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thoughts on TLs

spank

SOC-13
on of the thins that has alway bothered me about the TL scale is the way it "bunches up" in the mid 1900's for no apparent reason, so I have been trying to redesign the tl listing with a bit more spacing in this area.




tl 0 this is basically any form of technologly that must be at least "manufacured", hardend wooden spears, chipped stone implements, ect.

tl 1 the metal age the most of the defining feature of this TL is the mining and smelting of metals such as bronze, iron and early steels such as wootz steel that are dependent on existing ore deposits with the alloying element already in them.


tl 2 1400-1700 the last era is defined by the manufacture of steel by more complex processes, not reguiring the alloying elements to be present in the steel, also typical of this period are the development of the printing press, and gunpowder weapons. Firing mechanisms are generally limited to the matchlock, and wheelock.


tl 3 1700-1860 this TL is defined by the use of steam power and muzzle loading firearms ranging from the flintlock to the cap and ball.

tl 4 1860 1920 Tl 4 is characterized by the appearance of cartridge based firearms, and repeating firearms, wide spread steam based transport is widely available, electricity is finally harnessed in the form of electric lights and motors. Early internal combustion engines and automobiles apear.

tl 5 1920 1970 Tl 5 is characterized by the appearance of modern passenger aircraft, repeating arms fed from box magazines, the development of the jet engine, and the atom bomb, and early {chemical} rocketry.

tl 6 1970 2010 tl 6 can generally be described as the personal electronics age, computers enter the home, jet travel become the norm. organ transplants become common.

tl 7 2010 2050 Early interplanetary TL 7 is characterized by the begings of interstellar travel, propulsion moves from chemical rocket to ion type thrusters. Replacement organs become possible, vehicles are likely feuled by renewable energy of some form.

tl 8 2050 2100 interplanetary Nuclear rockets become common, as does fusion power. Replacement organs are generally available. Primative laser weapons are possible. Interplanetary colonization is likely.

tl-9 2100-



I think this iron out the TLs a bit, but it seems to glaze over some bits,
sometimes I toy with the idea of a decimal system.
 
Well, the problem with the TL scale bunching up is that tech went on such a rapid explosion in the mid-to-late-20th century. And, they were breakthroughs, not just incremental changes.

The microchip, jet engines, nuclear energy, space travel, etc. are major milestones that enabled other tech to move forward. Of course, everybody thought we would be living on mars by this time, too. (At least, back in the 70's.)
 
Well, the problem with the TL scale bunching up is that tech went on such a rapid explosion in the mid-to-late-20th century. And, they were breakthroughs, not just incremental changes.

The microchip, jet engines, nuclear energy, space travel, etc. are major milestones that enabled other tech to move forward. Of course, everybody thought we would be living on mars by this time, too. (At least, back in the 70's.)

The thing is that it doesn't really seem likely that the technological status quo on a planet that is economically undeveloped for any reason will at all closely match any of the technological states that Earth happened to pass through in the course of inventing everything. Some things that were invented late require contemporary tech for their manufacture, but not all.

The simplest example is the germ theory of disease and the corresponding technology of keeping things clean to prevent spoilage and sepsis. This couldn't be discovered until the invention of the microscope, which depended on the invention of non-fogging clear glass etc. etc. But you don't need to maintain microscopy to remember to wash your hands, boil your water, and keep wounds clean. Necessarily invented as part of Traveller TL4, asepsis and even Pasteurisation can be practiced without difficulty at TL 0.

