Honorverse ramblings and musings

1) Grayson lost most of it's "orbital" manufacturing capability with the attack on Blackbird in Oyster Bay along with the people who knew how to build the warships. They did not have the good fortune to have almost the entire R&D operation's people saved because of a drill on the Sphinx research station. While they do have experienced people and facilities in actual Grayson orbit, those facilities and people are structured in the direction of needs for the orbital farms and whatever you want to group as "related" industries but not specificaly in repair or construction of ships & weapons. We have not yet been told what assistance Grayson is receiving from Beowulf via Manticore or Haven in the rebuilding efforts. That is going to be important not only for Grayson but for eventual build-out of trade in the quadrant.

2) Neither the GA nor anybody else has any idea that the Lenny Detts even exist, let alone what their capasity and profiles are. We don't actually know what the capabilities are except that they will be able to use internal launchers for things like the Graser Torpedos and are sure to have other weapons systems in addition to the Spider Drive and various cloaking/stealth capabilities. That anybody is going to build Corvettes or anything else- at this time- to counter a potential future raid by one or more Lenny Detts is not reasonable. At this time, nobody in the GA or friends has a handle on detecting the Spider Drive nor any of the ships like the Ghosts or Sharks, let alone a Lenny Dett. Also, nobody yet has mentioned being able to detect a Streak Drive in operation though -if they were to board and inspect a Streak Drive ships- they might have enough questions about the geometry and physical feathers of the drive equipment that it might be pulled in for further study. That is if they looked at the drive when they did an inspection of the ship for any of a number of reasons (customer, anti-slavery, fee generation on finding "violations" of various regulations and procedures as a way of generating revenue).

If you think you are going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, you are going to take what you can build or get now and keep looking for improvement while you build you capabilities. If you can build your capabilities. Half dozen LACs vs one Corvette? Half dozen LACs vs one Frigate? Two "surplus" RMN modern LACs vs a Frigate? And that would be against a pirate using a modified freighter. Agains somebody in a ex-whoever DD, not so much. Against anybody's BC, almost less than toilet paper (which would be used in copious amounts).

It is plausable that most systems, post League, are going to want to attempt to make themselves too expensive to raid or attack. That is defense that makes the other guy decide to go elsewhere rather than make the attempt. Productive against ordinary pirates, not so much against brigands with lots of weapons.

Building a spaceborn industry up to the level of building hyper-capable warships is going to be a massive investment and will require also importing a lot of technical help to train your workforce. To begin to make that even start to work, you are also going to have to create the industries (and workforce) that will supply the materials and things you need. Sure, you can probably buy a lot of equipment from somewhere but you want the capasity to make stuff on your own. You need to supply your own population, your own industries and generate exports of whatever types to fund and support your planet and your growth. None of this stands alone in priorities.

cthia wrote:I did consider that Torch would be limited by available warm bodies. Though I was thinking they'd build the smaller ships below the wall, as automated as possible. I did NOT know the severity of their "warm body" count. I always imagined a steady influx of freed slaves coming in all of the time. (Exactly how many slaves throughout the galaxy could there be awaiting freedom?)

Sir Lucien Cortez' skills could be called upon. If BuPers can't do it, no one can. What about officers on half-pay? Some officers that are retired may find important slots. I wonder if Torch would be willing to give Bachfish a go? Torch could rehabilitate Bachfish in the manner as Honor rehabilitated Jaruwalski.

BuPers can do it. Also, Torch could be loaned officers from various polities.

I always thought there were many millions of slaves, alone, that need employment and a sense of purpose.

And wouldn't it be an outstanding brand of poetic justice if some of the best officers and tacticians turn out to be molded from freed slaves?

You are presuming that there is a meaningful number of half-pay officers who are available. Manticore already broke the bank to man their wave of construction that came out just prior to Oyster Bay. Anyone left is probably someone you don't want in charge of a lemonade stand, much less a shipyard.

And yes, Torch has been loaned officers from other navies. We've already met a few. But all their attention is spent simply building the foundations for their military - basic things like organization and training facilities. They're nowhere close to being ready to gear up for a sustained industrial effort to build shipyards, and then warships.

Another thought to help alleviate the crew problem is to offer "last chance" pirates a chance to become rehabilitated and become officers of the Torch navy. If facing death, I think it'd be a no-brainer. That would also create a need for treecats to be placed in a position to sample the trustworthiness of "reforming" pirates.

Your average Honorverse pirate has as much useful naval skills as a pirate operating off the Somalian coast has today. Which is to say, completely and utterly laughable. And that doesn't even get into just how few treecats there are at Torch to begin with. There is already a severe shortage of treecats available to serve as bodyguards for important leaders of the Grand Alliance. They're not going to waste the ones they have babysitting pirates.

Brigade XO wrote:1) Grayson lost most of it's "orbital" manufacturing capability with the attack on Blackbird in Oyster Bay along with the people who knew how to build the warships. They did not have the good fortune to have almost the entire R&D operation's people saved because of a drill on the Sphinx research station. While they do have experienced people and facilities in actual Grayson orbit, those facilities and people are structured in the direction of needs for the orbital farms and whatever you want to group as "related" industries but not specificaly in repair or construction of ships & weapons. We have not yet been told what assistance Grayson is receiving from Beowulf via Manticore or Haven in the rebuilding efforts. That is going to be important not only for Grayson but for eventual build-out of trade in the quadrant.

