NationStates Jolt Archive

Now I know how you might wonder (If you are New to NationStates) what The words 'MT' and 'FT' might meen.

MT=Modern tech.
PMT=Post-Modern Tech
FT=Future tech
FanT=Fantasy tech
PT=Past tech
NST=NationStates Tech
SteamT=Steampunk Tech

The abbreviations for these Tech Types are easy, but what do they meen?

Modern Tech: Technology in use today, sometimes even Weapons used in World War II and The early Cold War are in this Group also. This is one of the easy types.

Post-Modern Tech: Between Modern and Future Tech, this is sometimes sadly Godmoded with. For all Noobs, they most know one thing about PMT, Laser Guns are NOT in this, thank you.

Future Tech: also called Sci-Fi Tech, this is one of the most fast growing tech groups on NS. It is Divided into Star War FT, Star Trek FT, Warhammer 40,000 FT etc. It is sometimes wanked.

Past Tech: It is RPed in the Era From the Start of the Bronze Age to The end of World War I. Easier the even MT.

Fantasy Tech: This is in the realm of Fantasy and Myth. Dragons, Giants and magic rules in this Group, and It is also one of the most Wanked up if a FanT Nation faces a MT or FT Nation. It is sometimes grouped with Past tech.

Steampunk Tech: Mostly a Sub Type of FanT mixed with FT, It has Few fans. Most of The machines and Veichles are powered by Steam and it is more like the 19th Century to early 20th. (Jules Verne and Sakura Wars anyone?)

NationState Tech: Machines and Weapons made by NS Players, It is sometime wanked so much that many think NS made Weapons are Godmod.

This is your list of Techs, Read and use them wisely.

Remember: Don't wank or Godmod.

Thank you for your Time.

Post-Modern Tech: Between Modern and Future Tech, this is sometimes sadly Godmoded with. For all Noobs, they most know one thing about PMT, Laser Guns are NOT in this, thank you.

Quite right. Theyre MT.

Quite right. Theyre MT.

Don't you meen FT?

In a less smartassy-mode, I would like to point out that these definitions are, by no means, agreed upon by the majority of NSers.
The definition of 'post modern' technology extends from '2010-ish' all the way up to 'spaceships, as long as they cant go faster than light'.
Futuretech has many variations as well. There's even 'post-future' tech, although most people usually simply describe it as 'crazily advanced futuretech'.

And, of course, there's genre mixing. 40k is a good example of that. There've been a couple futuretech fantasy nations as well.

All in all, NationStates is a FREEFORM roleplaying environment. You can do what you damn well please and anybody who tries to tell you otherwise needs a good n00kzoring.

Don't you meen FT?

No, I mean MT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1)

You forgot Bastard Tech...

Third Spanish States is a NS in more or less the year 2039 as I roleplay it now and it has a MT military and Post Modern Tech civilian stuff with a hint of the cyberpunk genre(except for the "Evil Corporations Run the Place" thing), after all it has anarchist punks around too and is filled with criminals due to lack of police and somewhat far from the utopian land it superficially seems to be.

Services of genetic profiling and selection through artificial reproduction are available to prevent people from having children with birth defects and even to allow them to choose, to a limited, probabilistic extent, whether they would want a daughter or son, their physical, psychological features and to ensure they are born with the best combination possible to allow increased intellectual capabilities. I might make a thread one day about the eventual social displacement between those who were born through liberal eugenics and artificial reproduction methods and those who were born naturally through chance.

Massive arcologies which make the Petronas Towers look like miniatures, capable of housing up to 3 millions of inhabitants and privately-owned arcologies, not unlike those seen in the cyberpunk genre like for example the Renraku Arcology of Shadowrun(here owned by megacooperatives rather than megacorporations) are a common sight and there are artificial, "cybernetic" limbs which can effectively replace lost human limbs with the same capability of them available as part of their medical technology and computers and information technology are everywhere, including even some optical computers, and have made telephones, cell phones, paper-money and many other things obsolete as all currency is in digital form. However there is no stuff like occipital jacks and "cybernetic implants" actually capable of being superior to the performance of natural human limbs yet and nobody is insane enough to cut off his own arm to replace it with an artificial one.

