Subject: Batteries and Credits
I thought I'd add my 0.02Cr worth on the discussion of batteries.
Robert Dean mentioned that the vehicle was supposed to work at TL=5,6
range. How good is battery technology at this stage? This is the
advent of the car battery and by TL=6 probably the best batteries in
use were aboard submarines. I agree that making space a function of
cost is silly, (it ought to be tied to TL, total power output, duration
and that's it) it doesn't seem too implausible that the sort of batteries
you want would be prohibitively expensive at that TL. I would
suggest that the problem lies in the TL of a world where it is too
low to support people in the environment (TL 4 vacuum, for example,
is possible on the tables, but ridiculous.) I'd set it up that
the population (especially if they're miners) imported TL=9 type
items and the low TL represented their own construction ability.
There should be no problems with this if the population is small.
As far as the Cr to $ conversion goes, this is what I use:
Those objects that are not strongly technology dependent (handicrafts,
liquors, food) convert from $ to Cr at a ratio of 1-1.
Those objects which are strongly technology dependent (vehicles,
computer technology, medical aid) convert from $ to Cr at a ratio
of 10-1. Some may argue with some of these (food being TL dependent
or medicine being relatively cheap) but compare the cost of, say,
treating an infection (using penicilin, et. al.) in 1950 with the
cost now in real dollars and it will be lower now. Of course quad-
bypass surgery is really expensive now, but it could *not* be
performed at all in 1950. The cutting edge is always expensive,
yesterday's technology is dirt cheap and the cost of human labor,
in proportion to a society's available wealth is pretty constant
(at least to first order.) Some have claimed a 10-1 exchange,
some a 1-1 and I think this strikes a nice compromise. Of course
Traveller doesn't take TL differences in cost into account very
well, but there are a lot of things it doesn't do very well. Any
comments?
Nick Christenson
[email removed]