2300 ad tl

[Kymage]

I'm puttering around on converting some 2300 AD and 2320 AD materials over to GURPS. I was wondering what the consensus on the forum was as to what TL the 2300 AD universe would be. It seems to me to be a mix of TL 9 & 10, although I can also see strong influence of TL 8 in that setting. What do you all think?

[mlangsdorf]

I would pick out the technologies I thought were appropriate to match the setting materials and call that "TL 2300 AD." Unless you need to use the TL in a formula, the actual value doesn't matter much.

[johndallman]

RogerBW did some work on this, a while ago.

[weby]

Basic TL seems about 9 in general feel, but with weapon tech being advanced (TL 10) and computer tech being very retarded at very early TL 8 and communications tech being retarded at TL 8 mostly.

And of course there are couple of super science technologies: Stutterwarp, Trusters and Force screens at least.

So for overall TL I would call it TL 9 with notes for the modifiers.

[Rupert]

Aside from that one mention of a stupidly small amount of memory storage in a hand computer, there's no indication computers are so bad. There's mention of a distributed computer network in one adventure that you just plug everything into anywhere you like and it configures the connections so it works correctly. That's better than today's tech, and we're better than GURPS standard TL8 computing.

Communications is also fine, except cellphones aren't emphasised. OTOH, colonists might not want to be so dependant on the phone infrastructure and prefer satellite phones, so a cultural and not a technological limitation. 2300AD tech certainly has the capability to make decent cellphones. Note that we don't get a really good look at what a core world's infrastructure is like, and how core worlders live.

Weapons are TL9/10 - good binary rifles, functional gauss rifles, lasers are useful, but not for general issue, and plasma guns are heavy with very limited ammo capacity but are very powerful.

Hovercraft are quite effective and in more common use than we'd expect, a marginal diversion from the 'real world' as we currently understand it.

Note that the 'screens' of space ships are not force screens - they are suspended particle 'screens' - probably superscience, but not in the same order as force screens at all. The thrusters used to get into orbit are just heat exchangers using the heat from an MHD turbine, and are unrealistically powerful and efficient, but aren't a complete handwave (and my recollection was that making a spaceplane that could make a round trip to and from Earth without refuelling and had a reasonable payload wasn't really possible, so they weren't too hopelessly good).

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Aside from that one mention of a stupidly small amount of memory storage in a hand computer, there's no indication computers are so bad. There's mention of a distributed computer network in one adventure that you just plug everything into anywhere you like and it configures the connections so it works correctly. That's better than today's tech, and we're better than GURPS standard TL8 computing.

Today the plug in and it works is kind of almost there, you normally have wither just plug in a thing or at most to type in or scan a QR code and then it works for surprising number of different devices.


There are also quite many other indications that computer tech is quite bad. Some below:

Subermacalc: Why build a calculator only device as microchips to make a simple actual computer are less than a square mm more today?

Computer Station: weights 250kg and costs Lv30,000 When an office worker is said to make Lv10,000-15,000/year.

Basically the makers of 2300AD did not predict the tremendous TL 8 computer revolution just like most other people did not. So the computers are based on a slow evolution of the large computers of TL 7, so you could call their computer tech TL 7+1

Communications is also fine, except cellphones aren't emphasised. OTOH, colonists might not want to be so dependant on the phone infrastructure and prefer satellite phones, so a cultural and not a technological limitation. 2300AD tech certainly has the capability to make decent cellphones. Note that we don't get a really good look at what a core world's infrastructure is like, and how core worlders live.

It is not just the lack of cell phones, but more the lack simple of satellite communicators. Given the really low prices for com satellites at only Lv50,000 I would expect even smaller colonies to have a full constellation with backups. Today you have satellite phones in the 0.2-0.5 kg range, but the sat com in 15kg.

As for the handheld communicators:
Today you can get handheld radios weighting 1kg with 80km nominal ranges compared to the 1kg radio with 20km range in AD 2300

So overall communications technology seems to be below current(Late TL 8), but definitely above TL 7(transistor radios), so seems closer to what would be expected of average TL 8.


So overall I stand by my conclusion of TL 8 generally for both communications and Computers. But As computers took a different path than in our word, you could call them TL7+1 and not get an argument from me.

You have to remember that the divergence point between AD2300 and out world was in the late 1980s where instead of the Soviet Union getting close to collapsing and then collapsing in 1990s, we had it survive and prosper and then in the middle of 1990s we had WW III including a nuclear war. So any technology after that is understandably on a different path than our world.