Sci-fi Interstellar Empires and Tech Regression

[Astromancer]

Remember Dune had the Butlerian Jihad. You can always have religious fanatics, and brutal amoral social engineers, force the tech level down "FOR OUR OWN GOOD!!

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

That depends on how long automation goes. Regression may be measured in decades instead of generations, but, it'll still happen. Note that this is overall TL, and sub-categories may fall at different rates.

How will it ever be TL7, though? Regardless of whether it decays quickly or slowly, or how much or little of it is working, the residual infrastructure is TL10, and makes and requires TL10 products, not TL7 products.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

How will it ever be TL7, though? Regardless of whether it decays quickly or slowly, or how much or little of it is working, the residual infrastructure is TL10, and makes and requires TL10 products, not TL7 products.

Think Fallout. Even if somebody knows how to repair a laser pistol, you can't really make new ones. Once something reaches the point where you can't repair it, it's gone forever. If it weren't for some storyline discoveries, weapons technology would eventually drop below automatic weapons, and even gunpowder would be a trade secret. Just because Fallout features TL10 computers (terrabytes of data on tapes requires much better tech than we could possibly have), doesn't mean everything else isn't TL7 or lower. Aside from the quality of the materials, I couldn't imagine somebody at TL7 having any difficulty with a 10mm pistol from the Fallout universe.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Think Fallout. Even if somebody knows how to repair a laser pistol, you can't really make new ones. Once something reaches the point where you can't repair it, it's gone forever. If it weren't for some storyline discoveries, weapons technology would eventually drop below automatic weapons, and even gunpowder would be a trade secret. Just because Fallout features TL10 computers (terrabytes of data on tapes requires much better tech than we could possibly have), doesn't mean everything else isn't TL7 or lower. Aside from the quality of the materials, I couldn't imagine somebody at TL7 having any difficulty with a 10mm pistol from the Fallout universe.

I suspect Fallout economics make no sense whatsoever, so it's not really a great example.

That said, it probably works well enough to show the problem. Sure, the Fallout 'economy' operates at TL7 or worse, with emphasis on the 'or worse'. But they're not sliding down the tech scale. They haven't fallen back from making nuclear-powered roadsters to making Model Ts...they don't make new cars (do they?). Flight hasn't regressed from jets to prop-driven biplanes, it's relic aircraft or nothing. You say weapons tech was going to drop below automatics...so they didn't backslide from lasers to assault rifles, they dropped to a level of gunsmithing below that of some villages in Pakistan.

This is pretty close to TL4/10, really, but it's not remotely like TL7.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I suspect Fallout economics make no sense whatsoever, so it's not really a great example.

That said, it probably works well enough to show the problem. Sure, the Fallout 'economy' operates at TL7 or worse, with emphasis on the 'or worse'. But they're not sliding down the tech scale. They haven't fallen back from making nuclear-powered roadsters to making Model Ts...they don't make new cars (do they?). Flight hasn't regressed from jets to prop-driven biplanes, it's relic aircraft or nothing. You say weapons tech was going to drop below automatics...so they didn't backslide from lasers to assault rifles, they dropped to a level of gunsmithing below that of some villages in Pakistan.

This is pretty close to TL4/10, really, but it's not remotely like TL7.

Depends on where you live, really. Setting the ability of computers to last centuries without maintenance aside, TL10 tech is slowly dropping off. Sure, they have fusion batteries laying around in what used to be population centers, but, there are solar panels found throughout Fallout 3. This suggests a non-infinite supply, and a realization of such.

As for weapons, the loss of fusion cells requires a downgrade to gunpowder. Once you run through your supply of nuclear power, you end up without the machinery required to make automatic weapons. If Project Purity had failed, the Fallout universe would be sliding down the scale from TLX/10 to TL4, or, even lower, depending on what could be salvaged from libraries and the last computers not destroyed in combat.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Depends on where you live, really. Setting the ability of computers to last centuries without maintenance aside, TL10 tech is slowly dropping off. Sure, they have fusion batteries laying around in what used to be population centers, but, there are solar panels found throughout Fallout 3. This suggests a non-infinite supply, and a realization of such.

As for weapons, the loss of fusion cells requires a downgrade to gunpowder. Once you run through your supply of nuclear power, you end up without the machinery required to make automatic weapons. If Project Purity had failed, the Fallout universe would be sliding down the scale from TLX/10 to TL4, or, even lower, depending on what could be salvaged from libraries and the last computers not destroyed in combat.

Here is the thing that it seems to me you're passing over: sliding down the scale implies passing through intermediate points.

I am not saying that TL can't go down, I'm saying that the only way it can crawl back down the track, as opposed to diving off the edge and hoping to survive hitting the foothills, is with extensive investment along the way.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Depends on where you live, really. Setting the ability of computers to last centuries without maintenance aside, TL10 tech is slowly dropping off. Sure, they have fusion batteries laying around in what used to be population centers, but, there are solar panels found throughout Fallout 3. This suggests a non-infinite supply, and a realization of such.

As for weapons, the loss of fusion cells requires a downgrade to gunpowder. Once you run through your supply of nuclear power, you end up without the machinery required to make automatic weapons. If Project Purity had failed, the Fallout universe would be sliding down the scale from TLX/10 to TL4, or, even lower, depending on what could be salvaged from libraries and the last computers not destroyed in combat.

On the East Coast perhaps but near the West Coast you had entire societies already bootstrapping themselves back up and in some ways already nearing pre war tech and production capability though not in nearly the same volume. Frankly for the area's shown in Fallout 1-2 and even Fallout New Vegas Project Purity was completely irrelevant and inconsequential for their recovery much less the setting as a whole. Heck by the time of F:NV you can argue that suspension of disbelief is already growing a bit strained as recovery has actually been too slow in NCR territory. But that is a setting being a victim of its own success and thus preventing it from logically growing out of fear that fans will abandon it because the status que changed.

[Phantasm]

One thing that could conceivably cause a regression with extremely long-lived empires is running out of non-renewable resources. I'm not talking common stuff like iron or even uranium, but the exotic unobtanium necessary for certain TL11 or TL12 superscience tech. The infrastructure for these empires is probably not going to be affected by such a shortage; what would probably happen is that the technologies relying on the unobtanium will be phased out as the supply runs out.


(For what it's worth, this is the explanation I give to folks who wonder why the tech for Star Wars seems to have stagnated or even regressed from the Old Republic era (KOTOR/KOTOR2/SWTOR) to the Original Trilogy, a period of about 4000 years. This is why personal force fields, a TL12^ technology from Ultra-Tech, is used in the KOTOR era but not the OT.)

[Flyndaran]

I like the technobabble of super collider produced stable island transuranics for my unobtanium.
Production requires enormous infrastructure and power, and the final product still decays just not faster than an eye blink.

[Astromancer]

I still suggest that political and or religious reactionaries can force the tech level down. The creation of an Empire would require keeping the people under control. Certain technologies threaten that control. So an empire, especially if the empire contains all of it's ekumen (cultural zone or social world), might limit technology to enhance control. Dune is the best Sci Fi example.