No need to inflate the price. If the planet is anywhere near a planet that produces the modules already, you probably can count on the macro econ theory of comparative advantage to keep from having any such factory on a world with that small of a pop.
CT Only: Barbarian
- Thread starter Lapthorn
- Start date
No need to inflate the price. If the planet is anywhere near a planet that produces the modules already, you probably can count on the macro econ theory of comparative advantage to keep from having any such factory on a world with that small of a pop.
The nearest source of grav modules is about 20 parsecs away. Or perhaps only 10, I haven't entirely made up my mind yet.
Hans
10 would be fine (based on high component cost vs. its volume) but probably not 20.
Is that 'fine' as in 'importing grav modules from 10 parsecs away works fine for making grav vehicles affordable' or as in 'importing grav modules from 10 parsecs away works fine for making them too expensive to import in quantity'. Because it's the second version that I'm trying for.
Hans
You can get grav as low as KCr2 per Ton of thrust. Add electronic controls for KCr70, and a fuel cell, and at TL9, you can build a reasonably cheap grav grocery-getter.
Looking at the MT grav thrusters...
| Type | Min Thrust | min cost | min power | min mass |
| Std (TL 9) | 1 TT | KCr2 | 0.1 MW | 40kg |
| LP H-Grav (TL10) | 0.4 TT | KCr10 | 0.008 | 12kg |
| LP L-Grav (TL12) | 0.1 TT | KCr30 | 1kW | 2kg |
the real problem is getting the power system. Due to the minimums it's not until about TL 13 that fusion is practical. And fuel cells are fairly heavy...
Fine as in it doesn't greatly increase the price as we have discussed. If you want to make them too expensive to import just go with CT Book 2 price.
Works if you aren't using Striker construction elsewhere in your TU. If you are, you need to tweak some rules, most likely the base cost of the grav module - and keep in mind that it will also have some effect on the price of such things as tanks and APCs.
Book 4, Mercenaries? I'm not seeing anything there that alters Book 2 vehicle prices. Striker does - or rather, you can use those rules to design Book-2 vehicles that cost a fraction of what Book-2 charges. MegaTrav does also since it draws on Striker and conforms its vehicles to those rules.
Another consideration with grav vehicles is, while you can make them cheaper, the ground vehicle is cheaper still. Imperial Encyclopedia notwithstanding, I can put together a serviceable Striker-based car for around Cr1000, where a small fossil-fuel powered or fuel-cell powered bare-bones fly-by-eye grav vehicle comes in close to ten times that. If you want something fancy like avionics or terrain-following radar, the price can run into the KCr30 range. For the greater majority of people, a nice groundcar is quite adequate for getting to work and picking up the groceries.
Add to that the problem of learning to fly, or the added cost of controls that will deal with some of the complications for you. Moving in three dimensions in open space is inherently more complicated than moving in two along well-defined roads, unless you have features like radar to keep an eye on things around you and a computer to help you land without hitting too hard. For the consumer, the grav vehicle of the Imperial setting is likely to be in the same class as an off-road vehicle, a specialty vehicle that people with money buy when they want something for out of the ordinary travel.
Of course, that may not make them rare enough for the kind of milieu you might want.
What about reducing the raw materials available for the modules in that area? Rule that the rare earths (or whatever goes in your modules) are really scarce in that corner of the space and whenever a company did a feasibility study to see if it was worth building a factory there they found it just wasn't.
Just because a world has a certain TL can't always mean they can produce everything on the list there. If importing them in quantity is too expensive no one will import them. Alternate technology will be used instead.
Hovercraft are cool...and sadly underutilized once antigrav comes out at an amazingly low TL. Heavy lift lighter-than-air vehicles could be used for long distance travel and cargo. Trains, planes, automobiles. Automobiles that turn into planes. Jetpacks.
Just because a world has a certain TL can't always mean they can produce everything on the list there. If importing them in quantity is too expensive no one will import them. Alternate technology will be used instead.
