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Thread: Airships

  1. #111
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    Gary wrote:
    >
    > At 02:35 PM 8/21/2002 +0200, Chioran wrote:
    >
    > >>In my experience people tend to under rate not only the rate of advance,
    > >>the amount of effort required to make those advances and apply a sort of
    > >>simplistic reverse engineering/perfect hindsight to how technical
    > >>progress works. Got some examples of what you`re talking about
    > >>here? What simple technological advances and series of more
    > >>sophisticated advances, etc. are we talking about?
    > >
    > >I can assure you that no one involoved in this venture is underestimating
    > >anything. I understand the time and effort which goes into technological
    > >advances and do not take such things lightly.
    > >
    > >As far as a first step along this path toward a hovercraft, how about an
    > >improved wagon/cart wheel. One that is stronger and able to handle the
    > >rough paths that they frequently travel on.
    > >
    > >Earth Shattering isn`t it?
    >
    > Well, if we`re using the depictions of carts and wagons in 3e as the basis
    > of our wheel technology then I think this a pretty good example of what I`m
    > talking about. There are many steps in improving the wheel that are much
    > more specific than just saying "improved wheel." Spokes? Iron
    > treads? Shock absorbers? One with an improved axle? Standardized parts
    > that are more easily replaced when inevitable wear and tear occurs? Those
    > are just a few steps along the improved wheel path that could be explored.
    >
    > More importantly, however, is that a realistic approach to technology means
    > that the improved wheel should accompany other technical improvements that
    > would seem ancillary to the wheel itself, but are really necessary to its
    > development. Improved wheels go along with an infrastructure of other
    > technologies, most obviously road construction, but also things like mining
    > techniques, tack & harness, and animal husbandry. Technical advances don`t
    > generally exist on their own, which is what makes it so difficult to
    > rationalize taking one device from a significantly more advanced technology
    > and creating it in an earlier era. One example that has been cited was the
    > printing press and the many steps along its development, but in the broader
    > perspective there is an infrastructure that needs to exist for such
    > technologies. The printing press didn`t get invented until there was a
    > large enough percentage of the population who were literate to justify the
    > effort needed to print out several thousand copies of the same text.
    >
    > There are certainly technical improvements that PCs (or NPCs) should be
    > able to perform in 3e, especially BR regents, but it`s much more difficult
    > to rationalize a single anachronism than it is to justify progress in a
    > more generalized, abstract way. A system of "tech levels" in which the PCs
    > progress the skills of their domain in an aspect or two over a period of
    > time as part of the domain turn structure until they can build a prototype
    > of a device that is a tech level or two beyond the prevailing tech of the
    > culture. That`s probably the more "realistic" way of handling it.
    >
    > Gary
    >
    I couldn`t agree more with this, especially if you start looking at more
    modern tech you`d be suprised how much of it simply isn`t doable with a
    older tech base. Just take the steel tools we make today (especially in
    the expensive stuff where they really use state-of-the-art methods and
    tecniques). Any birthright smith would have no problem realizing that
    our
    21st century knive is better, but he still wouldn`t be able to reproduce
    it even if he had all the knowledge and a time traveller to show him.
    It would hit the classical you need the tools to make the tools to make
    the tools you need for the job :)

    A good book to illustrate this, which also IMHO happens to be a good
    read is
    1632 by Eric Flint, you can actually get it electronicly for free
    from here: http://www.baen.com/library/ and also the 1632 Tech forum on
    their
    webforums..

    Cobos

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  2. #112
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    So let us assume we give Chioran can advance the wheel and he is looking at a specific advancement of making it a stronger wheel and let say he has to be more specific on what exactly the advancement is...

    What would be the cost, time, and percent chance of success that people would give on this small leap?
    Lord Eldred
    High Councilor of the
    United Provinces of Cerilia
    "May Haelyn bring justice to your realm"

  3. #113
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    On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Lord Eldred wrote:
    > Lord Eldred wrote:
    > So let us assume we give Chioran can advance the wheel and he is
    > looking at a specific advancement of making it a stronger wheel and
    > let say he has to be more specific on what exactly the advancement
    > is...
    >
    > What would be the cost, time, and percent chance of success that
    > people would give on this small leap?

    I`m not real sure how a wheel would advance, so I`m going to take
    something more complex, like a wagon, and look at making it advance. The
    player may know exactly what advancement came on the wagon, in which
    order, in our history. So he would know exactly what step he was going to
    take. Each of these incremental steps would actually tend to be rather
    cheap- it`s coming up with the idea that`s hard.

    Suppose the idea would be a pivoting front axle, to allow tighter
    cornering (I know jack about wagons, but I know modern 4-wheeled wagons
    sometimes have this). The player sets this as his goal. He could use
    out-of-game knowledge, come up with this immediately, and implement it.
    It`s probably not a lot more expensive than a regular wagon axle- maybe
    the overall cost of the wagon goes up by 5 gp initially, for extra
    materials and labor to make the pivot.

