Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Galactic Sapper wrote: It's not even questionable; attacks on occupied civilian structures are a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Edict.

Even if the loss of life was low (as you state, but we do not really know), it is still a fact that the destroyed structures were occupied; just not at normal capacity. Civilian structures are not necessarily built with the same safeguards as military ones, since civilian contractors are more concerned about cost; so we have no idea how long it would take to evacuate them (they may be designed to be serviced by shuttles, with NO life pods). Therefore it cannot be true that it is a war crime to destroy a civilian structure with people in it (and so "occupied"), because that is what happened at Basilisk.

The "spirit" of an edict is the same sort of creature as an "unwritten rule" in a game. It does not formally exist and so is punished informally.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

tlb wrote:You might be right about the Parthian Shot, but we have no real description of what went on in the other attacks. I expect the biggest problem with the attacks is that they were on systems that had declared their neutrality, so were not legitimate targets.

Again I point to all the civilian orbital structures that were destroyed by Haven at Basilisk with attendant loss of civilian life. That was not an EE violation nor a war crime. Manticore can try people for war crimes (which EE violations certainly are), but not directly for violating the Eridani Edict - since that is a foreign policy statement by the Solarian League.

We don't know exactly how extensive the loss of life was at Basilisk. Assuming the stations were designed with the same considerations the major stations in Manticore were, it should have been fairly low. Even the major stations were designed for relatively rapid evacuation, given the Star Kingdom was in a state of cold or hot war for nearly a century. Note nearly the entire population of Weyland being evacuated in short order - minutes, not hours - rather than the days needed to evacuate the stations in Hypatia and Beowulf.

As for other "scorched earth" type strikes in both phases of the war, in every other case the attacking force at least temporarily took control of the system to give time for infrastructure to be evacuated before it was destroyed. No doubt a few people were on board but most were not. Harrington specifically left purely civilian structures alone; while the Havenites did not, the systems they hit had much less civilian infrastructure to begin with. The Solarians most certainly destroyed everything in reach, regardless of military value.

And last, the Solarian actions - Parthian Shot in particular - was seen as an Eridani Edict violation even in the minds of the officers tasked with doing it. It's not even questionable; attacks on occupied civilian structures are a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Edict.

The Basilisk orbital structures were mistly. warehousing transfer points for ships to transfer cargo from Foreign flagged vessels to RMN vessels (for lower wormhole costs and (earlier) to avoid detailed customs procedures). While we were never told the deaths from the strike, it was probably measured in the thousands, not millions.

Been away for a while so there was a lot of reading to catch up on.

1st: Manticore is in the process of reestablishing multiple space stations around the 3 habitable planets in the Manticore Binary System. That is including rebuilding the military yards (now probably seperate from the nominally civilian stations for non-military manufacturing). Also that will probably include both conventional yards on stations and the Grayson version of the dispursed yard/single ship types to spread the work over a larger area. They also need to rebuild the manufacturing capability of Manticore, both military and civlilian capacity. Just what gets built when is not presently layed out in detail for us.
What is clear is that Manticore (and Grayson) need to reestablish capacity and get into whatever is required in production as soon a possible. They- neither of them- want to depend on solely Beowulf or a combination of Beowulf and Haven for their military materials and ships. Think National Imperative to be able to control your military production and maintenance.
That being said, they are going to be buying a LOT of stuff from Beowulf and Haven for a good amount of time

2nd: At this time, the plans we have been told about by RFC for the defence of the surviving and new construction in the Manticore (and presumably Grayson as well) System represents the current best projection to protest the space located stations/manufacturing etc. That means perminant sidewalls and other things being implemented and brought on-line as the stations are build. You also expand the defenses as you build and agument as you discover things you can do better. Much of that depends on how much and how fast they may learn about the Alignment weapons. You do what you can, when you can and stay vigellent.

3rd: You don't want your major yards away from your home system. That has got to be the focal point of your research and building new ships.
However.......you do need at least repair yards scattered around the now SEM to, well, repair ships for normal maintenance and such battle damage as can be reasonably be expected short of compleat rebuild or conversion of a capital ship. Yes, you have Repair Ships for a lot of that but you also are talking about a navy disbursed across hundreds of light-years (and dependent in a large part on wormholes to move ships around between lobes of the Star Empire). So you also need nodal repair locations for more than emergency repairs in the field to let a ship get back to where it can be "fixed" beyond just surviving a trip in hyperspace (forget using a wormhole) from point A to point B.
So, presuming you are able to set up a military repair yard at places like Spindle, having carved out a military secure (and owned) section of an existing yard there, you can start a repair yard and build out appropriately. This is all going to be secondary to the primary rebuilding of the military yard capasity at the Home System.
Eventually you may want to start building LACs there before -possibly- doing light hypercapable warships. Talk to RFC...big smile. Remember that they military-at least- stations are going to also have the same level as current proposed anti-Alignment/OB typs defenses as the Home System. So you are also going to have to ramp up the protection of the orbital manufacturing etc in places like Spindle- at least. Initialy you are going to have repair and engineering ships along with various stores ships Think about what happened in the aftermath of Monica. A repair nodal base give you a place to both deploy from and to recover ships too.

