Technology level

Technology level is a concept used in the design of Van Buren, Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3 Project and J E Sawyers Fallout RPG system. This concept can be used to help place appropriate items for the location/characters/factions technology level.

Technology Levels
All items have a tech level, which defines how complex the item is and, generally speaking, gives a rough estimate of where it fell in the timeline of Earth's history.
 * 1 - Primitive, stone age - Extremely basic weapons and textile-based armor
 * 2 - Ancient, tribal - Flimsy melee weapons, flimsy metal and leather armor
 * 3 - Medieval - Reliable melee weapons, basic metal and boiled leather armor
 * 4 - Early Modern - Primitive firearms, advanced plate armor
 * 5 - Industrial Revolution - Reliable rifles, revolvers, steam tech, slow/short range cars, refined oil as fuel, lightbulbs, assembly lines, unreliable chems
 * 6 - World War Era - Grenades, early body armor, machineguns, tanks, bazookas, planes, basic automobiles, basic chems
 * 7 - Information Age - Modern computers with high communication abilities, advanced automatic weapons and composite body armor, jet planes, helicopters, laser-guided missiles, advanced chems
 * 8 - Cusp of Apocalypse - Personal laser weapons, powered armor, portable rail/coil guns, super-vacuum tech, proliferation of high volume small energy cells and micro-fusion cells


 * 9 - Survivor Era - Unknown frontiers of advanced technology

Examples

 * TL 2: Leather outfit
 * TL 3: Metal outfit
 * TL 4: Metal armor
 * TL 5: .22 autoloader, 12 ga. ammunition
 * TL 6: 9mm autoloader, construction helmet, leather armor, scav outfit, .22 FMJ, .44 magnum, .45 caliber, 9mm
 * TL 7: Motorcycle helmet, .223 FMJ, 7.62mm
 * TL 8: Pip Boy 2000, Lil' Pip Boy 3000, motion sensor, Geiger counter, stimpak, super stimpak, combat armor, environmental armor, power armor, Tesla armor, 2mm EC
 * TL 9: Hermes Armor, Athena Armor, Hei Gui armor,

Behind the scenes
A similar concept is used in many tabletop pole playing games; Particularly noteworthy among these is GURPS; It was intended that Fallout would use GURPS until a licensing disagreement required its removal.