SPOILER end of the MA

ywing14 wrote:I understand what you're saying and especially agree with you that pretty much any ships would deter pirates. I just think at the moment. The GA has sufficient forces to police it's own territory. So it can concentrate on upgrading its own yards and what not. And then get back to building vessels and export models as you say.

I don't disagree. However, most of the exiting yards are likely beyond upgrading. They are so backward, it would be cheaper to build a newer modern yard. The old yard still has value producing cheap warships for local defense in Verge systems. Most of the capital costs are completely paid off and the cost per ship is almost entirely operating costs. Those yards can produce cheap and effective ships to deter pirates until the newer years hit their full stride. Besides, running those legacy yards is good training for workers without sufficient education to immediately begin in a modern Manty yard.

Green workers can begin in those yards making money for the company while going to school off duty to prepare for the more demanding job in the newer yards. Those workers who have the skills in the old yards can train their green replacements and then go to school to prepare for working in the soon to be completed yards. Depending on the demand for bare bones warships, those legacy yards may never shut down.

PeterZ wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I understand what you're saying and especially agree with you that pretty much any ships would deter pirates. I just think at the moment. The GA has sufficient forces to police it's own territory. So it can concentrate on upgrading its own yards and what not. And then get back to building vessels and export models as you say.

I don't disagree. However, most of the exiting yards are likely beyond upgrading. They are so backward, it would be cheaper to build a newer modern yard. The old yard still has value producing cheap warships for local defense in Verge systems. Most of the capital costs are completely paid off and the cost per ship is almost entirely operating costs. Those yards can produce cheap and effective ships to deter pirates until the newer years hit their full stride. Besides, running those legacy yards is good training for workers without sufficient education to immediately begin in a modern Manty yard.

Green workers can begin in those yards making money for the company while going to school off duty to prepare for the more demanding job in the newer yards. Those workers who have the skills in the old yards can train their green replacements and then go to school to prepare for working in the soon to be completed yards. Depending on the demand for bare bones warships, those legacy yards may never shut down.

True that is a valid point about the them being beyond upgrading and the capital costs already being paid out.

ywing14 wrote:I think one of the best things Manticore (specifically the Old Kingdom) would be something along the lines of education support. Whether through the government or private organizations providing teachers and educational support to get a lot of these worlds education systems up would greatly improve their systems and their economies in the long term.

I get the impression the local government is willing to spend the money to attract good teachers. I also think there are enough companies willing to invest in adult education/vocational programs to upgrade the workers' skill sets. All the government's that voted to join the SEM want to improve their lot. The issues is the availability trained teachers. Especially with all the ex-protectorates and Verge worlds competing for the same sorts of educated personnel. Come to think of it, Haven also needs technically educated personnel for their school systems.

Availability will be the issue to upgrade education systems across the galaxy.

PeterZ wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I think one of the best things Manticore (specifically the Old Kingdom) would be something along the lines of education support. Whether through the government or private organizations providing teachers and educational support to get a lot of these worlds education systems up would greatly improve their systems and their economies in the long term.

I get the impression the local government is willing to spend the money to attract good teachers. I also think there are enough companies willing to invest in adult education/vocational programs to upgrade the workers' skill sets. All the government's that voted to join the SEM want to improve their lot. The issues is the availability trained teachers. Especially with all the ex-protectorates and Verge worlds competing for the same sorts of educated personnel. Come to think of it, Haven also needs technically educated personnel for their school systems.

Availability will be the issue to upgrade education systems across the galaxy.

True, we will have to see what happens with worlds like Hypatia and Chalot. Nothing wrong with their education or tech levels from what I could understand in then books.

cthia wrote:
The danger is when that debt becomes so bloated that it hurts your own economy and the people who you assist begin to expect it more and more and contribute to it less and less because they know you will. Oftentimes, the hidden costs are almost as bad as the upfront costs.

Being the galaxy's police without any help is costly. Even here on Earth with the US. Look at our frightening Defense/War debt. We've got to do something.

Here is where I think a timeline and expectations should come in place. Invest in a system and make sure that the knows that it is not investment without limits, make certain that systems know ahead of time that they have to achieve certain things with the resources given in order to receive more, if for example a system gets 100 billion in aid and 20% ends in the pockets of the ruling class and the rest are wasted on corruption further down the line and/or wasted then that system should know that they will not get a cent from the GA until they prove that they have made changes.


