Lord Skimper wrote:According to the nay sayers the Manties don't have anything that can cut through any SD's.
It should not be surprising that your comprehension of what other people post is about the same as your comprehension of the books, and yet....
Of course Manticore has the equipment to cut through SDs. That was never the problem. The problem, dear Skimper (and RedBaron, you better listen too), is that you haven't come up with a compelling reason for why said equipment should be used to alter the SLN ships such that they are useful for any purpose besides "being an example of obsolete capital ship building techniques and design doctrines".
It appears Manties use hand held grinders for working on Ships. Given how fragile an old SD is it should be easy to cut through with a 32 nd century cutting device.
"Fragile"? Where did you get the impression that the SLN SDs are fragile? They're probably as tough as any ship the RMN fielded up to the advent of the Gryphon class.
Let alone using the huge hallways and some explosives, making holes to access enough shouldn't be a problem. Unless you are a nay sayer. It appears it should have taken Grayson, who was more backwards than anyone, Decades according to these nay sayers to do anything with a captured Peep SD and DR. Even though it says otherwise in the books.
Couple factors you are ignoring: The Graysons had yard hands to spare and an obvious incentive to learn capital ship building techniques. They had a very pressing need for capital ships of their own. Putting the RHN SDs back into service filled both requirements, and the job still required several months of work (They were captured in 1905, their first offensive deployment happened in 1907).
Now. Let's look at the timeline so far. The SLN ships are captured in July 1921. As of Oyster Bay, which happens in February 1922, nothing whatsoever has been done with them (because there is literally no need to do anything with them). After Oyster Bay, with RMN shipbuilding either destroyed or focussed on rebuilding itself or servicing the existing RMN fleet, there is no meaningful capacity for ship modifications, let alone shipbuilding, in the Manticoran system.
So. Based on the example of the RHN SDs captured at third Yeltsin, it takes at least half a year to make meaningful alterations to capital ships comparable to the SLN vessels (Not counting design time), and that's with all the industry required to do it intact and operating at best possible efficiency and an overwhelming need driving the project. That brings us neatly to the baseline question that all proposals for doing something with the SLN ships have to answer and that neither you, Skimper nor REdBaron have bothered with:
What possible use case exists that would justify pulling industrial capacity off of the rebuilding effort and fleet service tasks to work on the SLN ships?Bear in mind that using these vessels as makeshift worker housing is stupid in a universe in which you can travel up to a space station for lunch.
Additionally, remember that the RMMM exists. For almost anything that you want to do with the SLN SDs, a similar proposal can be made using modifications to freighters, which is something that is much, much easier and that can actually be done using shipbuilding capacity in other allied systems (or, for example, Talbott and Silesia).
Funny a work shop and two month and a Solly can build a Hyper space engine. But a Mantie with three of the most advanced worlds can't rig up anything more than a grinder and can't do anything with 50-200 year old Ships, because they are Nay Sayers.
Okay. Skimper and RedBaron. Listen closely. Us 'Naysayers' are doing you the favour of not ignoring you and trying to take your so-called proposals and ideas, however harebrained they may be, seriously.
In return, what do you do? You denigrate, you refuse to engage with our arguments and just come up with the next scheme (or just run your scheme back, because why not). That is disingenuous.
Oh, and if you're going to mock the arguments we make? Please do try to find arguments that someone has actually made, not ones you made up.
Once you get a missile into a SD it can never come out again. The insides of SD are smaller than WWII torpedo boats, with less amenities. But give the nay sayer a tri barrel and he can storm the same SD without battle armour, and kill all the defenders shooting through the bulkheads and ...?
Stop it with the hyperbole. You are not good enough as a writer to use it well.