What's your goto tech?

[swordtart]

Print on demand does not produce the range of options that proper printing does. If you limit the effectiveness of makers to low grade results, then there would still be other kinds of industry needed. But that doesn't seem to be the intent of the Maker tech. Though it is not particularly clear what the limits, if any are, other than size.

I am happy to live in the uncertainty space to allow trade in actual goods to still exist.

 

[Sigtrygg]

This, this, this. If I want cyberpunk, I remember which hole I dropped it down.

I think cyberpunk is a sci fi future history that will never be in the real world, even after we invent all the tech. I'm looking forward to the Neuromancer TV series to see how they deal with it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I knew what you meant, but I was talking about it being more efficient to ship fabricator feedstock to different worlds rather than finished products, and I'm not sure how the publishing industry still existing despite print on demand relates.

The fabricator/maker will not produce to the same standard as a machine dedicated to the production of just one thing.

If you have a book printing industry on your world then you print it locally, if not you can fabricate a lesser standard or buy in high quality.

 

[Condottiere]

Artisanal.

 

[swordtart]

As another example consider the current 3d printing industry for minis.

In theory all we need is a decent resin printer and we can have all the figures we want. Let's say we want a single copy of that new mini. Sure it only costs pennies in resin, but:
We generally have to buy the stl to print and this is significantly more than the cost of the resin.
We have the faff of setting up the printer for a single mini.
You might well mess up your first copy as you tune the supports etc.
Some of the overhead costs (and we include labour costs in that) are the same whether we print 1 copy or 200 copies. With resin, it takes the same time (and probably to an extent power) to print 1 copy as it does to print many of them on the same build plate.
You have to amortise your capital costs against the savings against the total number of figures you make. If you only ever print 10 figures then it is likely those costs will swamp any savings. If you print 1000's then they will probably be covered.

So it is going to be cheaper per mini to print 1,000 of the same figure than print just one. Commercial enterprises can market 1000's of that same figure to many customers. There will therefore be a point where it is cheaper to buy the figure from a print shop than printing it yourself.

The same applies to shipping goods in from out-system. The shipping cost per ton is not huge compared to the value of most shipped commodities (and indeed the profit margins are higher with finished goods). Making 1000's of copies in a single plant before having to bear the costs of retooling/reprogramming/tuning/testing and the associated downtime means it is going to be more efficient to print centrally and distribute than print locally.

What constitutes locally is a matter of world building. On a planet with a low population there may not be enough demand for trade and whilst printing will be massively inefficient it may be the only game in town. With vast population you may have a large enough domestic market that printing on planet is entirely cost effective. There will a be a point in the middle somewhere however that printing locally should be more expensive than shipping in a wide variety of finished goods.

It is not even a case of a single point of change. If you import some finished goods, it will free up your fabricator capability for things that it is more efficient to print locally. This could vary over time.

Fabricators change the game for individuals but manufacturing is manufacturing and we might simply accept that the setting is like it is and thus fabricator technology means whatever it needs to in order to make that setting work and that we don't need to understand what is going on under the bonnet of every detail of a future fantasy. If your players are thinking of setting up in manufacturing industry then such details are important, but in most games it probably is less important than what the local name for coffee is.

 

[MasterGwydion]

It is quite difficult to keep these threads coherent when it strips the previous comments, but here goes.

My point was that we currently have a fabricator type industry presently with print on demand. The quality is good enough, the margins are good enough and there is no technology blocker so I think it is mature enough to use as a comparator (otherwise we are limited to speculation).

The point i was answering was that if you had fabs why would you ever ship actual goods when you can ship feedstock. My answer was intended to show that there are more reasons for people wanting things than their physical characteristics (e.g. a book from a bookstore vs the same book printed on demand).

