Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Weirdly, one of my podcast co-hosts (Veronica Giguere) co-wrote the latest novel in that series. Small world.
Intelligent ships for the players
- Thread starter Regnarts
- Start date
Mmmm. The Culture has casual teleportation, matter conversion and transmutation and easy travel at galactic distances. Megastructures are routine. I don't see their teleportation stuff (which is REALLY important - it's full on Star Trek) at TL17-18, but maybe I over-reached with TL30 too. Compromise on TL25?
Things get very vague at higher levels. Banksian Orbitals are rated at TL22 in WBH, but those aren't presented as anything like the most advanced examples of Culture technology. Niven Ringworlds are mentioned as existing, so that's about TL26-7 according to WBH. Likewise Dyson Spheres (TL28-9).
The Excession redesigns itself to be mostly engine and reaches a speed equivalent to 233,000 of lightspeed. One parsec per week is 169 times lightspeed, so that's 1378 parsecs per week, or Skip-14. TL33 if we extend the chart on HG p80. Given that's presented as an extreme case, Culture hyperspace travel seems to normally be in the Skip Drive range. Oh, and this is essentially using free energy drawn from the environment (though an antimatter universe may be involved). No fuel, antimatter or otherwise.
I'm comfortable with common Culture stuff being about TL22-25 (their equivalent of the Imperium's TL11-12, maybe), but I am seeing many examples of 25-30 in the books. And of course OUTSIDE and near the culture there are any amount of less advanced places, and some that can match it for a while. So maybe just go with double? TL24 is average, TL30 is high tech, TL18 is as primitive as you'd find within the culture?
The Excession redesigns itself to be mostly engine and reaches a speed equivalent to 233,000 of lightspeed. One parsec per week is 169 times lightspeed, so that's 1378 parsecs per week, or Skip-14. TL33 if we extend the chart on HG p80. Given that's presented as an extreme case, Culture hyperspace travel seems to normally be in the Skip Drive range. Oh, and this is essentially using free energy drawn from the environment (though an antimatter universe may be involved). No fuel, antimatter or otherwise.
I'm comfortable with common Culture stuff being about TL22-25 (their equivalent of the Imperium's TL11-12, maybe), but I am seeing many examples of 25-30 in the books. And of course OUTSIDE and near the culture there are any amount of less advanced places, and some that can match it for a while. So maybe just go with double? TL24 is average, TL30 is high tech, TL18 is as primitive as you'd find within the culture?
Except in cases where people deliberately go with lower tech out of a spirit of adventurism or some such. "Roughing it", for some values of "primitive".
Ultimately, you run into the fact that the entire tech conception is different. Like Traveller's tech schema in T5 assumes that Reality Engineering and instantaneous intergalactic transit precede solid Dyson Spheres (but not capsule Dyson spheres). I haven't read all the Culture books, so maybe they do have precognitive decision making and event retconning technology, but if so it was in one of the books I didn't read.
Star Trek Transporters first appear at TL19 and by TL24 you can have doors in your house that open onto other continents, possibly even other worlds. The TL28 Reality drive is essentially "go whereever you want to be in about the same amount of time it takes to decide where that is."
Star Trek Transporters first appear at TL19 and by TL24 you can have doors in your house that open onto other continents, possibly even other worlds. The TL28 Reality drive is essentially "go whereever you want to be in about the same amount of time it takes to decide where that is."
