Implenting Case Lacoon I & II after Oyster Bay

@ bafoote
Yes, we compare little countries with to much people to entire alien worlds.
Why? Cause those worlds are alien, they are not Earth 2.0.
You are saying that alien worlds habitable for humankind should have enough resources to grow food Humans can eat. Sorry, don’t see that at all.
The biosphere might be completely unsuited for EFFECTIVE food production. Sure, technology can do a lot of this, but you will never be as effective as the farm planet next door.
Just think Grayson. Or this certain Andermani World which had the same problem.
There are so much possibilities.
Our earth in the last ice age was habitable as well. Suited for growing food for untold billions? Not so much.
There are so many possible problems. Landscape. Try growing food in oceans or desert planets. Seasons. Ever thought about how grain grows on Sphinx? Solar radiation and Atmosphere. Do you think every planet has ozone layer?

Oh sure, technology can solve anything. No question about it. But first, you wont invest untold billions if there is an armada of Merchant Ships hauling grain for next to nothing in comparison.
This is capitalism. Instead of producing grain you can invest in something else, maybe asteroid mining. Start building ships and start hauling grain for other customers. Get rich and die happy ;)
Furthermore, yes it might be true that you can feed the population of most planets with the food the planet can grow. But its not only about hunger. I already wrote about this, the people in developed countries want more just not being hungry. They want to eat exotic things whenever they want.
No matter how good your technology is you wont even try to produce everything on your planet. You specialise and sell your product while buying other stuff.
And please don’t play the “It has to be fresh” card. Sure it has to be, but in the Honorverse they had sleeper ships centuries ago. If its possible to preserve a human being for centuries it should be possible to preserve fresh food for a couple of weeks.

Star Knight wrote:

bafoote wrote:honestly can't believe ANY planet would import food. It all comes down to available energy and how cheep it is.

As long as someone can make money from it it will be done.
Don’t you think its cheap to ship grain in those really big merchant ships around the stars than to grow it on some alien planet?

Cheap to ship, actually costs the same as everything else more or less. Profitable is the key question.

Not every world is a Garden Eden like Manticore or Sphinx. Don’t you think it would be fun to try and grow food on Gryphon with all that interesting "weather"?

Nope, but even Grayson survived for centuries without food imports.

Sure, you can build up a infrastructure to do that. But why if you have a farm planet in the next system that can sustain an entire sector?

Or you can terraform Mars and grow food there.

And not everyone like to farm you know. Its entirely possible that many societies in the League dont like the idea of using their landsacpe to grow food. The Core World are most likely overpopulated anyway, so they try and preserve the nature.

You tell the poor and middle class on your garden planet that they have to pay 5 times the cost because we want the weed fields of a natural prairie. Plus what do you do, when the food ships stop coming? Hey planet B over there is paying 10% more than you were, I'll make more profit shipping there.

I for myselve cant picture for example Beowulf growing food for untold billions.

Why not? Because it's an ultra-high-tech world? I suggest that you take a look at what passes for new farming equipment. Right now they are darn near autonomous. GPS, computers running fertilizer spreading, computer soil monitoring, etc. The farmer in 2000 years may sit in his comfy office and farm 10 or 20 farms at once.

Thats another factor btw. People in developed countries eat more and different then in poorer countries.
I dont believe for a second that our own little planet can sustain 7 billion humans, consuming the food what we are consuming in the first world.
The ressources just arent there.

Like I mentioned earlier, they said the same thing about 40 years ago, about the '70s. Don't forget that the US also pays farmers not to grow grain, and the US still provide half the worlds grain exports.

BTW the current World Population is 6,877,734,572.

Star Knight wrote:@ bafoote
Yes, we compare little countries with to much people to entire alien worlds.
Why? Cause those worlds are alien, they are not Earth 2.0.
You are saying that alien worlds habitable for humankind should have enough resources to grow food Humans can eat. Sorry, don’t see that at all.
The biosphere might be completely unsuited for EFFECTIVE food production. Sure, technology can do a lot of this, but you will never be as effective as the farm planet next door.
Just think Grayson. Or this certain Andermani World which had the same problem.

And those planets had limited populations until the problems were solved.

There are so much possibilities.
Our earth in the last ice age was habitable as well. Suited for growing food for untold billions? Not so much.

