Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But in fact all signs point to the exploration coming from the Felix side first, through the Twins, arriving in the Congo system. I think we know that because the Felix wormhole was known to the MAlign since the 1700s, but the Congo system and the Verdant Vista exploration is far newer. That tells me the MAlign explored the Felix Junction and arrived at the Twins, then explored the second hyperbridge and arrived in Congo. Once they knew where it led and how close it was to Erewhon, they came from the other side to claim rights.

That way, there never was any exploration from the Congo side. There are no records to be hidden because no records were ever produced.

I agree that Congo was probably found by exploring the wormhole bridge from the Twins. But I find it unlikely that the survey ship ran back to Darius or wherever though hyperspace instead of performing what is apparently the routine follow-up of surveying the terminus they just exited. Ideally they want to use that same wormhole to return to their starting point, rather than taking the long way through hyper. But to determine if it's safe to do so they'd immediately survey using their exit vector as a starting point. (So it's usually quicker and easier to survey the exit terminus that it was to survey the initial terminus you found). Based on expectations around Harvest Joy's exploration of that Torch terminus it seems that the majority of surveys do return through the wormhole; it's apparently pretty unusual (but not unheard of) for their survey to determine that they must return though hyper because they weren't able to get enough information to allow them to safely enter this end of the wormhole.

Now there wouldn't have necessarily ever been records of that survey on Verdant Vista since the survey would have happened before Manpower claimed the system and set up the Congo colony. And yes, for whatever reason, Manpower might have been encouraged not to look for or survey the terminus; and the MAlign records of the initial transit and almost certain immediate survey are probably buried on Darius and never shared with Manpower. So it's quite believable that there were never any survey results stored in-system that had to be cleaned up when Manpower's control was getting overthrown.

But not surveying the potential return route at all somewhat strains credibility.

Haven't consumed the thread and hate arriving to a party late, so disregard the thought if it has been discussed, but wouldn't dispersing yards also slow down the RMN's production? I always thought the current setup was partly responsible for the RMN's overall efficiency.

If so, it would be like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Jonathan_S wrote:Now there wouldn't have necessarily ever been records of that survey on Verdant Vista since the survey would have happened before Manpower claimed the system and set up the Congo colony. And yes, for whatever reason, Manpower might have been encouraged not to look for or survey the terminus; and the MAlign records of the initial transit and almost certain immediate survey are probably buried on Darius and never shared with Manpower. So it's quite believable that there were never any survey results stored in-system that had to be cleaned up when Manpower's control was getting overthrown.

But not surveying the potential return route at all somewhat strains credibility.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant it like you said: the ship that first transited into the Congo system did return through the wormhole, but no survey was done after the system was claimed, so no records exist and there is no one to leak the secret.

We are using dispersing yards in two differnt senses. Pre-war, Manticore had Grendlesbane as a yard built in a remote system (in the direction of Erwhon) with apparently no habital planet but lots of usable materials. That was setting up to support and build fleet elements at a great distance from the Home System. Essentially Technodyne had done the same thing to create it's shipyard which is supplying a lot of the SLN warships plus whatever warship or commerical building it does for other customers.

Before the Oyster Bay strikes, Manticore adopted the Grayson system of dispersed yards in the building essentialy stand-alone slips scattered about the Home System to move the actual building of ships away from the big orbital stations to increase capasity and reduce the chances of a single attack taking out all the capacity.
Obviously they didn't anticipate the Ghosts, Sharks, graser torpedoes and Spyder Drive technology.

Building shipyards in places other than your home system should provide protection if other factors don't come into play. Obvioiulsy that happens. Great Britian had yards, at least for fleet maintenance, in places like Hong Kong and Singapore but those were lost to Japan in the opening of WWII

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Now there wouldn't have necessarily ever been records of that survey on Verdant Vista since the survey would have happened before Manpower claimed the system and set up the Congo colony. And yes, for whatever reason, Manpower might have been encouraged not to look for or survey the terminus; and the MAlign records of the initial transit and almost certain immediate survey are probably buried on Darius and never shared with Manpower. So it's quite believable that there were never any survey results stored in-system that had to be cleaned up when Manpower's control was getting overthrown.

