On Thu, 25 Jun 2015, Onno Meyer wrote:
One key question is if hybrid-TL vehicles are considered. A TL9 contragrav unit lifting twenty stons is $1,100 in TL9 $, which is $4,400 in TL6 $. Put that into a streamlined metal box with props and you have a cheap and fast VTOL.
One assumption i always take in Traveller that helps suspending disbelieve regarding TL differences:
As rule of thumb, you don't happen to find people with the skills to maintain or repair high TL equipment on low TL worlds.
So to do annual maintanance or the contragrav equivalent of checking the tire preassue, you either need to send the unit to a high TL world, or you need to go to a high TL world and convince some mechanics from there to move to your world. You need to pay them enough, that they consider living on a low TL world, and you need enough, that you have replacements for illness and hollydays.
Once you have imported enough people with high TL skills, that you can easily find one on demand, congratulation, you are now a high TL world.
Under that assumption the vehilce described above is viable as subcraft of a spaceship for instance, or as toy for a local lord on a low TL world, but propably not as common workhorse on a low TL lord.
Doing it the other way (a high TL box, taken because of the weight for instance) hanging on a gasbag, could work however if the numbers add up, because boxes usually don't require maintanance.
Johannes _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
