> Oh, I'm sure that it's below the resolution of every RPG. Most of the > crunch in _Vehicles_ is. However, the practical effects sure aren't > below the resolution of any RPG set in a speculative fiction setting. > Think about what the american civil war would have been like, had one > side had advanced engineering help. The technology that existed was > capable of making things like better steam engines, much more advanced > metallic cartridges. Think what gettysburg whould have been like if, > instead of infantry, Pickett had a tank. Just one, even a lumbering > one, built around the sort of steam tractor that were developed 30 > years later, and with a couple of machine guns. A good mechanical > engineer from today could pull that off, armed with nothing more than > an HP-48.
There is a tendency to forget that properly integrating two or more existing pieces of technology is a technological feat by itself. In hindsight it is clear that a steam engine, tracks, armor plate and recoil-operated, belt-fed machine guns make a tank. At the time, the first prototype would have broken down within minutes, and it would be far from obvious that it could be made to go at all ... Advanced engineering help advances the local TL, creating an anomalous mixed TL that must be handled on a case-by-case basis. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
