Last use for SL SD captured

George J. Smith wrote:I don't even think the merchant crews sitting idle would be enough to "fly/sail" the Sollie SDs anywhere.

of-course the would, as I explained before, most of those huge number of crewmen the SLN require are the guys who "keep the captains automatic chair oiled", excessive crews to justify their budgets. most can be ignored, one weapons crew per squadron and minimum sensor crews for most. most would sail with little more than the crew of a merchie, command, sensors, propulsion, they don't need the rest to get from point A to B and just need a few weapons crew on one to give a show that "we're SDs and we're armed fear us!" so they don't get jumped by pirates or something.

MAD-4A wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:I don't even think the merchant crews sitting idle would be enough to "fly/sail" the Sollie SDs anywhere.

of-course the would, as I explained before, most of those huge number of crewmen the SLN require are the guys who "keep the captains automatic chair oiled", excessive crews to justify their budgets. most can be ignored, one weapons crew per squadron and minimum sensor crews for most. most would sail with little more than the crew of a merchie, command, sensors, propulsion, they don't need the rest to get from point A to B and just need a few weapons crew on one to give a show that "we're SDs and we're armed fear us!" so they don't get jumped by pirates or something.

We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

Ferrying the 70 survivors of BOMA II world require the crews of 2 squadrons of Gryphons to do so. I'm not certain how you would vet that many SLN crewmembers for such an operation.

Daryl wrote:To save lives and missiles, leave them there but with a well hidden off switch, that responds to a coded signal.

Lord Skimper wrote:Could just go and park them unannounced in a Solly system. Just show up, park them and leave. Leave it to the Sollies to figure out. Confuse the heck out of someone.

You could just park them in Beowulf Orbit. Beowulf can crew them as they want. Easy to move using Beowulf crews through the junction. Beowulf can crew 120-150 SD with Talbot, Silesian, Manty and Beowulf crews. Until they have their vote and can upgrade to a number of new ships.

Theemile wrote:
We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

Ferrying the 70 survivors of BOMA II world require the crews of 2 squadrons of Gryphons to do so. I'm not certain how you would vet that many SLN crewmembers for such an operation.

That reminds me ... did the GA decide what to do with the CREWS of those SDs? 70 ships with (guessing) 5000 warm bodies in each is 350,000 people to house and feed or haul to a planet in another system where they can be warehoused, fed and kept out of trouble.

robert132 wrote:That reminds me ... did the GA decide what to do with the CREWS of those SDs? 70 ships with (guessing) 5000 warm bodies in each is 350,000 people to house and feed or haul to a planet in another system where they can be warehoused, fed and kept out of trouble.

Easy. They put them in the PoW camps they built for the Havenite crews captured at the end of BoMA1. There were ~380,000 of them, all now repatriated.

Unless you meant Crandall's crews - that was covered in textev. IIRC, they chose an uninhabited tropical island on Spindle and dumped them there with the emergency survival supplies off their own ships.

Lord Skimper wrote:Could just go and park them unannounced in a Solly system. Just show up, park them and leave. Leave it to the Sollies to figure out. Confuse the heck out of someone.

I hate to say it, but this is the first idea that Vice Admiral the Lord Skimper has had that I could agree with.

robert132 wrote:

Theemile wrote:
We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

Ferrying the 70 survivors of BOMA II world require the crews of 2 squadrons of Gryphons to do so. I'm not certain how you would vet that many SLN crewmembers for such an operation.

That reminds me ... did the GA decide what to do with the CREWS of those SDs? 70 ships with (guessing) 5000 warm bodies in each is 350,000 people to house and feed or haul to a planet in another system where they can be warehoused, fed and kept out of trouble.

RMN and PRN SDs had crews just shy of 5000, iirc it was mentioned at Spindle that Scientists have crews of 6500.

robert132 wrote:

Theemile wrote:
We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

Ferrying the 70 survivors of BOMA II world require the crews of 2 squadrons of Gryphons to do so. I'm not certain how you would vet that many SLN crewmembers for such an operation.

That reminds me ... did the GA decide what to do with the CREWS of those SDs? 70 ships with (guessing) 5000 warm bodies in each is 350,000 people to house and feed or haul to a planet in another system where they can be warehoused, fed and kept out of trouble.

Personally, I would have taken a page from Henke's taking a page from Haven, and put all the Solarian survivors from Raging Justice on Gryphon islands

"Want to conquer US, did you? Here, have a sample of our beloved weather patterns."


Given that Gryphon has virtually no population compared even to Sphinx, let alone Manticore, it's for all intents Cerberus/Hades, minus the inedible fauna. Drop a few hundred Solarians in a camp, and tell them "better not wander too far if you expect to get fed. Here's some shelters and food, we'll come by in two weeks with more food. Have fun!"

Somtaaw wrote:Personally, I would have taken a page from Henke's taking a page from Haven, and put all the Solarian survivors from Raging Justice on Gryphon islands

"Want to conquer US, did you? Here, have a sample of our beloved weather patterns."

I'd pick a spot in the Sphinx Outback where the Hexapumas and Peak-bears can guard them -- with a little help from the treecats.

Between the wildlife and the winter weather, there's going to be precious little incentive to wander away from the prison camp.

Theemile wrote:We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

No - no more than a few hundred - you don't need thousands of crew members to operate a merci. the same systems would be needed regardless of what, or how much, shut down dead weight equipment the hull & drives happen to be lugging around. The 'ferry' ships would not have weapons up (as you claim it's obsolete anyway so why bother) you just need an escort or perhaps one in partial operations (PD weapons & chase missiles OR bow energy weapons (in hyper), to make a showing, at the most that's a few hundred extra guys, no round-the-clock watch, just on stand-by incase a rotating impeller gets in the way of some moving excreta).