Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

cthia wrote:That's when the honeymoon is over between Haven and Manticore and the bride and groom has a chance to actually feel each other out and see if matrimony was the right move. It is when the bride and groom has to face each other in day to day life. When Haven still has to figure out how to feed its many people.

I'm pretty sure Haven (the Republic thereof) doesn't have an issue with keeping its people fed.
I expect that most planets are self-sufficient for food, although in extreme cases the food for the lower parts of society are vat-grown products, that provide the necessary nutrients and calories, but aren't really the sort of thing anybody wants to eat if there's an alternative.

For that matter, it'd be extremely inhumane, but regeneration therapies could theoretically be applied to food animals. That probably wouldn't be cost effective, though.



Economically speaking ... Haven's only going to improve, Manticore's got a shaky period (thanks to Oyster Bay) but will massively improve once they're past the worst of it.
Frankly, Grayson's the place that's the most screwed - they don't really have any major exports, although they were selling ships and components to Manticore prior to Oyster Bay, and they don't have any clear alternative sources of system revenue like Manticore does with the Junction.
Frankly, with the Junction (and only ever increasing traffic through it), and the massive might of the Manticoran Merchant Marine, the trading/manufacturing cartels, and being a major interstellar banking hub (and probably a major hub for interstellar news agencies as well), I'm not sure why Manticore had to raise taxes.

munroburton wrote:
The Mesans developed both drives, ffs. Why wouldn't they put a streak generator on everything new they build?

Especially as their courier boats are already packing streak drives without noticeable external changes. If they can do that, then their Ghost-class scout frigates have them. And if the Ghosts have them, then the Sharks and Leonards almost certainly do.

The only thing I can think of is a kind of bureaucratic oversight whereby the Sharks, intended as training ships, weren't given a more expensive streak generator. But if that was the case, why wouldn't they have omitted the generator entirely?

The Spiders don't have the telltale sign of a "standard hyper generator", where the streak is supposed to effectively be a "highly overpowered" hyper generator. Those seem incompatible. That is the reason I doubt the streak-spider connection; both being gravitic systems, and Simoes would have to have studied how to make them interface without tearing the ship to shreds. Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:The Spiders don't have the telltale sign of a "standard hyper generator", where the streak is supposed to effectively be a "highly overpowered" hyper generator.

You're confusing impeller drives with Hyper-generators. "Streak Drives" don't have any external characteristics to betray them any more than a standard or mil-spec hyper generator does.

Spider drives aren't compatible with Impeller drives (wedges) but that has nothing to do with hyper-generator compatibilities.

SharkHunter wrote:The Spiders don't have the telltale sign of a "standard hyper generator", where the streak is supposed to effectively be a "highly overpowered" hyper generator. Those seem incompatible. That is the reason I doubt the streak-spider connection; both being gravitic systems, and Simoes would have to have studied how to make them interface without tearing the ship to shreds. Thoughts?

They didn't have large signals from their entry into n-space because they did so very far out an dead slow speeds. But I can't recall any clue or hints within the books that hypergenerator tech had any impact on the n-space signal generated by emergence. That was controlled by a ship's mass and it's velocity. (More so the later, because the 92% energy drop from Alpha to n-space appears to partially bleed over into the FTL emergency signal along the Alpha wall)

An SD's full velocity crash dive should be somewhat "louder" than a DDs, but an SD at relative rest would have far less emergence signal than a DD's high speed entry. But again, I can't recall any indication that generator technology would effect that "loudness" of that signal...


For your other point even if there was some incompatibility between the streak drive (aka bigger hypergenerator) and the spider drive I think all you'd have to do is turn off the spider drive briefly during transits. And I'd be truly shocked if the streak drive generator was any different in terms of spider-compatibility than a 'normal' military or civilian hypergeneror. I'd hazard a guess that likely none of them have an issue, but I'd be far more confident that if any did then all would.

