Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:I wonder if I am graduating to "old sweat" status around here. These light bulb ideas for using the captured SDs are looking dimmer all the time.

Guys, there are any number of uses to which these ships could be put. But for any idea to be truly useable, you have to ask yourself whether or not meeting a need in the advocated manner is truly the best, most cost effective way of achieving the desired end. No one really can afford to do it any other way. In Manticore's case, that was true even before OB. It's even more true now.

Using the captured SLN ships cannot be regarded as a goal that is worthwhile in and of itself.

Don

I want to provide 100 generally friendly systems with a minimally effective defense, if they are wiling to exert themselves, against an attack on the inhabited planets by pirates up to a SLN BC squadron scale threat. I do not want to provide them with current military gear that could be reverse engineered or used to attack me. I want to do this in the next 6 months. I propose offering them 3 SLN SDs each. You would accomplish this with what?

Yup, the one and only use for these ships. Non aligned powers who you do NOT wish seen conquered, but you also do not want to ally yourself to them either. Give them the means to defend themselves while not allowing them to attack you. Some good will, but not much.

One thought about the suggestions that evacuees would be able to get OJT for running the ships. Not a good idea. Yes OJT works fairly well, but it also requires an environment that is fairly fault tolerant. This does not describe an obsolete warship. I will concede that most errors mad by the trainee will not be fatal, but it only takes one in the fusion rooms for example and a whole lotta people die.

fallsfromtrees wrote:One thought about the suggestions that evacuees would be able to get OJT for running the ships. Not a good idea. Yes OJT works fairly well, but it also requires an environment that is fairly fault tolerant. This does not describe an obsolete warship. I will concede that most errors mad by the trainee will not be fatal, but it only takes one in the fusion rooms for example and a whole lotta people die.

Assuming you are right. So What? People die. Try a dose of reality here. Do you want to be free or someones slave or servant?

Fusion rooms run on auto. There is no way in this universe human interaction will be required to operate a fusion room in standard mode. No one in this universe runs nuclear reactors via human input or any other power station today, what gives anyone the belief this will be different in 2000 years?!?

Now battle damage surge control is a bit different. They still run on auto just fine, but not as well as with a little human input. If that is the case, so what? That is war. War happens when it happens, not when a referee throws the ball in the air, puck on the ground etc.

Do you have a slave mentality, or the mentality of an independent warrior? Anyone with a spine will take on the challenge. You only need a couple thousand out of a population of billions. That is an absurdly small number of people who are not gutless cowards.

wastedfly wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:One thought about the suggestions that evacuees would be able to get OJT for running the ships. Not a good idea. Yes OJT works fairly well, but it also requires an environment that is fairly fault tolerant. This does not describe an obsolete warship. I will concede that most errors mad by the trainee will not be fatal, but it only takes one in the fusion rooms for example and a whole lotta people die.

Assuming you are right. So What? People die. Try a dose of reality here. Do you want to be free or someones slave or servant?

Fusion rooms run on auto. There is no way in this universe human interaction will be required to operate a fusion room in standard mode. No one in this universe runs nuclear reactors via human input or any other power station today, what gives anyone the belief this will be different in 2000 years?!?

Now battle damage surge control is a bit different. They still run on auto just fine, but not as well as with a little human input. If that is the case, so what? That is war. War happens when it happens, not when a referee throws the ball in the air, puck on the ground etc.

Do you have a slave mentality, or the mentality of an independent warrior? Anyone with a spine will take on the challenge. You only need a couple thousand out of a population of billions. That is an absurdly small number of people who are not gutless cowards.

Of course they are automated - and there is absolutely no need for all of those fusion room watchstanders - on both military and commercial ships.

And I might add that there is a difference between being a warrior, and playing Russian roulette with 5 out of 6 cylinders loaded.

fallsfromtrees wrote:And I might add that there is a difference between being a warrior, and playing Russian roulette with 5 out of 6 cylinders loaded.

Here is an for ya.

If 5/6 are loaded:

SLN ships all by themselves should be blowing up left and right. Why? Human error. Automated error. Just like the highly trained Taiwanese pilot who shut down the still good engine a couple of days ago and crashed into the highway and river.

Guess what? SLN ships are not blowing up left and right. Ergo, your "RUSSIAN ROULETTE" ain't even close to 1/6 or even 1/66 or 1/666 if one adds up simple statistics for human caused error. SLN/RMN/RHN/GSN ships are not blowing themselves up on auto or auto+human input.

If you want case study after case study of human caused error in highly trained individuals look no further than the FAA investigations for crashes. Most are caused by highly trained human beings who know full well, if they screw up, they are dead.

