No, you said "the Xboat network infrastructure already present". I said "non-existent", as I think that would be the extent of the existing Xboat network infrastructure at the time they were designed...
Cost reduction would require the use of as much as possible of the pre-Xboat courier network infrastructures: data receiving centers, scout bases, training facilities, repairs workshops, recruiting centers, current admin, vet admin... A large chunk of the infrastructure used by XBoat existed as the nest in which XBoats and their Tenders hatched and became their nest.
As to the semantic issue: could the previous communication infrasctructure (the courrier network) be properly refered to as Xboat infrastructure once used by XBoat, I have no interest in such a debate from the semantic stand point (if that was your point). The aspect of your question that is of interest for me is how the new grow from the old.
Of course, if you play an early millieu, you may game the birth of the Xboat network whatever way you wish.
The way I see it (as I was working on a Pocket Empire campaign), as an Empire ( and that include TI) expand: the military network start carrying the message of the "civilian" administration (often a military governor) as it settle in the new territories and the issue of the economic expansion is raised. Since it require civilian access to a rapid communications infrastructure, a paying service is set up to make a needed system pay for itself.
In the early stage you use Fleet couriers, then the civilian/administrative courier creep foward with S courriers (or other less well known models) until distance and volume justify setting-up a Jumper link. That is the most credible pattern.
In the later stage, as worlds evolve, a mail route may evolve from mail contracts into a Xboat Jumper link.
You mean that they went from a model with a maneuver drive to amodel without one? I don't find that assumption credible..
No I mean a) that the current model might not have been the first yet ultimate model of Jumper. b) that one of the Imperial Secretary for Communication might have believe (like you in a later statement) that M less Xboat were not making sense and that a "MXBoat" version might have been used before common sense prevailed and (a new version of?) Jumper (the current one?) put back into service.
Which IMO would have been the pre-Xboat courier network..
Yes for the first model of Jumper-Tender.
And that's fine when it does. But I don't think the drive-less Xboat does.
noted,
But this requires assuming that the CT ship design system is simplified to omit this possibility. Which I'm perfectly OK with, but contradicts the existence of Xboat tenders designed to go fetch immobile Xboats.
Not at all, it is faster for a 1G Self Prop drydock to reach a 0.1G Jumper than for a 0.1G Jumper to reach an orbital drydock. Using the thruster as main propulsion would be a waste of the reaction mass given the incoming Tender. So there is no contradiction between the Jumpers' "immobility" from the standpoint of Tender pick-up and it having attitude thrusters
The whole issue of thrusters having been (as far as I know) left unspecified you cannot postulate that the canon design had none and therefore that "immobile Xboat" is to be taken literally to the point of absurdity.
Simplicity for game purposes is fine. But to assume that this simplicity applies to "Real Life" is wrong. In "reality", it should be possible to create an 18T bridge by shrimping here and there. Perhaps not as good as a 20T bridge. Or perhaps more expensive than a 20T bridge. But possible.
[Note: the quotation marks around 'real life' and 'reality' is to acknowledge that it's a fictional reality. But one that is supposedly every bit as complex as Real Life.]
Hans
Right, that is why I redesign all MTU ships using T5.
Have fun
Selandia
