If it is that different in Charted Space, they should say so. I doubt the Megacorps would allow that. I know other polities will just ignore the patents just like China does. Zhodani, Solomani, Aslan, etc.
No, but I did spend half of a day pounding nails with a rock since I broke My hammer and had to wait for the next day for a new one.
Can you build TL-x industry before you build TL-x tools? Your explanation seems to imply that you do not think that is possible.
Fabricator math is easy, if tedious. It is the 'construction' rules for bulldozers, cranes, graders, cement mixers, & etc which is really woolly. But it is important, because a Fab cannot make items higher than 'TL minus 2'. Even with fabricators, fabricators need 'fabrication supplies' -- usually of 50% Credit-value; but sometimes the 'supplies' can account for as little as 10%, or sometimes (more wool) more.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.
You are allowed to bootstrap; otherwise using the Hive Queen means the world can never be anything other than TL-0. For my requirement, once the colony has a full set of industrial infrastructure (and I was very generous in how little is required) the it can produce TL-10 items AND more TL-10 industrial capacity. That makes it a TL-10 world.
Well said.
The MegaCorps often have Imperial Charters and other factors which give them a favorable position. Very likely the MegaCorps are the ones being granted licenses on the patents -- and probably some patents are (exclusively or non-exclusively) licensed to certain Domain Archdukes or lesser nobles. The more I play with this idea, the more I think it suits the flavor of the Third Imperium -- as well as explaining how the vast revenue needed to run the Imperial Bureaucracy is collected.
So TL-x tools are preferable to / better than lower tech ones!
By the (old WBH -- was that in T4? I looked in the MT book & did not see it) rules you posted, TL-x production can make limited amounts of (prototype) TL-x+1 production. It is not trivially easy; but once some amount of prototype TL-x+1 production is available, it can build more TL-x+1 production & convert some existing production. That seems to be in the right ball-park, with timelines measured in months (or years, or longer) instead of in hours.
Agree with all of this, except the "Patents are for all eternity" part. That just doesn't make sense. That seems to be just an excuse to make stuff more expensive in-game. It has no real-world analog.
In the example above I used a 90% value for how much "fabrication supplies" are required to give the worst-case scenario.
How is turning out an entire manufacturing society not worth getting a TL? It can produce anything you wish from the things that it produces. So why do you think the world shouldn't have a TL based on that?
Feudalism was pretty brutal on serfs. When a serf died, it was assumed that he had been stealing from his Lord for his entire life -- so the Lord was entitled to take all the best stuff as 'compensation'. And then the Church stepped in to get their pound of flesh....
I'm not sure I understand your question. I assume having higher TL is desirable, but there are costs which are often not modelled or mentioned in the game. If you follow the rules-as-written then every TL-13 society ought to have a Santa Clause machine on every street-corner handing out free luxuries. That is not what we observe in the setting, so there must be something else going on.
See? This right here is why I say that better quality control is needed. We have the mechanics for things in Charted Space, but if we use them according to the rules, then Charted Space shouldn't look the way it has been described in the fluff.
One advantage of having all patents (eventually) revert to the Emperor -- all the stuff in the Imperial Library gets standardized.This is apparently from T5, so may be valid, or maybe not. lol
Universal Manufacturing Template - Traveller
wiki.travellerrpg.com
If that is how it works in Charted Space, you'd think the publishers would say that somewhere. You know players are going to want to buy templates for their fabricators so they can make things for themselves.
True, but the list of things 'The Authors Ought To Explain' is quite long. And Players can absolutely buy Templates -- but they have to get them (for a fee) from legitimate license-holders. Very likely the Templates expire if not renewed; and expire when the license-holder who sold them loses their license.
So, who in the Third Imperium holds licenses? Corporations? Nobles? Investment Bankers? The blurb on them says "The simpler UMT's can be purchased from the street peddlers of more technologically advanced worlds while more sensitive technologies might only be available on megacorporation fab worlds or naval depots."
Yup, the data is not free.
Probably the Emperor includes data on low-level stuff in licenses for more desirable high-end products and processes. Similarly, a license can include (for a fee) the ability to sub-license; so Mega-Corps just non-exclusively sub-license a bunch of the stuff they do not particularly care about to smaller entities -- including random street peddlars, if they can cough up the fee the Mega-Corp is asking. That might be a thousandth of a credit for every design at TL-1, or whatever.
Even not free though, from TL-0 to TL-15 and everything you need learn to make that transition for less than 50MCr is not bad at all.
I would love to see more about how the Third Imperium functions in published material.