    How likely is it that the character would come up with this? Not real
    likely. I would give a chance a character who spent time working with
    wagons- someone with Craft- wainwright would have the best chance, though
    carpenters, teamsters, smiths, etc might have lower chances, supposing
    their time was actually spent working on wagons. A swordsmith is not
    terribly likely to improve the wagon field. Anyway, a wainwright might
    get one chance per year, at DC 30 or 35, to come up with the idea. A
    smith, carpenter, teamster, etc, might have a DC 40 check. Each of these
    could give synergy bonuses to the others- a wainwright with at least 6 or
    8 ranks in animal handling (all my 3e books are at my new apartment, I`m
    probably getting names wrong), representing a career in teamstering, might
    get +2 to his check.

    So the idea would be the hard part. I definitely would not allow
    out-of-game knowledge to be used in this endeavor. It would be straight
    skill checks.

    If a regent wanted to sponsor researchers to improve the wagon, I`d let
    him Build such a research hall, then pay GB to maintain it. The average
    GB spent every season would grant a +1 bonus to the yearly check, and it
    would take a full year before checks would be possible. A successful
    check vs DC 35 or 40 would result in some improvement. They might not
    come up with pivoting axles- they might invent a better carriage brake, or
    a spring for suspension, or a quickly-changeable wheel (in case one
    breaks).

    The high DC on these checks represents not just knowledge on the part of
    the inventor, but the likelyhood that materials or crafting knowledge will
    have progressed to the point to MAKE a new invention possible.
    --
    Communication is possible only between equals.
    Daniel McSorley- mcsorley@cis.ohio-state.edu

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  4. #114
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 03:25 AM 8/22/2002 +0200, Lord Eldred wrote:

    >What would be the cost, time, and percent chance of success that people
    >would give on this small leap?

    I haven`t worked on this stuff much recently, but here`s a description of
    the system of technological progress I`ve been fiddling with. (This is
    probably much more answer than you were looking for, but what the heck?)

    First off, there`s a list of tech levels that I wrote up for determining
    things like province population level, but I`ve extrapolated it for use
    with this kind of thing. It`s a bit hard to reproduce that table, so
    here`s a link to it in the birthright-l archives:
    http://oracle.wizards.com/scripts/wa.exe?A...D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1

    Using that table, most BR cultures are TL 5. The Brecht may be TL
    6. Elven cultures are kind of hard to rate, but they`re probably between 5
    or 6 as well, though they are a bit of a special case.

    Within each tech level are several categories. DM`s should pick whatever
    categories they like, depending on the emphasis they want technology to
    represent in their campaign. I use the following eight:
    Government/Society, Agriculture/Industry, Construction/Architecture,
    Health/Medicine, Transportation/Travel, Military, Energy and Magic. In
    order to raise the tech level in a particular category a regent has to
    perform a number of successful Progress actions equal to the square of the
    current tech level. That is, if a regent wanted to raise the Military tech
    level of his domain from 5 to 6 he`d have to perform 25 successful Progress
    actions. (I refer to each of these as an "innovation" just for flavor, so
    it takes 25 innovations to go from TL 5 to TL 6.) The DC of the progress
    action is 10 + target tech level. (DMs may want to raise or lower this
    based on whatever their views on how easy or difficult they want progress
    to be.) One could also have more than eight categories of technology, but
    because of the way tech level is determined be aware that doing so makes
    raising the overall tech level of a culture more difficult. Some cultures
    may even have a different set of categories. BR elves, for instance, might
    have Natural Harmony in place of Agriculture/Industry.

    Using a system like this the easiest way to keep track of a particular
    culture`s progress is to note it in the description of the culture after a
    decimal point. That is, a culture might have an Energy TL 5.14 meaning
    fourteen of the twenty-five successful progress actions have been made
    towards getting to TL 6. Each successful progress action also means the
    regent can pick a particular type of item from the higher tech level which
    can be built as a "prototype." That is, he can build those items, but at a
    cost equal to the cost of the "standard" cost of the item times it`s tech
    level. Let`s say, for instance, one wanted to build iron weapons using
    bronze age tech. The Bronze Age is TL 2 while the Iron Age is TL 3. If a
    regent performed a successful DC 13 Progress action to improve his military
    technology he would be at TL 2.1 and he`d be able to construct, say, iron
    longswords for 45gp each instead of 15gp.

