The Ravens' economic woes resulting from the reactivation of their fleet is hardly "meaningless", Church. It's one of the reasons (the primary reason, in fact) their touman can't grow. And with the Ravens escalating their conflict with the FedSuns, not to mention their involvement with Alaric's new Star League, being stuck with only four Galaxies of ground troops is a big problem for them.
Their economic woes are a direct result of integrating with the poorest neighborhood in the near-periphery of the Inner Sphere, tassa, and then failing to actually INTEGRATE with it (economically, culturally, industrially....) Warships are logistics intensive beasts, and the Ravens didn't build up the local infrastructure in terms of educated workforce, convertible industries, or economic growth enough to actually support their fleet beyond subsistence levels....because they still haven't figured out they need to abandon Clanner Economics and embrace something that actually
works.
Thus, after decades in the area and plenty of time to prepare, they're still gutting their local infrastructure to get ships they've had decades to prep ready in a hurry.
per Canon they have ONE shipyard, and it has a lot of damage (Quatre Belle), and that's after decades where they could've been feeding the expansion and positioning of additional yards, feeder industries like prospecting and vacuum smelting, built up the supply infrastructure and economy to have the slack to
handle reactivation...They didn't do it, because they're Clanners, and still clinging to Nick Kerensky's misreading of Engels and Keynes.
They still think that military and economic are separate things and can be KEPT separate.
The more we learn about the Raven alliance the more amusing their struggles are, because they're so thoroughly unnecessary. A similar problem existed with the Republic, for similar reasons. Deeply centralized economies only produce progress in the very narrow short term, and only if they're run by actual geniuses with enough information to make intelligent decisions-neither the information, nor the geniuses are involved here, and their system is crippled by Clan Economic Theory and Clan Caste practices.
To give how this is related, I refer you to Jacob Bannson, from back in MWDA days, and the impossible glass ceiling that turned him from a potential major asset to the Republic, into a dedicated enemy of it.
The Ravens may not have to worry about their Outworlder subjects rebelling thanks to the spread of the Omniss creed, but the barriers built into their culture don't allow for the necessary type of growth to keep that fleet healthy for more than a relatively short period of time. Just like the Republic's built in barriers created internal enemies poised to disrupt it during a major crisis while also blinding those who maintained those barriers to the domestic threat.
It's actually not that unusual throughout the Inner Sphere and the Clans-Ideals and a segregated leadership doing the opposite of the practical or pragmatic everywhere BUT the battlefield, as if the battlefield was the only place where practicality matters.
The path to victory lies in securing victory and advantage
before pursuing battle. Sometimes LONG before, depending on how dependent your core systems are on things like maintenance and munitions. The more complex a system is, the more it needs to be supported by a logistics chain of educated, industrial workers committed to doing quality work quickly.
That in turn ties to things like food supplies-not just soldiers need to eat, starved workers don't do good work and they don't do it rapidly. The Ravens are in trouble, they just don't realize it yet.