But not surveying the potential return route at all somewhat strains credibility.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant it like you said: the ship that first transited into the Congo system did return through the wormhole, but no survey was done after the system was claimed, so no records exist and there is no one to leak the secret.

In that case where do the rumors that there is a wormhole at Torch come from. Ut was those rumors that led to Harvest Joy searching for it.

fallsfromtrees wrote:In that case where do the rumors that there is a wormhole at Torch come from. Ut was those rumors that led to Harvest Joy searching for it.

That's an unanswered question. I don't see why they should start the rumours in the first place. As I've argued, an unexplored wormhole is financial and ecomomic malpractice. It would be better to have never announced it. If someone stumbles upon it while visiting your system, despite your Astro Control's guidenace, then you do explore it. You can claim the research ship that first surveyed the planet did a shoddy job, cut corners, and just pocketed your money. And then you drag your feet in the actual exploration, to make sure those "damned Manties" don't get to insert spies.

Claiming it exists and no ships transit would invite every expert in the Galaxy to study it, which is the opposite of what you want.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:In that case where do the rumors that there is a wormhole at Torch come from. Ut was those rumors that led to Harvest Joy searching for it.

That's an unanswered question. I don't see why they should start the rumours in the first place. As I've argued, an unexplored wormhole is financial and ecomomic malpractice. It would be better to have never announced it. If someone stumbles upon it while visiting your system, despite your Astro Control's guidenace, then you do explore it. You can claim the research ship that first surveyed the planet did a shoddy job, cut corners, and just pocketed your money. And then you drag your feet in the actual exploration, to make sure those "damned Manties" don't get to insert spies.

Claiming it exists and no ships transit would invite every expert in the Galaxy to study it, which is the opposite of what you want.

This was all explained in chapter 2 of _At All Costs_ (I do agree that the Alignment was being too clever for their own good).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:In that case where do the rumors that there is a wormhole at Torch come from. Ut was those rumors that led to Harvest Joy searching for it.

That's an unanswered question. I don't see why they should start the rumours in the first place. As I've argued, an unexplored wormhole is financial and ecomomic malpractice. It would be better to have never announced it. If someone stumbles upon it while visiting your system, despite your Astro Control's guidenace, then you do explore it. You can claim the research ship that first surveyed the planet did a shoddy job, cut corners, and just pocketed your money. And then you drag your feet in the actual exploration, to make sure those "damned Manties" don't get to insert spies.

Claiming it exists and no ships transit would invite every expert in the Galaxy to study it, which is the opposite of what you want.

Ok, I wrote this before I read Robert Woodard's post.

First, no one else is going to come into the system to survey it--that would be a violation of your sovereignty. The system was owned by Manpower of Mesa, the initial survey was done by either Manpower/Jessyk or the Mesan Government; and new wormholes can take years to finish surveying. No traffic is heading that way yet--no one knows where it goes!

Rumors: part of a political effort by Malign to separate Erewhon from the Manticore Alliance, partly so Technodyne and the Mesan Navy could get their hands on tech. Text is shotgunned all over the place.

Some of it is in Service of the Sword: Ringsdorf and the Three Yahoos. Part of it is in Crown of Slaves: the reasons for sending Oversteigen/Gauntlet back to Erewhon in the first place, just holding the hands of the Erewhonese Navy: lost ships and the rumors of the junction. I think Cachat did an analysis of what bothered the Erewhonese the most--that Mesa would sell transit to ANY enemy that would attack Erewhon. The Malign plan as a whole was outlined in AAC, chapter two--the whole chapter was a meeting of Detweiler and the inner onion.

I don't have COS as an e-book, so I went looking: the rumors and the three termini are also mentioned in Chapter 13, Torch of Freedom:

Torch of Freedom, ch.13 wrote:"That's interesting," he said out loud. "Especially given the persistent rumors before the liberation that Torch was 'at least' a three-nexii junction. What you've just told us certainly agrees with everything official we've been able to find, but I can't find myself wondering where that specific number—three, I mean—came from in the first place."
"We've wondered the same thing," Du Havel replied. "So far, we haven't found anything to suggest a reason for it, though." He shrugged. "Given the fact that it really hasn't made any difference one way or the other as far as our decision-making priorities go, though, it's been mostly a matter of idle curiosity for us. We've been too busy clubbing alligators to worry about what color the swamp's flowers are."

