Brain uploading

[ottarrus]

@Vormaerin I've always advocated a range of TLs over several technologies. I strongly feel that every society has aspects of civilization [and technology] that are more or less important to them and they focus their energies accordingly. Jewell has a more militaristic society than Mora does, so they're gonna be more advanced in certain aspects of military technology. More than that, they also field more active duty troops. Their militarism takes up time, effort and resources that another society might put into culture and entertainment or whatever.

But there does seem to be a presumption among a lot of Traveller players that just because TL 15 sent a colony expedition out means that the colony instantly be a TL 15 world. A lot of folks forget that the initial work on a colony begins plain old TL 3 axes, hammers and shovels and that first several growing seasons will have crops planted by hand.
And there's something else that should be mentioned: the people who choose to be colonists on a new world are different those who stayed back home. These people want something else out of life than punching a time card a the Naasirka factory. There are things about the home world's society that are deeply unsatisfying to them. So they sell everything and climb into a freezer tube in the hope that they'll wake to a life they feel will be better. The people who are content with 'that's just how things are' are NOT the ones getting involved in colonization efforts.
Both of the factors contribute to how far a colony advances along the tech chain, and just because you have the knowledge of how to build a semiconductor doesn't mean you have the capability to do so.

 

[OldGuy59]

IMTU:
I had an NPC that went to Delta Research, the manufacturers of LHeP(Or) computers and had them make one with his brain cells as the core. The Scout Pilot was Psionic, but died in close proximity to the 100dT Scout Ship.

The Imperial Scout Service reclaimed the ship, and issued it to a Traveller that rolled a Ship Benefit. Over the period of a lot of sessions, the Personality Interface became more and more "human" as the dead pilot's 'spirit' took over more and more of the systems. The NPC was Telepathic and Telekinetic, but it took a lot of time for either 'skill' to manifest with conscious control. The personality was the easier part to GM, and it was gradual.

So, that was my version of a Brain Upload, but not intentional, nor one a Traveller would likely attempt as a deliberate process.

 

[MasterGwydion]

@Vormaerin I've always advocated a range of TLs over several technologies. I strongly feel that every society has aspects of civilization [and technology] that are more or less important to them and they focus their energies accordingly. Jewell has a more militaristic society than Mora does, so they're gonna be more advanced in certain aspects of military technology. More than that, they also field more active duty troops. Their militarism takes up time, effort and resources that another society might put into culture and entertainment or whatever.

I very much agree with this. I actually like the idea of breaking the TLs out into like somewhere between 5 and 10 different areas of advancement, such as power generation, medical, etc... On a normal world, all of these numbers would be within 1 or 2 of each other, but there could be odd exceptions.

But there does seem to be a presumption among a lot of Traveller players that just because TL 15 sent a colony expedition out means that the colony instantly be a TL 15 world. A lot of folks forget that the initial work on a colony begins plain old TL 3 axes, hammers and shovels and that first several growing seasons will have crops planted by hand.

Here is where you lose Me. Why would people be going out with axes, hammers, and shovels? If I am from a TL-15 society, I am going out there with a 60,000dton Seed Factory set down by a dedicated colonization ship from a megacorp, that after it drops us off, will head back to be charted by some other group of colonists in this sector or one sector over. The mining bots mine. The refineries refine. The manufacturing plants manufacture. The biosphere provides food and good air. The colony grows. Anything else such as emergency shortfalls are handled by the workshops and the fabricators. 5,500 colonists to start. Or you could go 900 colonists plus 4,600 robots since a TL-15 Robotics Lab with it's fabricator is part of the seed factory.

And there's something else that should be mentioned: the people who choose to be colonists on a new world are different those who stayed back home. These people want something else out of life than punching a time card a the Naasirka factory. There are things about the home world's society that are deeply unsatisfying to them. So they sell everything and climb into a freezer tube in the hope that they'll wake to a life they feel will be better. The people who are content with 'that's just how things are' are NOT the ones getting involved in colonization efforts.

This is one type of colonist. Another type are employees that are colonizing a world because they are being paid to. There are as many reasons to be a colonist as there are types of people. Not all of them are disillusioned with their homeworld or might not even be living on their homeworld at the time and this was a good opportunity.

Both of the factors contribute to how far a colony advances along the tech chain, and just because you have the knowledge of how to build a semiconductor doesn't mean you have the capability to do so.