Then again are there going to be billions living on that world?

There are so many possible problems. Landscape. Try growing food in oceans or desert planets. Seasons. Ever thought about how grain grows on Sphinx? Solar radiation and Atmosphere. Do you think every planet has ozone layer?

If you want humans living there there probably needs to be an ozone or equivalent layer. Besides, just because Honor hadn't heard of doming in farm, doesn't mean that other planets had already done it. (Actually Honor had heard of it, just not on the scale that the Graysons did it.)

Oh sure, technology can solve anything. No question about it. But first, you wont invest untold billions if there is an armada of Merchant Ships hauling grain for next to nothing in comparison.

Not sure where you came up with the ships haul "grain for next to nothing," I'd rather haul something with a bigger profit margin. How much does that ship cost? For the same cost you could easily build a desalination plant and irrigation system.

This is capitalism. Instead of producing grain you can invest in something else, maybe asteroid mining. Start building ships and start hauling grain for other customers. Get rich and die happy ;)

Yep, and I can grow grain here, and not have to pay your shipping costs, selling for less than you.

Furthermore, yes it might be true that you can feed the population of most planets with the food the planet can grow. But its not only about hunger. I already wrote about this, the people in developed countries want more just not being hungry. They want to eat exotic things whenever they want.

That's why I said that planets would still import stuff that they can't provide themselves.

No matter how good your technology is you wont even try to produce everything on your planet. You specialise and sell your product while buying other stuff.

Yes and then when that food shipment is late, people go hungry. If enough are late, people start dying.

And please don’t play the “It has to be fresh” card. Sure it has to be, but in the Honorverse they had sleeper ships centuries ago. If its possible to preserve a human being for centuries it should be possible to preserve fresh food for a couple of weeks.

Moooo. Fresh revivified cow.

@Thirdbase
1) I think grain is cheaper to ship than many other things, You can haul it in big tanks, loading and unloading will be very easy.
But that’s a detail, the question is indeed if its profitable or not.
And I think it is.

2) Grayson survived, yes. By investing a high percentage of their annual GDP.
It would have been much, much better for them if they could have imported the stuff..
Speaking of Grayson, thanks so much. You made me remember something from Honor of the Queen:

“Masada is badly over-populated in terms of its productive capacity,” Houseman went on, “and Grayson requires additional infusions of capital for industrial expansion. If you opened markets in the Endicott System, you could secure a nearby planetary source for foodstuffs and sufficient capital to meet your own needs by supplying Masada with the goods and services it requires for its population. The boon to your economy is obvious, even in the short term. In the long term, a commercial relationship which serves both your needs could only lessen—perhaps even eliminate—the hostility which has divided you for so long. It might even create a situation in which naval expansion becomes as unnecessary as it is economically wasteful.”

So there is trade going on with food.

3) You can terraform Mars, sure. If you have money to throw away you can do such prestige things. Or can build a fleet of merchant ships that will be able supply you for all eternity for that kind of money.

4) What happens when food haulers don’t show up in the real world? Price for goods will increase, demand will go down. You pay more, ships will keep coming.
That’s how capitalism works.
Furthermore, why should you pay 5 times more when you haul it through space?? Those merchant ships haul an incredible quantities and do so for decades if not centuries.
The cost of shipping will be minimal, crew salaries and wormhole fees will be the main expenses.

5) Why not? Cause they don’t have to? There is no need for Beowulf to waste perfectly good real estate or beautiful landscape on farming.

6) This is not about just feeding people. Of course that is possible. We are able to feed 15 billion if we have to. But this is not about feeding people. This is about meeting demands of a fully developed society.
I can order and buy norwegian salmon in the States if I want to or canadian bison in Europe if I feel like it and pay for it. No try to do that on a planet of 7 billion people. And the same for a couple of trillion.

Any iam quite sure that the current world population is anything but 6,877,734,572.


7) Problems where solved by importing food.
I don’t know why you call Grayson pop limited.

8) Sure, why shouldn’t there be billions of Humans on an icy planet? Cold nights means lots of pregnancies ;)
There is no reason for not having a big population. Since you can import food.

9) Yes, Honor wasn’t accustomed to the scale of Grayson farming domes cause the rest of the universe imports food if they can grow it themselves effectively.

