How good are the solarian transtellars?

As for ordering new ships, the production turn around is longer than a year, even if all the parts, and slips, are available.
As for slack, it exists, but the controlling factor is actually the components. Even in the Core there are systems that can't make impellars or starship fusion plants.

^
I think that is an important point: If you need Transport ships to build transport ships, because parts like interpellar rings, sensors and else are not build at your star system make it difficult for some shipyards to work. Maybe some have everything they need in their system, but then is the question about the parts for the systems, like computer parts and else.
I think we talked about that a few times here in the forum.

But the question was if the transtellar companies have it see it comming that it is possible that a war blockade the haven whormholes?

One other problem may be beaurocracy. The transstellars are huge and will have a beaurocracy to match. This is a situation crying out for creative out of the box solutions. But as much as gigantic corporations say they love innovation and creative thinking, they don't really, in fact their internal beaurocracies tend to discourage it. Under these extreme circumstances Darwinian survival will kick in and those organizations which can successfully tame the beaurocracy monster will prosper, those who can't will fail. But all of this internal infighting will take time.

biochem wrote:One other problem may be beaurocracy. The transstellars are huge and will have a beaurocracy to match. This is a situation crying out for creative out of the box solutions. But as much as gigantic corporations say they love innovation and creative thinking, they don't really, in fact their internal beaurocracies tend to discourage it. Under these extreme circumstances Darwinian survival will kick in and those organizations which can successfully tame the beaurocracy monster will prosper, those who can't will fail. But all of this internal infighting will take time.

I suspect the "ingenious" idea that Transtellars will have is to switch over to "new" shipping from "neutral" parties, at least at first. And by "new" I mean the exact same ships and people registered to a theoretically neutral nation. Torch, AE, New Tuscany, Monica. Etc. Assuming Manticore doesn't try and shoot its foot off and the Mandarins stop attempting to win Darwin Awards, that should work nicely although it will probably take a few months to all shake out.

If the Mandarins keep being idiots the first Manticorians who try to cash in will get blown away. If Manticore tries to put a stop to it, they'll get to watch the AE buy everyone's merchant marine. I presume that if anyone screws it up, the Mandarins will. The Mandarins doing that would make THEM the ones who are screwing up SL trade!

I wonder if the Manti commerce raiders will get confused and start protecting SL shipping from the SLN. It seems like a thing they might do.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

biochem wrote:One other problem may be beaurocracy. The transstellars are huge and will have a beaurocracy to match. This is a situation crying out for creative out of the box solutions. But as much as gigantic corporations say they love innovation and creative thinking, they don't really, in fact their internal beaurocracies tend to discourage it. Under these extreme circumstances Darwinian survival will kick in and those organizations which can successfully tame the beaurocracy monster will prosper, those who can't will fail. But all of this internal infighting will take time.

I suspect the "ingenious" idea that Transtellars will have is to switch over to "new" shipping from "neutral" parties, at least at first. And by "new" I mean the exact same ships and people registered to a theoretically neutral nation. Torch, AE, New Tuscany, Monica. Etc. Assuming Manticore doesn't try and shoot its foot off and the Mandarins stop attempting to win Darwin Awards, that should work nicely although it will probably take a few months to all shake out.

If the Mandarins keep being idiots the first Manticorians who try to cash in will get blown away. If Manticore tries to put a stop to it, they'll get to watch the AE buy everyone's merchant marine. I presume that if anyone screws it up, the Mandarins will. The Mandarins doing that would make THEM the ones who are screwing up SL trade!

I wonder if the Manti commerce raiders will get confused and start protecting SL shipping from the SLN. It seems like a thing they might do.

I'm sure that Manticore has a plan for how to handle any 'flag of convenience' operations, because that's an obvious ploy. I think they've seen it in Silesia, for example.

But the basic problem that the Solarian League transtellars have is that - without the Manticorian ships - they simply don't have enough bottoms to move their current level of cargo. And the Manticoran ships won't be available to adopt a flag of convenience, because they've already recalled their merchant ships, and will be pointing them at neutral areas.

