Bellerophon

darrell wrote:One thing that both Silesia and Talbot can do is build parts. The wouldn't be able to build the more technical parts such as computers or micro fusion bottles, but should be able to build more standard units like impeller nodes or factory machines.

MAD-4A wrote:Yes because they are all a bunch of barbarians running around in loin cloths and throwing stones at each other ... oh wait ... they are all on other planets!!! They are space faring societies, so why couldn't they build the parts? you don't need to know how to design a computer to plug "part A" into "part B" and tighten "Screw C". Happens all the time here on Earth, uneducated 3rd world labor slapping together computers, TVs, etc... for sale in the US, Australia, Western Europe. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to slap two pieces of one together and turn a crew driver. Sure they could build anything the Manties needed them to, just need some minor instruction on the new hardware and equipment, also, no - the tools to build the tools were not all destroyed, they would not have all been on the space stations, if so - then their high command were a bunch of dufuses and deserve to lose. the active equipment to build the systems were but other equipment were on the tenders and the equipment to build that equipment would have been on planet or elsewhere, especially after what happened over Basilisk and at Grendelsbane.

Kytheros wrote:No, they're not primitives bashing each other with rocks. No one is saying that they are.

However, the high tech stuff that gave Manticore its edge? That's not unskilled or lightly skilled production. That's a high skill requirement production. The modern equivalent is probably the places building the computer chips themselves compared to the places putting those chips together into a computer. Assembly of prebuilt parts is easy - building those components is not.


Silesia and Talbott both have tech bases several generations behind that of Manticore.
This is a rough analogy - Manticore was working in nanometers, whereas Silesia and Talbott work in centimeters (or maybe inches). Silesia and Talbott would need to build several generations of tools building better tools to build better tools. Or that buildup can be put on hold for Manticore to be rebuilt (which will be faster) and jump over those iterations of building tools to build better tools to build better tools.

No, I was not sugesting that talbot build the high tech components, but there are lots of low tech components that are part of a starship, whether a warship or a merchant ship.

Things like grav plates and COS scrubbers or other air recycling components. How about the hyper generator or ship fusion plants, I am pretty sure that those haven't changed much in the last several decades. What about gravitic arrays, COM lasers, radar instalations? There are also some strictly warship components that are not high tech, like CM tubes and laser clusters.

a freighter full of the above components manufactured in talbot or silesia can go a long way in speeding up the actual building of ships.

Modern ships are all high tech components, even now in the real world even the hulls of modern ships need high tech machining and incredible tolerances to work given the large chunk assembly methods currently used.

You could not take a shipyard from South Korea which fabricates the ships to micrometric tollerances as separate pieces and drop it in Liberia and get good outcomes the people there do not have the education and background to use the computer controlled tools that do the cutting and shaping. These tools need serious computer knowhow to use correctly.

I watched someone on the sons of guns program try to use a small shop version of these tools and despite being a very well trained gunsmith AND high school teacher he really struggled to understand how to do it.

Silverwall wrote:Modern ships are all high tech components, even now in the real world even the hulls of modern ships need high tech machining and incredible tolerances to work given the large chunk assembly methods currently used.

You could not take a shipyard from South Korea which fabricates the ships to micrometric tollerances as separate pieces and drop it in Liberia and get good outcomes the people there do not have the education and background to use the computer controlled tools that do the cutting and shaping. These tools need serious computer knowhow to use correctly.

I watched someone on the sons of guns program try to use a small shop version of these tools and despite being a very well trained gunsmith AND high school teacher he really struggled to understand how to do it.

agreed that you could not move a shipyard from a high tech planet to a low tech planet, but that is not what I am suggesting.

Have the low tech country build components, for example, portholes, hatches, pipe, wire, the anchor, etc.

darrell wrote:
No, I was not sugesting that talbot build the high tech components, but there are lots of low tech components that are part of a starship, whether a warship or a merchant ship.

Things like grav plates and COS scrubbers or other air recycling components. How about the hyper generator or ship fusion plants, I am pretty sure that those haven't changed much in the last several decades. What about gravitic arrays, COM lasers, radar instalations? There are also some strictly warship components that are not high tech, like CM tubes and laser clusters.

Some of that stuff does seem pretty high tech, or at least Manticore's designs are better than most other peoples. Their CM tubes manage to operate at a cyclic rate something like 4-5 times quicker than the SLNs. Clearly not all CM tubes are identical. And gravitic arrays are your primary FTL sensors; quality of those arrays is a primary driver of how well your ships see. Hardly something you'd want to risk going 2nd rate on. Radars are less commonly used, but again they get used to cue point defense, so the best frequncy hopping, anti-jam, EMC resistant installations, capable of individually tracking hundreds to thousands of relativistic targets means it's that the radar's Manticore is used to are probably far in advance of what Talbott or Silesia are up to building.

