Has the Mesan Alignment already lost?

Hornblower wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:
1. Nobody outside of the Malign knows about, or what the Malign have at, Darius either, so would not know to go looking for it.


T&R
GJS

They must have some kind of bolthole (an unknown system where the can build their ships). The force of Oyster Bay wasn't built at Mesa

They do. It's called Darius.

Hornblower wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:1. Nobody outside of the Malign knows about, or what the Malign have at, Darius either, so would not know to go looking for it.

They must have some kind of bolthole (an unknown system where the can build their ships). The force of Oyster Bay wasn't built at Mesa

And the Manticorans know it -- they just have no idea where it is. Given their problems finding Haven's Bolthole, they may have even more problems finding Darius, which is to say that they'll need a heaping dose of luck.

(unnested for embedded limit)

George J. Smith wrote:
1. Nobody outside of the Malign knows about, or what the Malign have at, Darius either, so would not know to go looking for it.


T&R
GJS

Hornblower wrote:They must have some kind of bolthole (an unknown system where the can build their ships). The force of Oyster Bay wasn't built at Mesa

Meshakhad wrote:
They do. It's called Darius.

I believe his point was that it should be clear to Manticore that they must have some kind of bolthole. Obivously we, the readers, know they do, know it's called Darius, and know that the Detwiler-class ships are being built there.

George J. Smith was overoptimistic because there were enough hints that Manticore should know to go looking for it. (Even if they don't know quite what they're looking for)

Jonathan_S wrote:(unnested for embedded limit)

George J. Smith wrote:
1. Nobody outside of the Malign knows about, or what the Malign have at, Darius either, so would not know to go looking for it.


T&R
GJS

Hornblower wrote:They must have some kind of bolthole (an unknown system where the can build their ships). The force of Oyster Bay wasn't built at Mesa

Meshakhad wrote:
They do. It's called Darius.

I believe his point was that it should be clear to Manticore that they must have some kind of bolthole. Obivously we, the readers, know they do, know it's called Darius, and know that the Detwiler-class ships are being built there.

George J. Smith was overoptimistic because there were enough hints that Manticore should know to go looking for it. (Even if they don't know quite what they're looking for)

Point taken, the GA should know there is something to go look for, but until it was confirmed that the yards were not in the Mesan system the GA wouldn't have known to go looking in other systems. And I think finding out that the Mesan system does not have the capable yards may just get someone in the GA to rethink about where the Torch wormhole goes.

Just a thought

T&R
GJS

Jonathan_S wrote:I believe his point was that it should be clear to Manticore that they must have some kind of bolthole. Obivously we, the readers, know they do, know it's called Darius, and know that the Detwiler-class ships are being built there.

George J. Smith was overoptimistic because there were enough hints that Manticore should know to go looking for it. (Even if they don't know quite what they're looking for)

They do know that the Alignment has some kind of Bolthole. The text specifically describes Honor and others discussing the fact that the Alignment must have some hidden base where they built the stealth ships used in the attack on Manticore, long before Henke got to Mesa. They already knew it wasn't in Mesa. But they have zero information on where to start looking for it.

Manticore and the GA have no idea where the ships and weapons that were used to attack in Oyster Bay were build. They are in the process of looking for that/those places now.

You can guess that once someone gets control of the Mesa System they will determine that they were not built there. That leaves a number of potential exissting places- like Technodyne for the Cataprhatcts, but that is going to produce some very odd numbers because we have the direct impression that the "new" missiles provided to the various puppet groups and then to Filerta are actually comming from Mesa and it would become a question of where Techodyne was able to build that amount of weapons.

These are NOT small weapons, small systems for carrying and firing then. They were also provided in huge numbers. Not some guy working in a little "machine shop" operation in a 1st, 2nd or 3rd rate system.

What makes you think they are not coming from the same sort of automated factory that produced something like 1000 missiles per hour for the RMN? Manticore is not the only place that understands mass production.

Brigade XO wrote:Manticore and the GA have no idea where the ships and weapons that were used to attack in Oyster Bay were build. They are in the process of looking for that/those places now.

You can guess that once someone gets control of the Mesa System they will determine that they were not built there. That leaves a number of potential exissting places- like Technodyne for the Cataprhatcts, but that is going to produce some very odd numbers because we have the direct impression that the "new" missiles provided to the various puppet groups and then to Filerta are actually comming from Mesa and it would become a question of where Techodyne was able to build that amount of weapons.

These are NOT small weapons, small systems for carrying and firing then. They were also provided in huge numbers. Not some guy working in a little "machine shop" operation in a 1st, 2nd or 3rd rate system.

I'm quite certain that Technodyne really does have publicly visible plants producing cataphract missiles. They might be on Mesa, or Filareta's missiles may have come from a batch that Mesa had bought from Technodyne, or they may have been supposedly in transshipment when redirected from Mesa. I'm sure the documentation will prove it, and the production plants really are out there. That doesn't help find the Alignment's bolthole (Darius) and any production plants there.

kzt wrote:What makes you think they are not coming from the same sort of automated factory that produced something like 1000 missiles per hour for the RMN? Manticore is not the only place that understands mass production.

IIRC, Manticore is the only place that understands Manticore-style mass production. There was a comment that Darius was trying to match it, but hadn't succeeded.

Your basic point stands, though. The Cataphract series is simply the standard SLN missiles with a second stage that has a counter-missile drive and a relatively wimpy warhead, so I'd imagine that, once Technodyne got the plans they could ramp up production relatively quickly.

They're still not going to come close to Manticore's ability to mass produce the sheer number of missiles as cheaply as they did before Oyster Bay, especially when you consider that they have never had to produce the sheer volume of missiles needed - for all the hulls the SLN has, they don't really expend missiles all that frequently.

JohnRoth wrote:

kzt wrote:What makes you think they are not coming from the same sort of automated factory that produced something like 1000 missiles per hour for the RMN? Manticore is not the only place that understands mass production.

IIRC, Manticore is the only place that understands Manticore-style mass production. There was a comment that Darius was trying to match it, but hadn't succeeded.

Your basic point stands, though. The Cataphract series is simply the standard SLN missiles with a second stage that has a counter-missile drive and a relatively wimpy warhead, so I'd imagine that, once Technodyne got the plans they could ramp up production relatively quickly.

They're still not going to come close to Manticore's ability to mass produce the sheer number of missiles as cheaply as they did before Oyster Bay, especially when you consider that they have never had to produce the sheer volume of missiles needed - for all the hulls the SLN has, they don't really expend missiles all that frequently.

Manticore doesn't have any secret technology for mass production. Every advanced system in the galaxy can do mass production. The only difference is that Manticore got lots and lots of experience on certain specific production lines, and managed to streamline those specific lines very well. It's not something that could be extended to completely unrelated production lines.

No one has suggested that Darius or Technodyne could match the production rate per production line that Manticore was able to achieve. They only said that the production lines were there and were adequate for the observed numbers of missiles. And both the Solarian League and Darius can create very large numbers of production lines to make up for the individually lesser production rates.