How to Recover from OB was-RMN Pows Held by RoH Op Thund..

richardinor wrote:SPOILER

At the book signing I attended last month, Mr. Weber said the Weyland servivors get shipped off to Bolthole

bafoote wrote:Yea well, good thing few jobs require true competence. Most are just paper pushers even if they have a fancy "title". IE fire half the engineers at the lazy B(Boeing) where I used to work and everyone would get far more work done as there wouldn't be as many damned meetings with morons feeling they had to say something, their 2 cents worth, as they were forced to attend.

IF a society has a basic education level, IE analytical abilty and hasn't simply been passing kids through the science courses, but rather forces them to develop their analytical side of their brains, then they should do fine.

The problem comes when you simply pass kids through because said kids whine that its "too hard" and because said kids aren't taught discipline by their parents who either did or did not have a tough time with math and said kids will use that as a crutch or their friends who also are undisciplined.

I have done plenty of tutoring. Take kids who said its too "hard" and beat them on the heads to actully do the work and guess what the perennial "stupid" D or F jocks became B to A students. It wasn't my brilliant teaching either. Just forcing them to do the homework.

If the society has developed the analytical side of their brains, then anyone can do most jobs competantly in less than a month. Engineering a bit longer, but not really if the data is readily available. Assuming they have the teaching background in said subject. No you aren't going to take a HS student and create a well rounded engineer in a couple months.

You could create a structural engineer in a year though. They don't need chemistry/physics/Calculus and most other classes taught. Just structural engineering, Statics/simplified Dynamics, and simplified material science course. All of that could be dumped into a single quarter actually.

Mech engineer would take longer as more classes are needed to familiarize themselves with different disciplines along with rotating machinery, bearings, mostly dyanamic scenarios and stress risers etc along with discipline specific courses.

EE, would take a bit longer as it would require calculus, well more Differential equations than calculus as it uses laplace transform equations but this is little more than algebra in usage in control circuits. Actually building circuits and programming would need whatever form of programming base is used in said society along with basic circuits and hands on Lab testing and design.

All said folks could be taught in 2 years or less if no summer breaks are given. WOuld they be "well rounded" individuals? Nope. Would get the show on the road.

Business folks would take even shorter time period << less than a quarter of intense training >>

Techs, for trouble shooting, building etc? Mostly learned on the job as this takes ability to think and remember what has gone wrong before. These folks would actually be much harder to replace after OB than the usually "higher paid" disciplines like the engineers. Of course have enough engineers, throw them over the wall to the manufacturing side as most of them "tend" to be more analytical, though slower, than the techs to fix said problem. At least I have seen this to be true in real world experience. Eventually said engineer would speed up a bit, but in general, I have seen Techs who tend to keep things a bit more simple and get the job done faster than engineers.

Anyone can babysit a computer, or computers, if precise flow charts have been created for ALL situations and there is a big red button for STOP. Yes, even my utterly incompetent grandfather who grew up in the city with an accountant father who never knew how to hold a screwdriver let alone build a box. He never knew how to change a tire if he got a flat either.

Sheriff Yoda wrote:"]My recollection was that it was somewhere between 100 k and 250 k people. THese weren't the people with detailed knowledge of Manticore's most advanced systems, but they were highly experienced ship yard workers.

Yes, I get the obvious point. Just another pool of people who can help rebuild Manticore ship building after Oyster Bay.


Question. why does Weber presume that after working their butts off to get the python lump out of the yards, why didn't any of the workers take a vacation. Under normal, American practice where people get two weeks of vacation, I'd expect that one worker in twenty-five would be off the stations along with their family having some fun. If they were Europeans it would be more like one worker in ten would be bye bye. Given all of the deferred vacations while they worked on the python lump, I'd expect that perhaps one in five ship yard workers would be taking an overdue vacation when OB hit.

Now about those retirees or people who've moved on to other professions as you would expect in a prolong society?

I'm sure that the economic minister was taking the vacationers into account when giving his estimates on how long it would take Manticore to get back on its feet after this sucker punch.

The problem with retirees and those that have moved on to other jobs is that they would have to go through at least a refresher course depending on how long they've been off the job. Then you have to deal with WHY they aren't on the job anymore, even in the Honorverse I'm sure you've got the phenomena of unemployable people cause they are lazy, incompenant or both.

I mean suppose you have someone that got fired the day before oyster bay, do you REALLY want to recall that guy afterwards?

namelessfly wrote:I'd imagine that most government workers, particularly those specializing in urban planning could easily be reassigned to ship buildign. I'm not certain how useful they would be. I've had to argue with urban planners that were so profoundly fucktarded that they couldn't even recognize the sewer lines on their own Existing Infrastructure maps much less interpret the topography to determine if said sewer lines could provide gravity flow service to the area.

All my snarkiness aside, there are a lot of blue collar jobs that take years to become proffecient at. A moderately proffecient welder can be trained in a few months. Learning the theorey is easy but developign the hand-eye coordination and muscle memory to manipulate a welder with enough precision to produce a high quality weld take lots of practice. It takes even more time to learn all of the arcane "Tricks of the Trade." How many metal fabricators have the skill to cut a threaded hole in a steel plate using a cutting torch? (Yes Virginia, it can be done. Fifty brownie points will be awarded to the alert student who can post hwo it is done). It is easy to read the plans from the engineers, select the proper components and assemble them in the proper orientation. However; there are numerous techniques that must be masterred to force the components to line up properly. Generally it is the workers with decades of experience who have to guide the younger workers in these subtle yet vital techniques for metal fabrication.

Obviously; manticore uses far more advanced technology for ship construction. However; I'd expect that the fundamentals would remain the same.

Brigade XO wrote:There is another pool of experienced shipyard workers that has not yet been mentioned or accounted for.
When all of those ships from the "python lump" went out and then over to Trevor's Star for workup, how many yard people and builders reps went with them as part of the shakedown and trials process? They were not being sent from builders to combat, they were sent into a highly restricted area with it's own major defensive capabilty to be intergrated into groups and the Fleet. These are brand new ships with new crews going out for combined trials and training. It's not like they are going on a six month deployment, without being able to drop off the civilian staff (or even military yard staff) prior to departing for active conbat .

Even ships that have been in for major repairs or modifications will often have yard or manufacturer's staff aboard when it goes out after the work is compleat. There are always problems, that's why there are trials and shakedowns. Along with the regular crew that is supposed to know how to fix this stuff, there are experienced yard people who are there for the not-so-common problems or potential problems. Usualy long time employees or experts in specific areas that provide extra experience or specialzed knowlege to be able to both identify problems and fix them. These are the kind of people who know how and why the stuff works, how things fit to gether and interact, and the practical skill sets to fix things.

So, how many experienced (very practical experienced) yard and systems reps might be out on the newest fleet vessels as part of the work-up?

richardinor wrote:No Vince nothing was said about those workers

SWM wrote:I believe that Richardinor was saying that nothing has been said about such workers being a resource after OB. Which is correct--they have not been mentioned.