Embracing the Virus?

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Judas:
As for my comments of the survival of the Virus in the "Vampire Fleets"... I read that they had robotic helpers, but this did not explain ships that were taken over by the virus that was transmitted by something that could not eventually help it. A ship that "Contracted" the Virus and all it had as "support" was the "machine" that infected it, which turns out to se something like an upload from a Medical computer... How is the ship going to survive?

Judas,

Seeing as you haven't been able to read Vampire Fleets yet I'll clue you in. Viral ships extort sophont slaves from defenseless worlds. VF didn't introduce the idea, it's suggested in other TNE materials(1), but VF did explain the process explicitly. You'd like the world of Promise.

... show that it is just another continuation of the Frankenstein complex that Traveller has been laboring under since its inception...

You've failed to realize that Virus was deliberately engineered to be a weapon and an insane weapon at that. Traveller has no more of a Frankenstein Complex than most sci-fi. Sir Aybee Wan Owen is part of Traveller too.

As I have pointed out in other posts, technology that becomes possible becomes imperitive, and considering that Traveller labored under the "Bigger is better" computer model for so long. Comsidering that Traveller completely ignored the current advances in AI technology, and the PC revolution in general...

It was written in 1977, what do you want? The PC revolution happened later and 'current' advances in AI technology are, well, current aren't they?

If you make the changes you want, you fundamentally change Traveller. You also make the older versions obsolete. Seeing how many people still use CT, MT, and the rest, you'd be alienating your customer base - just like TNE did.

I find it to be unreasonable that an AI did not emerge and then begin to self-imporve through recursive re-writing of its code.

Heres' another bit in VF you haven't read yet; the insane AIs Lucan's research team produced did self-improve through both 'evolution' and recursive writing. It's called 'Sandman' and it is the RC's newest friend. It and it's off-spring aboard RC warships will help the RC defeat the Solee Empire.

Just like any other intelligence, it is not likely that it will be automatically hostile unless it was created to be specifically thus...

Guess what? Virus was specifically designed to be 'automatically hostile'. It was a weapon, remember? Given the handicaps Lucan's researchers saddled it with, it's amazing that Virus was able to evolve into stable, 'Sandman'-type forms at all.

As I have said, this has been one of the major failings of the Traveller Melieu; that it has ignored the FACT that once a question has been asked... It WILL be answered no matter what prohibitions you place upon the exploration for that answer...

Seeing as you haven't read VF yet, I'd withhold my opinion if I were you.

I would recommend that people go and read the materials on the Singularity that are available from Raymond Kurzweil's web-site and the Singulairty Institute.

I'd recommend that you read more balanced materials about the 'singularity'. Kurzwell and the others are the equivalent of singularity 'fanboys'. Even the creator of the concept of 'singularity', Vernor Vinge, doesn't agree with most of the 'thinking' that has grown up around his idea. He's even retreated from a few of his own earlier claims.

The really unfortunate thing about these materials is that they effectively destroy the Traveller melieu as it has existed.

Oh, please. Traveller has a 2D universe, FTL travel, gravity control, psionics, stellar tables that don't match observed data, magic waste heat control, light-second range lasers, and dozens of other techno-goofs but the fact that it doesn't use post-1980 computer advances destroys it? Yeah, right.

Traveller doesn't use the latest theories, suppositions, and guesses(2) concerning AI? So what? If you want that, play Transhuman Space. It's very good.

(This is one of the major theories around AI research right now, that it may be impossible to create a fully formed AI that can recursively imporve itself unless it is embodied in a manner that allows it to interact with its environment at least as well as humaniti...

And I'll pay attention when they finally produce an AI. I may not be from Missouri, but you'll still have to show me.

For at least the last 35 years of my life, I've been told that 'fusion is ten years off' and that 'AIs are ten years off'. The weeks slide by, months pass, calendars change, and fusion and AIs are still 'tens years off'. Sometimes, like during the computer boom of the mid-80s, AI was even 'five years off'. I've been waiting since the Nixon Administration and I'm still waiting. I suspect you'll still be waiting after I'm dead.

