What's your goto tech?

I think the TL system is excessively granular. I don't think most people could tell you what would be different about the experience of visiting a TL 11 world vs a TL 12 world or a TL 13 world. I'm sure I could flip through the charts and eventually find something to hang the TL difference on, but is it really useful? I don't find it
I tend to agree that TL seems to be built to fit the range rather than the range set for anything useful. TLs below 8 almost make sense as there is a way to tie them into actual technology advances (but I cannot hand on heart say it does a good job of that). Once you move into future stuff it all gets a bit notional.

I am also not convinced it is that useful other than as short hand to differentiate levels of equipment. I think that is a function of price point rather than any innate technology since once you have an advanced enough fabricator you can make anything and once you have any sort of trade there is no reason not to have an advanced fabricator (and you only need to import one as fabs can make fabs). The defining limitation on manufacturing should be availability of raw materials (and power) and that should be properly tied into trade codes.

That isn't to say you cannot invent random reasons for a particular TL (particularly for systems that do not have spaceports and thus trade opportunities), but doing it by default as part of the world generation process for every system is probably overkill in a post fabricator universe. The way TL is generated makes sense for what the planet may require, but not for what it is capable of manufacturing. So maybe that is the clue, high TL systems have high TL stuff available, because there is a market, not because there is a manufacturing base, but a market will tend to drive a local manufacturing base simply for surety of supply (but that manufacturing base may not be efficient enough to be able to export - once you add KCr1 per DTon/Parsec in shipping fees).

If fabricators were more expensive than making stuff by traditional methods you could justify lower tech manufacturing, but that doesn't appear to be the case as the cost of making a fabricated product seems to average half the product cost for materials (but could be as low as 10%). Since you can print a TL1 dagger in a TL8 fabricator for on average Cr5 in 2 hours by pressing a button it is hard to see how making one with a forge could use less materials or be faster. A factory of metal presses etc. could be faster, but it will either require much more equipment (and power) and probably a larger workforce. All that adds cost and retooling for a different product would be an ongoing expense. As the usual factors in manufacturing cost are materials cost and labour costs, I don't see enough wiggle room.

This forces a conclusion that hand-made should be more expensive (which would fit with real world trend for manufacturing costs to drop as technology advances, but means that lower tech worlds would be logically limited to producing raw materials rather than products. We already have this from trade codes.

The only way I can see to continue to have a manual manufacturing workforce is artificially limiting fabs/technology. I am also inclined to say fabs cannot produce anything other than average quality, so the hand made stuff could be saleable because it is lower (and even cheaper) or higher quality. With a finely made weapon for example multiplying the cost by 2-6 times per attribute a Lethal Dagger could command Cr60 and be a more attractive export for a system that became renowned for them, much like real world cities became renowned for high quality products (e.g. Toledo for sword steel).

This has probably been hashed over millions of times in many forums, so it is likely an article of faith rather than fact.
 
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The way I see it, for Traveller, is that technological level is what's possible for a particular industrial base, and what might be available, in a market place.

There are other factors that would increase or decrease these chances, like local jurisdiction legality.

The other side would seem to be means and access.

Semi manual manufacturing might take place, if you can transfer the skill, and the artistic vision of a craftsman to an item, which a robot or automated factory might not be able to.

Race to the bottom generally ensures the Prisoner's Dilemma, in that competing industrial interests will almost certainly fully automate, to cut costs.
 
Still doesn’t mean every starport is getting shipped the TL15 resources to repair and maintain all ships, if you really consider the logistics that’s just insane.
No, it definitely does not. My other question is with a significant TL 15 presents on any world, why wouldn’t it raise the overall tech level? Technicians have to be trained, and that training has to be maintained. Equipment has to be manufactured, and more importantly maintained.
Just the understanding of physics alone, make this a foregone conclusion.
 
The setting has to make sense.

The Third Imperium has TL15 high population industrial worlds. Lots of them. The Imperium has free trade. So those TL 15 goods will be shipped to every world where they can be sold providing the sell price takes into account transport costs (and of course profits at every intermediate stage).

The knowledge to maintain those goods can also be "traded".

TL15 physics and engineering "books" will be available at every starport and world within the Imperium.

Different settings will have different rules.
 
