What's your goto tech?

[rinku]

One thing you would expect to see is offworld manufacturing higher quality tools than can be made locally.
It's not that they *can't* blacksmith a hammer... but a Ling Standard hammer that doesn't rust and is five times as robust as a local one at half the price is going to be a trade good.

So... still TL appropriate, and probably not repairable aside from replacing the grip with leather when the synth-rubber wears out, but you'd expect to see a lot of that sort of thing. Muskets that are far more accurate. Rope with ten times the load strength. Prefabricated buildings that can shelter them better than wood and thatch ever could.

 

[Condottiere]

The Taiwanese have to import Dutch cutting edge machines to print teeny tiny circuits.

I think the Dutch import Zeiss lenses.

I don't foresee that changing for the next two decades.

 

[MasterGwydion]

This is a false comparison Bangladesh is still capable of having and supporting Cell towers for your cell phone. Shipping those phones is vastly cheaper and take a lot less time that shipping enough Cell Phones, Cell Towers, Power Plants, Maintenance people, Maintenance equipment, Spare Parts, and the vast amount of other required equipment to support your Cell Phone. Shoot there are vast areas in Europe and the Americans that don’t have the infrastructure to support Cell phones. The logistics of just supporting your few cell phones is staggering but now you’re adding farming equipment and other stuff that requires infrastructure to maintain and support.

You break one part that normally doesn’t break and you’re waiting a minimum of 3 weeks to get the spare and that’s if it’s the next system over any farther and it could be months, there goes this season/years crops. The truth of the matter is no world is going to rely on technology they don’t have the infrastructure to support because unlike the earth you can’t call the manufacturer and have them overnight a critical part. A farmer or miner is not going to be able to wait for weeks or months get the support they need. Even in the real world in the remote areas people rely on what they can either produce/repair locally or within a days travel.

Here is the problem. I agree with you, so I often worldbuild using that very principle. In Charted Space though, they do not do this. When trade broke down during the Long Night, planets could no longer maintain their infrastructure and they regressed in tech levels massively thereafter.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, if you have a comprehensive, sustainable, technological level eight industrial base, you should be okay.

In practice, technological level six prefusion reactor, should be enough.

 

[actionman]

Your Fabricators still require infrastructure to support them.

Of course, just like all economic activity requires infrastructure. Why wouldn't people build the necessary infrastructure? How much infrastructure do fabricators need? Determine its function and capacity, get an appropriate fusion plant, put in the utilities, build the roads, worker housing, and all that, and away you go. All this would be planned by the people who wanted to do it. They'd figure out what they wanted to do, calculate the budget, make necessary compromises, then build it.

Our power plant is down and we can’t make the part to repair it without the Fabricators that need the power plant to run.

Idiots that allow such a single point of failure deserve the consequences. Why wouldn't they have backup generators for this contingency? The fabricator plant would have its own powerplant, and if that fails, I'm sure the planetary authorities would requisition power from other powerplants that power non-essential systems. They could even pay some scruffy adventurers to connect their ship powerplant to the fabricator facility to fabricate the part. If vehicles, air/rafts etc. all use fusion power, I doubt it would be that hard. And if there were ever a powerplant failure in living memory, they planetary authorities or the people whose lives depended on power being up would make sure they had a backup powerplant.

Worlds can not depend on technology they don’t have the TL(ie the infrastructure) to support not when replacing a simple part takes a minimum of 3 weeks and can take months or possibly years.

Yet this is a fundamental part of Traveller. People on low tech planets have starports, air rafts, all that crap. They can't build or maintain these goods without interstellar trade, but that's what interstellar trade is for, that's why the Imperium guards it jealously, and that's why the Long Night was so devastating. If the appropriate authorities or management or concerned citizens know this vulnerability exists, they would move toward mitigating that vulnerability. If they don't, then they're too stupid to live.