We still don't understand human sentience and consciousness. In the 80s, PET, CAT, and MRI machines invalidated entire schools of brain theory as new as the late 70s. What future technologies will invalidate the theories the AI-Singularity 'fanboys' are banking on today? How can we model or recreate sentience and consciousness in another system if we don't understand our only example? How easily will we be able to recognize sentience and consciousness when or if we succeed?

We've got a very long way to go. Guesses about whayt we'll find when we get there are just that; guesses.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - The RCES 'Virus Contact Rules' were one example. 'No repairs', remember?

2 - And they are theories, suppositions, and guesses because we don't have any AIs yet, do we?

 

[TheEngineer]

Hmm, I have to agree with Bill.
Today AIs are just as fictional as jump drives are. As such its hard to argue about the right or wrong of their appearance in Traveller.

For myself, I never was very sure about the actual level of "intelligence" the different virus strains in TNE represent.
Considering the actions and behaviour described in the offical Traveller stuff, the strains not seemed to incorporate "advanced" intelligence, but merely a different and sometimes superior set of sensors and manipulative devices.
Perhaps the most striking ability, which appears as "intelligent" to a human being, is that one can talk with some virus descendents.

All in all, Virus in all its variations never appear dangerous to me because of a superior intelligence, but because of its superior ability to control and manipulate its technical environment in order to reach some goals.

Perhaps even Virus does not understand itself anymore completely, because of several thousand abstraction layers and millions of independant sub-processes....

Regards,

Mert

 

[darktalon]

Traveller doesn't use the latest theories, suppositions, and guesses(2) concerning AI? So what? If you want that, play Transhuman Space. It's very good.

That's exactly what I say to people who complain about Traveller computers. Complete with the Transhuman Space recommendation. Traveller is space opera, more like Star Trek than hard-science stuff like THS. (The bit in FFS1 where the authors dissed space opera was a jarring moment in an otherwise excellent book. My designs use thruster plates, available from TL-10 rather than the usual 11, because I really don't like ultra-tech ships having to watch their fuel more carefully than the Apollo missions did.) It makes more concessions to known science than some, but at its heart isn't intended to be a serious futurological study and shouldn't be treated as one.

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:

If you make the changes you want, you fundamentally change Traveller. You also make the older versions obsolete. Seeing how many people still use CT, MT, and the rest, you'd be alienating your customer base - just like TNE did.

I'd have to both disagree and agree. Incorporating AI wholescale into CT would certainly not be a canon TU but the rules I believe work just as well whether the sophont is made of circuits or cells. You'd have to chuck much of LBB 8 (which many have done before) and would need to decide how much computer power you need for sentience, but those are realitively minor rule tweaks IHMO. This is of course just my opinion, but I believe the beauty of the CT rules is their setting independence and their flexibility.
Frankly, I've always wondered if those high comp numbers 6+ might not be sentient a bit and just hiding it. I've also never seen CT's description of computers as counter to our understanding then or now. Drop the program loading thing (which based on comtemporary sci-fi of 1978 Star Trek and Star Wars was readily done and saved book keeping and use LBB 5

) and the computer ratings are very abstract and can be scaled to represent anything.

I will agree with you about customer alienation, e.g., regarding TNE, but for me it wasn't so much the setting change but the fundamentla rule changes especially with respect to starship construction. I can appreciate a desire for realism/hard sci-fi, but if a game is going to beat this drum it better (1) acurately simulate current tech levels, and (2) not violate conservation of energy if it is to call it's new drives more realistic.

Oh, please. Traveller has a 2D universe, FTL travel, gravity control, psionics, stellar tables that don't match observed data, magic waste heat control, light-second range lasers, and dozens of other techno-goofs but the fact that it doesn't use post-1980 computer advances destroys it? Yeah, right.