My favourite example concerns cooking stoves. Back in the 80s a more-than-usually pragmatic charity hired a few teams of engineers to analyse the lives of the very poor, and the several teams separately reported that component of the very poor lifestyle that seemed to offer the best prospects for engineering improvement was gathering firewood, which imposed an inordinate cost (in terms of hours per day spent) considering the size of its role in daily life. The charity then engaged more engineers to address the problem of how to reduce the amount of time required to gather firewood, and these in their turn decided that the most cost-effective way of doing that would be to improve the thermodynamic efficiency of cooking stoves. Now, a traditional cooking stove for the very poor consisted of a pot resting on three rocks, and it was only 5% to 10% efficient at converting the chemical energy in the fuel into heat in the food. More teams of engineers were engaged, and these came up with three different designs of cooking stoves to be made from different materials: an earthenware one for the most basic conditions, designs incorporating materials such as sheet steel from discarded kerosene tins for areas better endowed with resources. These designs were about 25% to 40% efficient, which means that they reduced the daily task of gathering firewood for a very poor family from 6–8 hours per day to less than a couple of hours per day. Since the cost of making these improved stoves was three to four man-hours (or, to be honest, woman-hours), the payoff time was less than one day. The charity then took the designs into poor communities in Indian, sub-Saharan Africa, and south-east Asia, made templates, and set groups of very poor people up in business making cooking stoves. The designs are now traditional, and the effect on the people's lives (and the reduction of the pressure they put on their wood resources) is permanent.

The thing that really impressed me about this event (after I had finished being gobsmacked by the implied benefit-to-cost ratio) was that the simplest stove, the all-earthenware model, was designed by rocket scientists, using a supercomputer, with mathematical models that were created for use in designing rocket nozzles. These stoves couldn't have been designed before something like TL7, but they can be made at TL0.

Planets in Traveller will not be low-tech because high-tech hain't been invented yet. They will be low tech because in some way or another they are too screwed up to make sophisticated products. They are likely, therefore, to produce some products that reflect a sophisticated understanding, but which can be made simply when you know how. Like clean hands and rocket-nozzle cookstoves.

Moving on to another issue, consider that backward planets in Traveller will be importing good from their high-tech neighbours. They won't import very much, but if you reflect that a single load of high-tech goods can be put into the most critical alloctions, where their marginal effect is very high, even those few small consignments that a tramp trader brings in can have a huge effect. You shouldn't expect a TL4–5 planet in Traveller to lay trans-oceanic telegraph and telephone cables, which is something that Earth did at great expense at that stage. Even taking into account penal exchange rate effects, it is cheaper to import a few obsolete (TL8 or TL 9) communications satellites and ask the tramp who delivers them to place them in orbit than it would be to string a few thousand miles of waterproof cable.

Look at the effect mobile phones are having in very poor countries these days. Even taking into account that the handsets and the base stations and the cable and the exchanges have to be imported at a terms-of-trade disadvantage, these are much cheaper and more effective that the cable-to-house networks, bank branches &c. that they replace.

Finally, consider the fact that even in the poor parts of the world most food crops consist of varieties that were produced in the '50s and '60s by selective breeding, cunning hybridisation, and crude genetic engineering. (Yes, Dorothy, all your food is GM already, you can stop making a fuss about it.) Interstellar colonists are likely to bring with them crops and livestock consisting of the results of TL9 genetic engineering and organic design, if not better. They probably won't use crop rotation or even tilling, because all their crops will be deep-rooted perennials that fix their own nitrates, with genetically-engineered ants and earth-worms to aerate the soil. And the plants will probably be engineered to produce sophisticated materials, such as high-protein fruit, kelvar in their bast fibres, PVA pipes in their trunks, vaccines and antiretrovirals and all the pharmocoeia in various herbs and spices. These valuable crops and the analogous lifestock is unlikely to simply vanish just because a society loses the nous to make it anew.

The social effects of such legacies might be profound. Will there be, can there be, manorialism without annual crops and a high requirement for tillage? Low-tech worlds are likely to be very interesting. Earth's past seems like a poor model.
 
Finally, consider the fact that even in the poor parts of the world most food crops consist of varieties that were produced in the '50s and '60s by selective breeding, cunning hybridisation, and crude genetic engineering.

Side note:

I wouldn't consider dumping random seed in a nuclear reactor and then growing the mutants to be genetic engineering, even crude genetic engineering.

GE crops are a step forward from "nuclear mutant supercrops". At least you know what you are attempting.

If you think I am overstating the case, look into exactly how the current wheat crops were obtained - the strain that directly alleviated food shortages worldwide during the 60's,70's and 80's was made in this fashion.
 
