JV::>> Why exclude law level from the tech modifier? The more
[...deleted for brevity...]
UG::>This is a good point. If you send me your suggested modifications,
::>I'll try 'em out on the program. Another TLMer mentioned via email
::>that he uses three different tables for determining the government
::>type of a world. Which one he uses depends on the world's population.
::>I don't know if this is going too far or not, but the best way to
::>find out is to try out the idea and see what sort of UWPs it results in.
For a bare-bones set of mods, use the following:
No Law or Moderate Law +0
Low Law +1
High Law -1
Extreme Law (A-C) -2
Extreme Law (D-E) -3
Extreme Law (F-G) -4
Extreme Law (H+) -5
Rationale: At No Law, there is no way of ensuring that the
person who develops new technology will be able to profit from
it. If something is good, it will be used by anyone who can get
their hands on it, and without paying. This reduces the
incentive.
At Low Law, there may be some protection, so there will be some
innovation. However, it only rates a +1 because the government
will normally not be powerful or influential enough to make large
investments in research.
At Moderate Law, you will typically have a government that has
the power, influence, and revenue to invest in research, and
sufficient freedom of information exchange to make it profitable
(in terms of results). However, at this stage, the government
will probably have a tendency to want to direct the research,
rather than dropping the cash on the table, sitting back, and
saying, "O.K. folks, let's see what you can come up with."
This directive tendency will continue at higher law levels, and
with the continuing decrease in personal freedom and freedom of
information exchange, and increasing compartmentalization of
research, the return on investment will typically drop heavily.
At some point, the government will probably decide that research
is unproductive of results, and tech will stagnate (Look at the
USSR on Terra in -2531 - most of their technology was acquired
through intelligence gathering).
These worked pretty well for me. I've also tried fooling with
the DMs for government type, with results that were not
unreasonable. That info is posted in my next message.
==========================================================================
Jeff Zeitlin [email removed]
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