This is Anisimovna speaking.

AAC, Ch.2 wrote:"So the idea was to use Verdant Vista to worry Erewhon. We knew the Cromarty Government had promised the Erewhonese the Star Kingdom's assistance in their efforts to eject us from Congo. But we also knew the High Ridge Government was completely and totally—one might almost say vehemently—disinterested in the project. And we knew this was an area in which we could count on Descroix's support behind the scenes.
"With all that in mind, we abandoned our relatively low profile and started deliberately drawing attention to our presence there. We planted a few stories in the Erewhonese 'faxes about 'atrocities' on Verdant Vista, and we encouraged an upswing in 'piracy' in the area. The cruisers that were destroyed at Tiberian were part of that strategy. The idea was to draw the Erewhonese Navy into committing additional light units to piracy suppression in the vicinity, then to pounce on those units with modern Solarian heavy cruisers and wipe them out. Whether the Erewhonese decided we were directly involved in backing the 'pirates' or not, they were bound to become even more furious with the Star Kingdom when they started suffering losses among their warships as well as their merchant traffic. Given the peculiarities of the Erewhonese honor code, it was likely that if we continued to provoke them long enough, and if the Manties continued to ignore their demands for assistance, the Erewhonese would eventually withdraw from the Manticoran Alliance."

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

AAC, Ch.2 wrote:"So the idea was to use Verdant Vista to worry Erewhon. We knew the Cromarty Government had promised the Erewhonese the Star Kingdom's assistance in their efforts to eject us from Congo. But we also knew the High Ridge Government was completely and totally—one might almost say vehemently—disinterested in the project. And we knew this was an area in which we could count on Descroix's support behind the scenes.
"With all that in mind, we abandoned our relatively low profile and started deliberately drawing attention to our presence there. We planted a few stories in the Erewhonese 'faxes about 'atrocities' on Verdant Vista, and we encouraged an upswing in 'piracy' in the area. The cruisers that were destroyed at Tiberian were part of that strategy. The idea was to draw the Erewhonese Navy into committing additional light units to piracy suppression in the vicinity, then to pounce on those units with modern Solarian heavy cruisers and wipe them out. Whether the Erewhonese decided we were directly involved in backing the 'pirates' or not, they were bound to become even more furious with the Star Kingdom when they started suffering losses among their warships as well as their merchant traffic. Given the peculiarities of the Erewhonese honor code, it was likely that if we continued to provoke them long enough, and if the Manties continued to ignore their demands for assistance, the Erewhonese would eventually withdraw from the Manticoran Alliance."

Rob

Thanks, that really does explain it all. Thanks for reminding us.

They hadn't wanted to attract attention to Verdant Vista, but changed their minds and strategy as a way to break Erewhon away from the Alliance. The upside if they manage that is huge: getting their hands on Manty tech. And of course they didn't plan for losing the system in the first place.

And for a single Saganami-B taking out 4 Solarian CAs.

You do remember that Anisimovna was speaking to an audience for which she needed to deflect all sorts of questions, to plant the narrative of " we were looking to disrupt Erwhon's relationship with Manticore" and spin her tale to get cooperation with the offer beign made.
This is enemy agents and dirty business.

Even if the Torch Wormhole had been discovered by an Alignment ship comming from the Twins, the would have wanted to leak (eventually) that the Mesa/Manpower adminstration on Congo had discovered the possibility of a wormhole related to Congo but.......the research and survey of that anomally was taking a lot of time and the research ship was no where near having worked out if they should make an attempt at a transit.

Heck, if there had been a research ship there when Congo became Torch, it is also possible that it fled the scene out at the wormhole and made it's report to "Manpower" because that was the client and the system was now held by someone else who was, shalll we say, extreemly unhappy with Manpower and the captain of the research ship feared for the safety of his ship and crew....and they wanted to get paid for what they had done.
What you are left with is rumors.