Warships from ilClan

[Stormlion1]

Cannonshop is right. Terra probably is suffering from a rescource crunch. But does it suffer from a salvage crunch? Lots of raw materials remain it's just the process of converting it into something usable. There is also the issue of gathering raw materials from the belt and Mars and possibly other planets in the solar system. The amount of time needed for transport though may have made that untenable. The last thing I remember was the mech junkyards we see in the very first Dark Age novel. If nothing else they should have emptied those areas out for parts and materials.

[Cannonshop]

Cannonshop is right. Terra probably is suffering from a rescource crunch. But does it suffer from a salvage crunch? Lots of raw materials remain it's just the process of converting it into something usable. There is also the issue of gathering raw materials from the belt and Mars and possibly other planets in the solar system. The amount of time needed for transport though may have made that untenable. The last thing I remember was the mech junkyards we see in the very first Dark Age novel. If nothing else they should have emptied those areas out for parts and materials.

You're thinking logically in straight lines with this, but that's not how people in the BT universe think.  (or the real world, for that matter).

to fully grasp the problems here, consider a few things:

1. Belters should have jumpships of their own for internal traffic, but they don't because that creates problems for the writers, so they have slowboats instead.

2. Recycling isn't always the answer (I know, heresy, right?) separating alloys out into their constituent elements is insanely difficult, and may actually be more expensive than mining for the stuff in the raw and processing it from ore.  It's also logistics and resource intensive to set up, and if you've already cut your economic throat with Gray Monday, followed by warfare, followed by Fortress?  could well be that by the time someone crunched the numbers and did the math, it was too late to set it up.  You also get losses because no system is truly perfect and you WILL have material loss, possibly of critical elements, even if you can shred and resmelt in the right proportions.

3. It's probable that those outer system sources are either too difficult to extract due to lack of infrastructure, or got tapped out.  There's actually an extinct MINERAL or two, if your industrial processes were optimized to use that mineral, and it runs out? you've got to re-tool if you want to keep running.  Further, out-system sources will tend to be light minerals and elements.   For heavies in off-earth operations inside sol system, you'd need to look a lot closer to the sun-since that's where the heavy elements accumulated.  Mining the shade side of Mercury only works if it's stationary, and the conditions are...extreme.  If you didn't invest in it during the time when more comfortable sources were available, it's going to be exceedingly costly to invest in the research when you're in a national crisis and have cut off all external ties, flatlined your communication grid, and are using your merchant fleet to bolster a wall.

while having tens of billions of empty stomachs to fill, most of whom don't have the necessary skills or psychology to work that sort of operation.

IOW, Devlin Stone laid the foundations of the Republic's demise and the ilClan's rise long before he left office for the first time-about the time he started planning his cryochamber vacation, you might say, or setting up Gray monday's outage, and in the process of that, he also set up Terra to fall to the Clans, because of a lack of investment in technologies that would make his fortress defensible once the walls came down.  He simply didn't consider losing, and assumed a few years of blackout would allow the Republic to freely conquer in any direction against enemies that had expended their forces on one another. (this is actually mentioned in Pardoe's novel)

[Metallgewitter]

Point taken about the resource crunch. Though the Belts could probably supply the needs of Terra (at least that is what the source books alludes to) but if you neglect this then it will create a serious bottleneck in production (the FM 3145 hints that resource mining was directed to deep sea and asteroid mining which was expensive). I mean it is already something that the Republic managed to raise their armies from a handful to over 20 in a few years. Though I would assume that Alaric wil have the exact same problem: he has Terra but how to feed the factories that dot Terra? Sure he has his empire. An Empire that is in essence guarded by ilusions plus the fact that he might have to send his convoys through hostile teritory. Or is that the point where Clan Sea Fox comes in?

[Cannonshop]

Point taken about the resource crunch. Though the Belts could probably supply the needs of Terra (at least that is what the source books alludes to) but if you neglect this then it will create a serious bottleneck in production (the FM 3145 hints that resource mining was directed to deep sea and asteroid mining which was expensive). I mean it is already something that the Republic managed to raise their armies from a handful to over 20 in a few years. Though I would assume that Alaric wil have the exact same problem: he has Terra but how to feed the factories that dot Terra? Sure he has his empire. An Empire that is in essence guarded by ilusions plus the fact that he might have to send his convoys through hostile teritory. Or is that the point where Clan Sea Fox comes in?

If Sea Foxes have acknowledged him as ilKhan, and his right to legitimate rule, then it solves a BOATLOAD (heh) of his resource issues, leaving him only with Time and internal challenges to deal with until he's in a position to subdue the other states.

