Rebuilding Manticore's infrastructure

Penny, so are you saying that in the long run things don't look too good to our intrepid heroes? I hope they're not.going to be going there

Besides, I think that RFC will have a think or two to say about that.

If only he has the time to answer those and many other questions

Mycall4me wrote:Penny, so are you saying that in the long run things don't look too good to our intrepid heroes? I hope they're not.going to be going there

Besides, I think that RFC will have a think or two to say about that.

If only he has the time to answer those and many other questions

I think it will be okay, in the long run. I am saying that we shouldn't expect things to proceed as quickly as it could. And do consider that Project Gram always has been and always will be a huge piece of the budget, and we need Gram to keep running on all cylinders. Trying to figure out all of the info Simoes gave them isn't cheap.

penny wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Penny, so are you saying that in the long run things don't look too good to our intrepid heroes? I hope they're not.going to be going there

Besides, I think that RFC will have a think or two to say about that.

If only he has the time to answer those and many other questions

I think it will be okay, in the long run. I am saying that we shouldn't expect things to proceed as quickly as it could. And do consider that Project Gram always has been and always will be a huge piece of the budget, and we need Gram to keep running on all cylinders. Trying to figure out all of the info Simoes gave them isn't cheap.

Project Gram?

Mycall4me wrote:Project Gram?

Read the story that is in the book House Of Steel. Project Gram was started by King Roger, because he knew that war with Haven was coming and Haven's forces were numerically superior. So technological advances were needed to level the field.

tlb wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Project Gram?

Read the story that is in the book House Of Steel. Project Gram was started by King Roger, because he knew that war with Haven was coming and Haven's forces were numerically superior. So technological advances were needed to level the field.

Ofc! I thought that sounded familiar. Is that the on going name for Manticore's continuing weapons and research development program?

penny wrote:And thanks for the reminder Jonathan. I do remember it now. I had forgotten the details of the impetus behind the League's embargo. But I couldn't force myself to accept that it was anything more than the SLN's arrogance of not wanting to share their superior tech with neobarbs that might end up using it against them.

But, it all makes sense now. It was extorted out of Omosupe Quartermain's department. Which is the Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce. Don't you smell the smoking gun?!

Those damn pesky neobarbs cornered the market on trade! And they used strong arm tactics to do so.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10502

But in another thread of mine of the same name, I proposed that Manticore awakened a sleeping giant. The SL never had to put up with the strong arm tactics of the MBS. The SL could have simply boycotted them. The MBS's economy is going to take a very big hit as a result of awakening the lethargic gorilla. Nobody can grow a merchant marine the size of the SL.

Plus, it is just plain old economics. As lucrative as the MBS is, it is not an infinite source of revenue. If it were, the MBS could afford to remain at DEFCON 1 indefinitely. It simply is not realistic to expect the budget to remain at the level it was during war.

I am not saying that it shouldn't, because there is still a threat on the horizon. I am simply saying that convincing civilians that the navy needs to retain its currently bloated wartime budget during peace is much more than simply kids wanting to keep their toys, rather than needing to do so. Which cues my need to respond to tlb ...

.

They didn't exactly corner the market on trade. Manticoran merchant ships are definitely a minority, and probably a small minority, of the freighters running around out there.

What they dominated was the wormhole network part of long haul League to League shipping. And they did so simply by being the least expensive option, because Manticore discounted the wormhole transit rates for Manticoran flagged ships; so their costs were lower allowing them to make a profit while still undercutting the competition. (And even with the fees Manticore charged using the wormhole network even as a foreign flagged ship was still significantly cheaper/more profitable than going the long way) So the non-Manticoran shipping would have focused on parts of the League not served by wormhole, or comparatively short haul shipping, or final mile cycling between League worlds and the nearest wormhole. (And of course all the other Verge traffic in places Manticore had little to no presence -- that's diffuse, but there are a lot of worlds out there so even the occasionally tramp freighter here and there adds up eventually)

That's why such a large percentage of League cargo traveled on Manticoran hulls for part of its trip -- the shippers were saving money by paying Manticoran ships the haul it through the wormholes for them.

