Re: [FT] Tech Level? Is there such a thing?

ateske@hicom.net wrote:

> The_Beast wrote:
> >The idea of modeling tech levels is fun, but one I find dangerous.
> >
> >The main problem I have with the discussion tends toward the
> >slippery quality of 'tech level'.
> >
> >I will bore you for a moment with an analogy. The distance
> >between the USA's Brewster Buffalo [snicker-snack] would cause
> >fits of laughter to an F-16 pilot.
> >
> >Where does one level end, and the next begin? They are ALL
> >air-breathing, internal combustion, single-engined craft.
>
> Sure.  But the piston craft can't go supersonic.  Odds are the hull
offers more protection in certain critical areas on the later aircraft,
though that doesn't have to be the case.  (In fact, faster aircraft may
rely on speed/dodging instead of armor; FT doesn't cover to hit
modifiers for speed because of the different flight medium & methods of
propulsion, so whatever.)  I'm pretty sure the weapons on an F-16 are
better than those from the WWII aircraft.  So while it's tough to say
specifically where a break in tech level occurs, they *are* there.

The problem of tech levels is that they assume that everything changes
at once.  The F16 uses a weapon that is almost unchanged after 130 years
(the rotary cannon) and computers that were impossible to build 20 years
ago (the most recent batch).  The ME262 is an interesting comparison to
the P-51.  The P-51 was more advanced in many areas than the ME262, and
superior in most of the others, but the P-51 was at the end of its
development.  There was no way to improve it without making a break from
its design principles.	The ME262 was rather crude and unreliable (but
really, REALLY FAST), and towards the end of the war had enough toys
added that the crew of a two-seat version would not have that much
difficulty adapting to the crew tasks of an F4 (assuming the they could
read the
instruments), but a P-51 pilot, while a good stick-and-rudder man, would
be of little use in a modern airforce.	The technology of the ME262 had
growth potential, the tech of the P-51 did not; however, piston engined
aircraft remained in use for some time, even in the Viet Nam war.

>
>
> In fact, one reason it may be difficult to say where they occur is
because many components may be the same on some aircraft (e.g., engines)
while the weapons/"armor" were different, so the overall average tech
level of the aircraft is slowly sliding upwards... the other problem is
that "tech level" is usually a lot coarser scale than this.  I'd say
sub-sonic to supersonic flight is a tech level (it took a lot of
purposeful research to overcome), and some of the weapons differences
(self-guided weaponry, maybe?) but overall there's not a *lot* of
difference.

Another problem is that sudden shifts in the technology in use by a
society is related something else that is hard to model.  Metallic
aluminum used to be more valuable than gold.  When someone managed to
find a way to smelt aluminum in a way that was as cheap as bauxite was
plentiful, the world changed and flight became something that anybody
could do.

[This is the point where I have to plug "Connections", by James Burke. 
It is a must read]

An idea for tech levels is to reduce the range bands for weapons, or
make weapons heavier.  Here is my suggestion.  These are not real tech
levels, but sliding levels of technological maturity.  For simplicity's
sake, I like to use levels of obsolescence, with the human tech
described in FB1 at Olevel0.  Each level of  obsolescence adds 1% to the
mass required for the ftl drives, and each point of thrust.  The range
bands are reduced by one mu for each level of obsolescence (obsolescent
pds are only useful against obsolescent fighters), but doubling the mass
of the system reduces its obsolescence by four (but not to less than
Olevel0).  Doubling the mass of a beam to reduce obsolescence makes it
equivalent to the next class of beam for determining firing arcs

    Fighters lose 2mu of first movement, 1mu of secondary movement, 1mu
of range, and one point of endurance (fighters may also have their mass
doubled to reduce obsolescence).

SM's lose 2mu of max range, ERSM's lose 3mu.  Doubling the mass of SM's
does
not help.

The effect on electronics is also marked.  First, the difference between
obsolescence values of the firing and target vessels is subracted from
the die roll for determing how many SM's hit (when the difference is
negative, only as many SM'a as survived defensive fire may hit).  Ships
firing on less obsolescent ships must assign weapons to firecons and
roll for each firecon.	If the die roll is not more than the difference
in obsolescence, the firecon has been spoofed and all fire misses
(doubling the mass of a firecon also reduces its obsolescence by four).