Good one. Yet I think the abstract nature of CT computers (with the caveat above) doesn't mean they conflict at all with post-1980s computer tech. Their vast size just means that the programs they need to run (e.g., jump) are truly massive, and maybe there is built in redundancy.

Traveller doesn't use the latest theories, suppositions, and guesses(2) concerning AI? So what? If you want that, play Transhuman Space. It's very good.

Again, I think a nicely abstracted system (which focuses on overall gear performance for example instead of so much on how it gets that performance) can evolve with the times without re-write, maybe just reinterpretation. I'm never one to recommend another game as I don't want to sound like if you can't play my way don't play at all. Not what's intended here I'm certain.

I'd say throw whatever AI you want in YTU and go with the logical consequences. In the end, the mechanics can be the same, your characters and NPCs may just have higher strength due to cybernetics and more skills. But if it helps the PCs it helps NPCs and in the end the mods are likely to cancel out. You might find the game play the same just with all sorts of extra stuff on your character sheets.

And I'll pay attention when they finally produce an AI......
For at least the last 35 years of my life, I've been told that 'fusion is ten years off' and that 'AIs are ten years off'. ...I've been waiting since the Nixon Administration and I'm still waiting. I suspect you'll still be waiting after I'm dead.

Here, here. I still recall illustrations of the moon colony we were to have by 2010, of course the space station by 2001, a totalitarian worl government by 1984 (maybe that one happened ) and flying cars. That's the one that gets me, no flying cars, where are my flying cars. I was promised flying cars.
The day we can get a robotic car to drive itself off-road or a program to really recognize speech I'll begin toi believe that AI is anywhere near possible in the real world. I think it likely we'll discover some way to improve the intelligence of animals (e.g. chimpanzees) through genetic manipulation long before we get computers to think like we do.

On an aside...if anything, CT is way behind in the biological sciences. A simple approach would be you undergo a genetic therapy program and your strength and endurance increase by +1.

edited: to remove some typos

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Ptah:
I'd have to both disagree and agree. Incorporating AI wholescale into CT would certainly not be a canon TU but the rules I believe work just as well whether the sophont is made of circuits or cells.

Ptah,

Very true.

The point I was trying to make is that CT and MT already incorporate AIs, just not in the fashion Judas wants them to do. There are the Cymbeline chips and Sir Aybee Wan Owen for instance. Judas' real complaint is that Traveller isn't transhuman enough.

Grousing about computer sizes from the starship construction rules is as old as the LBBs. Yet the same people who point to the 2bis always manage to overlook all the 'small' computers elsewhere in canon. CT and MT equipment lists, amber zones, and adventures give us a plethora powerful, small, portable devices. An entire LBB uses them too; Robots. There is explicit mention of AIs on many occasions, some adventures even feature AIs. So why the grumbling?

Well, there's grumbling because there isn't AI, personality uploads, netrunning, and all the other bits straight out of the 'Singularity' handbook, that's why. Of course, that's because Traveller isn't about the 'Singularity'. Complaining that Traveller doesn't 'address' the 'Singuarity' is like complaining En Garde doesn't address women's rights.; the game and the concept have nothing in common. It doesn't stop the complaints though.

Another of Judas' comments struck me as odd, almost bewilderingly odd. He wrote; Once a technology becomes possible, it becomes an imperative. That statement ignores historical and cultural realities to the such a degree that I was left shaking my head. I had to read it twice to make sure he had actually written it.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:

Complaining that Traveller doesn't 'address' the 'Singuarity' is like complaining En Garde doesn't address women's rights.; the game and the concept have nothing in common. It doesn't stop the complaints though.

Bill you must be old. Haven't seen an En Garde reference for quite some time, or know many who have heard of it. It's all about your club in En Garde certainly there must be a cross-dressing club somewhere.

I'll be sure to mention you in my next dispatch back to HQ.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Ptah:
Bill you must be old.

