On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Roger Burton West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 05:04:05PM -0400, David Scheidt wrote: > >>I don't do traveller, so I don't have whatever source I'd look it up >>in. (I like my space settings much crunchier than traveller, thanks. >>One of the things that I don't like about traveller is the total lack >>of economic undrstanding in the setting. > > Have you read _GT: Far Trader_?
I've looked at it; but I've not read the whole thing. It still suffers from the fundamental problems of traveller. Technological knowledge is, except for the most cutting edge military stuff, is non-rival in consumption, and a has a near zero cost of production and transportation. That means it's going to be widely and freely available. So, even if you accept traveller's premise that there will be planets that don't have the population to support the necessary infrastructure to have high-tech, but which still get inter-stellar traffic, there's no way they're going to revert to TL5, the way it was known on earth. Lots -- I'm very tempted to say most -- of the technical progress that occurs between TL3 and TL6ish isn't fundamental changes, it's engineering knowledge. Give me a couple engineering text books, a few other reference materials, and send me back to 800 BC, and I'll either get burned as a witch, or I'll start the industrial revolution two millennia early. -- David Scheidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
