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Old 06-25-2022, 07:51 AM   #41
KarlKost
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
Except for naturally-occurring areas of pure metals which don't oxidize easily. This is one of the reasons that an exclusively aquatic species would have difficulty advancing in certain critical areas of TL.
The problem isnt so much about oxidizing but rather about shaping said metal to suit your needs.

Imagine an aquatic world that had the "Wonderonium" metal that doesnt oxidize and can be used to anything. A magic metal that could guide you all the way up to TL13 just with it.

You still wouldnt be able to create tech because you wouldnt be able to shape the Wonderonium into the tools you'd need.

You could go from TL-1 to TL0 under water, learning to pile rocks to build your underwater Stonepunk civilization - but that's it. Any civilization that has no means to create fire finds itself in a tech dead end as soon as it reaches TL0.

Really, we were very lucky to have wood, that amazing natural bio-fuel that grows from the ground.

Without that, the only way around it that I can think to keep evolving tech is with bio-tech, in a process that may take millions of years - or be outright impossible, since selective breeding aint magic and TL8 genetics requires a lot of other tech to reach. So, I dont know, maybe those tools could be developed by millions of years of selective breeding; maybe not.

So, we may end up finding aquatic aliens much much smarter than us, but they'll never have our technology.
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Old 06-25-2022, 08:34 PM   #42
Inky
 
Join Date: Sep 2019
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

The Zerg sound like one possible example of how tech levels could end up very different in different fields - strange circumstances that mean a particular civilisation doesn't need a particular field of technology. If the Zerg's technology is all self-powering, they don't need generators or any bio-engineered equivalent to do the job of one - which might mean that if they did need one for some reason, they might not know how to build one. If they captured a human-built device and wanted to use it for some reason, they might not have a power supply for it, or even know what kind of power it might need. Maybe after a lot of R&D they might manage to develop an electric eel that could produce a steady current! :-D

And if they regenerate that efficiently, they probably don't need any medical tech, either, unless there are Zerg diseases or poisons that can get past that. Unless they deliberately engineered their bodies to regenerate that fast and you count that as pre-emptive "medical tech".

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
The problem isnt so much about oxidizing but rather about shaping said metal to suit your needs.

Imagine an aquatic world that had the "Wonderonium" metal that doesnt oxidize and can be used to anything. A magic metal that could guide you all the way up to TL13 just with it.

You still wouldnt be able to create tech because you wouldnt be able to shape the Wonderonium into the tools you'd need.

You could go from TL-1 to TL0 under water, learning to pile rocks to build your underwater Stonepunk civilization - but that's it. Any civilization that has no means to create fire finds itself in a tech dead end as soon as it reaches TL0.
Makes sense! I suppose if the Wonderonium was a fairly soft metal, no harder than copper, they could work it to some extent with stone hammers. But if it was no harder than copper, it wouldn't be very useful!

It could be a little further than what GURPS calls TL0, most of what GURPS calls TL1 would still work (presumably, the underwater aliens wouldn't call it the Bronze Age, no bronze). But they'd have a hard time getting any further.
Actually, that's another drastically split tech level. (That may have been why you originally mentioned underwater technology, I can't remember :-D)
They're all over at least three Tech Levels in the Basic Set Tech Level chart.
Arithmetic and writing (TL1) they could do, although with ink impossible they'd be limited to carving or scratching all their writing.
But without metal or some handwavium material to take the place of it they'd never get further than TL0 in Weapons and Armour. The only knives they'd have would be stone ones and maybe shells (can be made quite sharp, but obviously really fragile).
They could get as far as TL2 (saddles) and perhaps TL3 (stirrups) in some aspects of the Transportation category. (Maybe their chariots would have air-filled floats to make them effectively "weightless" instead of wheels). Sails (TL1) could be done too (presumably the sail would be above the water and the rest of the boat under it!). But unless they had very conveniently-shaped plants, making the streamlined shape and enough oars for a trireme (TL2) would be a huge task, with stone axes and presumably no saws.
In Biotechnology, animal husbandry (TL1) sounds straightforward and I'm not sure what "chemical remedies" (TL2) as distinct from "herbal remedies" (TL0) is supposed to mean, and "bleeding the sick" (TL2) could be done for all the use it would be, but surgery (TL1)? Not with those knives.
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Old 06-26-2022, 11:17 AM   #43
KarlKost
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
The Zerg sound like one possible example of how tech levels could end up very different in different fields - strange circumstances that mean a particular civilisation doesn't need a particular field of technology. If the Zerg's technology is all self-powering, they don't need generators or any bio-engineered equivalent to do the job of one - which might mean that if they did need one for some reason, they might not know how to build one. If they captured a human-built device and wanted to use it for some reason, they might not have a power supply for it, or even know what kind of power it might need. Maybe after a lot of R&D they might manage to develop an electric eel that could produce a steady current! :-D
They probably understand bioelectricity and perhaps could even create "bio-tesla" lightning bugs! A pitty the game doesnt have water worlds, it would be crazy to see Terran submarines fighting giant zerg eels discharging massive electric charges.


