Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
They had to order technological level fifteen starwarships from Imperium shipyards.
What does TL mean?
- Thread starter MasterGwydion
- Start date
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I would say Darrian is a case of writers not using the same definition for TL across editions. Some places, TL seems to mean, as with the Darrians, that they have access to relics of that TL, but cannot build them. Other places, it seems to mean, the TL most people on the planet have access to. Still others, it seems to refer to local manufacturing capacity.
This is why I harp so much on internal consistency within a setting.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
They buy TL15 from the Imperium, they natively produce at around TL13, 14 for computers.
"Modern Technology: Modern Darrian technology is generally about tech level 13 for local products with a liberal sprinkling of tech level 14-15 products that are locally produced or imported from the Imperium. Most of the merchant ships are tech level 13, and the Navy is usually about the same with two very important exceptions. Top ships of the line are now imported from the lmperium (under an Imperial military aid program), and
some technicians have come with them to maintain them." CT Darrians Alien Module.
"Modern Technology: Modern Darrian technology is generally about tech level 13 for local products with a liberal sprinkling of tech level 14-15 products that are locally produced or imported from the Imperium. Most of the merchant ships are tech level 13, and the Navy is usually about the same with two very important exceptions. Top ships of the line are now imported from the lmperium (under an Imperial military aid program), and
some technicians have come with them to maintain them." CT Darrians Alien Module.
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AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
As the timeline advances they have a limited ability to manufacture some TL16 stuff.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Not until well after the rebellion era and Norris' reforms to form the Regency. Part of the deal for allowing Regency access to their relic TL16 tech was the Regency to invest in raising Darrian TL to 15 and later TL16.
"Another ministry policy was to carefully limit the pace and extent of modernization of the Regency's shipbuilding industry. While decades of advancing Regency technology would have permitted the upgrading of many TL15 shipyards to produce TL16 vessels, these upgrades would have caused a serious disruption in output, and the new high-tech vessels would have been technologically incompatible with the Regency's nearly homogeneous TL15 forces, and would haw required the creation of a new TL16 maintenance and support infrastructure in addition to the existing TL15 facilities. Furthermore, the production of the innumerable one-off TL16 prototypes required to learn how to properly manufacture and use this new technology would have been wasteful and duplicative. Modernisation efforts were instead focused on bringing worlds up to TL15 levels rather than further advancing existing TL15 facilities.
Small-scale TL16 programs were undertaken, both to ensure technological supremacy and to discover useful TL16 systems that could be adapted to other platforms, but these were carefully managed. These were typically joint Darrian-Regency programs, using known successful Darrian TL16 artifacts as goals, rather than requiring Regency engineers to conduct time-consuming TL16 basic research. The highly successful 500-ton Darrian patrol cruiser (page 92) is a prime example. The DPC is based on long-established Darrian designs and is also produced under license in the Regency for the Regency Navy and Quarantine Service*."
* referee secret info - the DPS in entirely constructed in Regency yards and then given back to the Darrians to maintain the fiction that they built them
"Another ministry policy was to carefully limit the pace and extent of modernization of the Regency's shipbuilding industry. While decades of advancing Regency technology would have permitted the upgrading of many TL15 shipyards to produce TL16 vessels, these upgrades would have caused a serious disruption in output, and the new high-tech vessels would have been technologically incompatible with the Regency's nearly homogeneous TL15 forces, and would haw required the creation of a new TL16 maintenance and support infrastructure in addition to the existing TL15 facilities. Furthermore, the production of the innumerable one-off TL16 prototypes required to learn how to properly manufacture and use this new technology would have been wasteful and duplicative. Modernisation efforts were instead focused on bringing worlds up to TL15 levels rather than further advancing existing TL15 facilities.
