Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

Joat42"quote="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.[/quote]


Try WWII the US had a population of 160 million with a military of 13 million, and the US GDP equaled 50-55% of the world GDP in 1943-44. In 1944 the US economy produced more than the economies of all Axis nations combined for the period of 1935-1945.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Since we are talking about using obsolete was ships fromhis universe, don't you think we should be playing by his rules. If you don't like his rules, go write your own universe - it's a free country.

Sure, add space hamsters ferrying bottles of hydrogen and gayly throwing them into the furnace to keep the fires burning if you wish. I always wanted the Scrooge Mcduck money vault too where I could dive into the money pile and swim around in it.

saber964 wrote:Try WWII the US had a population of 160 million with a military of 13 million, and the US GDP equaled 50-55% of the world GDP in 1943-44. In 1944 the US economy produced more than the economies of all Axis nations combined for the period of 1935-1945.

Yea right.

I have a bridge to sell you.

wastedfly wrote:I have a bridge to sell you.

Actually I think he's right, or in the general neighborhood.

one of the issues with trying to come up with lightbulb ideas is everyone likes to trot out rfc's statement/comment that the SLN ships are "pretty useless for warships"... yet insist every single possible lightbulb must have only military application.

Well that the SLN ships have to be only military uses, and that only the SD's have possible usage, and ignoring the far higher number of captured lighter ships, the battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, plus other escorts.


That's throttling a lot of possible ideas, and until an application ever is applied to the books, regardless of how the forum sweats keep arguing it's a dead horse; ideas will keep popping up.


I'll just leave off with, last time I actually piped up how one could use the SLN ships as evac, an argument was "how would Grand Alliance personnel be trained on SLN crap?"

Answer: How much training, exactly, does it take when 100% of military personnel, regardless of the Navy they serve, are equally 100% effective at operating merchant craft recaptured from pirates?

This is especially true for Manticoran and Andermani Navies, who have large merchant fleets, and usually end up in Silesia. This implies that at a general level, all ships are fairly universal for controls.

Now before anyone jumps to try and say "well thats merchant ships, not Navy!" TextEvidence to support this for NAVAL ships is also in HH7&8, where Honor + other prisoners with only a few minutes to familiarize with Havenite pinnaces, not only:
a) flew down to the planet on controlled, unpowered entry to the atmosphere
b) ran ground attack on Styx, and took out a full up impeller-drive dispatch boat, with pinnace missiles.


With all that said; using the SLN warships is definitely possible, for just about any purpose, from evacuation ship, to tugboat, to plain derping around ramming into asteroids for lulz. Without making use of dedicated training.

Somtaaw wrote:one of the issues with trying to come up with lightbulb ideas is everyone likes to trot out rfc's statement/comment that the SLN ships are "pretty useless for warships"... yet insist every single possible lightbulb must have only military application.

This is due to the simple issue that Suprdreadnoughts are fundamentally useless in roles that do not involve shooting at other ships. They make terrible freighters, marginal starting points for space stations, and sub-par training platforms. In every single one of those cases, there are simpler solutions available that use civilian or second-line RMN equipment.

Well that the SLN ships have to be only military uses, and that only the SD's have possible usage, and ignoring the far higher number of captured lighter ships, the battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, plus other escorts.

Except that that's not the case. Filareta's force was decidedly top-heavy, with only 32 BCs and 30 CLs as confirmed escorts (as per the wiki). The RMN reserve is larger than that.

I'll just leave off with, last time I actually piped up how one could use the SLN ships as evac, an argument was "how would Grand Alliance personnel be trained on SLN crap?"

Answer: How much training, exactly, does it take when 100% of military personnel, regardless of the Navy they serve, are equally 100% effective at operating merchant craft recaptured from pirates?

That's for basic shiphandling. Fighting the ship is a rather different task, as that involves a whole bunch of systems that may be comparable in role to RMN equipment, but will probably be vastly different in terms of user interface.