2) Neither the GA nor anybody else has any idea that the Lenny Detts even exist, let alone what their capasity and profiles are. We don't actually know what the capabilities are except that they will be able to use internal launchers for things like the Graser Torpedos and are sure to have other weapons systems in addition to the Spider Drive and various cloaking/stealth capabilities. That anybody is going to build Corvettes or anything else- at this time- to counter a potential future raid by one or more Lenny Detts is not reasonable. At this time, nobody in the GA or friends has a handle on detecting the Spider Drive nor any of the ships like the Ghosts or Sharks, let alone a Lenny Dett. Also, nobody yet has mentioned being able to detect a Streak Drive in operation though -if they were to board and inspect a Streak Drive ships- they might have enough questions about the geometry and physical feathers of the drive equipment that it might be pulled in for further study. That is if they looked at the drive when they did an inspection of the ship for any of a number of reasons (customer, anti-slavery, fee generation on finding "violations" of various regulations and procedures as a way of generating revenue).

About the only way to see the streak drive operate differently would be for a warship to be in the unfathomably improbably position of cruising by within sensor range, in the Theta bands, as a streak equipped ship made a downward transition through the (presumed to be) impenetrable Iota wall.
The energy bleed would be clear evidence that they were coming down from a higher hyper band that wasn't accessible to known state of the art hyper generators.

As for detecting spider ships, not only are you right but it occurs to me that the only approach even suggested in universe requires lots of survivable, hyper capable, units able to flood the area with recon drones. (And a very large, very expensive, system sensor installation). That was the tactic of aggressively responding to any hyper ghost detected within a light month or so of the system and flooding the area with passive sensors to attempt to detect even super stealthy ships trying to creep away.
But LACs, or Corvettes, are useless (on their own) for that because you need to use hyper to get in the area quickly enough to have any prayer of detecting a spider ship sneaking away. It'd take weeks to get there through n-space.

[/size=80](With LACs you could use a CLAC to bring them out there, but for the manpower you probably get better sensor coverage sending DDs which can launch and control lots of ghost rider recon drones - and you can shotgun their entry points around some and mitigate the risk of all emerging within weapons range of the target. And Corvettes wouldn't even have that option; though I guess you could build a Corvette carrier but it'd probably only be able to carry at best about 24 'Vetts, vs a CLAC's near 100 LACs)[/size]

[quote="Duckk"]http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/56/1

That infodump is concerned with Naval manning of captured/large ships. I'm not suggesting that Torch even attempt a massive increase in their Navy. I'm suggesting that the target recruiting to acquire the skills to build a ship construction capability from scratch.

Few of the slaves on Torch at independence were trained technicians. Torch therefore needs to recruit/import the technical knowledge from somewhere else. In the 2,000+ known worlds, there have to be knowledgeable, trained people -- with slave connections or otherwise -- willing to come to Torch either temporarily to train others or permanently to get in on the ground floor of a construction industry.

They don't need to shoot for the levels Manticore, Grayson, Haven and other major shipbuilders hit before Oyster Bay. They don't even need to aim for building complete ships initially -- they can either assemble ships from sub-assemblies built elsewhere or contract to build sub-assemblies for Erewhon and others.

Just a couple hundred skilled people willing to take on apprentices and start small with the basics will build Torch a credible ship-building capacity in fairly short order.

ETA: There's going to be a lot of former Technodyne Industries of Yildun on the job market in the near future. Avoid the high-ranking types and employ the grunts just slaving away for a paycheck.

You said the Torches "have training and experience in space construction, military service, ship handling (merchant marine) and just about any skill needed to jumpstart a ship-building industry." The point of the infodump was to show that is completely, demonstrably false. The majority of Torches are effectively uneducated. Their knowledge consists largely of whatever rote learning needed for their duties, and is not remotely suitable as a basis for starting up a modern industrial base.

Duckk wrote:You are presuming that there is a meaningful number of half-pay officers who are available. Manticore already broke the bank to man their wave of construction that came out just prior to Oyster Bay. Anyone left is probably someone you don't want in charge of a lemonade stand, much less a shipyard.

And then a very large number got killed at BoM.

No one ever said that scaring up warm bodies was an easy task, not even Sir Lucien would dare make that claim.

Hmm, "scaring" up bodies -- perhaps that's why it's called "Boo Pers?" lol

Seriously, it seems like a very impractical proposition to have to have another polity repair your ships. At least a minimum of a repair slip infrastructure is needed.

That fact would seem to make Torch's carrying trade a target -- hoping to acquire a windfall of hardware en route there.

kzt wrote:

Duckk wrote:You are presuming that there is a meaningful number of half-pay officers who are available. Manticore already broke the bank to man their wave of construction that came out just prior to Oyster Bay. Anyone left is probably someone you don't want in charge of a lemonade stand, much less a shipyard.

And then a very large number got killed at BoM.

You're correct. I did assume that there were many available on half-pay, scattered throughout the galaxy looking for work and a meaningful life -- as Bachfish.

I never thought that half-pay officers were among the pool of warm bodies that BuPers ever used. I would think that is the pool of last resort. If indeed that well has already been tapped, then it seems BuPers will have a hard time crewing any significant number of new ships constructed.

Why didn't BoM put BuPers into Code Black!?