4th: In WW II, PT Boats were shipped in cradles on merchant vessles or military transport ships, often as deck cargo. They were shipped compleat, at least all of their gear including guns and with crew. Not sure about the torpedoes going on merchant shipping. Maintenace (shore support) people may or may not have gone separately but that would depend on if they had to set up a new base or expand an existing one vs moving a base forward as the fighting progressed. Same for replacement boats to existing Squadrons,. Just remember that if you are already shipping one or more boats and their newly trained crews, you might as well ship along any replacement or expantion support people to the same locations with the same transport.
PT tenders functioned very much as did the Submarine and Destroyer Tenders. They were floating machine shops with cranes dedicated for PT Boat support with materials stores, ammunition, replacement parts and quaters and support spaces for the ship's crew along with the mechanics and support people for the PT's and an admin staff. They fixed/repaired boats and their equipment plus typicaly supported the boat crews if not at a "base" (which might not have been more then some hastlily constructed piers or bulkheads with tents scatterd around covering men and the equipment).

Just put your ship yards in hyperspace.

Lord Skimper wrote:Just put your ship yards in hyperspace.

Hey Skimper- Havn't seen you in awhile.

Or place the shipyard in deep space between stars - in either case there are no local materials to turn into ships, so you are still reliant on raw materials brought from smelters in actual star systems. This constant stream of freighters would be able to be followed to the base or someone would babble about it's location. Besides, without a local gravity well to make a hyperlimit, attackers can pop into your base inside of weapons range with no warning and rip things to shreds.

I don't think habitability of a system (or deep space) is an issue - every major system has a population of millions of people in space (The decision is probably akin to whether you want to live in a large metroplex, the burbs, a medium sized city, or be rural in today's society.) A habitat for millions can be built anywhere in the Honorverse, complete with parks and farms.

The questions for locating a shipyard are material and security. and secrecy will only get you so far unless you have something like a wormhole to mask your movements.

Theemile wrote:The questions for locating a shipyard are material and security. and secrecy will only get you so far unless you have something like a wormhole to mask your movements.

So maybe they should keep a secret where the next terminus comes out?

There's a good chance it's another Matapan: out in the frontier, nothing inhabited around.

I don't think you can.

will all the traffic to the new location, some bored sensor officer aboard a merchie will notice all the traffic on a lane that doesn't lead to any of the other termanii.

unless you send everything the long way around, which completely negates the point of building said yard in a system with a terminal of the junction in it, then I highly doubt you can keep a new terminal really secret.

admittedly you don't necessarily have to announce where it goes, but unless everything is shipped in on Navy controlled freighters then some merchie will take a snap shot of the stars in the new system, have a nav computer do some crunching and soon know where the secret yard is.

Dauntless wrote:I don't think you can.

will all the traffic to the new location, some bored sensor officer aboard a merchie will notice all the traffic on a lane that doesn't lead to any of the other termanii.

unless you send everything the long way around, which completely negates the point of building said yard in a system with a terminal of the junction in it, then I highly doubt you can keep a new terminal really secret.

admittedly you don't necessarily have to announce where it goes, but unless everything is shipped in on Navy controlled freighters then some merchie will take a snap shot of the stars in the new system, have a nav computer do some crunching and soon know where the secret yard is.

Haven managed to keep the locations of both Bolthole and Hades secrets for years, by limiting access to need to know. No un-vetted civilians nor any civilian ships is a minor inconvenience.

A wormhole lane with only naval traffic is a curiosity when known, but is not a secret breaker.

manticore doesn't dissaper people if they hint that they might know something they shouldn't.

still it is a big galaxy and just knowing there is an eighth terminus doesn't say anything about where it goes if you don't tell people.

I just have a hard time believing that the big merchie cartels will accept not knowing. especially during peace time. plus if it comes out even semi close to an inhabited planet similar to the way Lynnx did, then the planet might want to join the empire.

tlb wrote:Haven managed to keep the locations of both Bolthole and Hades secrets for years, by limiting access to need to know. No un-vetted civilians nor any civilian ships is a minor inconvenience.

A wormhole lane with only naval traffic is a curiosity when known, but is not a secret breaker.

In both cases that was helped by the minimum of required traffic. Bolthole had a resident population and vast resources to man and fuel it's yards. I'm sure there was quite a bit of initial traffic during the early set-up phase - but after that traffic was minimal; and even better IIRC the terminus in Peep space was in an uninhabited system; so no one would be in position to see those initial seed freighters or the odd courier pop through.

That's a far cry from trying to feed a hidden yard in hyper or deep space where you can't mine local resources so you'd have a steady stream of freighters hauling in raw or processed material from mining operations. Now you could in theory just repeat bolthole - and it need not be down a wormhole. Just find some mineral rich system with a habitable planet far from your normal systems (so scouts are unlikely to stumble over it) then set up a colony, mining infrastructure, and yards. But without the existing, but unknown, planetary population to draw from you'd have to ship in a several hundred thousand at least to set up a system able to be self-sufficient in food, mining, construction, etc. (power'd be the easy bit)

Simply relocating that many people would be very hard to hide, and would very quickly clue in adversaries that there was something major to look for.