10) Ships are a one time investment. It will amortize itself in no time. Then there is only maintance, crew salaries and wormhole fees. Not much cost for an incredible cargo space.

11) Sure, grow your grain. On a planet that isn’t suited for it. I have farmplanet in the next starsystem and a fleet of cheap multimegaton merchants. I flood your markets and ruin you in no time. Than I have a monopoly and dictate the price.

12) They wont import only exotic things. They will import the basic food supply also. There is no reason not to do so if its profitable.

13) Just like in the real world. Or not?

14) I bet you can buy real cow for the right price …

It seems to me that the arguments over whether Manticore has enough missiles to finish of the Sollies is rather pointless. I understood the books to make it abundantly clear that the lack of missile resupplies represented an insurmountable obstacle with respect to defeating Haven and the SL, as well as a significant handicap in a fight with the SL alone. I would seem bizarre for me for DW to introduce that as a plot element if it wasn't going to matter at all. Now the extent to which it will handicap manticore is clearly debatable but also clearly falls into the category of 'not enough data' no matter how much you try to mine out of the books already in print.

Secondly, it seems to me that the the discussions to date have focused around tactical, strategic and logistic considerations but haven't really addressed at all the political considerations. Thinking back to the conversations Honor and others have had in the past discussing the difficulty of conquering/breaking up the SL, the political considerations actually seem to be the primary difficulty regardless of the tactical/strategic/logistic considerations. Case in point I seem to recall there being an explanation in one of the later books for why the RMN doesn't simply send a big 'ol battle fleet to go park itself in Old Earth orbit and demand the SL's surrender. And the answer was, political considerations in that it would galvanize SL public support behind the government. Bottom line, beating the SL to a pulp, even cutting of a lot of its interstellar trade isn't enough. You have to destroy it as a political entity, and even then the war won't end because you have to defeat/make peace with all its successor nations. All of that takes time, during that time what do you think Mesa will be doing if not rectifying their technical and numerical inferiority to the RMN/RHN? Remember, everything to date was kicked off on essentially Mesa's timeline even if they did accelerate things a bit. Therefore I have to believe that they are convinced that the demise of the SL will buy them enough time to accomplish their ends. No doubt the SEM/RH alliance will throw there calculations off but I would be surprised if it really messed them up big time.

Finally I think the argument that disruption of the wormhole network will lead to starvation in the core worlds is...a bit overstated to say the least. I agree that the core worlds won't be self-sufficient in food production terms. However, I also agree they must have some locally produced food. Furthermore, I would bet that a sizable percentage of the SL's massive merchant fleet is not carrying essential items like food stuffs. That means they will have more than enough reserve capacity to move essentials by simply ceasing to ship nonessential items like luxury goods. It will be a devastating economic blow yes but not enough to lead to total prostration. After all, the disappearance of the wormhole factor will make all kinds of more local trade routes profitable with the disappearance of the more 'foreign' competition and I am sure plenty of enterprising individuals will be prepared to step in and fill the demand. What you will get will be less efficient, yes, but trade will go on.

Well its only been in the last 600 years that humanity in the HH has been able to run ships around for "free". Before that IE when ALL SL worlds were settled for 1000+++ years like Beowulf, they had to obtain all their food stuffs from their own planet. They didn't have Warshawki sails or the Hyper Generator. THey were ALL colonized by SLOW freezer ships running around at sub light speeds.

Thus, all SL worlds would have to be worlds they could easily terraform to start with. Thus no problem growing food and supporting a viable population. As if somone is going to wait 8 years for its first food shipment... YEA right.

Now a population can grow fairly quickly in 600 years, but the base 1700 SL worlds would already be settled on ONLY worlds that would sustain human population and inherent in this postulate is that they MUST be able to feed themselves.

Grayson is an extreme example. Remember they were genetically altered otherwise they would have died out like the Nuncio's??? in the Talbott Quadrant. Same reason Mesa was going cheep as a world when it was bought by Detweiler and company. The humans were genetically altered by 'x' means to survive on Mesa. Same with their food crops etc.

Sphinx would be an optimum planet to grow food on. A LONG winter to build up a snow pack, IE easy water source, and a LONG summer for multiple plantings and harvests. How easy would that be! Talk about a farmers paradise!

