I was just toying with a handwavium to keep a scarcity-driven TU without giving up the standard OTU gadgets, but I am not quite sure it can be built up to something resisting serious scrutiny.

The essence of the problem AFAIK is that tech as nuclear dampeners imply other tech which imply such a fine control of basic forces that one can cheaply generate any element one wants, because fusion implies cheap, abundant energy. So you end up allowing for Star-Trek-like replicators, and large, bulky interstellar shipments make little sense.

OK, but the point is not what the existence of tech implies, but rather what an understanding of it implies, right? What if nuclear dampeners and the like are available but NOT understood at all? Shift them to TL 25+. They were discovered as relic tech (from the ancients, of course) and reverse-engineered. But they are bulky, somewhat unstable, and nobody has been able to really understand them. Very much how primitive shamans might be taught the operational basics of modern medicine (hygiene, etc) without understanding the reasons behind them (bacteria, viri...), or how you can teach somebody to produce pulver without any understandign of chemistry. In my handwavium, for centuries many tried to obtain the secrets of dampeners, but there were accidents (some University campus was blown up or something even worse, think Fringe-style accidents...) and the 3I has put a ban on such research, except at a handful of imperial facilities (cue adventure idea / cool in-game location).

My physics knowledge is insufficient for this. Can this work? How many other gadgets would one need to push into the relic-tech bag excuse? Am I missing something fundamental here?

--
Carlos Alós-Ferrer
Chair of Microeconomics, University of Cologne
http://www.decisions.uni-koeln.de

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

In his opinion he thought that there wouldn't be interstellar commerce in mass bulk but would concentrate on unique high-value items. He mentioned information as one of those.

Stars Without Number follows this model, as do I these days. Only the newest/poorest of colony worlds needs to import much in the way of manufactured items. Most of those would be high-end gear which their minifacs couldn't make from local raw materials (e.g. they had not been pre-loaded with the correct highly-expensive copyrighted templates). Everything a trader physically carries between worlds is going to be low-bulk, high-value luxury goods. In short, I mostly have a low-trade, small-ship, relatively-poor-Imperium TU.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.