League FTL

Vince wrote:And to extend the analogy, Maniticoran R & D is more akin to the US Manhattan Project during World War II.

With Grayson playing a role in Manticoran R&D equivalent to the UK's "Tube Alloys" team that became an integral part of the Manhattan Project?

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

pnakasone wrote:Just the sheer amount of resources America was able to dedicate to the Manhattan Project was outstanding.

The SL if it can get its head out of rear and its act together just by the sheer amount of resources can match the RMN in very short time period.

I disagree. Let's posit a successful attack by Japan in taking out the Pacific carriers at Pearl Harbor, combined with an simultaneous attack by the Nazi's taking out both the Norfolk and NY shipyards at the beginning of WWII. Does that give Germany enough time to develop atomic weaponry and rockets before the US can "get back across the pond", AKA does England survive as free nation long enough to act as the invasion landing points for both North Africa, Italy, and D-DAY?

That's the situation the Solarian League is in at present. The GA has the capacity to near-term destroy virtually all of the League's hulls (active, mothballed, and shipyards), so even if they got to "FTL, MDM, and GA level compensators" near term, it would still take a rather long time to come up with a "bolthole location" and build enough ships to take out the Alliance ships near term. What the GA can't do is police enough systems to keep that Bolthole from happening in the longer term.

Your attack scenario would theoretically work in the very short term. But would've been bust with in a year. The U.S. had massive shipbuilding capability during WWII. Your attack overlooked the NSY's at Portsmouth NH, Boston MA, Philadelphia PA and Charleston SC. And the civilian shipyards in Bath ME, Boston MA, Fall River MA, Philadelphia/Camden PA/NJ, Baltimore MD, Charleston SC, Mobile AL, and Houston TX. These yards built just about everything in the U.S. arsenal ranging SS's and DD's up to CV's.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

pnakasone wrote:Just the sheer amount of resources America was able to dedicate to the Manhattan Project was outstanding.

The SL if it can get its head out of rear and its act together just by the sheer amount of resources can match the RMN in very short time period.

I disagree. Let's posit a successful attack by Japan in taking out the Pacific carriers at Pearl Harbor, combined with an simultaneous attack by the Nazi's taking out both the Norfolk and NY shipyards at the beginning of WWII. Does that give Germany enough time to develop atomic weaponry and rockets before the US can "get back across the pond", AKA does England survive as free nation long enough to act as the invasion landing points for both North Africa, Italy, and D-DAY?

That's the situation the Solarian League is in at present. The GA has the capacity to near-term destroy virtually all of the League's hulls (active, mothballed, and shipyards), so even if they got to "FTL, MDM, and GA level compensators" near term, it would still take a rather long time to come up with a "bolthole location" and build enough ships to take out the Alliance ships near term. What the GA can't do is police enough systems to keep that Bolthole from happening in the longer term.

Period atomic weapons turned out to be less effective that the same amount of money invested in conventional heavy bombers armed with explosives and incendiaries.

SharkHunter wrote:That's the situation the Solarian League is in at present. The GA has the capacity to near-term destroy virtually all of the League's hulls (active, mothballed, and shipyards), so even if they got to "FTL, MDM, and GA level compensators" near term, it would still take a rather long time to come up with a "bolthole location" and build enough ships to take out the Alliance ships near term. What the GA can't do is police enough systems to keep that Bolthole from happening in the longer term.

Also, the probability of an SLN 'bolthole' location remaining secret is ... slim. The SLN leaks like a sieve.

phillies wrote:Period atomic weapons turned out to be less effective that the same amount of money invested in conventional heavy bombers armed with explosives and incendiaries.

Think of it as a shock and awe weapon. One bomb dropped by one bomber did what would have taken a larger amount of bombers using conventional weapons to do. It was also to keep the Soviet Union from trying anything right away after World War 2.

Solarian R&D: We should not forget, that the Money disappears on the way down to the final target! So, if you spent Billons of credits for science, how many Money would get into the Hands of the scientists?

I think in that way is the Great Alliance a Little bit more effective.....

