What's stopping people from sharing high-tech information...

F

flyingsandwich

Mongoose
...with lower-tech worlds? Most of the worlds I'm generating here some out as Pre-Stellar or lower, so I can only assume that this is by design. Which raises the question of how there are so many lower-tech worlds. Surely you could just have teams of very patient teachers going around the galaxy giving 'Welcome to the Future' classes to these worlds' scientists, covering stuff like grav drives, Jump Drives, whatever counts as a processor at Stellar level, etc.
Instead we have whole civilisations that are seemingly left in the dark, still trying to figure out how to make their diesel trucks more efficient while interstellar travellers are opening up pocket dimensions right over their heads!

Is there some sort of Imperial edict prohibiting this kind of technological helping hand? What happens when a civilisation says "Now hold on, you stingy bastards, how about a laser pistol or two?"
 
Tech Level is one of those nebulous sorts of Metrics that has gotten foggier with iteration. Meaning It is more of rating of the local ability to manufacture rather than what was available, mostly. So if you needed some High tech gizmo you where going to pay more on the low tech dirtball your stuck on. In earlier editions there was a chart for figuring out how much more it was gonna cost on said dirtball.

Enter in the Starport/yard question, which is a A-port on a low tech world receives all it's parts from off-world to build their ships.

At least that has always been my take on the issue. With worlds with Tech restrictions being more the exception than the rule.

Also note Low-Tech but it works and is cheap means Low Tech is probably the standard mostly. With advance gear being reserved for those situations where y'all need it.
 
Just because it's low tech doesn't mean it doesn't work, or is not used.

Lots of people still today use pretty crude basic knives, not fancy ceramic blades... they just work (and are cheap).

That said, there is nothing saying that you can't add a modifier to TLs to get a final figure that you are happy with... it's your game.
 
The only worlds where Tech Level is a limit on what is known are Red Zones, worlds so far outside stable polities that they have no effective interstellar trade, and worlds at the maximum Tech Level.

There are also occasional "Low Tech Escapist" worlds where the founders and current government practice technological isolation for cultural, political, or unfathomable reasons. Those don't have an obvious indicator in the UWP, however, as there are many ways and reasons to do such things.

Within the Imperium or any other multi-system polity, you can assume that everyone is aware of the highest TL in the region, whether that is their capital world, a research world, or an allied trade partner. What they haven't figured out yet is how to pay for the improvements they would need locally to make such things themselves. Recall that the average world is a Pop 5, or the equivalent of a small city, for the entire planet. Not a very large tax base, so most higher tech gadgets will come from the Sears catalog (in 4-6 weeks) instead of the factory down the road.
 
That's a great way of looking at it, thanks guys. I'll have to go over the worlds I've made so far and revise. Except that one world with alien musketeers, that's staying. The players want to set up a lucrative smuggling operation to an interdicted low-tech world.
 
Having a TL 7 world doesn't mean that there aren't TL 8+ items present, just that they are probably imports, individually crafted items or locally assembled from imported components. I'm guessing that most worlds have access to the information to build higher Tech items, but lack the production infrastructure to mass-produce them.
 
Trade is what the players do, bringing high tech items to backwater worlds. :mrgreen:

However, TL's are a game-ism and don't really have a real world analog; too much of it (esp chemistry) is just a better idea of what you are doing.
 
Here's how I think of it. It's not available tech, but the tech you can make. Take afganastan for a moment. Sure they have cell phones there. And they have cars and guns and much more, but they don't have the infrastructure and expertise to make any of it themselves. Only things they can make themselves is low tech stuff like crops and drugs. And even if someonbrought car manufacturing to the country, the literacy rate is 3%. They are not going to be able to read blue prints to build the facility or assemble cars with a serious level of consistency.

Same is true with a low tech world. Sure you can bring star ship plans to a low tech world, and some of the cleverer individuals would figure some stuff out and help them to increase their tech quicker, but no planet is going from a 5 to a 9 in a few years.
 
Weapons are always one of the first things sold to less developed societies... so gun-running might be a tad bit less remunerative than players (typically) think initially... someone has likely already done it. They might still be doing it and object to PCs thinking to join them!

Low TL planetary inhabitants might well know that The Empire of Pongo (or whatever) has star-drives and teleportation (or whatever technology)... it's just beyond their own local capacity to make or devise at the moment due to crappy infrastructure, corruption, war, poverty, lack of education etc., etc....

Those with the means and/or opportunity (which possibly might include the players) might somehow manage to get higher-tech devices and knowledge in small amounts, but it will not be locally manufactured, and might be totally impossible to repair/support.

Just because the PCs go to a TL4 world doesn't mean that local soldiers don't have gauss rifles.
 
The same question would/could be asked of how we do things here (on our own planet).

The basic technology exists and the information is available. However that's not enough to bootstrap yourself a few tech levels. Lets look at China as an example.

In the last 30 years China has made the jump from TL5ish to TL8. They build many gee-whiz gadgets like iPads, have maglev trains, etc. They have nuclear power, nuclear weapons, space capability, etc. But since they bootstrapped themselves so far so fast they also have big gaps.

Their society doesn't have the underlying experience or knowledge of many things since they skipped past them. While they could build rockets, they needed US experience and expertise to design shrouds so they could deploy the payloads. They can build aircraft but are still struggling with creating the labor and knowledge infrastructure to build an aircraft similar to the 737 that Boeing originally built 30 years ago.

Their state has poured trillions into developing infrastructure. If you look at some of their architecture and infrastructure you would think the US or Europe were very much backwards. But if you look at the underlying structure you'll find a lot of gaps and faults that aren't present.

