Interesting read, had to look it up. I feel Moore's Curve would in essence not hold up to the technology of the Eclipse Phase time. The cost per unit would always remain constant due to the way nanofabrication works. As stated in the book, (pg 64) new technology is in essence readily available to all at cost. The other issue is the performance limit, almost a non-issue, 2 hours later (ignoring extracting it, breaking it down and reinstalling it), I will have a new medichines that will perform at a higher level than the old ones if the new technology comes out. Unless somehow new/more materials are needed to make it, even than, why not break down a fork to add to it. The true cost of items in the eclipse phase era is the time to create the objects. Modifiers exist such as rare materials, legality and accessibility to an compatible nanofabricater. To me, the cost of objects being time and materials, I don't see how price dropping would apply. Just my opinion.

From what I understand, there have been new technologies since the fall. The Remade morph was made open source after the fall (and some suspect that the fact it still looks human suggests that the fall affected even the Ultimates). In Gatecrashing, they've made new pod morphs using local lifeforms. There is also a new type of habitat, called a Hamilton cylinder, is supposed to a new kind of habitat that builds itself using nano technology. At present, only 3 are being built, but they are already being used for habitation. In regards to costs, technology does keep making goods cheaper and easier to make. Its at the point where technology probably could take care of themselves without transhuman intervention, but its not likely to happen so soon after the fall. Currently, it seems that the only things that will remain costly for the foreseeable future is morphs and living space. There is still isn't enough of either to go around, and a great many refugees still sleep in cold storage. There will be no shortage of demand for a while at least, which is the primary driving force behind high price of goods. Something to watch out for is if the Hypercorps try to form a cartel to keep prices up (they may have already done so). A cartel is basically an agreement between a bunch of companies to restrict production, as to keep the demand high, so they can charge high prices. This happened with oil a while back. A cartel's weakness is, there is a strong incentive to break the pact as doing so will allow the company to make large profits in the short term. This is at the expense of the other members, at least until they catch on and react. Its difficult to put a cartel back together after that (as many would be members no longer trust each other), but considering that the hypercorps are run by immortals, short term profits are going to look rather small after a few centuries of long term profits.

Medichines have to constantly compete with new diseases and bioweapons, so unless there's a breakthrough and the way they work is changed to be drastically more efficient, essentially what you'll have are 'updates' to defend against emerging medical threats. Applying the same thing to a gun seems silly, though. I don't imagine that most people are participating in this kind of arms race, and the same gun that you shot a down on his luck XP dealer with three years ago should still shoot a slumming off-grid socialite today just as well.

When you produce something you learn to make it more efficiently - this was observed by T.P Wright in the aircraft industry (he measured the growth of productivity at a factory) and holds for most things. One reason Moore's law is so extreme is that we make *a lot* of transistors and chips. It works for a lot of domains: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bn/workingpapers/NagyFarmerTrancikBui.pdf Whether it holds for *everything* is another matter. The cost of gadgets tend to come down exponentially, and software can be sold for free. But services are slower to decrease in price since somebody has to be paid to do them. This is why I expect most stuff in EP to be dominated by the price of R&D and service, rather than the material basis. I would run the threadmill of progress in my game by giving negative penalties to using old stuff in many domains (like software), rather than just add a lot of positive bonuses. The new stuff is better, but most of the time only relative measures matter.

I always had some kind of problem with this SOTA thing in contexts using tech like implants and software. For the former, given you maintain them well, their bonus should not drop, their properties not fade. Same goes with software. This fancy release of, say, your favorite text or image editor won't perform any worse. You can still achieve the same results you did 2 years ago on the same picture. I usually see improvements only once in a while, the rest is more update for security, patching bugs, integrating new formats compatibility. So maybe for things like a web browser or other softs interfaced to multiple techs I would downgrade them after a reasonable period of time (given retrocompatibility, updates should not affect readily your current suite unless major tech changes like changing communication protocols, even if after some time, people will have gradually jumped ship and gone past the point where they don't care anymore taking old stuff into account because it impairs new designs, if it is not related to major changes. This is just when the thing is starting being obsolete. And then, if your software can still achieve the same results, on new systems it will be unable to run or in an impaired fashion. If you want to keep only one system, you upgrade. For implants, Guns and so on, most improvements benefit either to the further major tech step (while sometimes it isn't when a real advance is done) or contribute to better quality control, easier production and so on, but they will usually use this for improving their margin. Prices of the book are likely those of product's maturity, for new thing I would see 20 or 50% higher but that is nothing player characters will see for the current items. Most of changes are for them cosmetic at best, or they are seamlessly integrated. Occasionally though, a production version is significantly better than other, in performance or because it opens new possibilities unseen. Like a handgun that can be modified for burst fire due to the peculiar conception of one part, or a firmware that improves some circumstantial performances, or is insensitive to some exploit. But it can also go the other way. For could example, some people try to avoid some hard disks versions. It can become something of a subplot to acquire such thing because it has properties useful for the current adventure. So for implants and guns, i would mostly play on this. Except for interfaced things again. But for a speed booster, it is not likely you get a 1% bonus every month. It is more than after 5 years a real but small breakthrough was done but unless it is for scenaristic purposes I would not do it is during PC life (indeed they are immortal but in game you will rarely see their lifetime going over such duration. And if they do, well upgrade or die:)). At last what is deemed as major change could just be marketing. Edit: And indeed; you don't really need to change bonus of an implant. You can add some twist to the dice so to say the implant performs better or the gun is more reliable against armor, or like having a minimal value for damage (if you do xD10, you can say minimal damage is 2X and not X like the old models)

