Technology Level System for the Shadow Wars Storyverse · 12:43am Mar 1st, 2015
Introduction
Whereas some fantasy worlds assume static cultures and technologies, the Shadow Wars Storyverse instead assumes that technologies rise (and, under the impact of sufficiently horrific catastrophes, sometimes fall) over time, as the cultures practicing them learn more about the nature of their Universe. This essay outlines the levels of technology and their changes. It doesn't yet incorporate magic: be aware that at every Tech Level, the Ponies supplemented and extended the abilities of their technology with their innate magical powers.
Tech Level System
We borrow our system from GURPS Third Edition, which has a fairly simple technology system, and one which is easy enough to apply to a wide variety of technologies. This basically rates General technology and then splits it into four primary fields: Transportation, Military, Energy and Biology. The levels are rather broad and can be usefully split into Early, Middle and Late periods, or intermediate levels expressed by "TL X-Y."
A. General Technology:
TL 0: Stone Age: Fire, language and the lever.
TL 1: Bronze Age: The wheel, writing and astronomy.
TL 2: Iron Age: Keystone arch, large-scale construction.
TL 3: Medieval: Steel weapons, positional numbers.
TL 4: Renaissance: Gunpowder, printing, gear trains.
TL 5: Industrial: Steam, electricity mass production, airships (1).
TL 6: Modern: Motorcars, airplanes, radio, analog computing.
TL 7: Information: Earthfire (2), computers, lasers, sunfire explosives.
TL 8: Spacefaring: Spaceships, sunfire (3) power, semi-aints, bodily implants, life extension.
TL 9: Starfaring: FTL starships, compact sunfire, sapient aints, extreme life extension.
B. Transportation
TL 0: Stone Age: Hooves, small boats (4), sledges.
TL 1: Bronze Age: The wheel: carts and chariots (5), sailboats and small galleys.
TL 2: Iron Age: Crude wagons (6), large galleys, single-masted sailing ships, short draught railways (7).
TL 3: Medieval: Basic wagons, two-masted sailing ships, medium draught railways.
TL 4: Renaissance: Improved wagons, full-rigged sailing ships (8), balloons (9), parachutes (10), long draught railways.
TL 5: Industrial: Advanced wagons (11), steamships (12) (13), steam locomotives (14), airships (15).
TL 6: Modern: Ocean liners, electric trains, motorcars (16), airplanes (17), armored aircruisers (18).
TL 7: Information: Jets, small spacecraft, superfast trains, hovercraft.
TL 8: Spacefaring: Hypersonic jets, ballistic airliners, spaceships, space fighters, space warships (19), space towers.
TL 9: Starfaring: Very large spaceships, STL starships, space yachts, stargates (20).
C. Military:
TL 0: Stone Age: Teeth, hooves, fire, wood, bone, horn (21) and stone weapons, including sabatons (22).
TL 1: Bronze Age: Leather armor, metal-tipped arrows, darts and spears.
TL 2: Iron Age: Scale armor, iron-tipped arrows and darts, lead bullae (23),
TL 3: Medieval: Chainmail, single-shot crossbow, steel weapons including swords, lances and wing-blades (24)
TL 4: Renaissance: Plate, repeating crossbows (25), single-shot muskets (26), cannons, rockets, sail warships.
TL 5: Industrial: Automatic bolthrowers (27), repeating muskets (28), rifled cannons, ironclads, and armed airships (29).
TL 6: Modern: Machine muskets, battle wagons (30), war submarines (31), fighters, bombers, earthfire bombs (32).
TL 7: Information: Ballistic composites, moonsilver (33), jet fighters, earthfire submarines (34),
TL 8: Spacefaring: Supermaterials (35), cyberwagons, drones, space warships, lasers, tasers, utter-flutter guns (36)
TL 9: Starfaring: Starcruisers (37), flamers (38), blasters (39) stun beamers (40), brilliant bombs, warnannies (41).
D. Energy:
TL 0: Stone Age: Workers and slaves.
TL 1: Bronze Age: Basic draft harnesses, water wheels.
TL 2: Iron Age: Improved draft harnesses, Windmills (42).
TL 3: Medieval: Advanced draft harnesses.
TL 4: Renaissance: Coal mining and fires.
TL 5: Industrial: Coal-fired steam engine, DC electricity.
TL 6: Modern: Oil-fired steam engines, internal combustion, AC electricity.
TL 7: Information: Earthfire plant and solar power, chemical fuel cell.