Now before anyone jumps to try and say "well thats merchant ships, not Navy!" TextEvidence to support this for NAVAL ships is also in HH7&8, where Honor + other prisoners with only a few minutes to familiarize with Havenite pinnaces, not only:
a) flew down to the planet on controlled, unpowered entry to the atmosphere
b) ran ground attack on Styx, and took out a full up impeller-drive dispatch boat, with pinnace missiles.

Flying a Pinnace is probably rather straightforward compared to operating a ship of the wall. It was also noted in the text that havente equipment tends to be simpler and more rugged than RMN equipment.

With all that said; using the SLN warships is definitely possible, for just about any purpose, from evacuation ship, to tugboat, to plain derping around ramming into asteroids for lulz. Without making use of dedicated training.

Except for the simple fact that better solutions exist for any task you want to mention. We're not disputing that it is possible to use these ships in some way, we're just saying that it doesn't make sense to do so when more economic solutions are available.

saber964 wrote:Try WWII the US had a population of 160 million with a military of 13 million, and the US GDP equaled 50-55% of the world GDP in 1943-44. In 1944 the US economy produced more than the economies of all Axis nations combined for the period of 1935-1945.

The problem with your example is that it's dated and not really relevant today, and even more so when compared to Manticores situation.

The US economy at the time of 1935 was still recovering from the great crash and it took until 1940 to exceed the pre-crash economy and only because of Roosevelt's new deal incentives and later the mobilization. This meant that when the mobilization started there where a huge pool of unemployed people that could be drafted or put into the mobilization efforts. In other words, the net effect was that it greatly helped the economy recover and got the industry running full tilt even though the military grew like mad.

If we then look at countries today, the only countries that have a large standing military (ie. > 1%) can be divided into 3 categories. 1) Those embroiled in low intensity military conflicts (for example Israel), 2) Totalitarian (ie. ruling class) but rich in natural resources, 3) Fascism/Despots/Bat shit crazy (for example NK which has 6% standing and 31% reserve). Most other countries economy doesn't allow them to increase their military personnel above 1% without seriously harming their economy.

Having a competitive military today is much more expensive than compared to what it cost during WWII per soldier, at the same time the effectiveness of modern weapon-systems means you don't really need as many personnel.

In the case of SEM, their unemployment rate is very very low which means their economy will instead suffer if you draft a huge amount of civilians that are already employed. On top of that their industry (what's left after Oyster Bay) is already running full tilt. Their recruitment has to be balanced with the need to rebuild their orbital infrastructure and industry.

In any case, the captured SLN ships are too manpower intensive to have any practical use for the SEM right now.

Post them on ebay, buyers collect

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote: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.

I'll assume you are making a joke here.

But what do you mean by "SDs are two sections of redundant systems"? Is that just part of the joke?

Thanks for asking SWM. Yes, it was meant as a joke. Even the redundant systems thing. Although I thought an SD has at least two main power systems (I think), at opposite ends of the ship?, I am aware that they are all intertwined.

Although, non-military uses of the SDs, I think have merit. Even if "one" is used as a mockup marines training device.

After all, you guys have already proved that they do have use ...

Wasting copius amounts of posts!

No, really, things can be derived from ascertaining what "won't" work. I've gotten a few ideas for other posts from this thread.

Go for it!

wastedfly wrote:

saber964 wrote:Try WWII the US had a population of 160 million with a military of 13 million, and the US GDP equaled 50-55% of the world GDP in 1943-44. In 1944 the US economy produced more than the economies of all Axis nations combined for the period of 1935-1945.

Yea right.

I have a bridge to sell you.

Like kzt says, I think saber has his numbers right, so I am not sure exactly what issue you are taking with him.

As for if the numbers apply today, I think Joat42 wrote a good post about that which I see no reason to repeat.

I would note that the US Armed forces, which are still the strongest (and overall the most modern-some others may have slight tech advantages here and there) in the world and second most numerous after the PRC, total about 1.5M active duty and 850,000 National Guard/reserves, or well under 1% of the total population.