Bellerophon

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.

MaxxQ wrote:
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.

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

To be accurate, they rebuilt/repaired a single broken component.

Manticore, and the rest of the Empire, with a decade to do infrastructure improvements? Any of the already-captured ships have probably been turned into raw materials already; if any haven't been, they're sitting in a starship museum.
And Manticore/the Empire is building actual proper modern ships - SD(P)s, CLACs, advanced LACs, Nikes, and the only hypercapable warships smaller than the Nike that we've seen on page, rather than just mentioned, that Manticore might still be building is probably the Sag-C, and that's not certain.

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

Sure, Silesia can make normal impeller nodes. That means civilian nodes, by the standards of the RMN, because Silesia can't build the "Beta-squared" nodes, and Silesia can't build the nodes used for ERMs or MDMs. Silesia can't build anything that involves the tech-advantages Manticore has developed since before the first war.

Oh, sure, Manticore's eventually going to change that, but the Star Empire of Manticore's infrastructure priorities are going to be focused on the Old Star Kingdom (Manticore and Trevor's Star, maybe Basilisk and Lynx), then comes places in Talbott, and Silesia is the bottom of the list. And that is only the internal priorities - it doesn't include external infrastructure concerns, such as whatever assistance is given to Grayson, and/or any potential aid to Haven or the former Havenite worlds that prefer allying with Manticore or Grayson to Haven.
Before Manticore invests high tech infrastructure upgrades into Silesia outside of secure RMN bases, they're going to make sure that it's going to be used properly and none of the secrets walk away/get sold to someone Manticore doesn't approve of. Cleaning up Silesia is going to take a while.

Kytheros 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.

MaxxQ wrote:
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.

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

To be accurate, they rebuilt/repaired a single broken component.

Manticore, and the rest of the Empire, with a decade to do infrastructure improvements? Any of the already-captured ships have probably been turned into raw materials already; if any haven't been, they're sitting in a starship museum.
And Manticore/the Empire is building actual proper modern ships - SD(P)s, CLACs, advanced LACs, Nikes, and the only hypercapable warships smaller than the Nike that we've seen on page, rather than just mentioned, that Manticore might still be building is probably the Sag-C, and that's not certain.

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

Sure, Silesia can make normal impeller nodes. That means civilian nodes, by the standards of the RMN, because Silesia can't build the "Beta-squared" nodes, and Silesia can't build the nodes used for ERMs or MDMs. Silesia can't build anything that involves the tech-advantages Manticore has developed since before the first war.

Oh, sure, Manticore's eventually going to change that, but the Star Empire of Manticore's infrastructure priorities are going to be focused on the Old Star Kingdom (Manticore and Trevor's Star, maybe Basilisk and Lynx), then comes places in Talbott, and Silesia is the bottom of the list. And that is only the internal priorities - it doesn't include external infrastructure concerns, such as whatever assistance is given to Grayson, and/or any potential aid to Haven or the former Havenite worlds that prefer allying with Manticore or Grayson to Haven.
Before Manticore invests high tech infrastructure upgrades into Silesia outside of secure RMN bases, they're going to make sure that it's going to be used properly and none of the secrets walk away/get sold to someone Manticore doesn't approve of. Cleaning up Silesia is going to take a while.

a facility that can build a normal impeller mode can be relatively inexpensively be retooled to build beta squared nodes, and certainly less expensively than building a new factory. A good example of this is when car factories were converted to building tanks and fighter airplanes in 1942.

A lot of the stuff that everyone is saying is beyond silesea and talbot will require only minor changes to their infrastructure to produce.

A factrory that is currently producing beta nodes can be converted to producing beta squared nodes a heck of a lot cheeper than building a new factory. A factory that is building cruiser grasers can be converted to producing SD grasers a lot easier than it takes to build a new graser factory.

There are many other options where silesea and talbot can be part of the answer to rebuilding manticores industry. How about converting an existing air car factory in talbot into a factory that builds manufacturing robots?

darrell wrote:
a facility that can build a normal impeller mode can be relatively inexpensively be retooled to build beta squared nodes, and certainly less expensively than building a new factory. A good example of this is when car factories were converted to building tanks and fighter airplanes in 1942.

A lot of the stuff that everyone is saying is beyond silesea and talbot will require only minor changes to their infrastructure to produce.

A factrory that is currently producing beta nodes can be converted to producing beta squared nodes a heck of a lot cheeper than building a new factory. A factory that is building cruiser grasers can be converted to producing SD grasers a lot easier than it takes to build a new graser factory.

There are many other options where silesea and talbot can be part of the answer to rebuilding manticores industry. How about converting an existing air car factory in talbot into a factory that builds manufacturing robots?

Thats possible, but hardly a given. You are dealing with a multiton object with internal features roughly the same scale, if not smaller, as today's CPUs. A massive mess of delicate molecular scale mechanisms within each node.

If the beta squared nodes require finer grained elements then retooling the factory might be very difficult and expense; quirking you to rip out and replace basically all the significant machines used within it. It's not like it's a cheap or easy process for Intel or the chip makers to deploy a new smaller die process; and the old machines are basically of no use.

