Honor's rescue of Marsh, nearly fatal?

Relax wrote:
1) the establishment, expansion, and maintenance of remote/regional bases was a consequence of pre-war and first war strategic thinking. Both sides engaged in building dispersed nodal forces.

2) Establishing bases in uninhabited systems avoid a multitude of political problems; especially for Manticore. The attack on Zanzibar where the local's commander countermanded the Manticoran commander to use the out-system LAC bases is a prime example of why an empty system is preferable.

3) If the only thing in the system is your military base, there is no problem declaring the entire system a military reservation.

4) Dispersed nodal forces are no longer mainstream strategic thinking. There's no need to establish an extended perimeter defense if the enemy is going to use deep penetration raids against "home" systems.

Yes, those reasons exist. Still does not mean you BUILD ships there, out in the middle of nowhere which cannot be defended well. This is like saying in WWII, Hawaii(front lines) with a small population and certainly no one with knowledge to build warships was going to become a shipbuilding center. Pull the other leg. If you do not like this example, pull any number of examples from the Royal Navy over the entirety of the 18th and 19th century when they ruled the waves. Small ships at most and then the cannons etc were all shipped in from England. They did not build forges to build cannon all over the world.[/quote]

RFC addressed that
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/104/1

To summarize:
1) repair base (including component manufacturing) got really big for all sorts of good reasons, with powerful defenses to protect those reasons

2) concerns about a raid taking out SKM's manufacturing ability (compared to Peeps with multiple systems with shipyards), plus huge stock of components on hand.

3) Existing fortifications were more than adequate pre-MDM, but Janacek&Co didn't think Peeps had MDMs so they didn't bother upgrading defenses by the time Thunderbolt rolled around.


Really, Janacek reminds me so much of Londo Mollari. "Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package, how efficient..."

Kael Posavatz wrote:

Relax wrote:Yes, those reasons exist. Still does not mean you BUILD ships there, out in the middle of nowhere which cannot be defended well. This is like saying in WWII, Hawaii(front lines) with a small population and certainly no one with knowledge to build warships was going to become a shipbuilding center. Pull the other leg. If you do not like this example, pull any number of examples from the Royal Navy over the entirety of the 18th and 19th century when they ruled the waves. Small ships at most and then the cannons etc were all shipped in from England. They did not build forges to build cannon all over the world.

RFC addressed that
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/104/1

To summarize:
1) repair base (including component manufacturing) got really big for all sorts of good reasons, with powerful defenses to protect those reasons

2) concerns about a raid taking out SKM's manufacturing ability (compared to Peeps with multiple systems with shipyards), plus huge stock of components on hand.

3) Existing fortifications were more than adequate pre-MDM, but Janacek&Co didn't think Peeps had MDMs so they didn't bother upgrading defenses by the time Thunderbolt rolled around.


Really, Janacek reminds me so much of Londo Mollari. "Arrogance and stupidity all in the same package, how efficient..."

My, bad, I was using logic instead of CYA BS to try to explain illogical crap. The fool goes blathering on about Chesapeake bay shipbuilding.... as if you can bottle up an HV system. If you can, then you already won the entire war... Its drivel of epic proportions.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The Grendelsbane yard and other bases in minimally inhabited systems never made sense to me. Assets to defend systems are limited. Each new base established represents a system that must be defended unless you are willing to sacrifice it. The absence of a habitable planet and established space industries increases operating costs. Everything has to be shipped in.

Once you have countergrav and impeller drive, space based mineral resources became nearly infinite by Honorvese standards. Asteroid belts are essentially a planet that has been dissassembled to make mining more convienient. One cubic kilometer of Nickel Iron asteroid equals one billion tons of mostly high grade oar. A ten kilometer diameter asteroid equals half a TRILLION TONS of goodies that can be transformed into SD(P)s, missiles, LACs ect. Manticore's entire Navy masses less than 10 billion tons. Even if only 1% of the asteroid is elements that you need, that one, ten kilometer diameter asteroid is suffecient to meet your needs.

Manticore does not need to establish a shipyard to Hell and Gone to have mineral resources to build ships.

They weren't out there for the resource gathering, they were out there to cut down transit time to the various fronts. But still, letting them morph from repair bases (even underutilized ones) into construction yards was clearly a bad idea.

Grendelsbane was supporting fleet activities in the southern region of Haven, southwest of Trevor's Star. For fleets operating there Grendelsbane was probable a week closer to the front than Manticore - and any commander would kill to get his damaged ships back a week sooner so he can keep up the pressure and avoid giving Haven time to reinforce and get their balance.