TL 8: Spacefaring: Sunfire plant, compact earthfire, and orbital solar power.
TL 9: Starfaring: Cosmic plant, compact sunfire, earthfire cell.
E. Biology:
TL 0: Stone Age: Tending of wounded, basic herbal medicine, domestication.
TL 1: Bronze Age: Support of wounded, systematized herbal medicine.
TL 2: Iron Age: Bleeding, chemical specific remedies.
TL 3: Medieval: Amputations, crude prostheses, systematized specifics.
TL 4: Renaissance: Experimental medicine, improved surgery, basic anesthetics (43)
TL 5: Industrial: Vaccines, improved anesthetics, germ theory.
TL 6: Modern: Major surgery, antibiotics.
TL 7: Information: Genetics, organ transplants
TL 8: Spacefaring: Cloning, basicimplants, bionics, basic life extension, basic genengineering.
TL 9: Starfaring: Autodocs, basic personality backups, panimmunity. stasis, improved implants, improved genengineering.
Rating Equestria: Equestria, at the time of Luna's Return, has a General Tech level of around 5, with Transport 5, Military 3-5 (variable, with more advanced heavy weapons than personal weapons), Power 5-6 (mostly Industrial but with some internal combustion engines and hydroelectric dams), and Medical 6+. A future essay will detail the tech ratings of Equestria in the past and future, and of some other societies.
Conclusion: This is very much a work in progress, my first pass through the very complex subject of Pony technological development. One glaring gap is the lack of a "Magic" tech system, which needs a General one and then one for each of the Five Kinds (Earth Ponies, Unicorns, Pegasi, Sea Ponies and Flutter Ponies/Changelings). Comments and suggestions are very greatly welcome.
NOTES
(1) However, Pegasi and Flutter Ponies have been flying since their crafting as Kinds by the High Eldren, before the dawn of Pony history. This means that even at TL/0, the Pony world was culturally-connected by long-distance couriers and travelers, in a sense that our own world would not be until the 16th-century Age of Discovery.
(2) "Earthfire" is the term the Ponies employ for the process of nuclear fission. They knew from Eldren survivals that this was the process, operating deep in the Earth's core, which empowers the Earth Currents and makes geomancy possible. Hence, they grasped it as part of the natural order, instead of becoming superstitious about it as did Humans.
(3) "Sunfire" is the term the Ponies employ for the process of nuclear fusion. They had a rather powerful entity who thoroughly understood the process on their side for a very long time, in several different incarnations. It still required a very high level of materials, energy and computing technology to generate technologically, though Celestia could personally induce sunfire explosions with her magic.
(4) At all levels of technology, seafaring was much safer for the Ponies than for Humans, for one big reason: Pegasi sailors. Any sizable ship naturally carried Pegasi in their complement, who would work the rigging, scout for favorable winds and storms, and (if there were enough of them), raise or quell winds to the advantage of the voyagers. This also acted to unite the Pony world more rapidly than our own.
(5) Wheeled vehicles were of course drawn by the Ponies, who naturally developed efficient harnesses from the start (instead of messing around with systems that choked the teams. Wheels on flat surfaces, combined with the inertia of a moving load, provide immense advantages in terms of energy efficiency over carrying the same weights on one's own backs, so they were as useful to the Ponies as ourselves.
(6) We distinguish between crude, basic, improved and advanced wagons and carriages because, in fact, muscle-drawn vehicles underwent a prolonged and elaborate technological development, without which motorcars and motorwagons would have been impractical. Major developments included improvement to the axles, articulation of the front wheels via a horizontal fifth wheel, and improved suspension systems.
(7) "Draught" railways are muscle-pulled trains over prepared tracks. Even for Earth Ponies, they have to be shorter and lighter than steam railways. They were developed fairly early in some Pony cultures; the main technological challenge was laying, maintaining and coordinating the systems. They were the predecessor in Equestria to powered railway systems.
(8) The most obvious technological development in sailing ships is the mounting of multiple masts allowing more complex sail rigging systems. These systems allow relatively safe sailing in a wide variety of wind directions and forces, and in particular make oceanic and storm-season sailing practical.
(9) Balloons were for Humans useful only as static observation platforms. Pegasi can direct the winds and hence steer an unpowered balloon; or in a pinch simply tow the balloon. The utility of the balloon, even in the latter case, is that it reduces the effective weight of the payload, though in the latter case drag is very greatly increased (which is why balloon systems were never popular for bulk cargoes).