Any industrial, financial or military aid the GA gives to the verge systems should in my opinion come in a certain breakdown, of the 100% given 40% should be government-to-government loans that the verge system should eventually repay, 20% should be aid that they should not expect returned and the other 40% should be a breakdown of loans to individual businesses or individuals within verge systems plus direct GA investments in verge economies.

Before a system gets even a cent they have to know what they are getting, what is expected of them in terms of using the aid and the big no no's that the GA will not tolerate. Some of the big once would be getting aid from the GA and spending it all on building up a massive(for a verge system) navy without investing in economy, because the GA will need see that money back. Another would be that if the GA gives military or Law enforcement aid it won't be used against the people, I think it would be pretty bad optics if the GA was handing out weapons to governments for their militaries only for those weapons to be used for the oppression of the people of those governments.

Another source of investment should be the core shell wether inside the League or out, there may be interest in doing business with the Verge and as long as the GA is satisfied that the business dealings are above board and mutually beneficial it should be utilized as much as possible.

PeterZ wrote:Verge worlds would be stupid to use their own ships to engage in piracy. All they need to do is facilitate the fencing of captured ships and cargo. Having one of their official ships caught in the act of piracy is a death sentence. Having one of the ships they bought from the GA end up in pirate hands is equally dangerous. If the GA discovers that, it's all over. Those systems don't need much for anti-piracy defense, old RoH legacy ships will do.

What would be risky are the better ships the regional alliances will be asking for. Those ships will need to be newer and provide an advantage over SLN ships. Finding a balance there will be tough and more than a tad risky.

Just because something is stupid doesn't mean people won't try it and it definitely won't mean that someone somewhere doesn't think he is too smart to get caught doing something so obviously self destructive.

ywing14 wrote:
I am confused, are we arming the Verge are we not arming the Verge. On one hand you tell me we need to arm the entire league and especially the verge with LACs and Missile pods. But then now you say few systems could handle the LACs even export models so we don't have to worry about numbers.

1)Never said to arm the league.
2)Arming the verge would take time, its not just a matter of building the ships, it is a matter of building the most basic of infrastructure in the host system to be able to operate and maintain those ships in a state of readiness.
3)Those systems that have navies will have an advantage because they already have some degree of experience and some people to crew those ships, those that don't have navies have to be build from scratch, dumping 10 LACs in a system and giving them the manuals and wishing them luck.
4) It is a process that might take 5-10 years just to get everyone a basic level of anti-piracy capability, it won't be an overnight thing.

I do think the numbers will be hard to come by since I think most of the GA's goals will be to upgrade RoH's shipyards to handle manticoran tech.

I think the GA's goals would be to recover the capabilities of the SKM and Grayson before they start any massive upgrades on Haven's industry other than Bolthole.

We are also talking about building LAC's over a 5-10 year period. Building 10,000 export LAC's in 1 year might be a bit of a challenge but building 10,000 Export LAC's over 5-10 years not so much. Hell even 50,000 LAC's over 10 years is manageable.

Since nothing can at the moment. They can't build any of the things the GA really needs. Just the shells sorta. Not to mention they'll be concentrating on rebuilding their own forces.

Rebuilding what forces? They lost a grand total of what 7-8 ships in the war with the League? What do they need to rebuild in terms of their own forces. Finish the ships in the yards and go from there.

Sigs wrote:

ywing14 wrote:
I am confused, are we arming the Verge are we not arming the Verge. On one hand you tell me we need to arm the entire league and especially the verge with LACs and Missile pods. But then now you say few systems could handle the LACs even export models so we don't have to worry about numbers.

1)Never said to arm the league.
2)Arming the verge would take time, its not just a matter of building the ships, it is a matter of building the most basic of infrastructure in the host system to be able to operate and maintain those ships in a state of readiness.
3)Those systems that have navies will have an advantage because they already have some degree of experience and some people to crew those ships, those that don't have navies have to be build from scratch, dumping 10 LACs in a system and giving them the manuals and wishing them luck.
4) It is a process that might take 5-10 years just to get everyone a basic level of anti-piracy capability, it won't be an overnight thing.

