Solarian League Naval Strenght versus SLN Strength

Henry Brown wrote:

nrellis wrote:There is a throw-away line in one of the more recent books (that I can never find when I need it) to the effect that "possession of even one squadron of ships-of-the-wall elevated a navy to the top dozen or so navies in existence".

Therefore we know about almost all the navies with wallers.
In order of size:

1- SLN (10,000+ *)
2- Republic of Haven Navy (1000 SD(P)s when their build programme is complete)
3- RMN (4-500 SDs and SD(P)s)
4(?)- GSN (1-200 SDs and SD(P)s)
5(?)- IAN (100+)
****SNIP****

You know, if this list is correct it makes the Sollie intelligence failure even worse. I mean, it means they managed to totally ignore a 20 year war involving the #2, #3, and #4 navies in existence. And those rankings are just size. It doesn't include the SLN's failure to recognize the technological advances the RHN and RMN have made. But, lets set that aside for a minute. Even if the Sollie assumption that the ships of the RMN and RHN were technologically equal to their own HAD been correct, shouldn't they have still been interested in what the other really big navies in the galaxy are up to? I mean, even if you have completely failed to recognize how advanced they are, wouldn't you still want to know what really big fleets of warships are up to? Just on the basis of their size if nothing else.

I believe it is worse then that as there was at least one junior officer Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi in the Office of Operational Analysis that was trying to get them to really pay attention to what was going on in the Haven sector. He found out that not only no one wanted too but where burying any intel that did not support their beliefs in the SLN being the greatest navy in the universe.

Henry Brown wrote:You know, if this list is correct it makes the Sollie intelligence failure even worse. I mean, it means they managed to totally ignore a 20 year war involving the #2, #3, and #4 navies in existence. And those rankings are just size. It doesn't include the SLN's failure to recognize the technological advances the RHN and RMN have made. But, lets set that aside for a minute. Even if the Sollie assumption that the ships of the RMN and RHN were technologically equal to their own HAD been correct, shouldn't they have still been interested in what the other really big navies in the galaxy are up to? I mean, even if you have completely failed to recognize how advanced they are, wouldn't you still want to know what really big fleets of warships are up to? Just on the basis of their size if nothing else.

"Ah, those peasants might have a few ships of the wall, but even all put together they're nothing compared to the Invincible Solarian League Navy(tm). Certainly nothing to bother our heads about, after all we've got 10 SDs for every one of theirs! (Ignore the fact that 80% of them are in mothballs, Everyone Knows that no neobarb would have the guts to cause trouble for the Mighty Solarian League without us having plenty of warning first.) And don't forget how backwards those Poor Benighted Neobarbs are; their SDs are probably steam powered, the poor bastards. No need to waste our time keeping an eye on them, if any of them were insane enough to attack us we could take them with both hands tied behind our backs."

MuonNeutrino wrote:

Henry Brown wrote:You know, if this list is correct it makes the Sollie intelligence failure even worse. I mean, it means they managed to totally ignore a 20 year war involving the #2, #3, and #4 navies in existence. And those rankings are just size. It doesn't include the SLN's failure to recognize the technological advances the RHN and RMN have made. But, lets set that aside for a minute. Even if the Sollie assumption that the ships of the RMN and RHN were technologically equal to their own HAD been correct, shouldn't they have still been interested in what the other really big navies in the galaxy are up to? I mean, even if you have completely failed to recognize how advanced they are, wouldn't you still want to know what really big fleets of warships are up to? Just on the basis of their size if nothing else.

"Ah, those peasants might have a few ships of the wall, but even all put together they're nothing compared to the Invincible Solarian League Navy(tm). Certainly nothing to bother our heads about, after all we've got 10 SDs for every one of theirs! (Ignore the fact that 80% of them are in mothballs, Everyone Knows that no neobarb would have the guts to cause trouble for the Mighty Solarian League without us having plenty of warning first.) And don't forget how backwards those Poor Benighted Neobarbs are; their SDs are probably steam powered, the poor bastards. No need to waste our time keeping an eye on them, if any of them were insane enough to attack us we could take them with both hands tied behind our backs."

Pretty much.

Hasn't also the Mesan Alignment actively (bribes,sleeper agents) suppressed all tech reports from the Haven sector?

Please, the League Navy was created with only one purpose - provide plenty of nameless goons, who "the good guys" could valiantly massacre by millions, lamenting "how horrible, we are forced to blast dozens of their SD's with only battlecruisers".

The main idea was to provide more "defeatable bad guys" (since Havenites stopped to be bad guys at all, and Mesans are more inclined to covert operations), but I really think the RFC gone too far about League's incompetence and incapability. Basically the only answer "why are the League so weak" is "they are so arrogant, that they didn't pay any attention to the local conflicts on the periphery" - which seems to be stretched beyond capacity.

MuonNeutrino wrote:(Ignore the fact that 80% of them are in mothballs,

Basically the League reserve fleet make no sence at all. For what reason they need about 8000 SD's in reserve, if their standing fleet was bigger than all other fleets in Galaxy combined?

Who could possibly have any benefits from the League reserve fleet? The shipbuilding corporations like Technodyne should be using all their political power to scrap the reserve as whole! Simply because "plenty ships in reserve" always meant "less shipbuilding contracts for shipbuilders". And reserve ships are mothballed. They basically required zero money to sustain, because they are IN VACUUM.