Maybe you want to support a particular bookstore (a system imports physical products from another system to maintain a trade balance despite it being cheaper to import feedstock).
Maybe you prefer the binding on the commercial version (a system exports physical products with a slightly higher production value than goods generated from the standard licensed pattern).
Maybe you just want to support the publishing industry and not all books are available print on demand (your species requires a particular specification that is not available from standard licensed patterns and you don't have the technology to create your own patterns)
Maybe you are just a dinosaur who doesn't like this new fangled nonsense (fabricators Bah Humbug).
Maybe you are a collector of first editions (You are a collector of hand crafted weapons and a machine produced one just won't do).
Last time you had a print on demand book it fell apart and took forever to get a replacement (a system very familiar with fabricating goods might do a better job of producing them than your own system that is still getting to grips with it)

There will be different use cases, but just because you can do a thing with a magic machine, it doesn't mean that some people wont still prefer a hand made/pre made version and thus trade in objects rather than raw materials need not vanish in a post fabricator culture. It will probably reduce as most people will still be driven by a cost consideration than anything else, but many of the trade goods are not that specific. Common Consumables could be food feedstock powders, grain or actual manufactured consumables.

Yeah. I can see how having magic devices in your home that can do many types of calligraphy on demand (the standard inkjet or laser printer) would make people support their local calligrapher or book illuminator. I don't see Mongoose or anyone else for that matter having artists draw or paint their art in each and every book or having people copy each book by hand, as opposed to just making copies with a magic machine... I am sure they said the same thing about the printing press originally as well.

 

[MasterGwydion]

As another example consider the current 3d printing industry for minis.

In theory all we need is a decent resin printer and we can have all the figures we want. Let's say we want a single copy of that new mini. Sure it only costs pennies in resin, but:
We generally have to buy the stl to print and this is significantly more than the cost of the resin.
We have the faff of setting up the printer for a single mini.
You might well mess up your first copy as you tune the supports etc.
Some of the overhead costs (and we include labour costs in that) are the same whether we print 1 copy or 200 copies. With resin, it takes the same time (and probably to an extent power) to print 1 copy as it does to print many of them on the same build plate.
You have to amortise your capital costs against the savings against the total number of figures you make. If you only ever print 10 figures then it is likely those costs will swamp any savings. If you print 1000's then they will probably be covered.

So it is going to be cheaper per mini to print 1,000 of the same figure than print just one. Commercial enterprises can market 1000's of that same figure to many customers. There will therefore be a point where it is cheaper to buy the figure from a print shop than printing it yourself.

The same applies to shipping goods in from out-system. The shipping cost per ton is not huge compared to the value of most shipped commodities (and indeed the profit margins are higher with finished goods). Making 1000's of copies in a single plant before having to bear the costs of retooling/reprogramming/tuning/testing and the associated downtime means it is going to be more efficient to print centrally and distribute than print locally.

What constitutes locally is a matter of world building. On a planet with a low population there may not be enough demand for trade and whilst printing will be massively inefficient it may be the only game in town. With vast population you may have a large enough domestic market that printing on planet is entirely cost effective. There will a be a point in the middle somewhere however that printing locally should be more expensive than shipping in a wide variety of finished goods.

It is not even a case of a single point of change. If you import some finished goods, it will free up your fabricator capability for things that it is more efficient to print locally. This could vary over time.

Fabricators change the game for individuals but manufacturing is manufacturing and we might simply accept that the setting is like it is and thus fabricator technology means whatever it needs to in order to make that setting work and that we don't need to understand what is going on under the bonnet of every detail of a future fantasy. If your players are thinking of setting up in manufacturing industry then such details are important, but in most games it probably is less important than what the local name for coffee is.

I agree with this entirely.

 

[actionman]

My point was that we currently have a fabricator type industry presently with print on demand.

That's where I got confused. When you mentioned PoD, you meant fabricator type capability, but I read that as custom small scale publishing vs. large scale mass publishing.

 

[actionman]

As another example consider the current 3d printing industry for minis.

Thanks for this excellent example.

 

[swordtart]

That's where I got confused. When you mentioned PoD, you meant fabricator type capability, but I read that as custom small scale publishing vs. large scale mass publishing.