Let's consider a hybrid approach. For example let's say there's a mining colony on some inhospitable rockball, no indigenous life. They would rely on interstellar trade for their major end items, like their vehicles, mining engines, construction vehicles, prefabricated structures, fusion plants, etc., but, IMO, they would also install fabricators to produce things like repair parts, tools, supplies, etc. It may not be cost effective or desirable for the corporation, investors, or government operating the colony to make it self sufficient, but if the colony is profitable enough, a robust fabricator capability could increase profitability by producing finished products of greater and greater complexity instead of shipping them in.

We a part that wasn’t support to break on their water supply system broke and they had neither the spare or the capacity to fabricate it, it required a rare material that they didn’t have enough in supply, so they all died of dehydration.

Isn't this a strong argument for local fabricators, to be able to produce repair parts for critical systems?

Again, I'm not entirely sure what we're discussing. Are you arguing that planets shouldn't use fabricators and should instead rely on interstellar trade?

 

[rinku]

Yes, of course fabricators. But unless the raw materials to feed the fabricator can be supplied in system, it's in trouble when the ships stop coming. And that can be as simple as they thought a couple of year's reserve was enough with the supplier only two jumps away.

I mean a lot of mainworlds are low population outposts. Their ability to survive when cut off might be problematic for many reasons. Maybe there's not a single fertile couple... or worse, just enough to attempt reproduction, but too shallow a gene pool to really succeed. The robotised tech keeps itself running as the inbred people wither, age and die.

Or, they can keep things working on their ice moon for a while, but then over the decades that turn into centuries the irreplaceable working spaceships fail one by one until they can no longer gather the asteroid minerals they need for self sufficiency, that their world totally lacks.

Or, the garden world they live on is also a deathworld. Cut off, the population succumbs.

Or, GreedCorp never did let the colony have self sufficiency. Why do that when they could profit from all that indentured labour? Oxygen and water for labour sounds like a fair deal, right?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Of course, just like all economic activity requires infrastructure. Why wouldn't people build the necessary infrastructure? How much infrastructure do fabricators need? Determine its function and capacity, get an appropriate fusion plant, put in the utilities, build the roads, worker housing, and all that, and away you go. All this would be planned by the people who wanted to do it. They'd figure out what they wanted to do, calculate the budget, make necessary compromises, then build it.



Idiots that allow such a single point of failure deserve the consequences. Why wouldn't they have backup generators for this contingency? The fabricator plant would have its own powerplant, and if that fails, I'm sure the planetary authorities would requisition power from other powerplants that power non-essential systems. They could even pay some scruffy adventurers to connect their ship powerplant to the fabricator facility to fabricate the part. If vehicles, air/rafts etc. all use fusion power, I doubt it would be that hard. And if there were ever a powerplant failure in living memory, they planetary authorities or the people whose lives depended on power being up would make sure they had a backup powerplant.



Yet this is a fundamental part of Traveller. People on low tech planets have starports, air rafts, all that crap. They can't build or maintain these goods without interstellar trade, but that's what interstellar trade is for, that's why the Imperium guards it jealously, and that's why the Long Night was so devastating. If the appropriate authorities or management or concerned citizens know this vulnerability exists, they would move toward mitigating that vulnerability. If they don't, then they're too stupid to live.

Let's consider a hybrid approach. For example let's say there's a mining colony on some inhospitable rockball, no indigenous life. They would rely on interstellar trade for their major end items, like their vehicles, mining engines, construction vehicles, prefabricated structures, fusion plants, etc., but, IMO, they would also install fabricators to produce things like repair parts, tools, supplies, etc. It may not be cost effective or desirable for the corporation, investors, or government operating the colony to make it self sufficient, but if the colony is profitable enough, a robust fabricator capability could increase profitability by producing finished products of greater and greater complexity instead of shipping them in.



Isn't this a strong argument for local fabricators, to be able to produce repair parts for critical systems?

Again, I'm not entirely sure what we're discussing. Are you arguing that planets shouldn't use fabricators and should instead rely on interstellar trade?

Remember, until TL-17, Fabricators can only fabricate things 2 TLs below their TL.

 

[rinku]

Remember, until TL-17, Fabricators can only fabricate things 2 TLs below their TL.

That doesn't seem like much of a problem if the assumed stellar tech is 12.