Unless they are basically deciding to be space amish or poor, colonists take what they need with them, including the tech to build semi-conductors. An Offworld Construction Master Robot can do this if you build it at TL-15 instead of TL-12 as it is in the book. Just need a few mining drones and a TL-15 Fabricator and you can produce up to TL-13 stuff in no time. With time, you can build TL-15 stuff at your factory. You can repair your stuff at your TL-15 workbench with attached fabricator for making spare parts. etc...

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Morgoth99]

And even if your disillusioned--let's face it to your average inhabitant of a TL15 world? TL10 is roughing it. It is going back to the simple. Going back to TL5-6 would be like me saying: "I wanna build a new house in the old way... how did the Sumerians do it?"

 

[Sigtrygg]

Why would you abandon the ships that have brought you to the world you are colonising?

They have machine shops, makers, fusion power plants, water recycling systems...

I refer you back to CT:

The Forboldn Project is the primary colonization project within the Regina subsector. Originally conceived in 987 to utilize the resources of Forboldn (0208), the project began its execution phase in 1089, shortly after the Fourth Frontier War. Large numbers of colonists were recruited and shipped in cold sleep from the Imperial core, with arrival times set from 1110 to 1120. Simultaneously, preparations on Forboldn began, with detailed planetary surveys to pinpoint resources and initial building projects to prepare industry and quarters for the arrival of colonists.
World 728-907, recently surveyed, is a large inhabitable world with no evidence of higher animal life although extensive forestation and insect presence have been noted. The Ministry of Colonisation has designated the world for seeding within the next century, with a view to colonisation upon availability of personnel and funds.

Egypt has been selected for a Ministry of Colonization training base

Nexine is an underpopulated water world currently being used by the Ministry of Conservation for reseeding efforts using biologically altered humans

 

[Condottiere]

I'm quite sure a number of stories have the colony ships optimized to be cannibalized for dirtside installations.

 

[Vormaerin]

@Vormaerin I've always advocated a range of TLs over several technologies. I strongly feel that every society has aspects of civilization [and technology] that are more or less important to them and they focus their energies accordingly. Jewell has a more militaristic society than Mora does, so they're gonna be more advanced in certain aspects of military technology. More than that, they also field more active duty troops. Their militarism takes up time, effort and resources that another society might put into culture and entertainment or whatever.

But there does seem to be a presumption among a lot of Traveller players that just because TL 15 sent a colony expedition out means that the colony instantly be a TL 15 world. A lot of folks forget that the initial work on a colony begins plain old TL 3 axes, hammers and shovels and that first several growing seasons will have crops planted by hand.
And there's something else that should be mentioned: the people who choose to be colonists on a new world are different those who stayed back home. These people want something else out of life than punching a time card a the Naasirka factory. There are things about the home world's society that are deeply unsatisfying to them. So they sell everything and climb into a freezer tube in the hope that they'll wake to a life they feel will be better. The people who are content with 'that's just how things are' are NOT the ones getting involved in colonization efforts.
Both of the factors contribute to how far a colony advances along the tech chain, and just because you have the knowledge of how to build a semiconductor doesn't mean you have the capability to do so.

Okay. But I didn't make either of those assertions.

 

[ottarrus]

Okay. But I didn't make either of those assertions.

Never said you, Vor.
But other folks have made those assertions. It was a more generalized addressing of an argument that I find flawed.

 

[ottarrus]

When I use the word 'colonist' I'm referring to those folks who leave the safe comfort of TL 15 living and literally hack a new home out of the wilderness. Somebody who signs a contract to work 'x' years on a colony project and then go back home isn't a colonist because they're not building a 'home'. They're working at a job site, nothing more. They get up, go to work at the facility or site, sock away their pay and dream of 'getting back to civilization'. They're no more a 'colonist' than somebody working at a Point Barrow, Alaska. Their entire involvement is temporary. A real colonist is a permanent resident. A colonist is someone who intends to live the rest of their life on the colony world, raise their kids there, and build a society.

And why are we assuming that the colonists are going to be supplied with very expensive robotics, industrial fabricators, and so on? Just how many sci-fi stories have we read where a colony is set up with less-than-optimum equipment because of budget cuts [btw, that usually means 'graft' to me... some higher-up decided those colonists didn't need top of the line gear more than he needed a new grav speeder]? Every colony has a different reason for its establishment. Some are for resource extraction and 'the company' expects a return on its investment starting yesterday. The company doesn't give a flying fig about setting up schools; they want the colonists to start mining ore, growing luxury foods, harvesting timber immediately. Some colonies are made up of dissidents. Most often those folks get garbage equipment out of sheer spite. There are many more reasons... yes, including the well-researched, well-funded, and well-administered effort. But I tend to see that last one as a unicorn farting fairy dust rare.

