Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Warpy wrote:No, the Majority of Grayson's shipyard were dispersed and they were still eliminated by Oyster Bay. It would be better to have several highly developed industrial nodes that were carefully planned to have easily upgraded defenses and to have a very extensive sensor network capable of detecting even the most minute of gravitational disturbances.

Dispersed as in multiple systems not dispersed in the same system.

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:No one is talking about building new Chansons instead of Wolfhound. The idea is to simply use the existing assets the best way to bring the training level of the TQG up to RMN levels. It's not very different than what was done to Grayson at the beginning of the alliance: Manticore sold a few Chansons and other relatively recent designs to them early on, so they'd begin getting acquainted with a modern Navy and create their own discipline. What others are suggesting is that the experience be repeated, though probably on a larger scale.

And if they can build those ships in Quadrant Yards? Start expanding the yards on ships they can quickly put into production, equip their local units with those ships, when the yards are able to put the next generation of ship into production they do so and stop production of the previous generation up until they can produce Rolands or whatever replaces them. It might take a decade or two to do it on their own and it might take a lot less with assistance from the GA. The idea is to improve the shipyards of the Quadrant while bringing up the various navies of the Quadrant closer in capabilities to the RMN. The difference between the situation with Grayson in 1905 and Talbott in 1923 is the industrial power of Manticore, in 1905 Manticore had a large and efficient spaceborne industrial base while in 1923 it does not so most of the buildup at least in the early years has to be from local and limited resources and with as little outside assistance as possible.

I'd say that if they have yards capable of building any CL-sized ship, they should build Wolfhounds and Avalons, maybe Valiants, not Chansons and Apollos. My point is that I don't see the need to build obsolete designs for the any of the navies of the SEM (whatever they'll be called) when modern designs are available and obsolete mothballe hulls exist. Reactivate and recommission those old ships for training, that makes a lot of sense, but don't build old ones anymore.

Sigs wrote:The situation between 1905 and 1923 is vastly different, in 1905 the RMN had 300 labour intensive DN's and SD's and another 1,300 labour intensive DD's, CLs, CAs, and BC's. This was also without accounting the forts and the logistic tail of the RMN located in the stations. So taking 50,000 or even 100,000 people and loaning them to the allies would have been hard but not impossible. In 1923 the stations are gone along with several million service personnel along with dozens of commissioned ships and hundreds of ships under construction. This followed closely to the Battle of Manticore that saw probably close to 350,000-400,000 RMN personnel killed in battle. In 1923 the RMN has highly automated warships but also highly labour intensive warships(LAC's) and CLACs. The RMN is stretched thin without accounting for the fact that they now have 60 systems to protect instead of only 3 and their administration, logistics and combat crews were gutted in between 1920-1923.

But we know the Manticoran armed services had over 12 million personnel in 1910. We can assume this stayed more or less the same until the cease-fire, but we don't know how that evolved through the High Ridge government and the second war. In any case, Manticore no longer needs hundreds of active SD(P)s. At the end of UH, they're already talking about mothballing a percentage of them (and how to avoid the Battle Fleet trap). That means there'll be personnel available for lighter units.

And those 60 systems increase the personnel pool too. You can certainly get lots of new enlisteds willing to get free education and a chance to be part of the navy that defeated the Solarian League and that will make a difference in the long run.

My point of mixed squadrons was that they're all SEM, so it should be easier than it was with the allies.

Sigs wrote:If ships belonging to the SEM fall in the hands of pirates the Quadrant guard is failing miserably. Before you turn over a semi-modern ship to someone I would hope the RMN and the Quadrant Guard at the very least makes sure the loyalties of the officers and places reliable marines/ground forces.

I didn't mean Manticoran, Grayson and Havenite ships falling to pirates. I meant Frontier Fleet and old Silesian units. If all warlords and pirates get their hands on are DDs and some CLs, then modern DDs suffice. If BCs ended up falling through the cracks, you're going to need at least Saganami-C to project power.

