On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 8:15 AM Ewan <xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk> wrote:

Just read through this thread.

As far as I recall (and you would have to trawl the archives) the “standard” jump drives in book 2 are the most efficient drives you can get in CT.

Which suggests, and what I believe the consensus of the list was, that they are all built at the best tech level they can be (TL15), and then shipped to various shipyards as “standard” drives you can just buy “off the shelf”.

My copy of the Starter Traveller pdf (purchased from DriveThruRPG and apparently a manual scan of the original pages . . . to judge by the slightly-off-kilter aspect of each page . . .) only mentions TL availability restrictions for ship computer Models. Nothing else on the ship construction charts and tables has a TL entry. So I tend to agree with the above assessment, that is that drives, power plants and all other major components are built at TL 15 and shipped out to Class A and B starports for assembly into vessels.

In canon, anyway.

IMTU, standard designs use CTL 12 components, since that's the average TL IMTU. Of course, YMMV.

Richard Aiken

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As far as the OTU is concerned, TL15 is avail just about *anywhere* thru importation (trade).

So, I guess a J6 design, or a 100% TL15 design is *possible* at any class A or B starport by importing parts from TL15 sources.

Now, that would NOT be possible c.900 or so cuz' TLmax was 14, at that time.

I guess it all comes down to semantics.

Is a TL12 system locked into only producing TL12 ships at it's dockyards?

I would say "NO", esp cuz', if that were the case, I can't see that a TL15 navy, like the IN, would have naval bases at anything lower than TL15.

p.s. of course, you'll potentially have to 'pay thru the nose' for those TL15 imports, *unless*, & this could be the case wrt J-drives, a very, very large trading network exists to distribute a very, very large quantity of mass-produced Jdrive units, thereby gaining economies of scale.

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