I am NOT saying that colonies are routinely sent out as half-assed attempts at population reduction. But I AM saying that it'd be the rare colony that had a herd of FarmBot 5000s to automate food production. The OTU isn't Star Trek, where a colony is given a bunch of 'replicators' that never break down and can feed the whole colony on nothing more than dirt and water as feed stock.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[MasterGwydion]

When I use the word 'colonist' I'm referring to those folks who leave the safe comfort of TL 15 living and literally hack a new home out of the wilderness. Somebody who signs a contract to work 'x' years on a colony project and then go back home isn't a colonist because they're not building a 'home'. They're working at a job site, nothing more. They get up, go to work at the facility or site, sock away their pay and dream of 'getting back to civilization'. They're no more a 'colonist' than somebody working at a Point Barrow, Alaska. Their entire involvement is temporary. A real colonist is a permanent resident. A colonist is someone who intends to live the rest of their life on the colony world, raise their kids there, and build a society.

I use the word "colonist" to describe a person building a colony. I place no more meaning on it than that. Temporary or permanent, that person is building the colony. Heck, at some point, even the colonists aren't colonists anymore. Once the world stops being a colony, the colonists become just citizens and no longer colonists.

And why are we assuming that the colonists are going to be supplied with very expensive robotics, industrial fabricators, and so on? Just how many sci-fi stories have we read where a colony is set up with less-than-optimum equipment because of budget cuts [btw, that usually means 'graft' to me... some higher-up decided those colonists didn't need top of the line gear more than he needed a new grav speeder]? Every colony has a different reason for its establishment. Some are for resource extraction and 'the company' expects a return on its investment starting yesterday. The company doesn't give a flying fig about setting up schools; they want the colonists to start mining ore, growing luxury foods, harvesting timber immediately. Some colonies are made up of dissidents. Most often those folks get garbage equipment out of sheer spite. There are many more reasons... yes, including the well-researched, well-funded, and well-administered effort. But I tend to see that last one as a unicorn farting fairy dust rare.

If colonies do not have the benefits of their high-tech "mother world", then colonizing isn't expensive. It is cheap. Basically, pay the price for transport as popsicles, pay the equivalent of 1-ton of workshop per colonist, pay for the transport of that 1-ton per colonist. It gets more expensive if you want to buy a ship instead of just chartering one to drop the colonists off though.

I am NOT saying that colonies are routinely sent out as half-assed attempts at population reduction. But I AM saying that it'd be the rare colony that had a herd of FarmBot 5000s to automate food production. The OTU isn't Star Trek, where a colony is given a bunch of 'replicators' that never break down and can feed the whole colony on nothing more than dirt and water as feed stock.

I think that it would be rare for an advanced civilization to not send out FarmBot 5000s to automate food production. They are more efficient and more skilled than the average colonist. That way your colonists stand a better chance of not dying of starvation. Heck, it could be a mining colony and have top-of-the-line mining robots too. The reason for founding the colony and the resources available to found the colony are what will determine how a colony looks and functions.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The CT quotes show you how the Imperium sets up a new colony world.

Identify a suitable world, prepare it for the colonisation to come.

Spend 20 years building the infrastructure for the first wave of colonists - homes, schools, hospitals, industry.

Send in colonists over a ten year period.

I don't think the TL15 Ministry of Colonisation drops colonists off naked and afraid, not when they go to the trouble of bioengineering humans to adapt.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The CT quotes show you how the Imperium sets up a new colony world.

Identify a suitable world, prepare it for the colonisation to come.

Spend 20 years building the infrastructure for the first wave of colonists - homes, schools, hospitals, industry.

Send in colonists over a ten year period.

Does this work still given the mechanics that have been changed since CT originally envisioned stuff like colonization?

I don't think the TL15 Ministry of Colonisation drops colonists off naked and afraid, not when they go to the trouble of bioengineering humans to adapt.

I always figured that if they went through the trouble of bioengineering then they would have no issue dropping off a fully functional seed factory. Bioengineering is expensive as well, yes? If it is cheap and easy, then I may need to revise My thoughts on colonization.

 

[Vormaerin]

Never said you, Vor.
But other folks have made those assertions. It was a more generalized addressing of an argument that I find flawed.

Well, you quoted me twice. I apologize if I misunderstood your intent and it wasn't meant as a rebuttal of my post.

I agree that not all colonies are going to be well financed and go smoothly. That's a totally different topic, though. I was talking about technological development on a world and how it would be different because it was a colony not an indigenous development from scratch. No one in this thread was saying that a TL 15 world's colonies would be TL 15. Just that they wouldn't look like worlds that had no idea what TL 15 was or how it worked even if they themselves are overall lower tech.