I agree that for system defence, pods and LACs should suffice.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I suspect the GA is going to dive deep into the export market for warships for the next 10-20 years. The Chanson design would work, or at least some export variant of it, for the thousands of newly independent systems of the Verge. Most systems won't need or be able to afford more than a squadron or two of destroyers to see to their basic system security. Parallel to that export market will be consultant services for building a navy from scratch. The only real competition for this market will be the new League selling off surplus warships and hiring out personnel to train the new system defense forces, and for fairly obvious reasons many of the potential client systems will be hesitant to let Sollies back in under any circumstances.

The Talbot sector shipyards could begin construction for those ships relatively quickly while building the expertise and infrastructure to build bigger later. The "second class navy" bit doesn't come into play because the ships they'd be building wouldn't be intended for the RMN anyway.

That's a very good point. If I were a newly liberated system, I would buy a Chanson or an Andermani design instead of a surplus Rampart. If Manticore can throw in some level of automation retrofitted in those old designs, my personnel needs should be smaller than with Solarian designs too.

Plus, Ramparts are what pirates in my region are going to be using, most likely. You don't want to protect your merchant ships with a unit of the same class as your attacker.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote: To be fair FF needed those ships to oppress the people rather than patrol for anti piracy and they caused a lot of the piracy and problems that is not going to be there when the GA steps in eventually.

You have a volume of something like 300,000,000 cubic light years full of systems that are too poor to defend themselves that you are supposed to somehow mysteriously patrol. How many ships do you think it will take? Now triple that, since you typically can only have 1/3rd of your ships deployed.

As of 1923 the GA wont have the resources to patrol that many systems, but luckily they have tens of thousands of LAC's that can be deployed with some quickly assembled support equipment.

In some systems having 4 LAC's would be overkill since they wont have much spaceborne industry or you know much of anything else. The idea there would be to keep that system from becoming a base for pirates. Other systems would require 10-20 LAC's which would keep those systems and their industry relatively safe.

A few systems would have significant industry that might justify a serious picket of CA's and DD's with a few dozen LAC's. Those would be few and far apart.

Between Haven, Manticore, Grayson and the Andermani I suspect that the GA can scrounge up enough LAC's to afford minimal protection for the majority of the systems.

And since it's going to take some time the GA has to make the tough decisions as to who get protection first, but then again since FF created a lot of the piracy problems in the first place there shouldn't be that many legitimate pirates initially at least.


It is in the GA's best interest to do their best to protect and build up the verge systems as they are going to be very underdeveloped markets that can and will with proper investment and guidance grow exponentially over the next few decades and this would be good for the GA's economies in the long run and the GA's defence since once those systems have the means to maintain a fleet of their own those too will increase exponentially and be firmly on the GA's side if the League wants round two.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
That's a very good point. If I were a newly liberated system, I would buy a Chanson or an Andermani design instead of a surplus Rampart. If Manticore can throw in some level of automation retrofitted in those old designs, my personnel needs should be smaller than with Solarian designs too.

Plus, Ramparts are what pirates in my region are going to be using, most likely. You don't want to protect your merchant ships with a unit of the same class as your attacker.

Problem is that the newly independent systems will have problems manning a handful of LAC's let alone a squadron of ships that each might require 80-100 crew even when fully automated. The GA has to protect them while training up their people to be able to handle their own defence, its not enough to build a squadron of DD's and give it to a system that has never had a defence force of it's own so it be highly unlikely that the GA will be selling ships to systems that cant afford them, man them, and haven't proven that they wont become the pirate problem yet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I'd say that if they have yards capable of building any CL-sized ship, they should build Wolfhounds and Avalons, maybe Valiants, not Chansons and Apollos. My point is that I don't see the need to build obsolete designs for the any of the navies of the SEM (whatever they'll be called) when modern designs are available and obsolete mothballe hulls exist. Reactivate and recommission those old ships for training, that makes a lot of sense, but don't build old ones anymore.