I'd say Alaric's significantly more intelligent than Stone is, and he's not hobbled by brainwashing or programming by nihilistic pseudo-religious lunatics, so he's more likely to use pragmatic, as opposed to idealistic, orders regarding things like how to defend what he's got from non-Clan opposition (meaning he's likely to search the chair cushions for the keys to the nuke locker, and won't be relying on a thin crust defense filled with foamed marshmallow for a defensive strategy-he'll actually let his subordinate commanders use intelligent strategies instead of idealistic ones.)

Part of that, is that Alaric can't rely on a messianic cult following, he's got to actually rule what he takes, and make it work without having Devlin Stone's lily-like reputation to cover his blunders and he knows it.

[Stormlion1]

You're thinking logically in straight lines with this, but that's not how people in the BT universe think.  (or the real world, for that matter).

to fully grasp the problems here, consider a few things:

1. Belters should have jumpships of their own for internal traffic, but they don't because that creates problems for the writers, so they have slowboats instead.

Why would the Belters need jumpships for internal traffic? There not gonna be jumping around the system all that much. Heck, would they have jump points in the belt at all? The belt would be better served with dropships.

[Cannonshop]

Why would the Belters need jumpships for internal traffic? There not gonna be jumping around the system all that much. Heck, would they have jump points in the belt at all? The belt would be better served with dropships.

because of the distances, unless you want them zipping at relativistic speed inside the solar system, it's weeks to months to get anywhere on a tank of fuel using orbital mechanics alone.  YES, you can get anywhere inside the Sol system with a chart and a decent stopwatch using a can of Krylon for propulsion, but it's going to take you forever to do it.  sustained burns requires sustained fuel sources, which requires infrastructure, which is expensive and doesn't fit the rest of the setting in terms of technology.  (the necessary level of development makes the outer system more populated by necessity than the Inner planets-the dominant culture would be belta, not innah.)  also, every system in the sol system with anything of value has points of neutral gravity, so to get from Jupiter to Earth, a dropship will take days or weeks at any sort of in-game realistic burn, but a hop from Jupiter's lagrange to Earth's is a few seconds with a week to charge.  When you're running an economy, you're also running into light delay.  Your patrol ships need to get to emergencies before the emergency has turned into an opportunity for the undertaker to ply his craft, and a dropship can't do it.

also light delay again, let me reiterate, light delay.  Unless your solar system has a bunch of A-station HPG's going, you need relatively fast transports that don't gobble up all your free hydrogen because once it goes out the tailpipe as helium, you can't get it back and it takes days to weeks to process more...if you're very lucky and the ice you're using is relatively pure (most of it isn't)...AND you also need that water to keep your spacers alive or they're worthless.

Think about the WHOLE of the economy here, not just what something with dedicated military refueling reserves can do on a limited axis of action.

[Hominid Mk II]

Didn't either ISP 2 or JHS: Terra state that Belters do use JumpShips to travel to and from the Oort Cloud?

All long since commandeered by Stone, Redburn or Levin , I suppose.

[Cannonshop]

Didn't either ISP 2 or JHS: Terra state that Belters do use JumpShips to travel to and from the Oort Cloud?

All long since commandeered by Stone, Redburn or Levin , I suppose.

Likely, though they might have hidden a few here and there on routes that avoid the inner planets and don't make stops at 'official' stations where they could be seized.

[idea weenie]

I don't actually need entire swarms of Caspars, but, really, make it somewhat believable that the cradle of humanity was still the most technologically advanced world in the IS with a military production to make Hesperus & Galax weep with envy.

So something like the Willow Run factory, where the Republic's version is capable of building a Mech every hour?

That sort of factory will be VERY expensive, but being able to put out two companies of Mechs every day would be a useful trick for planetary defense.

Or something quieter, only building 1 Mech every day, but they are all drones.  When someone invades, the drones are activated and use their datanets to coordinate attacks.  They won't be as coordinated or as good as the CASPAR networks because the Battlemech drones are much smaller, but it also means that unless you can jam the entire battlefield that the controlling program can just switch from one destroyed Mech to a fresh mech and keep on boosting that Mech's capabilities.

(The ATAC networks are at centralized locations and merely allocate X number of Mechs to different combat locations.  The main computers can improve a Mech's performance, but would be blocked by the equivalent of Guardian ECM.  Still, that just means the control computer merely switches to another Mech.  Once a battle is finished in one location, the command computer focuses on another fight and provides its bonuses there.)

