Last use for SL SD captured

Weird Harold wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:They are not building their own ships, Erewhon is. Erewhon has access to somewhat out-of-date Manticorean military technology, so I expect that the SDs it's building for Maya Sector are substantially better than the ISLN's Scientist class, as well as take smaller crews.

Maya is funding Erewhon shipyard expansion so they can build SD(P)s for Maya. Maya is well aware of how useless the Scientist and Vega class SLN ships are and wouldn't take them if they were paid to scrap them. Well maybe if they were paid enough.

Maya's new Marksman-class cruisers use a high degree of automation to reduce crew size and when combined with their "arsenal" ships are more than a match for SLN SDs. Why would they want ships that take five times the crew to field half the firepower?

Maya is probably the one sector that could actually use SLN SDs -- as opposed to using it as a "scarecrow" -- since they actually have a substantial pool of sailors trained on SLN hardware. Perhaps other OFS sectors have similar contingency plans but until they actually secede they can't accept captured SLN ships from Manticore without political repercussions.

The problem for lesser Verge systems isn't warm bodies that can operate an airlock. The problem is trained Navy personnel who can utilize the (limited) capability of a SLN SD. Training that Navy is going to take time, enough time that a more effective and efficient defensive system (like Mycroft and LACs) can be built installed and manned with trained people.

Good point.

Remember the issues Grayson had? They built a massive war machine, all the way up from less than a dozen destroyers and cruisers, along with a handful of LACs.

These ships couldn't be crewed by all-Grayson complements. They had neither the experience nor any real expectation that this would change (well, maybe Benjamin did at the start of the negotiations).

They certainly struggled to cope with the near dozen SDs captured during Third Yeltsin.

WLBjork wrote:These ships couldn't be crewed by all-Grayson complements. They had neither the experience nor any real expectation that this would change (well, maybe Benjamin did at the start of the negotiations).

They certainly struggled to cope with the near dozen SDs captured during Third Yeltsin.

With massive Manticoran support in the form of "loaners" and a much higher proportion of spacer/space construction personnel, it still took a year or so to get the Manticore's Gift class operational. Grayson managed it far faster than the PRH's worst case estimates, but it still took time and lots of "loaners" to accomplish. Even with Honor in command, her forces were barely fully operational when the PRN attacked.

ETA: I checked the timeline, and it was 29 months (two T-years and five months) between Third Yeltsin and Fourth Yeltsin. PRH analysts though three years would be the minimum to bring all eleven of the Manticore's Gift class to Operational status.

At the time, there were no better options for system defense, and Grayson needed the offensive power to prosecute the war. With the advent of modern LACs, CLACs, pod-based MDMs and SD(p)s there are better options for both defense and offense that won't take as much outside support (loaners/cadre) or time to bring online.

JohnRoth wrote:Among this clutter, what's "typical?" I expect that various departments of astrographics have a definition, but the definition is probably as useful as ballet slippers on a pig. (No comments about Disney's animation of "Dance of the Hours" in Fantasia, please.)

Those were "water horses," not swine, up on pointe in Fantasia.

Weird Harold wrote:

WLBjork wrote:These ships couldn't be crewed by all-Grayson complements. They had neither the experience nor any real expectation that this would change (well, maybe Benjamin did at the start of the negotiations).

They certainly struggled to cope with the near dozen SDs captured during Third Yeltsin.

With massive Manticoran support in the form of "loaners" and a much higher proportion of spacer/space construction personnel, it still took a year or so to get the Manticore's Gift class operational. Grayson managed it far faster than the PRH's worst case estimates, but it still took time and lots of "loaners" to accomplish. Even with Honor in command, her forces were barely fully operational when the PRN attacked.

ETA: I checked the timeline, and it was 29 months (two T-years and five months) between Third Yeltsin and Fourth Yeltsin. PRH analysts though three years would be the minimum to bring all eleven of the Manticore's Gift class to Operational status.

At the time, there were no better options for system defense, and Grayson needed the offensive power to prosecute the war. With the advent of modern LACs, CLACs, pod-based MDMs and SD(p)s there are better options for both defense and offense that won't take as much outside support (loaners/cadre) or time to bring online.

The whole Manticore's Gift class was a very forced plot point to begin with. Giving those ships to Grayson wasn't the equivalent of giving of giving giving a Nimitz to New Zealand, as mentioned above in thread, it was closer to Britian giving the interred ships at Scappa Flow to Ethopia, a nation then several hundred years behind the technology curve from the 1st world nations. The act overnight turned a podunk star into one of the 25 most powerful star nations.

