Re: PAU fleet

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 13:22:05 -0400, kaladorn@magma.ca wrote:

>OO makes an interesting point about the PAU fleet. Also, there may be 
>a difference between not being able to produce capital ships and not 
>being able to produce many of them or not being able to produce them 
>cost effectively. 

Or it could be that they needed to make ships quickly and didn't have
the
facilities at home. Another option was that they didn't have the
expertise and
were busy learning the craft of ship building. This was essentially what
happened with Japan.

At the end of the 19th and into the very early 20th centuries, many of
Japan's
warships were built in other countries, primarily Britain. Of the 6
battleships Japan had going into the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905,
three
were built by Armstrong Whitworth, two were built by Thames Iron Works,
and
one was built by John Brown in Glasgow. These were based on extant
British
designs (Royal Sovereign and Majestic), but included a number of
improvements
on those designs. 

Note that these were not "handmedowns". They were built to order. This
was a
common occurance at this time period. Germany built two modern
battleships for
China, for instance. Obviously if a nation was in "all out war mode",
they
would use their shipyard facilities to build ships for their own fleets.
However, if the shipyard is idle, building ships for a third party (an
ally,
of course, as you don't want to end up going against the same ships in
battle
[1]) is a good way of keeping people employed, keeping shipyard
facilities at
peak performance, and keeping up the skills needed for building ships.
In a
more modern, automated time period (i.e. the future) maintaining a
shipyard
could mean a continuation of improvements on ship building methods, and
innovation. Oh, yeah, and your nation (or at least your companies, who
then go
on to pay taxes) get money from outside sources.

[1] Britain and the US actually _did_ encounter these British built
ships, but
that wasn't until the Second World War when the ships were very much
obsolete
and used for purposes other than as warships. I suspect that the
longevity of
interstellar warships is greater and that FT nations would do well to be
_really_ sure of an alliance before they built capital ships for other
nations.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
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