Hovercraft are cool...and sadly underutilized once antigrav comes out at an amazingly low TL. Heavy lift lighter-than-air vehicles could be used for long distance travel and cargo. Trains, planes, automobiles. Automobiles that turn into planes. Jetpacks.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
50 million - that is the combined 1988 population of Canada (26,795,383), Australia (16,532,164), Ireland (~3,531,000), and New Zealand (3,345,200) - 50,203,747.
That should support a very good light-manufacturing base (ground cars), a moderate medium-manufacturing base (grav vehicles), and a minimal heavy-manufacturing base (oceanic & orbital cargo/passenger vehicles).
Manufacturing requires one of two things to flourish, either no completive imports or a working export market, look at the Aussie Auto Industry, Exports have bean dieing off for the past decade and a half, without the Export Market the factories close. Ford, GM, Toyota all will be printing more pink slips than building cars till they shut there doors in a bit over a years time.
out Clothing industry did the same more suddenly and with a shorter time frame a few years back, as has our preserved fruit & vegetable industries
out Clothing industry did the same more suddenly and with a shorter time frame a few years back, as has our preserved fruit & vegetable industries
It should. Unless there's some special economics of scale factor in the manufacture of cheap grav modules that makes a higher population base necessary. Which is what I said I was considering.
Hans
The rare earths would have to be pretty damn rare not to turn up in a system within five parsecs or so, wouldn't they? I wouldn't imagine the chances of that occurring would be particularly great.
Good point. Plus, Australia had an aircraft construction industry before a car industry. Markets need to be a certain size sure, but transport costs can be the significant factor that knocks imports on the head a times. That doesn't mean that better, higher-tech imported models wouldn't be available, just that the locals have something that's made domestically and works.
Plus, that doesn't take into account high-tech manufacturing techniques and equipment. Micro and nano-factories for certain tricky components.
Perhaps the gravs require nanoassembly techniques that can only be performed in a zero-G environment. That might at least limit it to planets with an active space industries sector. Or it could be a tools-to-build-the-tools-to-build-the-tools thing: perhaps something intrinsic to jump is hostile to the nanobots used in nanoassembly, so that any technology dependent on nanoassembly techniques has to be grown up locally rather than having the tools and equipment imported.
The auto industry piggybacks with a host of other manufacturers who specialize in the tools and parts needed by the auto industry. Building a new plant in a place where there's currently no manufacturing base means all of that has to be imported, which is something the corporations consider when weighing the comparative advantages and disadvantages of a new locale. Such lack of infrastructure would also hinder a start-up that chose to open up shop away from the usual manufacturing hubs. It could be that building a grav module is likewise something that cannot be done by one company: you need one company skilled in producing and programming nanoassemblers, another skilled in producing gravitically compressed materials, another skilled in production of nanocircuit chips, another skilled in making nano-layed superconductor power delivery nets, and so forth, and so forth, so that the company building the modules (in orbit) has someone from whom it can order the needed tools and parts.
A combination of such hurdles could mean that, short of a major push to build the entire web of infrastructure needed by a given company, the industry won't exist on a particular world regardless of the local tech level until the infrastructure of companion industries needed by it has had a chance to develop naturally in the course of serving other needs.
Couldn't this be done with a grav system on-planet that creates a zero-g environment in part of a factory? Saves one going into space doesn't it?
o:Man, you lot got distracted by grav-cars. Separate thread much? 
I still say that you could use this as justification for a TL-2, Iron-Age or Medieval, or even Renaissance, culture that fouls up adventurers with bureaucracy.
And have a run-in with bureacrats who have no access to computers.
"I'm sorry, my off-world bretheren from between the stars, but we have to send the request to allow you to use the lake to refuel to the Court. And as you know, that takes a horse to courier it all the way. That'll take weeks."
"But sir, we have a grav-truck that can make the journey in a few -"
"IT. IS. COURIERED. BY! HORSE!!!"
I still say that you could use this as justification for a TL-2, Iron-Age or Medieval, or even Renaissance, culture that fouls up adventurers with bureaucracy.
And have a run-in with bureacrats who have no access to computers.
"I'm sorry, my off-world bretheren from between the stars, but we have to send the request to allow you to use the lake to refuel to the Court. And as you know, that takes a horse to courier it all the way. That'll take weeks."