As far as how colonists go, we only have real life to go by, such as the English colonies in North America and Australia. Those were generally not very well equipped or government financed. They were predominantly economic migrants, folks going somewhere because they felt they could become landowners, business owners, or high paid specialists that they couldn't do at home. Or they were political migrants: leaving because they had a different religion or political persuasion from those at home. In some cases, it was "go to the colonies or go to prison". It was pretty rare, but not unheard of, for people to go because they wanted to go low tech. Some colonies failed and either everyone died or they returned home/joined other colonies.

Sci if colony stories tend to assume that the colony is going way out in the middle of nowhere where it is difficult or impossible to keep contact with home. For example, Earth 2 they were decades from Earth. And there are colonies that started like that in Charted Space. The Islands were sublight colony arks that had no contact with anyone for centuries after they arrived. But a lot of space colonies were the next planet over, which is closer time wise than England was to North America.

Very few worlds in Charted Space are actually still colonies controlled by another planet (government 6) or corporation (gov 1, iirc). Their effective TL is almost certainly determined by local resources rather than lack of knowledge unless they are isolated worlds out in the fringe somewhere or interdicted worlds. If they are using miniphants instead of trucks, it's because that makes economic or political sense to them.

 

[Geir]

I'm gonna be honest, while I like the tech for a lot of games, the addition of fabricators and such to traveller really hammers some of the underpinning assumptions of the setting, given their relative lack of expense (at least in governmental terms).
A Tl13 fabricator is: Cr50000 per litre, and can either produce entire Tl11 and below items, OR produce components for higher tech level items, although you may need a different factory for that. It's one explicitly called out thing it can't do is make superdense alloys which require industrial processes.

Okay, 1 litre is Cr50000. Expensive, yes. Or is it... 100 litres are 5MCR, for something that can build any tool you need from TL11 down, or components for a larger unit. An external fabricator takes more time and at TL13 you'd only be able to make TL10 materials, but it's cheaper.

Now yes, something could happen to your fabricator, but... yeah, themore that happens, the more it sounds like: "Star trek transporters, which work up until you need them." Most colonists from even a relatively advanced world, unless they're castaways or people with just the clothes on their back should be able to get themselves set up without a lot of problem.

Honestly, I think this i the issue of thigns changing in the real world--when Taveller was first printed, and it's underlying assumptions were put down, things like 3d printing/nanotech/fabrication systems were actually fairly rare even in Sci-fi. The underlying assumption was if you wanted to build stuff, you needed a big honking factory with thousands of people, which explained a lot of setting issues. Now? It's harder.

I wouldn't worry too much... I did (better, certainly still not perfect) math for the manufacturing stuff I'm writing for the Vehicle Handbook, and even at TL15 fabricators end up being niche and nanocontructors even more so, because they are too expensive at scale. Good for prototyping and wilderness manufacturing, but the good old fashioned assembly line is still looking like the best method of mass production (even if it is actually a line of robots using mini fabs to do half their jobs) until TL17. After that point, it does become more like *poof*, *dust clears*, here's your car - but of course by then you need to makes sure your nanovirus protection is up to date on your fabs because a TL18 botnet takes on a whole new meaning...

 

[Terry Mixon]

I wouldn't worry too much... I did (better, certainly still not perfect) math for the manufacturing stuff I'm writing for the Vehicle Handbook, and even at TL15 fabricators end up being niche and nanocontructors even more so, because they are too expensive at scale. Good for prototyping and wilderness manufacturing, but the good old fashioned assembly line is still looking like the best method of mass production (even if it is actually a line of robots using mini fabs to do half their jobs) until TL17. After that point, it does become more like *poof*, *dust clears*, here's your car - but of course by then you need to makes sure your nanovirus protection is up to date on your fabs because a TL18 botnet takes on a whole new meaning...

I am going to town with the TL-17 deconstruction/fabricator my robotics genius NPC from Vincennes created in my backdoored Ancients campaign. Poof, indeed. He’s eyeing one big enough to do small jump ships next.

 

[Arkathan]

I kinda suspect lowest common denominator.

What's the lowest possible technological level that a society will feel comfortable in.

TL 1, providing that they know no better.
People get used to whatever conditions they grow up in.

 

[Condottiere]

If we disregard hygiene and medical care, I think technological level eight, with unlimited energy.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Canonically the Imperium was using makers in the 400s and would gift makers and fusion+ to distant worlds to foster good relations in the future.