?

penny wrote:I'm not finding anything either. But I would have sworn that I once saw 100 LDs. And I also thought I remember pasting it into the forum directly from the wiki. Now I am questioning my own sanity because I also can't find the original post where the author chimed in. I once tried to find a post that was lurking on the very first page with keywords that I was looking right at. To no avail.

But I do recall discussing what "a far bigger number than 28 Shark class ships" could mean. What would you guestimate a far bigger number than 28? The number could be higher.

Even if they intend to build 100 of them, we don't know the timeframe to do that. They must certainly not have laid down 100 frames at the same time before MANS Leonard Detweiler herself launched. It would be the height of arrogance to build all of them in parallel before the first unit is finished, the build problems debugged and ironed out, the design problems fixed, etc. Those would be the biggest ships anyone anywhere had ever constructed. There will be issues.

Not to mention the logistics requirements of building 100 ships in parallel. Resources are finite, so this is going to take a long while before the MAN would be strong enough to use them in actions that were necessary. They can't even claim to have not thought of this, because it's exactly what happened during Oyster Bay: the opportunity presented itself before the ships were ready.

The resources necessary to build 80 of 100 slips could probably be spent finishing the first 20 ships instead.

Then there's the fact that this is probably not the only ship type they will need to build.

So I can believe the MAN wants to have 100 ships. Or more. Who wouldn't want to? The questions are when they plan to have reached critical mass (no sooner than 1935 in my opinion, more likely 1940) and when they will be found or their hand forced.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I'm not finding anything either. But I would have sworn that I once saw 100 LDs. And I also thought I remember pasting it into the forum directly from the wiki. Now I am questioning my own sanity because I also can't find the original post where the author chimed in. I once tried to find a post that was lurking on the very first page with keywords that I was looking right at. To no avail.

But I do recall discussing what "a far bigger number than 28 Shark class ships" could mean. What would you guestimate a far bigger number than 28? The number could be higher.

Even if they intend to build 100 of them, we don't know the timeframe to do that. They must certainly not have laid down 100 frames at the same time before MANS Leonard Detweiler herself launched. It would be the height of arrogance to build all of them in parallel before the first unit is finished, the build problems debugged and ironed out, the design problems fixed, etc. Those would be the biggest ships anyone anywhere had ever constructed. There will be issues.

Not to mention the logistics requirements of building 100 ships in parallel. Resources are finite, so this is going to take a long while before the MAN would be strong enough to use them in actions that were necessary. They can't even claim to have not thought of this, because it's exactly what happened during Oyster Bay: the opportunity presented itself before the ships were ready.

The resources necessary to build 80 of 100 slips could probably be spent finishing the first 20 ships instead.

Then there's the fact that this is probably not the only ship type they will need to build.

So I can believe the MAN wants to have 100 ships. Or more. Who wouldn't want to? The questions are when they plan to have reached critical mass (no sooner than 1935 in my opinion, more likely 1940) and when they will be found or their hand forced.

Getting back to the original tendril. If the target number is anywhere near 100 LDs, more or less, then I find it difficult to believe that they were only going to be used to launch ICBMs from the edge of the system. Surely that number is not needed to raise holy hell all over the Galaxy. Unless they weren't so sure of their stealth and thought they'd be losing them in job lots. Or that they knew, as I posit, that some would be lost because they would be used for certain high risk high reward missions.

Or, I suppose, if they are going to be utilized in a wolfpack mentality I suppose 100 would fit the bill.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:I'm not finding anything either. But I would have sworn that I once saw 100 LDs. And I also thought I remember pasting it into the forum directly from the wiki. Now I am questioning my own sanity because I also can't find the original post where the author chimed in. I once tried to find a post that was lurking on the very first page with keywords that I was looking right at. To no avail.

But I do recall discussing what "a far bigger number than 28 Shark class ships" could mean. What would you guestimate a far bigger number than 28? The number could be higher.

Even if they intend to build 100 of them, we don't know the timeframe to do that. They must certainly not have laid down 100 frames at the same time before MANS Leonard Detweiler herself launched. It would be the height of arrogance to build all of them in parallel before the first unit is finished, the build problems debugged and ironed out, the design problems fixed, etc. Those would be the biggest ships anyone anywhere had ever constructed. There will be issues.

Not to mention the logistics requirements of building 100 ships in parallel. Resources are finite, so this is going to take a long while before the MAN would be strong enough to use them in actions that were necessary. They can't even claim to have not thought of this, because it's exactly what happened during Oyster Bay: the opportunity presented itself before the ships were ready.