Those yards might not necessarily have the capability to build 1919 level ships right off the bat, so building an "obsolete" class of DD that is a dozen generations ahead of their ships might be the way to go. Work on improving and expanding any and all shipyards in Talbott and Silesia to build lower tech level ships and as soon as those yards are capable step it up to the next generation. In the meantime your workforce in the shipyards are gaining experience and knowhow that would help implement the next generation of ship that much quicker. Even the most advanced of the Talbott yards are likely significantly behind technologically behind those of Manticore.

But we know the Manticoran armed services had over 12 million personnel in 1910. We can assume this stayed more or less the same until the cease-fire, but we don't know how that evolved through the High Ridge government and the second war. In any case, Manticore no longer needs hundreds of active SD(P)s. At the end of UH, they're already talking about mothballing a percentage of them (and how to avoid the Battle Fleet trap). That means there'll be personnel available for lighter units.

If there were 12,000,000 people in uniform that would count the Army, Marines and the Navy in the total. The number of people on shipboard duty is significantly smaller than the total while the rest is the support element of the navy, which is probably gutted now after the BoM and OB. In the BoM the Navy is the one that suffered the biggest casualties and the casualties for OB are still predominantly those of the navy, so the navy is hurting for people as of 1923. Depending on how many people the Quadrant navies have it could be done but it will be very demanding on very, very, very limited resources.


And the RMN is very far away from the Battle Fleet Trap since they now have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30% of the ships they had in 1905 while having 60 times the territory to defend, they might decommission old SD's but I doubt they will decommission SD(P)'s and more likely they will expand them unless the RMN needs to be weakened for the next part of the story.

And those 60 systems increase the personnel pool too. You can certainly get lots of new enlisteds willing to get free education and a chance to be part of the navy that defeated the Solarian League and that will make a difference in the long run.

We go back to the limited resources thing, the SEM might have the large pool of people but they don't have the resources to make use of those people as of 1923 because they would need to train them up to an acceptable standard which in some cases would require twice the time or more of a SKM recruit. Also the Navy that just got gutted and at the same time had it's area of operation exponentially increased is going to have to take twice as long to train when they need them the most. What's more we don't know how many of them are prolong recipients which would skew the numbers as there could be something like 70%+ of the new population without prolong and too old for prolong.

My point of mixed squadrons was that they're all SEM, so it should be easier than it was with the allies.

They are not all SEM, they are made up of more then a dozen navies some of which have serious rivalries. What is needed eventually is to take those crews and run them through RMN schools in order to mold them into acceptable members of the RMN. Right now they answer to the SEM but they are not part of the RMN, they are more then a dozen navies still defending their home systems.

I didn't mean Manticoran, Grayson and Havenite ships falling to pirates. I meant Frontier Fleet and old Silesian units. If all warlords and pirates get their hands on are DDs and some CLs, then modern DDs suffice. If BCs ended up falling through the cracks, you're going to need at least Saganami-C to project power.

I don't think that FF units will turn pirates because they know that they wont have the SLN to help them and they will quickly find themselves hunted down and killed. You might have a handful but I doubt it would be widespread enough to be a problem.

Sigs wrote:Those yards might not necessarily have the capability to build 1919 level ships right off the bat, so building an "obsolete" class of DD that is a dozen generations ahead of their ships might be the way to go. Work on improving and expanding any and all shipyards in Talbott and Silesia to build lower tech level ships and as soon as those yards are capable step it up to the next generation. In the meantime your workforce in the shipyards are gaining experience and knowhow that would help implement the next generation of ship that much quicker. Even the most advanced of the Talbott yards are likely significantly behind technologically behind those of Manticore.

Difficult to tell when we don't understand the technology. RFC has said that if you have the blueprints, programming the factories should be easy in the short-term. That is, hardware is more or less common, software is the issue. But that statement is incongruous with Haven's inability to build some things: if it was the software, I'm sure InSec and StateSec would have got pirated/stolen copies from the SL.