Ptah,

Guilty as charged.

Haven't seen an En Garde reference for quite some time, or know many who have heard of it.

I haven't seen a physical copy since the early 80s. There are plenty of copies on the net though.

I dredged up En Garde because I needed a RPG of Traveller's vintage. IIRC, En Garde is older than Traveller.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[darktalon]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
The point I was trying to make is that CT and MT already incorporate AIs, just not in the fashion Judas wants them to do. There are the Cymbeline chips and Sir Aybee Wan Owen for instance. Judas' real complaint is that Traveller isn't transhuman enough.

And CT Robots tells us that AI is buildable at TL-17. This tech level isn't as ridiculous as its statistical rarity (3 worlds in Charted Space including the robot planet in Antares) might suggest. The Imperium might only have been TL-15 generally with a few pockets of 16, but enough hints have been dropped that some of the research stations were working on TL-17 projects. Virus itself is arguably one. Arrival Vengeance hinted at rumours that Lucan was putting antimatter reactors (another TL-17 invention) on some of his ships, and in Traveller rumours are rarely wrong. Dave Nilsen seemed to suggest that Lucan carried on developing technology right through the years between the Collapse and the New Era, which would put the Black Curtain civilisation at TL-17 generally. Probably why the (TL-12) Coalition had to resort to whatever unspecified extreme measures they used to help defeat the BC. Of course this is all speculation.

What's clear is that any AI in Third Imperium-era Traveller will be very rare experimental projects, probably worthy of being the focus of an entire plot arc.

 

[epicenter00]

Darktalon and Judas - don't worry, in embracing the Virus, there's going to be some fascinating things going on IMTU regarding the entire philosphy of sentience and technology. Transhuman philosphy is very much taking hold in AI nations of the fringes around the core - the mixed AI/human communities are doing some stuff that's a flowering of the best of AI and human thought.

At least until the frothing anti-AI fanatics of the Island Stars on their Butlerian Jihad and the biological-hating AIs of the Core crush their beautiful, progressive little Al-Andalus in the fires of a Reconquesta in the 58th century...

---
Some total tangents:

Loren Wiseman makes a good point about advancing technology too much in the GURPS: Traveller BBB in the section about nanotech: (paraphrased) "You could make a good game around that but it wouldn't be the Traveller we know and love."

Though honestly, people complain about the size and weight of computers in Traveller (and they are a bit silly) but there's a lot of other problems with Traveller that are even worse (imho). Take for instance the totally arbitrary system of Tech Levels. The lower TLs take centuries or even millenia to go up one TL. The however, just in the latter half of the 20th century, society advances from TL6 to TL8, a whole three TLs in 50 years. Lower TLs are based around revolutions in tech. Higher TLs are based around evolutions in tech. By the increasing rate of TL advancement, by 2100, we should be living at like TL15-16.

In a lot of ways that doesn't suggest to me that we as players want the game to keep up with the times. It more suggests that we as players are bored of Traveller and need to move on. In my years of running RPGs, one of the biggest signs that you and your players are growing bored of a system is when everyone spends more time nitpicking the rules than playing the game.

In the case of computers, however, I don't think changing the weights and capacities of them really would do damage to the Traveller milleu, certainly less than introducing widespread use of nanotechnology or "transhuman" technology. But that might just be me rationalizing things.

---

Originally posted by darktalon
And CT Robots tells us that AI is buildable at TL-17.

Even in the 57th century, on TL16 worlds, scientists are still saying that AI is a mere 10 years away...

---

Originally posted by Ptah:
Don't believe him Epicenter! I personally know that Sandman-82025 did not reboot last night, he has been out every night this week at those AC/DC current bars. Shameful I know. Ask to check his system log and you'll see he's been slacking.

Yeah, yeah. I know. What can I say, Sandman is a stone cold playah, hanging out at the Energy Bar. He's always getting the hookups, too. I'm always warning him about it, too.