I'm sure there are some things they can contribute; but the majority of the ship, at least in Manticoran designs, is probably 50+ years in advance of what either of those sectors can build today.

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:
No, I was not sugesting that talbot build the high tech components, but there are lots of low tech components that are part of a starship, whether a warship or a merchant ship.

Things like grav plates and COS scrubbers or other air recycling components. How about the hyper generator or ship fusion plants, I am pretty sure that those haven't changed much in the last several decades. What about gravitic arrays, COM lasers, radar instalations? There are also some strictly warship components that are not high tech, like CM tubes and laser clusters.

Some of that stuff does seem pretty high tech, or at least Manticore's designs are better than most other peoples. Their CM tubes manage to operate at a cyclic rate something like 4-5 times quicker than the SLNs. Clearly not all CM tubes are identical. And gravitic arrays are your primary FTL sensors; quality of those arrays is a primary driver of how well your ships see. Hardly something you'd want to risk going 2nd rate on. Radars are less commonly used, but again they get used to cue point defense, so the best frequncy hopping, anti-jam, EMC resistant installations, capable of individually tracking hundreds to thousands of relativistic targets means it's that the radar's Manticore is used to are probably far in advance of what Talbott or Silesia are up to building.

I'm sure there are some things they can contribute; but the majority of the ship, at least in Manticoran designs, is probably 50+ years in advance of what either of those sectors can build today.

Exactly and the point I was trying to make is that the hypothetical Liberian shipyard couldn't even make the base hull modules because of the complexities of the manufacturing process.

Silverwall wrote:Exactly and the point I was trying to make is that the hypothetical Liberian shipyard couldn't even make the base hull modules because of the complexities of the manufacturing process.

Other than your example is complete BS; it makes "perfect sense". As No, those modules are NOT built to exacting tolerances. +/- a centimeter is hardly what one would call "high tolerances". Fact is the tolerances actually produced are not bad. Why? Because any dumb numb nut can operate a plasma torch to cut 1/2" plate steel at the desired length and angle. Sure, they are going to more CNC operated plasma cutting, but anyone can also learn to use said CNC Plasma cutter in less than a day. The only part that requires ANY skill at all is the welding so it does not crack out later. You can literally hand an 18 year old kid a plasma torch, without any prior experience, and cut all of the pieces for a ship. Welding takes practice and a little schooling. But anyone can do it. The only part of a ship that requires any sort of technical experience is the heating/welding/heating/cooling procedure setting the main bearings to the propeller.

The only reason Liberia is not building commercial ships is that commercial ships are built at a LOSS or at best dead even regarding profits and they can only do so, if they make a lot of them. Why does S. Korea and China do so if they lose money? Or essentially break even? What a country gains is all of the heavy industry and therefore profits in the long run in terms of all of the associated industries that are required to support a ship building industry. All that steel production can be used to build cars, buildings, bridges, tools, heavy construction equipment etc.

Take machinsts today. Only a small percentage actually have to know anything anymore(those who set up the CNC machines). The vast majority sit on a chair watching a CNC machine work while they get astronomically high wages. They might have a deburring tool in their hand and applying it to the parts as the parts come off the CNC machine.

Operating a crane no matter how small or large is essentially all the same. Have to worry about weight and dynamic loading. Things change when you up the ante to 2 cranes operating in conjunction with each other. Electrical wiring is electrical wiring. Yup, might use different crimpers and sealing agents. Otherwise? No different. Same goes for plumbing, HVAC, filters, and you name it. Very little in manufacturing is high tech. The only high tech is used in designing the high tech and testing the high tech. Everything else is made so dumbo's can use and maintain it.

Things like grav plating and life support systems are probably relatively standard and outsourceable.
However ... I'm really not sure just how much time would be saved by outsourcing the components that could be outsourced.


Manticore was looking at just a couple years to rebuild without any outside help whatsoever. They have since gotten around six months (I think) of help from Beowulf, so even if Beowulf got swallowed by a black hole tomorrow, Manticore is probably less than a year from building light units again.

MaxxQ wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:It sure appears from the cutaway drawings that Mk13 missiles are pretty much the same dimensions of the Mk16. Refitting to fire Mk16's shouldn't be such a big deal, from the missile tube impossible to cut through armour point of view. Internal refits will be gutted and replaced but then that is what a refit is.


