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having working examples and schematics isn't the same as being able to build something

if you were given full schematics for the computer you are useing and a few hundred of them how long would it take to build the manufacturing plant to produce the CPU? (there are only a handful of plants in the world capable of building that CPU today)

they would have needed to build the tools to build the tools,,,,,, to build the weapons and they just didn't have anyone with that expertise on hand. the 312'th did have someone with that knowledge and when combined with the resources of the sphere was able to get things into liited production

By Stewart W Frazier (Frazikar) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 12:37 am: Edit

Gentlemen, whioe I an sure that Tholia has an excellant repair facility for PCs, NFFs and NDDs, there is a limit in the number of repairs that can be make/maintained without a steady supply of parts (especially for the specialized naval WC/PC parts).

Not to mention what parts they did have, were probably used in jury-rigging to get the sphere moving plus maintaining what ships were there.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 02:01 am: Edit

To build on David Langs post it is also entirely possible that the technology for building specific parts were not available. Special materials may be required and the technology for making those would not be in the schematics or in the maintenance manuels.

Disruptors are made from materials that are all TL12 in nature and available in the new galaxy. Tholian PC designs may require componants that are TL14 ONLY.

The Selts could not consume the Tholians TL14 as a whole but certainly had all the knowledge to build PC's themselves as it was probably given to them.

The Tholians had used the PC componants they had on the trip to the Milky Way so when they arrived they only had phasers left. It may be that modern Tholian phasers are not the exact same designs as their original equipement. They may have had to make changes due to a difference in local material supplies.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 04:17 pm: Edit

It's a mistake to think of the dyson sphere as a homeworld or even a world. It's just a really big base with a small TL12 shipyard.

I've worked at a plant which manufactured semiconductors (transistors, ICs, etc). In that regard, I know the appropriate technology. But do I have the capability to build those parts myself? No.

For example, I don't know how to build the machines that build the parts. Nor do I have a complete understanding on the processes involved. Nor do I have an understanding of precisely what materials are needed, nor do I know how to build the machines that make the materials, etc. Every bit of technology has a number of building blocks supporting it, and the higher the technology the more of these building blocks are needed.

I view technology as a pyramid, with the highest technology at the top. All of the building blocks the pyramid is made up of support the highest block. As an example, we've known how to make iron for millenia, and steel for centuries; that is one of the lowest, most fundamental building blocks in the pyramid. But that didn't help when it came to aluminum. We had to gain the same knowledge re aluminum before we could progress to titanium, etc.

The overall point is that the higher you want the top of the technology pyramid to be, the wider the base has to be. Take away part of the base of the pyramid, and the top crumples down.

On the dyson sphere, they had enough to maintain a TL12 technology base. But a lot of the building blocks were not on the dyson sphere, and they got left behind. So the pyramid crumbled from a average highest point of TL14 down to TL12.

Only in the fields of medicine are the Tholians still at TL14. In all other areas, they haven't got higher than TL12 any longer.

"Look, I found the plans for a particle cannon!"
"The parts list says that it uses six MB-3 glyphus inhibitors -- what is an MB-3 glyphus inhibitor?"
"I don't know, but it says I can buy one from Meephus Industries for $14."
"Meephus Industries is in the Old Galaxy. How do we build a glyphus inhibitor?"
"I don't know. Look through that pile of blueprints over there."
"I found a print for a MP-2 glyphus inhibitor -- can we use that instead?"
"I don't know. Did you find a document that explains the difference between an MP-2 and an MB-3?
"No."
... and so it goes.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 04:39 pm: Edit

Heh, that's funny but highly accurate!

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 10:37 pm: Edit

OK, I guess I'll just trust on you that, but I do want to make two points.

1) If the best TL14 technology can come up with is particle cannons, I am not impressed.

2) If they cannot figure out how to reverse engineer particle cannons, how could they do it with disruptors when a) it is (from there point of view) extra-galactic technology, b) probably only a partially working example, and c) they don't exactly have a parts supply line for them, either?

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 10:40 pm: Edit

Also, a related but independent question:

Just how many Tholians are there? (In our galaxy, I mean.) A few hundred thousand? A million? Tens of millions? A billion?

