08-29-2022, 10:31 PM | #21 |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
From what I've read, Cold Fusion is really chemistry. I agree with the idea that Vader's armor isn't power armor. His strength comes from the force.
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08-29-2022, 11:27 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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08-30-2022, 12:40 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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08-30-2022, 12:49 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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Everything else about R2-D2 and C3P0 is well within the bounds of our scientific understanding, if not necessarily our engineering ability. For a science-fantasy franchise like SW, R2-D2 was actually oddly gritty and utilitarian, a service robot with lots of integral tools and the ability to interface with and service/maintain all sorts of different machines. (Though the lack of convenient spoken communication is peculiar.) (Granted the prequels with the rocket flight is another story.)
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08-30-2022, 01:02 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
Blasters aren't bad. They're just drawn that way. The bolts are visible because if they weren't, it would like they were just pointing toy guns...which of course they are. The blaster bolts are as nonliteral as the "real" guns that for some reason cause sparks and make kapwing noises when they shoot at hard surfaces.
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08-30-2022, 02:05 AM | #26 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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08-30-2022, 07:26 AM | #27 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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"An ^ after TL indicates the gadget requires superscience technology. The GM may wish to omit the gadget, or to reassign the TL." Quote:
In other words, GURPS Ultra-Tech was not written to be a Tech-O-Meter that you hold up to a setting and get a TL reading. Quote:
"The standard GURPS tech levels represent just one of many paths that describe how different technologies pace one another in development. The tech levels of the various items in this book should be treated simply as guidelines — a culture may develop some technologies more rapidly than others." If GURPS had just said "TL^" for superscience devices, then there would be no guidelines, no concept of when these devices tend to be developed in science-fiction. As a simple example, GURPS Ultra-Tech assigns semi-portable fission reactors as TL9, semi-portable fusion reactors as TL10, and portable fusion reactors as TL11. It assigns portable cold-fusion reactors as TL10^. It specifically chooses TL10^ instead of TL9^ or TL11^ or TL12^ because fusion comes into its own in TL10, and compactifying it with cold fusion is superscience. You would have gained nothing if the book had simply listed it as TL^, especially since the TL10^ device is listed as an alternative to the TL11 portable version. But if you know that you want cold-fusion reactors to be TL9^, then it doesn't really matter if the book says otherwise. I am often dismayed at the poor regard GURPS Ultra-Tech has on this forum. It's an incredibly sophisticated book, with layers upon layers of interlocking parts, but I feel like its purpose is not really understood here, where people seem more interested in arguing about what the correct TL of Star Trek or Star Wars really is. GURPS Ultra-Tech does not set out to answer questions like that. It provides a future path of technology based generically (this is GURPS!) on science-fiction, along with tools to customize it to suit any setting. |
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08-30-2022, 08:38 AM | #28 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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To be clear, the "setting has Y which is assigned TL n^, so setting must be TL n^" bit was meant to be a description of how many people go about assigning TL's to various settings, not how I was thinking it should be done. Indeed, my point was that it shouldn't be done that way! Quote:
EDIT:I'll note the purpose of determining what TL a setting should have is that doing so means that, when playing in that setting, you can more-readily extrapolate what sort of other technologies exist that the setting's official media hasn't yet had reason to explore (or you're unaware of any exploration of this). What are military rations like in Star Wars? I've not seen them depicted (although maybe it's the weird insta-bread that Rey was bartering for at the beginning of The Force Awakens), but if we assign Star Wars a TL, we'll know what options from UT are likely to be appropriate (although offhand I don't think UT made much distinction between rations available at a given TL; I think we may already be at the point where you can technically make nutritionally-complete rations as light and compact as physically possible, at higher TL's you'd just have a better eating experience - which GURPS doesn't generally concern itself with - and/or longer shelf life, so this may be a bad example).
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08-30-2022, 09:18 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
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08-30-2022, 10:27 AM | #30 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Using 3e's Tech Levels, or adding more Tech Levels beyond 12.
Based on the non-superscience technology, and how it functions. In a setting where basically everything is superscience, you'd instead go off of what things seem to approximate in terms of performance - although in really heavy-superscience settings you're sometimes better off largely ignoring TL and just limiting things to the gear that canonically exists, is related, or seems to thematically fit (although eyeballing some level of TL can be useful for types of gear not explored in the media, as I noted upthread).
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