The resources necessary to build 80 of 100 slips could probably be spent finishing the first 20 ships instead.

Your logic is certainly sound. And applied to any other navy, I would board that bus. But if you have ever worked on an assembly line, you'd know it actually slows the process down overall to isolate a select few. For a navy whose back is up against the wall and working against the clock like the RMN against Haven, I'd readily agree. What gives me pause is Grayson's build rates, and the fact that resources should not be so limited in a system whose navy is not currently fighting any wars or losing any ships and weapons. And whose workers are grown in vats and they love their overtime. No unions, etc., etc. When your workers are fanatics, they will die for you very early.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Then there's the fact that this is probably not the only ship type they will need to build.

You are probably right about that, but there's still cause to pause. We do not know the MAs planned strategy and tactics, and as I see it, an LD can be utilized for the same missions as any smaller ships. Perhaps an LD will be even better suited for any role if for some reason the LDs stealth is supreme. It would be ironic if for some reason the most expensive warship, the flagship, does not feature the best stealth, even though it is bigger. But the reverse would not be true. The smaller ships that we conjecture for other roles can not fill the roles of an LD, should more LDs be needed. Cost notwithstanding.

And the smaller ships cannot utilize the same unprecedented weapons that the LD can, which seems to be critical to the navy. And my proposal of smaller, shorter ranged higher acceleration hybrid g-torps is not well received. So what kind of ordnance will smaller ships store?

If the smaller designs are small enough and can pack a 3-second firing graser, then in my book that would be a game changer. It would be like being able to get a squadron of LACs into energy range with grasers more powerful than capital ship grasers. But anything else would be underkill, pardon the pun.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:So I can believe the MAN wants to have 100 ships. Or more. Who wouldn't want to? The questions are when they plan to have reached critical mass (no sooner than 1935 in my opinion, more likely 1940) and when they will be found or their hand forced.

More reason not to hold up the assembly line isolating a small batch of them that can only be deployed for a one-time mission like OB, which would kick-off a war and you don't have any more left when needed. But you may be right that a small number of them were planned for OB. But they didn't know the timeline for that would be moved up drastically, so why wouldn't they have been building all of them simultaneously. Other than building the one to prove the concept. A prototype.

penny wrote:Getting back to the original tendril. If the target number is anywhere near 100 LDs, more or less, then I find it difficult to believe that they were only going to be used to launch ICBMs from the edge of the system. Surely that number is not needed to raise holy hell all over the Galaxy. Unless they weren't so sure of their stealth and thought they'd be losing them in job lots. Or that they knew, as I posit, that some would be lost because they would be used for certain high risk high reward missions.

All the more reason not to build 100 of the same class, if they have a single role.

I think the answer is actually both: the LDs will have multiple roles, but also they won't need 100 of them for the strategy that they have planned.

What gives me pause is Grayson's build rates, and the fact that resources should not be so limited in a system whose navy is not currently fighting any wars or losing any ships and weapons. And whose workers are grown in vats and they love their overtime. No unions, etc., etc. When your workers are fanatics, they will die for you very early.

But Darius Gamma is a paradise, not an industrial hell-hole. So I really think they'll have trouble explaining to the population, whether they are indoctrinated or not, the need to go on a crash military production. Why are they keeping war-time production rates if they are not in a war?

The Darius population may be virtually slave, but they don't think they are, which means there must be a modicum of freedom to keep the illusion alive. Which means they have some level of free-thinking and self-determination, and it also means no one is whipping workers into submission to complete the quotas. They need to be motivated and believe in the cause (which is where indoctrination comes in), but there's a limit.

Side note: there's nothing that a low-level worker could do that a robot couldn't do faster, more efficiently, and without complaint. But that's not HV technology.

Then there are the higher-level workers, those who know more details about what is going on and some of whom were transplanted from Mesa. Pushing those is going to create discontent and civil unrest, something the Inner Onion cannot afford. They may not be pushed as much as lower-level workers, but operating a war-time construction effort is going to put a toll on them. And many will ask questions. Especially those that thought the Alignment's objective was the uplift of humanity, not wreaking havoc.

Perhaps an LD will be even better suited for any role if for some reason the LDs stealth is supreme. It would be ironic if for some reason the most expensive warship, the flagship, does not feature the best stealth, even though it is bigger.

That's not ironic, it's expected because it's physics. Bigger ships have bigger power plants, which are required to power everything that the bigger ship is supposed to carry (in the case of spider ships, the grav plates and the tractors at a minimum). Given the square-cube law, bigger will have a smaller area-to-volume ratio than smaller ships, so they will radiate more per unit of area. This holds true in the HV: the most stealthy objects are recon drones and the Silver Bullets & torpedoes, followed by LACs, followed by smaller combatants.

