Standardization

[Enoki]

That's about how I'd work it. If you used a local specialist in making parts in that fashion, who routinely made similar type parts, I'd simply give the players a time it'll take (roll 1+ die for that depending on how long I think it could take, or want it to take) and they get their part for some price.

If they chose to make it themselves the above system would be the one to use.

 

[Supplement Four]

You guys are making it a lot more difficult than you have to. Have any of you heard of 3D printing?

Nano-tech! o:

 

[vegas]

@sfchbryan

If all it takes to make any tech item is a 3D printer, then why isn't every society TL15. All they need is to buy 1 TL15 printer.

If 3D printing is as magical as Star Trek replicators, you have a hard time explaining trade or economics at all.

I think that "solution" is worse than the problem.

 

[aramis]

Re: Hardware.

You guys are making it a lot more difficult than you have to. Have any of you heard of 3D printing?

Input the information on the part into the printer and your part comes out on the other side. Doesn't matter whether it is an Imperial part or not.

Additive manufacturing isn't suitable for many types of parts. Such as many forms of pressure vessels.

It's useful, but not a panacea.

 

[sfchbryan]

Additive manufacturing isn't suitable for many types of parts. Such as many forms of pressure vessels.

It's useful, but not a panacea.

Not today perhaps, but this is an SF game, last time I checked.

 

[sfchbryan]

@sfchbryan

If all it takes to make any tech item is a 3D printer, then why isn't every society TL15. All they need is to buy 1 TL15 printer.

If 3D printing is as magical as Star Trek replicators, you have a hard time explaining trade or economics at all.

I think that "solution" is worse than the problem.

Great strawman.

Look at what 3D printing can do today at TL8; the Chinese are building subdivisions with 3d printing; whereas the US is making plastic guns. I use 3d printing because it is the simplest; I can tie it into the requirement for Imperial Data Packages and to overall Tech Levels. At some point, you have to let 1970's thinking go.

Its a simple solution - but gearheads have no interest in simple.

I'd remind you that no one can explain trade or economics in Traveller - any version.

For the same reason every society isn't TL15 is the same reason Earth has differing technological levels.

For the same reason that population levels never change from Milieu 0 to whichever milieu your group travels in.

For the same reason the Verge sector full of hell worlds with billions of people on them when unoccupied garden worlds are one jump away.

For the same reason that a TL B starport can't import a jump drive and install it in a ship.

It can be cultural or economic, anything really, but rather than come up with the most convoluted ideas, simply go with the easiest.

 

[vegas]

You seem to be writing that replicators are no more problematic than all these other problematic things. Sure, I will grant there are other problems with the OTU, and you can add one more problem to the list if you like.

For the same reason every society isn't TL15 is the same reason Earth has differing technological levels.

This bit isn't really right though. Earth doesn't have anything like replicators, so to the extent Earth has different TLs you would need a different explanation in your universe with replicators for different TLs.

Aramis already pointed to one of the fundamental limitations of 3D printing. There are plenty of others, real or SFish. I think we are better off assuming that technology items are not that easily manufactured in order to account for their scarcity. But YMMV and you can give other explanations or none at all.

 

[mike wightman]

In the OTU they are called makers - they started as a design subsystem in T5 and then someone in my group asked where the maker on board ship is...

he was so familiar with cad/cam and 3d printing it just made sense to him that the maker is an actual manufacturing machine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39522103

In his novel MWM has imperial ships use their makers to manufacture maneuver drives for asteroids to use them as weapons; maker/fusion+ technology is gifted to faraway worlds on the proviso that when the Imperium comes calling the world will join.

Are makers replicators? No.

You need a template and you need the raw materials.

 

[Condottiere]

Adidas wants to sell 100,000 3-D printed sneakers
A personalized shoe that can “adjust the strength, durability, and the shape.”

JOE MULLIN - 4/8/2017, 1:34 AM

Enlarge
Adidas
49
German shoemaker Adidas will begin mass-producing a shoe with a 3D-printed sole, the company announced today. The process will allow for more personalized shoes, shaped to an individual's weight and gait.

FURTHER READING
Company 3D prints ceramics that can withstand 1700ºC temps
"This is a milestone, not only for us as a company, but also for the industry," Gerd Manz, Adidas' head of technology, told Reuters. "We've cracked some of the boundaries."
Adidas is partnering with the 3D-printing startup Carbon to make the printed soles. Carbon has been financed by General Electric and Alphabet's Google division, as well as big venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital.