"But sir, we have a grav-truck that can make the journey in a few -"
"IT. IS. COURIERED. BY! HORSE!!!"
Hold the snark, bud.
"Rare earths" are not called that because they are rare, per se. It is, however, difficult and expensive to mine and refine them because of their nature when found. On Earth lanthanides are not particularly rare at all, but they are classified as a rare earth. On other worlds maybe they are not so common at all, which has already been mentioned as a reason why some races could or could not develop jump drives, so why not the same thing for grav modules?
Because developing Grav tech isn't considered particularly difficult in the Trav universe like Developing Jump IS?
It doesn't have to be "difficult", just that when you consider why an otherwise easy technology to build is missing from a world it may be that a key component is missing, or in insufficient supply to warrant mass producing that technology. If you want to go that far, anyway. You can also just use referee fiat and say they don't use grav vehicles here because the local Teamsters won't allow it. It would force their members to buy expensive equipment that they can't afford and drive down wages or something.
Of course if you want to go by strictest holy writ and all then you are stuck frustrating yourself over not being able to apply your imagination to such details.
Of course if you want to go by strictest holy writ and all then you are stuck frustrating yourself over not being able to apply your imagination to such details.
I'm gonna try this again 'cuz the rest of you are acting like yer each Lady White Blade.
Man, you lot got distracted by grav-cars. Separate thread much?
Quote:
Originally Posted by timerover51
If you view Barbarians in the Imperium as residents of a low-tech level world, with MegaTraveller apparently listing at as Tech Level 3 and lower, which would roughly correspond to about early to mid-1800s, then you have a fairly wide range of possible not-so-standard Barbarian types in the Space: 1889 game. You would have gunpowder, steam locomotives, steamships, the beginning of petroleum technology, and a solid metal-processing industry available. Your so-called Barbarian could be an Alfred Nobel-type working to tame nitroglycerin. Dynamite dates from 1867, nitro from 1847. Percussion firearms became possible with the discovery of mercury fulminate in 1800.
If you take a look at Sprague De Camp's The Ancient Engineers, Hodge's Technology in the Ancient World, or Landels' Engineering in the Ancient World for starters, you could have a lot of fun with a non-traditional Barbarian.
I still say that you could use this as justification for a TL-2, Iron-Age or Medieval, or even Renaissance, culture that fouls up adventurers with bureaucracy.
And have a run-in with bureacrats who have no access to computers.
"I'm sorry, my off-world bretheren from between the stars, but we have to send the request to allow you to use the lake to refuel to the Court. And as you know, that takes a horse to courier it all the way. That'll take weeks."
"But sir, we have a grav-truck that can make the journey in a few -"
"IT. IS. COURIERED. BY! HORSE!!! That is the COURT APPOINTED way!"
Man, you lot got distracted by grav-cars. Separate thread much?
Quote:
Originally Posted by timerover51
If you view Barbarians in the Imperium as residents of a low-tech level world, with MegaTraveller apparently listing at as Tech Level 3 and lower, which would roughly correspond to about early to mid-1800s, then you have a fairly wide range of possible not-so-standard Barbarian types in the Space: 1889 game. You would have gunpowder, steam locomotives, steamships, the beginning of petroleum technology, and a solid metal-processing industry available. Your so-called Barbarian could be an Alfred Nobel-type working to tame nitroglycerin. Dynamite dates from 1867, nitro from 1847. Percussion firearms became possible with the discovery of mercury fulminate in 1800.
If you take a look at Sprague De Camp's The Ancient Engineers, Hodge's Technology in the Ancient World, or Landels' Engineering in the Ancient World for starters, you could have a lot of fun with a non-traditional Barbarian.
I still say that you could use this as justification for a TL-2, Iron-Age or Medieval, or even Renaissance, culture that fouls up adventurers with bureaucracy.
And have a run-in with bureacrats who have no access to computers.
"I'm sorry, my off-world bretheren from between the stars, but we have to send the request to allow you to use the lake to refuel to the Court. And as you know, that takes a horse to courier it all the way. That'll take weeks."
"But sir, we have a grav-truck that can make the journey in a few -"
"IT. IS. COURIERED. BY! HORSE!!! That is the COURT APPOINTED way!"
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