"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

kzt wrote:

Bluesqueak wrote:In both World War One and World War Two, the United Kingdom had a War Risks Insurance Scheme. Essentially, the government became the Insurer of Last Resort - and controlled merchant shipping by controlling which routes were insured.

Given the relatively calm way that the Manticoran Merchant ships respond to the recall - one slightly desperate request to complete this run is about the extent of it - there's likely some equivalent on Manticore. The merchant skippers don't seem to be expecting to be bankrupt once they get home; they're worried about the immediate contract payment that covers the bank payment due before they report in.

I would point out that recovering from the devastating economic effects of a major war is a damn sight more survivable than the tender mercies of the OFS. If WW2 and the UK is anything to go by, Manticore will have recovered in twenty to thirty years - but planets were suffering under the OFS unto the second and third generation.

When WW1 started, there was much rejoicing in the U.K., Germany and France as the armies marched into battle. It turned out that the war didn't quite work out like the cheering crowds expected.

And then the entire export industry of Manticore suddenly was destroyed, along with several decades worth of gross system product worth of investment. So now they suddenly have nothing to ship to anyone, and this won't just go away as soon as the the politicians stop being dumb.

How many decades worth of gross system product do you think the government of manticore has on hand in cash? I would suspect much less than one.

There is a time in war to consider economic cost. There is a time, in war, when you can't consider economic cost - because losing means that your economy will be that of a conquered province. The only economic cost you can consider are 'logistics'. As White Haven says when ordering Lacoon,

...we're fresh out of good alternatives.

I'm currently re-reading Shadow of Saganami, and it's made pretty clear that Manticore is about to get into that sort of war with the Solarian League. In Mission of Honor, it's clear that White Haven has realised that. If Manticore loses any kind of war with the Solarian League, it's not going to be like negotiating with Haven. It's going to be 'Hello, we're the Office of Frontier Security, and we're here to exploit you.'

Furthermore, the entire merchant fleet of Manticore has just become a weapon of war. There's a real danger their merchant shippers will be interned anyway, their hulls lost (and what's the insurance on that?) to the Solarian League.

Basically, Manticore is not confidently about to embark on World War One. They're not an equal power with the Solarian Navy (at least, they didn't think so, and neither did anyone else). But nor can they afford to smile sweetly and say 'oh, did our ships get in your way?' when an insane Solarian Admiral blows them up. Nations, star nations or not, simply can't afford to let foreign navies blow up their ships whenever they feel like it.

Lacoon is a last ditch attempt to stop a full scale war, by keeping things to the level of a commerce war. Is it going to damage the Manticoran economy? Yes.

Is the alternative (surrendering to the Solarians) worse? Yes. We have several books' worth of detail on how almost anything is better than being a Solarian 'protectorate'.

Does it matter how much cash-in-hand the Manticoran system government has? Nope. Sorry, but nope. Does it matter how much of their current economy is destroyed? Nope. Sorry, but nope. The reason I quoted the UK and WW2 is partly because it's the history I know best , but mostly because I know the UK economy was pretty well destroyed by World War Two. Yet, forty years later, it had pretty much recovered. Forty years is nothing to a prolong society.

Manticore is not fighting World War One. This is World War Two. Oyster Bay is Pearl Harbor. Whatever the economic damage the war does, they have to commit to it - because they simply can't afford to lose.

Manticore is a prolong society thirty or forty years is not really all that long of a time frame.

You can spend yourself into economic collapse by printing money to keep the war effort going until you need to buy say 50 trillion dollars worth of machine tools and space stations from a foreign nation who demands you to pay in a real negotiable currency instead of funny money.

After WW2, while the USA was virtually untouched, and the UK was well knocked around; Japan and Germany had their car industry destroyed altogether.
Ten years later the UK and USA were making vehicles using old jigs with cast iron pushrod engines. Meanwhile Japan and Germany had to rebuild from scratch, so were building overhead cams and alloy heads.
Sometimes destruction can enable a fresh start.

Manticore (and Grayson) will be buying machine tools and all that other required logistical hardware (and software) equipment from Beowulf, Erwhon, the Aldernami and even Haven. At the same time they will be buying it, they will start setting up production lines to make more of it themselves. They have to do that.

They need to be able to expand/rebuild by effectivly makeing the "bootstraps" to replace the capacity and training to create the workforce to both build new (manufacturing equipment) and build the end products.

They also can buy equipment-up to and including entire new or used production lines from systems/supplyers inside or outside the SL. The challange is 1) getting the goods delivered to where it can be shifted to Manticor with appropriate cut-outs, 2) what they get isn't sabatoged or destroyed by the SL before or during shipment, 3) essentialy laundering the funds for purchase to mask who the buyer/end user is going to be. High end SL machine tools with a large supply of replacement pieces and full tech/operating manuals are still going to be valuable in rebuilding even if it below the former cutting edge standard of the 1st line Manticorian equipment.
It is entirely possible that the used or new SL tech equipment will be better in the near term- a couple of years- for training and production with a major influx of new Citizens from the Talbot Quadrant and from the Manticorian half of Silesia to provide workforce for the rebuilding of the Mantorian orbit infrastructure.

Remember that it isn't just the manufacturing equipment to produce the military, local civilian and export products that needs to be replace, it is all the things like space stations, basic heavy industry manufacturing (wire, control and data cables, plumbing, bulkhead material and the forming of same to spec, environmental facilities, computers and peripherals, sensors, controls, fusion plants, everything. You have to build and outfit the places to make things and to house the workers and store goods from the raw materials through manufacture and then pending shipment to end-users along with the support systems for all of those stations and platforms and facilities.