I agree, Agemegos, I've put this idea forward in other threads. Earth history is a very poor model for TL. Hunter was trying to address this issue in a sticky thread somewhere.

One caveat, though; there may be some worlds that are naturally undeveloped - interdicted reservation worlds with a 'no interference' Prime Directive in force.

I'm interested in the cooking pot designs - could you forward me a link so I can check out how they differ from traditional designs? Cheers.

veltyen said:
If you think I am overstating the case, look into exactly how the current wheat crops were obtained - the strain that directly alleviated food shortages worldwide during the 60's,70's and 80's was made in this fashion.

I wasn't aware of that. It's one in the eye for the anti-nuclear movement. (just an observation, not a political comment).
 
Side note:

I wouldn't consider dumping random seed in a nuclear reactor and then growing the mutants to be genetic engineering, even crude genetic engineering.

GE crops are a step forward from "nuclear mutant supercrops". At least you know what you are attempting.

If you think I am overstating the case, look into exactly how the current wheat crops were obtained - the strain that directly alleviated food shortages worldwide during the 60's,70's and 80's was made in this fashion.

I agree with you. The crops that we all eat were created by using radiation and mutagenic chemicals to make random mutations in hundreds of thousands of seeds, then choosing the ones that looked valuable and in-breeding them to fix the traits, then cross-breeding with other mutant stains, then in-breeding again, and so forth. This being the case, I can't get hot under the collar about carefully inserting genes of known effect.
 
I'm interested in the cooking pot designs - could you forward me a link so I can check out how they differ from traditional designs?

Sorry, no. I read about it in an article in Scientific American back when I used to subscribe, probably in the 'Eighties. Try a research library with a Sci Am cumulative index.

The traditional cooking stove is to arrange three rocks on an equilateral triangle. build a fire between them, and rest a pot on the rocks.

The simplest of the engineering designs was a slightly waisted cylinder of thick earthenware, with a stokehole/air inlet at one side at the bottom, and three lugs in the mouth o it to rest a pot on. It was designed to lead a draft of hot air from the fire up the sides of the pot while preventing heat from escaping around the sides. The others were more sophisticated, but required sheet metal for their construction.
 
I wasn't aware of that. It's one in the eye for the anti-nuclear movement.
I wouldn't have said so. Of the wheat, rice &c. that was irradiated thus, most died, much was sterilised, and most of the survivors borne sickly mutant offspring. It was only a few grains out of tons of seed that showed valuable mutations such as dwarfism, seeds that wouldn't break off the head, etc. Even those aren't good for the wheat except that they make people look after it.

It is, however, a sloppy one right in the eye for the people who are campaigning against GM crops.
 
How many out there use the idea of differential TL, i.e. for each different catagory of technology, the local TL on the planet is different with the listed TL in the UPP being the average of these TL?

Example: In power technologies the planet can build fusion reactors, but is still using commodore 64 equivalents for computing.
 
I agree, Agemegos, I've put this idea forward in other threads. Earth history is a very poor model for TL. Hunter was trying to address this issue in a sticky thread somewhere.

One caveat, though; there may be some worlds that are naturally undeveloped - interdicted reservation worlds with a 'no interference' Prime Directive in force.

I'm interested in the cooking pot designs - could you forward me a link so I can check out how they differ from traditional designs? Cheers.

A similar project (refrigerators rather then cookers) is described at

http://www.rolexawards.com/laureates/laureate-6-bah_abba.html

A similar concept, using modern design and science and backporting it to lower technology to alleviate waste.
 
How many out there use the idea of differential TL, i.e. for each different catagory of technology, the local TL on the planet is different with the listed TL in the UPP being the average of these TL?
I don't actually use this idea, but i have been kicking it around, CT lists TL in a number of different areas, and i can certainly see that a civilivation might, for what ever reason make more advances in some areas than others.
 
Since differential TL was made canonical for MT by WBH, yes, I've used it. Often.

My take on TL: it is the locally maintainable without imports tech. ANything above requires imports for maintenance (and is likely to cost above base, even if available), as most places won't ship goods where they are not maintainable unless said goods have been ordered.
 
