Ultratech 4e: No cost/weight modifiers for tech level?

[Rivenshield]

In 3e gadgets halve their cost and weight one TL after their introduction, and again the TL after that. Armor weight is unaffected, but gets hefty DR bonuses in addition to cheaper cost.

A cursory reading of 4e fails to turn up any such ruling. Is this an oversight, or was it left out deliberately? If so, why?

[Kelly Pedersen]

As far as I know, it was deliberate. I believe the logic is that equipment doesn't reduce in weight predictably with higher TL, and the cost savings of being able to produce items more cheaply are largely rolled into the increased starting wealth available at higher TLs.

Also, many things in Ultra-Tech actually have higher performance at higher TLs, which largely stands in for the benefit of less weight. I believe the theory is that we've largely already found the efficient amount of weight people can carry and still perform the tasks expected of them. So, it makes sense that when you can reduce the weight of something as technology improves, that you improve its performance using that saved weight, putting it back up to the original weight but now with extra benefits.

[Ulzgoroth]

4e generally doesn't like 'automated' TL progressions, I'd say. I'm not sure about Ultratech but there are certainly places where the higher-tech version of a thing is lighter, but generally with a specific separate statline rather than a broad rule.

4e also often doesn't go for price going down with increasing TL, instead limiting that to the inflation of wealth and income. There are some examples of price drops with TL in UT though.

[weby]

The two factors:

Price:
As others have said the effective money amount that a person will have increases by TL, thus the effective price goes down.

As example lets take a $100 gadget. At TL 9 you could buy 36 of that gadget with the average monthly salary, at TL 10 you could buy 56 such. So in effect there has been a 36% price drop.

Size:
When it comes to things like gadgets there tends to come new smaller versions, but the normally used gadget tends to stay approximately the same weight/size after the early years.

Basically the first not so widely used versions tend to be big, clumsy and very expensive. By the time the product becomes mass market it tends to be fairly consistent in size and weight and only gain (much)higher capabilities. The items in UT are basially the "mature products"

And things that are not gadgets tend to be even less affected.

The one real exception is the materials for things like casings/clothes and such, but as that is a very variable amount of the whole thing it is hard to give a good rule.


As for gadgets:a good real life example are mobile phones.
In the 1980s the phones were in the prototype stage, they were big, bulky and finicky.

As example the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X introduced in 1983 could make calls(in very few areas with coverage) weighted 790 grams.

But by middle of 1990s the phones had become "pocket size" and mass market items, though still bit expensive side.

As example the 1995 Nokia 2110 was 147×56×25 mm and weighted 235 grams and had a 24 hour standby time, but was still just a mobile phone, but had text messaging as addition.

Then in the early 2000s the phones started to become more complex devices.

As example the Nokia 7210 from 2002 had mobile data(GPRS), a wap browser, could run java apps, color display, calendar, e-mail and so on as apps right out of the box. It was much smaller, seemingly validating the "things get smaller and lighter" at 106 x 45 x 17.5 mm and only 83 grams.

In then obviously we had the smart phone explosion, so lets take a 2010 model, iPhone 4. It was a "oh, they are getting heavier again?" compared to the nokia from 2002. being 115.2 x 58.6 mm x 9.3 mm and thus larger in all dimensions except slightly more than half the thickness and weighted 137 g.
But again it had new features, it had a camera and the app store, allowing downloading a lot of apps.

And then as final lets take the latest iPhone the Xs from 2018, and it is again larger and heavier than the 2010 model. It is 143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm and 177grams (with the max being 208g).

So as you can see there is no clear trend on even the weight and size in mobile phones(going first down and then up again) and mobile phones are among the gadgets that have developed fastest due to the high market pressures.

Most other gadgets have developed even less in weight, but often a lot in capability.

The big thing I find missing in UT and HT is not the weight/price changes but the HUGE increase in how much better you can use them for things. In game terms the equipment modifiers should be dramatically better in the later things. That is they should have higher bonuses.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by weby

The big thing I find missing in UT and HT is not the weight/price changes but the HUGE increase in how much better you can use them for things. In game terms the equipment modifiers should be dramatically better in the later things. That is they should have higher bonuses.