What makes you think the there were 1700 SL worlds a thousand years ago?
I think the vast majority were settled in the last centuries after the invention of the Hyper Drive.
Colonizing has to star slow an gets quicker as time goes by.
Your colonies themselves will start colonizing enterprises of their own after a couple of centuries before good old earth gets around establishing a thousand colonies.
So yeah, you have a point about a couple of worlds. The first colonies were established at worlds that could SUSTAIN a SMALL population.
That however doesnt mean that those worlds are able to feed untold billions effectivly today without importing food. And it doesnt mean that those able worlds actually do so.

bafoote wrote:Well its only been in the last 600 years that humanity in the HH has been able to run ships around for "free". Before that IE when ALL SL worlds were settled for 1000+++ years like Beowulf, they had to obtain all their food stuffs from their own planet. They didn't have Warshawki sails or the Hyper Generator. THey were ALL colonized by SLOW freezer ships running around at sub light speeds.

Thus, all SL worlds would have to be worlds they could easily terraform to start with. Thus no problem growing food and supporting a viable population. As if somone is going to wait 8 years for its first food shipment... YEA right.

Now a population can grow fairly quickly in 600 years, but the base 1700 SL worlds would already be settled on ONLY worlds that would sustain human population and inherent in this postulate is that they MUST be able to feed themselves.

Grayson is an extreme example. Remember they were genetically altered otherwise they would have died out like the Nuncio's??? in the Talbott Quadrant. Same reason Mesa was going cheep as a world when it was bought by Detweiler and company. The humans were genetically altered by 'x' means to survive on Mesa. Same with their food crops etc.

Sphinx would be an optimum planet to grow food on. A LONG winter to build up a snow pack, IE easy water source, and a LONG summer for multiple plantings and harvests. How easy would that be! Talk about a farmers paradise!

Star Knight wrote:That however doesnt mean that those worlds are able to feed untold billions effectivly today without importing food. And it doesnt mean that those able worlds actually do so.

So what if they need to import food. Even if 20% of the Solarian carrying trade is dedicated to moving food stuffs around (a gross overestimate in my mind given the tonnages involved). You still have to multiply the average transit time five fold before the rest of the tonnage moving nonessential goods can't take up the slack. Add in the fact that they just got effectively barred from a bunch of export markets entirely by the closure of the wormholes and you have lots of free shipping to keep your food moving. That doesn't even take into account the inevitable readjustment in shipping routes to trade 'closer to home' when the economic advantage of the wormholes goes away. The point being, no one is going to starve.

It doesn’t work that way.
You pick out one factor and argue that you could make it work if you do x and y.
The food supply and as a consequence starvation on some planets (never said the hole League would starve) cannot be maintained by using other merchants ships.
Because starvation is only one consequence of the actual catastrophe: The political and economical collapse of the League.
This isn’t about Manticore closing the Wormholes making it impossible for merchants to haul food around, therefore the hole League dies due to starvation.
Imagine what would happen in the real world if all of a sudden, ship tourneys on average take 12 times as long. The world economy will be thrown into chaos. It doesn’t matter if you still have the necessary cargo space to meet all demands.
If you suddenly cant deliver on time the entire well oiled machine will be destroyed within a tyear. That means companies going bankrupt over night, leaving merchant lines without shipping contracts. Nobody will be there paying for the transport. Nobody will have the money to actually buy anything when the stock markets hit the deck.

You don’t think a war with Manticore wont have such consequences?
Well neither did I, but apparently DW is going for it (Spoiler):

Last night I attended a David Weber book signing. He spoke for about 90 minutes. Here are some highlights about the next Honorverse book RISING THUNDER.

1. The book is almost finished. 4 chapters to go
2. 60% of all the Solarian Leaque's interstellar cargo travel in Manticoren ships for at least part of their journey.
3. Closing the worm holes to SL ships will cause about a 12X increase in SL cargo transit times
4. This causes the Solarian League’s economy to collapse.
5. Solarian League’s income comes from taxes on interstellar trade and protection money from the planets in the protectorate.
6. The League doesn’t have the money to activate the SLN reserve fleet.

