Ship's TL, Fixed or Fluid

[CordwainerFish]

There's even a quirk for used ship where the computer is upgraded, so it's probably fine to do. Could be they just ignore the old wiring and connectors and plug in new stuff.

How crazy would it be to use the old cabling to pull new cabling through the runs?
(I mean, it would be cheaper than training the squirrel.)

 

[Condottiere]

Wifi.

 

[Saladman]

1) High Guard 2022 Update page 8 states:

Before you start building your ship, decide on the Tech Level of the shipyard that will construct it. This is the maximum Tech Level available for any given component you add and also serves as the overall Tech Level of the ship itself.

Situation: The Travellers commissioned a ship to be built at a shipyard on Lunion (TL13).

2) Prior to construction, the Travellers decided that want to reduce the size of the J-Drive to make more space. The Travellers successfully convince the shipyard to install the a new advanced smaller size J-Drive.

High Guard 2022 Update page 70-71 states:

Prototype/Advanced Table: Advanced result is TL+1, size -10%, cost +10%.

With the addition of the smaller J-Drive, the Travellers' ship is now TL14.

3) Months later, the Travellers want to refit their current Computer/25 (TL13), which is max'ed out, with a Computer/35 (TL15). They find a TL15 shipyard to do it.

Now what is the TL of the ship?

a) Fixed: TL14 as it came out of the shipyard; or
b) Fluid: TL15 after refitting the new Computer/35?

c) Fixed: TL 13, the maximum possible at the TL 13 Lunion shipyard.

In other words I'm taking page 8 as controlling, for overall tech level of the ship. Then I am contradicting the later language, but the later language contradicts page 8, so some judgement must be made. I see how people get to the exact opposite position, but I blame it on the later language being hot garbage.

2) Prior to construction, the Travellers decided that want to reduce the size of the J-Drive to make more space. The Travellers successfully convince the shipyard to install the a new advanced smaller size J-Drive.

High Guard 2022 Update page 70-71 states:

Prototype/Advanced Table: Advanced result is TL+1, size -10%, cost +10%.

With the addition of the smaller J-Drive, the Travellers' ship is now TL14.

What they actually need to do at a TL 13 shipyard is install a prototype TL 14 jump drive, paying the extra cost and disadvantage to gain the reduced space in their TL 13 ship.

Problem for my interpretation is the table doesn't plainly support that reduced space. You have to make a judgement call to give the players what they're specifically after out of the higher TL component. But it makes sense of the system as a whole for me, and brings the table back in line with page 8, instead of retaining the contradiction in the rules.

 

[Talon Greyfeather]

Regarding skills and modifiers ... if you were doing in right, wouldn't the TL penalty go up and down? After all, you aren't necessarily trained on the old way with the old moving parts (punch card programming anyone?). Would you even know what you were looking at?

At some point there has to be some hand-wavium here to make the game playable. We're assuming all TL-X components are created equal. There're likely racial and even planetary modifiers to consider too (electricity in Europe vs US for example) especially at lower TLs.

Unless it plays a part in the story, is it worth having the die-roll let alone the modifiers?

 

[Geir]

Wifi.

Probably not.
I remember they where still doing coax ethernet on US Navy ships when the rest of use where running Cat 5 - too much metal and interference. As I said earlier, not only is that a potential issue (it's the um, j-drive coils and the fusion reactors, or the, um... gravtronomics or something.. Oh wait! Cosmic Rays!), but then there's the reach of the network:

Wouldn't want anyone hacking into the ship from outside. I work for a power utility and we don't allow wifi on the operational network at all and for that matter I'll be long dead before the regulators ever allow cloud for that control stuff - there's still working on an official virtualization stance eight years later (and eight years after we did it anyway, but on isolated systems - long pointless story, so never mind. Passed the audits.)

In any case, maybe the SOM will come out and explain how stuff works.

 

[Condottiere]

A sound-powered telephone is a communication device that allows users to talk to each other with the use of a handset, similar to a conventional telephone, but without the use of external power. This technology has been used since at least 1944[1] for both routine and emergency communication on ships to allow communication between key locations on a vessel if power is unavailable.[2] A sound-powered phone circuit can have two or more stations on the same circuit. The circuit is always live, thus a user begins speaking rather than dialing another station. Sound-powered telephones are not normally connected to a telephone exchange.

 

[Micky]

There's even a quirk for used ship where the computer is upgraded, so it's probably fine to do. Could be they just ignore the old wiring and connectors and plug in new stuff.

I wouldn't see why not... what is the real difference in those tech level computers. The computing speed of the main CPU unit and resulting increased tasks/bandwidth that come with it. Do note that higher level interfaces are not required, still can use TL7 to operate TL15 .. so more advanced interfaces were not required to use with more advanced computers. I suppose one could say and do what they wanted with it but there is that cost to remove the old one... wouldn't cost nothing taking less time than to smoke a cigarette to just unplug the old one and swap it out so perhaps any rewiring is assumed in the costs .. the cost of removing the old and the increased costs of a refitted computer over the same unit installed when the ship was built.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[IanBruntlett]

Consider the Travellers being "gifted" a defunct starship. You might want to consider a parallel with computers today.

I was given a broken Dell Optiplex 755 Desktop PC with a broken hard drive. Because it had been optimised for screwdriver-less maintenance, no-one could work out how to replace the drive - so the Dell was donated to the Computer Wombling Project. After much research, I found a YouTube video (

) which told me to remove the drive caddy (not sure this is the right term for the horrendous plastic contraption involved) mechanism and then twist the caddy while pressing down on two plastic levers to release the hard drive.

So, differing shipyards might do things so strangely that there is a penalty for getting maintenance done by foreign shipyards and a bonus for getting maintenance done by the originating group of shipyards. In fact things might be so strange, the Travellers have to go on quests to find out how to do the maintenance.

Or consider that some systems (for example Lenovo ThinkPads) are well supported with hardware manuals (PDFs) and built to be upgradeable and/or repairable. Travellers might go for a second hand starship and start replacing or customising all sorts of things.

 

[AndrewW]

Or perhaps c

So, differing shipyards might do things so strangely that there is a penalty for getting maintenance done by foreign shipyards and a bonus for getting maintenance done by the originating group of shipyards. In fact things might be so strange, the Travellers have to go on quests to find out how to do the maintenance.

Or consider that some systems (for example Lenovo ThinkPads) are well supported with hardware manuals (PDFs) and built to be upgradeable and/or repairable. Travellers might go for a second hand starship and start replacing or customising all sorts of things.

Or some not so nice. Worked on someone else Compaq computer once upon a time which used proprietary parts. Just needed to replace the power supply. It was actually cheaper to build up a whole new faster computer then get just the power supply.

 

[Condottiere]

Hewlett Packard soured me on that.

If the motherboard layout is more efficient, efficient for what?

Right to repair should make it easier to screw around with smartphones and laptops.

 

[AndrewW]

Hewlett Packard soured me on that.

Well, they did purchase Compaq.

 

[ottarrus]

Replying to the OP:

The way I do it IMTU is the the TL of the main primary engineering systems of the ship, specifically the power plant, J-Drive, M-Drive, and computer.
These are the core systems the ship is built around and provide most of the performance envelope of the ship. Even dreadnoughts, which have their spinal mounts laid with the keel of the ship, are designed around the questions, 'how far can it Jump', 'how fast can it go', and 'how much power do all systems require' and 'how much bandwidth do I need to run everything'. Everything else takes second place.
You can modify lots of things on a ship... most often sensors and weapons... but when you start mucking about with the core engineering is when you start spending the real credits.