(10) Due to Pegasus familiarity with aerodynamics, parachutes came in as soon as the use of light, air-tight fabric on such a scale became economically-practical -- the same time that balloons became practical, and for the same reasons. Among Humans, parachutes came in a century or so after balloons, and were uncommon until World War Two. That's right, "Two." World War One fliers usually died if their planes failed them.
(11) The most advanced muscle-drawn carriages made by Humans were fully-enclosed, with upholstery, spring suspensions and headlights (oil, gas, or electrical from onboard batteries). They were basically luxury motorcars with motors that ate oats and hay. The Ponies had developed similar vehicles before the widespread adoption of the internal combustion engine.
(12) Piston steam engines were sometimes designed to be enhanced by Unicorn telekinesis, and hence attained power densities which Humans could only dream of until the development of internal combustion engines and steam turbines. You've seen one example of such a device in-show: the Super Squeezy Cider 6000, which also doubles as a "road engine." Pony engineers were often Unicorns for this reason.
(13) Due to the superior efficiency of Pegasi sailors to Human ones, steamships took relatively longer to become popular among Ponies than among Humans, and Pony steamships retained auxiliary sail rigs for as long as they employed chemical combustion based engines; they did not fully abandon them until their ships were earthfire or sunfire-powered and hence needed only infrequent refueling.
(14) Teams of Earth Ponies are magically strong enough to pull short railway trains, complete with powered-down steam locomotives, and there was a tradition of such dating back to centuries of draught railroading. Consequently, early Pony steam railways were designed to facilitate such haulage in case of engine breakdown. As locomotives grew larger and trains longer, this technique was (mostly) abandoned.
(15) Due to Pegasi airponies, steam piston engine powered airships were practical, and airships in general much safer than in Human history. Consequently, airships figured far more prominently in Pony transportation history than in ours, and were never abandoned: later they plied the skies of many worlds, including Venus and the gas giants.
(16) Ponies can cover moderate distances (several miles) much faster and more efficiently than Humans (though Humans are better long-distance walkers); consequently motorcars did not really become popular until the generation who were colts and fillies during the later part of the Shadow Wars grew up. Then, to the dismay of the older set, they became socially-universal.
(17) This whole TL was raced through during the Shadow Wars. Heavier-than-air flying machines went from technological curiosities like the original Spark Wheel Flyer "Meadowsong" to high-performance fighters, bombers and transports in a matter of a couple of decades. By the end of this era, only some rare Pegasi such as Rainbow Dash could outperform the fastest aircraft with their unaided bodies. Most pilots, of course, were often Pegasi -- including the deadliest of all Shadow War fliers, the incomparable Scootaloo.
(18) The Buoyance generator is an early attempt at harnessing Pegasus paramagnetism to artificial flight; it provides what amounts to antigravity generation. They make large heavily-armored flying warships, or "aircruisers," possible. The early Buoyance generators are only semi-stable and consequently for commercial and residential purposes are generally used as backup systems on airships.
(19) Under the lash of necessity, space fighters and warships were the first maneuverable or large spacecraft deployed in numbers by Equestria, the first launched from Earth since the Age of Wonders. After the war, many were converted to civilian purposes, and the colonization of the Solar System began.
(20) Claire Pie and her children have the capability of creating spacetime Gates, including stable interstellar ones. Consequently, Ponykind leaped right over the need for FTL starships, though they will probably also develop such in the future, no doubt in a scientific attempt to duplicate Claire's abilities and install them in a mobile vehicle. The Pony interstellar civilization is connected by a very advanced and high-technology system of sunfire-powered trains running through the Gate system. The advance from TL/8 to TL/9 occurs in the century after the end of the Shadow Wars.
(21) Inanimate horn. For a Unicorn, goring is a desperation tactic, as the unicorn horn is full of nerves and a strike delivered wrongly can be blindingly painful to the Unicorn who attempted the maneuver.
(22) Pony "sabatons" are armored, weighted and generally pointed horse-shoes, worn on the hooves and used to convert ordinary kicks into truly lethal attacks. They are most favored by Earth Ponies and Pegasi. The most famous set of sabatons are the moonsilver ones worn by Princess Luna of Equestria.
(23) Lead balls which can be variously dive-bombed, telekinesed or slung/kicked at foes by Pegasi, Unicorns or Earth Ponies respectively. The impact can be lethal, especially against lightly-armored or unarmored targets.
