Recent content by phavoc

I wouldn't agree with your description of the US education system. There is no question that it's fractured, but it still leads the world in most areas. You have to look beyond the simple numbers. The US doesn't do the most lines of code, Japan does (or did). But the languages are created...

Thats a great point. You may all the knowledge of the gods, but if your education system is rote-based, you'll have scads of engineers who can't bridge two points because that's not how things work. Or manufacturing that MUST follow the patter from A...Z with no jumps or breaks. It all works...

What we've seen on our planet is nations bypassing certain stages and moving directly towards endstages, like in cellular communications bypassing entire POTS networks. The necessary infrastructure to fully maintain advanced gear requires an industrial base, but one can easily move to the...

I completely agree. TL is a bit of a misnomer as Mr. Z from a TL-3 world can return from his trip to Capital and have a device that has technical information on pretty much every TL-15 technology and device that is known to man. That's not saying much as his TL-3 world can't do a lot with it...

Lotsa stuff to unpack in the thread. But let's start with the first question: Should components and equipment get lighter, cost less, or add capabilities. Not just vacc suits as an example, but all technology? In some cases, yes. But I don't think it's necessarily a universalism. Some...

They CAN be destroyed, though it's not a guarantee that they are. Master Gwydion posted the latest rules on them (which vary from original CT somewhat).

Yeah, possible. Though the issue with that line of thought would be that (for MGT at least) the jump fuel is rapidly converted to exotic particles that fill up the area around the ship in a sphere. Though, now that I type this, I could see that if you ran pipes from the jump drive that's...

Something to consider is at the lower TL's your crews are considered elite's for the time period due to the very high cost of space travel. People of that type are willing to put up with things the average person will not. That certainly helps on the cramped size (and zero-G sleep needs is...

Oh, no assumption intended, I was just pointing out that bit of trivia. I don't know enough of the other empires during that period and how fast (of if) they needed to rebuild their navies. I know Salamis and Actium were big battles, just don't know what they did to build up to that (or...

An easy side-step to this is to increase the bubble radius so that it could be centered on the jump drive and encompass the entire ship. This would, of course, require either some repositioning of some ships jump drives if they are overly long, or else handwavium. I personally prefer less...

I think the question remains up in the air - will AI put real artists out of business? Probably not because it is derivative art rather than original. At some point it will fall back in on itself to reference itself and become even schlockier. Will it have a short-term impact as companies...

That brings up a bit of a conundrum. IF your external containers include grav plating and life support (even limited) then your costs and complexity go up. Containers benefit from standardization, so one would assume then that all space-rated containers would have life support and grav plating...

After getting their butts kicked in the first war with Carthage, Rome did indeed find a damaged Carthaginian ship and rebuilt their new navy (only about 120 ships) using it as a template. Carthage was a much stronger sea power at the time than Rome was. It was easy to build ships like this...

Well, to be fair, if you are towing anything through space and expect the contents to not be affected by radiation, vacuum, temperature and meteorite strikes then you have to assume it needs to be the same magical hull material that spaceships and starships are constructed of. That means the...

Now it's easy to justify putting you on ignore. Ciao!