Why isn't Bangladesh as technologically advanced as the United States? They have access to the internet and examples of the goods.

It's not as easy as some people think. You need resources, you need skilled labor, you need a market for the goods to make it worth making, and you need a governmental and legal framework that makes developing these things feasible. This works in reverse, too. Just because you are a high tech country doesn't mean that you can manufacture any particular good. You may not have the raw materials or the skilled craftsmen or an affordable workforce.

What frequently happens is that it is cheaper to make something elsewhere and ship it to a location than to try to develop the infrastructure to make it locally. This applies when the locale is poor and when it is rich. I do think that some of the extremes of technological difference within the Empire are kind of strange. But a wide variance is not unlikely.

The biggest issue with low tech worlds is that they are not comparable to the Earth at that technological level. On Earth, we have layers and layers of lower tech behind us and things are invented in fits & starts, forgotten, invented again, etc. Worlds in the Imperium that are low tech are almost all declines from spacefaring tech, not rising up from nothing. They aren't going to have a medieval (lack of) understanding of medical theory, sanitation, etc. It's entirely possible that they won't have the industrial ability for a variety of reasons, but they are not likely to be thinking mice spontaneously generate from fields.

So even those lower techs are going to look different than they did in the comparable era on Earth.
 
I think fabricators (replicators, star trek food thingies) really throw it out the window. When traveller was designed, having huge infrastructures to build higher tech made sense. So, it was completely plausible for worlds to simply be missing crucial infrastructure, and therefore, for worlds to have wildly different tech levels.

But 3d printers and the high tech versions of them, completely destroy that precept. Traveller hasn't really adapted to that change. As has been dudcussed elsewhere, it is CHEAP (for a world) to bring in complete manufacturing facilities. On an individual level, 3d printers, fabricators, whatever you call them, are also completely affordable. So the idea of TL governing what is available locally doesn't name much sense. It's too easy to import an entire industrial base.

So I think what TL has turned into, is what the world could do, if it had no access to imports, and lost the significant majority of all of its fabricators.

So for amber or red worlds, TL might be meaningful. Or worlds where the socio-political environment prevents imports and fabricators, such as extreme religion, extreme dictatorships, extreme poverty, or extreme devastation due to war or disaster. (But in theory all of those worlds should already be amber or red).

But for all other worlds, TL should be meaningless, and they should all just have the galactic norm.


IMTU I would make the norm 12, by make fabricators and portable manufacturing facilities unable to produce anything higher than 3 TL below the TL of the fabricators or production facility (thereby making the TL 15 3I have a galactic norm of TL12.)

Some worlds would have the infrastructure capable of higher than 12, as shown, but every world under 12, would just be treated as it had 12. Lower than 12 only becomes relevant if some kind of situation strikes rendering trade impossible.
 
Traveller's definitely not designed around any kind of post scarcity, print whatever you need sort of economy. You can definitely do that, of course. That's what Mindjammer is (among other things). But you start wondering what the actual trade is with widespread fabricators and trade is the core of Charted Space's concept.
 
Traveller's definitely not designed around any kind of post scarcity, print whatever you need sort of economy. You can definitely do that, of course. That's what Mindjammer is (among other things). But you start wondering what the actual trade is with widespread fabricators and trade is the core of Charted Space's concept.
Traveller has had "makers" since the beginning of the 3rd Imperium. It is not new tech. What "makers" are is a matter of some debate, but makers could actually build whole starships. It was the main reason that some worlds joined the Imperium.
 
Traveller has had "makers" since the beginning of the 3rd Imperium. It is not new tech. What "makers" are is a matter of some debate, but makers could actually build whole starships. It was the main reason that some worlds joined the Imperium.
Yup, one of those very large contradictory pieces of information about the setting, where a thing makes sense, but leads to a lot of very large problematic questions when you think about it too long.
 
Yup, one of those very large contradictory pieces of information about the setting, where a thing makes sense, but leads to a lot of very large problematic questions when you think about it too long.
I think fabricators first showed up in Traveller in T4? T:NE was still doing "portable machine shops" and other mico factories, not any sort of fabricator. I don't recall any mention of them in CT or MT, either. The current version of the game says that we've had them all along, but it doesn't actually do anything about changing the setting to reflect that.
 
