[Phantom Hoover]

It sounds like you are all trying very, very hard to find reasons for the GTVA keep UEF warships operational even though they have absolutely no need and no interest in them, especially in the long term. Just scrapping them and build new ships with the Sol infrastructure is so much simpler and so much more sensible for all parties involved, stop trying so hard !

I'm really not; I thought the best course of action would be to scrap them until the thought of using them for policing came up.

[headdie]

It sounds like you are all trying very, very hard to find reasons for the GTVA keep UEF warships operational even though they have absolutely no need and no interest in them, especially in the long term. Just scrapping them and build new ships with the Sol infrastructure is so much simpler and so much more sensible for all parties involved, stop trying so hard !

I'm really not; I thought the best course of action would be to scrap them until the thought of using them for policing came up.

thing is the only system with the infrastructure to maintain UEF ships is Sol, and the GTVA will probably not want them in Sol as they will serve as a reminder of the UEF to the local population and probably the prosperity they enjoyed under the UEF government.

[Phantom Hoover]

OK the logistical demands of UEF ships are being blown waaaay out of proportion. They don't have furnaces that burn Apocalypses, they just need to be rearmed and repaired more between fights than GTVA ships. Tev systems aren't the space equivalent of a muddy field with a few shacks in them, they can afford to produce a few more torpedoes and spare parts.

[General Battuta]

OK the logistical demands of UEF ships are being blown waaaay out of proportion. They don't have furnaces that burn Apocalypses, they just need to be rearmed and repaired more between fights than GTVA ships. Tev systems aren't the space equivalent of a muddy field with a few shacks in them, they can afford to produce a few more torpedoes and spare parts.

Yeah, but those repairs require yards with different fittings, fed by factories making different parts, designed to different specifications, using different standard materials, running on different protocols requiring different training...

[An4ximandros]

It's like trying to fit a ship shaped like a sphere in a yard meant for cubes. You could do it but ya know... simpler to just make cubes to defend the polyverse.

[Luis Dias]

OK the logistical demands of UEF ships are being blown waaaay out of proportion. They don't have furnaces that burn Apocalypses, they just need to be rearmed and repaired more between fights than GTVA ships. Tev systems aren't the space equivalent of a muddy field with a few shacks in them, they can afford to produce a few more torpedoes and spare parts.

Yeah, but those repairs require yards with different fittings, fed by factories making different parts, designed to different specifications, using different standard materials, running on different protocols requiring different training...

Unless those are all bombed, I see no problem whatsoever, and even if they were, the know-how is not in shivan language, there's a whole contingent of scientists and engineers ready to answer any doubts you might have. If these remarkable ships are available, I wouldn't write them off as you probably already did, but that would be an entirely personal choice. I can see both arguments winning.

[Mars]

Keeping ships for which you cannot make replacement parts is problematic. They also do not fit with GTVA tactical doctrine (shock jumping, extreme offensive posture,) and  are really only useful for defense. This makes them largely useless unless Sol itself is attacked by Shivans.

Currently the GTVA likes to use ships that can be jumped into another system quickly to aid evacuation operations.

[Luis Dias]

I don't understand why all this talk of "oooh hell and all those logistics that are impossible to build", yeah except in that same solar system that has built them for years and has the know how on how to do so. Unless of course the writers destroyed every single facility that has this ability. As far as WiH1 is concerned this was not the case.

[headdie]

As it stands there are several options for the GTVA if they want to maintain UEF ships and tbh none are going to be attractive to them.

1. They Maintain them in Sol, this has difficulties like I mentioned in that their presence could easily remind the population that existed prior to the invasion of just what they had, not good.

2. They move them into another system outside of Sol to take up the roles of existing warships and then have to spend months ferrying replacement parts, fuels, munitions and miscellaneous components from Sol along with the ships themselves back to Sol for heavy maintenance (lets face it even the best maintained ship blows an engine from time to time even in peacetime, I know someone on a UK Frigate which did just that) because they use different alloy compositions, electrical specifications, pressures, shapes etc to the GTVA standards until the GTVA can construct/adapt manufacturing and maintenance facilities nearer to where the UEF ships are being operated.