"Sandman, are you doing unprotected data exchanges with strange systems?"

"My honeys, they don't like firewalls. They like their I/O without it, they say it's more natural."

Being a guy, I figure he's the one who's telling them that. The whole "baby, but I love you" thing. Either way, he's going to catch a nasty ... Virus ... someday.

(hmm...the computer revolution is halted by the Virus, the Traveller version of AIDS for computers?)

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by darktalon:
What's clear is that any AI in Third Imperium-era Traveller will be very rare experimental projects, probably worthy of being the focus of an entire plot arc.

Or how about the first published adventure...

 

[Judas]

Bill, I have read a LOT of other authors that deal with topics that are associated with the "singulairty" including Ishiguru's books on the subject (although as my Japanese is not very good yet, they are still a struggle to read).

I have also read Minsky, Barthel, Bruce, Ferrarotti, Merle, Mond, du Plessis, and so many more that I cannot remember them all...

Vinge, Kurzweil and Minsky are probably what you would call "Fanboys" of the singulairty, and I do not believe in a single event that would occur like some of them do, but the effects of technology having consequences that we do not yet understand, or cannot predict is one that has kind of been ignored in Traveller...

Take Grav tech for instance... In CT it was just used for keeping people on the floors of starships, adn was said to be part of the sub-light drives of starships (CT did not have the "Fusion Torches" that later came into vogue as a result of things like Niven's works describing fusion plumes from some of his ships, but I digress)...

If you can control the direction of gravitic flow, and its strength (as would be necessary in inertial dampers) you can also use it to do MANY other things.. Like create shields that distort the incoming energy of weapons, or move projectiles from their paths. I know that eventually Repulsors were included to account for a portion of this, but it still did not address the basic fact that a standing gravitic wave is essentially a shield...

Other technology that was ignored: If you can create technology that can repair people (like Auto-Docs) then you are going to have a form of very weak AI that is operating that technology. Starship jump drives would need equivalently powerful computers that would far exceed the computational abilities of the human brain... if this was so, then there WOULD be someone who would have noticed that and immediately begun to model the human brian in one (which his autodoc could help with as it would probably have imaging equipment that would allow for the sensing of neurological activity down to sub-cellular levels (This is already possible with Very high resolution PET scans and SQUIDs (superconducting Quantum Interference Detectors), which will be able to trace a human thought from origination to effect VERY soon. Dr's William Peniston, and his accomplice have been working on these technologies for some time now, and have already been able to track neurological motor impulses from origin to the movement of the muscle is fair detail. another few orders of magnitude will allow then to see the specific neurons responsible for each area of every muscle and haptic neurological synapse)... Anyway, it is likely that your typical Med Lab in Traveller would have abilities similar to this, so modelling a human brain would not be impossible (BTW, the technology surrounding PET scans and SQUIDs has been advancing atthe same rate as other semi-conductor technologies, so it will only be a few more years until they have the resolution and computing power necessary to track all of the intereactions they need to begin to reverse engineer a brain)...

I am not implying that Traveller should be Transhuman space, but that the technologies should be more prevasive than they are... And Traveller DOES have a huge Frankenstein complex... The assumptions about robotic show a sublimated fear of non-human intelligences in the game...

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Judas:
... but the effects of technology having consequences that we do not yet understand, or cannot predict is one that has kind of been ignored in Traveller...

Judas,

Sure, that's the nature of speculation. Guttenberg couldn't and wouldn't be able to visualize all the changes his printing press wrought. Folks in the 60s thought we'd have Moon bases and flying cars. The future will always remain the "undiscovered country".

On the whole and relative to other attempts to visualize the future, I think Traveller is about average.

Take Grav tech for instance... In CT it was just used for keeping people on the floors of starships, adn was said to be part of the sub-light drives of starships (CT did not have the "Fusion Torches" that later came into vogue as a result of things like Niven's works describing fusion plumes from some of his ships, but I digress)...