There might be some Manticorans who try to 'cash in' by reflagging (there's always some), but having someone try and invade you has this funny result of making most people disinclined to support the invader's Star Nation while they're still at war with them.

Then there's the merchant reservists, or even non-reservists, who are probably now in RMN uniform.

HungryKing wrote:First of all not all transstellars possess shipping interests, most solarian freight appears to be handled by a relatively small number of shipping cartels, most of whom actually sub-contract an extremely large portion their carrying capacity. As for penalties for non solarian shipping it would not work, Manticorans would start using perfectly legitimate Beowulfan flags.

As for ordering new ships, the production turn around is longer than a year, even if all the parts, and slips, are available.
As for slack, it exists, but the controlling factor is actually the components. Even in the Core there are systems that can't make impellars or starship fusion plants.

HungryKing wrote:First of all not all transstellars possess shipping interests, most solarian freight appears to be handled by a relatively small number of shipping cartels, most of whom actually sub-contract an extremely large portion their carrying capacity. As for penalties for non solarian shipping it would not work, Manticorans would start using perfectly legitimate Beowulfan flags.

As for ordering new ships, the production turn around is longer than a year, even if all the parts, and slips, are available.
As for slack, it exists, but the controlling factor is actually the components. Even in the Core there are systems that can't make impellars or starship fusion plants.

Does it sound like a double-edged doubletalk sword, on one hand, for the League to label the Manties as neobarbs, yet allow their carrying trade to become dependent on the neobarbs and their darn junctions, w/o having a contingency plan? Something the size of the League simply doesn't, or shouldn't, give other superpowers the ammo to shoot their carrying trade in the foot, without at least having bandaids on hand.

Does every outfit in the League, civilian and military, have one hand covering one eye and one hand covering the other? Where are all of the market researches that are suppose to come out of campuses like the Harvard branch of Bogota? Surely they still have a business school with enough merit to continue collecting those exorbitant tuition and fees.

cthia wrote:Does it sound like a double-edged doubletalk sword, on one hand, for the League to label the Manties as neobarbs, yet allow their carrying trade to become dependent on the neobarbs and their darn junctions, w/o having a contingency plan? Something the size of the League simply doesn't, or shouldn't, give other superpowers the ammo to shoot their carrying trade in the foot, without at least having bandaids on hand.

Does every outfit in the League, civilian and military, have one hand covering one eye and one hand covering the other? Where are all of the market researches that are suppose to come out of campuses like the Harvard branch of Bogota? Surely they still have a business school with merit to still collect those exorbitant tuition and fees.

It sounds like a severe case of 'How can a tiny single system polity threaten the mighty Solarian league?'

Truthfully, Manticore is only just achieving superpower status - in one sense, the Honor Harrington story has also been the story of the tiny Star Kingdom of Manticore becoming the mighty Star Empire of Manticore. So the Solarian League has probably always thought that Manticore would never withdraw their carrying trade, or close their junctions, because that would result in Manticore being squashed like a bug. Helen Zilwicki recalls a Solarian saying that the RMN wasn't a real navy.

Besides, who the heck is interested in a nation of, essentially, truck drivers? Merchants? Shopkeepers. What kind of military showing could they possibly make?

I would suspect that any League Member System that has yards with building capasity for hypercapable vessels is going to have the industrial depth and diversity to already have companies in-system making the components for those yards. The most plausable reason is that they would not truly want to be dependent on other systems for parts/equipment and to keep the money being spend at home.

Then there are Transtellars like Technodyne who have an entire starsystem as a major shipyard for both military and I presume civilian ship construction. The same base reason- keeping the money in-system and not being dependent on elcewhere for parts/equipment apply. That is especialy true for all that proprietary military stuff you sell SLN and various SDFs.
Literally, everything from the stuff to build and maintaind the slips to ALL of the components of the ships you build plus spairs and aftermarket parts for non-Technodyne built ships.