Now despite that, maybe the beta squared nodes are just an unusual application of off the shelf manufacturing techniques; in which case sharing the secret sauce gives you most of what you need to retool to build them. But I'd bet that's not the case; otherwise Manticore would have had them sooner and Haven would have duplicated them for their SD(P). Since neither were the case I'm betting it's harder than you think to retool.

Kytheros wrote:Sure, Silesia can make normal impeller nodes. That means civilian nodes, by the standards of the RMN, because Silesia can't build the "Beta-squared" nodes, and Silesia can't build the nodes used for ERMs or MDMs. Silesia can't build anything that involves the tech-advantages Manticore has developed since before the first war.

Do we know for a fact that Silesia (Or former members of the Rembrandt Association in the Talbott Quadrant) manufactured their own impeller nodes?

Sure, we know they built ships up to Cruiser weight, but did they build all of the high-tech components or did they import them from the Solarian League, Anderman Empire, Manticore, Haven, or elsewhere?

Impeller Nodes can't be that difficult to manufacture. We know Grayson managed pre-alliance, although their pre-alliance nodes were too big and crude to repair RMN ships, IIRC. Grayson was an anomaly, though, because nobody would sell them modern spaceships parts like impellers and compensators so they had to reinvent their own.

Nodes would be economical to import rather than build because more developed world would have economy-of-scale where a small neo-barb world wouldn't.

Weird Harold wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Sure, Silesia can make normal impeller nodes. That means civilian nodes, by the standards of the RMN, because Silesia can't build the "Beta-squared" nodes, and Silesia can't build the nodes used for ERMs or MDMs. Silesia can't build anything that involves the tech-advantages Manticore has developed since before the first war.

Do we know for a fact that Silesia (Or former members of the Rembrandt Association in the Talbott Quadrant) manufactured their own impeller nodes?

Sure, we know they built ships up to Cruiser weight, but did they build all of the high-tech components or did they import them from the Solarian League, Anderman Empire, Manticore, Haven, or elsewhere?

Impeller Nodes can't be that difficult to manufacture. We know Grayson managed pre-alliance, although their pre-alliance nodes were too big and crude to repair RMN ships, IIRC. Grayson was an anomaly, though, because nobody would sell them modern spaceships parts like impellers and compensators so they had to reinvent their own.

Nodes would be economical to import rather than build because more developed world would have economy-of-scale where a small neo-barb world wouldn't.

For Grayson, it was their alpha node technology that wasn't up to repairing RMN ships. Their beta node technology level was a lot better, to the point that they were able to repair Troubadour:

The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 21 wrote:“So we’re all there is for now,” Honor said even more slowly than her damaged mouth required. “What’s the status on Troubadour’s alpha node?”
“The Grayson yard people confirm Alistair’s original estimate,” Truman replied. “It’s completely gone, and they can’t repair it. Their Warshawski technology’s even cruder than I thought, and their components simply won’t mate with ours, but their standard impellers are a lot closer to our levels, and Lieutenant Anthony got with their chief shipwright before I sent Troubadour off with the freighters. By the time she gets back, the Graysons should have run up jury-rigged beta nodes to replace the damaged beta and alpha nodes. She still won’t have Warshawski capability, but she’ll be back up to five-twenty gees for max acceleration.”

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Silesia will have certain systems that embrace Manticore and move from Protectorate status to Member system status.

Why can't one make a new Mk16 missile version a few cm shorter for instance so it will fit the Magazines of the Bellerophon/Sphinx/Gryphon/Devenski/Bennies in the converted Silesian missile yards.

Seems ships must be refit in Manticore for Years to make them capable of shooting a set type of missile when the missile could be easily modified to fit the existing tubes.

Sure you need to change the precharge for the fusion reactor, do this by using the power plants for the adjacent Laser or Grasers. Funny that a box pod can do this but a SD or DR can't be made to do this without massive problems. Sounds like Manty engineers are not very good or follow NASA protocols. Maybe it is just the new generation of Manty engineers. The older generation could feed power directly from bottles to the energy torpedoes but the newer ones can't start a fusion missile.

Lord Skimper wrote:Silesia will have certain systems that embrace Manticore and move from Protectorate status to Member system status.

Why can't one make a new Mk16 missile version a few cm shorter for instance so it will fit the Magazines of the Bellerophon/Sphinx/Gryphon/Devenski/Bennies in the converted Silesian missile yards.

Seems ships must be refit in Manticore for Years to make them capable of shooting a set type of missile when the missile could be easily modified to fit the existing tubes.

Sure you need to change the precharge for the fusion reactor, do this by using the power plants for the adjacent Laser or Grasers. Funny that a box pod can do this but a SD or DR can't be made to do this without massive problems. Sounds like Manty engineers are not very good or follow NASA protocols. Maybe it is just the new generation of Manty engineers. The older generation could feed power directly from bottles to the energy torpedoes but the newer ones can't start a fusion missile.