Boy have you got that wrong! The first edition of High Guard had specific rules for using a vessel's maneuver drive as a weapon. The 'Kzinti Lesson' was part of Traveller from the very beginning.

Because the authors wanted a rules set people could use for many different settings, they were necessarily vague on many points. Pin down one technology with a description and you close lots of doors. It was MT that finally gave us thruster plates and that was more to prevent PCs from carving their names in Mora more than anything else.

If you can control the direction of gravitic flow, and its strength (as would be necessary in inertial dampers) you can also use it to do MANY other things.. Like create shields that distort the incoming energy of weapons...

Not if your gravitic control is limited to 6 gees you won't. Use the technology as actually presented and not as you think it is presented. CT's SotA and other adventures discuss encounters in which Traveller's gravitics cannot wholly negate or compensate for the local gravity field.

... or move projectiles from their paths. I know that eventually Repulsors were included to account for a portion of this, but it still did not address the basic fact that a standing gravitic wave is essentially a shield...

Repulsors work because a 6gee 'push' at a critical moment can throw a missiles aim off at a critical moment. Energy weapons is another matter. With gravitics limited to 6gees in Traveller, the multi-mega-gee 'sidewalls' of the the Honor-verse cannot exist.

Other technology that was ignored: If you can create technology that can repair people (like Auto-Docs)...

Show me a Niven-style auto-doc in Traveller. Chapter and verse please.

There are medical devices which are the direct descendents of the devices we use today. Many in my family are nurses. You'd be very surprised at the level automation in the health field. People even have insulin pumps that test blood sugar and release insulin as needed without outside intervention. They're all controlled by expert systems and all those devices will 'grow together' much as our computers, phones, TVs, DVD players, and whatnot are grwoing together. You don't need Hal to run medical devices, we do nicely now with expert systems.

Starship jump drives would need equivalently powerful computers that would far exceed the computational abilities of the human brain...

LOL! The calculator on my desk far exceeds the computational powers of the human brian! It can hold 12 digits numbers in its memory indefinitely and perform all sort of calculations with them in an eye blink. Is it an AI because of that?

... if this was so, then there WOULD be someone who would have noticed that and immediately begun to model the human brian in one...

Ah, the old "Computational Power Equals Sentience" argument. If we only build a big enough computer we could have an AI. Trouble is we build bigger computers every day and we never get any AIs. Try again.

(This is already possible with Very high resolution PET scans and SQUIDs (superconducting Quantum Interference Detectors), which will be able to trace a human thought from origination to effect VERY soon...

Yes, I'm aware of those devices. I'm also aware of your fixation with them thanks to the detection thread. If you remember, I already mentioned them up thread when I wrote about how the data they began to provide in the 80s destroyed large swaths of brain science from the 70s.

Dr's William Peniston, and his accomplice have been working on these technologies for some time now... (snip) ...only be a few more years until they have the resolution and computing power necessary to track all of the intereactions they need to begin to reverse engineer a brain)...

Yadda, yadda, yadda, just a few more years, yadda, yadda, and yadda. I've been hearing that old song for over 35 years now. They're going to have to show me before I fall for that line again.

I am not implying that Traveller should be Transhuman space, but that the technologies should be more prevasive than they are...

Technology is pervasive in Traveller. It's just not pervasive in the manner you believe it should be.

Look at 'robots'. You use routinely use devices everyday that people from a few decades back would goggle at. What's TiVo for instance? We'd say it a DVD/R system that 'merely' records video, strips out stuff we don't like, and plays it back on command. However, to someone from 1966 TiVo is a robot. It manages all those chores with just a few commands for its owners. We see it as an appliance, they see it as a robot.

To someone from 1906, your thermostat is a robot. It senses room temperature and then controls a heat pump to maintain the temperature band we tell it to do. Again, appliance or robot?