I'm not saying that the flagship would have anything less than their best effort. No, far from it: it would have the best technology. But the best may not be enough to hide that monster of a ship, while the second- or third-best may be enough to hide torpedoes and small combatants.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Getting back to the original tendril. If the target number is anywhere near 100 LDs, more or less, then I find it difficult to believe that they were only going to be used to launch ICBMs from the edge of the system. Surely that number is not needed to raise holy hell all over the Galaxy. Unless they weren't so sure of their stealth and thought they'd be losing them in job lots. Or that they knew, as I posit, that some would be lost because they would be used for certain high risk high reward missions.

All the more reason not to build 100 of the same class, if they have a single role.

I think the answer is actually both: the LDs will have multiple roles, but also they won't need 100 of them for the strategy that they have planned.

Which is my point. The LDs will have multiple roles as the subs of yore. Some of those missions will be high-risk high-reward, like crawling deeply in-system ensnaring juicy targets of opportunity in a web. But I even caution my own notions, as we do not know whether some of those LDs will be held back in a defensive posture in the Darius System.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:What gives me pause is Grayson's build rates, and the fact that resources should not be so limited in a system whose navy is not currently fighting any wars or losing any ships and weapons. And whose workers are grown in vats and they love their overtime. No unions, etc., etc. When your workers are fanatics, they will die for you very early.

But Darius Gamma is a paradise, not an industrial hell-hole. So I really think they'll have trouble explaining to the population, whether they are indoctrinated or not, the need to go on a crash military production. Why are they keeping war-time production rates if they are not in a war?

Because the big bad Manticoran wolf is out there consuming the galaxy. One day the big bad Manticoran wolf will come to blow our house down. We must be ready. They are searching for us.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:The Darius population may be virtually slave, but they don't think they are, which means there must be a modicum of freedom to keep the illusion alive. Which means they have some level of free-thinking and self-determination, and it also means no one is whipping workers into submission to complete the quotas. They need to be motivated and believe in the cause (which is where indoctrination comes in), but there's a limit.

They are fanatics. Consider the many historical inspirational speeches from the leaders of fanatics, that are so powerful it will prompt the followers to drink poison to kill themselves. They are free to choose, and they are also fortunate to be the chosen ones and privileged to be a part of what is right. So they think. The brain-washing is total by these charismatic leaders. Conformity born out of intimacy instead of cruelty is vastly more powerful. And dangerous. Reverse psychology is probably a Malign staple.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Side note: there's nothing that a low-level worker could do that a robot couldn't do faster, more efficiently, and without complaint. But that's not HV technology.

Good point and very interesting. More caution. It has not been HV technology thus far. Darius may turn out to be different. And is Darius technically a part of the HV at the moment? It is its own galactic island so far. Developing and thriving on its own.

BTW, since workers are grown out of vats, workers could be (not necessarily have to be) twins or triplets who take turns going to work. One 3-day shift giving each worker a week off in-between a 3-day work week. I love that system too! LOL

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Then there are the higher-level workers, those who know more details about what is going on and some of whom were transplanted from Mesa. Pushing those is going to create discontent and civil unrest, something the Inner Onion cannot afford. They may not be pushed as much as lower-level workers, but operating a war-time construction effort is going to put a toll on them. And many will ask questions. Especially those that thought the Alignment's objective was the uplift of humanity, not wreaking havoc.

The truly indoctrinated push themselves. Indoctrinated fanatics push themselves even harder. It is a wonderful privilege to have, as total indoctrination leads one to believe.

The transplanted workers do not have to be told anything other than their need to know. Need to know has been the MO of Darius from the beginning. Why should it be any different now? The transplants very well will ask questions, but who is to say what they will be told. And what are their options? Die?

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Perhaps an LD will be even better suited for any role if for some reason the LDs stealth is supreme. It would be ironic if for some reason the most expensive warship, the flagship, does not feature the best stealth, even though it is bigger.

That's not ironic, it's expected because it's physics. Bigger ships have bigger power plants, which are required to power everything that the bigger ship is supposed to carry (in the case of spider ships, the grav plates and the tractors at a minimum). Given the square-cube law, bigger will have a smaller area-to-volume ratio than smaller ships, so they will radiate more per unit of area. This holds true in the HV: the most stealthy objects are recon drones and the Silver Bullets & torpedoes, followed by LACs, followed by smaller combatants.

