Fate of Hancock station?

SharkHunter wrote:If I had to hazard a guess -- aka this is just my "not RFC but an authorial type" opinion-- Hancock is still operational and vital to it's "service area". Otherwise Allied ships in the area of Alizon, Yorik, Zanzibar, etc. really don't have much of a place to go for overhaul and refit currently. After Oyster Bay it would be even more important; realistically where else are many of the Grayson, RMN, and other ships going to be refit and re-armed? Yes, Trevor's star, but it's a LOT easier to resupply the base as a strong nodal position.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Hancock isn't really well defended with sysem defense pods and a huge sensor array left over from the Peep and early RN years before the Grand Alliance formed. There's no reason to deconstruct the base or that array; the skilled workers there can do more to train up-and-comers needing the skills "in place" than anywhere else.

Thoughts?

Hancock Station could be like it was in EoH, a test and evaluation center away from prying eyes. The USN has several areas were it test new technologies and developes new tactics well out side shipping lanes. Like AUTEC (Atlantic Underwater Test and Evaluation Center) in the Bahamas, but the actual range area is east of the islands.

munroburton wrote:
Really depends how much raw fabrication capability Hancock has and how much it relied on a warehouse of spares topped up by semi-regular shipments from the home system. More of the latter than the former and Hancock will run dry eventually.

It's all cool because David doesn't think about this much. Note that not a single RMN line officer has expressed ANY concerns about maintenance logistics or has suggested changing how the fleet operates to extend the time it will take before they start having to deadline ships due to usage and lack of spares.

kzt wrote:David's economic numbers don't really work. Using any rational assumptions you find that the entire industrial economy of Manticore was somewhere between 30,000 and 120,000 people, which means 0.005% of the entire population was invoked in making anything. This includes every single consumer product (from door knobs to toilet paper to computer chips) as well as civilian vehicles as well as every piece of every RMN ship.

Then you have his statements about how you can't get more than 1% of the population in the military due to the economy. So don't think about it too long, that way lies madness.

It works for me. As an illistration, Today a large auto factory with 1,000 robots and 100 workers on the factory floor(not counting clerks, bookkeepers, etc. in the office) can build about 250 cars an hour.

100 years ago the ford motor company could build about 100 cars an hour with 1,000 assembly line workers.

If we follow the trend.

In 100 years, 10,000 robots and 10 factory workers, not counting office help, could build 4,000 cars an hour.

In 200 years, 100,000 robots and 1 factory worker, not counting office help could build 16,000 cars an hour.

Running just one shift a day, 40 hour weeks, 50 weeks a year (2 weeks vacation) the factory would produce 32 million cars a year. That is more cars than were produced in any country in 2015 (China, 24,503,744) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... production

4 workers running a 42 hour work week could keep the plant running 24/7 and that would produce 140 million cars, which is more cars than produced by the entire world in 2015. (90,780,583)

In just 200 years it is possible for just a few thousand workers to build all goods used in the world today, so in 2,000 years I suspect that even the low end of 30,000 factory workers is way more than manticore would need. once they retool.

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:
Really depends how much raw fabrication capability Hancock has and how much it relied on a warehouse of spares topped up by semi-regular shipments from the home system. More of the latter than the former and Hancock will run dry eventually.

It's all cool because David doesn't think about this much. Note that not a single RMN line officer has expressed ANY concerns about maintenance logistics or has suggested changing how the fleet operates to extend the time it will take before they start having to deadline ships due to usage and lack of spares.

That's not entirely true. In Echoes of Honor Hamish, his brother Willy & Thomas Caparelli have a discussion where Caparelli informs Hamish that they have had to withdraw 25% of the battle fleet from frontline service for refits & essential maintenance. At that Hamish thinks it is almost two thirds more than the mandated 15% maximum & Caparelli tells him that they have had to defer essential maintenance to enable him to capture Trevor's Star.

Admittedly that is the only time I can find it explicitly referred to.

Rincewind wrote:That's not entirely true. In Echoes of Honor Hamish, his brother Willy & Thomas Caparelli have a discussion where Caparelli informs Hamish that they have had to withdraw 25% of the battle fleet from frontline service for refits & essential maintenance. At that Hamish thinks it is almost two thirds more than the mandated 15% maximum & Caparelli tells him that they have had to defer essential maintenance to enable him to capture Trevor's Star.

Admittedly that is the only time I can find it explicitly referred to.

I believe that was long before the factories, warehouses and largest repair facilities the RMN had all blowed up. Since then does anyone concern themselves with op tempo? No.

Consider what the US Air force and Navy would do if they knew they had no more than a handful of spare engines. And would have no more for years. Jet engines have a finite number of operational hours they last, like drive nodes, and when they wear out they require extremely sophisticated factories to build you new ones or to even build parts to repair the old ones.