These valuable crops and the analogous lifestock is unlikely to simply vanish just because a society loses the nous to make it anew.

I'd actually like to present a counter-argument to this assertion. If you turn genes into a profit-making product like this, it is directly against the interests of the companies that developed to make the flora and fauna able to propagate naturally. Especially in a place like the TI where corporation exploitation of the most cynical and machevellian sort is not only tolerated but encouraged by the TI and safeguarded by its Navy and Marines as its profits flow directly into the hands of the nobles and the Imperial family, the "supply-driven" seed/embryo business model would not be quashed (we are talking about the same TI that tolerates "trade wars" and intraplanetary wars because all that violence and killing is a good method of letting off societal steam).

I would like to humbly give this scenario: In the TI, a company that develops seed for some super-grain that it grown on Agricultural worlds throughout the TI would engineer the crops so that the seeds of the grain are sterile in some way, or perhaps the mutations aren't propagated to the next generation without buying more seed grain from the company or perhaps spraying some special chemical solution that would "activate" the latent genes. This chemical solution wouldn't be easy to duplicate to prevent locally-made (or competitor-made) equivalents from cutting into their lucrative monopoly. The entire reasoning for this would simply be to secure future markets for the company's seed grain. If the farmers (and Agricorps) were seeing far better returns that far outweigh the costs of having to buy new seed grain every year, it's entirely possible in a societal crash, after a single season, your staple grains no longer exist. I would think this would be the face of medium and large scale agri-business in the TI.

Or perhaps in another case, we might have a case where the company wants to maximize profits by making this super-wheat more useful and profitable to the farmers. So indeed the stalks might contain some valuable polymers or something (nevermind the disastrous consequences if the local bacteria adapted to feed on it). Given that all of the high TL agriworlds have automated threshing machines, what happens if the stalks are extremely tough and essentially impossible for even a strong human with a scythe to make much headway on? It'd prevent deer or whatever from gnawing on the crops, while your powerful automated threshers would have no problem shredding the stalks. Win-win for you, lose-lose for the deer.

Perhaps on dozens of worlds there's dozens of different varities of insects and molds and such that might blight this super-wheat. So they genetically engineer it so that the wheat actually develops a kind of case or a tough, inedible husk around it to protect it against predators. Or perhaps they take a page from the Vilani and make it so that it inedible until the grain is treated in some way. Using the first idea, the husk quickly breaks down if exposed to a special chemical (again sold by the company that sold you the seeds) or treated in some other way that doesn't occur naturally to lessen the chance that some natural phenomenon will render your crop vulnerable. This sort of situation would be a win-win situation for everyone betting on the grain harvest (futures), the farmers who have to worry less about crop loss, and the company that manufactures the special enzyme bath necessary to soften and break open the husks to access the seeds. So even if the seeds grow "wild", if the society that remains cannot cheaply reproduce this method (entirely possible in a situation where the TL12 harvesting machines break down or shipments of the enzyme no longer show up), you can literally have populations of farmers starving, yet surrounded by the bounty of their work.

However, as these crop plants were deliberately introduced to the worlds, there are no "less efficient" wild varieties present on the world for people to fall back on (well, let's assume there actually is - people perhaps growing "archaic" varieties because they taste better when made into beer or something - there still wouldn't be enough to feed significant populations). Indeed, the people starving might know exactly what needs to be done make their crops viably edible, but wouldn't have the "primitive TL" stuff to fall back on to do it. Farming machinery operators who are used to just replacing broken parts of their machines and so on aren't going to have the plans for more primitive but easier to manufacture threshers available.

In my TNE variant universe, stuff like this actually is what led to a lot of the widespread devastation and human die-offs even on agricultural planets. Specially engineered plants, normally so very much more hardy, productive, and nearly maintenance-free turn viciously back on their growers when the complex net of interdependence suddenly (or even gradually) fails. For those not playing in a TNE universe, this scenario could easily be adapted for a contributing factor of the Long Night.
 