And don't forget how backwards those Poor Benighted Neobarbs are; their SDs are probably steam powered, the poor bastards. No need to waste our time keeping an eye on them, if any of them were insane enough to attack us we could take them with both hands tied behind our backs."

Oh yeah, and corrupt League industry, of course, actually are purehearted non-possessors.

Basically NO ONE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY EVER REACTED LIKE THAT. Because such reaction is bad for buisness. The arm race is always good for buisness.

So unless ALL the League upper clases are Mesan agents - and we knew that they aren't - they should act exactly the opposite. I.e. "oh no, those neobarbs poossessed the new weapons that could - in future, of course - change the force balance. We need immediatedly to vote for more money gave to industrial moguls... er, for the new defense bills and emergency shipbuilding program, of course!"

Dilandu wrote:

MuonNeutrino wrote:(Ignore the fact that 80% of them are in mothballs,

Basically the League reserve fleet make no sence at all. For what reason they need about 8000 SD's in reserve, if their standing fleet was bigger than all other fleets in Galaxy combined?

Who could possibly have any benefits from the League reserve fleet? The shipbuilding corporations like Technodyne should be using all their political power to scrap the reserve as whole! Simply because "plenty ships in reserve" always meant "less shipbuilding contracts for shipbuilders". And reserve ships are mothballed. They basically required zero money to sustain, because they are IN VACUUM.

Well the SLN did cycle ships in and out of the reserve. So the shipbuilders would be getting a trickle of work to pull out the oldest ships and update them.

Sure they'd prefer if the SLN built ships on a 50 year cycle so 1/50th of Battlefleet was replaced every year with new builds - but the chances of getting funding and approval for that are non-existent.


But yes, the Reserve did grow to large to ever be useful, though part of it was self-inflicted. If SLN planning showed that it took 6+ years to build a new SD (because given the trickle of funding all the yards and supplier were optimized for low-rate sustainability work and couldn't quickly be ramped up) then you clearly need to have all the SDs you might ever need in the first 6+ years of a war ready at hand. But then it went even further overboard. But bureaucratic inertia is hard to stop. Plus if you start reducing the size of the reserve budget commities will start assuming you've already got all the ships you need and cut funding for new construction.
So inertia and not wanting to rock to boat, taken to extremes gives you the rampant stupidity of the 8000 ship Reserve.

Jonathan_S wrote:But yes, the Reserve did grow to large to ever be useful, though part of it was self-inflicted. If SLN planning showed that it took 6+ years to build a new SD (because given the trickle of funding all the yards and supplier were optimized for low-rate sustainability work and couldn't quickly be ramped up) then you clearly need to have all the SDs you might ever need in the first 6+ years of a war ready at hand. But then it went even further overboard. But bureaucratic inertia is hard to stop. Plus if you start reducing the size of the reserve budget commities will start assuming you've already got all the ships you need and cut funding for new construction.
So inertia and not wanting to rock to boat, taken to extremes gives you the rampant stupidity of the 8000 ship Reserve.

Basically, that's why I consider League as extremely implausible Bad Guys. They required so many authors direct intervention to be weak, that... well, they are unrealistic. And frankly, I could not see the reason, why the SLN must be reduced to complete incompetence in therms of plot development. The constant demonstrations of the Alliance superiority over League became boring basically immediatedly.

Sure they'd prefer if the SLN built ships on a 50 year cycle so 1/50th of Battlefleet was replaced every year with new builds - but the chances of getting funding and approval for that are non-existent.

The problem is, that League was stated as deeply corrupt and baiscally controlled by the bureaucracy, tied with great interstellar corporations. So the situation "they couldn't change the situation into more profitable" seems... just plainly impossible. Especially if such perfect excuse as global interstellar war basically near the League's heart - let's not forget, the Star Kingdom is CLOSE neighbor for League through Beowulf termini! Basically, it should be piece of cake for Technodyne&Co to obtain major fleet modernisation in such conditions - instead they tended to downplay all this for basically no reason at all.

Again, this is one of the great League's implausibilities - capitalists, who aren't after the 300% profit.

Static markets and disruptive innovation is a well understood phenomenon in economics. It's pretty easy to see many examples in our lives where markets were static due to inertia. Wikipedia has a good number of examples. I don't see what's so implausible about the League behaving this way at all - it fits the idea to a T. The League and its transtellars are in a symbiotic relationship, and have no desire to change the status quo. Manticore is the classic case of the outside disruptor.

As has been pointed out in a few places, the current technological state of affairs in the Honorverse isn't analogous to today. We are, today, used to rapid changes in technology and have been for a century or two. Our worldview is such that we embrace and expect there to be disruption. The Honorverse, however, is relatively (note the qualifier!) static. Changes are much more spaced out. Thus the pressures on maintaining the status quo are a lot greater.

Duckk wrote:
As has been pointed out in a few places, the current technological state of affairs in the Honorverse isn't analogous to today. We are, today, used to rapid changes in technology and have been for a century. Our worldview is such that we embrace and expect there to be disruption. The Honorverse, however, is relatively (note the qualifier!) static. Changes are much more spaced out. Thus the pressures on maintaining the status quo are a lot greater.

In that case, the same as much must work for Manticore&Haven. And "the war" isn't the absolute answer. There were quite a lot situations, while the groundbreaking military innovations weren't quickly implemented during the global wars. For example, during Napoleonic war, the baloons and steamships were already in use, but their influence on military actions were near zero.