Grayson, with a lot of help and captial from people at Manticore, created a major shipbuilding operation. Manticore is described as initialy started building at least civilian ships with imported equipment but reasonably quickly brought the manufacture of what was nessisary in-system. That probably would have started with licences to build stuff (the inventors etc want to get paid and Manticore would not be happy dealing with patent infringements by its citizens) but it means you can also sell "excess" production as aftermarket for repairs. If for no other reason, being able to supply the generalized repair operations clustered around the Junction and also in at leas one of the Binary Systems would help drive your profit margins and reduce (through profitable sales of aftermarket gear) cost of goods sold.
Look at the freighters and transports where any detail has been provided. Designes if not the ships themselves over 150 years old. Classic or normal SL designs, mostly commercial and "older" military with usefull lives of 100yrs or more in constant service which would need manitence and "normal" replacement of all sorts of things including impeller nodes and other gear.

The problem the transtellars and anybody elce who wants a new commercial starship now faces is the line (of contracted orders) by any builder in their or any other system to produce the desired ship starting when the NEXT SLIP VACANCY OCCURES. Buying military stuff will be a bit more difficult but you probably might be able to buy various components for "older" models (presuming you get the right licences to aquire and hold them...) but you still face the same thing. The builders are going to have to get the ships now under construction off the yard and into the delivery process before they can start yours. If they have orders for 1 or 2 (or more) ships ahead of yours, well, you are going to have to pay a LOT MORE MONEY to either buy the ship under construction or to advance your number in line.
Or the SL/SLN is just going to confiscate the presently building ship and the spots in the building queue to produce either commercial freighters for military service or auxilluray military freighters (with better and/military components plus possibly at least defensive weapos suites) for their logistics needs. Either way it will take time.

Another of those "little" problems that are going to start cropping us is that repair operation across the SL and out in the Verge, etc, are going to have a limited number lf more specialized replacement parts (unique parts/designes, military spair's that could be installed by a civilian yard but not localy produced) as there will be an ongoing and increasing need for normal maintenace and expend-in-regular operations stuff. Like an auto repair shop or auto dealership sending out for parts beyond some regulars/normal in-stock stuff, if nobody local (in your planitary system or out at a related terminus) has it you are going to have to have it shipped in. In this case, you have to send the request/order by the next starship going in that direction AND wait for the part/parts by next ship from that location. Now, the oveall stock of available inventory is going start buring off.
Surprise!

The League should be in a much better place than Grayson to industrialize. They can start building more slips.

quite possibly a cat wrote:The League should be in a much better place than Grayson to industrialize. They can start building more slips.

One thing that really helped Greyson was that they had large numbers of very motivated shipyard workers that simply had to be retrained to new technologies and techniques. They where able to greatly reduce the number of workers needed per ship construction and reassign the newly freed workers to other projects and ships.They where also able to shift workers from other industries as labor efficiency increased to more productive jobs.Not to mention Greyson was willing to tap a very big source of available and underused workers in its women.

For a League world do they have enough space trained workers to ramp up production? Do they have a local sources of underused labor that they can tap? Is local production of components already at capacity?

For a League world the real question is how quickly can they start building more ships?

pnakasone wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:The League should be in a much better place than Grayson to industrialize. They can start building more slips.

One thing that really helped Greyson was that they had large numbers of very motivated shipyard workers that simply had to be retrained to new technologies and techniques. They where able to greatly reduce the number of workers needed per ship construction and reassign the newly freed workers to other projects and ships.They where also able to shift workers from other industries as labor efficiency increased to more productive jobs.Not to mention Greyson was willing to tap a very big source of available and underused workers in its women.

For a League world do they have enough space trained workers to ramp up production? Do they have a local sources of underused labor that they can tap? Is local production of components already at capacity?

For a League world the real question is how quickly can they start building more ships?

The League has vastly, vastly, more people than Grayson did. The average churn of unemployed workers is probably more than Grayson's entire population many, many times over.