    I assume that tech levels can`t go more then 1 level away from one another,
    so a culture can`t "realistically" have agriculture/industrial of TL 5 and
    a military TL 7, but you could easily toss that aside if you want someone
    to create higher tech items in a sort of H.G. Wells/Jules Verne kind of
    way. (And in cases like elven technology it makes sense to throw out that
    restriction too.) You could then have the character develop single aspect
    of technology, in this case Transportation/Travel, until he got a single
    innovation into the tech level that would allow hovercraft, which might be
    TL 11. If he`s going to build it using TL 10.1 technology it would cost
    x11 the cost of such an item in a TL 11 culture, so if you find some sort
    of reference (maybe D20 Modern will have the cost of such vehicles) you
    could determine a price for it at x11 the cost of the reference you`ve
    found. (Though it`s hard to place the cost of items that don`t use gp as
    their base cost I`ve found that 1gp:$20 is a rough guide. YMMV.) Building
    a prototype $20,000 TL 11 hovercraft, for example, after performing some
    progress actions at TL 10 would cost $220,000 or 11,000gp.

    Using a system like that described above you could figure out the cost of
    an item, and the amount of research effort required to learn to build
    it. There are many tweaks that you could apply to such a system, and it
    may very well be too complicated for many people`s taste....

    Gary

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  5. #115
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    Gary such a system does well to give tech advances in general. However, Chioran is looking for a specific tech advance which I would do without a whole general tech advance. How do you think your system applies?
    Lord Eldred
    High Councilor of the
    United Provinces of Cerilia
    "May Haelyn bring justice to your realm"

  6. #116
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 03:41 PM 8/24/2002 +0200, Lord Eldred wrote:

    >Gary such a system does well to give tech advances in general. However,
    >Chioran is looking for a specific tech advance which I would do without a
    >whole general tech advance. How do you think your system applies?

    Towards the end of that post there is some information about the cost of
    creating prototypes of items that are from a more advanced tech level than
    the one of the prevailing culture. Multiply the cost of the item in that
    tech level by its actual tech level. So a TL 10 item produced in a TL 9
    culture with a cost (at TL 10) of 45gp would cost 450gp. I usually assume
    that one can create a prototype only of items in the very next TL, and that
    there must still be at least one successful Progress or Research action
    performed at TL X to build a prototype of an item from TL X+1. If you
    wanted to get rid of those considerations, though, and allow unrestricted
    prototype development then you should probably extrapolate that system by
    continuing the multipliers for each tech level step between the prevailing
    one and the target TL of the item being built. The same 45gp TL 10 item
    produced at TL 5 would then cost 45gp x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 = 1,360,800gp.

    It is, I think, pretty questionable whether someone really could just reach
    across several tech levels without performing a lot of research first and
    produce items from that more advanced tech, but even without that
    requirement the cost of creating an item by extrapolating the costs and
    continuing the multipliers is more than likely prohibitively
    expensive. Using the $20=1gp conversion (in fiddling around with these
    kinds of $ to gp conversions I`ve found gp equal to $20=$50 or so with
    certain exceptions, YMMV) the cost of a "modern" TL 11 hovercraft that
    cost, say, $20,000 built at TL 5 would be 1,000gp x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6
    = 332,640,000gp.

    On the other hand a medieval (TL 5) character who wanted to produce a circa
    1974 silk screen polyester disco shirt ($20) would only cost 332,640gp. He
    could produce the same era`s mood ring ($5) for $83,160 or replicate the
    70`s pet rock fad for 33,264gp each.

    Gary

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  7. #117
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    Lord Eldred <brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG> wrote at 02-08-19 03.51:

    > Lord Eldred wrote:
    > Gary, I would have to agree with many of your issues. I am the one that wants
    > the realism if he is not going to use magic. He seems to think that such a
    > device could be made out of wood. He also thinks I should give him a chance if
    > he starts trying. I think that lots of people would die in the process because
    > of the inherent dangers involved with leaving the ground.

    I can`t see any real dangers, unless he has people leaping off cliffs. No
    amount of tingering with wood will ever get you off the ground. There is NO
    WAY that a RL 15th century technological base could produce a hovercraft
    unless we play around with the laws of physics.

    But basically, it is all a genre question. Gnomes have flying machines in
    Krynn. Anime is full of flying devices - particularilu check out Escaflowne,
    where there is a kind of anti-gravitic rock with a bouyancy (in air) that
    depends on it`s temperature - heat it and it rises.

    The basic questin becomes - do you want this device in your campaign? If it
    is mundane, it will very soon be copied, and the whole world will be using
    it.

    /Carl

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  8. #118
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    I am not directly opposed to the idea of a hovercraft if it makes sense. For example if he uses magical means to make it happen. SO far the strongest arguments I see against it is

    1. He is using player knowledge to develop something that his character wouldn't necessarily think up.

    2. I still don't see how he gets the wood off the ground with the energy sources of the day.
    Lord Eldred
    High Councilor of the
    United Provinces of Cerilia
    &quot;May Haelyn bring justice to your realm&quot;

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