Kytheros wrote:Somtaaw wrote:
Actually Haven was already developing the tech BEFORE they signed Erewhon. The press release stating Theisman had built 60 podlaying superdreadnoughts was done months before they signed Erewhon. That Erewhon switched sides, meant a great deal to how fast Haven was "catching upto" Manticoran tech during At All Costs post-Thunderbolt era, but Haven developed their own MDMs, podnoughts, CLACs, and modern LACs entirely on their own purely off what they saw during Buttercup. Erewhon's "tech manuals and related" merely let them start the refining and polishing of their designs, but the initial designs are still 100% purely Havenite Foraker specials.
And there are/were repeated references that the League [and others] had observers at many battles, which means the SLN should have reports somewhere. That al-Fanudahi, that's in Solarian League intel and keeps pissing off his superiors because he HAS been stating that Manticore & Haven have pushed new boundaries on weapons technology, and nobody wants to hear it. As long as he isn't punished for such, when they finally start listening, the League could get their own MDM's really quickly. Not quite as quick as Haven did, because the SLN is still using missiles that were at best from pre-Basilisk Station, but they'll still get MDMs pretty quickly.
It may very well take a while to get MDMs. The MAlign started trying to figure out how to make them and still hasn't.
On the other hand, the Andies did MDMs all on their own as well, after the first war.
Indeed. If the SLN doesn't fire al-Fanudahi for being right, when all his intel shop superiors were wrong... I'd give the SLN 4-7 years to get proper MDM's. The Andermani did it, and got ships laid down and built to perform their acts of aggression around Sidemore in less than 3 to 4 T-years. Haven also did it in the same time frame.
But the SLN still has to perform the arms race build up from pre-OBS through to Buttercup which was a period of what, 15ish years? Excluding the lack of money to pay their scientists, a hot war could drop that from 15 years to 3 to get them close, but it'd still take 18+ months to just build the very first SLN podnought. That's a hard limit even Manticore couldn't beat during AAC, and explained it to Willie Alexander why they weren't building the DNP's, so the SLN certainly shouldn't be able to beat it when Manticore supposedly has/had the best shipyards in known space.