aspqrz said:
With the greatest respect possible, you're completely, totally, absolutely, 100% ... incorrect.
Firstly, SMGs, come into use with the Villar Perosa, 1915. Note that this is TL4, "Roughly comparable to the late 19th/early 20th century" according to MongTrav, page #5.
Secondly, the Automatic Rifle, either the BAR or Huot (Canadian) appear in 1917. Note, this is stillTL4, "Roughly comparable to the late 19th/early 20th century" according to MongTrav, page #5.
The source of our argument is probably the different interpretations of TLs in different versions of Traveller - MGT seems to "expand TL4" a little and "shrink" TL6 a bit. The pre-MGT Traveller convention seemed to be that TL4 was pre-WWI, TL5 was WWI and the inter-war period, TL6 was WWII and the very early Cold War, and TL7 was the 1960's/1970's and on. T4/Marc Miller's traveller (p.134) even gave dates for TLs up to TL9 (which is probably one of the source of the confusion between "Tech Level" and "Earth Historical Date"), with TL4 being roughly 1860 to 1900, TL5 being roughly 1900 to 1940, and TL6 being roughly 1940 to 1970. Now, that table was BROKEN, with TL8 being 1980-1990 and TL9 being 1990-2000 (WHERE ARE MY JUMP-DRIVE, FUSION REACTOR AND LASER-RIFLE!?), but up to TL7 these were more or less the Traveller conventions. Now, MGT has TL4 as "late 19th century to early 20th century" (rather than the late-19th-century convention in previous editions), and TL5 up to the early atomic age (rather than ending a bit before that); TL6 is a bit shortened as it covers very early spaceflight and early atomic power, but communication satellites - a relatively early achievement of the space-age - are already TL7.
aspqrz said:
This is one of the key problems with people and Traveller TLs. Many people fall into the same "trap" you have, equating "year of production" with "technical capability to do it."
The rules themselves, as well as some descriptions, in previous Traveller editions have fallen to this "trap" as well. Tech levels are abstractions. They are also
problematic abstractions, especially when dealing with technology we already have, as they
DO seem to reflect historical progress rather than technological capabilities. Also, it is unclear what TL represents - does it cover local production capability (as IMHO it should), locally-common technology, or what is available at all locally.
One of the reasons for this is that they were developed before the OTU actually took shape. Traveller was initially supposed to be sort of "Age of Sail in Space" and thus have far less shipping volume and far more expensive shipping than in our modern world; eventually it's setting grew into a huge, millennium-old, stable Imperium with massive cheap megacorporate shipping. So that TL1 world which should have had mostly medieval technology now should have access to large amounts of higher-tech imports at comparatively low prices (unless it's interdicted, that is, and most worlds won't be). So low-tech worlds have changed from age of sail "islands with 'primitive' natives" to a more-or-less modern "third world nations". The problem is that many Traveller materials ignore the economic implications of the stable, old, high-shipping-volume Imperium and still treat low-tech worlds as if they were more or less isolated.
