Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Compatibility.
How standardized is the tech in your setting?
- Thread starter Spirit of 1977
- Start date
Compatibility.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
Everyone should read that novel.
(I realized the other year that the Droyne are probably inspired by the Pak. And the K'kree and the Hivers are both inspired by the Pierson's puppeteers.)
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
Related: in anyone else's TU, does the Solomani Confederacy use pounds/feet/etc.[1] just to spite the legitimate rulers of space, or is it just me?
[1] Ordinarily I would say 'Imperial units'[2], but in the case at hand that would lead to confusion.
[2] On occasion people scold me for referring to the old, bad units as 'Imperial'. My killfile thinks those people are delicious.
[1] Ordinarily I would say 'Imperial units'[2], but in the case at hand that would lead to confusion.
[2] On occasion people scold me for referring to the old, bad units as 'Imperial'. My killfile thinks those people are delicious.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Confederationwide and exports, it would be metric.
Locally, however you please.
Startowns would have both measurements.
Locally, however you please.
Startowns would have both measurements.
Spirit of 1977
Cosmic Mongoose
Condottiere: You may joke, but at higher TLs I've envisioned a universal plug/socket adapter being like a fine pin mesh in a tube, so you can plug any plug in and the pins give way, or plug the adapter into any socket and the pins conform to the holes. It contains a microprocessor to properly route the power though the pins.
CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
(I'm reminded of the character in The Cassini Division who, when asked why everything in space uses Imperial units, replies "flipping NASA". Except she doesn't say 'flipping'.)
Of course you can have variations because of local politics or conditions. But the fact is that all but a handful of worlds are colonies. Someone came from somewhere else with already developed technology and established the place. And there are existing blueprints, standards, etc available to anyone who has access to interstellar trade. Sure, some worlds backslide and survived to redevelop their technology. In some cases without access to the original tech because of calamity.
But in all those cases, it is NOTHING like how tech on Earth developed. It isn't going to have the layers of obsolescence, multiple origins, and whatnot that generates a lot of our infrastructure. Examples of how TL 2 decisions still echo in our TL 8 decisions are interesting, but not particularly analogous to the situation on a colony world. They never built expensive low tech infrastructure that needs to be removed before modern infrastructure can be installed. They had the modern infrastructure first in the vast majority of cases. (Yes, I am aware there are scattered exceptions)
Except depending on how the backslide can vastly change that, example a nuclear war that destroys all the infrastructure in a high tech society can actually destroy the knowledge base that created the infrastructure making them start from scratch
Also we are talking 3 different empires possible more depending on the area your talking about so multiple starting tech standards. The spindward marches for example has Earth, Vilani, Zho and Darian as source of the colony.
I wasn't aware anyone was arguing that Imperial standards apply to the Zhodani.
And, yes, I did allow that there will be unusual situations. I'm not sure what relevance that has. A planet with a nuked high tech civilization in its past isn't going to develop like Earth did either. Even if it did crawl back on its own without re-contact.
And, yes, I did allow that there will be unusual situations. I'm not sure what relevance that has. A planet with a nuked high tech civilization in its past isn't going to develop like Earth did either. Even if it did crawl back on its own without re-contact.
Spirit of 1977
Cosmic Mongoose
Like I said before, if you can make a fun scenario out of the players figuring out a way to charge their iPhones when the planet only has USB-C chargers and the tree rats chewed up all their 8 pin lightning connectors, go for it.
All I said is that Earth's technology arc is not a good pattern for determining how a colony world's technology arc would be. Because the vast majority of colony worlds started from a space age technology and you will most likely have the ability to import technological know-how. And if the colony tech falls and recovers in isolation, that's still not like Earth because the colony world's ruins and ancient civilizations are high tech, not lower tech.
You can have as much non standardization as you want. Non standardization can happen over regions because you have different polities. It can happen because different corporations want to maintain walled gardens (sorry, we put our control panels in backwards so you can't use any one else's control panels in our products). Business only wants standards if 1) they control the standard or 2) lack of standards prevents them from making as much money as a standard would. It can happen because some material is super abundant on this world while the usual one for this product is rarer and costlier than normal. Lots of reasons.
But your competing standards are not going to come from legacy systems of significantly lower technology. It is extremely unlikely that a colony world would ever develop chains, furlongs, acres, and hectares as land measurements because they would have already had the concept of modern measurements like square meters or cubic hairballs or whatever their home world's standard was and probably never had to worry about how much land one guy could plow in a day with an 8 ox plow team (the original definition of an acre, resulting in acres that were different sizes depending on the soil). Even if they fell back to medieval technology, they'd probably still remember how to use standardized measurements and that washing hands improves health.
This is a game and, more importantly, it is a space opera game. So you certainly can create Canticle for Leibowitz situations and other interesting things. But if that's common enough that it affects the trends of your Imperium equivalent, I'd consider that pretty extreme.
All I said is that Earth's technology arc is not a good pattern for determining how a colony world's technology arc would be. Because the vast majority of colony worlds started from a space age technology and you will most likely have the ability to import technological know-how. And if the colony tech falls and recovers in isolation, that's still not like Earth because the colony world's ruins and ancient civilizations are high tech, not lower tech.
You can have as much non standardization as you want. Non standardization can happen over regions because you have different polities. It can happen because different corporations want to maintain walled gardens (sorry, we put our control panels in backwards so you can't use any one else's control panels in our products). Business only wants standards if 1) they control the standard or 2) lack of standards prevents them from making as much money as a standard would. It can happen because some material is super abundant on this world while the usual one for this product is rarer and costlier than normal. Lots of reasons.
But your competing standards are not going to come from legacy systems of significantly lower technology. It is extremely unlikely that a colony world would ever develop chains, furlongs, acres, and hectares as land measurements because they would have already had the concept of modern measurements like square meters or cubic hairballs or whatever their home world's standard was and probably never had to worry about how much land one guy could plow in a day with an 8 ox plow team (the original definition of an acre, resulting in acres that were different sizes depending on the soil). Even if they fell back to medieval technology, they'd probably still remember how to use standardized measurements and that washing hands improves health.
This is a game and, more importantly, it is a space opera game. So you certainly can create Canticle for Leibowitz situations and other interesting things. But if that's common enough that it affects the trends of your Imperium equivalent, I'd consider that pretty extreme.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
1. My feeling is that is three millenia from now, we'll be using advanced versions of Universal Serial Bus Type Cee, power and information, for small appliances.
2. They're likely compatible with several generations in either direction.
3. Anything requiring more power, say hundred watts plus, has a similar but larger plug.
4. There would be wireless options, but I suspect that the protocols would need to be in sync.
5. The Imperium seems to have taken much effort to introduce standardized engineering parts for spacecraft.
6. One interesting aspect is deciding if kinetic ammunition fits in similarly calibred weapon systems.
2. They're likely compatible with several generations in either direction.
3. Anything requiring more power, say hundred watts plus, has a similar but larger plug.
4. There would be wireless options, but I suspect that the protocols would need to be in sync.
5. The Imperium seems to have taken much effort to introduce standardized engineering parts for spacecraft.
6. One interesting aspect is deciding if kinetic ammunition fits in similarly calibred weapon systems.
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