The other fun would be using the various 3D printer capabilities that Terrans have that was mentioned in the last Jihad book, and the computer just buys replacement parts where possible.  So several people get purchase orders for explosives and rocket fuel, others get purchase orders for circuitry, others get for casings/wings/etc, and their printers are put to work.  A drone cargo van goes around to pick up all the items, delivering them to a final depot that assembles them into SRM ammunition.  So you could have an entire town being used as an ammunition dump to support the defending troops, while the people in that town are either asleep or down in a bunker due to the planetary invasion alarm, and as a result don't know what is going on.

[Stormlion1]

because of the distances, unless you want them zipping at relativistic speed inside the solar system, it's weeks to months to get anywhere on a tank of fuel using orbital mechanics alone.  YES, you can get anywhere inside the Sol system with a chart and a decent stopwatch using a can of Krylon for propulsion, but it's going to take you forever to do it.  sustained burns requires sustained fuel sources, which requires infrastructure, which is expensive and doesn't fit the rest of the setting in terms of technology.  (the necessary level of development makes the outer system more populated by necessity than the Inner planets-the dominant culture would be belta, not innah.)  also, every system in the sol system with anything of value has points of neutral gravity, so to get from Jupiter to Earth, a dropship will take days or weeks at any sort of in-game realistic burn, but a hop from Jupiter's lagrange to Earth's is a few seconds with a week to charge.  When you're running an economy, you're also running into light delay.  Your patrol ships need to get to emergencies before the emergency has turned into an opportunity for the undertaker to ply his craft, and a dropship can't do it.

also light delay again, let me reiterate, light delay.  Unless your solar system has a bunch of A-station HPG's going, you need relatively fast transports that don't gobble up all your free hydrogen because once it goes out the tailpipe as helium, you can't get it back and it takes days to weeks to process more...if you're very lucky and the ice you're using is relatively pure (most of it isn't)...AND you also need that water to keep your spacers alive or they're worthless.

Think about the WHOLE of the economy here, not just what something with dedicated military refueling reserves can do on a limited axis of action.

All good points. And a few things I've missed about the Belters infrastructure. Only issue I see is that they still need to use jump points which the Republic can monitor and patrol. Even Stefan Amaris did do when he controlled Terra. Heck, Amaris even took control of the Belters shipyards and had agents amongst the Belters population.

[Cannonshop]

All good points. And a few things I've missed about the Belters infrastructure. Only issue I see is that they still need to use jump points which the Republic can monitor and patrol. Even Stefan Amaris did do when he controlled Terra. Heck, Amaris even took control of the Belters shipyards and had agents amongst the Belters population.

For a jump-point you literally only need a zone of neutral gravity.  If you're in the Oort cloud, it's ALL a jump point-you only need the limited ones once you get within  one or two AU of the primary star, or within the gravitational 'system' of a large body.  The number of Jovian points alone would be hard to keep patrolled, never mind patrolling those, all of Saturn's, plus the inner planets. (esp. the ones with moons, the Earth/moon L1 for example, is still a serviceable point!)

The Zenith and Nadir points are chosen because they're stable and they're large.  Thousands of KM across (Hundreds of thousands, really), while also being relatively close (7 burn days at 1 G).  But there are dozens (and in the Sol system, probably closer to hundreds) of other points that are smaller targets,but predictable orbits.  and again, you describe methods that would NOT get patriotic fervor going among the BELTS for DEVLIN STONE-seizing points would get the opposite-it would generate rebellion and shunning, which is not consistent with the claim in FM 3145.

Putting a (figurative) gun against someone's head doesn't make them friendly OR loyal, at best you would get grudging compliance or even malicious compliance, followed by  the sort of treacherous lieutenant backstab common in fiction and some real-life events of the 20th century.  as in it would be extremely unlikely that any 'volunteers' from the Belt would provide useful, never mind good, training, advice or technology for the defense of Stone's paradise.

[CVB]

Strategic Operations (2nd pr.), pp. 70 and 132-133, has some relevant charts and illustrations about distances to standard and L1 jump points as well as between planets for the Sol System.

[Cannonshop]

Strategic Operations (2nd pr.), pp. 70 and 132-133, has some relevant charts and illustrations about distances to standard and L1 jump points as well as between planets for the Sol System.

thanks for that reference, CVB, it's usually a good sign when someone calls me on my bullshit with page references to objective-in-universe-facts that don't rely on 'unreliable narrator'.

The reference to FM 3145 can't rest on Stoney 'forcing' cooperation.  forced cooperation doesn't get you skilled volunteers, and while a good case for forcing cooperation (or compliance) is pretty easy to make, a case for obtaining it willingly requires a lot more work.