So do you think there would be drastic changes in how they operate so as to retain a functioning combat force as long as possible? Or would they just continue to train and operate as if new engines will appear when they burn out their current ones?

Rincewind wrote:

kzt wrote:It's all cool because David doesn't think about this much. Note that not a single RMN line officer has expressed ANY concerns about maintenance logistics or has suggested changing how the fleet operates to extend the time it will take before they start having to deadline ships due to usage and lack of spares.

That's not entirely true. In Echoes of Honor Hamish, his brother Willy & Thomas Caparelli have a discussion where Caparelli informs Hamish that they have had to withdraw 25% of the battle fleet from frontline service for refits & essential maintenance. At that Hamish thinks it is almost two thirds more than the mandated 15% maximum & Caparelli tells him that they have had to defer essential maintenance to enable him to capture Trevor's Star.

Admittedly that is the only time I can find it explicitly referred to.

That is not talking about the same thing. In EoH they had to withdraw 25% of the wall of battle to refit them with the new compensators. In essence there was somewhere around 150 SD's and DN's in the shop getting new engines. Nunroburton was talking about "spare parts"

In essence, Hancock is a repair yard, not a factory. they had 3 fusion plants as spare parts. They probably had hundreds of impeller nodes for all sizes of ships in stock, for example.

After they replacd the fusion plant, I am sure that a message went to manticore that said something along the lines of: we just used a fusion plant, on your next shipment to us, we need you to send us another one. All that takes place behind the scenes.

kzt wrote:Then you have his statements about how you can't get more than 1% of the population in the military due to the economy. So don't think about it too long, that way lies madness.

I think that statement is misunderstood, the way I see it, 1% of the population in uniform still allows the rest of the nation to behave as if at peace. When you go higher than say 3%-4%, once that happens there is a transition to a total war economy where more and more of the industrial and economic focus is on the war.

Think Iraq and Afghanistan wars say mid 2005 vs World War 2.

In WW2 the US mobilized I think well over 10% of their population to fight the war and it was felt across the country and the economy and industry were geared towards total war while during 2005 the US economy and industry were only peripherally focused on the war.

Rincewind wrote:

kzt wrote:It's all cool because David doesn't think about this much. Note that not a single RMN line officer has expressed ANY concerns about maintenance logistics or has suggested changing how the fleet operates to extend the time it will take before they start having to deadline ships due to usage and lack of spares.

That's not entirely true. In Echoes of Honor Hamish, his brother Willy & Thomas Caparelli have a discussion where Caparelli informs Hamish that they have had to withdraw 25% of the battle fleet from frontline service for refits & essential maintenance. At that Hamish thinks it is almost two thirds more than the mandated 15% maximum & Caparelli tells him that they have had to defer essential maintenance to enable him to capture Trevor's Star.

Admittedly that is the only time I can find it explicitly referred to.

I believe KZT is talking about the Manticorian fleet post Oyster Bay, not 15 years earlier. Manticore just list it's 3 biggest fleet bases and all it's factories destroyed, yet there is no mention of part wear and reduced operating tempo to extend time between planned maintenance, just some off hand concern about ammo stocks.

cthia wrote:
Though I can't ascertain whether the Havenites sought it for some inherent strategic purpose or because of its size.

The Peeps had this tendency to become obsessed with refighting engagements they had lost. How many times did they attack Grayson? At least four?

darrell wrote:In just 200 years it is possible for just a few thousand workers to build all goods used in the world today, so in 2,000 years I suspect that even the low end of 30,000 factory workers is way more than manticore would need. once they retool.

Ok, so lets make some assumptions:

You have 250 orbital extraction platforms each running two 50 man crews in 2 week shifts, so 25,000 directly involved in extraction. Assume 20X in supports, so the entire resource extraction industry is 500,000 workers.

You have 150,000 people doing the entire manufacturing industry.

Another 50,000 building ships.

Say another 100,000 running the non-miltary junction platforms.

We'll assume there are 25,000 merchant ships in the MAnticoran merchant marine, each of which has a crew of 20. So 500,000, which we will assume support 10x that, so 5 million.

Finance isn't a huge employer even now, so assume 500,000 being generous.

So now we have accounted for every major part of Manticors GDP and have accounted for 6.3 million people. So essentially 0.2% of the entire population of Manticore accounts for something upwards of 90% of their economy per David's description.

Please explain how this means they can't manage to have a military larger than 30 million people before their economy falls all apart? Really, what the heck do the other two billion, nine hundred and ninety three million people do? Are they all studying erotic dance and underwater basket weaving at Landing University on the 50 year plan?

The US in 1965 had 1.3% in the military, and we didn't have only 0.2% of our population constituting the entirety of the industries that produced 90% of the GDP. Nor was the US in the mid 60s usually thought as a garrison state. So I say pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.