So having a remote repair base and supply depot makes sense to me. If you trust your fleet to hold it it lets you save on convoy escorts getting supplies from Manticore forward to Grendlesbane and build up supplies against future need. Turning it into a construction yard though, that didn't make much sense.


And worse was after they captured Trevor's Star and then started building their (pod laying) Dreadnaught revolution they kept it going even though it was no longer in a good position to provide support. The front, via Trevor's Star, was now significantly closer to Maniticore than to Grendlesbane. So, especially in hindsight, it would have been far better to dismantle the yard there, repatriate everybody and everything back to Manticore (or maybe to Trevor's Star), and simply abandon the now uninhabited system.

I can only guess that they kept focused on short term gain over long term planning. Using every currently available slip everywhere to get the first batch of SD(P)s out so they had a usable core of the new designs when they were revealed and obsoleted all existing SDs instead of rationalizing their construction after capturing Trevor's Star. Moving that capability back to Manticore would probably have resulted in months of delays compared to building in place. But long term it is pretty inarguable that it would have been both more efficient and more secure to have taken that short term hit.

Relax wrote:My, bad, I was using logic instead of CYA BS to try to explain illogical crap. The fool goes blathering on about Chesapeake bay shipbuilding.... as if you can bottle up an HV system. If you can, then you already won the entire war... Its drivel of epic proportions.

Tell you what, Relex.

Use your 'logic' to analyse all military and political decisions made for the past century - real world ones. You will find plenty that are more unbelievable than the development of Grendelsbane into a production yard.

The truth is that all decisions should be analysed based on the thinking and thought processes that existed at the time, not on hindsight.

WLBjork wrote:

Relax wrote:My, bad, I was using logic instead of CYA BS to try to explain illogical crap. The fool goes blathering on about Chesapeake bay shipbuilding.... as if you can bottle up an HV system. If you can, then you already won the entire war... Its drivel of epic proportions.

Tell you what, Relex.

Use your 'logic' to analyse all military and political decisions made for the past century - real world ones. You will find plenty that are more unbelievable than the development of Grendelsbane into a production yard.

The truth is that all decisions should be analysed based on the thinking and thought processes that existed at the time, not on hindsight.

It is just as likely Grendelsbane's boat yards were a political move more than a strategic one. We let some foreign companies make needed components for oour weapons systems now.

We ignore chances for espionage (a Japanese company gave key info on submarine systems to Russia) not to mention having another country able to block our production of needed components.

Imagine France being able to hold up production of our latest fighter planes! It could happen. Yes, we could start doing some production here but it would take needed time.

As already said, as far as we know Grendelsbane was uninhabited. As such, it would have been a wholly-owned subsidiary of SKM, Inc. and the only poltical considerations that applied were related to the Exchequer's need to get the largest possible number of bangs for their bucks. Given that the facilities needed for repair and overhaul of starships are probably more extensive and complex that those needed to build them in the first place - there's no need to work through and around existing elements during construction - you would have construction capability from the get go. Once the decision is made to start manufacturing the major components needed for that R&O from local resources, using that manufacturing capacity to support your building program is a no-brainer: it translates directly to more efficient use of capital, and probably manpower as well. And it's arguably more efficient to return complete ships to the home system than to load the parts into freighters, unload them at the other end, and _then_ assemble what are essentially prefab kits into working ships. Many of which just have to be sent _back_ to Grendelsbane for deployment.

Another thing to bear in mind is that it appears that the lady commanding the station when these choices were made was one Sonia Hemphill. Who, we now know, was up to her ears in Project Gram, would have known exactly what was coming down the pipe and probably had no hesitation in manipulating logical decisions to make that pipe as fat as she possibly could. And that thought reminds me that the design and construction of CLACs, LACs and SD(P)s was as black as the RMN could make it - and where better to do that kind of work that in a system that nobody outside the Navy and its contractors had any excuse to enter, under the eye of somebody who already knew what was going on.

[and all that leads me to a point of trivia: who named the system, and why? we know who Grendel's Bane was, and he already has a system]

ldwechsler wrote:
It is just as likely Grendelsbane's boat yards were a political move more than a strategic one. We let some foreign companies make needed components for oour weapons systems now.

We ignore chances for espionage (a Japanese company gave key info on submarine systems to Russia) not to mention having another country able to block our production of needed components.

