Tech Levels at the start of next series

The Gbaba are so far beyond the capability of Safehold for a couple of hundred years that the speculation if futile.
If the Terran Federation (with colony worlds and a major funtioning star traveling navy could't beat them, little Safehold is going to get just blotted out if they show up soon.
There is the small problem (after getting the OBS to know kill a bunch of things and whatever is under the temple to be friends), to bootstrap their way up to AT LEAST the level of Terran Federation technology and start conversion of a lot of the Safehold System into manufacturing plants and orbital habitats to grow the population and provide it with the tools to do the same thing with nearby systems---at the same time as pushing the R&D to surpass the Federation tech in meaningful ways.
I seem to recall that the Gbaba had a lot of ships but the Federation didn't notice any broad swath of improving tech- just a crapload of ships and crews with a singleminded obsession to kill any species that could possibly bother them. Not even particularly a need or want to take over a system for their own use.
So there will need to be a LOT of warships with a vastly improved and hopefully vastly more effective set of weapons and defences coupled with growing (and educated and inovative) population of humans expanding over dozens of systems and manitaining a very close watch on anything that is going on in space.
That, unfortunatly, is also going to improve the chances of running into the Gbaba again but you have to hope that humans can be prepared for the next encounter in terms of technology, masses of ships and vast amount of population to support that with ways to defend the occupied systems.
Should be good for 30 or 40 books....big smile.

Brigade XO wrote:The Gbaba are so far beyond the capability of Safehold for a couple of hundred years that the speculation if futile.
If the Terran Federation (with colony worlds and a major funtioning star traveling navy could't beat them, little Safehold is going to get just blotted out if they show up soon.
There is the small problem (after getting the OBS to know kill a bunch of things and whatever is under the temple to be friends), to bootstrap their way up to AT LEAST the level of Terran Federation technology and start conversion of a lot of the Safehold System into manufacturing plants and orbital habitats to grow the population and provide it with the tools to do the same thing with nearby systems---at the same time as pushing the R&D to surpass the Federation tech in meaningful ways.
I seem to recall that the Gbaba had a lot of ships but the Federation didn't notice any broad swath of improving tech- just a crapload of ships and crews with a singleminded obsession to kill any species that could possibly bother them. Not even particularly a need or want to take over a system for their own use.
So there will need to be a LOT of warships with a vastly improved and hopefully vastly more effective set of weapons and defences coupled with growing (and educated and inovative) population of humans expanding over dozens of systems and manitaining a very close watch on anything that is going on in space.
That, unfortunatly, is also going to improve the chances of running into the Gbaba again but you have to hope that humans can be prepared for the next encounter in terms of technology, masses of ships and vast amount of population to support that with ways to defend the occupied systems.
Should be good for 30 or 40 books....big smile.

Probably not 30-40 books since RFC wouldn't live long enough to write them nor would I who am older than RFC live long enough to read them.

I would imagine 4 more books since the series was suppose to go to 12 books to start with. Three more to cover the decisive moments of Safehold's rise and the bootstrapping of TF tech along with the development of and industrialization of the colony worlds. Then the final book to cover the confrontation with the Gbaba. There will probably be some long time lapses between the books with back story sketched in.

The best way to avoid the Gbaba would be to expand away from their territory sinse what we know about them is that they are not expansionist unless provoked by incursions into what they regard as their turf.

I think your 200 years is probably a pretty good guess as to how long it will take to get ready for the confrontation...although with Owl increasingly able to help things along that time frame might be shortened. The big thing there would be for Safehold to develop researchers who not only understand the tech but are able to build upon and improve it

As Lyonheart would put it, interesting times ahead.

Don

-

Fireflair wrote:I do have to wonder about the pace of innovation. Yes, Merlin and Nimue can push things, especially with the support of the Terran database, but is this a good thing? How much change can society take before it begins to fracture?

Actually, quite a bit. Look at Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Basically three centuries of progress in essentially one or two generations. It was common to find modern businessmen and workers whose parents or grandparents lived the same way as the their ancestors has at the beginning of the Edo period 350 years before. Modernizing was considered a patriotic duty, and was accomplished enthusiastically. Even some of the people I worked with twenty years ago had grandparents born in what was essential an Edo period village, though they might have had one electric light in the apartment as the only modern aspect.

It was also recent enough that while browsing a used bookstore in Tokyo, I found an engineering text book that, given the date of publishing and other notes in the inside cover, probably had been one of the batch of books imported at the beginning of the Meiji restoration. Quite remarkable to see and hold in my hand what had been used to skip 300 years of technological development in a single generation. The first step was, of course, to modernize the educational system to teach the imported knowledge. That is why Japanese currency today still has the image of some of those early educators.

I'm wondering if by the time the next books come out,could the relatively unguided rockets that we saw being used have been developed into something more formidable. If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

Weird Harold wrote:

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

Hydrogen peroxide. Very dangerous, but works.

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

Weird Harold wrote:How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

PeterZ wrote:Hydrogen peroxide. Very dangerous, but works.

Works for the drive, but how about guidance?

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

Weird Harold wrote:How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

PeterZ wrote:Hydrogen peroxide. Very dangerous, but works.

Weird Harold wrote:Works for the drive, but how about guidance?

Begin with WWII models that can go straight. Torpedo boats and destroyers launching them is a good place to start.

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

Weird Harold wrote:How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

PeterZ wrote:Hydrogen peroxide. Very dangerous, but works.

Weird Harold wrote:Works for the drive, but how about guidance?

PeterZ wrote:Begin with WWII models that can go straight. Torpedo boats and destroyers launching them is a good place to start.

That's a very long step to Harpoons and Mk-48 torpedoes. Which is sort of my point.

Charis already has the tech level to build pneumatic-powered, gyroscope-guided torpedoes without any particular stretch of the Proscriptions. Thanks to OWL they even have blueprints (if they can explain where they came from :p). What they don't have and can't obtain without electricity is digital guidance fast enough and small enough for an effective guided-missile like a Harpoon or MK-48.

Michae wrote:If they had anything like say Harpoon anti-ship missiles available,or some form of the MK 48 torpedo,thy'd have sea superiority as I see it.

Weird Harold wrote:How would they engineer something that advanced without breaking the Proscription of electricity?

PeterZ wrote:Hydrogen peroxide. Very dangerous, but works.

Weird Harold wrote:Works for the drive, but how about guidance?

PeterZ wrote:Begin with WWII models that can go straight. Torpedo boats and destroyers launching them is a good place to start.

Weird Harold wrote:That's a very long step to Harpoons and Mk-48 torpedoes. Which is sort of my point.

Charis already has the tech level to build pneumatic-powered, gyroscope-guided torpedoes without any particular stretch of the Proscriptions. Thanks to OWL they even have blueprints (if they can explain where they came from :p). What they don't have and can't obtain without electricity is digital guidance fast enough and small enough for an effective guided-missile like a Harpoon or MK-48.

Agreed. I thought your point was self evident. Using hydrogen peroxide will be tough enough an obstacle to accomplish without electricity. The ICN torpedos will have a significant advantage over torpedos using other means of propulsion, like compressed air.