I agree with this. I would love to see this detailed as I have an NPC that built a superior fabricator (combined with a deconstructor) and I’ve been winging it.
The key is to define the underlying stuff first. Traveller already has definitions for what makes up a Technology Level, and allows different regions of technology to advance ahead or behind a worlds' 'average' TL. Power Generation, Power Storage, Transportation, Gravitics, Medicine, Computing, Communication, Agriculture, etc -- all of that (and more) needs to be defined, even if it is just a 'Hey, this is sci-fi so we are forced to make up some numbers' the numbers have to be explicit and consistent. How much energy does it take to run a grav-belt? Nobody knows -- but at the same TL, it ought to take less energy to cancel the weight of a single person than to cancel the weight of a fully-loaded double-decker bus.
Once we have defined what TLs are made of, we can figure out what goods they produce, and what it takes to produce them. I think it makes sense to specify that each TL produces less waste than each preceding TL; things get lighter, stronger, more compact, more capable, and less costly to produce. Materials are more effectively recycled at higher TLs. So we define the bare bones, then agree that 'Each TL is an X% (overall) improvement over the last TL'.
Some things will always be TL0 -- rock (including unrefined ore), naked humans, wild animals, wild plants, etc. Biological needs of people will not change much as TL advances; every kg of living human will require X food, Y water, Z air. Maybe Vargr are similar; Aslan, K'Kree, and Droyn a bit different; Hivers radically different. Get that stuff nailed down, too.
As long as we are defining the biological needs of the different species, consider their different cultures, perspectives, priorities, and aptitudes as well. Aslan are great hunters; so maybe we can expect their agricultural (even ranching) technologies to lag and such facilities to under-produce. So Aslan agriculture makes (at similar TLs) the same products, but at greater cost compared to other races; this creates an opportunity for trade with non-Aslan. Male Aslan value hunting-land; maybe their basic unit of currency is not 'One koku is enough rice to feed a person for a year' -- it is 'this plot of land is large enough to support a single hunter'; and that colors everything in their outlook. It changes how they view transactions, how they evaluate worlds, where they seek to expand, etc.
Traveller is very human-centric; but in order to have humans be something other than boring Mary-Sues we can declare humaniti is consistently 2nd (or maybe 3rd) best at basically every category of technology. That does make us valuable trade partners for basically every other race -- but quite a lot of the human perspective is in terms of trade, commerce, and Credits, so maybe that fits.
Start with the fundamentals, and build up from there; and you can end up with sensible long-range trade flows, trade-goods, conflicts between empires, and so on.