Imagine France being able to hold up production of our latest fighter planes! It could happen. Yes, we could start doing some production here but it would take needed time.

Louis R wrote:Another thing to bear in mind is that it appears that the lady commanding the station when these choices were made was one Sonia Hemphill. Who, we now know, was up to her ears in Project Gram, would have known exactly what was coming down the pipe and probably had no hesitation in manipulating logical decisions to make that pipe as fat as she possibly could. And that thought reminds me that the design and construction of CLACs, LACs and SD(P)s was as black as the RMN could make it - and where better to do that kind of work that in a system that nobody outside the Navy and its contractors had any excuse to enter, under the eye of somebody who already knew what was going on.

You may be right, but Manticore also has the Unicorn Yard where secret production is ongoing.

tlb wrote:

Louis R wrote:Another thing to bear in mind is that it appears that the lady commanding the station when these choices were made was one Sonia Hemphill. Who, we now know, was up to her ears in Project Gram, would have known exactly what was coming down the pipe and probably had no hesitation in manipulating logical decisions to make that pipe as fat as she possibly could. And that thought reminds me that the design and construction of CLACs, LACs and SD(P)s was as black as the RMN could make it - and where better to do that kind of work that in a system that nobody outside the Navy and its contractors had any excuse to enter, under the eye of somebody who already knew what was going on.

You may be right, but Manticore also has the Unicorn Yard where secret production is ongoing.

The Unicorn Yard was a series of construction modules on the Weyland station owned and run by Hauptmann, not a physically separate yard like Grendlesbane, Marsh, Talbot, or Marsh.

Louis R wrote:Another thing to bear in mind is that it appears that the lady commanding the station when these choices were made was one Sonia Hemphill. Who, we now know, was up to her ears in Project Gram, would have known exactly what was coming down the pipe and probably had no hesitation in manipulating logical decisions to make that pipe as fat as she possibly could. And that thought reminds me that the design and construction of CLACs, LACs and SD(P)s was as black as the RMN could make it - and where better to do that kind of work that in a system that nobody outside the Navy and its contractors had any excuse to enter, under the eye of somebody who already knew what was going on.

tlb wrote:You may be right, but Manticore also has the Unicorn Yard where secret production is ongoing.

Theemile wrote:The Unicorn Yard was a series of construction modules on the Weyland station owned and run by Hauptmann, not a physically separate yard like Grendlesbane, Marsh, Talbot, or Marsh.

The point was that is was a highly secured area that was hidden from prying eyes. Here is Captain Truman talking about HMS Minotaur in chapter 3 of Echoes of Honor:

"Don't worry, Commander. We do have a main battery . . . and the first part of it is almost ready to embark. But the Powers That Be felt—correctly, I think—that Minotaur needed a shakedown cruise of her own. That's what we've spent the last two T-months doing while the Hauptman and Jankowski cartels finished building our LACs at Hauptman's Unicorn Yard."
Understanding flickered in the eyes of all three newcomers. The Unicorn Belt was the innermost—and richest—of Manticore-B's three asteroid belts, and the Hauptman Cartel's Gryphon Minerals, Ltd., subsidiary owned about thirty percent of it outright, with long-term leases on another third. The cartel had built enormous extraction centers and smelters to service its mining operations, and there had been persistent rumors even before the war that Hauptman Yards, Ltd., the shipbuilding unit of the mighty cartel, had been using its Unicorn Yard to build experimental Navy units well away from prying eyes. And the Jankowski Cartel, though far smaller than Hauptman's, was highly specialized and a major player in the Navy's R&D operations in its own right.
In fact, Gearman thought, Jankowski's who handled the major share of R&D on adapting the Grayson compensator design for the Fleet, aren't they?

Kael Posavatz wrote:

And now that I think about it, Janacek wasn't able to beach Theodosia Kusak. He had to chose between her and White Haven so he beached White Haven. Of course, this left White Have with the free time to show up in the House of Lords whenever they wanted to talk Navy, so maybe that wasn't one of High Ridge's better (for his own interests) moves.

I suspect there was at least some degree of personal animus between White Haven and Janacek, and of course between White Haven and High Ridge. Beaching Kusak instead would have put Hamish someplace out in space, away from the Lords. But wouldn't have had the personal satisfaction of putting White Haven "in his place".

Which was alongside The Salamander in the Lords, blowing holes in the Janacek Admiralty, and the High Ridge government's foreign and naval policies, including the Sitzkreig with the RHN.