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Old 06-20-2022, 09:17 PM   #41
whswhs
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Thing is that's getting too far into the nitty gritty of how things work. I mean we haven't the faintest clue how the innards of TL 9+ power cells work, or TL 10+ computers. We just assume that we'll come up with something, that we won't run into a hard limit to those technologies in the near future. If GURPS 1822 says you can buy little boxes that can communicate through the already postulated aether and communicate with a repository of all knowledge the players are going to shrug and not quarrel with it. They don't know enough to say "That's not possible".
That is demonstrably not how GURPS uses the category of superscience. Checking GURPS Ultra-Tech, I see that it doesn't categorize power cells as TL^, or TL9^, or anything like that; it just gives them straight numerical TL ratings. What it rates as ^ is cosmic power cells. Similarly, TL9-12 computers, and even quantum computers, just have numerical ratings, whereas computers with the FTL option are TL11^.

That is, GURPS does not consider "this technology we have now will continue to advance into the future" to be superscience. Its use of that label is more restricted. So your argument, which rests on the assumption that power cells and advanced computers are superscience, cannot be right.
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Old 06-20-2022, 09:28 PM   #42
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
e. Checking GURPS Ultra-Tech, I see that it doesn't categorize power cells as TL^, or TL9^, or anything like that; it just gives them straight numerical TL ratings. What it rates as ^ is cosmic power cells. .
Superscice power cells are one of the options on p.133.
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Old 06-20-2022, 09:53 PM   #43
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Superscice power cells are one of the options on p.133.
That's fine. But ordinary power cells don't have the ^ modifier. The exception establishes the rule in cases not excepted.
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Old 06-20-2022, 10:13 PM   #44
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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That's fine. But ordinary power cells don't have the ^ modifier. The exception establishes the rule in cases not excepted.
Power cells in 4e (unlike 3e) are not clearly superscience; they're very very good, but not exceeding the limits of chemical bond strength.
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Old 06-20-2022, 10:30 PM   #45
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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In the Spaceships series David Pulver used the term "limited superscience", which I jokingly define thus: "physicists don't know it's impossible, but engineers do".

An example would be reaction engines such as the Nuclear-saltwater rocket and the TL10 fusion torch, which obey all conservation laws, but the performance characteristics of which imply a temperature in the reaction chamber at which no possible material would remain solid. The reason it's a joke is that the relevant scientists (materials scientists and condensed-matter physicists) do understand why the walls of the reaction chamber can't be that hot, and thermodynamicists do understand how reaction temperature limits exhaust speed in a thermal rocket.
Shouldnt airplanes thus be considered Superscience for Gurps 1822 thus, based on the fact that engineers did not believe it to be possible to be make?
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:00 PM   #46
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Shouldnt airplanes thus be considered Superscience for Gurps 1822 thus, based on the fact that engineers did not believe it to be possible to be make?
Did they believe it to be impossible to make, or just "we don't currently have a method to produce the necessary power"? Note things like powered armor and infantry-scale laser weapons (not just blinding lasers) aren't considered superscience, despite largely having that same issue - we don't have a method to produce the necessary power (at least in a form that is readily man-portable and lasts more than a few minutes/shots). And that's after seeing fairly significant boosts in energy storage and efficiencies since UT was published.
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:05 PM   #47
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Did they believe it to be impossible to make, or just "we don't currently have a method to produce the necessary power"? Note things like powered armor and infantry-scale laser weapons (not just blinding lasers) aren't considered superscience, despite largely having that same issue - we don't have a method to produce the necessary power (at least in a form that is readily man-portable and lasts more than a few minutes/shots). And that's after seeing fairly significant boosts in energy storage and efficiencies since UT was published.
My understanding has always been that it was considered impossible to be made, a crazy wild dream, but I might be wrong.

Sure, if you dont consider it impossible, you simply dont know how, it aint superscience
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:10 PM   #48
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
That is demonstrably not how GURPS uses the category of superscience. Checking GURPS Ultra-Tech, I see that it doesn't categorize power cells as TL^, or TL9^, or anything like that; it just gives them straight numerical TL ratings. What it rates as ^ is cosmic power cells. Similarly, TL9-12 computers, and even quantum computers, just have numerical ratings, whereas computers with the FTL option are TL11^.

That is, GURPS does not consider "this technology we have now will continue to advance into the future" to be superscience. Its use of that label is more restricted. So your argument, which rests on the assumption that power cells and advanced computers are superscience, cannot be right.
You have taken the opposite of my meaning. My point was that micro electronics would not be superscience because a games examination of how tech works isn't that granular.
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:38 PM   #49
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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My understanding has always been that it was considered impossible to be made, a crazy wild dream, but I might be wrong.

Sure, if you dont consider it impossible, you simply dont know how, it aint superscience
I'm not sure either, but I think "people in olden times used to believe that powered flight was impossible" is one of those myths like "people in olden times used to believe that nothing could travel faster than sound" or "people in olden times used to believe that the world was flat".
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Old 06-21-2022, 02:17 AM   #50
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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The electron was only discovered in 1897.
But the electron was theorized as early as 1838 by British natural philosopher Richard Laming. Just was it was theorized by the ancient Greeks there was a massive landmass in the southern hemisphere (terra australis incognita) which has become fodder for a host of 'the ancients knew of Antartica' theories.

"Terra Australis Nondum Cognita" with a totally different coastline appears on a 1570 map by Abraham Ortelius though that actual continent would be discovered until 1820.

Admittedly not all theories panned out - Vulcan was a bust. More over Mars and Venus were considered able to support life which Mars being what Earth would become and Venus what the Earth had once been.
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