On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

I expect the Imperial standard will largely win out over incompatible local standards just for the purposes of convenience and costs; larger number of suppliers and the economies of scale for the Imperium are ginormous.

Also, the long Vilani history of the Imperium will tend to produce standardization; at least roughly within areas corresponding to the different Bureaux.

IDK. I suspect it depends on if you ever plan to leave the planet.

If you're born on some high-tech, high-pop world with a fast turnovr (say, Japan) and you never plan to leave, they may have all sorts of really cool indiginous-tech toys that don't work off-planet because the supporting infrastructure isn't there.

Navy and Scout ships are all wired for imperial standard power, as is every starport.

Imperial Navy and Scout ships are all wired for Imperial standard power, as is every starport. Potentially *every* jump capable starship is built to Imperial shipipng standards, and most local hulls also conform, simply because all the major components are only manufactured to Imperial standards.

Even most commercial products that have any connection to interstellar markets are at least nominally comformal to Imperial standards, if only Imperial power standards.

Rugged IMPSTAN stuff tends to be bigger, bulkier, and more rugged, and at least 10 years behind the new local stuff. It will work with other IMPSTAN items (as long as the relevant IMPSTANs are compatible) but not necessarily with your new local toy.

Any planet that developed with Impie assistance got all their infrastructure built to Imperial standards.

The power system on every colonial podunk is Imperial standard, if only because the colony gear was produced to be IMPSTAN compliant.

Dan

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine kook." -Alan Morgan