It's not as easy as some people think. You need resources, you need skilled labor, you need a market for the goods to make it worth making, and you need a governmental and legal framework that makes developing these things feasible. This works in reverse, too. Just because you are a high tech country doesn't mean that you can manufacture any particular good. You may not have the raw materials or the skilled craftsmen or an affordable workforce.

Very true. I'm glad you mentioned the governmental and legal framework, that's a critical part of it that is so often overlooked. Corruption, barriers to entry, regulatory environments that favor large established corporations and create obstacles for smaller businesses, security of private property and intellectual property, all of these things play very important roles.

A robust research and development establishment is also very important. A world may have the industrial base to manufacture certain goods, but a research and development base is a different thing. Companies or governments have to be willing to fund R&D for years before it shows profitable results. It requires labs and a culture which rewards a degree of experimentation rather than risk aversion. Another cultural requirement is a culture of merit, where scientists, managers, and experts get their positions based on professional competence rather than political connections or nepotism. Freedom of information is another big one, so scientific information and technological processes are shared rather than hoarded.

Infrastructure is another big one. Transportation networks, power, water, etc. need to be able to support industrial development, and their costs have to be reasonable. And the availability of capital, in the form of loans, etc. which allow businesses to keep operating until they sell their goods.
 
I think fabricators (replicators, star trek food thingies) really throw it out the window.

Agreed. They're all just magic. It's like a shorthand, an abstraction, and thinking stops. Star Trek doesn't even bear thinking about. You can beam molecules together in the replicator every time you want something, beam Guinness directly into your mouth, beam fat out of your body from all those tendies and fries you beamed into your mouth, and on and on with the silliness.

Fabricators will need feedstock of at least equal mass to what they are building, and they will need different feedstock for every different material they'll use in the finished product. Even if something is a nanoscale fabricator, it will need feedstock of every different element in what it's building.

Yup, one of those very large contradictory pieces of information about the setting, where a thing makes sense, but leads to a lot of very large problematic questions when you think about it too long

So true, so true.
 
Traveller has a nasty tendency to introduce major technological innovations and then pretend nothing changes. Personal Energy Shields, Wafer Jacks, Fabricators, interstellar Ramscoops, and so on. Nothing wrong with any of these technologies, but they do have obvious effects on the way things work.

Obviously, the way to resolve it is to make Charted Space into *a* Traveller setting rather than *the* Traveller setting. Or to start revising Charted Space to account for all these techs that they want to add.
 
I think fabricators first showed up in Traveller in T4? T:NE was still doing "portable machine shops" and other mico factories, not any sort of fabricator. I don't recall any mention of them in CT or MT, either. The current version of the game says that we've had them all along, but it doesn't actually do anything about changing the setting to reflect that.
CT had Makers
 
Agreed. They're all just magic. It's like a shorthand, an abstraction, and thinking stops. Star Trek doesn't even bear thinking about. You can beam molecules together in the replicator every time you want something, beam Guinness directly into your mouth, beam fat out of your body from all those tendies and fries you beamed into your mouth, and on and on with the silliness.

Fabricators will need feedstock of at least equal mass to what they are building, and they will need different feedstock for every different material they'll use in the finished product. Even if something is a nanoscale fabricator, it will need feedstock of every different element in what it's building.



So true, so true.
I house rule fabricators need common/uncommon raw materials in a 4:1 ratio with the Cr value needing to equal half the cost of what is being fabricated. I got the idea from @MasterGwydion and loved it. That means expensive product needs lots and lots of raw materials that can be fed to it by something like an UNREP system so they all can be used in the fabricating timeline.
 
It would change trade too, IMO. Why bother shipping finished items when you can transport bulk fabricator feedstock for manufacturing at the destination?
We have print on demand currently and yet there is still a publishing industry. Not everything that makes perfect sense actually happens :)

I suspect that major industry players will have a subsidiary in each major system and even on a TL8 planet there might be TL15 manufacturing facilities producing TL12+ goods for local consumption. Not everyone will have access to the new hotness and there may even be social reasons why the old TL8 (or lower version is preferred).

TL is a number assigned by the ISS to represent the system (as perceived by the empire). As with any government metric it might well be a half-truth.
 
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