Build a Fleet!

kzt wrote:...Assume each is willing to pay 1,000 per year for defense. ...

That's the assumption I question. Would 200 billion people be willing to support a military build up without a clear and present danger?

Sigs made a point that a Democracy wouldn't stand for military spending it thought was excessive.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And in a LAC sized hull you might not be able to mount enough nodes to pull even 150g.

Good points, but I did consider the mass penalty and specified a "frigate sized" LAC.

I know they're not optimal for the LAC role as we've seen LACs employed, but I believe there would be a lot of sub-optimal legacy equipment around at the 1950-1960 PD point of the Honorverse.

Likewise, the System Defense missiles don't really need a fifth stage or to combine GA Multi-drive tech with Technodyne's multi-stage tech. But I can see the extra drive and "best of both world's" tech being a selling point right after the collapse of the SL. Not an optimal design for several reasons, but adequate to the purpose of overwhelming an attacking fleet with missiles.

I must have missed that "frigate sized LAC" from upthread; sorry about that. But weren't the Ghost-class frigate sized? And they carried nothing but engines and sensor arrays.

You'd might well have to get up to at least DD sized to mount the equivalent of a even a Shrike's weapons and defenses on a spider powered ship... And I'm still unclear on why you need huge, even stealthier, but quite sluggish LACs.


As for the 5 drive missile; I still don't see why anybody would build it. It's not just sub-optimal but it's less optimal than a 4 drive system defense missile. The extra drive pushes up the size and cost but results in basically no more usable range.
A 4 drive missile already can provide full coverage across an entire hyper limit (assuming sufficiently relayed FTL fire-control) making a 5th drive counterproductive.


Also I see no reason to mix and match RMN multi-drive with "Technodyne" multi-stage. Multi-drive has a clear advantage in every respect; so if you know how to build the "baffle" to enable it why would you build anything else?

Obviously if you don't how then you have no choice but to build truly gigantic multi-stage missiles to get 3 or 4 stages; because you need many meters of physical seperation to keep the inactive drive nodes from being destroyed by the active ones.
But with the "baffle" to enable multi-drive I can't think of a single advantage for multi-stage over multi-drive.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for the 5 drive missile; I still don't see why anybody would build it.

If you build it, you can find a sucker to buy it. Same for the Spider-LACs.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:...dozen systems of equal economic and industrial ability ...

You have a dozen Wormhole Junctions that cover 2/3 of the league border too?

I don't doubt that you could build the infrastructure, the SDs, the screening elements, the missiles, Drones, and all of the other minutia. I just doubt you could get a democracy to pony up around a trillion bucks in taxes without a clear and present danger.

If you are using the GA as a bogeyman to convince your taxpayers you need such a big Navy, the GA is going to stomp you before you get it built.

No, but the Wormhole and the Merchant marine do not make Manticore the equivalent to a dozen equally industrialized systems, even taking the Junction and the Merchant Marine into account I will still have at least 8 times the income of Manticore...

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:...Assume each is willing to pay 1,000 per year for defense. ...

That's the assumption I question. Would 200 billion people be willing to support a military build up without a clear and present danger?

Sigs made a point that a Democracy wouldn't stand for military spending it thought was excessive.

I made a point that a democracy won't stand for excessive spending on someone else's defence as opposed to your own...

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:...Assume each is willing to pay 1,000 per year for defense. ...

That's the assumption I question. Would 200 billion people be willing to support a military build up without a clear and present danger?

Sigs made a point that a Democracy wouldn't stand for military spending it thought was excessive.

A thousand year for your defense isn't that excessive. Particularly as it would be structured so that every system gets contracts for parts, construction and/or bases.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As for the 5 drive missile; I still don't see why anybody would build it.

If you build it, you can find a sucker to buy it. Same for the Spider-LACs.

So you are the sucker?

Sigs wrote:So you are the sucker?

The 20 systems joining to create my confederation were; they are not necessarily now.

kzt wrote:A thousand year for your defense isn't that excessive. Particularly as it would be structured so that every system gets contracts for parts, construction and/or bases.

Defense, yes. Sigs 300-500 SDs is more than "defense." Who, or what, is he defending against?

Prolong: Even assuming no one in Silesia has it or the TQ, in 20 years(this scenario as posted), the population that will have it will be everyone under the age of 45 which is over 60% if we assume an increased in total age due to better health care. If the health care does not happen, then the total population will be 70% with prolong by the time this scenario rolls around.

Conversely we can come at this problem from the SL's perspective where they all have prolong and the planet workforce available to a core world with an average population of 5Billion and 20+ worlds can easily man/produce a navy equal that of Manticore.

Of course the SL has 2000 such worlds... without even getting into the protectorates, let alone the verge population.

kzt wrote:You have 25 core systems with say 8 billion people each. All with prolong. So 200 billion population. Assume each is willing to pay 1,000 per year for defense. That's 200 trillion a year. In a war or high threat it goes higher, I can see 2 quadrillion a year before you go into deficit spending, which you will in a war.

How many of that 200 billion population are non earners,
(children, students, OAPs) who don't have the wherewithal to contribute anything?