(24) Swords were first made in imitation of Eldren swords; they were used primarily by Unicorns. Wing-blades were invented by Wind Whistler; they are held in the flight-field in contact with the wings, and used to deliver spinning or en passant attacks.
(25) The repeating crossbow, in Human cultures a technological curiosity, was one of the main missile weapons of Equestria for many centuries, used in lieu of musketry because single-shot muskets were simply not very effective against targets as rapid as Earth Ponies, as agile as Pegasi or Griffons, as magically-adept as Unicorns, or as well-armored as Dragons. The Ponies developed their repeating crossbows to a very high standard of accuracy, efficiency, speed and power, well beyond anything ever known to the pre-industrial Chinese.
(26) Specifically, blunderbusses. The blunderbuss, with its wide shot spread at short range and horrifying point-blank damage capability, is practical in Pony combat, despite the fact that it is a single-shot weapon. The limitations on its accuracy and range made it a specialized assault weapon rather than the mainstay of any fighting formations, however, and its indiscriminate effects made the Ponies emotionally-prejudiced against its usage.
(27) Automatic bolt throwers are rapid-firing crossbows using complex gearing systems, sometimes with multiple grooves. They are about as far as one can go with tension weapons, and some versions require Unicorn gunners. They are cumbersome and must be fired from the rest by all but the strongest of Ponies. They are far inferior to the repeating and automatic firearms Celestia neglected to develop. Many are used in the wars of the late 15th century YOH, and even in the Great Tauran War of 1500-1504. When Luna comes all the way back, she makes the development of repeating rifles and machine-muskets a priority, and such are deployed in quantity in time for Windvane's Rebellion of 1512 and the Great Changeling War of 1513-15.
(28) Used by the Tauran nations in the Great Tauran War, but not adopted by Equestria in numbers until 5-10 years after the end of the war. These were generally rifled muskets, equivalent in performance to c. 1900 AD Human bolt-action rifles. Unlike in Human history where rifles were a pre-industrial technology, rifling and repeating firearms technology were developed simultaneously. These were the first firearms to be more effective against Ponies under field combat conditions than were repeating crossbows, and they would have displaced repeating crossbows even without the spur of the Shadow Wars.
(29) Unlike Humans, Ponies had been fighting in the air since the crafting of the Pegasi from the Proto-Ponies by the High Eldren. Armed airships were of course unarmored due to lift limitations: at best, the cars were protected against crossbow bolts. They were thus designed for use as Pegasus carriers, as air transports, or as bombing craft mounting bombs and rockets, with bolt-throwers for defensive purposes. In close combat they were highly vulnerable.
(30) Armored fighting vehicles, powered initially by coal- or oil-fired steam or internal combustion piston engines; generally on wheels or tracks, and carrying cannons and machine-muskets, sometimes in rotating turrets. Pony "tanks." First fielded in numbers in the Great Changeling War, and called "land-crawlers" by the Changelings.
(31) TL/6 war submarines are of course far less capable than the various descendant races of the Sea Ponies, some of whom (like the Kelpies) have very advanced war subs of their own, or (like the Deep Ponies) organisms that substitute. However, the latter-day Sea Ponies rarely got involved in land-dweller conflicts in any case.
(32) Uranium or plutonium fission bombs, generally yielding around 10-50 kilotons, first used by Equestria in the Great Changeling Wars against Changeling strongpoints and massed formations.
(33) Titanium steel alloy, used for millennia as relic tech from the Age of Wonders, now produced again and used as armor, often sandwiched with ballistic composites.
(34) For the first time attaining speeds and dive capabilities similar to that of many of the variant races of the Sea Ponies. They were used as underwater launch platforms against the Shadows. Actual Shadow infestations of the deeps were taken care of by the natives. Shoo bee doo.
(35) Supermetals alloying rare metals such as iridium into titanium steel under very precise conditions, nanofibers such as ultra-long chain carbon threads, and living silicate crystals, a generalization of the single-crystal construction employed by the Crystal Empire.
(36) Essentially a paramagnetic phased gravity gun, copied from the natural ability of the Flutter Ponies and upscaled to form the spinal mount of a space battleship.
(37) The Pony method of FTL travel requires that a Child of Claire (member of the race, not necessarily direct offspring) be carried onboard. The Child creates a temporary Stargate, through which the starcruiser then travels. Once a new system is proven, the greater effort needed to create a permanent Stargate may be undertaken.
(38) Paramagnetic plasma beam weapons.
(39) Particle beam weapons.
