With a relative handful of exceptions (colonies full of crazy religious fanatics, outright pirates), most Honorverse people are sort of "first world" in that they are open to commercial opportunities, unlikely to opportunistically attack others without provocation and/or premeditation, and so on. An alliance of convenience is likely.
Eternal_Freedom wrote:While I know little about Honorverse, the potential for BSG jump drives to have a major impact is definitely there. Even if the effect doesn't "stack" with Weber's hyperpspace as Simon mentioned, their range was limited by how accurately you can plot a jump, and how quickly. So if the Honorverse have better computers (I'd say this was a given)...
The Honorverse probably has better computers than anyone who isn't a Cylon. On the other hand, the Cylons are so good at hacking I'm not sure how much in the way of computers the Colonies had
before they crossed swords with the Cylons. They would have had to remove or disable a lot of the computers just to stop the Cylons' taking them over...
...and more accurate star charts (of their area of space at least) then jump ranges could be high enough to make wormholes obsolete curiosities.
This would happen pretty much regardless. BSG ships may only be jumping a few light years at a time but they can make many jumps in fairly rapid succession.
Top top speeds for Honorverse ships are something like 3500c (about ten light-years per day) for high-end military drives taking considerable risks with their lives and safety. The top-secret Mesan streak drive can beat that, probably topping out at around 4500-5000c.
All your jump drive needs to do is jump three or four times a day, and it's moving drastically faster than any hyperdrive ship could possibly move, even if you can't jump while already in hyperspace.
If you
can jump while in hyperspace, then the range of jumps is increased by a factor of hundreds and you can go from one side of known space to the other instantaneously.
And yes, this would economically neuter Manticore once the jump drive technology began to proliferate. They'd still have a major shipbuilding industry, but there would be no particular advantage to shipping your goods in a Manticoran hull.
If this happens in 1900 PD, it is likely that jump drives will first be publicized before the beginning of the Manticore-Haven War. If Haven gains access to large numbers of them Manticore is probably
screwed militarily because it makes a massive, rapid, undetectable, unavoidable surprise massed attack possible. Your ships can literally teleport out of nowhere, well inside their (million kilometer) missile range of civilian infrastructure, without being traced or tracked on the way in.
Since Manticore's infrastructure is all concentrated in a few key locations, they don't have a counter to this. They can mass strength at those key locations, but not
enough strength, not if Haven really concentrates its force.
Conversely, if Manticore has large forces fitted with jump drives before Haven does,
Haven is screwed, because the Manticorans have effectively no logistics limitations stopping them from staging deep raids into Havenite space. Their ships can jump into Havenite territory, attack fleet bases or industrial centers, and jump back before Haven even realizes they're gone.
I'm not clear on whether the BSGverse has any working FTL comms (at least, the Colonials don't; the Cylons clearly do or their resurrection infrastructure wouldn't work). The Honorverse doesn't, or rather, doesn't have
interstellar communications which move faster than the speed of a spacecraft. This is a considerable handicap to the powers involved in the recent wars in the Honorverse, and would be an utterly crippling handicap in the face of a jump-capable opponent.