[Banestorm] Usefulness of TL-8 skills on Yrth?

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I'd be pessimistic about computer skills, electrical engineering (in the usual electronics sense), or biotechnology skills.

Many TL8 skills normally require basic 'equipment' that won't be available, but the penalty for going back to lower-TL substitutes that you can obtain, improvise, or invent is going to be tolerable in many cases. You might be in most respects better off having TL 5-6 skills rather than TL 8, though.

Yes, as a gross generalization, I'd agree that a TL 5 character with a lot TL-related skills would be better off on Yrth than a TL 8 guy with similar TL-linked skills.
If you have first to build the tools to build the tools needed in order to build the tools, you are in a harder position than a guy who just has to build the tools to build the tools.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by lexington

Huh, I didn't realize Research was a TL skill.

Not only is it TL, I think it requires computer Use at some point.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Not only is it TL, I think it requires computer Use at some point.

At TL8 Computer Use skill is a prereq for research.

At very late TL7 it was possible to use computers in your research but it required creating programs with a key punch machine.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

At very late TL7 it was possible to use computers in your research but it required creating programs with a key punch machine.

Not so. TL8 starts in about 1980. In the 1970s there was an online research industry. It was rather odd by today's standards.

The data was things like academic journal abstracts, which sat on fairly large computers belonging to the publishers. To use it, you used a terminal and modem for dial-up access, for which you were charged dollars per minute. Since there were quite a few information publishers in this trade, they all had different search engines, and usage was so expensive, there were people who were employed as online search specialists, because being skilled could cut costs by a lot more than their cost of employment.

This industry is doubly obsolete. Microcomputers with CD-ROM drives meant it was much more effective to subscribe to a CD-ROM series in the mid-eighties, and then the Internet replaced that in the nineties.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Incidentally, the claim earlier that TL8 to TL5 is only -3 is wrong. It's -5. The penalties go -1,-3,-5 and so on. This means that taking Chemistry TL8 and trying to use it with improvised tools (-2) and TL5 procedures (-5) to make high explosives is probably not a good idea.

Although this is one of the (many) cases where the penalty fails to make sense. The procedures for using Chemistry to make small batches of TL5 explosives do not appear to be any different at TL8 than they were at TL5 - it probably isn't a good idea at either TL, but it's no safer now.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Although this is one of the (many) cases where the penalty fails to make sense. The procedures for using Chemistry to make small batches of TL5 explosives do not appear to be any different at TL8 than they were at TL5 - it probably isn't a good idea at either TL, but it's no safer now.

You might not want to label "order all precursor compounds from a store" and "make all components yourself from available natural sources" as TL differences but one is what is normally done at TL8 and the other at TL5.

One of them has either more steps (requiring more rolls) or higher penalties than the other.