I'm basing my assumption that the biggest hurdle to building a ship are the physical dimensions of the shipyard and the availability of the factories to manufacture each component. Those shipyards need to be upgraded/retooled anyway to a new design a couple of generations newer than what they were building. So I'd retool them all the way to modern designs, instead of stopping in the middle, producing some ships I've already plenty of, then retooling again.

But that was before someone mentioned building ships to sell... if that market exists, then the decision would be based on how to allocate the resources to supply SEM's own needs.

Sigs wrote:And the RMN is very far away from the Battle Fleet Trap since they now have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30% of the ships they had in 1905 while having 60 times the territory to defend, they might decommission old SD's but I doubt they will decommission SD(P)'s and more likely they will expand them unless the RMN needs to be weakened for the next part of the story.

I disagree. You need SD(P)s to face against ships of the wall. The RMN needs them in the MBS, Trevor's Star and maybe Spindle and one or two more. You don't need them in every Talbott and Silesia system. Assuming each system is going to get at least a few squadrons of LACs plus a shoal of system-defence pods, you'd picket the majority with DDs, CLs and in systems with a bigger population and spaceborne industry, a CA. Supplement that with nodal forces with BC squadrons, you can pretty much defend the entire territory against piracy.

Then you add the extra-territorial needs: showing the flag, exercises with Grayson, Haven, and the Andermani, commerce protection. Without including patrolling the Verge, I think the number of ships might be bigger than the current mix, but the number of people inside them is smaller. That's what I meant when I brought up the SD(P)s going into mothballs.

Also, I didn't come up with the idea of mothballing them. That's right at the end of UH.

Sigs wrote:I don't think that FF units will turn pirates because they know that they wont have the SLN to help them and they will quickly find themselves hunted down and killed. You might have a handful but I doubt it would be widespread enough to be a problem.

I also disagree. Admirals and Commodores in the FF probably had cosy agreements with the OFS and the transstellars, none of whom will like the withdrawal requirements. And the transstellars aren't bound by the armistice agreement, since they weren't the belligerents. So why wouldn't a transstellar ask that those smaller units no one could keep track of anyway be "sold" to a local government it still controls, which in turn offers citizenship and tidy sums of money to the SLN crews?

You don't even need the crews. Just get the bureaucrats in the FF to "lose" some ships and the transstellars will find people for them. They won't be any good, but that's the norm for pirates and privateers.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Sigs wrote:Those yards might not necessarily have the capability to build 1919 level ships right off the bat, so building an "obsolete" class of DD that is a dozen generations ahead of their ships might be the way to go. Work on improving and expanding any and all shipyards in Talbott and Silesia to build lower tech level ships and as soon as those yards are capable step it up to the next generation. In the meantime your workforce in the shipyards are gaining experience and knowhow that would help implement the next generation of ship that much quicker. Even the most advanced of the Talbott yards are likely significantly behind technologically behind those of Manticore.

Difficult to tell when we don't understand the technology. RFC has said that if you have the blueprints, programming the factories should be easy in the short-term. That is, hardware is more or less common, software is the issue. But that statement is incongruous with Haven's inability to build some things: if it was the software, I'm sure InSec and StateSec would have got pirated/stolen copies from the SL.

I'm basing my assumption that the biggest hurdle to building a ship are the physical dimensions of the shipyard and the availability of the factories to manufacture each component. Those shipyards need to be upgraded/retooled anyway to a new design a couple of generations newer than what they were building. So I'd retool them all the way to modern designs, instead of stopping in the middle, producing some ships I've already plenty of, then retooling again.

But that was before someone mentioned building ships to sell... if that market exists, then the decision would be based on how to allocate the resources to supply SEM's own needs.

