Topics Enjoying 30 Years of Discussion

[robject]

Here's how I was forced to come to this conclusion.

GIVEN: the Imperium TL timeline is accurate
GIVEN: the Imperium TL takes the High Guard TL charts into account.

High Guard was designed to let the Third Imperium fight the Fifth Frontier War. The 3I's history was fleshed out to track expansion with technological improvements... roughly.

So 3I gets a vote, and HG2 gets a vote, and both crowd out Book 2. Their TL is canonical, especially for the OTU.

Page 22 is an exception, an allowance. Interestingly, it is exactly what the Xboat design needs to be a "TL 10 design". So Book 2 is not invalidated, even though it does not represent the technological timeline. Thus components fabricated at lower TLs.

***

Loren's Rules apply. If you construct a CT Book 2 ATU, the TL tables change and you get Jump 4 at TL 10.


I'm not sure what other implications come out of this. A Book 2 Imperium can be constructed. It'll look a little different, but it's still Traveller.

***



As Loren said, the referee can change almost anything... except the speed of communication.

 

[aramis]

Ah, I see where you're going with that.

You have to make the breakthrough at high tech levels in order to enable the performance to be backported into lower tech level standard drive systems. Jump-4 needs to be "discovered" at TL=13 before previous tech levels can become "capable" of that performance output as a matter of engineering/control. So the LBB5.80 limits on jump per TL are still true, and once those breakthroughs are understood then lower tech level standard drives are capable of reaching up to that (new) performance limit.

So a TL=10 Jump-F drive is capable of up to Jump-6 performance in a 200 ton hull, but only after that Jump-6 performance is "unlocked" by a TL=15 advancement. If a society has only reached a maximum TL=13 then that same Jump-F drive in a 200 ton hull would be limited to only Jump-4 because the "fundamentals" of Jump-5 and 6 have not been "unlocked" yet by TL=14-15 advancements.

That's a reasonably clever bit of workaround that does not invalidate anything especially hard. It simply means that until the jump and maneuver drive numbers are "unlocked" as per the LBB5.80 table on tech levels, the standard drives are limited to those performance maximums. But then once those "unlocks" are achieved by the society and/or by technology transfer (knowledge has a way of crossing borders) then "older" standard drives can be "retuned" to deliver uprated performance courtesy of developments made elsewhere in custom (meaning prototype) starship designs that can then be rolled out more widely to the entire fleet inventory.



I approve.

It actually invalidates a few 3rd party items from the early years... Not that those are canon.
It also is incompatible with many genuine Bk1-3 PTU s...
It's also worth noting that a model 2 can, under Bk2-77, run all the needed software for J4. (Also, Bk2-77 doesn't list the TL for computers nor drives - those are in Bk3 in both 3-77 and 3-81).
3 active + 6 storage
2 units Jump 4
1 unit generate
1 unit navigate
1 unit maneuver

That said, it is the approach Marc has taken in T5, so...

 

[Grav_Moped]

That said, it is the approach Marc has taken in T5, so...

I'm personally inclined to accept T5 as the errata/expansion of LBBs if you're looking for definitive answers.

On the other hand, in practice I'm using it as an optional supplement rather than the definitive rules.

 

[Bartleby]

Back in the late 90s, the piracy debate seemed to come up every month on the TML. It never seemed to flare up here like it did back then.

 

[Spinward Flow]

 

[robject]

Yep, and piracy has a couple of threads here, but that was maybe 10 or 15 years ago... We haven't had a good pirate debate lately.

I think the issues were discussed thoroughly on the TML in the 90s by those who care, and a neutral zone was established.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The bit pitfall (or should it be pratfall?) with the Piracy Debate™ is the notion that just because it can't (or at least, shouldn't) happen HERE means it won't happen ANYWHERE.

Kind of the same fallacy as thinking "I've got a sandwich, so why would anyone in the world go hungry?"