A TL5 world still needs the infrastructure, workforce, and more importantly the needs/desire to grow. But if these pieces don't exists its easier to import the tech from offworld. The have's on a TL5 planet probably have airrafts whereas everyone else uses mass transit or the local equivalent to a car. Maintaining that airraft requires importing parts, tech and probably know-how, and without the imports it will eventually stop working. Those imports make it possible for the other planets to have trade, and in return they import raw materials, foodstuffs or other items that can be acquired more cheaply elsewhere. If you think about it, the low-tech objects that are hand-made cheaply elsewhere in the world are quite expensive in the industrialized nations where labor is expensive.
 
I think that if you have certain critical masses of population, resources and education, you could jump from TL7 to TL12 in a century, assuming technological transfer, a population of around a billion to support domestic consumption, and easily accessible resources to feed and grow an industrial base.

You could have kilo and megacorporations sabotaging these attempts, in an effort to maintain trade monopolies or market shares.
 
However, once a certain technological level in communications is reached (probably c. TL 7-8-9), most people will find out eventually that higher tech goods exist out there in the wider galaxy (they may not understand how they work internally, or are made though, for hundreds of years). They will however know the general sorts of things that exist, but they will not initially have any capability to manufacture or repair.

This technology imbalance will certainly fuel trade, both ways, as resources/lower TL goods flow out and higher TL items/knowledges in.
 
Lord High Munchkin said:
This technology imbalance will certainly fuel trade, both ways, as resources/lower TL goods flow out
Click to expand...
While possible, low tech need not equate to valuable export resources. As listed below, the fact that the tech never advanced could be from a lack of resources.

Various issues for various worlds

Population too low
Too poor
Environmental conditions that are counter productive compared to competing worlds, maybe needing domes and special life support. Certain processes won't work properly on high or low pressure atmosphere, high and low gravity. Need adequate oxygen and water or whatever else.
Lack of governmental support and direction via
- education
- roads, utilities and other infrastructure
- education
- regulation and taxes
- corruption
Maybe it's a lack of metals or other resources
Maybe it's a lack of power. Few rivers for hydro power. Little wind or storms for wind power. Little former animal and plant life for gas and coal. An atmosphere that makes solar power an issue.
and so on

Someone used China as an example. We do still have parts of the world, including lots of rural China, that are not close to TL 7.

If the TL criteria is current manufacturing capacity then many small and even mid sized cities across America might not even come close to TL 7 as the closest they come is high tech farming.

Perhaps this is something to consider. What exactly is a high tech low population world? A handful of factories producing items for a specific market segment? Thousands of high tech factories with just a couple living workers each, automated mining sites, smart unmanned haulers moving resources, programmable construction equipment to build the power plants and utility infrastructure with robots operating the facilities.... ? Hmm, I need to go look at the trade info and see which goods are effected by high and low pop and see if that might give some insight. If it only effects things like consumer goods vs raw materials and machinery for manufacturing...


EDIT: Based on the TV show almost human and the suggestions that criminals adapted and used the high tech faster than the police. Social issues from advancing tech too rapidly. Criminals (white collar as well as more violet types) or monopolistic companies taking advantage of the tech and breaking down the social norms so the governments (or the rich and powerful that want to stay that way and limit competition) may want to restricts the rate of advancement. In Traeller, maybe there are historical examples with the virus, AI issues or elsewhere?
 
The level of technical knowledge and available infrastructure can certainly differ dramatically. A real life example was illustrated in a picture that made the rounds a few years ago at a large aerospace company where I was working:

An advanced new airplane model was under development, requiring a new highly advance titanium alloy for some of the largest components. The metal was mined and alloy mixed, cast and rough forged at a Russian factory located in Siberia. The forgings were then flown to the U.S. for finish machining and assembly. The picture illustrating an infrastructure gap was of the forging wrapped for shipment being transported from the very modern factory to the airport in a horse drawn cart.
 
Agreed. If there's an open downport on a planet, you can assume that anything up to about TL13 is going to be theoretically available if you're rich enough and determined enough.

There are some planets which restrict the TL of items you can bring across the border - see the Law Level chart - but you can assume that even such worlds will have a few items available to nobles and government organisations above this; such restrictions are for the proles.

Certainly, if there's an imperial starport on a "contemporary earth" TL8 planet, and a group of players were kicking off in the capital city, I would have no hesitation having an ESWAT team turn up in TL12 combat armour with gauss weapons* to deal with them


*or even battle armour and plasma weapons in extreme cases
 
There is also one other consideration, that is how useful a higher tech item is to that society - we might consider a truck to be essential for commerce, but in areas with zero petrol availability and abundant grazing, the horse and cart would win, hands down.
Afghanistan is a poor example to use to illustrate a point in some ways - there was a story a few years ago about a glut of cheap but excellent quality handguns and rifles, without serial numbers, making their way onto the black market throughout Europe. Turns out some enterprising chaps had given an original to some Afghan village blacksmiths and they were churning out handmade copies just as good as the factory-made originals! It was a cottage industry that had started when the British turned up with modern European rifles a couple of hundred years ago and they had had a bit of practice!
 
Lord High Munchkin said:
Condottiere said:
Information transfer shouldn't be a problem, considering how much data a TL15 USB stick would contain.
Click to expand...
Ah, but one probably needs a TL15 reader to find out what it contains....
Click to expand...

Or a TL 15 education to understand it; I see plenty of people today who look at "technology" like magic.
 
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