Originally posted by Malenfant:
I don't get that - why should a TL be significantly LOWER on a fronter than anywhere else? Did the European settlers of North America somehow forget how to invent fire and the wheel when they went over there? No, they didn't.
So why should the TL be lower in Spica or Alpha Crucis?
I would rather ask, how *wouldn't* the TL on the frontier be lower?
Every frontier in history has been less developed and less "advanced" than "back home". The difference between Sydney, Australia 1800 and London, England 1800 were, I think, pretty dramatic. And the difference between a colony in trailing Alpha Crucis and spinward Spica areas ca. -1805 would be remarkably behind Terra and her brightest daughters.
Further, every world is not going to have centers of research and education to support technological advancement. Underdeveloped frontier worlds (and they'd be *very* young indeed on the trailing half of Alpha Crucis by that point, less than 400 years, with each colony advancing at their own rate due to varying factors) aren't going to have the same capability to advance TL as teaming/burgeoning Terra, where a hundred thousand highly intelligent minds might, on any one day, be turned toward solving the same problem.
Anything colonized in Spica from around -1900 (maybe -1950) to -1774, is going to be a young dependent . . . .
Well, I guess that also depends on how, exactly, the colonization is carried out . . . is it old-fashioned low-tech colonists using low-tech easy to repair tools and equipment and self-replicating tools like horses . . . or is it a hitting a fly with a sledge hammer type where the colonists having pre-built housing and manufacturing set up for them, jobs and entertainment and tourism ready to go at start-up when the construction teams move out?
While Terra wouldn't be the only center from which "technology" would radiate outward, it would certainly be the heavy hitter in my mind. Most minor worlds, especially with Pop 6 or less (most of them), might not have little to no inherent techonological advancement capability, at least in the TL 6 to 8 or higher area.
Oh, and technologically speaking, it's quite easy to create fire.
Building long range TL-14 J-5 scout ships in a developed shipyard to go off and wind up running into some Hivers doing their own exploring is another matter entirely.