A white paper on permanent settlements in space suggested that any long term occupation effort would require the ability to produce 'essentials' locally. Specialty goods could be imported, but everyday essentials must be made locally. They defined 'essentials' as FOOD, CLOTHING, SHELTER, and BASIC TOOLS.

Planetary TL could also represent the local production of everyday 'essential' goods. Thus the items most commonly encountered and available.
 
Epicenter00, you've given me yet another reason to play TNE - your ideas could add another layer of horror and tragedy to this setting.
 
I think Tech Levels 0 through 7 work just fine:
Digit Description
0 Stone Age. Primitive
1 Bronze Age to Middle Ages
2 Circa 1400 to 1699
3 Circa 1700 to 1859
4 Circa 1860 to 1899
5 Circa 1900 to 1939
6 Circa 1940 to 1969
7 Circa 1970 to 1979

Its the "future" tech levels that are somewhat speculative. By future I mean from the point of view of the 1970s which was when Traveller was first published.

Suppose we went by the original Traveller Material with regards to dates:
8 Circa 1980 to 1989
9 Circa 1990 to 1999
And lets add in one more since we're almost through the first decade of the 21st century
A Circa 2000 to 2009

Where does that leave us?

Digit Description -------------- Personal
0 Stone Age. Primitive --------club, cudgel, spear
1 Bronze Age to Middle Ages - dagger, pike, sword
2 Circa 1400 to 1699 -------- halberd, matchlock, broadsword
3 Circa 1700 to 1859 -------- foil, cutlass, flintlock, blade, bayonet
4 Circa 1860 to 1899 -------- revolver, shotgun
5 Circa 1900 to 1939 -------- carbine, rifle, pistol, SMG
6 Circa 1940 to 1969 -------- auto rifle, light machine gun
7 Circa 1970 to 1979 -------- body pistol
8 Circa 1980 to 1989 -------- personnal handheld anti-aircraft missile launcher
9 Circa 1990 to 1999 -------- tasers
A Circa 2000 to 2009 -------- unmanned aerial drones

Digit Description -------------- Heavy
0 Stone Age. Primitive -------
1 Bronze Age to Middle Ages - catapult
2 Circa 1400 to 1699 -------- cannon
3 Circa 1700 to 1859 --------
4 Circa 1860 to 1899 -------- artillery
5 Circa 1900 to 1939 -------- sandcasters, mortars
6 Circa 1940 to 1969 -------- missiles, missile launchers
7 Circa 1970 to 1979 -------- grenade launcher
8 Circa 1980 to 1989 -------- heat-seeking artillery rounds
9 Circa 1990 to 1999 -------- laser-guided munitions
A Circa 2000 to 2009 -------- GPS-Guided munitions

Digit Description -------------- Computers
0 Stone Age. Primitive -------
1 Bronze Age to Middle Ages - abacus
2 Circa 1400 to 1699 --------
3 Circa 1700 to 1859 --------
4 Circa 1860 to 1899 -------- mechanical adding machines
5 Circa 1900 to 1939 -------- electric calculators, encryption machines
6 Circa 1940 to 1969 -------- Model/1 electronic computers, vacuum tubes, transistors, Model/1 bis
7 Circa 1970 to 1979 -------- Model/2, Model/2 bis, hand calculator
8 Circa 1980 to 1989 -------- Model/3, Model/3 bis, desk top computer
9 Circa 1990 to 1999 -------- Model/4, Model/4 bis, lap top computer
A Circa 2000 to 2009 -------- Model/5, Model/5 bis, PDA (Hand Computer)
B Circa 2010 to 2019 -------- Model/6, Model/6 bis, embedded wearable computer, VR Tech
C Circa 2020 to 2029 -------- Model/7, Model/7 bis, implanted computer, intelligent agent, artificial intelligence
 
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In my TNE variant universe, stuff like this actually is what led to a lot of the widespread devastation and human die-offs even on agricultural planets. Specially engineered plants, normally so very much more hardy, productive, and nearly maintenance-free turn viciously back on their growers when the complex net of interdependence suddenly (or even gradually) fails. For those not playing in a TNE universe, this scenario could easily be adapted for a contributing factor of the Long Night.