I don't have time to scan through all the good answers to find perhaps some of my own. So perhaps I am repeating myself which is not good. Is there a way to collect all my threads here?

The Sollies will roll over the Grand Alliance in less than 5 years. There will be no Empire of Manticore. Once the Sollie new design new construction hits it is all over. Compare this with 1941.

Actually early 1942. The USA crushed the third (3rd) largest modern navy in less than 4 years. The Japanese had no chance. Compare the Japanese Navy to the Grand Alliance Navy. Yikes indeed.

The GA will run wild for about one year. All the Sollies have to do is play very non fair. Find and destroy Bolt Hole. Just destroy the GAs ability to build, move, find and exploit. Easy to do?

Quantity has a quality of it own. Russian front. David Weber may have painted himself into a literary corner with this. Easy to hand wave. The Sollies are that sleeping giant. The GA will be crushed. Oh boy.

And do not forget the evil intent and proven track record of the Mesans. Kinetic strikes on populated GA planets? Yep!

HB of CJ wrote:I don't have time to scan through all the good answers to find perhaps some of my own. So perhaps I am repeating myself which is not good. Is there a way to collect all my threads here?

The Sollies will roll over the Grand Alliance in less than 5 years. There will be no Empire of Manticore. Once the Sollie new design new construction hits it is all over. Compare this with 1941.

Actually early 1942. The USA crushed the third (3rd) largest modern navy in less than 4 years. The Japanese had no chance. Compare the Japanese Navy to the Grand Alliance Navy. Yikes indeed.

The GA will run wild for about one year. All the Sollies have to do is play very non fair. Find and destroy Bolt Hole. Just destroy the GAs ability to build, move, find and exploit. Easy to do?

Quantity has a quality of it own. Russian front. David Weber may have painted himself into a literary corner with this. Easy to hand wave. The Sollies are that sleeping giant. The GA will be crushed. Oh boy.

And do not forget the evil intent and proven track record of the Mesans. Kinetic strikes on populated GA planets? Yep!

1) Can't compare the USN and IJN, for one thing the gap between their capabilities was not so great as you make it seem.

2) The US industrial power was well out of the reach of the IJN, while the GA has a powerful force that the SLN cannot dislodge right at the heart of the core worlds(Beowulf).

3) How would the SLN find Bolthole when they don't even know it exists? And if they were to find out, how do they go about doing the very thing that the RMN and GSN had tried and failed to do?

4) The military technological capabilities of the GA are so great that that the SLN stands zero chance to penetrate any of the larger concentrations of industry the GA has.



There are at least 125 SD's in Haven as well as Pods and forts. Grayson Probably has somewhere in the neighbourhood of another 50-60 SD's with pods and forts. The Grand Fleet has 440 SD's plus the once they had in Beowulf which was if I remember correctly ~60 SD's. Haven might have another 200 SD's at various stages of completion and/or workup plus whatever defences they have protecting Beowulf. So by my math the GA has somewhere in the neighbourhood of 875 SD's whereas the SLN has 1430 SD's "ready" for operations and another 300 for refit.

So unless the SLN decides to send the entire remaining strength of SD's against a single Manticorean or Havenite secondary system they wont stand a chance, and even then there might not be too much remaining of the SLN.

The SLN has a lot of catching up to do technologically(R&D)before they even consider building new SD's that can come within shouting distance of the GA. It would be at least 5-10 years for that IF they can survive for that long.


Quantity is a quality of its own when there is enough quantity or the difference in quality is not that big. In this case comparing the situation between the GA and the League to Germany and Russia is faulty because the technological difference was once again not that great. It was not Soviet Army with 1940's weapons beating a German Army with 2016 weapons.

When two of yours are as good as one of mine then Quantity has a chance, when you need 20-25 of yours to take down one of mine and even then lose most of your force it doesn't look good for quantity.

As for the MA using kinetic strikes? Doubt it unless they have a plan to destroy every single GA planet and manage to kill every single citizen of the GA.