No matter that it took liberal technology infusions from Manticore and retraining the Grayson workforce, as well as rebuilding the GSN with almost 50% loaners from Manticore (The officers were probably >75% for the first few years.)

So while I may be alone, I definitely see the whole Manticore's gift/Grayson industrial Miracle as plot driven, and not something easily replicateable in the Honorverse.

Theemile wrote:The whole Manticore's Gift class was a very forced plot point to begin with. Giving those ships to Grayson wasn't the equivalent of giving of giving giving a Nimitz to New Zealand, as mentioned above in thread, it was closer to Britian giving the interred ships at Scappa Flow to Ethopia...

No, it was more like giving the old Russian carriers to India and China, or Dreadnoughts to 3rd world South American countries ... oh wait, they did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Vikramaditya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivadavia-class_battleship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_battleship_Minas_Geraes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_battleship_Almirante_Latorre there is no reason to think that human beings from Earth, on another planet, with space faring technology would have any issues figuring out 'oh the manual says this button does this, that's new.' They are a space farring people they can figure out slightly better technology, just like a gunner from CSS Virginia, transferred to USS Virginia could figure out oh, the shell slides in the breach, that's convenient. and the US with 300mill people can operate 10 supper carriers, so there is no way a planet with a Billion people couldn't come up with the same # of people to operate an SD (with the same crew requirements).

Theemile wrote:So while I may be alone, I definitely see the whole Manticore's gift/Grayson industrial Miracle as plot driven, and not something easily replicateable in the Honorverse.

No the whole 'I can't figure out how they could' is plot driven for 'I don't want to deal with them.' - so just have them sold off to some Verge systems that never actually entered the war and they go off and slowly/quietly break down later.

MAD-4A wrote:

Theemile wrote:The whole Manticore's Gift class was a very forced plot point to begin with. Giving those ships to Grayson wasn't the equivalent of giving of giving giving a Nimitz to New Zealand, as mentioned above in thread, it was closer to Britian giving the interred ships at Scappa Flow to Ethopia...

No, it was more like giving the old Russian carriers to India and China, or Dreadnoughts to 3rd world South American countries ... oh wait, they did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Vikramaditya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivadavia-class_battleship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_battleship_Minas_Geraes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_battleship_Almirante_Latorre there is no reason to think that human beings from Earth, on another planet, with space faring technology would have any issues figuring out 'oh the manual says this button does this, that's new.' They are a space farring people they can figure out slightly better technology, just like a gunner from CSS Virginia, transferred to USS Virginia could figure out oh, the shell slides in the breach, that's convenient. and the US with 300mill people can operate 10 supper carriers, so there is no way a planet with a Billion people couldn't come up with the same # of people to operate an SD (with the same crew requirements).

Theemile wrote:So while I may be alone, I definitely see the whole Manticore's gift/Grayson industrial Miracle as plot driven, and not something easily replicateable in the Honorverse.

No the whole 'I can't figure out how they could' is plot driven for 'I don't want to deal with them.' - so just have them sold off to some Verge systems that never actually entered the war and they go off and slowly/quietly break down later.

I believe you are missing my point - in 1902, the fleet Grayson had (the peak of their technological development) was overall less advanced than the ships we see being fielded by Manticore in the Manticore Ascendant series - 3 centuries earlier. Their Counter missiles were chemical rockets, and their best point defense units were surplus Solarian Emag slug throwers, so old they had been replaced in Solarian service by first grav drivers, then laser clusters. In a stand up fight on ground of her choosing, the Fearless CA alone probably could have taken the entire OOB of both the 1901 Masadan and Grayson fleets.

As far as economies and military forces go, in 1902 Grayson was in the bottom 5% of polities. Just Manticore giving Grayson their surplus ships (7 DD, 9 CL, 3 CA, 16BC) and selling them new ships at greatly reduced pricing (3 DD, 7 CL, 5 CA, 3 BC), jumped Grayson into the 80% range of most powerful navies. Giving them 11 SDs was the equivalent of adding them to the nuke club. In 5 years, to go from one of the poorest, backward economies in the connected universe to being able to boast a fleet that can threaten even the mightiest of nations, and an economy which can support AND increase that fleet, is very plot driven.