I do think the numbers will be hard to come by since I think most of the GA's goals will be to upgrade RoH's shipyards to handle manticoran tech.

I think the GA's goals would be to recover the capabilities of the SKM and Grayson before they start any massive upgrades on Haven's industry other than Bolthole.

We are also talking about building LAC's over a 5-10 year period. Building 10,000 export LAC's in 1 year might be a bit of a challenge but building 10,000 Export LAC's over 5-10 years not so much. Hell even 50,000 LAC's over 10 years is manageable.

Since nothing can at the moment. They can't build any of the things the GA really needs. Just the shells sorta. Not to mention they'll be concentrating on rebuilding their own forces.

Rebuilding what forces? They lost a grand total of what 7-8 ships in the war with the League? What do they need to rebuild in terms of their own forces. Finish the ships in the yards and go from there.

It is likely that several trends will develop after the war:

1) More focus on ships like Rolands and Hexampuma C's. They can handle a real lot of issues and they are less expensive.

2) A lot of R&D. Look to be able to deliver bigger missiles are longer distances. Plus even more upgrades on anti-missile systems.

3) Real heavy development on anti-spider tech. I would not be surprised if perhaps one or two people left around on Mesa might have some knowledge. Also, Anton or other techs might manage to find info in destroyed computer systems.

4) More anti-piracy weapons.

Sigs wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Verge worlds would be stupid to use their own ships to engage in piracy. All they need to do is facilitate the fencing of captured ships and cargo. Having one of their official ships caught in the act of piracy is a death sentence. Having one of the ships they bought from the GA end up in pirate hands is equally dangerous. If the GA discovers that, it's all over. Those systems don't need much for anti-piracy defense, old RoH legacy ships will do.

What would be risky are the better ships the regional alliances will be asking for. Those ships will need to be newer and provide an advantage over SLN ships. Finding a balance there will be tough and more than a tad risky.

Just because something is stupid doesn't mean people won't try it and it definitely won't mean that someone somewhere doesn't think he is too smart to get caught doing something so obviously self destructive.

Agreed. However, that sort of stupid is rarely a problem for long. They get caught and made a spectacular example of pretty quickly. The smart crooks won't make that mistake. They'll finance pirates buying warships from the New League or some other shipyard. More likely they'll facilitate an outside financier to et up shop in their system and create cutouts for deniability. That way if the pirates get caught, the financier's agents can be offered up to the GA. The local government and the financier can recruit another crew and start again.

ldwechsler wrote:It is likely that several trends will develop after the war:

1) More focus on ships like Rolands and Hexampuma C's. They can handle a real lot of issues and they are less expensive.

More Saganami-Cs (or a Saganami-D design to correct observed deficiencies,) is very probable. More Rolands is NOT in the cards; there are too many deficiencies in the Roland design that make it unsuitable for peacetime missions. (No marines, forex._

ldwechsler wrote:2) A lot of R&D. Look to be able to deliver bigger missiles are longer distances. Plus even more upgrades on anti-missile systems.

I would expect R&D focused on putting the same punch in smaller missiles or increasing the punch without increasing missile sizes. The Mk16G is a capital warhead on a cruiser-weight missile; applying the same principles to smaller missile to increase yield for legacy platforms makes more sense than building missile that need newer and larger ships to launch them.

Anti-missile defense and better counter-missiles will be emphasized, but I think that changes in doctrine and mutual-defense networking is going to yield more immediate advantage.

ldwechsler wrote:3) Real heavy development on anti-spider tech. I would not be surprised if perhaps one or two people left around on Mesa might have some knowledge. Also, Anton or other techs might manage to find info in destroyed computer systems.

The GA needs to find a better way than the MAlign found to detect spider drives; the MAlign could only detect Spiders out to a light-second or so. Detecting and localizing spiders out to a light-hour or so is what is going to be needed for effective defenses.

ldwechsler wrote:4) More anti-piracy weapons.

Perhaps more platforms, but existing tech from almost any source is going to be sufficient. Most of the increase in anti-pirate platforms is not going to be the GA's problem.