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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
And if they regenerate that efficiently, they probably don't need any medical tech, either, unless there are Zerg diseases or poisons that can get past that. Unless they deliberately engineered their bodies to regenerate that fast and you count that as pre-emptive "medical tech".
Yes, their bodies are engineered to have insane regeneration, mostly under the Creep. They also absorb nutrients directly from the Creep, so they dont even need to eat, it's perfect bioengeneering. Their mouths are just for bitting the enemies of the Swarm!

Their Queens can heal with bio-psionic powers, but other than that, they dont apply medicine - they do have it thou, as evidenced in the lore, their Cerebrates and Overmind were absolutely immortal (as long as there's a Swarm), and the Queen of Blades were also ressurected (several times), so they do have medicine TL12^, but that's restricted for the few "citizens". Most of their "units", despite being living organisms, are treated simply as disposable "biomass", so the cost to apply medical care in those are not worthed, so they dont care, they just let those die since it's easier to breed 100 more in its place than to take care of it.


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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
Makes sense! I suppose if the Wonderonium was a fairly soft metal, no harder than copper, they could work it to some extent with stone hammers. But if it was no harder than copper, it wouldn't be very useful!
Stone hammers would be insanely innefective under water, I dont think they would be able to muster the necessary force required for the necessary impact.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
It could be a little further than what GURPS calls TL0, most of what GURPS calls TL1 would still work (presumably, the underwater aliens wouldn't call it the Bronze Age, no bronze). But they'd have a hard time getting any further.
Actually, that's another drastically split tech level. (That may have been why you originally mentioned underwater technology, I can't remember :-D)
They're all over at least three Tech Levels in the Basic Set Tech Level chart.
Arithmetic and writing (TL1) they could do, although with ink impossible they'd be limited to carving or scratching all their writing.
But without metal or some handwavium material to take the place of it they'd never get further than TL0 in Weapons and Armour. The only knives they'd have would be stone ones and maybe shells (can be made quite sharp, but obviously really fragile).
They could get as far as TL2 (saddles) and perhaps TL3 (stirrups) in some aspects of the Transportation category. (Maybe their chariots would have air-filled floats to make them effectively "weightless" instead of wheels). Sails (TL1) could be done too (presumably the sail would be above the water and the rest of the boat under it!). But unless they had very conveniently-shaped plants, making the streamlined shape and enough oars for a trireme (TL2) would be a huge task, with stone axes and presumably no saws.
In Biotechnology, animal husbandry (TL1) sounds straightforward and I'm not sure what "chemical remedies" (TL2) as distinct from "herbal remedies" (TL0) is supposed to mean, and "bleeding the sick" (TL2) could be done for all the use it would be, but surgery (TL1)? Not with those knives.
Surgery could perhaps be done with bones - if again, that alien world were luck enough to have something similar to that organic structure.

If they are all soft invertabrates-like well, they are out of luck. And that could well be a possibility for a world that is calcium poor. No hard organic structures - but some organisms could develop chitinous carapace.