The people of the 57th Century move through a society littered with devices they view as appliances, devices we would call robots. What we in 2006 see as a robot, they in 5706 don't see at all. When was the last time you actually saw a telephone pole? Can you even guess how many there are in your neighborhood? Along your route to work? Do you even notice them at all? Even though they're all around you? Robots in 5706 are no more noticeable than telephone poles.

And, just because there are robots it doesn't automatically follow that there is a lot of AI. Robots don't need AI to do they jobs, they don't need it now and they won't need it then.

And Traveller DOES have a huge Frankenstein complex... The assumptions about robotic show a sublimated fear of non-human intelligences in the game...

Humans have a huge Frankenstein complex, Judas. Talk to an ob/gyn about the 'monster growing inside me' phase most pregnant women go through. It's part of our make-up. Slamming Traveller for reflecting the human condition is absurd. Slamming Traveller for not 'exploring' technologies in the way you assume they should be explored is absurd also. As this post has shown, your assumptions regarding Traveller are not entirely accurate; gravitics and auto-docs, so your complaints about their use are not entirely accurate either.

You want strong AI in a RPG? Play Transhuman Space.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[mike wightman]

Judas said:
(CT did not have the "Fusion Torches" that later came into vogue as a result of things like Niven's works describing fusion plumes from some of his ships, but I digress)...

Actually it did

The maneuver drives were defined in High Guard first edition as fusion rockets, and the fuel use and power plant requirement in the original version of CT implied reaction based drives as well.
It was MT that retconned them into reactionless thrusters.

If you can control the direction of gravitic flow, and its strength (as would be necessary in inertial dampers) you can also use it to do MANY other things.. Like create shields that distort the incoming energy of weapons, or move projectiles from their paths. I know that eventually Repulsors were included to account for a portion of this, but it still did not address the basic fact that a standing gravitic wave is essentially a shield...

The only trouble is that at Imperial TLs the maximum strngth of those fields is only 6G, not enough for a hard shield as you describe.
At higher TLs such things become possible - there are a couple of Ancient devices that can provide their used with a personal shield IIRC.
It's also an area of research for Imperial Research Stations

If you can create technology that can repair people (like Auto-Docs) then you are going to have a form of very weak AI that is operating that technology.

And again, such already exists in Traveller. In LBB8:Robots the low autonomous and high autonomous fundamental logic programs are what we would recognise as AI today.
The "sentient" programming of low AI and high AI fundamantal logic programs are what I would call the first steps towards artificial machine life, rather than just running a simulation of being alive.

The post Virus era that begins with TNE may well be the OTU's first steps towards a singularity like event.

But then AIs were used a lot earlier in the OTU's history.

AD 2129 Terran Navy uses artificially intelligent robots.

MT Imperial Encyclopedia.

 

[mike wightman]

Oops, cross posted with Bill.

Never mind

Bill,

about the autodoc, GT has them at GTL9 (called automeds) and T20 has them as TL13.
I don't think they appeared in MT, but I'd have to check that one.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
about the autodoc, GT has them at GTL9 (called automeds) and T20 has them as TL13.
I don't think they appeared in MT, but I'd have to check that one.

Sigg,

Thanks. I knew about those, but Judas mentions AI controlled, Niven-style auto-docs that operate wholly independent of instructions for months at a time. For instance, the latest 'Ringworld' book opens with Louis Wu spends months unattended in one. He later is completely 'recontructed' by an auto-doc from a 'protector' back into a 'breeder'.

The only auto-meds I knoew about in Traveller are a device in MT which is used in conjunction with medics and doctor and the others in GT and T20 which need some level of outside monitoring too.

The automeds in Traveller are of the "Hospital equipment, EMT, & RN In A Box" and "Wonderful Tool For Medics" variety while a Niven-style 'AI' autodocs are of the "Everything Including A Neurosurgeon & A Supply Dept." and "Don't Ever Need Medics Anymore" variety.

