06-25-2022, 07:51 AM | #41 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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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06-25-2022, 08:34 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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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". Quote:
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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06-26-2022, 11:17 AM | #43 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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. Quote:
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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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06-26-2022, 11:48 AM | #44 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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! Quote:
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Making cloth-like materials would be another challenge thou without our "wonderanium" plants. Quote:
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06-26-2022, 12:03 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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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06-26-2022, 12:22 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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. Yeah, I forgot about that. The water is a cesspool of microorganism and parasites of all kinds |
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06-26-2022, 10:03 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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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06-27-2022, 09:35 AM | #48 | |
Join Date: Dec 2020
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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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06-27-2022, 10:57 AM | #49 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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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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06-27-2022, 11:53 AM | #50 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Different TLs in different fields
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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. Quote:
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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