Oh noes. We can only make TL10 junk.

 

[swordtart]

The knowledge is available universally at least in the imperium but the equipment need infrastructure and infrastructure in most cases is not transportable. You can’t transport roads, mines, electrical grids and the thousands of other things needs to support and maintain those factories. And you can’t rely on off world supplies for repair and parts because of communication and shipping times

What is the TL of a road exactly*? I think the majority of us are talking about the post TL5 worlds as I doubt anyone is really visiting TL2 worlds other than to strip mine them (or hopefully as part of a sensitive and respectful anthropological expedition).

If a planet doesn't have a star port and never had contact with a stellar society might have a "Stone Age" or "Steam Age" society. One that has a star port might have settlements far from it that decided to eschew that new-fangled nonsense for a variety of reasons, but anyone within a days travel of that star port will have access to whatever TL is required to operate that level of Star Port.

Shipping times are not actually that much of an issue in real terms for the majority of systems. Tarsus is Jump 1 from Collace but that have a TL difference of 3, that isn't due to shipping times. It is the AG bestie of an IN world, there is going to be more ships going between them than ants round an picnic.

The REASON for the TL differences is because when Traveller was first made someone wanted to recreate those Star Trek episodes where they visit a retrograde planet because they had the costumes. The solution was roll a dice and get a largely random number for TL and let the referee come up with a reason. In some of the canon the reason isn't that good and much of it doesn't really make any sense.

The rationale is up to you as a referee, let's not pretend it is more than it is.

*Where we're going, we don't need roads

 

[rinku]

Yeah, it gets back mainly to economics and a bit of common sense. Plus cool local flavour.

Sure, the steam powered agricultural world *could* import some fusion plants, and maybe does for specific purposes. But they get by just fine burning the abundant local fuel shrub, rich in burnable oil. Just chop off a few branches, wherever you may be, and throw them in the fire to keep the steam pressure up. Air pollution isn't much of an issue with a population of a few million, living in family homesteads.

If there's a reliable precipitation cycle, hydro power is likely to used across a wide range of tech levels. Mechanical at lower ones, electrical at higher ones. Wind power too, but liquids can be dammed for energy storage. And need not be water - a colony on Titan could presumably use the methane cycle for energy generation.

 

[swordtart]

One thing you would expect to see is offworld manufacturing higher quality tools than can be made locally.
It's not that they *can't* blacksmith a hammer... but a Ling Standard hammer that doesn't rust and is five times as robust as a local one at half the price is going to be a trade good.

So... still TL appropriate, and probably not repairable aside from replacing the grip with leather when the synth-rubber wears out, but you'd expect to see a lot of that sort of thing. Muskets that are far more accurate. Rope with ten times the load strength. Prefabricated buildings that can shelter them better than wood and thatch ever could.

We need to be careful with these analogies. There is no high TL hammer. There might be high quality hammers and hammers made in high tech societies and even hammers made of high tech materials, but a hammer is a hammer. A high tech "hammer" might be a "nail gun" instead. Nails might be iron, steel, hardened steel etc. and the ability to produce in quantity them might be TL dependent (but only at the very low TL levels) but they are all nails and given time someone who has knowledge of metallurgy at a pretty basic level can produce any of them, they just take longer to do so for the more advanced materials.

A hammer might not be as prevalent in high TL society because fixings other than nails might be more common. Let's say pop rivets* as an example as preformed plastic is used more than wood. Pop rivets require more advanced materials and methods to make and if a society is cut off from those it will not be able to make any. It can still import and it might choose to do that because actually its demand is still not enough to justify local production. It is not that they cannot, it is because they choose not to. Hammers might still be around in tool kits as hammers are not just for nails and an engineering ball-pein hammer can still drive home nails.

If a society that had a building industry based on preformed plastic and pop-rivet construction with no domestic supply industry (e.g. a colony) suddenly lost the ability to import (and it would be a pretty catastrophic event to cause that, interstellar embargo, war etc) it might be forced to regress back to hammers and nails and this probably wouldn't pose too much of a technological problem. The issue would be that it would also have to regress back to non-preformed plastic dwellings in the short term and whilst it could do so it will probably be more resource and time intensive (or they wouldn't have adopted the preformed plastic method in the first place).