Judas seems to be confusing what is actually in Traveller with various sci-fi technologies he has read about elsewhere. Hence his 'complaints' about the supposed 'lack' of fusion torch drives and gravitic sidewalls.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[epicenter00]

For me, Traveller has always been a game about 'convienent realism.' The most archtypical example of this is that Imperial Marines still use cutlasses. While I don't think it's ever outright mentioned in any Traveller adventures (I could be wrong), there's a strong suggestion that these swords were used (at least in LBB Traveller) as weaponry during boarding actions, which suggests a very strong vein of "sword-and-blaster" space opera like the old "sparklers in the rear starship" Flash Gordon serials.

Traveller is litered with examples of ignored technology, technology that isn't very well-explored, and so forth. It's part of the game to keep the human element of "a brave crew of mostly (Caucasian) humans with a token showing of 'them thar colored folk and moon men' poking around the stars." You can attempt to move away from that unwritten basic paradigm (and most of us do in some way or another) but the further you move away from that, the more you're going to run into the so-called 'limitations' of Traveller.

I could be wrong on this, but I thought it was MT that also really introduced in force this whole 'grav plate' and 'reactionless thruster' stuff. The guys making TNE obviously didn't like wholesale slide towards "Star Wars/Trek" tech and put fuel back into the equatation with their (questionable to me) HEPLAR thrusters.

Is it just me or does the effiency difference between HEPLAR and fusion reactors (with HEPLAR literally converting a significant percentage of the mass directly to energy) in TNE/FF&S remind you of some world where you have ramjet airplanes that depend on coal-fired steam turbines to provide electrical power?

Autodocs I am pretty sure were in MT, which means they probably appeared in some DGP product or something. I know they're in TNE as well.

 

[darktalon]

I could be wrong on this, but I thought it was MT that also really introduced in force this whole 'grav plate' and 'reactionless thruster' stuff. The guys making TNE obviously didn't like wholesale slide towards "Star Wars/Trek" tech and put fuel back into the equatation with their (questionable to me) HEPLAR thrusters.

The problem with reactionless thrusters is that they violate conservation of energy and momentum. So they were replaced with HEPlaR, which don't actually solve the problem because they also violate conservation of energy and momentum but not so obviously (they're throwing fast stuff out of the ship's back end, but not enough of it or with enough energy). Classic had reactionless thrusters as well, but power plant fuel only lasted 4 weeks rather than a whole year.

However, IMTU I want (to quote FFS1) a no-hassle way of getting from A to B. To this end I use the thruster plates, and as I said before make them available from TL-10 rather than 11.

 

[mike wightman]

Classic Traveller didn't actual define how the maneuver drive worked - although a couple of pieces of evidence point to it being some sort of reaction drive.

First edition High Guard actually states that ships use fusion rockets for their maneuver drive.

 

[mike wightman]

Yes, the exhaust velocities are ridiculous. But what if the maneuver drive also reduces the inertial mass of the ship Considering all of the other magical things the CT maneuver drive does, not to mention the other related grav tech, this has always been a more reasonable way to tie up the loose ends.

So are you arguing that second edition High Guard is where the reactionless maneuver drive starts to make an appearance?

I'd have to agree with you.

The ship building and tech paradigm of High Guard is different to CT LBB2 though, and yet LBB2 drives may be used with HG designs (which mixes the tech paradigms nicely )

CT was revised in three different formats following the publication of HG2, and yet the authors never bothered to reconcile the TL chart in CT with HG, the drive potential table, or any of the weapon systems.

 

[jfetters]

Here is a question, which actually may belong in its own thread...

Has anyone tried to recreate vessels in the MT mold using the TNE FF&S? As I recall, the official tables list HEPLAR only, but I could be wrong (I don't have my copy accessible at the moment).

The reason I ask is that I'd like to try using MT vessels in a Brilliant Lances scenario, but I have no idea what is involved here, or whether it has been attempted before. I don't want to re-invent the wheel if I don't have to...