P/MT is the proper definition here.

The definition of 'post modern' technology extends from '2010-ish' all the way up to 'spaceships, as long as they cant go faster than light'.

I have a FT version of Third Spanish States which have ships capable of wiping out an entire solar system with relativistic weapons, I don't think they are PMT just because I respect science rather than resorting to unobtanium and handwavium and because it's almost entirely Hard Sci-fi. I prefer to call it separatedly as "Hard FT" because of that.

Hataria your hardly one to offer advice to, well, anyone.

Never mind tech types have been explained dozens of times, and an even more in depth description is available through the stickies.

NST, SteamT, FanT

Anyone ever hear these terms before? ever?

Anyone ever hear these terms before? ever?

Nope

Anyone ever hear these terms before? ever?

It's not SteamT, it is AT(Alternate Tech), With huge airships for the LULZ

It's not NST, it's "IGNORE Cannon test subject Tech"

It's not FanT, it's just called Fantasy.

May want to improve definitions on MT/PMT, when I read it it seems to suggest RL stuff only, NS tech being for player designs.

Um, a note for new players...read the stickies over this. No offense (or maybe some) Ryou, but...the majority of what you've just written refers to whether or not the tech can be wanked (which it all can, by the way), and based on your experience. Try to be positive so that we don't kill off new players so fast.

Um, a note for new players...read the stickies over this. No offense (or maybe some) Ryou, but...the majority of what you've just written refers to whether or not the tech can be wanked (which it all can, by the way), and based on your experience. Try to be positive so that we don't kill off new players so fast.

I am only trying to help

I am only trying to help

Understandable; but you might want to phrase it to be a little more open. A lot of the new players often are really responsive to the slightest touch of a phrasing.

I wish PMT was better defined.

I'd like to try roleplaying my nation but on one hand, some of the technology (such as sentient, near sentient, etc, AIs and complex androids and holograms) are not exactly modern tech, but at the same time I fear that they're not exaclty FT ether, they're advanced but they're not going around flying Enterprise or such.

PMT is somewhat of a grey area. Different people define it in different ways; for instance, I personally think PMT ends with the discovery of a fusion reactor and/or space warfare craft. Others think that PMT only ends with the discovery of light-speed travel. Others still think that PMT ends with, say, 2150 or something. MT is more rigid; it's modern tech and a few years. PT would likely be anything before 1990-2000. I'm no expert on this myself, though like I said, PMT would end with more simple droids, fusion, below light-speed travel, etc. Think I, Robot, I suppose.

I consider as PMT beginning the development of an effective Single-Stage-To-Orbit spaceplane and of the first, crude power armors(2050 is the limit I established for MT-PMT separation) and as the PMT ending the development of the first interstellar capable spacecraft, which logically implies the development of an effective fusion power for propelling starships coupled with something like solar sails. Thus what mainly separates PMT from FT in my vision is interstellar travel capability, regardless of being FTL or sub-light. Again, this is a quite grey area and like I mentioned before, technically CTSS has some PMT elements despite fitting as MT. There are some more expansive separations like "Early PMT"(usually RPing together with MT nations) and "Late PMT"(usually RPing together with the "Near FT" and "Hard Sci-fi FT" nations) among others which can be found in NSWiki or in the stickies.

In my opinion, the movie Blade Runner and most cyberpunk literature are excellent examples of what would consist Post-modern Tech, and Shadowrun would be a sort of "PMT + Fantasy" universe, for example.

The big difference between FT and PMT that I see is the following:

PMT still has to try to explain everything it pulls with real world physics, and even then it has to use technology that would be only a generation or two ahead of what we've already got in the real world.