In all the posts on this thread there is one point that has not been considered. All your points have been about the League & especially, the SLN, as a whole. What I wonder is about individual systems within the League.

We know from the text that several League SDFs sent observers who submitted reports on all they had seen including the FTL Comm, increased acceleration rates & missile ranges & salvo sizes. We also know, (from Storm in the Shadows) that several of them are as large as the Royal Manticoran Navy pre build-up & that they are a lot more advanced & innovative than the SLN. Now the SLN may have ignored those reports but I am pretty certain that their own SDFs would not have. So I have to wonder if any of those SDFs have been quietly working on their own FTL programmes... amongst other things.

Rincewind wrote:In all the posts on this thread there is one point that has not been considered. All your points have been about the League & especially, the SLN, as a whole. What I wonder is about individual systems within the League.

We know from the text that several League SDFs sent observers who submitted reports on all they had seen including the FTL Comm, increased acceleration rates & missile ranges & salvo sizes. We also know, (from Storm in the Shadows) that several of them are as large as the Royal Manticoran Navy pre build-up & that they are a lot more advanced & innovative than the SLN. Now the SLN may have ignored those reports but I am pretty certain that their own SDFs would not have. So I have to wonder if any of those SDFs have been quietly working on their own FTL programmes... amongst other things.

"The Service of the Sward, "With one stone (1901)"":
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next-generation electronic warfare drones, and maybe throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BuWeaps . . .

and it still took a year or two to develop, even though the technology to implement it was already there. HotQ 1903.

The SL should be able to do Morris code style FTL in about a year, as long as it is kept to ships. Based on comments by the detweilers, it dosen't look like the alignment has even FTL Morris code, even though it has known about it for several years. Since the alighment hasn't got it yet, despite a big incentive, it might be harder than I thank it should be. Regardless of difficulty, I doubt that any of the SDF's could have even Morris code FTL sooner than 1-2 years, possibly much more.

Once morris code FTL communications was created, it took manticore between 10-15 years to develop modulated FTL and full FTL communications because it was still morris code in AoV (1913) but was full modulated in WoO (1918)

Don't expect anyone else to have FTL recon drones anytime soon because they would need beta squared nodes and microfusion plants as well.

Although shipboard morris code FTL might be available in the SL as soon as a year, I seem to recall that it required a shipboard to either change out or modify the impeller nodes. Don't expect them to get full FTL communications for at least a decade, possibly longer, and it is 99.9% certain that the SL will break up before then.

darrell wrote:"The Service of the Sward, "With one stone (1901)"":
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next-generation electronic warfare drones, and maybe throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BuWeaps . . .

and it still took a year or two to develop, even though the technology to implement it was already there. HotQ 1903.

Keep in mind that all of Hemphill's internal musings there are along the line of miniaturization, i.e. cramming the FTL into the recon drones we first saw in HOTQ. As that same story shows, crude morse code style FTL signaling is literally possible just by flickering the nodes of an unmodified heavy cruiser - the advanced manty tech comes in when you want to make it small enough to fit into a drone, directional enough to make interception difficult, and fast-repeating enough for decent bandwidth, but the basic *idea* doesn't require any of that.

In other words, the most basic level of FTL signaling is *already* available to anyone who's been exposed to the idea - it won't take a year, it's already there. It's of limited usefulness at the moment, but it still would provide a significant weapon in the toolbox of a clever enough commander. (Of course, the SLN doesn't seem to have very many of those, but the SDFs might.) And I think you may have missed part of what Rincewind was saying - I think he was suggesting that some of the SDFs might have *started working on the idea* earlier than the SL did, since the SL is so notoriously slow to notice new ideas. If that's the case, then some of them might already have the shipboard version, at least on wallers that can most easily afford the mass penalty that the lower levels of miniaturization would impose.

(Also, please, it's morse code, not morris code. I know it's a nitpick, but it annoys me. XD)

It's not a story by David. And the timeline doesn't work. And the entire trick shown is trivially obvious. It's like getting inspired by a fire to come up with smoke signals, which 2 years later leads to IPv6 video conferencing over 5Ghz wireless.