Startup for micro-fusion plants is massively different from capacitor charging or starting of a regular missile, Also massively different from energy weapons, both beams and energy torpedoes.

Refitting tube-launched micro-fusion powered missiles into anything would take longer and cost more than building a new ship designed to take them from.
The micro-fusion pods are entirely different pods from the old capacitor pods. They're an entirely different design, built separately.

The tubes for a capacitor missile and a microfusion missile are very different in terms of required support equipment.


At most, one might seek to design a missile employing ERM tech to fit the constraints of existing tubes on the legacy ships that you're still actively using. Capacitor MDMs have just too big a minimum size to fit in tubes not designed for them.
Oh, wait. Manticore did that already.

Also, Manticore doesn't need or want legacy SDs. Any surviving legacy SDs or DNs of the RMN are in the Reserve. The RMN has somewhere around 300 SD(P)s in active service, I believe. Perhaps more. Most, if not all, of them with Keyhole-2. All of them loaded with Mark-23 MDM pods.
I don't know how many lighter ships were built during the so-called "Python Lump", but I'm guessing a fair number of them - and they'd all be modern designs, which most likely means Nikes, Sag-Cs, and Rolands. All of them already have Mark-16 DDMs. There may have been a few older specialist designs built like the Kamerling Marine Support Cruiser, instead armed with ERMs.
If Manticore needed to pull SDs from the Reserve, they'd start with the ones with tube-launched capacitor MDM capability. Admittedly, there aren't that many of them, but Manticore doesn't actually need any of them either.


Skimper, understand this: It is cheaper, easier, and faster, to build a new ship than to update a legacy SD to be useful in the modern combat environment. And, yes, that includes building the yards to build the new ship and upgrading yards to update a legacy SD.
Manticore will not be outsourcing its military high-tech needs to Silesia for quite a while, if ever. It may be a generation or two before cutting edge Manticoran technology and infrastructure is in Silesia outside of secure RMN bases and facilities. The RMN has this strange desire to keep its secrets, well, secret. Especially when it comes to their technology advantages.

Skimper is a poster child for the sunk cost fallacy. He sees all the mothballed or captured ships and thinks "There must be something we can do with them", not realizing that these aren't investment items but things that were written off the moment they were pulled from service.

Lord Skimper wrote:Silesia will have certain systems that embrace Manticore and move from Protectorate status to Member system status.

Why can't one make a new Mk16 missile version a few cm shorter for instance so it will fit the Magazines of the Bellerophon/Sphinx/Gryphon/Devenski/Bennies in the converted Silesian missile yards.

Seems ships must be refit in Manticore for Years to make them capable of shooting a set type of missile when the missile could be easily modified to fit the existing tubes.

Sure you need to change the precharge for the fusion reactor, do this by using the power plants for the adjacent Laser or Grasers. Funny that a box pod can do this but a SD or DR can't be made to do this without massive problems. Sounds like Manty engineers are not very good or follow NASA protocols. Maybe it is just the new generation of Manty engineers. The older generation could feed power directly from bottles to the energy torpedoes but the newer ones can't start a fusion missile.

The SL SD's are about on par with the legacy ships built in WW2 Made from concrete, there was a reason that none lasted in service after 1950. simply stated, it was cheeper to build a new ship than to refurbish the legacy ships. The same is true of the SL SD's

Lets see, I can referbish a a SL SD for about the same cost as I can build a brand new invictus. I think I will build the Invictus.

Lets see, I can crew one SL or crew six invictus. Since I have troubl getting enough people, I will crew the invictus.

I can buid 2 q ships or 4 fast freighters for less than it would take to cut the internal armor out of the SL SD to make cargo holds, I would rather build the Q ships or fast freighters.

I can crew 5 new q ships or 10 fast freighters with the same crew that it would take to crew one converted SD freighter or q ship.

Like the WW2 legacy ships, the only thing that the SL SD's are good for are the scrap yards, artificial reefs or museums.

Kytheros wrote:Startup for micro-fusion plants is massively different from capacitor charging or starting of a regular missile, Also massively different from energy weapons, both beams and energy torpedoes.

I would guess that a capacitor powered missile it charged by electricity; but a micro-fusion powered missile (to save space and squeeze the tiny fusion plant in) isn't capable of cold-starting and has to get fed near critical plasma from another fusion reactor. (We know the pods for fusion powered missiles have their own onboard reactors, so those could "jump=start" the missiles. But in tubes you'd need (super high density) plasma feeds that the conventional missiles didn't. So you either have to pipe that from the ship's main fusion reactors, or put smaller "local" reactors near the tubes to jump=start the missiles.
Neither is a minor refit operation. (Plus of course the results if a fusion bird with it's reactor hot suffers damage in the tube is much worse than if it happens to a capacitor bird; that's why fusion tube designs have such extensive additional armor cofferdaming around their tubes. Even emergency refits probably wouldn't be willing to forgo that; lest a single hit chain reaction across all the tubes of a broadside)

Yeah, there are reasons RFC made refitting to fusion powered missiles is far from trivial.