3. They strip down and rebuild the UEF ships to GTVA standards, this will take them out of circulation for months if not years (especially for the Solaris Destroyers) in which time the GTVA could have probably built the same number, if not more of their own design ships in the same facilities. On top of that the results of the conversion could easily go the way of the Typhon and be an unreliable mess in the end.

[Phantom Hoover]

Eh... the spare parts thing does kind of make the Solarises a lot less maintainable than I had thought. Maybe if there were a respectable amount of surviving frigates they could be reused, but I'm doubtful.

[Mars]

I don't understand why all this talk of "oooh hell and all those logistics that are impossible to build", yeah except in that same solar system that has built them for years and has the know how on how to do so. Unless of course the writers destroyed every single facility that has this ability. As far as WiH1 is concerned this was not the case.

Okay, for the sake of argument then, lets say it's not that it's impossible to repair or resupply the UEF ships (nevermind that UEF infrastructure, including one of the places that makes parts for Karuna armor, is stated to be in shambles and that the UEF is on the verge of logistical collapse in terms of its military.) It's that UEF ships, for the purposes of the GTVA, are useless.

Think of it this way, the GTVA seems to have a very precise strategy when it comes to another Shivan incursion, based on Capella. This seems to involve jumping all of the nearby fleets into the system. This is up to four subspace jumps in some cases, something that we have NO IDEA if UEF ships can handle, certainly UEF fighters CANNOT. Then GTVA destroyers are tasked with launching convoy escort missions, lots of them, with high frequency. UEF fighters require more downtime between sorties Warships are tasked with clearing the way of a high volume of opposition, destroying things many times their size in some cases, many times in a row. This is something that we know for sure UEF ships cannot do, as after a sortie they need time to reload and tend to spend days in drydock. Current Tev ships, while still requiring repairs in extreme cases, are consistently said to be easier to repair - and Tev logistics ships can do most repairs and rearming in system within days - even in the case of a destroyer almost completely devoid of fighers (the Imp).

UEF ships are high intensity, high maintenance machines. They can do some very impressive things within their own solar system, but that doesn't mean that they're cut out for the role the GTVA needs them for.

[Luis Dias]

That is all very interesting Mars but it contains a deep flawed thought, which is the idea that having a single strategy-able fleet is the best possible solution to the Shivan threat. If you believe you know the Shivans, then that might be somewhat conceivable, but as far as both retail campaigns have shown the Shivans are an elluding mystery that always seem to surprise us. So, in this particular case, the Tevs may have built a whole fleet considering shock-tactics, sudden subspace attacks and swarm assaults by the Shivans, but the hedging on a quite completely different strategy may not be utterly stupid.

So all the paragraph above is extremely abstract, and it may completely ignore the actual inability by the Fed's fleet to oppose any considerable threat by the Shivans.

[Phantom Hoover]

The GTVA still needs to patrol their own systems, and currently they're using front-line warships for that.

[Mars]

That is all very interesting Mars but it contains a deep flawed thought, which is the idea that having a single strategy-able fleet is the best possible solution to the Shivan threat. If you believe you know the Shivans, then that might be somewhat conceivable, but as far as both retail campaigns have shown the Shivans are an elluding mystery that always seem to surprise us. So, in this particular case, the Tevs may have built a whole fleet considering shock-tactics, sudden subspace attacks and swarm assaults by the Shivans, but the hedging on a quite completely different strategy may not be utterly stupid.

So all the paragraph above is extremely abstract, and it may completely ignore the actual inability by the Fed's fleet to oppose any considerable threat by the Shivans.

The ability to cover their systems is not an abstract thought.

[Luis Dias]

Look Mars, when I said "paragraph above" I meant my paragraph above. The paragraph above that sentence.