That's in fact a curious fact about our own alien past Earth. Up to some hundreds of millions of years ago, Trilobites dominated the oceans. It were an arthropodous, that ressembles crustaceans.

But they disappeared entirely. Imagine this, it's as if ALL insects went extinct.

Insects are too diverse however for that to happen - but Trilobites were not. They were so well adapted to their environment that evolution forced them NOT to change.

And that's the problem with being top dogs: they were so well adapted to the environment they were in, that when that changed, they couldnt change.

And the change was the increased levels of calcium in the oceans, probabily by vulcanic activity and biological processing over hundreds of millions of years.

Chitinous carapaces are fantastic, but they are "expensive" to build, since they are made of proteic sequences - meaning a lot of energy demanded from the body to syntesize.

Calcium carapaces however are a lot cheaper to make, since the organism only have to accumulate it - that's shells from oysters, clams etc.

However, when Calcium was scarce, Trilobites ruled. When Calcium became a lot more common, shells carapaces proliferated. So, eco-paleontologists believe that the main cause for the trilobites extinction has been their inability to compete with shell organisms, once they started to proliferate.

Anyway, Underwater civs could use shells or chitin-like carapaces as tools, including for surgery - IF they have the luck to have those.

Flamboyant marine organisms or organic structures - such as wood - would be EXTREMELY unlikely, because plant-like organisms syntesize biochemicals using sunlight as energy (or volcanic chemicals); the amount of energy however is insuficient to allow plants to be mobile - that's why plants dont walk. The other thing that the first level syntesizers (plants) need is chemicals; some they get from the atmosphere, or gases dissolved in the water in the case of aquatic plants-like, such as O2 or N3, NH4 or other nitrogen sources in gas, liquid or mixed in other forms in the soil, they need water that isnt a problem under water, but they also need chemicals that are only present at large quantities at the bottom of the oceans, because those sink in the water, like Calcium, Magnesium, Iron and many others, as well as decomposed organic matter. That's why aquatic plants are fixed at the bottom, instead of just floating at the top. Which is why we dont have floating aquatic plants at large, except a few exceptions on shallow waters.

That's also why the middle of the oceans are "deserts" in terms of biomass. When the ocean is too deep, the nutrients are all in the depths, but sunlight doesnt get there, so you have no food chain because synthesizers cant live there (where there's light there's no nutrients, and where there's nutrients there's no water) EDIT: no light instead of "no water". What's wrong with my brain?

And rigid structures like wood are unfit for the oceans; it's no accident that wood occurs just for terrestrian plants, not aquatic ones.

And the fact that wood floats is another struck of blind luck for us! Wood is the most incredible gift from Evolution to our technological progress! As such, there's no garantees another alien world would have the luck of having such a magic material literally growing in threes - seriously, wood is absolutely magical. We take it for granted, but the truth is that wood is our own "Wonderanium" material - which in fact has conducted us all the way to our TL8 wonder age and still does!

Last edited by KarlKost; 06-26-2022 at 11:23 AM.
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Old 06-26-2022, 11:48 AM   #44
KarlKost
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
They're all over at least three Tech Levels in the Basic Set Tech Level chart.
Arithmetic and writing (TL1) they could do, although with ink impossible they'd be limited to carving or scratching all their writing.
They would certanly need a "Wonderanium" of their own; inky would have to be a wonderanium of itself, squids and octopus produce it, but it gets diluted under water. And paper is also impossible - of yes, and another magic product from our "Wonderanium" wood - paper!

And I just thought of yet ANOTHER "magic" property of our wonderanium plants - FIBERS. Like Linen from Flak or fibers from cotton, and ropes from hemp (not to mention all the medicine from herbs). Our plants are magic wonderaniums all over the place!


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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
But without metal or some handwavium material to take the place of it they'd never get further than TL0 in Weapons and Armour. The only knives they'd have would be stone ones and maybe shells (can be made quite sharp, but obviously really fragile).
I just remembered another alternative: obsidian. Obsidian knives have a sharper cut than modern medical scalpels!


Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
They could get as far as TL2 (saddles) and perhaps TL3 (stirrups) in some aspects of the Transportation category. (Maybe their chariots would have air-filled floats to make them effectively "weightless" instead of wheels).
Transportation underwater is a lot easier, so maybe they would content with muscular transportation or animal driven one, simply tying a "sharky-like" domesticated beast with tons of stuff.

Making cloth-like materials would be another challenge thou without our "wonderanium" plants.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
In Biotechnology, animal husbandry (TL1) sounds straightforward and I'm not sure what "chemical remedies" (TL2) as distinct from "herbal remedies" (TL0) is supposed to mean, and "bleeding the sick" (TL2) could be done for all the use it would be, but surgery (TL1)? Not with those knives.
Well, we sure use herbal remedies, yes plants are absolutely magic, but we have other sources of medicine. The ancient egpticians for example used honey and rot bread for healing wounds. Now we know that "hot bread" contains penicilin, our best antibiotic to date, and that comes from a fungus; honey meanwhile also has several medicinal properties, so there are other sources for medicine chemicals other than just our wonderanium plants. Several types of poison from animals are also used to systesize medicinal-drugs nowadays, but that's TL7-8 tech (for us), coming from snakes poison for example. It's not impossible for alien biochemistries to find medicinal uses from their own alien organisms against alien diseases and alien microscopic contaminants - by the way, all of those would probably just be toxic to us. In fact, all life on Earth, while probably not infectious to aliens (our microorganisms wouldnt be able to survive on alien biochemistry) it would instead be highly toxic to them, and vice versa. Eating alien "food" would be like trying to eat plastic, so their "medicine" would kill us - but it would be perfect for them.
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Old 06-26-2022, 12:03 PM   #45
Pursuivant
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
I'm not sure what "chemical remedies" (TL2) as distinct from "herbal remedies" (TL0) is supposed to mean, and "bleeding the sick" (TL2) could be done for all the use it would be, but surgery (TL1)? Not with those knives.
I take "chemical remedies" to be simple products of chemical reactions, like heavy metal salts, and somewhat refined or processed plant products like laudanum (opium + wine).

Surgery is possible using TL0 obsidian stone tools. Obsidian scalpel blades are still preferred for some types of surgery, since they can be honed to a much finer edge producing cuts which heal with minimal scarring.

The big challenge to underwater surgery is keeping the surgical field sterile, since surrounding water can carry contaminants into the wound.
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Old 06-26-2022, 12:22 PM   #46
KarlKost
 
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
I take "chemical remedies" to be simple products of chemical reactions, like heavy metal salts, and somewhat refined or processed plant products like laudanum (opium + wine).
Some ancient "doctors" used mercury and lead as "medicine". Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, cant win it all.

But who knows, for an alien biochemistry gunpowder could prove to be a great healer. Alcohool for example is a great sterilizer. There may be countles of chemicals and alien biochemicals that may serve well an alien biochemistry.


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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
The big challenge to underwater surgery is keeping the surgical field sterile, since surrounding water can carry contaminants into the wound.
Yeah, I forgot about that. The water is a cesspool of microorganism and parasites of all kinds
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Old 06-26-2022, 10:03 PM   #47
Pursuivant
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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The water is a cesspool of microorganism and parasites of all kinds
The way around that would be to create a sealed bubble of sterile air or water over the area where you're operating, with all the tools you need inside, and use the equivalent of a glove box or "waldoes" to allow the surgeons to operate. If you have a water-filled bubble, you circulate sterile water through the chamber to carry away blood and other stuff. Done right, it could be more sterile than a human-style operating theater.

Surgical wounds would have to be glued together or sutured up tight to prevent liquid from getting in. Surgical dressings would be replaced by glue-like stuff impregnated with antibacterial agents, possibly with something water repellent on the outer surface to keep the drugs from being carried away by water currents. Alternately, certain types of small marine creatures could be used to debride wounds in the same way that blowfly maggots or leeches are used in modern surgery.

