[TML] Technological advancement

[Terry Carlino]

>
> Unfortunately, John's article has 1 major flaw.  He wants to update the
> details of Traveller, but maintain the outline.  I would seek just the
> reverse, as the outline of the OTU is extremely unrealistic.
>
> Or better yet, update it all.  Obviously, Traveller Canon is on to
> something, or there wouldn't be so many of us clinging to it after all these
> years and having such strong opinions about it.  Figure out what that
> something is, and produce a whole new Universe that also has it.  Then maybe
> we could attract more people to gaming again.
>   
I think that it is the depth of of the history of the Imperium that is 
most fascinating to me as a Traveller hobbyist. The problems I have is 
with the details of the technology curve and the slow advance of 
technology. Also sometimes there are just dumb things.

Let me use the XBoat network as an example. Logically there is simply no 
explanation for building a jump ship without any kind of  maneuvering 
drive. Especially if jump technology doesn't let you pin point exactly 
where in a system you will precipitate out, which seems to be the case 
with Traveller Jump drive. The savings in cost of deleting the 
maneuvering drive is quickly eaten up by the cost of maintaining tenders 
at every leg of the XBoat circuit. The number of boats now has to be 
doubled or tripled because the boat can't just take itself to refuel for 
the next leg. It must wait for a tender to come pick ip up. Add to that 
the fact that an XBoat is a five hundred year old design which is stuck 
at J4. Was a J4 XBoat network created in a metagame sense just so the 
Duke of Regina could get the news of the Emperor's assassination via 
private J6 courier before the news got out by the XBoat network? It's 
silly really. Who would use such a network? Even if they couldn't create 
an Imperium wide network why wouldn't a megacorp use their own J6 
couriers to transfer information? Once they made the network the ability 
to sell it's services to others would just be too profitable not to do.

"Get the news before the XBoat!" Pretty soon all of the new services 
would be using it and no one would care about the outdated XBoat news.

It's like our present postal system. As more and more people use email 
to communicate and UPS/Fedex to send stuff more and more the U.S.Mail is 
carrying nothing but bills and junk mail, and as more and more people 
are paying their bills on line they are losing the bill traffic too. The 
only thing that prevents a private carrier from taking that business 
away is that private carriers are not allowed, by law, to compete with 
the post office in that arena. I've seen nothing in canon to indicate 
that the Imperium prevents private carriers from competing with the 
XBoat service.

So it would make sense that when J5 became available the XBoat network 
would start to put them on important routes. The same with J6. Now I 
could believe that it might take a hundred years to update every Xboat 
route to J5, and another hundred years for J6 boats to get to the 
Marches. I would even believe that you might find some J4 boats still 
servicing minor routes in the Marches in 1120. But I would expect to see 
J6 service between Regina and Mora.

-- 
TerryC
All that is Gold does not glitter
Not all who travel are lost