I'm not saying that the flagship would have anything less than their best effort. No, far from it: it would have the best technology. But the best may not be enough to hide that monster of a ship, while the second- or third-best may be enough to hide torpedoes and small combatants.

You very well might be right. Perhaps. Unless because of their size, more powerful tractors, they have the ability to dissipate heat into hyperspace as it grabs (perhaps pierces) hyperspace. Or some other stealth ability which is a function of its size. The MA turns problems onto its head.

penny wrote:BTW, since workers are grown out of vats, workers could be (not necessarily have to be) twins or triplets who take turns going to work. One 3-day shift giving each worker a week off in-between a 3-day work week. I love that system too! LOL

Grown out of "vats" in that they're tubed in artificial wombs. They still need 16+ years of raising and education before they're useful workers. Unlike some other SciFi they're not popping out of these "vats" as fully educated and trained adults ready to pick up tool (or weapons). You're getting newborn babies; with all the needs of any other newborn.

Maybe you're able to raise twins or triplets to be interested in working the same job; but a fair bit of the time -- even with Mesan's genetic tinkering -- their interests or aptitudes aren't going to play out that way.

Note also that tubing is more expensive, more resource intensive, and requires more skilled workers, than body births. Darius and the MAlign may not care, per-say, about cost -- but they do have to think about where best to use their not unlimited resources. So while you could tube as many babies as you've the money, resources, and technicians that may not, in practice, actually be all that many more than you could get from encouraging body births.
And, once you've got all those babies, raising and educating them is another potential bottleneck -- get the child to caretakers or educator ratios too far out of whack and your "quality control" suffers (netting you workers who aren't as good as they should have been).

Oh, and hope you correctly forecast your personnel needs of
today nearly two decades ago; since you can't rush the process much.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:BTW, since workers are grown out of vats, workers could be (not necessarily have to be) twins or triplets who take turns going to work. One 3-day shift giving each worker a week off in-between a 3-day work week. I love that system too! LOL

Grown out of "vats" in that they're tubed in artificial wombs. They still need 16+ years of raising and education before they're useful workers. Unlike some other SciFi they're not popping out of these "vats" as fully educated and trained adults ready to pick up tool (or weapons). You're getting newborn babies; with all the needs of any other newborn.

Maybe you're able to raise twins or triplets to be interested in working the same job; but a fair bit of the time -- even with Mesan's genetic tinkering -- their interests or aptitudes aren't going to play out that way.

Note also that tubing is more expensive, more resource intensive, and requires more skilled workers, than body births. Darius and the MAlign may not care, per-say, about cost -- but they do have to think about where best to use their not unlimited resources. So while you could tube as many babies as you've the money, resources, and technicians that may not, in practice, actually be all that many more than you could get from encouraging body births.
And, once you've got all those babies, raising and educating them is another potential bottleneck -- get the child to caretakers or educator ratios too far out of whack and your "quality control" suffers (netting you workers who aren't as good as they should have been).

Oh, and hope you correctly forecast your personnel needs of
today nearly two decades ago; since you can't rush the process much.

Well, they don't actually have to be twins, triplets or related at all. Simply several vat-produced surplus-workers doing the same job. But you do have a point about the problem of educating them all. Which cues a notion I have had for quite some time.

Parents, society, educators and psychologists complained not too long ago that TV time should be limited because TV was actually the mechanism whereby our children were being educated. I imagine the plethora of smart devices are added as an unforeseen side-effect of how our children are being educated today.

But what about a society that intentionally uses computers, gadgets, HD and direct stimulations to the brain to educate? The MA enjoys so many breakthroughs and advances in so many areas. Many will have uses in the private sector.

penny wrote:They are fanatics. Consider the many historical inspirational speeches from the leaders of fanatics, that are so powerful it will prompt the followers to drink poison to kill themselves. They are free to choose, and they are also fortunate to be the chosen ones and privileged to be a part of what is right. So they think. The brain-washing is total by these charismatic leaders. Conformity born out of intimacy instead of cruelty is vastly more powerful. And dangerous. Reverse psychology is probably a Malign staple.

We'll have to see where David takes this, but the usual trope in Sci-Fi is that the brainwashed are less productive than the free-thinkers. The examples in our history would be the Soviet Bloc vs the capitalist world during the Cold War, and North Korea today. The latter case is telling: they invest a disproportionate amount of their GDP into military, they indoctrinate their population in the Kim Cult, they control the media and education, but even then they have dissenters who wish to defect (and some do) and their productivity per capita is much, much lower than their neighbours to the South.