No one stands "watch" on a civilian engine room today.

wastedfly wrote:The issue of not enough "manpower" always comes down to this: 1) Do you believe people are stupid, or 2) Do you believe people with an average education with motivation are not lazy drecks. IE stupid. Stupid is really just a short way of saying lazy drecks. Be a lazy dreck long enough and sure enough... said person becomes stupid.

I believe the Honorverse is not the real world and works the way RFC says it does. So even if we think the various manpower crunches experienced by military forces in the Honorverse despite said forces only employing at most 1% of the population in the middle of an existential shooting war are silly (especially in a society with no sexism and pervasive prolong, the latter acquired long enough ago that almost no one without prolong is still alive, but recently enough that no one with prolong is physically old), it's RFC's universe, not ours.

wastedfly wrote:Here is an for ya.

If 5/6 are loaded:

SLN ships all by themselves should be blowing up left and right. Why? Human error. Automated error. Just like the highly trained Taiwanese pilot who shut down the still good engine a couple of days ago and crashed into the highway and river.

Guess what? SLN ships are not blowing up left and right. Ergo, your "RUSSIAN ROULETTE" ain't even close to 1/6 or even 1/66 or 1/666 if one adds up simple statistics for human caused error. SLN/RMN/RHN/GSN ships are not blowing themselves up on auto or auto+human input.

If you want case study after case study of human caused error in highly trained individuals look no further than the FAA investigations for crashes. Most are caused by highly trained human beings who know full well, if they screw up, they are dead.

No one stands "watch" on a civilian engine room today.

Complex machinery tends to behave in complex and unintended ways, running a fusion plant without an engineer looking after it is not something I would recommend. Also, there are the maintenance schedules that need to be followed on any running machinery. Re the SLN ships, I agree with you that they wont explode left and right without engineers babysitting them. Instead there are a good chance the automation will shut systems down in case of problems and leave the ships dead in space.

And there are engineers watching engine rooms today. Look at any larger vessel; for example a modern cargo ship, they always have people on watch in the engine control room. Their systems are almost totally automated but as soon something happens that the automation can't handle it gets expensive real fast if they don't have an engineer on watch.

But that's in real life today. Re standing watch in a fusion-room, should one trust the automation with ones life when you know that faults can happen that the automation can't handle without human input? So far in Honorverse when we have a fusion bottle fail in different ways we have seen it either being scuppered, being safely shutdown by either automatics or an engineer, or failing catastrophically which is kind of fatal.


On the issue of fatal accidents due to human error it's quite common today relative to automation failures, but that's because almost none of our transportation is automated.

drothgery wrote:

wastedfly wrote:The issue of not enough "manpower" always comes down to this: 1) Do you believe people are stupid, or 2) Do you believe people with an average education with motivation are not lazy drecks. IE stupid. Stupid is really just a short way of saying lazy drecks. Be a lazy dreck long enough and sure enough... said person becomes stupid.

I believe the Honorverse is not the real world and works the way RFC says it does. So even if we think the various manpower crunches experienced by military forces in the Honorverse despite said forces only employing at most 1% of the population in the middle of an existential shooting war are silly (especially in a society with no sexism and pervasive prolong, the latter acquired long enough ago that almost no one without prolong is still alive, but recently enough that no one with prolong is physically old), it's RFC's universe, not ours.

Anyone having an active military that exceeds 1% of it's population means that their economy suffers in one way or another. And in Manticores instance they can't just conjure up the needed personnel, they have to be recruited and educated which takes years even with the accelerated courses they have implemented.

And it's not viable to expand a military force fast by recruiting from the civilian population. For every civilian you recruit into the military means you move a person from contributing (well, hopefully anyway) to the economy to being a drag on the economy. And if you need specialist it costs the economy even more.

Joat42 wrote:And it's not viable to expand a military force fast by recruiting from the civilian population. For every civilian you recruit into the military means you move a person from contributing (well, hopefully anyway) to the economy to being a drag on the economy. And if you need specialist it costs the economy even more.

Really? Can you cite an example? I'll cite a counterexample: Look at the year to year strength figures for the US Navy between 1937 and 1945. Did the US economy collapse?

The entire military production section of the Manticore economy was less than 10 million people, most of whom are now DEAD.

Since SDs are two sections of redundant systems, why not just cut them in half and convert the wedge half into tugs. Manticore gets benefit of more tugs and the negative psychological impact to the League when they find out that their SDs are no more than overhauled Ford F-150 trucks.