Re: Star Knight

I actually agree entirely with your assessment that it would be an economic catastrophe for the League whether people starve or not. Since you and bafoote had gone into such detail arguing about whether food was being transported I was just trying to make the point that it doesn't really matter other than making another marginal contribution to the overall disruption of the Solly economy. After all, hunger seems to concentrate people's priorities and in a world with as much technology and wealth as the Honorverse I can't seem most Sollies not 'doing whatever it takes' to make sure the food shipments get through. That being said, something like defunding the activation of the reserve is entirely plausible since that would obviously take back seat to feeding yourself, not to mention the way the Solly gov't is funded.

Thanks for the input on what Weber is thinking, always nice to hear a little tidbit now and then.

In addition, I don't think that simply causing the economic collapse of the league is going to solve all of manticore's problems. As you have pointed out previously, the reserve the can't man is so obsolete as to be nearly inconsequential anyway. It may actually be harder for the SEM to step into the chaos of the league collapse because at least initially there won't be any central focus that Manticore can go 'knock on the head' with its fleet. Leaving plenty of opportunities for all kinds of nefarious entities to step in.

In conclusion, yes Lacoon will devastate and possibly destroy the SL as it currently exists, perhaps through economic disruption alone or maybe with a little pointed military encouragement. However the successor states to the SL will potentially pose an even greater if slightly less immanent threat to the SEM's interests, especially with Mesan involvement. And again, the SL currently hardly poses an immanent threat to manticore given that they can't possibly crack the SEM's defenses with the current hardware anyway.

HH history:

SL is comprised of Core SL worlds and Shell = Roughly 1700 systems with who knows how many planets. Here I am not counting protectorates who would have small populations anyways.

All of said worlds were colonized BEFORE Warshawki sails or the Hyper Generator. It was only with the advent of the Hyper generator at Beowulf about 600 years ago that let Beowulf come to the aid of Earth in their "Final War" and save the planet. SCRAGS anyone...

Its only been recently that, IE last 600 years, that protectorate worlds were settled and the verge trying to get AWAY from the SL Core/Shell worlds.

This includes Manticore/Haven and all other verge planets. Its only the VERY rare exception like Grayson who bucks the overwhelming trend.

So, it could be stated that Verge planets are far more likely to "starve" via disruption of wormhole traffic than SL worlds. Of course their populations are FAR smaller and the Core/Shell SL worlds have had 600 years to outstrip their farming resources from the advent of the Hypergenerator and the Warshawki sail.

But its the sure fire shooting truth that whatever the Core/Shell populations were 600 years ago, they most certainly had to feed themselves from their own resources. Population growth since then...

Star Knight wrote:What makes you think the there were 1700 SL worlds a thousand years ago?
I think the vast majority were settled in the last centuries after the invention of the Hyper Drive.
Colonizing has to star slow an gets quicker as time goes by.
Your colonies themselves will start colonizing enterprises of their own after a couple of centuries before good old earth gets around establishing a thousand colonies.
So yeah, you have a point about a couple of worlds. The first colonies were established at worlds that could SUSTAIN a SMALL population.
That however doesnt mean that those worlds are able to feed untold billions effectivly today without importing food. And it doesnt mean that those able worlds actually do so.

bafoote wrote:Well its only been in the last 600 years that humanity in the HH has been able to run ships around for "free". Before that IE when ALL SL worlds were settled for 1000+++ years like Beowulf, they had to obtain all their food stuffs from their own planet. They didn't have Warshawki sails or the Hyper Generator. THey were ALL colonized by SLOW freezer ships running around at sub light speeds.

Thus, all SL worlds would have to be worlds they could easily terraform to start with. Thus no problem growing food and supporting a viable population. As if somone is going to wait 8 years for its first food shipment... YEA right.

Now a population can grow fairly quickly in 600 years, but the base 1700 SL worlds would already be settled on ONLY worlds that would sustain human population and inherent in this postulate is that they MUST be able to feed themselves.

Grayson is an extreme example. Remember they were genetically altered otherwise they would have died out like the Nuncio's??? in the Talbott Quadrant. Same reason Mesa was going cheep as a world when it was bought by Detweiler and company. The humans were genetically altered by 'x' means to survive on Mesa. Same with their food crops etc.

Sphinx would be an optimum planet to grow food on. A LONG winter to build up a snow pack, IE easy water source, and a LONG summer for multiple plantings and harvests. How easy would that be! Talk about a farmers paradise!