They do - if you are using the best stuff (you get a bonus of +TL/2), and it's a high TL gadget to do the same thing as lower versions. A whole lot of things in UT get better with TL, and those that don't are often simply replaced by a new device (for example, the cutting torches on UT80 and UT85 - a given model doesn't get better at a higher TL, it gets replaced by a new model). Also, UT tends to hand out increasing benefits in areas other than simple bonuses - communicators have more range, vision enhancement gear gets more magnification (and smaller types are available), armour gets more DR, and air tanks hold more air, for example.

An exception is toolkits, and that's because at each TL they add a whole new capability - to be proper tools for their new, higher TL.

[weby]

Originally Posted by Rupert

They do - if you are using the best stuff (you get a bonus of +TL/2), and it's a high TL gadget to do the same thing as lower versions.

But that is only for the best tools and even then +1 each 2 TLs. But in real life the progress in user friendliness has been phenomenal even within a single TL (tl 8).

The best TL 6 equipment in say filming with +3 would still lose a lot to even a middle range smartphone camera of today(late TL8), you should thus definitely get more than the +3 to the filming rolls today even using that mid range smartphone, if the +3 was the TL 6 best bonus.

The same with a lot of other things.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by weby

But that is only for the best tools and even then +1 each 2 TLs. But in real life the progress in user friendliness has been phenomenal even within a single TL (tl 8).

User-friendliness doesn't necessarily make a tool more powerful. It can just make it easier for low-skill people to use, while not really helping (and even hindering) the highly skilled, though this is probably below GURPS' resolution.

The best TL 6 equipment in say filming with +3 would still lose a lot to even a middle range smartphone camera of today(late TL8), you should thus definitely get more than the +3 to the filming rolls today even using that mid range smartphone, if the +3 was the TL 6 best bonus.

I don't really think so. What modern film gear does, aside from giving a +4 bonus if it's cutting edge, is let you do more things.

For example, it can have much better low-light capability than TL6 cameras and film (though this is not something smartphone cameras are particularly good at), and the high-end gear can film at very high resolution and frame rate, or in 3D. Not things that necessarily make filming well easier, but things that the lower TL gear can't do, or does far less well.

[Bruno]

Yeah, the ability to carry the camera in your pocket doesn't make your pictures better.

There's a certain illusion that it has, because people can take several hundred photographs instead of 24, and then only share the one or two shots that looked nice. But that's not a skill bonus, that's letting you keep rolling against the skill until you succeed :)

I suspect people today forget how high "resolution" analogue film can be, and that we actually took a big hit in raw picture quality by going digital. We've been a bit stunned by how the raw numbers for megapixels shot up, but they started off horrible.

Another thing is you never get JPG artifacts with analogue film, and even a disposable "happy snaps" camera can take pictures that you can get printed at poster size without noticing funny business. I'd recommend using a camera you can actually focus for poster pictures because when you blow it up you'll start noticing the fixed DOF but you aren't going to be fighting little weird squares.

Basically, sometimes high TL stuff is looking for different goals than increased skill bonuses. I would say what we're actually looking at the moment is mechanical or AI assistance that offer a substitute skill level to roll against (somewhere in the 8-10).

[AlexanderHowl]

I do think that there is room for more improvements when it comes to energy storage though. I think that power cells should provide items of the same TL twice as many shots/duration for every TL above the initial introduction of the item. In the case of ranged weapons, I also think that Acc should increase by 1 for every TL above initial introduction.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Another thing is you never get JPG artifacts with analogue film, and even a disposable "happy snaps" camera can take pictures that you can get printed at poster size without noticing funny business. I'd recommend using a camera you can actually focus for poster pictures because when you blow it up you'll start noticing the fixed DOF but you aren't going to be fighting little weird squares.

Modern professional digital cameras make the camera in smartphones look awful, especially when it comes to sharpness of focus and light gathering (both of which require large aperture size, which smartphones simply don't have).

For example: The Nikon D850, not even their top of the line model, and $3,300 or so retail.