TL-2 Internal Combustion Car (what am I missing?)

[Timerover51]

Yes, you could force reciprocating steam engines to higher outputs, but at the cost of increased wear on all of the moving parts, along with increased need for lubrication. And then you have the problem of supplying the needed steam for the increased output, and dealing with all of the heat generated by the boiler radiating it away. Steam power is not something easy to play with.

For naval vessels around 1900 or so, a full maximum power run with their engines could easily result in a major breakdown from forcing the planet to the limit. As for the boiler heat, boiler room could run as high as 140 degree Fahrenheit even with forced draft feeding air into the boilers. A steam boiler generates a LOT of heat.

 

[LeperColony]

Something's wrong. Even apart from the TL, a basic car (I'm thinking Toyota Carola) cannot fit 8 people.

By pure area, you could fit 8 people. Seats, safety features, etc are strictly speaking not necessary to a car.

It's like those signs they have in elevators, X pounds or Y people. They seem optimistic to me, but I suppose someone must have figured it out.

 

[Bromo33333]

Something's wrong. Even apart from the TL, a basic car (I'm thinking Toyota Carola) cannot fit 8 people. I could say that 1 ton is cargo, but I thought that was supposed to be taken care of by "load." Can we swap them around after the fact? If so, that could solve that issue.

There's a note in the rules about higher TL's improving quality, but wouldn't they also improve performance? Especially from TL 6 to TL 8 there's significant jumps in speeds without jumps in tonnage. Maybe for speed you chose to either bump the TL up, or bump the tonnage up?

Thoughts?

Internal combustion could have been fabricated 1750AD-1850AD as a one off inefficient unreliable large inefficient beasts, very slow, too, provided they knew what they were doing. The first IC engines appeared in the 1880's. That's TL3, not 2, though. I wonder if someone had plans if they could put together a IC based vehicle and run it in the 1500-1700's?

The first computers were made in the mid 19th century, (Late TL3, Early TL4) with Babbage and the analytical engine. It was a failure of funding, not technology in this case. That's 2-3 TL's early. But it utilized steam and mechanical, but the Analytical engine was a real simple computer.

I think given the game, Terra achieved TL12 before/during the Rule of Man, then fell back only re-achieving this on an imperial basis thousands of years later. And the tech level rose and fell ov er the fortunes of the universe through 1250IC.

SO for me, I can work with those rules (I don't view them as broken, as long as one uses common sense), because there are lots of older records of higher technology and lots of worked examples soa large body of knowledge to draw upon.

It would be if we had a technical library available to us from the year 3000AD, and all we needed to do was to look it up and try to fabricate.

But I would say that your IC based car would be a large vehicle much like a converted ground rolling steam car, with one or two large cylinders made to the right dimensions, can't run for long, can't run too hot, and uses a fuel that is hard to get and expensive. Probably runs slower than a train, but it is a little smaller.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Vehicle: Ground
Model.........LongName
FrewCar......Wheeled-Car-2

Vx: 2-6-0-Fossil-Enclosed-24hrs-50000

Passengers/Crew: 8 (10 if you use 5 per ton), 10,000Cr, 0 armour (I'm assuming you can't go below 0), FlashProof = 4, SoundProof = 4, Insulated = 6

Something's wrong.

Yes, something is wrong.

It's a Light vehicle, so you only get one operator and one passenger by default. With a Load of 0 you can't fit more people or cargo. Four (or five if military transport) people per tonne is if you dedicate Load to passengers.

PASSENGERS AND CREW
The number of persons a Vehicle can carry is determined by a variety of factors.
A Vlite can carry one operator.
A Lite can carry one operator and one passenger.

So it's something like a 3 tonne steam-powered car with only two seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_car#Early_history