So are we 'officially' at TL 8.25 or what?

Combat, movement, skill, characteristics can be generic.

Careerist generation pretty much pin you down to something more specific.
 
ottarrus said:
Since when did anyone ever say that Traveller was setting neutral /agnostic?
There are other settings [2300, Pioneer, Dark Conspiracy] that use the 2d6 mechanics, but they're offshoots of the basic Traveller Charted Space /OTU product.
And let's be 100% here: there is no alternate setting that pulls down as much sales as the Traveller OTU. Not 2300, not Zozer, not anybody. Why are you guys faulting Mongoose for following its sales figures?
If you want a setting neutral /agnostic 2d6 system, there are several authors that have tried it. Cephus, Zozer, etc. You can find their work all over DTRPG. Personally, I love the Traveller setting more than I love the mechanics of 2d6. YMMV and all that, but I find 2d6 to be much less adaptable than d100 for personally designed milieux. But I'm down for new material on the setting I've loved for nearly 50 years every day of the week. I don't have to agree with it, after all. That's what 'IMTU' means.
And what does ANY of this have to do with estimating Earth's current tech level?
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MongooseMatt

Post in thread 'Ask MongooseMatt ANYTHING!!!'

MasterGwydion said:
@MongooseMatt I know you hate giving definitive answers, but please answer these. What is Traveller? Is it a setting or a ruleset? If it is a ruleset then why do the settings other than Charted Space not use the Traveller CRB? If it is a setting, then Traveller is no longer a setting-agnostic game system. Which of these is Mongoose using going forward?
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Traveller is a ruleset, albeit one that is very close to Charted Space.

Dark Conspiracy and Pioneer are not simple universes but separate games - basically, they have enough differences that they benefit from better separation.
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Matt said it.
 
MarcusIII said:
Actually naval laser weapons are alive and well. Moving forward at a rapid pace
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Lasers are actually deployed in limit numbers. They'll get a lot more research pumped at them for anti-drone and anti-overly-hyped-hypersonic weapons.

Rail/Coil guns need better underlying tech (crystaliron and superconductors?) before we try again.
 
Sigtrygg said:
And vehicle mounted lasers as well. It is the man portable laser weapon that we are still waiting for.

en.wikipedia.org

DragonFire (weapon) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

OW5 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

LY-1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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en.wikipedia.org

Boeing YAL-1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
It's Boeing though, so anyone in its sights is probably pretty safe.

And this is only what the public knows about. Maybe in our little writeup on the Traveller wiki, it would say Earth, TL 8.1 (not available in all areas)
 
For me, there was enough of a watershed in computing and automation in the early 21st century to count as very early TL8. The 2020's really feel a lot different than the 1990's.

In terms of the military hardware that Traveller loves to use, we've moved into the drone era. Laser carbines might not have happened, but lasers are everywhere. Here's an interesting graphic from 2007 (18 years ago. It's old enough to vote.):

1762486369082.png
 
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TL8 - fusion, air/rafts, man portable laser weapons.

The interwebs and antisocial media that differentiates the 2020s from the 1990s is based on technology that has been around since the '70s/late 60s, there have been no breakthroughs just improvements and infrastructure.
 
rinku said:
For me, there was enough of a watershed in computing and automation in the early 21st century to count as very early TL8. The 2020's really feel a lot different than the 1990's.

In terms of the military hardware that Traveller loves to use, we've moved into the drone era. Laser carbines might not have happened, but lasers are everywhere. Here's an interesting graphic from 2007 (18 years ago. It's old enough to vote.):

View attachment 6459
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I'd quibble.

I think the writer's logic is a bit meh. Body armor is really great, but the KIA / WIA ratio is also affected by medical and systemic advancements, like a robust medevac system, golden hour doctrine, and pretty amazing battalion aid stations and field hospitals. Only the kevlar helmets and modern body armor are force protection gear. Boots are boots, kneepads are kneepads. Someone I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago was a trauma nurse in the Vietnam War. She rode on medevac helicopters so she could apply care as soon as soldiers were loaded. One day a general asked her what could be done to save more soldiers' lives. She told him a serious problem was the blood plasma going bad by the time the soldiers were loaded, because of the tropical heat. She asked for a little office refrigerator for the medevac to keep the blood plasma in. The general got them for all the medevac helicopters he had control over.
 
There is an issue from Ukraine, about whether there are unnecessary amputations, due to not quite understanding the correct application of tourniquets.

Being overcautious, inexperienced personnel, not quite adequate training due to time pressure, and lack of fast transport.

As for the other side, coup de grace.
 
Maybe I should have searched for a better graphic. The point I was trying to make is that if WW2 is TL6 and Vietnam era is TL7... there was already enough difference by 2007 to consider a new TL, let alone 18 years later.

That makes sense. TL6 is now meant to be atomics and space race; TL7 is the information age. Maybe what we are now is very mature TL7 - I'm good with that, or with it being very early TL8 (I personally think there's enough of a phase change to justify that, but YMMV). If we take the text in CRB to heart, TL8 starts with the space colonies. The gravity stuff is meant to be a late TL8 development. Fusion arrives when it arrives.
 
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We have not achived the scientifivc, technological and engineering breakthroughs required to be TL8, we have just advanced from experimental TL7 to mature TL7.

And this is why I dislike the TL scale
 
TL5
TL5+ (experimenting with TL6)
TL5++ (experimenting with TL7)

The problem is the "pure" TLs can not exist, since at the earlier TL you were experimenting 2TLs above you by the time you acive the breakthrought you are still studying 1 TL above with new insight into 2 TLs above.

It is a system I dislike.
 
As someone else pointed out, somewhere else, we're still using the same basic military rifle since the Vietnam War.

Longer, if you count the Kalashnikov.
 
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