Yes, it all made perfect sense in my head when I wrote it, but reading it from outside my head it could have been clearer

 

[Vormaerin]

If fabricators are just 3d printers writ large, that is one thing. They are not that useful and don't make a huge difference. Distinguishing between them and a machine shop is basically flavor text. On the other hand, much of the commentary about how trade would be impacted derived from certain posters saying industrial capacity would be easy to plant on worlds because makers are far more capable than that. If that is not true, of course the speculation resulting from those statements would not follow.

Like many things about how future tech works, we don't actually know. There is basically no examples in the game books or the fiction of how they are actually used. Makers are another of those techs that are just dropped into the setting and do nothing. So everyone has to guess what impact they'll actually have.

Charted Space was designed without them. It assumes that actual factories do most of the work of producing goods and that said factories are highly polluting (which is why industrial worlds have to have a tainted or otherwise undesirable atmosphere). Then Makers/fabricators were introduced. Nothing changed about the setting, so the implication is that they are not that useful. On the other hand, if you think a TL 12+ maker should be something more than a TL 8 3d printer, that makes no sense.

Par for the course for Traveller.

 

[swordtart]

I think it all stemmed from the idea that if TL15 knowledge is available universally and the equipment to produce it is easily transportable, why are all systems not TL15.

I guess we could be flippant and say that the real world could have universal technology but doesn't due to various geo-political factors and so who is to say the worlds of the future are not similarly hampered.

One man's technology is another man's barbarism. The romans considered the barbarians uncivilised as they didn't have the benefit of modern technology. Modern classicists consider people who rely on technology such as AI to be uncivilised as they have lost the human in the machinery.

It's all madness I tell ye!

 

[actionman]

Yes, it all made perfect sense in my head when I wrote it, but reading it from outside my head it could have been clearer

It happens to all of us at one point or another.

Fabricators change the game for individuals but manufacturing is manufacturing and we might simply accept that the setting is like it is and thus fabricator technology means whatever it needs to in order to make that setting work and that we don't need to understand what is going on under the bonnet of every detail of a future fantasy. If your players are thinking of setting up in manufacturing industry then such details are important, but in most games it probably is less important than what the local name for coffee is.

Understanding details like this is important to me for a couple of reasons. First it informs me as to how to present a particular location to the players, what is available to them there, which cargoes are in demand and which are not, things like that. It tells me what the name of the local coffee is, or even if there is local coffee, or if it's all imported by Guild transport from the Coffee Paradise Worlds of the Tleilaxu Coffee Masters. The second is that I enjoy things much more when they make sense. By that I mean the internal logic of a well thought out setting appeals to me intellectually, just as the drama of a movie or novel or setting or adventure can appeal to me emotionally. For example, I despise the Harry Potter books, but I admire JK Rowling's structuring of multiple storylines and subplots across the whole series. It is beautiful in itself, like a suspension bridge that is also a work of art. To know how the setting works is so much more fulfilling to me than simply saying well there's an astroburgers because there are burger chains irl, or there's a space coffee shop because there's starbucks irl, or there's a Brubek's because that's so fun-nay, or there's space walmart because there's walmart irl, and the players need to buy stuff so there's a space feed store that just happens to carry tree kraken kibble and spaceship parts and gauss rifle ammo, and there just happens to be a nice food court that just happens to have a patron waiting for scruffy player characters to hire for this session's adventure.

In another thread I discussed sandboxing with other posters, and understanding why different elements of the setting work the way they do, and having the different elements of the setting work instead of just magically existing, is vitally important to sandboxing. Once these elements are understood by the players and their characters, it allows them to interact with the setting on their own initiative instead of waiting for the ref to spoon feed them. Spoon feeding has to happen when the players are bound by a setting that doesn't have an underlying logic, because they have to wait for the ref to magic an adventure or situation into existence. Without the underlying logic of an economy, political situation, etc., there's no cause and effect, there are no sensible motivations for npc's to do what they do, and expecting players to come up with their own adventures is like expecting them to feed themselves when their hands are bound.

 

[actionman]

It assumes that actual factories do most of the work of producing goods and that said factories are highly polluting (which is why industrial worlds have to have a tainted or otherwise undesirable atmosphere).

