Tech Levels - Are They Needed?

[Roman]

Your discussion reminded me of two things I used to incorporate into my own campaigns. I just checked my Traveller "library" and hope it's interesting for you:

There is a chart with exchange rates for the Imperial Credit in the TNE rulebook (p230) that I often used in classic and MT-campaigns. It links the local value of a Credit with the local TL (basic availability and local manufacture of goods) and the Starport type (frequency of travel, taking into account the import of goods).

An interesting essay about the theme is in the Traveller4 rulebook (p64), called "What is poverty at TL12", comparing a homeless person in the TL12-Imperium with a millionaire at TL7.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

c. these are the extreme ends of the government table and accounts for, at most, 5 out of 16 government types.

Then why do I get the dadgum things so often?! Huh? And repressive governments don't really have to be on the fringes - if the law level is high enough (I keep getting those, too).

Wether or not most worlds in the OTU need tech to live on is still an option, not a fact. The definition of "Tainted" and it's resulting dangers is rather open and based on TL12+ Imperial Scout Service definitions.

Not all of the issues involve tainted atmospheres - I keep getting my main world to be a tiny, airless rock orbiting in the outer orbits. No taint here! :file_19:

Low tech planets are at a disadvantage because their goods don't sell (unless they are valuabel ores/woods etc) and they lack in money for imports.

Which would be the "low trade" argument heard from some.

further, underlying this is an assumption that low tech == poor and unhappy. this need not be the case.

Well, absolutely. But, definitely more often than not (at least when they know the higher-TL is out there.)

 

[whartung]

Most of the issues talked about are generational.

"Who wouldn't use an iPod? My grandmother." In 20 years, Grandma will be using an iPod and not the whatever svelte gizmo of the day.

"Just because I would take my daughter to the hospital in the starport doesn't mean I want one built in the jungle." Perhaps not, but in 20 years, your daughter very well might.

The only reason Saudi Arabia isn't maintaing their own Air Force is purely the choice of the Saudi Arabian government. They have had the access, the time, and the resources to bring that task in house. I bet there are a lot of folks in SA who would like the opportunity to be able to design, manufacture, and maintain that level of aircraft. But this too is generational. And this too will come to a head if and when Peak Oil hits and the society isn't ready to maintain itself on anything besides the finite resource store beneath it.

I'm not trying to be political, but this is a political/societal issue in this case. In fact, much of the conflict today is the culture clash brought on by technology.

But, again, its generational. Since we're at the cutting edge of technology, and we've grown with it, the new introductions have less of an impact than on societies that were not on track. But educate/train/indoctrinate the "new generation", and you get a (comparatively) short spell of chaos before the new tech level is available. Take a baby from an aboriginal tribe in the Amazon at a very young age, from the most primitive technological background, and you can train the child in to an advance, say, Aerospace engineer in 20 years. It would be neck deep in technology, but at the (probabl) cost of its culture.

Witness the Indian Schools in the United States, this was essentially their specific task, tho they were certainly more cultural than technological.

But, in some ways, the style of the society is much like a technology. So teaching a tribal native the mechanisms and mannerisms of a modern society is similar to teaching them electronics.

It is obvious, tho, that change does not come cheaply, or without conflict. But it can come quickly. Witness many of the Communist revolutions in the past hundred years. Those were almost over night.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

The only reason Saudi Arabia isn't maintaing their own Air Force is purely the choice of the Saudi Arabian government. They have had the access, the time, and the resources to bring that task in house. I bet there are a lot of folks in SA who would like the opportunity to be able to design, manufacture, and maintain that level of aircraft. But this too is generational.

Maybe, maybe not. I know guys who taught the Saudi pilots. After their first unsuccessful attempt at spin recovery, many would throw their hands in the air (that is, take them off the stick - with which they were supposed to be flying) and say "Inshallah" - meaning "God's will." Until that mentality changed (and it never did for some :file_28: ) it was impossible to let them out on their own. Generations won't cure that unless there is an accompanying change in the culture.