[headdie]

The GTVA still needs to patrol their own systems, and currently they're using front-line warships for that.

thing is there is no "Shivan Border" for them to cross, no predictable entry point, while we know that there are (likely temporary) sealed nodes from Vega and Eps-Peg to Capella, we dont know for sure where the FS1 shivans came from and it was mentioned on more than 1 occasion that Shivans can in all likelyhood used nodes too "unstable" or undetectable by the GTVA so they could literally appear out of nowhere without even a moment's notice, so frontline warships have to do the bulk of patrolling to stand a chance and even then the GTC Vigilance proves that might not be enough to ensure survival on initial contact.  Not to mention it's gives your massive navy something to do.

[Phantom Hoover]

I think the GTVA have some idea of where the Shivans might attack from. They've always attacked from the edges of known space, never from inside a charted and populated system. Even leaving that aside, UEF ships are generally better for peacekeeping. You don't really /want/ police going around bristling with powerful and lethal weapons; it's just asking for trouble.

[qwadtep]

I think the GTVA have some idea of where the Shivans might attack from. They've always attacked from the edges of known space, never from inside a charted and populated system.

Well yeah. If a system is charted then there probably aren't any undiscovered jump nodes for the Shivans to sneak through.

[el_magnifico]

Solaris retrofit:
You know, I still don't get why the UK doesn't retrofits the ironclad HMS Warrior to use it in their navy. I mean, she's a good design! All they'd have to do is to strap some missile launchers and some other modern armaments on it and it would be ready for a modern-day war right? RIGHT!?

Apollo, you're so wrong in so many levels that I just can't handle it. Moreover, you contradicted yourself at least once in one of your past posts, you confuse the hell out of me about what is it that you're actually trying to argue for, and you've made a very enjoyable thread a nightmare to follow.

This whole discussion makes no sense.

About Mjolnir strapping:
I think I was the first person who came up with a plan to strap Mjolnirs in freighters and deploy them en masse, together with massive fighter escort, as a cost-effective answer to the 80+ Sathanas threat. However, I think it was Battuta (I'm not sure if it was him) that pointed out that when you think about it, that's pretty much what BP corvettes already do, without the added fragility of a jury-rigged design.

Logistics of UEF ships in other systems:
What Battuta said. It seems to me that the logistic problems are actually being GROSSLY underestimated.
Living in a country that 60 years ago used to have the ability to produce high-performance jet fighters

Spoiler:

before yet another US-backed coup d'etat destroyed that infrastructure

, I can tell you for sure that any modification to your industrial infrastructure to produce something completely different from what you produce at any given point in time is one hell of a though job.
Granted that, the same difficulties could be faced by the GTVA while trying to adapt Sol's infrastructure...


NOTE: Despite Apollo, I'm still an UEF supporter here.
Also, note that adopting Ubuntu's economic model without at least partly adopting its philosophy may be impossible, as the GTVA dossiers suggests that the success of the economic model may have something to do with the current mindset of the Sol population. In other words, they seem to be interlaced to a degree (Jupiter and Mars still embrace the model without FULLY embracing Ubuntu, but it's hinted that they do embrace it to some extent and that this is accounted for in the Elders calculations).
I'm actually worried of the other possible scenario: The Elders' economic and social system, dependant as it is on finely tuned calculations and gradual adjustments, could very well go to hell in case of an abrupt, massive influx of immigrants from the rest of the GTVA who haven't yet been properly prepared to handle living in Ubuntu.

[MatthTheGeek]

Anyway, to close the topic, keeping UEF warships in service for the GTVA after the war :
- would inherently be nothing more than a temporary solution, since they do not fit with the GTVA doctrines.
- would be one hell of a costly temporary solution, because of the original repair and subsequent maintenance resources required to keep them in any kind of efficient state.
- would be a solution to an inexistent problem, since the Tevs aren't exactly lacking warships to police their systems (two dozens of destroyers for the Terran part of the GTVA alone, remember ?), and they'll soon be able to roll out a lot more with the newly-acquired Sol infrastructure.

It's that simple. The GTVA simply don't need the UEF warships for anything else than scrap, not on the short term, not on the long term.