Real effects of Lacoon II

drothgery wrote:

Nico wrote:Yup, so it seems that whenever one of the senior posts vacates, the others on that level decides whom to appoint to the vacant post. Don't know how it would work for lower positions, though.

Though I'd imagine the only plausible candidates are the most senior underlings of the outgoing permanent undersecretary. Defense doesn't have a permanent undersecretary among the Mandarins, but Ranji was the next best thing to one, and Kingsford was his obvious successor.

The difference between how a military hierarchy functions and how a civilian bureaucracy does would come into play here. With a military hierarchy there are clear chains of command, with one position officially being more senior than the next, so that when the top most position vacates the next most senior then moves up. So yes, with Ranjani's death Kingsford would automatically be promoted.

With a civilian bureaucracy it isn't nearly as rigid or clearly-defined. The seniority of various nominally-equal departments or agencies would be fluid, depending on current priorities and circumstances that might change within just a single budget cycle. So let's say the Director for Trade Negotiations dies or retires, then the mandarins would not have a clear choice of replacement. Any of the sectoral Deputy Directors might be most senior at that specific moment, depending on whether trade negotiations with or within their sector are most urgent or most important to the central government's aims at that time.

What that means is that the Department of Trade Negotiations won't have a strict chain of command, so politics on the personal level will come into play. Which candidate will garner most support among those responsible for deciding the replacement will depend on personal loyalties, favours exchanged etc.

In the internal power structure (not the one on the organizations paper TO) for the Mandarins in their various buracracies is sort of fluid.
In the opening scene for the Mandarins we get a picture of the newest member of the troop group ( The Mandarins) as being the compromise selection of the rest of the people at the top of the power and influence heep in her bureaucracy. There were a number of people who were perhaps more powerful but they each could't get enough support from enough of the people who were ultimatly involved in making the appointment and so she was the most acceptable/least disliked (in both the professional and dance of power frames of reference) and so she got the job. She is apparently good at her job and she had enough support but not enough enemies (with enough clout) to be a compromise choice that the top of that buracracy can live with.

There was a line from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (Heinlein) where the primary character is observing things about some of the other people on the Moon. Speaking about the Indian (Hindi, apparently) shoppkeepers, he notes that thy seem to get rich selling rocks to one another. That works out to be you have relative levels of rich and poor in any society or situation and -with work (and probably luck) and keeing at it, you can "make a profit" and certainly a living from a lot of little transactions.

What happens with Lacoon II? Picture at least of the water or air transported good in the world can't be shipped or that the trips that used to take perhaps 15 hours by air or up to 3 months by ship are now going to take MINIMUM six months- and you no longer have 50% of the vessels (air and water) that used to do the transport.
Except that with the Wormholes, you have to go back to using routes that can take perhaps years instead of weeks or a couple of months and some of that is many years. And you still lost 50% of your shipping capacity and are going to have to fight for and pay though the nose for any space you manage to book.
Now figure that all of those contires on earth that have rail interconnections and highways don't have them- they are little islands in a big ocean so you can't divert to surface transportation. And all the money being made by the corporations deaing in interstellar transport and manufacturing and sales on multiple planets sprinkled around the known Human Inhabited part of the galaxy--the "money" is going to slow down in delivery exactly in the same manner and rate of travel as all those goods that are going to have a difficult and lengthy time moving IF you can get space at all.
Dam, that hurts.

Brigade XO wrote:Except that with the Wormholes, you have to go back to using routes that can take perhaps years instead of weeks or a couple of months and some of that is many years. And you still lost 50% of your shipping capacity and are going to have to fight for and pay though the nose for any space you manage to book.

How is the Streak Drive (and Jessyk Combine's freighters under false flags and flags of convenience) going to affect Lacoon's effect on universal commerce?

The Renaissance Factor will suffer less for having access to faster freighters with better hyper-generators and Manticore is going to have to deal with false transponders and flags of convenience to block Solarian trade. It seems to me that Jessyk Combine already specializes in "smuggling" and should be well-placed to make a killing from Lacoon.

Weird Harold wrote:The Renaissance Factor will suffer less for having access to faster freighters with better hyper-generators

No, that is far too high risk for anything other than critical shipments that you would escort with heavily armed warships. You won't use it for typical freighters, you can get that by just using military grade propulsion. Which I predict will be very popular in new construction in the SL.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:The Renaissance Factor will suffer less for having access to faster freighters with better hyper-generators

No, that is far too high risk for anything other than critical shipments that you would escort with heavily armed warships. You won't use it for typical freighters, you can get that by just using military grade propulsion. Which I predict will be very popular in new construction in the SL.

Actually, just upgrading to a military hyper-generator would provide a significant advantage -- not necessarily Streak Drive. A Streak Drive equipped courier will be able to transfer financial data faster than anything in space. It doesn't necessarily need to advertise that it can travel faster than anything else, but it could detour to a different pair of system to carry twice as much data in the same amount of time.

The same principle applies to upgrading from standard commercial hyper-generators; each additional band achievable in hyper will reduce travel time and allow a single ship to do the work of two or more. A Streak Drive courier or freighter wouldn't need an escort because only someone with a streak drive could intercept them in Hyper. They run the same risks in lower hyper-bands and inside a hyperlimit as any other ship, but smugglers are used to such hazards.