I know, as if TL10 to 15 societies couldn't figure out a way to deal with pollution. Of course they may not care, if there's no biosphere on some barren rockball.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I think it all stemmed from the idea that if TL15 knowledge is available universally and the equipment to produce it is easily transportable, why are all systems not TL15.

Because the Imperium doesn't want them to be.

It's all madness I tell ye!

It is to maintain control.

 

[Geir]

I think it all stemmed from the idea that if TL15 knowledge is available universally and the equipment to produce it is easily transportable, why are all systems not TL15.

Part of why I set the fabricators to only make TL-2 (until TL17 and then you can have your Star Trek post-scarcity environment, where everyone is happy all of the time*)

It's all madness I tell ye!

And the worlds are not all TL13, because you need spare parts and licenses for those TL15 fabs/makers/printers/magic boxes, and its priced so it's cheaper to just import the iPhones, er, various high tech items.


*Now with Less Zhodani Mind Control!!!

 

[swordtart]

Understanding details like this is important to me for a couple of reasons. First it informs me as to how to present a particular location to the players, what is available to them there, which cargoes are in demand and which are not, things like that. It tells me what the name of the local coffee is, or even if there is local coffee, or if it's all imported by Guild transport from the Coffee Paradise Worlds of the Tleilaxu Coffee Masters. The second is that I enjoy things much more when they make sense. By that I mean the internal logic of a well thought out setting appeals to me intellectually, just as the drama of a movie or novel or setting or adventure can appeal to me emotionally. For example, I despise the Harry Potter books, but I admire JK Rowling's structuring of multiple storylines and subplots across the whole series. It is beautiful in itself, like a suspension bridge that is also a work of art. To know how the setting works is so much more fulfilling to me than simply saying well there's an astroburgers because there are burger chains irl, or there's a space coffee shop because there's starbucks irl, or there's a Brubek's because that's so fun-nay, or there's space walmart because there's walmart irl, and the players need to buy stuff so there's a space feed store that just happens to carry tree kraken kibble and spaceship parts and gauss rifle ammo, and there just happens to be a nice food court that just happens to have a patron waiting for scruffy player characters to hire for this session's adventure.

In another thread I discussed sandboxing with other posters, and understanding why different elements of the setting work the way they do, and having the different elements of the setting work instead of just magically existing, is vitally important to sandboxing. Once these elements are understood by the players and their characters, it allows them to interact with the setting on their own initiative instead of waiting for the ref to spoon feed them. Spoon feeding has to happen when the players are bound by a setting that doesn't have an underlying logic, because they have to wait for the ref to magic an adventure or situation into existence. Without the underlying logic of an economy, political situation, etc., there's no cause and effect, there are no sensible motivations for npc's to do what they do, and expecting players to come up with their own adventures is like expecting them to feed themselves when their hands are bound.

I understand that need.

Whilst Space Starbucks may lack interest and seem like a cop out, it might accurately reflect nuances that would take too long to detail. I had to have a fast food joint as a drop in encounter in a game recently. It was in the second largest city on a non-aligned agricultural planet that was a parsec from the aspirant sub-sector capital. I went for McSwineys. It carried the right feel of a wholly inappropriate corporate imposition over an entire systems culture that would succeed even if people hated the idea of it. Players immediately understood what they would be encountering, what quality it would provide and even a rough cost in money and also how much it would infect their soul. It also meant I and they could riff of the kind of things the employees would know without me having to create a lookup table. I would have had to spend hours describing the macro economics of the world and the nearby empire to get that across if I hadn't used that simple short hand. The fact that I already have a head canon for McSwineys that an aggregation of Sweinske from Germany, Micky Ds and (of course elements from Harry Harrison) made it simpler to answer any questions beyond "Do we get fries with it?".

McSwineys isn't there because McDonalds exists in the real world, it is there because where there is no McDonald's something else fills the void and there seems to be a universal human need (or at least acceptance) for something like McDonalds to exist (a Platonic ideal form). Humans simply do what they can to manifest that ideal with local resources (be that physical objects or concepts). It may be rebadged and sometimes it will subvert the trope, but it won't be doing so just for set dressing. In star ports there is even more reason for there to be a carbon copy culture. They are the bleeding edge of the Empire. When the players get to Trexalon the differences will therefore be startling and the anti-imperial feeling will be palpable from the first time they order a drink in the bar. "We don't serve Carlstein* and we don't serve anyone who asks for Carlstein!"