I had similar thoughts, partly regarding this, and partly how offworld trade might retard a societies tl progress. An extreme scenario might be a world with tech in the mid 1950's, but no manufacturing. they could be in theory almost completely dependant on the goods being brought in from offworld.
If a world had a GPS system there would be less call to develop clocks, if they could buy off world firearms and autos, would mass production ever really develop?
One or two antimissle systems in and around London could have been a serious deterent to the germany ever developing missile technology.
 
When I first saw the differential TL (and all the other expanded goodies) in WBH I was thrilled.

But after generating a couple detailed worlds, and having PCs simply go somewhere else or ignore the details, the thrill was gone. It was an unnecessary complication. I just wing it.

The basic TL (and LL) is what the PCs can easily buy for book prices at the starport or startown. Anything else will require searching it out, usually beyond the "safety" of the extrality line, and haggling for it, usually paying several times the book price, even more if illegal (and you have to smuggle it through the extrality line).

The whole UWP is a simple shorthand system for Traveller's provided by the TAS. Members get updates and details, non-members make do with old data and basic data. That's all. It's not some absolute definitive guide to the world or complete survey information by the IISS :)
 
I'd actually like to present a counter-argument to this assertion. If you turn genes into a profit-making product like this, it is directly against the interests of the companies that developed to make the flora and fauna able to propagate naturally.

That consideration was certainly cogent in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. That was partly because creating a new strain by the crude methods of the time was a huge undertaking that involved scores of crop scientists examining hundreds of thousands of mutants to find valuable mutations, followed by plant breeding programs to fix the traits and further plant breeding programs to combine them into single strains. This took years not only for lots of scientists, but for a big experimental farm. Creating an improved strain was a huge investment, which no-one could afford except by raising money from investors. Also it was partly because it was actually simpler back then to produce two strains of breeding stock and effect the final combination of traits in a hybrid, which could be sold and not breed true.

Transgenic technology is much cheaper. A few grad students in a university teaching lab can create a transgenic organism during Spring Break. That puts miracle crops within the budget of open source movements, charities, philanthropists, and of colonising co-operatives that commission genetic engineering work for their collective use and the benefit of their posterity. Each genegineering work undertaken for a future Bill Gates, Save the Children Fund, Linux Foundation, or Oneida Colony is at least potentially and eventually a permanent addition to the genetic legacy of Humaniti.

Also, using transgenic techniques and future disciplines of organism design it is going to be simpler to produce a true-breeding strain: the technique of designing two strains that breed true to themselves and that hybridise to produce the commercial product is actually more complicated and difficult that way.

Over 11,000 worlds and several thousand years a huge number of charitable acts, philanthropic programs, advanced students' end-of-year projects and apprentice genegineer's master-pieces, open-source collaborations, and commissions to piece-workers from collectivist groups are going to produce a mind-boggling accumulation of non-commercial material. And it is all potentially permanent.

Finally, let's not forget the actions of collectivist societies. Imagine that Stalin had had advanced genetic engineering instead of Trofim Lysenko. His positive legacy might be open-source food for the poor instead of an array of stupidly ill-considered dams.
 
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How many out there use the idea of differential TL, i.e. for each different catagory of technology, the local TL on the planet is different with the listed TL in the UPP being the average of these TL?

I used to use it in the form suggested by ForeSight, since it is one of the outputs of the ForeSight star system generation procedure. But the more carefully I thought about interstellar trade, the more I came to realise that it didn't actually matter. High tech economies all specialise in something, which they export, and in return they import the rest of the tech suite. Planets with lower tech export stuff that isn't quite as valuable, and so they have to be more sparing with imports, using only very little of the cutting-edge stuff for which the terms of trade are bad, and importing cheaper stuff from other backward economies.

A planet's highest tech level determines what it specialises in, what it exports, therefore what it terms of trade it faces, therefore what its real exchange rate is, therefore the prices of imported goods in its economy. There is, basically, just one economic development level.
 
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