How many came with the mini-sphere? How many were there in Y100 (or so)? How many are there "now" in the GW timeframe?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 10:50 pm: Edit

Mike, TL14 also came up with the webcaster, but I agree with you about the particle cannon

as for #2,

what you are missing is that the technology for disupters is so much simpler (look at the trouble in defining a X-Disrupter and you will see that it's very mature technolgy by the time of the general war)

it's like the difference between building a florecent light and an incondecent light. the incondecent light is simple, pass current through a material until it gets hot enough to glow (the trick is keeping it from burning up), which the florecent light needs the right combination of chemicals in the gas, in the coating, and then the right combination of voltag4es to trigger it.

or looking at computer technology, I would be able to produce a rough design of a vaccum tube (it would take a lot of trial-and-error to make it work well), but there is a huge gap between that and being able to build a transistor, and a huge gap betwen that and an IC, so I could build a computer with vaccum tubes after several years (and lots of help), but it would take MUCH longer to build a computer with transisters, let alone anything resembling the smallest computer chip you can buy today

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 11:10 pm: Edit

The problem with reverse engineering the PC was there was nothing to engineer from. They didn't arrive with any intact and the Neo-Tholians didn't either.

There might have been a few ragged examples of PC's when they arrived but there was no way to maintain them and the situation at the time was difficult. Beside, with only Ph-1's they were superior to the locals and didn't need the PC anyway. They couldn't have known the locals would so soon catch them technologically.

By the time the Seltorians could have provided working example through capture the Tholian were set with the Disruptor and Photon. As you said, not impressed with the PC so why bother?

The answer to the population question has been answered by SVC; two billion. That's probably a number based on the central game time frame wich is the start of the GW. The population varied from time to time I'm sure. There are other factors though.

I'm sorry that I cannot answer all your questions as GT is still a work in progress. There are answers to your questions and most are in my notes.

Still, keep asking questions. The one about the Omega race that comes from M82 was very important and opened a whole section that needed study and answers. So keep presenting your questions everyone, please.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 08:57 am: Edit

Mike, the Andro's had TL14 throughout the entire era Y1-Y225, and they were never able to build shuttlecraft. It doesn't make sense, it's something the Steves built into the game long before the concept of TL was added.

I don't know that I can give you an answer re particle cannons, or any other technological "blind spots."

Loren can answer the "how many Tholians" questions better than I can.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 10:08 am: Edit

Loren,

I believe if you check Module Y you will find that the Tholians do have fully operational Particle Cannons and web casters on their very few NFFs and NDDs when they arrive in this galaxy. In fact the Particle Cannon is the only weapon that can be overloaded during the Early Years period.

As to why the Particle Cannon is such a wimpy weapon for a TL14 society, somewhere (I believe it's one of the C-modules, but I'll check when I get home if someone else doesn't find it first) there's a statement that the Tholians in the Home Galaxy had been using the same ship designs for centuries. I submit the likely explanation is that the Particle Cannon is not even close to TL14. The Tholians believed that web technology gave them an untouchable superiority and they saw no need to expend time and resources to build ships that took maximum advantage of their technology. (If you had World War II level military technology but late 20th century level technology generally, and everyone else in the world had technology equivalent to mid/late 19th century (American Civil War of Franco Prussian War, at best), would you regard it as a priority to embark on an expensive and politically contentious upgrade of your military capabilities?) By the time the Tholians realized that the Seltorians had a counter to web technology, it was too late.

Though I don't regard the Particle Cannon as TL14, it may have been built on fully automated TL14 production equipment, which didn't exist in the sphere. As the NFFs and NDDs were being gradually killed of by the technologically inferior but much larger (and available in greater numbers) Klingon ships, the Tholians needed a heavy weapons capability that could be built using low tech (to them) production equipment. This was the spur for the operation to steal disruptor tech from the Klingons. Recall also that the Tholians didn't acquire this tech by capturing a Klingon ship and trying to reverse engineer the capability, they mounted a complex (coordinated actions by 4 separate teams IIRC) Prime Team operation that presumably was targeted at stealing not just schematics but detailed information on production methods.

