varients

[dm_dracos]

i got a question for everyone. was just rereading anne maccaffreys planet pirates, and was wondering what others thought of the idea of finding a shuttle with a low birth (cold sleep capsule) with someone from say second or even first imperium????
was wondering what you would set as their tech level for knowledge ect. .......brain just running away with me a little.......sorry hasnt been on lately, been working my poor lil butt off big time

have fun and i await with baited breath for your responces
Dracos

 

[aramis]

Since LB's in MT, TNE, and T4 draw power, I'd consider it unlikely, especially given the MT based Traveller's Digest articles on Low Berths.

YMMV.

1I TL ~ 9-10
2I TL ~ 11

 

[The Oz]

I've done it. I dealt the the power issue that Aramis mentions by putting solar cells on the lifepod the PCs find (the one with the "time travellers" inside).

Is it realistic? No, it's not at all likely that machinery could work untended for literally millenia. But it made for a neat story.

 

[dm_dracos]

thanks...so stupid question again, what TL was the second imperium????

 

[The Oz]

Depends on who you ask or which sources you read. The 2nd Imperium had to be at least TL12 because they had Jump-3 drives. The problem is how much further did they get before the Long Night.

Some sources say TL12 with some breakthroughs to TL13. Some say TL13 with breakthroughs to TL14. So you get to pick what you want.

 

[dm_dracos]

ok thank oz, is there anything written with a TL 17 culture?????

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Since LB's in MT, TNE, and T4 draw power, I'd consider it unlikely, especially given the MT based Traveller's Digest articles on Low Berths.

YMMV.

1I TL ~ 9-10
2I TL ~ 11

The First Imperium must have been TL 11 at least, since they had Jump 2.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by The Oz:
Depends on who you ask or which sources you read. The 2nd Imperium had to be at least TL12 because they had Jump-3 drives. The problem is how much further did they get before the Long Night.

Some sources say TL12 with some breakthroughs to TL13. Some say TL13 with breakthroughs to TL14. So you get to pick what you want.

I'd say TL12 - the Solomani have won, among other things, due to achieving Jump-3 while the Vilani had only Jump-2. Sure, theoretically speakling, they might have developed TL13 or even higher in the few centuries of the Rule of Man, but remember that most of their resources of energy probably went to trying to keep things from falling apart, not to research, plus the bureaucratic disfunctions of the Rule of Man would have hindered effective technological progress.

 

[mike wightman]

The T4 supplement Emperor's Arsenal is pretty clear that the RoM achieved TL13 in many areas of military technology, even going as high as experimental TL14 stuff and TL15 gear in research stations.

These TL breakthroughs didn't occur across the board though. Their fusion TL remained at TL12 (no fusion+ and beyond), and they didn't invent the meson screen for example.

 

[robject]

Yeah, Emperor's Arsenal...

My opinions follow.

T4, eh? Well, there's one strike against it.

It claims RoM got up to TL15 in "some areas"? Sounds like a slippery slope to me, so two strikes.

And I suppose those weapons were designed using Fire, Fusion, and Steel 2? If so, that's three strikes against that supplement.

On the other hand, the other guys in my group really liked that supplement. I didn't care for it.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Apart from the "hi-tech RoM" bollocks, EA is a good book.

 

[Laryssa]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Since LB's in MT, TNE, and T4 draw power, I'd consider it unlikely, especially given the MT based Traveller's Digest articles on Low Berths.

YMMV.

1I TL ~ 9-10
2I TL ~ 11

Doesn't it get very cold in space, especially interstellar space? A typical scenario is when a ship's jump drive breaks down after a misjump, the ship is nowhere near an inhabited system, and the damage to the jump drive is so extensive that it cannot be repaired with what's onboard the ship. The power plant still works though and so does the low berths and the Maneuver drive. What the captian of the ship decides to do is point the ship towards the nearest inhabited system, then he programs the ship's computer to maneuver towards that system using the slower than light maneuver drive. Once cruising speed is reached, the crew climbs into their lower berths and the computer automatically cycled them into suspended animation. Once far enough away from a star, the ship powers down life support and lets the ship grow cold, to about just a few degrees above absolute zero matching the temperature of interstellar space, this is quite sufficient to keep those suspended frozen, not power needs to be expended to keep the crew cold. The trick is always to freeze the crew so it can be revived and to revive the crew without damage, the inbetween part of keeping the low berth cold sleepers cold is rather simple in the cold of space.

 

[aramis]

That assumes that Low Berths are cryo. Most of mine are a tetrodotoxin induced hibernation. (DGP's TD had a great article on low berths.)

Since the freezing would rupture the cell walls unless the appropriate processes were used in both freeze and thaw, it's dodgy either way.