Sorry for the digression, but I've recently been thinking how exactly sapient aquatic species would perform surgery for a project I've been working on.
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Old 06-27-2022, 09:35 AM   #48
Willy
 
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
SNIP

Sorry for the digression, but I've recently been thinking how exactly sapient aquatic species would perform surgery for a project I've been working on.
Some sessile creatures glue themselfs at rocks or hard surface in the oceans. I read the same glue, refined and cleaned ) could be used to glue wounds together, and itīs biodegrable, so less problems arise while the wound heals fully. Also some sealife produces substances that stops bleeding nearly immediately, by rapid enhancing the blood coagulation. I forgot the exact species sorry.

The fibres some mollusks produce to attach them to the ground or other sea shells, have been used in the old pre roman times to make a silk like cloth, it certainly can be used as sewing thread.

Cutting can be first done with chipped stone, flint and obsidian are very sharp.
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Old 06-27-2022, 10:57 AM   #49
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

Just a reminder that being a water breather doesn't mean not having access to the air. They would be able to reach out even if they were exclusively water breathers.
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Old 06-27-2022, 11:53 AM   #50
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Different TLs in different fields

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
Yes, their bodies are engineered to have insane regeneration, mostly under the Creep. They also absorb nutrients directly from the Creep, so they dont even need to eat, it's perfect bioengeneering. Their mouths are just for bitting the enemies of the Swarm!
Of course, the Creep needs to get the nutrients from somewhere. I don't know if what it is was ever explained, but my guess would be a sort of plant-analogue (more akin to mold of some sort, really) that absorbs nutrients from the environment and energy from photosynthesis, radiosynthesis, etc.

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
Their Queens can heal with bio-psionic powers, but other than that, they dont apply medicine - they do have it thou, as evidenced in the lore, their Cerebrates and Overmind were absolutely immortal (as long as there's a Swarm), and the Queen of Blades were also ressurected (several times), so they do have medicine TL12^, but that's restricted for the few "citizens".
That's not really medicine, honestly. The Cerebrates, Overmind, and Queen of Blades (and, later, Hybrids, and I believe Stukov and some other unique Zerg units) basically innately have something akin to GURPS' Unkillable 3 trait - when they "die," they immediately start regrowing a new body somewhere in the swarm, and their mind moves to and inhabits said new body, so long as they aren't slain by their Achilles Heel (Void energy, like that used by the Dark Templar... at least for the Cerebrates and Overmind, I'm not sure even that would be enough to stop Kerrigan).

That's not to say they have no understanding of medicine, however. They have a good enough understanding of biology - their own, as well as that of other species - that I suspect they could easily have access to advanced medicine in rather short order (say, if their leadership caste permanently lost their Unkillable 3, and/or if they opted to join the Protoss and Terrans in the galactic economy*). It's just that, as you note, they don't really have a good reason to pursue that particular subfield of biology, given their innate gifts.

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
Stone hammers would be insanely innefective under water, I dont think they would be able to muster the necessary force required for the necessary impact.
In this case, a stone "hammer" could be a stone that you simply thrust forward into whatever you're working. That's going to be harder than being able to make use of a lever, of course. A human probably couldn't work even soft copper while underwater, but our theoretical aquatic aliens may have a method of producing the necessary force (much as a pistol shrimp can generate tremendous force underwater). There may also be ways to simply (but slowly) crush the metal into shape, with the item being worked between two hard surfaces that are worked via levers.

But, yeah, most likely a purely-aquatic creature would be restricted to using its natural gifts and what it could harvest from other creatures (shell, coral, bone, etc). They'd probably have beautiful tapestries woven from various marine plants, at least. If the world has landmasses, however, they may well figure out ways to survive and function, at least for short periods of time, outside of the water, potentially allowing them to (slowly) make their way up the tech tree.


*When I was musing over a potential StarCraft campaign setting, I thought the ideal time would be perhaps a century or so after StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops (and basically ignoring pretty much all the lore outside of the games... and modifying some of what was in the games), with a semi-cosmopolitan galaxy where Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg can be seen working together, although typically like would stick to like, and there'd be plenty of fighting within and between the groups. The Zerg using their extensive knowledge of xenobiology to produce medicines (and other medical services) for sale to the others would certainly fit.
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