And yes, the League could have tried to enact a boycott against that. The problem is that is the Assembly's Liberum veto. As annoyed as the League government might have been about being strong armed the average person on the street probably didn't know or care that it happened -- but they would care if imports got more expensive. You'd need the representatives of every single system in the League to decide that they're willing to economically hurt their constituents (the ones that can vote them out of office) in order to try and economically hurt Manticore more. Because if just one vetoes the idea then no boycott.

Because I don't think that kind of boycott is something the Mandarins could order without approval of the Assembly; it directly affect the member systems too much. (Also it hurts the Mandarins because it'd reduce the fees they collect on trade to fund the League and its navy -- so they have to decide that they're pissed off enough to take some personal pain to try to hurt Manticore more)

tlb wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Project Gram?

Read the story that is in the book House Of Steel. Project Gram was started by King Roger, because he knew that war with Haven was coming and Haven's forces were numerically superior. So technological advances were needed to level the field.

Yeah, but I don't expect Gram to look anything like it did when it was first started, but I never thought it was defunct. It may not even be referred to as Gram anymore, but what's in a name? The infrastructure and ideology or offshoots of it anyway, should still be in place.

penny wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Penny, so are you saying that in the long run things don't look too good to our intrepid heroes? I hope they're not.going to be going there

Besides, I think that RFC will have a think or two to say about that.

If only he has the time to answer those and many other questions

I think it will be okay, in the long run. I am saying that we shouldn't expect things to proceed as quickly as it could. And do consider that Project Gram always has been and always will be a huge piece of the budget, and we need Gram to keep running on all cylinders. Trying to figure out all of the info Simoes gave them isn't cheap.

It might be Providence, that word again, if the rebuild process proceeds slowly. It would be a very bad thing if they rebuilt everything near as it was, then have the LDs slither in and laugh at their efforts.

"What a target rich environment. Let's have ourselves some fun."

Mycall4me wrote:

tlb wrote:Read the story that is in the book House Of Steel. Project Gram was started by King Roger, because he knew that war with Haven was coming and Haven's forces were numerically superior. So technological advances were needed to level the field.

Ofc! I thought that sounded familiar. Is that the on going name for Manticore's continuing weapons and research development program?

Probably not, given that it was already in existence almost half a century ago! (If nothing else the project name should have been changed a bunch of times over the decades just to prevent people from piecing together any accidental stray mentions)


We do know from the story that things developed in Project Gram would eventually get (very carefully) " decanted into BuWeaps’ openly maintained R&D programs". So certainly the things mentioned in the story have long, long, ago moved into those other R&D programs and then into deployment with the fleet.

But organizationally I don't know if Manticore would have kept Project Gram (under whatever name) as always being their bleeding edge R&D group, or if they'd have stood up a series of compartmented successor each looking even further ahead. There's risks to that, but advantages as well -- both from a security standpoint (if Gram gets compromised that gives no hook into a new and different fully isolated program) and organizationally (the people assigned to the new 25+ years in the future program aren't competing directly for resources with established folks who are working on programs that have been going for 13 years already; and don't have to face any "not invented here" if they work out something that the Gram researchers gave up on or didn't think of)

Reply to Penny (my quote thing is not allowing me to submit the reply, so no quote)

Which is exactly why I started a thread about detecting spider drive ships

But both Admiral's Hemphill, and Caparelli agree that they had isolated the readings detected of the ships that launched the Yawata strike, and were confident that they could ID similar incursions and blanket the area with ships and drones thick enough to walk on.

And then there's the fact that the LD ships are a lot bigger than the original's attackers so that would hopefully mean that they would probably be less stealthy.

Additionally RFC has written that the new stations (two each for Manticore and Sphinx) are being built from the start as better defended and shielded, and better prepared from attack Something about the burned hand learned best (or something along those lines)