MAD-4A wrote:No, it was more like giving the old Russian carriers to India and China, or Dreadnoughts to 3rd world South American countries ... oh wait, they did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Vikramaditya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivadavia-class_battleship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_battleship_Minas_Geraes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_battleship_Almirante_Latorre there is no reason to think that human beings from Earth, on another planet, with space faring technology would have any issues figuring out 'oh the manual says this button does this, that's new.' They are a space farring people they can figure out slightly better technology, just like a gunner from CSS Virginia, transferred to USS Virginia could figure out oh, the shell slides in the breach, that's convenient. and the US with 300mill people can operate 10 supper carriers, so there is no way a planet with a Billion people couldn't come up with the same # of people to operate an SD (with the same crew requirements).

It's less that clear that the South American countries actually could keep their Dreadnaughts in military shape, or could use them effectively.

And those ships are, even for the time, much simpler than a 20th century, much less a 40th century Honorverse design.

The couple times we've seen Verge worlds given fairly modern warships they've struggled to man, maintain, and operate them.

Masada didn't really know how to use Thunder of God/Saladin and got badly hurt by a CA that it should have been able to crush. And that's despite operating a large, for the verge, navy of 5 CLs and 8 DDs (to Grayson's 3 CLs and 4 DDs)

And we've already talked about the level of support Grayson needed to ramp up their navy. Yet despite their technological obsolescence a trio of cruisers backed by a quartet of destroyer, plus a fair number of LACs, makes Grayson probably in the top third of naval size for a single-system verge polity.

Oh, and supporting that navy sucked up 1/3rd of Masada's GDP, and 1/6th of Graysons larger GPD. You wouldn't have the capital costs if given an SD, but the costs for missiles, spares, and people would still be more than many verge worlds could support.

An Monica, which was getting OFS support for it's original outsized navy of 5 CAs, 8 CLs, 19 DD, and "several dozen" LACs, had trouble coming up with the crews for just 14 BCs -- only triple the tonnage they already had in active service (though admittedly those BCs have roughly twice the combined tonnage of one Scientist-class SD).


Certainly David hasn't painted it as quick or easy to ramp up a navy - even if you're dealing with a similar tech base. So I think you're overoptimistic on how many Verge worlds could scrape up the manning on short notice to fly an free SD home, or could keep it in operation long once they had it.



That said, if some thing they can try, and Manticore is reasonable sure they won't go off to commit attrocities with it, I don't care if they let the verge system try. I just don't expect much success.

Theemile wrote:I believe you are missing my point - in 1902, the fleet Grayson had (the peak of their technological development) was overall less advanced than the ships we see being fielded by Manticore in the Manticore Ascendant series - 3 centuries earlier. Their Counter missiles were chemical rockets, and their best point defense units were surplus Solarian Emag slug throwers, so old they had been replaced in Solarian service by first grav drivers, then laser clusters. In a stand up fight on ground of her choosing, the Fearless CA alone probably could have taken the entire OOB of both the 1901 Masadan and Grayson fleets.

As far as economies and military forces go, in 1902 Grayson was in the bottom 5% of polities. Just Manticore giving Grayson their surplus ships (7 DD, 9 CL, 3 CA, 16BC) and selling them new ships at greatly reduced pricing (3 DD, 7 CL, 5 CA, 3 BC), jumped Grayson into the 80% range of most powerful navies. Giving them 11 SDs was the equivalent of adding them to the nuke club. In 5 years, to go from one of the poorest, backward economies in the connected universe to being able to boast a fleet that can threaten even the mightiest of nations, and an economy which can support AND increase that fleet, is very plot driven.

And my point is - if the most (well 2nd most next to Masada) backwater - anti-technology-theocratic/technology-is-the-Devils-work planet in human occupied space can go from 'pointed sticks' to Pod-Noughts in only a few T-years, then how come other, less backwater non-anti-tech worlds with billions (or at-least 100s of millions) of inhabitance and a serviceable space presence (even the 'backwater' of the Silesian Confederacy had merchies and space patrol vessels/space pirates) can't muster a token prize-crew to get a few (or even 1) of those SDs back to their planet while sending a few thousand volunteers to Haven or Andi... or even somewhere else, to get basic warship training and man those ships. Even the members of the Talbott Cluster should be able to, and reinforce their defenses (in lieu of the EoM being able to send missile pods - which as ya'll point out are now in short supply, no production and unavailable) against FF BCs raiding the area - as the Bellerophon showed even 1 DN can annihilate and entire fleet of BCs - so why would you not want such a presence. as to other Verge systems - having an SD - ANY SD would be a huge boost to their defenses, even if it were manned by incompetent, half-trained local crew who can barley keep her in a parking orbit. No body can see that just looking at it. like a pirate or raider is going to enter a system, see an SD orbiting the planets capitol and go... hmmm I don't think this planet has the technology to have maintained that ship so I'll just ignore it." - No they are going to say - first "HARD ABOUT! GET US OUT OF HERE! " then, "bring me fresh pants. " and the planets government is going to know it, all they need is for it to be able to make an occasional romp to the outer systems a few times a year (maybe 1 or even every few years) to show it's "operational" and fire a few weapons (the lasers even) to make a shoeing of "we're still armed an can fight" and it's doing it's job (like the US & USSR had to keep nuking cities with ICBMs to let everybody know that they could) its the threat that counts. It's and SD are you (as a pirate) going to take the chance your wrong and it CAN fight?

