message 0150

• On Riders: Advantages, uses, origin

>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 11:36:04 +0100
>From: Matthew Jude Brown <mjb@doc.ic.ac.uk>

> From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)

> Every time a carrier is destroyed, there would be four riders
> looking for a carrier to attach to.  A possible counterargument to
> this would be that the riders would defend a carrier at all costs,
> to the point of being destroyed before it, so this would not happen 
> very often, but the same effect would be achieved if the Fleet ever 
> decommissioned a carrier to use it for replacement parts (AFAIK, a
> very common practice in comparable situations).

Remember that according to _Downbelow Station_, `Norway' was built
out of parts from several (presumably badly damaged) carriers.  Many
of the stations had quite substantial shipyards, although raw
materials were almost certainly much more expensive, and the overall
level of technology maybe not so high.  The carriers, though,
according to _Hellburner_, were designed, not at Sol, but by the fleet
and the shipyards it controlled.  This makes it quite likely that the
shipyards at Mariner etc. could repair carriers, at least in the early
years of the war.

The riders, OTOH, were of Sol design and possibly were somewhat beyond
the ability of the stations to construct.  However, in the early years
of the war, it would not be surprising if a good quantity of spares
found their way out to the stations;  the Fleet never did trust its
backers on Earth.

-Morven

--
| Matthew J. Brown | Dept of Computing | If God intended for us to go to   |
| mjb@doc.ic.ac.uk | Imperial College, | lectures He wouldn't have created |
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| Morven on Lambda | LONDON SW7 2AZ    |          -IC RagMag 1991/92       |