When the Neo-Tholians departed from the Home Galaxy to reach the Holdfast, they may have taken some automated production equipment with them that the original sphere never had and didn't have time to acquire. Two possibilities as to why the Tholians develop the ability to produce new web casters a few years after the Neos arrive, but never develop the ability to produce Particle Cannons:

1. The Neo-Tholians, before departing, made a particular effort to obtain the production equipment and necessary technical information for web casters, but were unwilling to risk the additional time required to do the same for the particle cannons, because the latter system wasn't powerful enough to justify the risk.

2. The Neo-Tholians arrived with production equipment (which couldn't be reproduced in this galaxy) for both weapons. Had the Tholians chosen to do so, they could eventually have built production lines for both web casters and particle cannons. But the Tholians in this galaxy were already mass producing disruptors and the particle cannons didn't offer enough of an advantage over disruptors to justify the resources and engineering talent necessary to set up that production line. So the production equipment was cannibalized to supply spare parts and components for the web caster production equipment.

The above contains a lot of speculation, of course, and may turn out to be way off base. But I believe it is compatible with (in the sense of not contradicting) the already published information about the Tholians.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 10:15 am: Edit

It's not that the Andros weren't able to do build shuttlecraft, they just didn't. When you can teleport an entire starship over tens of thousands of kilometers, a small, slow, short-range craft isn't really useful. (And on top of that the Andros did build MWP.)

As far as PC versus Disruptor...imagine if you used pressurized steam to fire projectiles at high velocity. But you have to flee from a slave revolt, and you arrive in a far-off country where the natives use gunpowder. You'd prefer to have your steam-powered cannons, but the high-strength low-weight alloy metals necessary to make the high-pressure systems work require a very exact manufacturing process. You could turn your industry to producing them, but you only have a finite amount of industry and resources, and you need those metals to support your remaining civilization. So you buy gunpowder weapons and use those. Eventually you reach a point where you could start making steam guns again, but by this time you can use the gunpowder weapons pretty well; you'd have to get used to the steam guns all over again.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 12:01 pm: Edit

"there's a statement that the Tholians in the Home Galaxy had been using the same ship designs for centuries."

That's the part I forgot to mention above.

Just to let you guys know, I've been off and on in writing this thing as SVC has had me putting effort into the other GPD projects and writing and then there's my own work. I will be doing a full compilation of all Tholian SFU material (that why the Omega thing was so important. I don't have O4 so I will be getting that).

I have Y and will check it but would have anyway. I've done a general review but there is so much going on my mind hasn't been totally on this. Don't worry, I won't miss anything when it comes time to pull this all together. I'm a hard core fan!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 12:08 pm: Edit

I'm not sure the Neos had any sort of production equipement. But the Tholians did retain the ability to build Old Galaxy Police ships which is the PC. These had web so they had the basic production facilities to build web. Once they had Web Caster examples to work from they were able to build up from their current facilities to produce more, probably one at a time, by hand maybe.

They didn't have Particle Cannon production so any working models available were all that was available.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 12:31 pm: Edit

Loren,

But when the sphere arrived in the Early Years (I think it was a bit before Y100, but I don't remember for sure), among the ships that arrived with it were two NDDs, each with one web caster. The Tholians can use those in the early years but cannot build new web casters until the 312th arrives decades later. So it wasn't just lack of a design to copy that prevented the Tholians from building web casters until Y184. They had a design to copy until the NDDs were destroyed. So something changed between the arrival of the sphere and the arrival of the 312th that allowed the Tholians to eventually build web casters. Presumably the Tholians would have recorded all the information concerning the NDDs and web casters, assuming they didn't already have that information. That should have eventually enabled them to build web casters on their own. But they never develop that capability until 6 years after the Neos arrive. So whatever it was that changed when the Neos arrived, it was something other than simply having designs to copy. Note also that it was Neo-Tholian knowledge that allowed the Tholians to wield hulls together in a new way and produce the War Cruiser, even though that ship didn't exist in the Home Galaxy. So the 312th brought things, whether knowledge or equipment, that didn't exist prior to their arrival and went beyond simple having examples to copy.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 12:45 pm: Edit

What happened was a combo of issues. It took considerable time for the THolians to settle in. They had priorities and they were already superior to any of the locals so attention was diverted elsewhere. Remember they had two starbases to build, materials to find and mine. Several base stations and outpost to build. They had to establish the Holdfast. They also had to reorganize their social order. There was also a lack of highly trained engineers. Later, the great among them started learning. But for a time they needed to just use what they had and establish a safe environment for soon their resolve would be tested as they would be taught a lesson about the Klingons and other growing empires. Their engineers had to provide for their needs at the time and not spend time working on weapons that might help. Beside the Disruptor and Photon suited their needs and took less effort. More over, new production facilities could be built separate from the old automated facilities so there is enough parts to supply any demand (well, less so for the Photon of course). They went for what they KNEW would work instead of what MIGHT work.


