"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Jonathan_S wrote:

GabrialSagan wrote:Manticore would not have to charge more than a nominal price, they are offloading captured goods they acquired for the cost of the expended missiles after all. As for the use and interest, Barregos is not the only one who can see the writing on the wall as far as the collapse of the Solarian League is concerned. Star nations that have relied on the SLN as a stabilizing force in the galaxy are going to find themselves suddenly in the midst of a new age of warlordism and are going to want the hardware necessary to defend themselves. Other star nations and militant NGOs are going to want that same hardware to seize opportunities in the new destabilized galaxy to kick off the new age of warlordism.

Sure, if some hypothetical buyer showed up, and you were reasonable sure they weren't going to turn around and immediately commit atrocities with them, by all means offload the otherwise useless SDs.

But a buyer who can scrape up a sufficient crew to fly them away, can maintain them, aquire replacement ammo but still has a real use for obsolete, and very manpower intensive, hardware might be less common than you thinks.

Oh, and one who's not worried about what the SLN might think about their acquisition of ex-SLN war prizes. Because as obsolete as the SLN is, it's more than capable of crushing anybody trying to start up a little navy around captured SLN units. If Manticore is willing to offer system defense to prevent the League from retaliating against you then you don't need the SDs in the first place - but if it's an "as is" transaction then you'd better hope the League doesn't learn about it, doesn't care, or at least has higher priorities than making a quick and painful example of you.

They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League. As for retaliation is concerned, yes the Sollies do have bigger fish to fry in the form of the Grand Alliance. As for the atrocities issue, that is sort of the point. Every raider, pirate, and warlord ripping pieces out of Solarian space is one more strain on the SLN's resources that they cannot use to go after Manticore and Haven. Even if only one star nation in twenty has the sort of infrastructure to maintain a solarian capital ship, that is still dozens of potential customers.

GabrialSagan wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure, if some hypothetical buyer showed up, and you were reasonable sure they weren't going to turn around and immediately commit atrocities with them, by all means offload the otherwise useless SDs.

But a buyer who can scrape up a sufficient crew to fly them away, can maintain them, aquire replacement ammo but still has a real use for obsolete, and very manpower intensive, hardware might be less common than you thinks.

Oh, and one who's not worried about what the SLN might think about their acquisition of ex-SLN war prizes. Because as obsolete as the SLN is, it's more than capable of crushing anybody trying to start up a little navy around captured SLN units. If Manticore is willing to offer system defense to prevent the League from retaliating against you then you don't need the SDs in the first place - but if it's an "as is" transaction then you'd better hope the League doesn't learn about it, doesn't care, or at least has higher priorities than making a quick and painful example of you.

They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League. As for retaliation is concerned, yes the Sollies do have bigger fish to fry in the form of the Grand Alliance. As for the atrocities issue, that is sort of the point. Every raider, pirate, and warlord ripping pieces out of Solarian space is one more strain on the SLN's resources that they cannot use to go after Manticore and Haven. Even if only one star nation in twenty has the sort of infrastructure to maintain a solarian capital ship, that is still dozens of potential customers.

They're almost certainly also obsolete compared to the SDs the Renesans Factor worlds' SDFs have - and, though they mothballed their yards during the ceasefire the Talbot system (Manticoran ally during the first war) build SDs and those were presumably a bit more modern than the SLN designs; as were all the mothballed 1905+ PD SDs from all the navies you mentioned.

Though by that point you've pretty much listed the owners of over 80% of non-SLN SDs in existance. So while the SLN SDs are probably about as modern as the remaining handful of SDFs that have a squadron or two they're obsolete compared to basically everybody who is operating any number of SDs.


Still, if you can man and operate them, a couple divisions of SDs are vastly better than no warships; or even than a couple divisions of BCs. And if your worry is people getting their hands on other ex-SLN hardware then yes, the captured SDs should be comparable to them.


But I object to the idea that Manticore would willingly hand out units to people to commit raiding, warlordism, or atrocities, just because those would distract the League. Even if they were amoral, which they clearly aren't, that's bad real-politic. It's at best a shor term tactical advantage that screws up their long term strategic plans. And on the short term their military edge is sufficient they don't need to majorly distract and disperse the SLN. But long term they need to be able to make peace treaties with the rump of the League and other polities that may splinter off from it. Encouraging warlordism is a bad way to convince people to sit down with your diplomats and agree on how to end this conflict. But it's a good way to ensure they fear you, hate you, and want to see you punished for unleashing that. A nice recipe for revanchism; which is exactly what Manticore is trying to avoid.