I have been in campaigns where every step outside required hours of exposition just to work out what the hell was going on. It was interesting for a while but ultimately tiring and unsatisfying as I felt I had no agency. I couldn't predict what was going to happen and whilst that was fair enough for a player that had been in the game world for only tens of hours, my character lived there. He should have known most things.

I absolutely hate SF where you need to keep looking up how to pronounce the characters names. It destroys immersion. Nothing sounds worse than the constant reference to Centons in the 80's Battlestar Galactica TV series. They probably decided to change the time name to make it sound spacey, but in so doing destroyed my immersion entirely. The first time I heard it was in the context of saying "Give me a few Centons" or "They'll be here in Centons" and I instinctively knew that a Centon is a short space of time (maybe something like 100th of an hour) and sure enough minutes later the speaker follows through or the Cylons arrive and my idea of a Centon is cemented. Later someone else says "You should have been in bed Centons ago" and we suddenly have absolutely no idea what a Centon is supposed to be and it just jars every time we hear it thereafter. The word Centon now not only doesn't add anything but destroys immersion every time I hear it.

On the flipside sometimes the shortcuts add more than they remove and not everything needs to be bespoke.

*Brewed under licence by the Collace Brewery Corporation.

 

[swordtart]

Because the Imperium doesn't want them to be.

It is to maintain control.

Yep. I think my Empire is more like the Grey Empire in Andor. Not the shiny black aspirational evil empire in the original Star Wars films that was at least being bloody bold and resolute to achieve big things, but that sort of low grade matte grey evil that just grinds away at your soul one parking ticket at a time. An empire where it is likely your neighbour who dobs you in for an extra ration portion or a corner office and you will be condemned by an administrator who just can't be bothered to care about "customers" any more. An empire where the officials will be stupid but think they have it all figured out and they will destroy things in ignorance in pursuit of a pointless perk or to conform to rules that don't make any sense but are rules nonetheless.

Much like this world now I come to think about it, "and that's why I drink"

 

[Vormaerin]

These are the questions that SHOULD be answered when introducing new technology to the setting, especially wen retroactively applying it back for centuries. Is there even a common understanding of what makers/replicators do and how they work, much less what their role in Imperial society is?

If I walk up to a weapon maker and order a "Laser Pistol, Earlcorp G9, Hot pink" what am I going to get? A plastic replica of laser pistol? A basically functional one that melts after a few shots? A completely standard laser pistol with normal functionality?

Can I make socks and a laser pistol from the same replicator? Do I need different replicators or just different feedstock or is there a universal feedstock?

My clothing maker: can it make wool socks, cotton undies, denim jeans, and a silk shirt or is all it able to do is make plasticy jumpsuits? If the former, where is it located? Do I have one instead of a closet and dresser in my house and order up the day's outfit to print while I'm showering, then toss it in the recycling bin at night? Or is it in the back room of the local Gap? Or are we still running clothing factories, just with fabricators and robots? Can it match bespoke tailoring or not?

The Imperium is supposedly a free trade fanatic, but is it actually a cartel that operates on the old mercantilist principle of colony worlds that provide raw materials and core worlds that provide finished goods? Does it restrict these technologies like the Vilani did so that this stays in place? Are the Ine Givar the good guys, just trying to get the freedom to fab their own silk boxers instead of having to import them from Regina?

These are, imho, the kinds of questions that a setting should answer. They are far more important than which Duke won some space battle 500 years ago.

 

[Vormaerin]

I know, as if TL10 to 15 societies couldn't figure out a way to deal with pollution. Of course they may not care, if there's no biosphere on some barren rockball.

This is the same problem that Tech World has. It is, per flavor text, a giant world of robotic factories with a few human techs and an even smaller number of mad scientists/engineers running it. It isn't an industrial world because it doesn't have enough sentient carbon life forms.