If it was likely that contact with the rest of the universe could be re-established within a few years, they would probably stick with their high tech methods and just try to ride it out. After a decade or so (or the great pop-rivet crisis) they would need to recalibrate and go to a long term mitigation. Hopefully they will have planned and have education programs in place to recover the hammer and nails methods, or they may have gone an entirely different route.

A society that had always had a Hammer and Nail building philosophy and had adopted the high tech methods only latterly could more easily revert and might do so more quickly (as the old construction guild masters nod wisely and say "I told you so"). Out in the boonies they may never have adopted the new methods anyway as transporting stuff from the star port (or the industrial centre) was more expense or trouble than it was worth. Even after generations that knowledge would still be there so the impact of interrupted exo-TL supplies would be minimal.

The issue is not whether a society can make a hammer, it is whether that society has a culture of hammer use. Previously undiscovered tribes have no difficulty adopting imported tee-shirts after only a short time of contact. They might not be so eager to adopt imported nails as it requires a different construction method. Those people living only a day's travel from the source of the modern wonders might be more willing to adopt and you would see a gradation of TL from the TL of the source (Starport in our case) outwards until it met the intrinsic TL of the culture. This gradation will be dependent on the size of the planet, and the time of travel on planet (for both goods and information) and whether the higher TL using element is indigenous or are colonists.

It is setting dependent how many populations that are below the default star port TL are indigenous and how many are colonies.

* This is for illustration only, don't get hung up on the specifics.

 

[Condottiere]

Civilizations thrive on energy.

Provide a surplus of cheap energy, and people will figure out something to do with it.

By default, in Traveller, that should be the introduction of fusion reactors.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Just to be a pedant, it is TL 12 (C).

Still a typo/retcon

Fat finger and poor eyesight, I know what I intended to yupe lol - serves me right for neing a pedant

That's what a typical reply looks like until I go back to it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Remember, until TL-17, Fabricators can only fabricate things 2 TLs below their TL.

So use a maker instead...

 

[MasterGwydion]

That doesn't seem like much of a problem if the assumed stellar tech is 12.

Oh noes. We can only make TL10 junk.

It means that your TL-12 Fabricator can't make parts for your TL-12 Starport. If your Fabricator is TL-14 it can, but it can't make parts for itself, so eventually, everything breaks down without non-fabricator-based industry.

 

[Terry Mixon]

So use a maker instead...

If only T5 really spelled out how they worked. I couldn’t find much at all when I looked.

 

[Sigtrygg]

They make stuff smaller than themselves, or make parts for things larger than themselves

To convert a fabricator to a maker just remove the silly 2 TL penalty.

Another JTAS article...

 

[Terry Mixon]

They make stuff smaller than themselves, or make parts for things larger than themselves

To convert a fabricator to a maker just remove the silly 2 TL penalty.

Another JTAS article...

I hear you, but what are the actual rules? There was just a lot of hand waving in T5. With the fabricators, there is meat on the bones, not black boxes that just magically produce things.

 

[actionman]

because they had the costumes.

It's all about the costumes.

 

[actionman]

If only T5 really spelled out how they worked.

I know, I know. Not explaining how things work has always been a problem. How do jump drives work? Who knows. If the powerplant is a fusion generator, and the maneuver drives are electrically powered thrust plates, and the jump drive is also electrically powered, what is all the LHyd for? Who knows. I know things have been retconned, but it was all just duct tape over a gaping "this is sparta" sized hole. Of course we all know that the how and why of everything was never created because it didn't matter. The important thing was that ships could only move so far so fast and that they had to refuel and repair, for game mechanics purposes.

Fabricators only being able to make things two tech levels below their own, that's such an arbitrary rule. So a TL 15 fabricator can't make a TL 15 wrist communicator. I guess the Imperium relies on TL 15 sweatshops filled with sweaty Bwaps to make its TL 15 fabricators which then can only make TL 13 products.