However if someone is willing to take them for peaceful defensive purposes then by all means, let Manticore dispose of some that way.

Jonathan_S wrote:But I object to the idea that Manticore would willingly hand out units to people to commit raiding, warlordism, or atrocities, just because those would distract the League. Even if they were amoral, which they clearly aren't, that's bad real-politic. It's at best a shor term tactical advantage that screws up their long term strategic plans. And on the short term their military edge is sufficient they don't need to majorly distract and disperse the SLN. But long term they need to be able to make peace treaties with the rump of the League and other polities that may splinter off from it. Encouraging warlordism is a bad way to convince people to sit down with your diplomats and agree on how to end this conflict. But it's a good way to ensure they fear you, hate you, and want to see you punished for unleashing that. A nice recipe for revanchism; which is exactly what Manticore is trying to avoid.

Morality aside, it actually makes a lot of sense to garner allies. If you are worried about being attacked by pirates and raiders with SLN hardware you would need to ally yourself with the star nation that has the firepower capable of repelling such a force. Only the Alliance navies have that kind of power. Privateering was a fact of life in the age of sail just as it is in the 20th century P.D. How is unleashing private military contractors on an enemy any different from going in and blowing your enemies space stations to smithereens that different from one another?

GabrialSagan wrote:They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League.

No, the SLN Scientist Class is a design over two centuries old, not much bigger than a "Haven Sector" Dreadnaught, and only sporadically upgraded with more modern systems -- like replacing auto-cannon point defense with PDLCs or the purely cosmetic "Fleet 2000" upgrade.

They were built for energy-range combat and lack sufficient missile defense to survive against even moderate system defenses built around even extended range single drive missiles (like the Technodyne missile pods used in Monica.)

Against almost any ship -- including Shrike-class LACs -- that can control extended range or multi-drive missiles a Scientist-class SD is just a target.

Any SLN screening units would be better gifts/sales to systems building a SDF from scratch. The SLN Scientist-class SDs should only be sold to systems the GA wants to bankrupt or feels they will have to deal with militarily in the future.

GabrialSagan wrote:They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League. As for retaliation is concerned, yes the Sollies do have bigger fish to fry in the form of the Grand Alliance. As for the atrocities issue, that is sort of the point. Every raider, pirate, and warlord ripping pieces out of Solarian space is one more strain on the SLN's resources that they cannot use to go after Manticore and Haven. Even if only one star nation in twenty has the sort of infrastructure to maintain a solarian capital ship, that is still dozens of potential customers.

Actually as a general rule anyone capable of effectively manning these white elephants can build something better.

I do expect some to be sold outside of Manticore but the uses of those sold have a fairly low max number that can be utilized. Main uses I for see for these ships (besides scrap), a handfull sold for use in destructive testing, another handfull used in training (probably in Manticore) for marine boarding parties (live fire!) and for SAR teams.

Why not re-purpose them as a sort of mobile trade or SAR station. Those ships are monsters with lots of empty space that you could use for loading/off-loading cargo. Plus, they wouldn't need by a fraction of their magazines for defensive purposes and they have all those lazers and energy weapons that will can defend from any forseeable standard threat (ie not GA, MA, Andermani, Erewohni, or Mayan). Pirates would steer clear plus the ships could pay for themselves for whoever bought them.
As far as SAR, you can gut a lot of the offensive magazine space and put many a LAC (even pre-Manticore ones) in their boat bays. I guess you could do this with my other idea too, but I like things that are purpose built/tasked.

Weird Harold wrote:

GabrialSagan wrote:They are only obsolete if you are a Mantie, A Havenite, A Grayson, An Andermani, or an Erewhonese. Otherwise they are a state of the art warship built by the oh so sophisticated Solarian League.

