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Onno Meyer wrote:
Setting: A vast federation/alliance/empire with worlds of
differing tech levels from about TL6 - TL13.
GURPS Traveller has put a lot of thought into multi-TL empires,
mostly to reconcile the 'canon' of differing TLs with the free
trade rules in Far Trader.
The key question: is the listed TL the maximum locally available TL
or the maximum locally sustainable TL? If there is trade between
TL13 and TL6 worlds, how long will TL6 worlds stay genuine TL6? And
how do you describe TL6 heavy industry and farms with TL13 cell
phones and space transport? How long will the heavy industry stay
TL6 if you can send your best and brightest to a TL13 university?
The terms of the
scholarship could make them come back for a couple of years with
their fancy education. If they don't want to return to a backwoods
planet, well, sue for immediate repayment with compound interest
...
Nice image: TL6 trucks, tractors, trains with people working on
larptops and talking on cell-phones.
Star Trek is another example of starships (with replicators, not
nanofactories) and far-flung colonies. Of course a TV series can
get away with more economic ambiguity and just plain silliness than
a game.
The ship:
TL13 Important items: Enough armor and weaponry to make pirates
give second and third thoughts to attacking.
Q: Why do we get so many pirate attacks at the Somali coast, but
not
in the North Sea?
A: The EU has problems, but it ain't that dysfunctional yet :-)
Is your federation/alliance/empire corrupt enough to allow piracy?
Such 'interesting times' make for good adventures, but can a TL13
society live that way or will the economy suffer and decay?
Maybe mix aspects of Traveller, Star Trek, Humanx, and Honorverse.
Very unreliable and slow FTL communication; minimum transit times of
days, with various speed ships, add rare stable wormholes; planets
filled with a dozen or so races, with uncommon vacant habitable
planets.
Is moving to the customer the only way to learn their needs in
time to fill them? Or are they just an interstellar phone call
away?
Will the expensive factory spend months idle in transit or can
it travel fast enough to be kept busy working on the basic load
of on-board raw materials?
I think it would be difficult to make much in transit since most of
the cargo is "additives" (rarer elements). Probably enough common
material for repairs.
]] Restricted tech
Depends on the quality of law enforcement. In a functional state,
breaking the law in a large, armed starship means the local cops
will call in the Navy if they have to.
I'd probably have a setup where the Navy is kind of busy "showing the
flag" and doesn't care as much about tech smugglers, especially if
it's not military hardware.
I should probably re-read GURPS Space again. And maybe Far Trader.
- --
Troy Guffey
ICQ: 1978644
AIM: Pax214
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