difficulty". After all sir, if I screw up, my rice bowl might be diminished, or not increase as quickly as my peers as the only thing in this union/organization that counts is a proper paper trail and maintaining my job security. Not actually getting the job done." point of view.

See King County regional transit system for an example. The only thing you want to know when you go to the website is: How to get from address A, to B using buses etc. But is there ANYWHERE you enter this? Hell no. That would take forethought on how the end user would actually use the system. Instead the stupid douche government system asks for a Bleeping bus route # as this is in THEIR data base. Tieing the bus number data base to an actual map/address would take work and a little initiative. But as there is no incentive to providing services outside the employees oh so VERY narrow authority it never happens as any initiative in large organization gets quickly squashed as you are upsetting the union apple cart(eliminating obsolete jobs), or stepping on some lazy douche's rice bowl. Hey dumb Bleeps! If I knew the bleeping bus number and where it travels, would I enter it? Of course NOT!

PS. In the Honorverse, MWW has the majority of population residing in cities where people do not have space to have large garages/yards/pastures/barns full of "junk" and use it where children grow up learning how to build, repair, invent physical systems/objects. [Not true in the verge.] Without the hands on childhood experiences building things, adults, are essentially worse than children as they now have ingrained habits and rigid mind "thought" paths.

I worked as an electrician apprentice many moons ago. The number of calls in the city for "repair" requiring a simple throwing of the breaker, GFI, or replacing a lightbulb is unbelievable. Or the number of lazy morons who actually pay $$$ to have someone fix a flat tire on the side of a road, or change their oil. They mostly all reside in a city where they do not have the childhood background experiences for hands on work that those who grow up in rural areas around the world take for granted. A metropolitan area city slicker sees a back40/barn full of stuff and thinks it is trash redneckville. A rural person sees junk in the barn and thinks, hey, this guy actually does something with his life and is not a boring stick-in-the-mud work, whine, cheese, and TV drooling drone who is utterly ignorant of anything outside of this very narrow range of subjects. Work, whine, cheese, and TV.

A long way of saying, it is an ingrained mentality, point of view, not found in affluent city dweller society who thinks cars, TV's, cell phones, houses, SD's magically appear at the local shopping mall where all one has to do is pick one up at their convenience and leisure instead fixing what they have or obtaining someone else's "junk" and making it work for a fraction of the cost. Of course the treasure seeker does not reside in affluent society, where everything is handed to them on a silver platter. Where throwing perfectly good goods out, and buying new whenever they choose, as they do not like the color anymore is a perfectly normal and acceptable way of life. After all, all they have to do is buy new and everything is ok, right?

In short, it is Snobbery point of view.

Relax wrote:

n7axw wrote:There is what I call a world view difference that creates the dissonance among us. I see it as the difference between the "fix and repair" mindset and what I call the "gotta have the latest and greatest" point of view."

Don

Why how diplomatic.

Undiplomatic is:

In short, it is Snobbery point of view.

Well it is, but I think not the way you mean it. The idea that anything significant on a really, really obsolete ship of the wall is better for civilian purposes than what people in almost any verge system are already using is pure snobbery.

drothgery wrote:
Well it is, but I think not the way you mean it. The idea that anything significant on a really, really obsolete ship of the wall is better for civilian purposes than what people in almost any verge system are already using is pure snobbery.

The issue is that while there is likely plenty of usefull equipment on the SD, there is no need to bring the SD, and operate it at the verge planet. You have the reclamation teams dismantle the sickbay equipment put it on shuttles or other small craft then use a freighter to move them (forwarding the needed manuals and specs for power couplings in a dispatch boat). The equipment would ten be installed in the new hospital wing after the freighter arrives. If the equipment cannot be removed without cutting armor it is too much trouble to reclaim, but many items would be designed to breakdown into subsystems that would be removable.

If your verge planet cannot manufacture transformers and rectifiers you have no business trying to use the SDs at all.

I suppose that to one degree or another, we have all been fashioned by our experience of life. There have been times in mine where I have been touched by poverty. My folks were raised in the midst of the great deression and waste not, want not was the motto which characterized our upbringing. I was blessed to get a good education courtesy of the church for which I will forever be grateful. But my basic poimt of view is blue collar. I identify very strongly with folk who "don't have it made" and who will never have it made in a normal middle class sense.

So when I read Weber's books, the people I find myself most sympathetic with are in Dresden, Nuncio, Split and yes, the Doleists. And I find myself cheering when things happen to offer these folk hope and the opportunity to better themselves that I myself have enjoyed.

As for the snobbery thing, the comment is not something I am going to respond to beyond pointing out that such comments reflect more on the people who make them than the person toward whom they are directed. Even worse they distract from thinking about the substantive points I was trying to make.

Don

I am basing this on the captures in the Quadrant. It seems to me the particularly useful parts and subsystems to be salvaged off the ships would be the machine shop and fabrication units off the ships. What the Quadrant needs among many other things is the tools to make tools, and given the overall situation that would make the most sense.