But the Neos had military engineers. That's what made the difference.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 04:08 pm: Edit

I don't disagree with any of the above, but I think one key point has been overlooked:

In the Old Galaxy, the Tholians had dozens of slave races to do the dirty work, especially tasks at low temperatures (normal for us, freezing vis-a-vis the 400 degree Tholian environment).

In this galaxy, they had no slave races and the Tholians would have had to do all the dirty work themselves. This would have put a crimp in things to some extent; maybe they found a solution, or maybe they didn't and have had to deal with an unresolvable situation.

To this point, consider that they had all the Klingon and subject race personnel from the colonies that they captured upon arrival. Did they kill them all off, because the revolt in the old galaxy made them paranoid about slave races? Or did they let them live, as new slave races, and make them do the dirty work?

IMHO, they killed all the ethnic Klingons as they would be totally resistant to being enslaved by the Tholians, but they might have cut a sweetheart deal with the subject race population that was captured.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 04:18 pm: Edit

Oh great! Now we will have Klingon subject races cooperatively working for *three* empires!

Those disloyal slime will work for *anyone*!

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 04:20 pm: Edit

Mike: so you don't want me to discuss the Tholian-Klingon "Anarchist" ships that are 100% crewed by subject races, and have had the Security boxes replaced by bowling alleys and soda fountains?

(very evil grin)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 07, 2005 - 04:51 pm: Edit

I've worked out what happened to the colonies. It's neither of those.

By William Nathan Smith (Smitty2) on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - 01:56 pm: Edit

yes but thruth told a Dyson sphere look it up you could have scavenged that and not compromised the sphere in any way whatsoever that would have giving you enough material to build two starbases and start on a shipyard I would go with the story idea that yes the Tholian parents? started the ship and movement but by the time it got to the space where it ended up that the Tech base had slipped so far as to be negligable in redoing the Particle Cannons.

Because if they had two complete NDD's they could have saved one to tear apart to reverse engineer, we do it all the time why do you think that at JRTC in Ft. Polk they have a HIND D not just for realism but because somebody somewhere wanted the specs so it was "bought", "Stolen", or "lost", if we poor monkeys can do that it is silly to think that a space faring race could not figure out how to build a PC from scratch with a working model there to work off of.

By Stacy Brian Bartley (Bartley) on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - 02:12 pm: Edit

William
Huh?

Seriously William it is darn hard to recreate a technical base.

We take a lot of things for granted. We don't know how the Tholians build ships-it may not be the way we do. Also just because you reverse enegineer something doesn't mean you can build it. If for instance it requires Boson Irradiated Grelnak crystals and you ain't got none what are you going to do?

That the Tholians are doing as well as they are is a tribute to their tenancity and ingenuity. That they are progressively getting better shows they are making progress slowly in ramping up their tech base.

We poor monkeys do as well as we do in reverse engineering a HIND because we have the complete resources of the United States behind it. But what if that helicopter were at Ft. Polk surrounded by a forcefield blocking all contact with the outside US? Would they from scratch be able to duplicate it? We'd be scratching our pink monekey butts then

regards
Stacy

By Marc William Harkness (Kiyone4ever) on Sunday, May 06, 2007 - 12:57 am: Edit

Just looking over this old thread and wondering if anything ever was decided as to how the Seltorians managed to defeat the Will? It seems that a concurrance was that they could possibly destroy ONE Dyson sphere with heavy loss but seemed to lack the power to do so more than once or twice.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, May 06, 2007 - 10:33 am: Edit

The entire Seltorian Revolution has been worked out and will be presented in PD Tholians and future (hopefully) products based in M81.

By Marc William Harkness (Kiyone4ever) on Sunday, May 06, 2007 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Ah! Thank You. I prefer to ask before pointlessly stirring the waters.