Low Tech vs Interstellar societies...

[Condottiere]

Which is why you have kids.

 

[kilemall]

What does that buy them locally? If you are buying a 1 million Cr grav harvester versus a 100,000 Cr TL 7 harvester is it worth ten times the cost? If local labor is cheap due to a lack of alternative jobs to agriculture, wouldn't the lower cost harvester plus cheap labor be a better deal?

Exports or not, sometimes better technology isn't the correct solution to a problem.

The fact that we can have nail guns doesn’t stop hammer and nails from use. The option is there and funded when it makes sense.

TL also means general items in use so apparently the locals are well off enough to broadly afford medical/transport/computer tech above our current level.

 

[bookwyrm]

What does that buy them locally? If you are buying a 1 million Cr grav harvester versus a 100,000 Cr TL 7 harvester is it worth ten times the cost? If local labor is cheap due to a lack of alternative jobs to agriculture, wouldn't the lower cost harvester plus cheap labor be a better deal?

Exports or not, sometimes better technology isn't the correct solution to a problem.

It seems like there is room for something in the middle here. I took a look online and found: IOF's and Corporate Businesses. On a Low Pop/Non Ind high tech world, the higher tech could cause the lower population to act like an Ag world, with most, if not all, of the population working for the IOF or CB that owns the farms on the world.

Traveller doesn't have a system for this to work, so it would be something like a house rule. I remember a scene in one of the Star Wars novels, where someone was on a Agri-world with many fields being harvested by robot harvester machines. Hadn't really thought about it until now, about how something might be possible or necessary, like in a Traveller setting.

Going the other way, how much population would a low tech world need to have a viable off world agricultural presence, if they were part of an interstellar trading route?

 

[Krikkitone]

While a perfect justification for a lot of TL5 planets, I view something like a nonindustrial agricultural TL10 world with grav harvesters as a statement of economic export clout.

The planet has enough profitable exports to afford importing the good stuff, so we can expect one or more high value crops or dependent meats or animals and they are amenable to automated equipment, especially being a low pop world.

Or the high tech allows freshly harvested preservation that increases shipping value.

I think that shows up in the World Generation.. the 2 main determinants for TL are Population (ie local resources) and Starport (ie offworld resources). you get a TL by building it or importing it.