Dispersed yards are built around parked ships. No big deal here.
Even Graysons could do this. As for people who think that the technical data no longer exists nor that the refineries or part making facilities where on the stations well we will just point out they don't know what a dispersed yard is.

Okay.... I was stupid and actually read this post (bangs head on table). Skippy, the Mk-13 is capacitor-powered and the Mk-16 is fusion-powered. That means ripping the guts out of the power-up system and replacing it. It's not just a matter of "boring out the tubes" (facepalm - so much wrong with that ASSumption) so the missile will fit.

The Mk-16 is also longer, maybe not much longer, but long enough to require a rebuild of the magazines to fit them. They are made to tight tolerances, with not much more than a couple cm between the missile and the walls of the magazine. This, of course, means tearing apart the armor of the magazine, which may be thinner than hull armor, but is just as tough.

No one thinks the technical data doesn't exist. What you are missing (or purposely ignoring) is the fact that the tools to build the tools to build the tools to make the parts needed WERE ALSO DESTROYED!!!!!!111111oneoneone That means they have to start completely from scratch, building the machines/tools to put in the manufacturing plants that also have to be rebuilt from scratch. Dispersed yards can't do squat if they don't have the parts to assemble the ships.

Once all that's been built, why transport it all to Silesia when it's already there in Manticore? Silesia probably doesn't have the tech base to build the specialized machinery and tools for making such precise equipment such as nodes and whatever else is needed.

The Silesian ship building yards still exist, sure you need to get things up to snuff etc... If the Mk13 and Mk16 missiles are about the same size, a new Erm design Capacitor missile with upgraded Mk16G warhead could make an interesting missile.

It amazes me that an old SL Freighter and old SL crew can build a hyperdrive while floating in space in a couple month. After building the tools. But the Manty's with 34 complete star systems can't build tools to make a ship given a decade. hmm

Also Silesia was a space faring Confederacy, politically failed or not they can make a node. You would think BuNine would know that.

Lord Skimper wrote:The Silesian ship building yards still exist, sure you need to get things up to snuff etc... If the Mk13 and Mk16 missiles are about the same size, a new Erm design Capacitor missile with upgraded Mk16G warhead could make an interesting missile.

It amazes me that an old SL Freighter and old SL crew can build a hyperdrive while floating in space in a couple month. After building the tools. But the Manty's with 34 complete star systems can't build tools to make a ship given a decade. hmm

First, yeah you could add the warhead upgrades of the Mk16 to the Mk14 ERM design; that's the current CA weight ERM that replaced the Mk13. But we have explicit text that it's bigger than the Mk13 and you need larger missile tubes to fire it. (It wasn't retrofit into older designs).

The extra capacitors you need for an ERM take up more space than those of a similar warhead-weight SDM. But you might be able to physically downsize the warhead some and make up the effective damage through the improved grav focusing of the Mk16G. If it need to be fired out of a SDM tube it'll be less powerful that a non-compromise ERM designed for that displacement of ship, but it might be powerful enough to be usable.
(Though I find it interesting, and possibly suggestive, that Manticore didn't deploy an Capital Ship fired ERM during the ceasefire to give their retained legacy units greater range. Maybe it's trickier than you think to design one to be tube compatible with existing SDM tubes)


As for comparing reparing the hyperdrive of one freighter (which they crew had full specs and presumably manuals for) and building the supply chain to provide replacement parts for every part of ex-SLN hardware there's just a tiny difference in that Manticore by and large doesn't have the specs, design sheets, or other details of all the hardware. They'd have to reverse engineer it all to figure out how to may plug comaptible replacements.
Still if they devoted a lot of effort to it I'm sure they could. But that would be utterly wasted effort because doing so would take a lot of their most skilled people and waste their time figuring out how to reproduce obsolete crap. It would be quicker, and more effective, to instead get the low tech yards in Silesia and Talbott upgrading themselves to be able to produce pre-war RMN designs and technology. It's still obsolete, but not quite so painfully so as the SLN crap, and they have all the plans, specs, knowledge already. So you don't have to divert the time and effort of people whose attention is better spent working with Haven to integrate their respective technologies, or continuing to focus on ongoing R&D to develop the next upgrades.

But honestly, the GA does NOT have a shortage of hulls; they do not need to adopt desperate measures to deploy any hull they can get their hands on. Manticore needs to get it's supply chain reestablished, and wants to get its shipbuilding back so it can contiue to replace legacy units (still far more capable than the SLN junk) with cutting edge hardware. Haven wants to integrate RMN tech into future designs, and probably backfit it where possible. But none of that equals a desperate need for any hull they can find.