Small-scale TL16 programs were undertaken, both to ensure technological supremacy and to discover useful TL16 systems that could be adapted to other platforms, but these were carefully managed. These were typically joint Darrian-Regency programs, using known successful Darrian TL16 artifacts as goals, rather than requiring Regency engineers to conduct time-consuming TL16 basic research. The highly successful 500-ton Darrian patrol cruiser (page 92) is a prime example. The DPC is based on long-established Darrian designs and is also produced under license in the Regency for the Regency Navy and Quarantine Service*."
* referee secret info - the DPS in entirely constructed in Regency yards and then given back to the Darrians to maintain the fiction that they built them
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Here you are, @MasterGwydion. A TL16 version of the Hive Queen with a prototype Advanced Fabrication Chamber that can build TL16 stuff from the ground up. It's only three times more expensive than the original TL13 version. I added some construction capability because the space was there. MixCorp thanks you for your business!
J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
TL-15 factories are one of the things that a TL-15 world should be able to produce; this is necessary, but not sufficient. If an (otherwise TL-8) world has a single tiny, overworked facility that 'can' (slowly, at great expense, from limited supplies which must be imported) produce single copies of a TL-15 FGMP does that make it a TL-15 world? I would say 'No'. Being at a TL means having a network of production and supply facilities; mines, smelters, farms, foundries, and so on.If they can build TL-15 factories, then TL-15
Nowhere does it say meet local demand as a requirement for TL. It just says what can be manufactured locally. See the very first thing posted on this thread.
I found this while scrapping through Hard Times. Thought it might help with defining TL.
This network of production must be of such magnitude that the world does not (need to) import TL-15 goods; if a world must import high TL goods, then local production is inadequate.
Using the 'can build a single factory of TL+1' capability as a defining criteria leads to an infinite loop -- All TL-0 worlds are obviously 'really' TL-1 worlds by this criteria. And all TL-1 worlds are obviously 'really' TL-2 worlds, and so on -- to the point that people will argue that all TL-0 worlds are 'really' TL-37 worlds.
Please let me know where you are quoting those rules from; I am unfamiliar with them, but probably have a copy laying around somewhere. If I were to create a set of house-rules to express technological uplift, it seems likely that they would align fairly closely to what I have seen here.
Note that the rules you quote specify that using TL+1 requires a network of facilities which are all at the current TL. Again, a single factory does not suffice.
If your point is that Mongoose Traveller authors do not read, sanity-check, nor use the rules-as-written, then I am sympathetic. It does nothing to defeat my point.You mean there are exceptions that are explicitly stated? Or do you mean that is the Bandwidth those programs require when being run on those devices (Brain Tapes and Wafer Jacks)? Or do you mean that those writers had no idea that this line existed in the CRB on page 110?
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The Robot Handbook has the same rule violation. Saying it requires 32 Bandwidth to store in computer memory, but Bandwidth is processing power, not memory. That is like saying I need 160 horsepower to fill my gas tank. lol
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Data is not free, not to buy, nor store, nor transport -- the authors of the game have so far considered it unimportant and 'below the abstraction of the game', and so have not bothered to present rational costs for data. My point is that if the schematics of a TL-12 starship cost a thousandth of the final cost of the ship, then all the schematics for all the starships at and below TL-12 are not going to be included 'for free' with every new droid. Similar reasoning leads to the idea that schematics for other goods are likely to be similar. The exact set of schematics included (or even available), their sizes, and their prices, are left entirely undetermined 'so that referees can make something to suit their own game' or some similar
By the rules you cited above, TL-15 Industry can produce goods of any TL of 15 or below -- so a house with TL-0 bits can be built with TL-15 tools. The trick is trying to build the TL-15 bits of a house with TL-10 tools -- that would seem to be impossible. There is no way to build TL-10 kinetic energy sinks for the foundations with TL-9 tools; and TL-7 tools are notoriously inadequate to produce or manipulate room-temperature superconductive wiring.
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actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Which book is the seed factory in? I need to read about it before answering thoughtfully.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Nice! Thanks for this tidbit!
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Mix Corp engineers, brilliant as always!