The shoe will be called "Futurecraft 4D." Adidas hopes to sell 5,000 of them this year and as many as 100,000 next year. Carbon says it currently takes an hour and a half to print one of the soles, but it hopes to get that down to as little as 20 minutes per sole.

Other shoe companies, including Nike, Under Armour, and New Balance, have been experimenting with using 3D printing, but so far have only produced prototype shoes and soles tailored to sponsored athletes.

Sole from 3D-printed Futurecraft 4D. Adidas
Adidas
Adidas

In an interview with Footwear News, Adidas Group Executive Board Member Eric Liedtke said Futurecraft shoes will be "as durable as we've ever done, if not more so."

"The product is ultimately tunable," Liedtke said. "The way it's created from light and oxygen through software design, you could get down into the individual component cells and adjust the strength, durability, and the shape."

If Adidas' dream of selling a run of 100,000 Futurecraft shoes comes to fruition, it will be a major push of 3D-printing technology into the mass consumer market, something that's been talked about for more than a year now. By way of comparison, Liedtke says Adidas sells 350 million pairs of standard shoes annually.

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/04/adidas-wants-to-sell-100000-3-d-printed-sneakers/

 

[McPerth]

I see the unititly of 3D printing in manufacturing sparece parts and othr stuff, and even envision the possibility (at higher TLs) to mak gravitic molds (if the gravitics can be shaped so precisely, as the Darrian fire sculptures seem to hint they can) where to pour molten metal to produce them.

They may need some polishing, but I guess this would be no major problem for many ships' repair shop.

But...

• can they produce bonded superdense or crystallion ítems (I guess most ship or vehicle parts that must endure strong forces are so built)?
• can the work on dilitium crystals?
• can they work on radioactive materials to produce new warheads?
• etc...

I guess no, in most those cases. 3D printers and gravitic modls can be quite useful, even to build temporary parts to substitute those that should be made in bonded superdense (thay will not last for long, but probably allow you to reach a starport), but they have their limitations, and many things need larger factories and labs.

And standarization is more than interchangeable parts (as important as they may be):

• sizes/shapes: sorry, this fighter will not fill in our lunch tubes
• spacifications: what the hell they inted we do with those tons of .45 ammo? our revolvers are .38!
• Language: no, whe don't have any Lorry here. This is the truck depot
• measures: Mars Polar Lander was allegedly lost because one team worked in km and another in miles, IIRC
• training/protocols: why could I know they would wxpect me to have my vacc suit done in 2 min and will not wait the usual 3 min before putting the ship to vaccum?
• tactics: what the hell is doing this foreign squadorn?
• etc...

 

[mike wightman]

You tell me how bonded superdense is made and I will tell you how a maker can fabricate it
A rough guess would be the application of gravitic and damper tech.

As to crystaliron we make something akin to it for turbine blades, maker tech would make making it much easier.

Now as to radioactives, damper technology says hi...

put another way from TL13 onwards manipulation of the strong nuclear force is a thing in the TL scale (TL12 if you look at naval nuclear dampers) and so working with radioactives is much easier and safer.

It takes a while for makers to make big stuff - I wouldn't go changing the hull construction times.

 

[aramis]

Not today perhaps, but this is an SF game, last time I checked.

Not by any physics that don't require invalidation of many fundamental physical laws. Including thermodynamics.

 

[Enoki]

You tell me how bonded superdense is made and I will tell you how a maker can fabricate it
A rough guess would be the application of gravitic and damper tech.

As to crystaliron we make something akin to it for turbine blades, maker tech would make making it much easier.

Now as to radioactives, damper technology says hi...

put another way from TL13 onwards manipulation of the strong nuclear force is a thing in the TL scale (TL12 if you look at naval nuclear dampers) and so working with radioactives is much easier and safer.

It takes a while for makers to make big stuff - I wouldn't go changing the hull construction times.

Bonded super dense? Probably along the lines of using something like an advanced version of a Hot Isostatic Press (HIP) furnace. Right now, these are very limited in size, but in the future...?
Here, they'd be using a process that produces a metal or ceramic or even metal-ceramic alloy or composite at say 2500 C at 15,000 Bar. Companies produce artificial diamonds this way today.

Crystaliron? Maybe an advanced powdered metal technology that controls crystal size and formation more precisely? A 3D printed part using something like powdered metal or ceramic with a very precise grain size would do the trick I'd think.

Of course, they'd have materials we don't have today too.

