UWP Tech Level?

[phavoc]

Then why not remove them from the game? Problem solved. It seems to me that if you are a building a setting based on trade, then some thought should have gone into what that means. As an example, don't make it so that I can use the rules and build a 100% self-sustaining colony for 100 people for about a billion credits. This colony will expand and never drop in TL, because it can make anything that it needs, from mining and building robotic workers up through finished production. If you want a setting based on trade, like Charted Space, then including things that allow this, is a mistake. I personally love them, but it does break the setting.

Edit - How much does a colony of 100 people cost? 1 billion credit.

How much does a colony of 25,000 people cost? 1 billion credits and 10 years. lol

I think this is just another one of those instances where the full thought process of what this can do to the game setting isn't fully thought out. If you can build a factory ship that can go to any asteroid field and use it as raw material to produce any and every component for a warship (including the fissionables to arm the weapons), then once a system has this capability, its trade will mostly end - except perhaps for luxury goods and some newer tech they can't make at home.

One has to be careful about designing such industrial system as it can radically affect your game setting in more ways that are often predicted.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I think this is just another one of those instances where the full thought process of what this can do to the game setting isn't fully thought out. If you can build a factory ship that can go to any asteroid field and use it as raw material to produce any and every component for a warship (including the fissionables to arm the weapons), then once a system has this capability, its trade will mostly end - except perhaps for luxury goods and some newer tech they can't make at home.

One has to be careful about designing such industrial system as it can radically affect your game setting in more ways that are often predicted.

It is hard to use the excuse that people didn't think it through when it's been a problem for 40 years and has never been repaired or addressed.

 

[phavoc]

It is hard to use the excuse that people didn't think it through when it's been a problem for 40 years and has never been repaired or addressed.

You realize you are talking about Traveller, right?

 

[Sigtrygg]

If the Third Imperium were to be written today:

start with the technology of the TL11 Ziru Sirka - what does their empire really look like.

the early Third Imperium is TL12, what does that look like.

in the hundreds of years it takes to get to TL13 how does that change things and so on up to the TL15 achieved over a century ago.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If the Third Imperium were to be written today:

start with the technology of the TL11 Ziru Sirka - what does their empire really look like.

the early Third Imperium is TL12, what does that look like.

in the hundreds of years it takes to get to TL13 how does that change things and so on up to the TL15 achieved over a century ago.

These are the things I think of when I write a campaign. It has always boggled my mind that people writing a setting don't think their own setting through and they are supposed to be the professionals.

 

[Sigtrygg]

It's tricky. When the Imperium became the backdrop to GDWs supplements and adventures there wasn't a great deal to go on. The early double adventures and adventures could be adapted easily by referees to their homebrew settings.

You had planets with randomly generated stats next to each other - solution, it is a frontier and the big empire is off board...
but then things changed.

We got an Emperor's list, greater Imperial authority, the frontier region changed to a region settled for over a thousand years... and that was the point of departure for me. The Spinward Marches as a frontier with little Imperial authority is a great setting ripe with shennanigans.
A 1000 year settled Spinward Marches with Imperial nobles linked to every world, a navy that could have a squadron of escorts in every system, they are just not the same setting.

Then as technology evolved over the years in the real world, and authors wanted to reflect those changes plus new themes in sci fi the setting paradigm changed again. The 57th century with makers (sigh, fabricators), clones, wafers, robots, intelligent machines, cyborgs, genetic enhancement and a whole lot more is a very different place to the 57th century of the Kinunir adventure... or is it?

 

[MasterGwydion]

It's tricky. When the Imperium became the backdrop to GDWs supplements and adventures there wasn't a great deal to go on. The early double adventures and adventures could be adapted easily by referees to their homebrew settings.

You had planets with randomly generated stats next to each other - solution, it is a frontier and the big empire is off board...
but then things changed.

We got an Emperor's list, greater Imperial authority, the frontier region changed to a region settled for over a thousand years... and that was the point of departure for me. The Spinward Marches as a frontier with little Imperial authority is a great setting ripe with shennanigans.
A 1000 year settled Spinward Marches with Imperial nobles linked to every world, a navy that could have a squadron of escorts in every system, they are just not the same setting.

This is one reason why I love Milieu 0 as a setting. Everywhere is frontier with a few islands of interstellar polities.

 

[Sigtrygg]

My longest running setting is a long night sort of affair; forty+ years ago the original player characters mustered out and headed off to the frontier and then continued on into the unknown. Usually it is a different planet every week or so, but we have had months long adventures in certain systems or pocket empires.