Yes that was exactly my point. I would eventually extend this to other tests depending on communication protocols, though. And if you have some contest with a guy augmented with more recent implant; except if a whole new level is available (like sometimes in some shows or fictions) and the PC is really obsolete; well, I would only give small advantages to the updated guy.

Decivre wrote:

Arenamontanus wrote:

When you produce something you learn to make it more efficiently - this was observed by T.P Wright in the aircraft industry (he measured the growth of productivity at a factory) and holds for most things. One reason Moore's law is so extreme is that we make *a lot* of transistors and chips. It works for a lot of domains: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bn/workingpapers/NagyFarmerTrancikBui.pdf

Once we get to nanotechnology and advanced semi-intelligent robotic assembly systems, we are for the most part at the entropic limit for production efficiency.

Not really. Just because you get another efficiency jump like the production line doesn't mean you have now solved all problems. For example, designing optimal robot motion patterns is typically NP-hard, so you should expect a lot of learning to occur as you make stuff and slowly find ways of making it more efficiently with your equipment. And the big issue is of course inventing new, more capable and more complex things: not only does that require intelligent systems, but the ramifications have a combinatorial explosion necessitating enormous amounts of testing before they can be put on the market. Old stuff has old and potentially known exploits, but new stuff has unknown exploit possibilities that nobody knows yet.

Decivre wrote:

I disagree with this. Many programs scale laterally rather than up. New versions of adobe Photoshop and Acrobat add a couple new features (that generally don't really improve anything, per se), and otherwise just upgrade to the newer file protocols. I don't see why you would necessarily get a penalty for using dated programs. In that same vein, you probably won't get a penalty for using old word-processing software for entering an essay contest, or playing on an older chess client, or any number of other scenarios.

I second that. Indeed some new programs improve really the thing, but most just make algorithms a bit faster or more efficient; but on a scale that is mostly not measurable by human spirits, unless through benchmarks that give sometimes no good indication of the real behaviour on the field (compare two cameras with benches, and you can say, this image quality is better and so on. Look at it with your eyes; you will really have a different take, i don't want to name brands for now but I have some recent examples of this). But yeah, indeed, if you compare some PS CS3 or 4 with both last version and have a global thing to do with it; not just small changes; you will likely go faster or easier because of introduction of a lot of automation for tasks that computer could not do before as brain can lack processing power but is ultimately efficient to do some things (like identifying faces, eyes; distinguishing focal planes and so on...) But at a time when AI exist and has such capabilities; even original version would include such features; so you can not count on this to see further improvement on your program. Also; it should be remembered that hardware updates don't necessarily mean something that will be better. If you look at computer that is mostly true. For home appliances it is not always. And when you take electronic devices; out of smartphones and so on; nothing could be more subject to variations. Again an example out from the photography thing (ok, right, I confess, it is one of my really time consuming hobbies); but take the whole series of reflex cameras from brand X, most of the time there are improvements; but on the most low end consumer products it is not guaranteed that you achieve better quality, be it by look assessment or by bench evaluation. My first cam was quite that case; they had to throw like 3 products before it became vastly superior in this area, while the 2 first successors were equal at best. Indeed, for general abilities it was a different matter as they were faster; had more memory and so on, but on the point I needed more (as other features were sufficient for my use at that time); it was not true.

Sepherim wrote:

As for cosmetic changes and such, well, as you pointed out, players' game lifes don't usually run that long. I guess that's why they didn't include no SOTA rules in the basic book. So I'd keep it as a GM controlled thing. Players are getting too much money, well, you make them spend some; they too OP, you make them face people with new prototypes which have bonuses (and maybe some drabacks too), etc. And, of course, the pace of SOTA advancing would depend on each technology: cars evolve slower than computer videogames, for example.

Anyway that should always be GM take, but I would more do it for scenaristic reasons or randomly, than for "balancing power". That doesn't feel right to me. If they have too much money, they earned it by being efficient, or it is your mistake. If you made a mistake; OOC discussion is better. If they are efficient; they deserve it. And random things can also be better in the sense that sometimes, it won't affect them, while sometimes they will have to react. It is less artificial pressure while keeping importance, that way.

Of course, each new EP book that comes out can be seen as a whole load of new upgrades and models available in a game campaign. New stuff appears all the time (abstracted to when "real-life" readers find out about them by buying the new book).