An interesting parallel: the DPRK is propped up by their two neighbours to the North. Could we say that Darius is propped up, to some extent, by the Rennaissance Factor? They have to be the ones with the conduit of information in and out of the Darius system. They do protect the only known access to Darius too.

The truly indoctrinated push themselves. Indoctrinated fanatics push themselves even harder. It is a wonderful privilege to have, as total indoctrination leads one to believe.

The transplanted workers do not have to be told anything other than their need to know. Need to know has been the MO of Darius from the beginning. Why should it be any different now? The transplants very well will ask questions, but who is to say what they will be told. And what are their options? Die?

I concede on the need to know, but even then I push back a little: the transplants from Mesa were used to full Galactic media. They may balk at the much stricter need-to-know.

They have the option of not working as productively as they did before and they may do that even subconsciously because they are living in a heightened state of alert, fear for their lives, and stress. Some may even go as far as subtle acts of sabotage and others will join the Fifth Column. Which, I remind you, does exist on Darius Gamma!

All this to say that, however much they may want and try, they still have limit on how quickly they can produce anything. David has been very consistent in keeping build-rates believable in the HV and most of his other universes.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:They are fanatics. Consider the many historical inspirational speeches from the leaders of fanatics, that are so powerful it will prompt the followers to drink poison to kill themselves. They are free to choose, and they are also fortunate to be the chosen ones and privileged to be a part of what is right. So they think. The brain-washing is total by these charismatic leaders. Conformity born out of intimacy instead of cruelty is vastly more powerful. And dangerous. Reverse psychology is probably a Malign staple.

We'll have to see where David takes this, but the usual trope in Sci-Fi is that the brainwashed are less productive than the free-thinkers. The examples in our history would be the Soviet Bloc vs the capitalist world during the Cold War, and North Korea today. The latter case is telling: they invest a disproportionate amount of their GDP into military, they indoctrinate their population in the Kim Cult, they control the media and education, but even then they have dissenters who wish to defect (and some do) and their productivity per capita is much, much lower than their neighbours to the South.

An interesting parallel: the DPRK is propped up by their two neighbours to the North. Could we say that Darius is propped up, to some extent, by the Rennaissance Factor? They have to be the ones with the conduit of information in and out of the Darius system. They do protect the only known access to Darius too.

Interesting post. It may be "sci-fi trope-ically true." But I wonder if it is actually true, or would be true if everything else was equal. For instance, it is difficult to be productive and happy when you are hungry. That is the main impetus behind the push for free school lunches. The obese Kim seems to be eating up all of the food. The shelves in North Korea are barer than the South's slaves'. I don't think Darius' slaves are starving. The Soviet Bloc's table wasn't actually a feast either. And the working and living conditions were awful.

Also, my main point also rings true. North Korea rules its people by terror, torture, fear and cruelty. Darius is a Paradise. An Oasis. Never heard that spoken about the DPRK or the Soviet Bloc.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:The truly indoctrinated push themselves. Indoctrinated fanatics push themselves even harder. It is a wonderful privilege to have, as total indoctrination leads one to believe.

The transplanted workers do not have to be told anything other than their need to know. Need to know has been the MO of Darius from the beginning. Why should it be any different now? The transplants very well will ask questions, but who is to say what they will be told. And what are their options? Die?

I concede on the need to know, but even then I push back a little: the transplants from Mesa were used to full Galactic media. They may balk at the much stricter need-to-know.

They have the option of not working as productively as they did before and they may do that even subconsciously because they are living in a heightened state of alert, fear for their lives, and stress. Some may even go as far as subtle acts of sabotage and others will join the Fifth Column. Which, I remind you, does exist on Darius Gamma!

All this to say that, however much they may want and try, they still have limit on how quickly they can produce anything. David has been very consistent in keeping build-rates believable in the HV and most of his other universes.

Firstly. I am not so certain that Darius' build rates have been increased. They could have been near war production rates even from the beginning. After all, they could have been discovered at any time.

And again, this isn't the HV. Consider that we (and the author, I believe) said that what the MA should have done was carve out a section of the galaxy and lived in total isolation. If that had happened, I wonder how even more differently their society and tech would have evolved. Away from the technology, wars and influence of anything going on in the "HV" at large.

Using an OTL example, consider East Germany versus West Germany just before reunification.
The West Germans were driving Mercedes and BMWs, while the East Germans were driving Trabants, with their bosses driving Ladas. East Germany's productivity was hopeless. As one person said (afterwards), "They pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work".
Yet reasonably quickly afterwards, all Germans were driving Mercedes and BMWs.