FT can bend the laws of reality, or even break them. Much of what can be seen in "FT" is actually a mixture of Fantasy and FT. The Star Wars universe is a prime example of this, as is Warhammer 40k, and stuff that tries to stick closer to real-world stuff (so-called "Hard" FT, or BattleTech) are frequently left with obsolete weaponry against a large number of FT NS players.

I started out thinking "hey, you know what? I'd like to do some battletech stuff" only to see that if I expected to cause the level of havoc that I want to without blatantly overstating the capabilities of my chosen techbase, I'd have to start looking for other tech bases to fill the power gap.

I disagree that "Hard FT", when used for example to a Type II civilization, would make it defenseless against the "Soft FT" stuff. For things like c-frac weaponry(including deuterium fusion bullets (http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Sci/sci.physics.fusion/2006-09/msg00018.html) fired at 150 km/s muzzle velocity or more) can only improve with further progresses and reach the needed relativistic speeds to impair major damage and are scientifically viable, although modern materials science limits their application currently. While a large enough supercollider, on the other hand, would, if fitted inside an equally large starship, make the most fearsome kamikaze craft ever devised, something which would make anything a few dozens of thousands of miles from it defenseless against the black hole that it would generate, while an enoughly powerful quantum computer would have enough processing power to target and estimate the trajectory of even those ridiculously fast gravitic ships. It's all a matter of perspective, and an enoughly advanced "Hard FT" NS could launch several interstellar ships filled with nuclear fusion explosives against a planet light years away, and a collision of a kilometers long unmanned ship filled with nukes with a planet flying at a speed of 0.99c wouldn't be something easy to stop. So no, refusing to bend scientific laws does not negate capability of facing certain FT stuff. Also whereas some realistic space weaponry would have a range of up to light-seconds, those Star Wars and WH40k typical stuff would have a much inferior range due to the "Space is an Ocean" trope, so it all depends. Now there must be a clear differentiation between bending physics for the sake of plot purposes and of making a RP more interesting and doing the same for pure tech-wank only using the "I'm FT" as a pretext.

Sorry to be off-topic, but...

Wasn't there that one quote about bending the quantum mechanics laws to make Einstein spin in his grave so fast that the amount of energy generated could power a vehicle to travel faster than 1.5c?

Sorry to be off-topic, but...

Wasn't there that one quote about bending the quantum mechanics laws to make Einstein spin in his grave so fast that the amount of energy generated could power a vehicle to travel faster than 1.5c?

Here, because I have this classic post tagged in my FT nation forum account:

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12131324&postcount=10

The ERD (Einstein Rotation Drive) works by trampling all over Albert Einstein via violating special relativity without causing any detrimental effects to reality at large.

The effect of this trampling is that Albert Einstein starts rotating in his grave - and the faster he rotates, the faster the ship goes.

I.e. if he manages one rotation per second, the ship goes at 1 c. If he rotates twice per second, the ship goes at 2 c. If he rotates thrice per second, the ship goes at 3 c. And the faster one tramples on his theories, the faster he rotates.

The upper limit is where Einstein's rotation does itself reach the speed of light - at a width of 50 cm, the circumference of the circle described by the rotation is 157 cm, which means that the upper limit is approximately 190 million rotations per second - the maximum speed of a ERD-equipped ship is therefore ~ 190 mio c.

Also, sorry for the offtopicness.

Post link sigged in the link repositorium :D . I'll take my leave now...

No, I mean MT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1)

Good point... :D

Even though Dontgonearthere has a point about the ABL and by extention the THEL and METHEL, Furia, you still have a point about laser 'guns' not being MT or even PMT. If you define gun as an infantry crew served weapon or below, then yeah, Furia, you've got your definition that works. I don't think it'll be all that soon even into PMT that you could reduce a laser weapon, its power generator or power source, the machinery needed to work it, to an infantry weapon.

Now, reducing it to the size of one self-propelled artillery vechicle that could use a small fusion reactor and a really good capicitor to charge for the beams? Yeah, that might be 'noon'-era PMT.