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
The Hive Queen is in the Robot Handbook. It is the seed that builds the robots and seed factories.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
You seem to be under the understanding that, like modern-day factories, to produce more than one item it will require massive retooling. Yes? Is that still the case, when you can fabricate the new tools and simply change them out as needed. Need a new mold for pouring liquid metal into? Fabricate one. A new robot? Fabricate one. Then your factory can easily change from producing one type of good, to producing different goods. Likely factories in the future will simply "Produce-on-Demand". This can be done from TL-12 and higher with ease. From TL-13 and higher, you may never need a Blueprint again if you have a Deconstruction Chamber. It will give you all the blueprints that you could ever need, as long as you have one sample of each to burn.
Once the Hive Queen lands on a planet, it never again needs imports. It is fully self-sustaining at that point. I also found this on the wiki, but I think it is Fanon and not Canon.
Apocalypse Package/meta - Traveller
Yeah, but if you actually use the rules that they use, it takes a long time.
World Tamers' Handbook. (Not Geir's new WBH, the old one.)
A single factory does suffice if all you have is a single Heavy Industrial unit at TL-15. It can, for one month, produce TL-16 Heavy Industrial units at double the cost. After that, you can use the new TL-16 Heavy Industrial units to produce TL-16 Heavy and Light Industrial units, Resource gathering units, and Agricultural units.
If you had a TL-15 Heavy Industrial unit, but even one of your other types of units wasn't TL-15, say it was TL-14, then you cannot upgrade your Heavy Industrial to TL-16. First you have to upgrade the others. If you had a TL-15 Heavy Industrial Unit and no other units, then you could upgrade it right away. I think this is an edge case though were the rules kind of fall apart. It works fine for larger settlements with 10s or 100s of units, but not so much for if there is only 1 unit of Heavy Industrial.
FREE!
If Patents in space are anything like Patents on Earth anyhow...
I don't know. I learned how to work with my great grandfather's tools. Including those damn drills that you have to turn by hand. So, obviously you can build higher TL things with lower TL tools, but there is obviously a limit. There is this from the CSC
J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
I thought you might have a citation for a Manufacturing Facility actually called a 'seed' or 'starter' factory. The Apocalypse Package is similar in concept, but 1) happens much later; and 2) is not (yet) present in Mongoose Traveller.
But the actual capabilities of a Hive Queen are still being speculated upon, and not certainly not obvious from the rules we are given. Let us suppose that a newly-settled world includes exactly one Hive Queen and no other sort of production capacity; and their goal is to reach mature TL-10 in addition to the capabilities of the Hive Queen. What does this involve? Exactly what is the Hive Queen building? How long does it take? What do the various supplies to do this cost?
Assume at least a TL-10 Mineral Refinery, a continuous supply of TL-10 Mining Drones to keep up with losses, a TL-10 Smelter, and (at least) one each of TL-10 Basic, TL-10 Advanced, TL-10 Specialist, and TL-10 Agricultural Manufacturing Plants -- what is the timeline? How much time is saved by bringing in 'Fabricator Supplies' to speed up construction? How much 'Fabricator Supplies' (both Credits and dTons) is absolutely required in the initial shipment which brings in the colonists?
I submit that the rules on this are unhelpfully vague; and scattered in disparate places, which makes it difficult to get a grasp on how a referee can approach this problem. It does not seem as though reaching TL-10 in this manner is trivial -- there are far too many low-tech worlds. 'Well, there is an in-story reason why this world is more primitive than expected' only works for a handful of worlds before it starts to wear a bit thin.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
I am yet to be convinced that the hive queen and other setting destroying technologies in the Robots book belong in the Third Imperiu m setting at the TL they are in the Robots book.
I also really dislike the prototyping rules as they make a mockery of the TL structure.
I also really dislike the prototyping rules as they make a mockery of the TL structure.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
The Hive Queen is made by Ling Standard Products, so it is obviously designed with Charted Space in mind.
