> Onno offered a TL8 designed/built sailing ship facing Nelson - ergo in a > set > TL5 world. So those world rules apply to the ship - which was the point I > was making.
That wasn't the point I was trying to make. If both sides decide to ignore a technology option, there is a level playing field, and vehicles which would be inefficient a more reasonable universe can still win. That Nelson remark was to say they're a substantial improvement over earlier TLs, too. Imagine people had looked at early turbojet engines and said "no way those Rube Goldberg contraptions will ever work". We might have seen TL7 wars fought with increasingly efficient prop fighters, which are viable designs as long as both sides have the same mental blinders. A supersonic jet might be able to outrun them with ease, but there are no supersonic jets because nobody bothers to build them. Props are an existing tech, after all, and TL7/8 prop fighters beat those old WWII clunkers with ease, so obviously there is still room for progress. (There might be a nice vehicle concept or two lurking somewhere, BTW ...) That situation would be analogous to your proposal of a world where civilian Mecha fit the civilian market and nobody tries tracks in military applications -- after all, there are Mecha factories all over the place, but no tank factories. It could be that the real world has similar blind spots where it comes to plentiful free energy and easy space travel. By definition, we can't know. We do known that tracks are viable for ground vehicles, so I want Mecha which can be justified in an universe with tracked vehicles. The justification doesn't have to be watertight or universally applicable, just enough to convince a couple of generals and congressmen to put some poor GIs into walking AFVs. US WWII tank destroyers sounded good on paper, too :-) _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