(Successful) piracy operates in an economic niche and is something that only amateurs attempt to do spontaneously without a Plan Of Action. Pirates who want to "stay in business" beyond their first prize taking are going to need to have a way to liquidate the bounty they have seized, which usually means grey (if not black) market contacts and fences for stolen goods.

After that, it's all Measure vs Counter-measure and staying one step ahead of The Law (or The Navy, as the case may be) in an interstellar game of cat and mouse.



Think of it as being akin to speculative trading for merchants.
A lot of merchants go bankrupt on speculation ... while a few get rich.
Piracy is just "speculative goods" trading by means of "hostile takeovers" in order to make someone else pay the purchase price(s) for you on the goods you're ultimately going to be wanting to sell (hopefully for a profit).

And most importantly ... no pirate is ever going to want to deliberately choose to engage in a "fair fight" with anyone.
Piracy is essentially "gambling" (of a sort) ... an no serious professional gambler wants to play a game where they don't know the odds, let alone one where they know the odds are no better than 50/50.
Professional pirates will do everything they can to "stack the deck" in their favor such that they are very unlikely to lose.
Win or draw is fine ... losing is not ... and "fair fights" present an unreasonably high chance of losing the engagement, so avoid them in favor of "unfair fights" (the more "unfair" in the pirate's favor, the better!).

 

[Condottiere]

Guerilla marketing and hostile take over.

 

[robject]

The bit pitfall (or should it be pratfall?) with the Piracy Debate™ is the notion that just because it can't (or at least, shouldn't) happen HERE means it won't happen ANYWHERE.
[...]
Piracy is just "speculative goods" trading by means of "hostile takeovers" in order to make someone else pay the purchase price(s) for you on the goods you're ultimately going to be wanting to sell (hopefully for a profit).
[...]
And most importantly ... no pirate is ever going to want to deliberately choose to engage in a "fair fight" with anyone.
[...]
Piracy is essentially "gambling" (of a sort) ... an no serious professional gambler wants to play a game where they don't know the odds, let alone one where they know the odds are no better than 50/50.

All good points. I like the "hostile takeover" angle. But I don't think any of this is surprising.

I'll hunt down one of the piracy threads and resurrect it.

 

[whartung]

Yep, and piracy has a couple of threads here, but that was maybe 10 or 15 years ago... We haven't had a good pirate debate lately.

Good heavens.

I'm sorry, robject, do you have me blocked?

We talked about this a few weeks ago. Talking about viability, expense of being a pirate, expense of being a trader and subject to pirates, pirate scavenging ship parts for phat cash.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Mind like a steel seive that one ...

 

[boomslang]

THEREFORE, it seems, somehow, that working J4 drives can be manufactured at TL 10, within "TL 13 space".

Noting that CT B2 proceeds CT HG2 (which may be viewed as an expansion of the BT rules rather than a complete replacement thereof), and that B3 addresses drive (and computer) availability as a function of TL, I have always played it that the TL limits on drive performance under High Guard only constrain drives produced under High Guard.

IMTU, drives from Book 2 will perform as indicated on the relevant B2 tables (allowing Jump-4 at TL10 and Jump-5 at TL11, for example, in a few hull sizes and limited primarily by available computer Models), but if you want to custom-build a drive for a larger hull size or a special application, you will need to wait for the prerequisite HG2 TL to come around.

This also accommodates the Xboat network, which, other major tech issues aside, then does not require Way Stations to be built at only TL13+ worlds, and thus avoids introducing more inconsistencies in the canon (such as it is). While it is true as far as it goes that a TL9 starport can perform annual maintenance on a TL15 starship, looking at HG and TCS tells us that repairing drives probably ought to require the local TL meet or exceed the drive's TL -- otherwise, the parts will have to be shipped in. This is then backwards-compatible with the idea that most any Type A or B startport at TL9+ can repair a Jump Drive Model B (and a Type A can build one from scratch); all your IN Naval Depots are going to be TL15 of necessity, and I am comfortable with that consequence.