How standardized is the tech in your setting?

[AndrewW]

Didn't they use special radiation hardened CPUs?

Radiation hardened CPU's are usually a few generations behind. Not sure if the shuttle used or not, there exposure is shorter then say a Voyager probe.

 

[Arkathan]

Didn't they use special radiation hardened CPUs?

The Shuttle operates in low earth orbit, well inside the earth's magnetic bubble. Beyond LEO, hardening is more critical. The shuttle used 8086 processors and NASA resorted to scavenging on Ebay to maintain a supply. Backups for backups appeared to be the solution to radiation damage, and we can extrapolate that the boards were swapped out each time, thus the need for a steady supply of the chips.

 

[AndrewW]

The Shuttle operates in low earth orbit, well inside the earth's magnetic bubble. Beyond LEO, hardening is more critical. The shuttle used 8086 processors and NASA resorted to scavenging on Ebay to maintain a supply. Backups for backups appeared to be the solution to radiation damage, and we can extrapolate that the boards were swapped out each time, thus the need for a steady supply of the chips.

Then there was the time the backup computer was shutting down the others, nothing wrong was found in those though, turns out the problem was in the backup computer.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I'm not sure how widespread standardization is, but my view of tech overall is that planets having a tech level of 8 or better, usually better, is more common than library data suggests.

 

[Condottiere]

Standardization could be within geographic boundaries, if the market area is profitable enough.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, but regression and then re contact is still a very different paradigm from everything invented from scratch multiple times in multiple eras and lots of legacy obsolescence involved in most things, like how Earth Tech developed.

 

[ottarrus]

During Cold War exercises tanks did use the Autobahn on occassion. This gets funny if they are KaJaPa or Jaguar tank hunters because those beasts are fast and the crews are certified crazy. The 70km/h are a "will go at least that fast" value not a top speed.

The Abrams was a revelation when it was introduced... even with the speed governor on the engine we could get that baby up to 45 mph /72 kph. And the speed governor was the first frikkin' thing we removed After we got rid of that, we could get it up to 60 mph /96 kph. Oh, we'd get in trouble if we did get it fast, but that didn't stop all of us from doing it at least once.
The real thing about the Abrams was that they were **quiet**. You ever see a tank sneak up on somebody? If we kept the speed down and the rpms low, we could sneak up on anybody. One unit did just that versus a Bundeswehr Panzer battalion during a REFORGER... found their laager in the middle of the night and just smoked their asses. Let me also say that it wasn't my unit, and I wasn't there.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

Somebody: Good stuff! Nice analysis of the complexities of this issue.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

The Imperium insists on standardisation. This is made explicit in T4 material.

Oh, does it? Good information as to intent. I have not discerned this in T5 which is highly derivative of much of T4, but that does not matter.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

Sure, if you think that produces fun outcomes in your game. I love to world build far beyond what is needed for my game, but my metric is still whether it will be fun if it actually comes up at the table. I don't find that I want to do the "deny the characters' their stuff" card often enough to make this a useful feature of my world building.

Besides, I have to deal with whether a tool is metric or standard and a bunch of proprietary standards issues all the time at work, so I can live without it in my games

I too like the metric joke, and yes, if the players hate it, it's counterproductive.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Oh, does it? Good information as to intent. I have not discerned this in T5 which is highly derivative of much of T4, but that does not matter.

There is a section on standardisation in one of the books, when I get the time I will find it and post it.

I have a few different universes i use for my Traveller games.

The longest running is a planet of the week journey that has now lasted many decades. The only standardisation is within the pocket empires the PC have encountered along the way. Individual planets may have more than one standard just like today.

In my 2300 inspired game there is no standardisation between nations.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

This came up in one of the threads, and I thought it was interesting on its own. Specifically, can an object of a given TL be resupplied and repaired anywhere of the same or higher TL, or are objects specific to location of manufacture, usually worlds? Three initial thoughts:

1) Does the Third Imperium canon say anything about this? I don't use any published setting, and while I am reasonably familiar with the Third Imperium I don't have many details memorized. I imagine many of you do, and I'd really like to know. I don't recall much comment on this topic, but I could be wrong.

2) The simplest and kindest decision is YES, and this is a reasonable and understandable decision. Such a setting would be more cinematic and heroic: heroes don't worry about whether their magazines are compatible (and may not even worry about magazines). I suspect many player prefer this decision. But it leads to situations like "of course my mobile works on every TL 8+ world, and of course I can access any internet." This is a bridge too far for me, and I discuss an alternative below.

3) My choice is "yes in space, no on worlds." To clarify, starport vendors have an incentive to standardize, as this is a service to their highly mobile customers. Megacorps compete to be vendors, and with a Megacorp there is complete standardization, but not between them except in special cases. One of these is gauss weapons: being the last stage of kinetic weapons, there has never been any change to the 4mm caseless needle bullet.