Then when you add in a knowledge of how gravity really works and the ability to manipulate it, or the ability to use fusion cheaply (relatively speaking), it gives those in the future a much greater range of materials and options for making them.

 

[Whipsnade]

In his novel MWM has imperial ships use their makers to manufacture maneuver drives for asteroids to use them as weapons...

Yet those same warships still carry a stock of computer chips for use on those maneuver drives and guidance systems. One of Bland's first questions after deciding the scrub the target and dispatching bombardment ships to the asteroid belt is how many computer chips are on hand. He's assured that there's enough on hand and that the amount was inventoried recently.

The makers on the vessels involved either can't make chips, can't make enough chips fast enough, or, perhaps more plausibly, can't make chips without certain materials being available. Whatever the reason, those 3I warships find it necessary carry a stock of computer chips despite having what many want to believe is "replicator" or "Santa Claus" machine.

As you wisely note, makers are not replicators or any other kind of "Santa Claus" machine.

Makers make. They build and assemble. They do not transmute They need specific feed stocks and parts. You're not going to shovel manure into one and get a FGMP-15.

Makers may also make some of the feed stocks and parts they require for other assemblies. I've posited in other threads that makers may be used to "feed" other makers in order to speed assembly times.

The need for specialized feedstocks, plus proper maintenance, repairs, and operation, means Fred and Barney on Bedrock-III aren't going to be building jumps drives with nothing more than a maker, the right program, and a heap of sand.

 

[Enoki]

I'd assume they have a lower limit to how precise and small a part they can make. Electronic components might, in many cases, simply be too small for the equipment carried to make. Or, the process involves steps that something like a 3D printer can't replicate. I'd also think there's an upper limit to how big a part they can manage.

 

[sfchbryan]

I tie 3d printing to energy requirements - If you need a TL15 part, you need a TL15 power source to make it. That makes a convenient check on scarcity. This is where the IDP comes into play.

When you need a part, you still need the raw materials.

In the example of my Zhodani ship earlier - If the ship needs a new electromagnetic stratocaster for the maneuver drive, the following is needed:

1. An equivalent of an IDP for the component (This is why the success level is 1 higher than what I use for Imperial equipment made in the Imperium - the information was machine translated into Galactic then the translated information was dumped into an IDP software template).

2. The raw materials needed to manufacture the part (this also ties into J-I-T delivery).

3. Feed raw materials into 3d printer. After the part is extruded, ship to the crew that is doing the work.

The machine shop isn't stocking thousands of parts like an Auto-zone, it simply stocks raw materials for custom, semi-custom, and commodity parts manufacture.

 

[Whipsnade]

I tie 3d printing to energy requirements - If you need a TL15 part, you need a TL15 power source to make it. That makes a convenient check on scarcity.

Simplistic, but as "good n' quick" as any other way to keep a maker from being used as a Santa Claus machine.

IMTU, makers(1) are constrained by capacity, capabilities, and feedstocks.

• Capacity - A maker can only assemble items up to a certain volume. A volume, I should add, which is usually smaller than the volume of the maker itself.
• Capabilities - Much more than simply programming, capabilities also refers to what physical actions and techniques a maker can perform. A TL10 maker, for example, may be physically unable to perform certain TL15 actions and techniques because it was not designed with those techniques in mind. Indeed, those TL15 techniques most likely didn't yet exist when the TL10 maker was designed.
• - Feedstocks - I use the term "feedstocks" rather than "raw materials" because the latter gives the impression of unprocessed, unrefined, unpurified, undistilled, etc. materials while the former does not. You don't shovel sand into a maker and get a cellphone. Instead, a maker requires specific feedstocks to assemble specific items.

As with many things in Traveller, the more your players want to use a device as a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card the more you must define it's operation. Ditto gravitics, jump drives, etc.

If players use a device in the spirit it was intended, there rarely are problems. It's only when one of them says "Lathanum coils? No problem. Just toss enough rutabagas into the maker and we'll have them in no time" that you need to start crafting "technobabble" explanations.


1 - I use the term "maker" rather than 3D printing or even additive machining because maker encompasses both while also suggesting additional processes. 3D printing itself is actually a subset of additive machining and thus not the best label for what a maker does. Maker > Additive machining > 3D printing.

 

[kilemall]

Example from Star Trek, the replicator economy cannot make certain items, or cannot perfectly duplicate natural foods/wines, or make dilithium crystals which is why its really a dilithium-driven economy for both manufacturing and transportation.

And why fights often revolve around planets with the stuff.