Eventually someone will figure out who the MA is backing, would you want to be the guy that gives the other side a reason to bombard your planets? What do you think happens to the RF if the survivors of the GA figure out that the MA was behind the attacks and the MA is backing the RF?

The USN in 1942 had a problem with force projection. It took awhile to get their act together. The IJN did a great job of force projection and superiority, (long enough) at Pearl Harbor.

They could have hung around for a week. They did not. Fortunately.

Do not forget the evil Mesans. Wonder if they will blab Bolt Hole stuff to the Sollies ... all sub rosa. The Japanese Navy did fine concentrating. The USN could but didn't for almost 1 year.

Midway was a fluke. "Do we eat better than the Japanese?"

Do not underestimate the evil ability of the Mesans to do dirty deeds. Seems they already did it once to Manticore. Why not also to it to everybody then blame everybody? Things look bad for the GA.

The GA will awaken the Sollie sleeping giant. Yikes indeed!

HB of CJ wrote:Do not forget the evil Mesans. Wonder if they will blab Bolt Hole stuff to the Sollies ... all sub rosa.

They could do sneaky things like read the parliamentary discussions about this from news media and public government sources on Manticore.

None of this stuff is a deep dark secret. The general overview and detailed discussions of the battles of the 1st war will have been discussed in the numerous books published by beached officers during the 5 years of "negotiations".

I'm sure the same happened to a lesser extent in Haven.

The post BoM report would have been publicly released due to the demand of the next of kin of the half million or so RMN casualties as to how this kind of debacle could happen and who was responsible.

Refineries and mining was not blown up and civilian production was not blown up which was why the Nat Turners were being produced even after Oyster bay. Just the three main stations were destroyed and anything parked nearby.

HB of CJ wrote:I don't have time to scan through all the good answers to find perhaps some of my own. So perhaps I am repeating myself which is not good. Is there a way to collect all my threads here?

The Sollies will roll over the Grand Alliance in less than 5 years. There will be no Empire of Manticore. Once the Sollie new design new construction hits it is all over. Compare this with 1941.

Actually early 1942. The USA crushed the third (3rd) largest modern navy in less than 4 years. The Japanese had no chance. Compare the Japanese Navy to the Grand Alliance Navy. Yikes indeed.

The GA will run wild for about one year. All the Sollies have to do is play very non fair. Find and destroy Bolt Hole. Just destroy the GAs ability to build, move, find and exploit. Easy to do?

Quantity has a quality of it own. Russian front. David Weber may have painted himself into a literary corner with this. Easy to hand wave. The Sollies are that sleeping giant. The GA will be crushed. Oh boy.

And do not forget the evil intent and proven track record of the Mesans. Kinetic strikes on populated GA planets? Yep!

You are forgetting the tech imbalance. The GA has FTL communicaitons, faster ships, CLAC's, MDM's, Ghostrider, Apollo, etc. It will take at least 5 years before the SL will be able to match the GA technology. After all, Manticore has been researching weapons technology for 75 years. For a real life example compare WW 1 vs WW 2 technology.

You are also forgetting the build difference. Haven currently has several shipyards that can each complete a SD a month, for a total of 5-10 per month. (haven, bolthole, plus others) The solarian league has several shipyards, none of which can complete more than 1-3 per year, for a total of 10-20 per year.

First, the SL will need to build effective LAC's, CLAC's, MDM's, FTL, etc. Next, they will need to upgrade their shipyards 20 times so that they are building 20-30 per month instead of 10-20 per year.

There is no way that the SL can hope to defeat the GA in less than 10 years.

Imagine how different WW 2 would have gone if:

Japan had zero's, aircraft carriers, and battleships with 16" guns, along with the ability to complete an aircraft carrier or battleship every week. (WW2 tech, 50 ships per year)

The US had biplanes and battleships with 12" guns, and could only complete a new battleship every 3 months. (WW1 tech 4 ships per year)

edit: The US has the biggest baddest navy on the sea, so why spend the money on R & D?