But on a world, there is no reason at all for interoperability beyond the system level. When it does occur, say 2-5 systems, this is very special and important instance. Thus, when travellers must leave the starport and go dirtside, they will be assaulted by a phalanx of merchants, selling them local clothing & jewelry, guide tapes and tour services, cooking up local street food, and in particular selling the equivalent of prepaid mobiles with customized guidebook and landing pages to help offworlders navigate that world's bewildering internet, or whatever it is. I very much want non-native worlds to be disorienting, unnatural spaces for travellers used to the similarity of starports and starship interiors. Worlds have their own customs, rituals, laws, aand ethics, none of which are familiar to offworlders. This is why services like the Travellers' News Service (TNS) are so valuable, as they serve to translate local news into something more generic.

Now the above is my choice. It takes work, and many players may not like it, which is ultimately most important. So I'm interested in how you approach alien world compatability within the same Star Empire.

I'd imagine there would have been several 'standardization waves' in the OTU. The Vilani especially would have had most things standardized during their rule. Then, along come the Terrans with their own standards.
I think big, expensive things (star-ships come to mind) would either be entirely standardized, or at the least made up of standard modules.
Outside the imperium, anything goes.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

I'd imagine there would have been several 'standardization waves' in the OTU. The Vilani especially would have had most things standardized during their rule. Then, along come the Terrans with their own standards.
I think big, expensive things (star-ships come to mind) would either be entirely standardized, or at the least made up of standard modules.
Outside the imperium, anything goes.

The observation about starships is interesting. A starship could clearly be one of the most bespoke things ever. But in a setting like the Third Imperium, where almost all construction is either military or at Class A starports ostensibly sponsored by the government, you would like to think standardization would be the rule. Though I think it would be in-universe funny for, say, the Navy and Scouts to use different standards out of stubbornness!

 

[tytalan]

In many ways, the real world is a bad example. Your average TL 10 planet was never TL 1-9. They arrived at TL 10 and set up/built everything at TL 10. If they were ever TL 8 or 9, it's probably because they slid downwards and recovered. Maybe they invented some things on their own, but most likely they bought the database for TL 11 when they had the resources to do so.

Even if it was lower tech, the knowledge base would change things. The European Middle Ages would be different if folks then understood sanitation and germ theory, even if they didn't have any new physical technology.

Just something to think about.

This would be true if TL was knowledge but it’s not its infrastructure which has to be built on site. Every imperial world has access to TL 15 database but that has little to do with that worlds TL. Now infrastructure can be weird because there can be many reasons for it to be limited even for it to backslide.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

The observation about starships is interesting. A starship could clearly be one of the most bespoke things ever. But in a setting like the Third Imperium, where almost all construction is either military or at Class A starports ostensibly sponsored by the government, you would like to think standardization would be the rule. Though I think it would be in-universe funny for, say, the Navy and Scouts to use different standards out of stubbornness!

If you've never read any of David Brin's books, his two trilogies (Sundiver, Startide Rising, Uplift War are the first), the very setting is dependent on standardization. Namely, what happens to a society, when they discover a billion+ year old civilization, that have almost anything you can think of inventing, already patented for the last 500 million years?
<unrelated>
I'd also recommend his book Earth. I read it when it came out in 1990 (pre-mainstrem internet), and it's chilling how prescient it seems now.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

This would be true if TL was knowledge but it’s not its infrastructure which has to be built on site. Every imperial world has access to TL 15 database but that has little to do with that worlds TL. Now infrastructure can be weird because there can be many reasons for it to be limited even for it to backslide.

This is why whoever builds the first "Space factory"*, will make a mint. The shear amount of infrastructure required to set something like that up, would prevent such a barrier to the next guy, that it would be cheaper to use the existing one, even at exorbitant fees. Even if you don't like them.

*Defined as either an ultra-efficient zero-gee assembly plant (that pollutes space instead of home), or a stepping stone base/shipyard for the rest of the solar system.

 

[Arkathan]

As for ships: They where mass produced even before the famous Liberty and Victory ships. Often due to the requirements of the artificial inland waterways and their locks. The Peniche and the Europaschiff are two examples from continental europe, the Narrowboat one from GB. The History of the Europaschiff has a "Traveller" element since the construction plan was done by a central comitee and than handed out to all ship builders for a minimal fee.

While some things were mass produced, reduction gear assemblies (huge gears connecting steam turbines to propeller shafts) were individually HAND CARVED into and past WWII.
I learned on the USS Portmouth (CL-102) engines, attached to a mock submarine S7G hull when getting my initial certification at the naval prototype.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

If you allow some non-standardization in your setting, Skills are the obvious way to overcome this. Mechanical, Electronic, and Engineer should all allow jury-rigged and bespoke parts to be used in repairs or even complete constructions. This shows up in a big way in the novel The Mote in God's Eye, for example (I won't spoil).

 

[Arkathan]

... This shows up in a big way in the novel The Mote in God's Eye, for example (I won't spoil).

That book also speaks to creating electronic circuit boards on the fly.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

That book also speaks to creating electronic circuit boards on the fly.

And how!