To End in Fire

The SLN had to scuttle ALL of it's warships and quite possibly most of it's military shipping including engineering and cargo ships. Fastest way would be to blow the reactors.

All the space-born non-habitat stuff could have been destroyed by missile or grazer fire from the GA ships but even it was in orbit around almost anything except an astroid the GA wasn't going to want it to drop out of orbit so demolition would possibly have been by charges designed- amoung other things- to blow the reactors and so you get a lot of bits and pieces that is spreading out and has some velocity on it.
Everybody in the Sol system is going to have a lot more to do than chase down the bits and pieces of former orbital industry. Sure, there will be ships arriving from all sorts of places even just in normal course of business and anything from freighters and liners as well as SLN warships could be directed to assist in stabilizing potential assets though I think there will be a fair amount of need to set up logistics supply and start taking people off the untouched habitats. We don't see Honor scuttling or taking off every in-system vessel as had been done in at least one of the Buccaneer raids but we just don't know.

The SL.2 navy will be having to make a whole lot of new arrangements as far as getting ships built or even repaired at this point. At the very least a number of systems which decide to remain in the league will be hammering away at getting themselves chosen for new basing arrangements for the SLN since there is nothing left- including the basic fleet logistics- in Sol System.

Brigade XO wrote:The SLN had to scuttle ALL of it's warships and quite possibly most of it's military shipping including engineering and cargo ships. Fastest way would be to blow the reactors.

All the space-born non-habitat stuff could have been destroyed by missile or grazer fire from the GA ships but even it was in orbit around almost anything except an astroid the GA wasn't going to want it to drop out of orbit so demolition would possibly have been by charges designed- amoung other things- to blow the reactors and so you get a lot of bits and pieces that is spreading out and has some velocity on it.
Everybody in the Sol system is going to have a lot more to do than chase down the bits and pieces of former orbital industry. Sure, there will be ships arriving from all sorts of places even just in normal course of business and anything from freighters and liners as well as SLN warships could be directed to assist in stabilizing potential assets though I think there will be a fair amount of need to set up logistics supply and start taking people off the untouched habitats. We don't see Honor scuttling or taking off every in-system vessel as had been done in at least one of the Buccaneer raids but we just don't know.

The SL.2 navy will be having to make a whole lot of new arrangements as far as getting ships built or even repaired at this point. At the very least a number of systems which decide to remain in the league will be hammering away at getting themselves chosen for new basing arrangements for the SLN since there is nothing left- including the basic fleet logistics- in Sol System.

No it would not. The GA attacked and trashed the SOL system. It was the equivalent of the U.S. losing Norfolk VA during WWII. It would hurt but other industrial systems could compensate.

saber964 wrote:No it would not. The GA attacked and trashed the SOL system. It was the equivalent of the U.S. losing Norfolk VA during WWII. It would hurt but other industrial systems could compensate.

I'm not sure the analogy is correct.

We know Sol had a huge industry, but we don't know how big it was. It's possible it had always been older industries and the heavier ones, especially shipyards, were off-system. Indeed I think the military complex was not in the Sol system, so your analogy is probably correct when it comes to that.

But for the rest of the industry, I'm not as sure. I think losing the Sol space industry is as heavy a blow to the League as Beowulf's secession.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

saber964 wrote:No it would not. The GA attacked and trashed the SOL system. It was the equivalent of the U.S. losing Norfolk VA during WWII. It would hurt but other industrial systems could compensate.

I'm not sure the analogy is correct.

We know Sol had a huge industry, but we don't know how big it was. It's possible it had always been older industries and the heavier ones, especially shipyards, were off-system. Indeed I think the military complex was not in the Sol system, so your analogy is probably correct when it comes to that.

But for the rest of the industry, I'm not as sure. I think losing the Sol space industry is as heavy a blow to the League as Beowulf's secession.

I forget the exact number, but there are so something like 1500 core systems, many with 10 billion plus inhabitants. The core tech for shipbuilding hasn’t changed in several hundred years. How many nations on earth couldn’t build a diesel engine plant if they decided it was the most important national objective?

And for the fancy new stuff, nobody can do that, so it all needs to be built from scratch. But having a modern industrial plant where the senior manufacturing engineer has decades of experiance instead of months is probably helpful.

kzt wrote:I forget the exact number, but there are so something like 1500 core systems, many with 10 billion plus inhabitants. The core tech for shipbuilding hasn’t changed in several hundred years. How many nations on earth couldn’t build a diesel engine plant if they decided it was the most important national objective?