(40) Phased neural induction devices.
(41) War nanotech.
(42) Pony windmills became much more efficient when Pegasi learned to direct the winds.
(43) Pony surgeons more energetically adopted and sought out anesthetic technologies than did Human ones at comparable levels of technology; Pony Medicine is Advanced in Anesthetics.
Is this some kind of footnote record?
This is actually a misconception. I'll let Dr. Judith Weller say it:
There has been considerable misunderstanding by modern historians about traction by equids during Antiquity. Much of this has been fostered by Lefebvre des Noëttes' work Le cheval de selle à travers les âges: Contribution à l'histoire de l'esclavage. Many of the book's conclusions were widely disseminated, especially in the United States, by individuals such as T. Lynn White in his book Medieval Technology and Social Change who ignored the vast amount of literature which had been rapidly accumulating raising serious questions about the Commandant and his work. Consequently many Medievalists compounded the error by assuming that the horse collar was a Medieval "invention" which enabled the horse to pull heavy loads far exceeding that which could be pulled in ancient times. Now, however, we know that all this has no basis in fact. Yet even to this day books appear such as Gies and Gies' Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel which do little more than compile and regurgitate in an entertaining way ideas and theories, now proven untrue, about the Middle Ages.
From her conclusion:
It is evident that by the time of the Empire the Romans had a fully functional and useful harness system for equids which permitted their use in sport, war, and commerce. The load limit was on average 1 to 1 ½ metric tons for a team as I have demonstrated. The harness provided for traction points on either the shoulder or the chest. The system did in not any way impede the ability of the animal to breathe. Despite the development of the horse collar and the use of the horse in agriculture, and light hauling, the load limit was not increased in the Middle Ages. Medieval times showed no improvement in wagon technology or in road construction. The improvements in harness systems were merely modification of those existing in Roman times and in many areas, during the period known as the Dark Ages, the yoke existed side by side with the horse collar.
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I thought that I hadn't included enough footnotes -- I skimped on the last two categories!
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I did not know that! Then in what did the improved Medieval farming efficiency consist? Just the three-field system and heavy moldboard plow?
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Pretty much, though remember that the historians who advocate the medieval adoption of the three-field system and the heavy plough also talk alot about horse collars!
Our understanding of medieval agriculture and peasant life is still badly flawed from some inaccurate studies of 14th Century English Court Rolls done back in the '60s. Given the sheer number and length of these rolls (believe me, they are long) they could not really do much analysis. I have done a bit of work with this stuff and you really do need to use computers for it- there's just too much data. Even with badly fragmented rolls you can track the activities and fortunes of village families over the generations. It leads to interesting conclusions.
To return to the point, the whole "Improvement-of-Agriculture-via-these-three-innovations thing was a nice, neat theory to explain the population growth that fueled the Black Death back when it was popularized (in the sixties, I believe) but it gets far too much play in modern textbooks for my taste. Makes me worry about what other breakthroughs in scholarship we're ignoring.
In fact, we must distinguish the three-field system (In which there are three separate fields in which each peasant has a stake) and the three course system (Winter Planting, Spring Planting, Fallow). The three-field system shows up very late in the Medieval Period- in many areas, it's a new idea in the 16th century, while the three-crop system would have been familiar to English farmers before ol' Willy the Conquer showed up (Indeed, it might even be late Roman). In short, there never was any real, sudden improvement to Medieval agriculture that can account for Medieval population spikes, since the alleged factors responsible were either a) non-existent b)been there for centuries without noticeable population changes or c) show up after the medieval period.
In short, the never was a Medieval Agricultural Revolution.
And they told me two degrees was useless!
The interesting question about a magic tech scale is what to measure. Sophistication, the most complex task the magic can perform? Efficiency, how much the magic can do for a given energy input? Accessibility, how many ponies can use the more advanced magics? (I assume biologically innate things like cloudwalking would be considered TL 0.) Or should one look for parallels with mundane technology, for when fireballs, auguries, and spacial winks give way nucleomantic megaspells, predictive-model arcane intelligences, and interstellar teleportation? (And that's just the unicorns!)
Codifying the progress of magic is a fascinating concept. I look forward to seeing how you go about doing it.
A very nice outline of technological development in Equestria.
Levels of communication would be an excellent addition to this list. For instance, if there's two armies equal in power, the one that can give out orders faster will win. Communication is a major factor in any civilization. I've been harping on it a bit in the daily discussion thread.
I think your footer is longer than the actual article...