As to maintenance, You can't tell me that the entire GDP of a planet with Billions (or even Millions) of people on it can't support the operating expense and maintenance cost of a few (or even 1) SD. What are they using for fuel, molten gold and platinum? The US is operating the equivalent of 10 SDs, with full support, on the GDP of 1/3 of 1 non-spacefaring continent with less than 400 million people. So no - the whole claim that 'they don't have the manpower' or 'can't afford to support them' is pure bunk. as is the idea that the damaged ones can't be repaired - Haven has hundreds of old yards, not yet upgraded to work on the new ships, sitting idle as Bolt hole shoulders the new production. any of these yards - and their attending mobile repair ships can be used for repairs and minor modifications to the captures (which are compatible with their equipment).

So, Mantis turn them over to Haven - who uses their mobile repair ships to make any needed repairs to get them through to Trevor's Star and then to an old Haven yard. Haven sets up basic training camps for foreign sailors and sells them to Verge systems wanting to upgrade with a few (1-4) SDs, as well as a few going to Talbott systems (same procedure but for free as part of the alliance) to counter FF BC raids in systems that can't get pods or LACs due to shortages. The income goes to Haven to fund more production for GA.

If a few blow up or break down due to the local Navies poor treatment/training - not an issue for the GA.

Replaying to selected parts

MAD-4A wrote:Even the members of the Talbott Cluster should be able to, and reinforce their defenses (in lieu of the EoM being able to send missile pods - which as ya'll point out are now in short supply, no production and unavailable) against FF BCs raiding the area - as the Bellerophon showed even 1 DN can annihilate and entire fleet of BCs

4 BCs is not really an entire fleet. And Bellerophon got lucky in that the BCs popped up in her energy range where her massive grasers could swat them.
Those same 4 BCs could have raided and destroyed much of the orbital infrastructure of any planet defended by only Bellerophon - she can only be in one place at a time and she's got significantly lower acceleration so she can't run them down.
And that's ignoring that FF can be hauling around pods with longer ranged missiles than what a Scientist normally carries. (But hopefully the captured ships have magazines full of Cataphracts which evens out the missile duel range -- unless the MAlign hands over the reported higher performance 2nd gen design to the Sollies)

But an actually fleet, say a couple squadrons so 16 BCs, can expect to handily win a fight with a single SD of comparable tech base. And in the case of FF Nevadas vs ex-SLN Scientists the BCs have better missile defenses - tons per ton - so probably won't lose more than 4 or 5 killing the SD if forced to engage within its missile envelope.

MAD-4A wrote:The US is operating the equivalent of 10 SDs, with full support, on the GDP of 1/3 of 1 non-spacefaring continent with less than 400 million people.

Each SD, even the small SLN SD, is like 59 times the size of an Nimitz-class carrier. Arguably the US is operating 17% of an SD

MAD-4A wrote:And my point is - if the most (well 2nd most next to Masada) backwater - anti-technology-theocratic/technology-is-the-Devils-work planet in human occupied space can go from 'pointed sticks' to Pod-Noughts in only a few T-years, then how come other, less backwater non-anti-tech worlds with billions (or at-least 100s of millions) of inhabitance and a serviceable space presence (even the 'backwater' of the Silesian Confederacy had merchies and space patrol vessels/space pirates) can't muster a token prize-crew ...

You mean the construction and maintenance of the orbital farms had no effect on Grayson's ability to build and man spaceships?

Grayson had one of the highest percentages of space-based population/economy of all of human space. The poisonous nature of the planet-side environment made orbital farms cheaper than detoxing and maintaining planet-side farms.

That and you're still ignoring the time element: In the time it would take to bring an obsolete, second-hand SLN SD to any sort of effective readiness -- including fixing all of the little things the SLN crew let slide -- other, cheaper, options could be built from scratch. Building from scratch provides the opportunity for crews to learn their systems from the ground up.

The only thing crewing and operating a Scientist-class SD against Frontier Fleet level opposition is going to accomplish is to put most of your Navy's people on the same bulls-eye.