And for the fancy new stuff, nobody can do that, so it all needs to be built from scratch. But having a modern industrial plant where the senior manufacturing engineer has decades of experiance instead of months is probably helpful.

For the Record, WEB DuHavel said 1763 SL Members as of late 1918 pd - many of which were in the shell, not the inner or outer core of the SL.

Hypathia was probably a perfect example of a Core world. No navy, no defenses and no shipbuilding capability even though their economy was first tier and their population was ~10 Billion.

The SLN Battle fleet still has 5 production centers and 5 reserve centers (not certain if they are co-located), and about 1000 active Wallers left - even if some are out Tasmania way, prepositioned to strike Manticore again. The Frontier Fleet has ~20 (I believe) regional bases and construction centers.

Theemile wrote:For the Record, WEB DuHavel said 1763 SL Members as of late 1918 pd - many of which were in the shell, not the inner or outer core of the SL.

Hypathia was probably a perfect example of a Core world. No navy, no defenses and no shipbuilding capability even though their economy was first tier and their population was ~10 Billion.

Yup, I expect the distribution of capability of the systems in the SL to have a very long tail. If there are about 2000 systems in the SL, there shouldn't be more than 10% of them that are "core." That's still 200 systems and sounds like a lot, but the SL is (was) huge!

That distribution of industrial capacity is probably strongly correlated with population too. We hear that the SL has somewhere around 1 trillion people (though there's no census and no one knows for sure), which is an average of 500 million per system. That doesn't tell us much, though: core systems like Sol, Hypatia and Beowulf should be at 10+ billion, while recently-joined Shell systems should be at the 100 million mark only.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That distribution of industrial capacity is probably strongly correlated with population too. We hear that the SL has somewhere around 1 trillion people (though there's no census and no one knows for sure), which is an average of 500 million per system. That doesn't tell us much, though: core systems like Sol, Hypatia and Beowulf should be at 10+ billion, while recently-joined Shell systems should be at the 100 million mark only.

Someone did a statistical analysis based on the chamber of stars numbers, and it’s rather higher. Mostly because a 30 billion pop system raises the average pop quite a bit.

And there has to be some sort of census as the delegates are distributed by system population.

I still don't think the League's industrial might was hurt one bit. Perhaps it's absolute potential may have been hurt. But I'm willing to bet that the SL's true industrial might never even came close to being tapped. I always thought the oldest Core systems represented the hub of military industry. Why would an entity needlessly spread it's naval industry too wide? Allowing an enemy to cut off supply lines.

Of course, we're discussing the arrogant, complacent SL, so, all bets are uncovered.

cthia wrote:I still don't think the League's industrial might was hurt one bit. Perhaps it's absolute potential may have been hurt. But I'm willing to bet that the SL's true industrial might never even came close to being tapped. I always thought the oldest Core systems represented the hub of military industry. Why would an entity needlessly spread it's naval industry too wide? Allowing an enemy to cut off supply lines.

Of course, we're discussing the arrogant, complacent SL, so, all bets are uncovered.

Oh, the SL got hurt.
Militarily, they lost 1/2 of the active Battle Fleet, and a couple percent of FF. They lost 1/4 of the reserve, their largest BF maintenance, construction, and R&D site.

On the industrial side, Sol got 100% punched out and they had Hypatia, Beowulf and another 1/2 dozen core worlds walk away. It's not much, but a few % of their economy - but those were integral % that may have far reaching effects, especially with the wormhole shutdown and the withdrawal of freighters from the SL.

But... IT's a speed bump - 12-14 months later and all the woes caused will be replaced - except for the blown up SDs..

cthia wrote:I still don't think the League's industrial might was hurt one bit. Perhaps it's absolute potential may have been hurt. But I'm willing to bet that the SL's true industrial might never even came close to being tapped. I always thought the oldest Core systems represented the hub of military industry. Why would an entity needlessly spread it's naval industry too wide? Allowing an enemy to cut off supply lines.

Hey cthia, let me see if I understand you.

On one hand you're saying that the absolute potential was reduced because many systems walked away. But on the other, you're saying that the industrial potential wasn't really reached before, so the SL can recover to pre-war industrial levels. The facts may be both true, but you're comparing apples and oranges at best.

Or did you mean to say that the systems that walked away can't be but a drop in the bucket? If so, I don't agree: Beowulf alone must have represented a significant fraction and so must have Sol.