No, the SLN Scientist Class is a design over two centuries old, not much bigger than a "Haven Sector" Dreadnaught, and only sporadically upgraded with more modern systems -- like replacing auto-cannon point defense with PDLCs or the purely cosmetic "Fleet 2000" upgrade.[/quote[


Bellerophon's are 150 ktons larger than Scientist's, and Majestic's are less than 50 ktons smaller. Which means that even before the pre-Haven War I size creep happened, non-Solarian ships were creeping up in size in general and the SLN just kept building to the same design.

Now staying to a single design, rather than constantly innovating makes sense.... if the ship were actually "tried and true", and battle-hardened designs. Scientists had none of that, and Haven Sector solar nations simply dealt with teething issues of fielding new designs due to their death grappling. Building obsolete ships just to avoid teething issues was a good way to lose and get wiped out.

ChronicRder wrote:Why not re-purpose them as a sort of mobile trade or SAR station. Those ships are monsters with lots of empty space that you could use for loading/off-loading cargo. Plus, they wouldn't need by a fraction of their magazines for defensive purposes and they have all those lazers and energy weapons that will can defend from any forseeable standard threat (ie not GA, MA, Andermani, Erewohni, or Mayan). Pirates would steer clear plus the ships could pay for themselves for whoever bought them.
As far as SAR, you can gut a lot of the offensive magazine space and put many a LAC (even pre-Manticore ones) in their boat bays. I guess you could do this with my other idea too, but I like things that are purpose built/tasked.

SD's are massively sub-divided by some of the heaviest armor in space - they don't have "lots of empty space" - at least not on the order of a freighter or station.

Sure, for example, the gyms for an SD are large for a ship - probably at least as large at a high school gymnasium. But that's pretty small compared to even an ocean going freighter, or a warehouse. Plus the access corridors to them aren't sized for large cargo. And when you compare them to freighters, which have hatches large enough a destroyer could slip through; and holds big enough to hypotenically hold that destroyer, the free space on an SD seems miniscule.


Also I think you've got a misconception about the size of LACs vs Boat Bays. Even the compact Shrikes and Ferrits are easily 4-5 times the size of a pinnace or shuttle - they won't fit into a boat bay. You need larger specialized LAC bays for a LAC. And cutting away enough armor - even on the less armored bottom side of an SD to install some - is a very non-trivial task.

ChronicRder wrote:Why not re-purpose them as a sort of mobile trade or SAR station. Those ships are monsters with lots of empty space that you could use for loading/off-loading cargo. Plus, they wouldn't need by a fraction of their magazines for defensive purposes and they have all those lazers and energy weapons that will can defend from any forseeable standard threat (ie not GA, MA, Andermani, Erewohni, or Mayan). Pirates would steer clear plus the ships could pay for themselves for whoever bought them.
As far as SAR, you can gut a lot of the offensive magazine space and put many a LAC (even pre-Manticore ones) in their boat bays. I guess you could do this with my other idea too, but I like things that are purpose built/tasked.

SDs do not have lots of empty space, except for the boat bays where small craft (pinnaces and cutters) dock. An imperfect analogue might be a large cardboard box filled with egg crates and eggs where each egg is an individual item of important stuff (fusion reactor, impeller node generator, hyper generator, life support, individual missiles, command and control, etc.) and the cardboard of the egg crates are armor that is a nightmare* to cut up, with the cardboard box being the outer armored skin of the SD.

Think of a stack of these egg crates as a superdreadnought's internal (underneath the ship's outer surface) armor scheme:
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/colorfu ... 521834.jpg
And the egg crates are all fused together.

* A superdreadnought's armor is designed to stand up to the next best thing to a multi-megaton nuke going off right next to it (inside the sidewalls) and either still remain in action or at the very least not be completely destroyed.

1) grav plates. Grayson had better grav plate tech pre HOQ,and Manticore actually borrowed that and improved it for their next-generation ships.
2) Computer hardware: equally obsolete despite upgrades.
3) Software woefully inadequate. More tech headaches writing modern dual Pentium software for IBM 6066 machines. and the $$$$$$ needed.
4) Lots of room does not equate to functional room.
5) Manticore has lots of pre-pod SDs they could sell that are newer.
6) only functional use is to tow them out to the asteroid fields and use them as target drones for trainees.
7) can't convert to Ammunition ships or fleet haulers because of basic grav plate tech makes max accel too slow. Back (or forward, whatever) to MA cutting one BC to 2 frigates, cost over runs on conversion, makes gutting and converting not cost effective.