I agree.
J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
'If'. Maybe after the patent expires, ownership of the patented design reverts to the Emperor, who licenses it out for a fee.You seem to be under the understanding that, like modern-day factories, to produce more than one item it will require massive retooling. Yes? Is that still the case, when you can fabricate the new tools and simply change them out as needed. Need a new mold for pouring liquid metal into? Fabricate one. A new robot? Fabricate one. Then your factory can easily change from producing one type of good, to producing different goods. Likely factories in the future will simply "Produce-on-Demand". This can be done from TL-12 and higher with ease. From TL-13 and higher, you may never need a Blueprint again if you have a Deconstruction Chamber. It will give you all the blueprints that you could ever need, as long as you have one sample of each to burn.
Once the Hive Queen lands on a planet, it never again needs imports. It is fully self-sustaining at that point. I also found this on the wiki, but I think it is Fanon and not Canon.
Apocalypse Package/meta - Traveller
wiki.travellerrpg.com
Yeah, but if you actually use the rules that they use, it takes a long time.
World Tamers' Handbook. (Not Geir's new WBH, the old one.)
A single factory does suffice if all you have is a single Heavy Industrial unit at TL-15. It can, for one month, produce TL-16 Heavy Industrial units at double the cost. After that, you can use the new TL-16 Heavy Industrial units to produce TL-16 Heavy and Light Industrial units, Resource gathering units, and Agricultural units.
If you had a TL-15 Heavy Industrial unit, but even one of your other types of units wasn't TL-15, say it was TL-14, then you cannot upgrade your Heavy Industrial to TL-16. First you have to upgrade the others. If you had a TL-15 Heavy Industrial Unit and no other units, then you could upgrade it right away. I think this is an edge case though were the rules kind of fall apart. It works fine for larger settlements with 10s or 100s of units, but not so much for if there is only 1 unit of Heavy Industrial.
FREE!
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If Patents in space are anything like Patents on Earth anyhow...
Again, lower TL tools are (at the very least) at a disadvantage -- and sometimes they will not be usable at all. Have you ever built a house using your Great^100000 Grandfathers tools? A TL-0 paleolithic hammer 'does' exactly the same thing a TL-7 hammer does -- but the TL-7 hammer has a far more ergonomic interface (a nice handle), is more reliable, is easier to strike a clean blow, can get into narrower spaces, probably weighs less, and numerous other advantages which may not be instantly obvious.
Using lower TL tools does not make building stuff of higher TL universally, absolutely, completely and forever impossible -- just vastly impractical. If you want to build TL-x industry, you need TL-x tooling.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Leaving aside the prototyping rules, a TL16 Hive Queen could have an Enhanced Fabrication Chamber that can make TL14 gear.
J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
And colonists.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
#truth
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
It was built using the Mongoose rules though.
This is all easy to calculate if you really want to OD on math (not meth
) Since most of the things you will be making will be high tech and complicated, let's assume that all materials cost 90% of final cost instead of 50%. One mining drone can put out roughly 13 dtons of raw materials per 8-hour shift. 3 shifts a day is 39 tons. This material costs 1,000Cr per dton. This can give you a credit value of how much can be mined per day. If you smelt it, then you have to break it down to get the actual costs. (9.75 tons of Uncommon Ore, 5.85 tons of Uncommon Raw Materials, 5.85 tons of Crystals and Gems, and 1.95 tons of Precious Metals for a total value of about (someone better check My math. It looks wrong.) 38,025Cr/day is 10% of that. Then you will have to check if this exceeds the tonnage output for the specific Fabricator. Once you know all of that, it is easy to calculate how much time is needed to build something.Can't bring in supplies or it won't be considered locally manufactured, so you can't do this is you want a higher TL designation.
The excuses of Explainaboutism to me are lazy writers and publishers. I agree a few things like that are acceptable, but when every single planet starts needing explained as to why it deviates from the rules, why even have rules?
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