Weird Harold wrote:A Streak Drive courier or freighter wouldn't need an escort because only someone with a streak drive could intercept them in Hyper. They run the same risks in lower hyper-bands and inside a hyperlimit as any other ship, but smugglers are used to such hazards.

A streak freighter needs an escort BECAUSE it has a streak drive, losing that would be a major setback. So you send a couple of BCs with it. And whatever you are hauling in that ship would need to be worth the cost of transport. I can think of things that would be worthwhile, but not typical commercial products.

kzt wrote:A streak freighter needs an escort BECAUSE it has a streak drive, losing that would be a major setback. So you send a couple of BCs with it.

So you would risk three streak drives and advertise that there was something special about your freighter? Instead of quietly running in the highest Hyper-bands where nobody without a streak drive will even know you're passing by?

FWIW, the MAlign has already effectively lost its monopoly on Streak Drives with the defection of Herlander Simoes to the GA. It still is going to have an advantage over everyone else until the Streak Drive becomes well known and widely spread.

Curiosity: How good are the Hypergenerators in the SLN scrapyard -- er, reserve fleet? That seems to me that it might be a ready source of cheap upgrades for enterprising freight haulers.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:A Streak Drive courier or freighter wouldn't need an escort because only someone with a streak drive could intercept them in Hyper. They run the same risks in lower hyper-bands and inside a hyperlimit as any other ship, but smugglers are used to such hazards.

A streak freighter needs an escort BECAUSE it has a streak drive, losing that would be a major setback. So you send a couple of BCs with it. And whatever you are hauling in that ship would need to be worth the cost of transport. I can think of things that would be worthwhile, but not typical commercial products.

Obviously your not a business minded individual. Yes it is risky and yes streak drive might be too risky, but it has been used in every system on courier ships. Think like a business and cornering the market of every system in the SL. Manties might control the wormholes, but there are no Mantie freighters in the league for at least a couple years. An enterprising trans stellar can upgrade to fast freighter level and corner the market. Any system totally backed up will sign a more expensive 30-50 year exclusive contract with a fast freighter trans stellar. In three years a Manty freighter will show up and be locked out of the market.

Manty military maybe the best but it is based on Manty Freight hauling and that is a total disaster right now. Manty Military thinks a Manty freighter, totally unreliable is just going to show up and resume business when exclusive contracts with someone else have been signed, someone reliable. Manty Freight might be okay if it was still available making use of the wormholes. But it isn't. When it shows up, unless escorted by escorts willing to kill every other freighter and force the locals to use the Manty freight exclusively, the Manties are going to be locked out of the system.

Weird Harold wrote:Actually, just upgrading to a military hyper-generator would provide a significant advantage -- not necessarily Streak Drive. A Streak Drive equipped courier will be able to transfer financial data faster than anything in space. It doesn't necessarily need to advertise that it can travel faster than anything else, but it could detour to a different pair of system to carry twice as much data in the same amount of time.

The same principle applies to upgrading from standard commercial hyper-generators; each additional band achievable in hyper will reduce travel time and allow a single ship to do the work of two or more. A Streak Drive courier or freighter wouldn't need an escort because only someone with a streak drive could intercept them in Hyper. They run the same risks in lower hyper-bands and inside a hyperlimit as any other ship, but smugglers are used to such hazards.

Upgrading from commercial to military hyper generator could cut transit times roughly in half - Theta bands allow you to move 2.3x faster than Delta bands. Upgrading to a Streak drive generator instead would cut transit times by roughly 2/3rds - Kappa bands allow you to move 3.3x faster than Delta bands. I'm not sure the security risks are worth it, even to shave another 50% off the the transit times. And For freighters there's really only an potential economic advantage if you can advertise, and charge for, the quicker trips. But then your back to kzt's concern - everybody would want to grab one to reverse engineer streak drives for their one navy / SDF.

Weird Harold wrote:Curiosity: How good are the Hypergenerators in the SLN scrapyard -- er, reserve fleet? That seems to me that it might be a ready source of cheap upgrades for enterprising freight haulers.

Aye, there are around 8,000 of them. Even if the oldest of them are only good for up to the Zeta or Eta bands, the reduced times on voyages would go some way to alleviating the League's merchant lift problems.

Unfortunately, even ignoring the difficulties of removing generators from thousands of SDs, such a program would require the immediate yanking of a few hundred freighters for a few months - to transit to the shipyards and then have their 'new' generator installed and tested.

And then the freighters in question need major maintenance every year instead of every five years. They also sacrifice some carrying capacity.

It's not a bad idea. It might be useful to have fast freighters carrying pods for Frontier Fleet raiders or components for quick-building new fleets, but I don't think it would help the League solve its economic problems. Critical shipments get delivered quicker, but at a cost in overall efficiency.

It might be viable in a short-termist way - if they only intend for the freighters to burn out each generator and then dump it, they could gain a short boost in carrying speed whilst waiting for more new freighters to be built. In the end, it's probably better to expend what resources can be found on building more freighters - whatever specs the generators in them end up being.