Manticore does still have income from the Junction though it is much reduced (effects of Lacoon I & II) but a question is what they are going to accept payment in? Solarian Credits will work in the short term as long as they have an access to convert these funds into what is nessisary to (as in acceptable to) from places they need to buy equipment.

Given that the whole intent of both the Alignment campaign and the Harrington Plan is to break up The SL, you have to wonder about the Foreign Exchange Rate of SL Credits as a medium of exchange or what they are going to be valued at as the League starts to fall apart.

kzt wrote:You can spend yourself into economic collapse by printing money to keep the war effort going until you need to buy say 50 trillion dollars worth of machine tools and space stations from a foreign nation who demands you to pay in a real negotiable currency instead of funny money.

You can, but that presumes that Manticore has no friendly Star Nations willing to lend them the money and/or goods on a very long term loan. You might find it interesting to look up the Anglo-American Loan, which followed the Lend-Lease system of WW2.

The U.K. finally finished paying off the U.S. loans in 2006. Yes, the U.S. wanted real money - but because they were our friends they were willing to wait a very long time for the full repayment. Do you think Beowulf, Grayson, the Talbot Sector won't be willing to do the same?

First, if you want to use the SD's captured or Mothballed seems as hard as it is to believe they are indestructible short of weapons fire. Not sure how Grayson did it but they can't be reconfigured. So if this is a given, lets just leave the SD as is, park it in space and build a dispersed yard around it. Power runs from the SD to the yard. Use the tractor beams to help assemble things hard to move or place. The SD gives you a place for several thousand personal to live comfortably, Machine shops, etc... Sensors, communications, whatnot. The yard, built out from the shuttle bay area, leaving shuttle access and piggyback the new yard. A Sphinx or Gryphon SD Would allow 4,000 personal Easy tech access, and paired or grouped can easily provide 10's of 1,000 of personal for a new yard. Adding Captured SD into the Mix just extends the options / numbers of yards that can be built. 12 SD per yard would let you build 30+ yards. Using Homer and other BC's as intermediate structure, being much less heavily armoured one should have little problem reconfiguring them.

Yards / Stations so constructed will over the years be refined as the yards are built out and around them. As for crew and station personal, the Manty being the most advanced of systems would have no problem teaching new personal. In two years yards will be built and new personal will start to be deployed to each station. Three years in the Yards will be making new missiles, more sections of ship components lined up for repurposing and Ships will have been started. After Five years the second set of 6 to 12 BCL Nike or SD(P) will be under construction at each yard. Not just in the Manty home system but in key Protectorate and Star Empire Systems. Within another Five years 30+ Yards will be churning out ships and missiles.

Lord Skimper wrote:First, if you want to use the SD's captured or Mothballed seems as hard as it is to believe they are indestructible short of weapons fire. Not sure how Grayson did it but they can't be reconfigured. So if this is a given, lets just leave the SD as is, park it in space and build a dispersed yard around it. Power runs from the SD to the yard. Use the tractor beams to help assemble things hard to move or place. The SD gives you a place for several thousand personal to live comfortably, Machine shops, etc... Sensors, communications, whatnot. The yard, built out from the shuttle bay area, leaving shuttle access and piggyback the new yard. A Sphinx or Gryphon SD Would allow 4,000 personal Easy tech access, and paired or grouped can easily provide 10's of 1,000 of personal for a new yard. Adding Captured SD into the Mix just extends the options / numbers of yards that can be built. 12 SD per yard would let you build 30+ yards. Using Homer and other BC's as intermediate structure, being much less heavily armoured one should have little problem reconfiguring them.

Yards / Stations so constructed will over the years be refined as the yards are built out and around them. As for crew and station personal, the Manty being the most advanced of systems would have no problem teaching new personal. In two years yards will be built and new personal will start to be deployed to each station. Three years in the Yards will be making new missiles, more sections of ship components lined up for repurposing and Ships will have been started. After Five years the second set of 6 to 12 BCL Nike or SD(P) will be under construction at each yard. Not just in the Manty home system but in key Protectorate and Star Empire Systems. Within another Five years 30+ Yards will be churning out ships and missiles.

This out of the box idea, I very much like It makes an end run around most of the re-use problems.

DDHv wrote:This out of the box idea, I very much like It makes an end run around most of the re-use problems.

Except for the part where it's utter bullshit, of course.

Skimper has, once again, failed to establish the need and failed to evaluate alternatives.

He would want to use old superdreadnoughts, when the simpler alternative is to get Beowulf to provide a couple stations, or life support modules that can be mounted inside a freighter.

He has furthermore failed to consider the timeline. Right now, the RMN is more worried about rebuilding the main space stations, not the shipbuilding capacity as such. When Manticore is once again turning towards shipbuilding, the need to use awkward pro tem solutions will not exist.

It is, yet again, another solution that solves no problem.

Brigade XO wrote:
Manticore does still have income from the Junction though it is much reduced (effects of Lacoon I & II) but a question is what they are going to accept payment in? Solarian Credits will work in the short term as long as they have an access to convert these funds into what is nessisary to (as in acceptable to) from places they need to buy equipment.

The SEM has all the "currency" it needs to buy equipment. They have their merchant marine and they would be able to get pretty much anything they want from many core world and non-aligned worlds if they can provide the cargo ships and guarantee that those ships will make it to the destination.

They can still use League currency for as long as necessary but once the League starts to collapse in obvious ways they can switch to Manticoran, Grayson or Havenite currency. And if the economic power of the galaxy revolves around the GA after the League is shattered buying wouldn't be a problem.