> Equipment will get cheaper by approx. 10% per tech level. Thus, making a
> TL 5 car at TL 9 should cost you .9^4 or 63% or the TL 9 cost. Note that this
> makes TL 12 merchant ships dirt cheap by TL 15. Why are the space lanes not
> full of these critters? Because the TL 15 starport is swamped with offers to
> build TL 15 craft at full price.
I don't know about MegaTraveller, but the old Traveller universe _was_ full of
ships of TL 12, or lower. The Type S scout/courier and the Type A free trader,
the most common ships around, could be built and maintained at TL 9! Which
meant that you could buy one just about anywhere, and you could get spares for
it just about anywhere. The problem with TL 15 starports is, there aren't many.
What do you do if your TL 15 ship breaks down while you're at Regina (class A
starport, TL 10)? The TL 15 starport builds ships for megacorporations who
probably have their own private spares stores, and for the Navy who does have
private spares stores all over the place - naval bases.
> Ilustrative example: The pocket computer. It becomes available at TL 11
Does that mean that Earth is now TL 11? Because I own a pocket computer. It
has 32K memory, although that can be expanded. Seriously, although I wouldn't
class it as a model 1 (which I'm assuming is the equivalent of, say, a PDP-11)
I'd expect a pocket model 1 at around TL 8 or 9.
> By the way, for ship computers, I allow a volume drop of about a factor of 2
> or 3 per tech level. Thus, at TL 15, one may have a big, expensive, power
> hungry model 9, or a small, inexpensive model three that the ships engineer
> can carry on his belt.
Better yet, both. That way, if the ship's computer gets destroyed in battle,
you can use the belt computer to calculate your jumps to somewhere where you
can buy a new full size computer.
"Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott
Adrian Hurt | JANET: [email removed]
UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: [email removed]