The other bit is infrastructure (which someone else mentioned with the shovels and cable bit). Sure, you can plop down a vehicular fusion reactor and run a village or two (with power to spare), but there's no way to make that a societal change unless there's infrastructure to support it: fuel delivery, cables to run, outlets for plugging in, somewhere to get the things you want to use the electricity, etc. Yes, you could bring it all in as a gift - but it would be magic, then, and wouldn't raise the TL at all. Oh, and after the first one goes boom (because someone stuck a sword in the works, perhaps), all the neighboring villages will drag theirs to the nearest ravine and heave it in.

 

[gdbackus]

When fleshing out a gov/culture/world/system I have started to think of different technologies as having their own TL rating. Mentioning the starport medical facility is an excellent example. Some humane dictator may allow medical technology to be very high, while keeping gravitics under wraps.

I guess I look at the standard TL as a baseline and think of technological areas
that are higher or lower. Computers, material, agriculture, medical, etc.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

And, that's the way it was (sorta) intended. Why else would that table with all the technologies be necessary? We're breaking into TL8 in some areas, but not others.

Though... Really, a world should only be listed as TLx if most of those things are present.

 

[Duke]

What Tech Level implies

Tech Level isn't necessarilly an indicator of what is for sale and available (although that is a part of it). Tech Level is more an indication of what that world is capable of producing and maintaining. You can take a million air-rafts to a TL 7 world, but how many natives are going to be able to fix it? Maybe a few mechanical savants, but not many. Along with Law Level and Government type, it gives the visitor a picture of what the society is like.

 

[Straybow]

Just because I can does not mean I do. How many passenger jets are build each year in Sweden (They obviously CAN build advanced jetfighters and do), how many nuclear subs in Germany (We CAN build nuclear ships - See Otto Hahn) Sometimes you don't need the stuff, sometimes it is cheaper to buy it from someone else.

The airports in Sweden maintain and repair those passenger jets, and that's essentially the same TL. The primary reason why they don't build widebody passenger jets is because the domestic market is too small and the international market is deemed saturated. If Sweden were 100M+ pop they'd build their own. Nuclear anything is a touchy subject in the Real World, so that isn't a very good example. If safe, cheap fusion power existed Germany would be building fusion power plants.

Just because some people travell to the stars does not mean all do. Same with other technologies. Germany 1960 was a high-tech nation again yet large parts of it still had no central heating, running hot water or communal sewers (i.e my father worked in the most advanced coal mine in the world yet had to stoke a coal fired oven for bathing water until the 1970s, we got a sewer access in the late 1980s). OTOH medical services where eccelent even then with access to the latest gear because it was needed

In this case part of the issue is innovation. Electric/gas water heat, central forced air heat, refrigeration, etc, were relatively new tech, less than 100 years old back in the 1960s. Not so in a broad interstellar milieu several thousand years old.

The other part is economic practicality, not technology. My Dad's house doesn't have sewer access even though it is in a pricey neighborhood. Every house has a septic system. It is far outside the city limits and will probably never have sewer access.

On the other hand, in a large city a septic system is impractical. You need land for the tank and drainfield. You can use cesspits that have to be emptied if a city doesn't provide a sewer.

Once you have certain infrastructure in place the tech involved is immaterial. We use electrically powered carnot cycle heat engines for cooling. It doesn't matter if the electricity comes from hampster treadmills, water wheels, coal-fired steam turbines, direct electric fuel cell, photocell, or Trav fusion. We could also swap out the carnot cycle unit for a Peltier effect unit, or some posited higher tech cooling method.

That city sewer system is connected to a waste treatment plant, with settling tanks, digesters, filters, and a landfill. It could be connected to a higher tech solution that transforms the waste into usable substances.

So, we dont have to sell gravcars to Ma & Pa Kettle, we get the government to replace their less reliable search and rescue helicopters with gravcars. Somebody then decides that a commercial service would be improved using grav vehicles.

If the demand is big enough, an enterprising local could obtain the 3I datapack and manufacture standard grav effectors for replacements. Then somebody starts making vehicle frames, and now you have a local air/raft industry. It doesn't have to become standard for average family.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

You're right, straybow. Now, just replace "domestic" with "planetary" and "international" with "interplanetary". I think you can come up with good reasons for why a planet is a low TL in the midst of the Imperium.

You really don't want to ride in the grav car version of a tuk-tuk, though.... :nonono: