TL20 Milieu

[robject]

Vehicle Defenses at TL20

Something implied from the technological tree is that with the advent of personal defenses, there also comes vehicle-mount defenses.

So for example, Black Globes are TL16. Personal black globes are therefore TL17, and so also are vehicle black globes. So, your grav tanks will have black globes at TL17, as will your battledress marines.

By TL20, your mechanized combatants will have black globes, grav scramblers, and proton screens.

They'll have these because of the amounts of kinetic, heat, gravitic, and antimatter damage being thrown at them. At any rate, your TL20 GCarrier has some enhanced features.

Sensors

Vehicle-mount sensors are also quite mature. At 1105 tech levels, vehicle-mount sensors typically have an orbital or regional range -- several thousand kilometers (R=6), for example. At TL20, vehicles essentially can communicate anywhere in the solar system -- granted it's still with light-speed delays, but range is nearly unbounded for the system.

So in TL20, a GCarrier on the ground has the ability to detect things in the outer system, talk with them, and even coordinate data with them (all in lag-time of course). They're protected against antimatter attacks, gravitic attacks, and absorb a lot of energy attacks as well. They're armored better than most commercial starships in the 1105 era.

Interplanetary Vehicles

Theoretically at least, a TL20 GCarrier can be operated as an interplanetary craft. If stage effects are allowed to make power plants smaller than 4 tons, then a Modified Power Plant A, displacing 2 tons, could be installed with a Modified Maneuver Drive A (assume that's still 2 tons, but cheaper than standard) for a total of MCr 4. At 90% of the rating of a typical Maneuver Drive A, it would easily push that GCarrier at better than 9 Gs.

 

[robject]

Interplanetary Grav Vehicle
Here's a stab at an interplanetary-capable TL20 grav craft:

code: AUVhGPH
type: Armored UltimateVh Grav Passenger Vehicle
TL: 20
q: 10
vol: 12
spd: 4
ld: 10
AV: 55 {ca:10, fp:10, rp:10, sp:32, ps:0, in:32, se:20}
KCr: 1330

It's a 12 ton craft with a payload capacity of 10 tons. If 4 of those tons were a 2 ton Mod PPA and a 2 ton M-drive, then performance is

2Gs x 100 EP (PPA) x 0.9 (Mod stage) x 12 tons (vehicle) / 100 tons (standard)

= 21 Gs (theoretical) = 9 G (probably).

Fuel requirement is 9 G x 12/100 = 1 ton.

Leaving us 5 tons for the rest of our payload.

Legal Example

Using T5 core rules as written, the Mod PPA is 4 tons, since the smallest possible PP is 4 tons.
Performance is the same, cost is the same.
Leaving us 3 tons, instead of 5.

Interplanetary GCarrier
A military craft (GCarrier) with relatively similar capability shows up at TL19:

code: UUVhGSC
type: UpArmored UltimateVh Grav Supply Carrier
TL: 19
q: 10
vol: 19
spd: 4
ld: 10
AV: 140 {ca:30, fp:30, rp:30, sp:60, ps:0, in:50, se:40}
KCr: 9070

 

[robject]

Laser Pistols

It seems that the laser pistol ends at TL19 with this model, a disposable precision model (precision gives you the ability to call your hit location with no penalty)... with a coherent beam range of 50,000 kilometers (you could actually bounce this beam off of the moon).

The thing is quite heavy.

Code  : PrDLP-19
Name  : Prec Disp Laser Pistol-19
Range : 7
Mass  : 4.75
Burden: 1
Damage: (5D) Burn-3 Pen-2 
MgT   : 3D + 2
Cost  : 750

The more sensible choice shows up earlier, at TL17. Light as a feather, reasonable range (150m), cheap as dirt, effective as all get-out.

Code  : UlDLP-17
Name  : Ult Disp Laser Pistol-17
Range : 4
Mass  : 0.83
Burden: -3
Damage: (7D) Burn-5 Pen-2 
MgT   : 4D + 1
Cost  : 210

 

[inexorabletash]

Not based on anything...

At TL -2, the basic physics is being discovered.
At TL -1, primitive examples are possible in the lab.
At TL -0, items are available commercially
At TL +1, items are a commodity, practically found in cereal boxes
At TL +2, the technology has faded into the background.

I'm reminded of "Marooned in Realtime" showing refugees from a series of points in time along the development of "bobble tech" - think black globe/stasis fields. The earliest refugees had city-sized shields they barely understood. The latest refugees had personal swarms of drones built from bobbles and practically wore them as clothing.

Apropos of this thread: by TL-20 I'd expect that when you go camping and are roughing it, you keep your space-beer cold in a black globe mini-fridge.

 

[robject]

Apropos of this thread: by TL-20 I'd expect that when you go camping and are roughing it, you keep your space-beer cold in a black globe mini-fridge.

Nice. I will work up the stats for that handy piece of equipment.

Now hang on... I think the Stasis Mini-Fridge is available by TL20.

TL18, actually.

 

[Draconian]

High-tech stuff from RINGWORLD

Yes, battlesuits made of matter will be considered passé at TL20, maybe even gauche. Force-fields will be the way to go, much lighter, but for that reason soldiers may still want a big powered exoskeleton to minimize recoil if hit with a physical weapon.

Portals like from the PORTAL computer-games, using matter-displacement to materialize a falling object higher again and accelerate it would probably spend more energy to keep the portals going than it takes to actually accelerate the object to insane speeds by conventional means.

Thinking of the RINGWORLD novels by Larry Niven and the venerable 80's RPG of that name, they postulated booklets of memory-plastic which were torn out of plastic sheets and exposed to a solvent, and these would twist into tools of various shapes. Nowadays we have the superior concept of 3-D printers where nothing has to be pre-patterned into the plastic in order to make anything. There's a lot you can do with nanomachines printing ANY material in 3-D.

In Ringworld, the humans bought impossibly strong General Products spaceship hulls which were guaranteed impermeable to anything but gravity and visible light. Sensors and radio therefore had to be mounted outside from pre-fabricated holes which were armored conventionally. Your ship would survive any scrape, but the sensors would likely be torn off or burned off.

Matter displacement was handled by transfer booths of human design; going anywhere in the world cost a "decistar" (a dime). The Puppeteers (sophonts) had stepping-disks which didn't even need you to close a door. You could cover distances on the world by stepping from stepping-disk to stepping-disk and even choosing your direction on a LARGE scale by choosing which disk to step on next.

Puppeteers kept the technology of the tasp to themselves, and had tasps implanted in their bodies. A tasp immobilizes sophonts in the nicest way possible, with a blast of pure pleasure, in adjustable strength.

The native, forgotten technology of the Ringworld had the cziltang brone, which was a high-tech airlock making the normally hard neutronic material of the Ringworld structure soft, allowing ships and cargo to go through from the airless rim into the pressured facilities inside. Failure might trap a ship or a person across the floor, with the neutronic material bonding with him and killing him instantly.

Gen(etic engin)eering could develop monstrous animals and plants. One of the most deadly plants on the Ringworld was the sunflowers, whose petals were mirrors. Acting in concert, they could focus the sun's rays on any intruder getting too close, burning them to a crisp and adding to the fertilizer nearby. Louis Wu defeated them by suspending a balloon with superconducting cloth and dunking the other end of the cloth in the ocean. The sunflowers madly focussed on the intruder but that only raised huge banks of steam which turned into clouds and cut off the Sun from an entire region of the Ringworld, neutralizing the sunflowers.


High-tech people are rare in the Traveller Universe but may exist in interstitial space between the stars, hatching their evolved plans with little need to interact with the sophont empires. I feel like springing some people like that on the players in my future game (but not from Ringworld, from a certain movie...)

 

[mike wightman]

Couple of thoughts.

The MgT Secret of the Ancients has some pretty nifty toys detailed, and as I type this I'm watching the opening scenes of Man of Steel - Krypton as TL20+?

 

[whulorigan]

So for example, Black Globes are TL16. Personal black globes are therefore TL17, and so also are vehicle black globes. So, your grav tanks will have black globes at TL17, as will your battledress marines.

And T5 has some really cool options and add-ons for the various Globes (Black/White/Silver/Stasis).

 

[mike wightman]

Personal black globes are not TL16, they are not until much higher.

 

[robject]

Personal black globes are not TL16, they are not until much higher.

(How much higher?)

I think you're probably correct... although "Personal White Globe" shows up (in MegaTraveller, mind) just 1 TL after the regular White Globe. That's the precedent.

However, I think you're right: 1 TL is not enough time. And, I think that that might apply to the personal white globe as well.

 

[mike wightman]

Remember TL15 isn't the "true" TL of ship sized black globes (although I hate that particular bit of background fluff).

I also have a suspicion that at their true TL a black globes doesn't use jump capacitors to store the energy, it is diverted somewhere else otherwise vehicle and personal black globes are going to struggle.

By TL20 there has to have been some other breakthrough tech.

TL4 electromagnetic theory breakthroughs

TL8-9 grav, fusion, jump (variations on gravity manipulation - lessons learned from Higgs field discoveries hand wave)

TL12 nuclear damper/meson (manipulation of nuclear forces)

TL16 antimatter?

 

[Quint]

I've been really pondering how to simulate personal shields ala Dune in the OTU. To my mind this is probably simply a development of anti-grav/tractor beam tech on a personal level (possibly linked to some sort of combat computer).

It wouldn't have the "blows up if hit with a laser" problem from Dune, but it also probably wouldn't be that effective against a laser either (unless is also has some form of suspended reflec particles). At the same time, I wonder if through a combination of gravity, holographic projection, and perhaps other somewhat handwavium, if it couldn't be made effective against lasers as well.

In my head, there would be a mechanic (perhaps ala the Mongoose 4+ success) that would allow for the "slow blade penetrates the shield" effect that would allow minimum damage from melee weapons.

D.