What is the new Low Tech like?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Wedhro

I don't like the way this topic about Low Tech turned into a topic about garbage. Sounds rude and unfair to the people working on it ;)

It's strangely appropriate, actually. A lot of what's in Low Tech comes from archaeological evidence. The archaeological record is, for the most part, stuff that people threw away or lost and couldn't be bothered to find. Low Tech is based on garbage!

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

I'd guess that there are many technologies that are adopted at a later tech level than they are actually technically possible. Looking at my lists of TL2 and TL3 armor and weapons, I can see that each culture only used a subset of what was technologically feasible for them.

For example, if a hypothetical new type of armor is technologically possible but totally unnecessary against the main weapons of that tech level or culture, few people are likely to bother with it. (If I knew more about armor, I'd have an example.)

The batteries mentioned earlier could be another example: If all the necessary metals, vinegar, ceramic containers, wire-drawing machines, and cloth are available, but practical uses for electricity are not, people just won't make batteries. And that doesn't even get into how, when, or why people would discover that they could make an electric current with these materials. I have read the same about early "steam engines:" there was no way to harvest or use the energy generated, making them useless.

Economics, laws, demand, taboos, local natural resources, and trade patterns could all make a difference in determining what feasible technologies are actually widely adopted. The differences between bronze and non-steel iron might make a good example: if copper, tin, and zinc were more abundant than iron, the costs of bronze vs. iron armor would be different.

Originally Posted by whswhs

If the technology were newly invented, I would believe the story that no one has caught on to the economic opportunity it offers. But you say it's been around for a while.

As far as I can recall, it was invented within the last 20 years. Reportedly it would have been technologically possible earlier because it uses no new equipment, but the particular process hadn't been invented. Whether it could ever be economically (as opposed to technologically) viable depends on broader economic trends, fuel demand, competition, regulations, subsidies, the total supply of potential feedstocks, etc. I agree that if it were viable under current conditions, it would have started to take off.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

For example, if a hypothetical new type of armor is technologically possible but totally unnecessary against the main weapons of that tech level or culture, few people are likely to bother with it. (If I knew more about armor, I'd have an example.)

Mail is the obvious example. It could easily be made using Bronze Age technology but it wasn't invented until the middle of the Iron Age.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Mail is the obvious example. It could easily be made using Bronze Age technology but it wasn't invented until the middle of the Iron Age.

Will LT mention this sort of thing, sort of like how HT had rules for inventing the shaped charge at TL6?

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Heck, any armor that was historically made of iron plates could probably have been made of bronze or brass plates, but AFAIK no bronze brigandine or full body bronze plate suits for humans or horses have been dug up -- at least, not any from the ancient Greeks or Romans. And if what I have written down is right, and iron full plate for horses wasn't used until TL4, then that's another technology that could have been invented earlier: it should have been possible at TL3.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But I have to grant that most people don't think of paying wages as a capital expenditure.

Bill Stoddard

That's because wages are recurring, while capital expenditures are typically one-off.

A back-of-the envelope conversion can be done where you take the Net Present Value of the wage stream required to operate the capital and add that to the (usually) one time costs of the actual equipment and facilitization.

By and large, this means you have to find the discount rate for your wage stream; in modern times, the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC; a combination of the average of debt and equity returns you can get on the open market if you don't sink your money into the present venture) can vary, but a ballpark good guess is often 10%.

Thus, if you have to pay $50M for actual fixed equipment, and $5M per year for wages (about fifty people, fully burdened), your total NPV costs are on the order of $100M, and your physical capital costs are equal to your ongoing labor costs.

To make a profit in the long term, your NPV income must exceed your NPV outflow. Using the WACC for discounting both income and outflow, means that profit in this case means not only do your income flows outweigh the time-weighted outflows, but it also means that you're "beating the market" in terms of not being a better investment to put your money in an index fund.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

How about the opposite issue of how long it could remain undiscovered?

Briefly mentioned as a general category but not analyzed for this particular case. Mainly because I thought it far more likely that GMs would have to deal with players who wanted to invent black powder in ancient Egypt than that they'd have to deal with players who wanted a society where George III's troops were facing colonials armed with cheiroballistrae.

Bill Stoddard

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

I have read the same about early "steam engines:" there was no way to harvest or use the energy generated, making them useless.

Nah. Steam engines could have been hooked up to grain mills, oil presses, water pumps, and the other machines which were originally driven by animal power and hooked up to water wheels when those were invented towards the end of the Roman Empire. LT goes into this in slightly more detail, but the problem with pre-TL5 steam "engines" is that they weren't any good.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by lexington

Will LT mention this sort of thing, sort of like how HT had rules for inventing the shaped charge at TL6?

LT4e treats bronze and iron as the same regarding stats. If you want bronze mail then look up the stats for regular mail and add +3 CF. Same for any other type of metal armour.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

AFAIK no bronze brigandine or full body bronze plate suits for humans.

Look up Dendra Panoply. It isn't a fully articulated suit but it is an example of TL1 full plate. You could start by looking a little to the left ;)