Actually, if you have read the forums since David announced that Oyster Bay would occur, he has been talking about a lack of "tools to build tools". He has said repeatedly that you cannot just take a blueprint to a Havenite yard and get the product made. Beowulf was a special case because their state of the art was identical to Manticore's, and used the same hardware, so was easy to modify. As I mentioned before, to get Apollo to the Andermani, an entire production line was built, disassembled into a couple freighters, and shipped to the Andermani, it was not sent on a chip.

The Nanites we saw in UH are specially built for a specific purpose or group of purposes. So the Nanites which lay modern ship armor, or the matrix of a modern Manty fusion plant are developed specifically for the purpose. Nanites which build normal battle steel structures won't work. And you need the right facility to make the special Nanites.

As I quoted, "need the tools to make tools." Manticore was state of the art in almost every level of manufacturing. Avalon's were state if the art, just 3-4 years ago with essential technologies like the beta squared nodes as part of the design. The shipyards at Talbott are at least a century behind Manticore in technology, and further in capacity. No matter what, they need new production hardware, new methodologies, and new training to produce any Manty products.

David already said that dispersing capability is not on the RMN agenda, so the Talbott yards will not be getting upgrades to build top rank RMN hardware anytime in the future, because it can only come from one source, Manticore via Beowulf, and their sole focus is rebuilding the 6 stations in Manticore.

However, purchasing the technology to build Chansons is technology widely available, as Manticore's shipbuilding technology prior to 1900 was similar to the SLN's, and is thus roughly available at any Core world with shipbuilding tech or Havenite shipyard.

Now remember David did not say escorts would be built in Talbott, I projected that Talbott would move from transports, something David did say they were producing, to also producing Escorts, just like they were bringing their army units up to speed- on Quadrant produced hardware that close to SLN/RMN hardware, and using RMN doctrine.

If the Quadrant government decides they will only build top notch hardware, then they will not be building escorts for many years, simply because they will have a difficult time getting the tools required to build said ships before the Manty Stations are completed.

So the question becomes, do you buy the capability now from a 3rd party to build capable, but slightly outdated hardware, or do you wait 4-5 years to get the top end upgrades?

Theemile wrote:So the question becomes, do you buy the capability now from a 3rd party to build capable, but slightly outdated hardware, or do you wait 4-5 years to get the top end upgrades?

I see what you're saying and it all depends on whether there is a market and whether the RMN Admiralty will even let the blueprints to build Avalons, Wolfhounds and Rolands out of the Manticore System and the crown will invest in that expansion. You're also right that there is one source for the tools to make the shipyards and that's already being used to build the MBS shipyards themselves. So I can believe you when you say that it would take 4-5 years before the TQ yards could begin producing modern designs.

With those parametres in mind and assuming David doesn't change his mind (justifying it by saying the war ended and priorities changed, or something), I agree the most likely scenario is for those yards to be privatised, if they weren't private already, and generate / attract investment into the Quadrant economy.

Back to the original topic: would dispersing be more secure? No.

Would it make logistical sense? No

Would it be economically advantageous? Possibly, depends on factors we don't know and all indications are that investing in yards for export or even civilian models would make more sense.

Would it score political brownie points? Probably would, which means the crown will need to spend political capital to have them accept other types of yards.

PS: what's the proper adjective for the Quadrant's Parliament? The central one will be the Imperial Parliament; would the Talbott and Silesian ones be "provincial"?

Theemile wrote:
Actually, if you have read the forums since David announced that Oyster Bay would occur, he has been talking about a lack of "tools to build tools". He has said repeatedly that you cannot just take a blueprint to a Havenite yard and get the product made. Beowulf was a special case because their state of the art was identical to Manticore's, and used the same hardware, so was easy to modify. As I mentioned before, to get Apollo to the Andermani, an entire production line was built, disassembled into a couple freighters, and shipped to the Andermani, it was not sent on a chip.

Apparently that became inconvenient to the plot and is mo longer the case.