Might call it a different set of conditions, really, and goes back to the question I asked several posts ago;

"What did Stone/The Republic have to offer" that would buy that loyalty from people who had a higher standard of living than Earth/the Star League, had not lost technology, and were self-sufficient?

Because that's the real thing here;  we know there are 'ways' to force it, but that's not what was described, it was loyalty and/or patriotism, which the ROTS doesn't present a good case for either of those-Stone's people didn't free the Belters from the Word of Blake any more than Kerensky saved them from Amaris or Amaris from Cameron, or Cameron from McKenna.

In a sense they're 'in the world but not of it'-everything including how the Republic is structured, leaves the Belts unrepresented and largely outside of society, socially isolated and not part of, (nor an integral part of) the Republic or Fortress would have been impossible to sell (or grounds for rebellion in and of itself).

To an extent this is because the writing/development staff really didn't account for the addition of them into the setting when they hauled off on their merry way leading up to this, and that's part of why the reference feels 'tacked on' by someone who had to answer a question without having much (or any) involvement with it.

So...let's do a No-Prize here and figure out how the quote can be possible on a practical level without making them stupid or losing what makes them worth mentioning.

we know what the Republic needs from THEM-the shipyards, the production, something the ROTS can export after 3080 and before 3134...but what would the Belters get out of that deal that they can't get on their own cheaper and/or better?

What did Devlin Stone's government offer them, to buy their loyalty?

[Hominid Mk II]

A promise not to throw all their leaders into concentration camps to await vivisection and gene-mapping as part of an effort to find out whether or not the immortal Ancients are a real thing?

[Stormlion1]

A promise not to throw all their leaders into concentration camps to await vivisection and gene-mapping as part of an effort to find out whether or not the immortal Ancients are a real thing?

Or Stone not rampaging through looking for former WoB personnel. Any Infrastructure destroying searches that make the belt totally no longer self sufficient is totally regrettable.

 And those shipyards? Well Stone has warships and troops to seize them if required. The Belters can be deported at any point to there asteroid homes with naught but the clothes on there backs. Because in the end Stone will not have a independent entity running around his Solar System.

The expectation is Stone will play nice. He doesn't have to. He has the Sword of Damocles and the Belt is a bunch of eggs easily crushed if they do not play ball. And in the end, the Belt is a very fragile infrastructure that can be disrupted easily. Even better, he can even do it all under the claim its 'For there own good', 'Internal Security', etc, etc. All it takes is one incident to get Stone to order troops in for 'Peacekeeping. Or he could even follow in Stefan Amaris's footsteps and install Political Overseers, military governers, or just use the threat of force. Done right and the only ones that will even know there is pressure from Terra will be the Belter leadership. Ghost Knights are so good at sabotage and assassination, especially early on in the Republics lifetime. After that its all propaganda to make everything copacetic. 

[idea weenie]

we know what the Republic needs from THEM-the shipyards, the production, something the ROTS can export after 3080 and before 3134...but what would the Belters get out of that deal that they can't get on their own cheaper and/or better?

What did Devlin Stone's government offer them, to buy their loyalty?

Investment opportunity on a surface that doesn't need dedicated life-support systems, or have to worry about hull breaches?  The Belters do have a high lifestyle, but how much of their economy is tied to keeping everyone alive?  Imagine what they could accomplish if they had access to a location that didn't have to worry about hull seals, ionizing (or cosmic) radiation, or vacuum welding.

Stone could offer the Belters a chance to invest in Terran industry, or even just taking advantage of an entire planet's worth of habitable area to grow extensive amounts of food in exchange for various petrochemical material to replace the organic material being removed.

Terra'a main advantage in that there is far more free energy nearer to Sol than farther out.  Smelting operations that need energy supplies out in the Belt (or farther) can be accomplished inside Terra's orbit with a few mirrors focusing solar energy onto a chunk of asteroid.  (As a comparison, Neptune gets ~1/9 the energy per square meter from Sol compared tot he Z/N jump point)

Stone could even offer the Belters the option to set up a SOL-Earth Pirate point monitoring station, where the Belters handle arrivals/departures at that location (and taking fees), and in exchange they provide useful training to the Republic forces.  The Belters will likely set up part of each day where fellow Belter ships can jump in freely to load up fresh produce.

Belters probably wouldn't provide military training, as they expect the Republic to backstab them and will not make it easy for the Republic to do so.  Now making money off the Republic to improve their supply situation is another matter.