[swordtart]

I may have found a good shortcut for this.

Dreg gangs can only use stock vehicle from the AADA VG1 (including variants). Over 80% of their vehicles must be vehicles described in the guide as common (e.g. best seller, popular, most common etc.). This represents their slow accretion of spoils from non-pro duellists, roadkill and abandoned wrecks etc. There are less bikes than might be expected as generally when a bike goes out of control it ends up wrecked. Trikes are popular as well as subcompacts and compacts as they are smaller targets. Anything larger than a midsize is normally too expensive (though an occasional pickup will be used for cargo and troop transport).

Stock vehicle can be modified but only in the following ways:

1) Chassis. No chassis modification can be made anyway, but Dreg vehicles often have light chassis and light suspensions as these are cheaper. They would rather sell a decent chassis for food.

2) Armour. Plastic Armour may be removed but not added. Metal armour can be added or removed as desired.
This represents the lack of plastic forming facilities available to the average dreg gang. Bashing sheet metal needs basic tools by comparison. Metal armour is cheaper than the weight of plastic it replaces. It is also persistent, dreg gangs don't have time to continually replace ablative armour. Metal is also immune to normal Dreg hand weapons (pistols, shotguns and rifles generally), whereas plastic armour can be damaged at point blank range.

3) Tires. Tires can be replaced freely. In general Dregs sell any half decent tires and only keep the unsaleable ones. A tire with 5 DP or more damage is generally worthless. There is an almost unlimited supply of this sort of tire that can be picked up for 1/10th of the price of an undamaged tire. There is a good chance that these will be modified and so any sort can be freely selected. Radials are very popular as this compensates for the poor suspension of the average dreg car. PR and Solids are also common. Dregs generally don't overly worry about tire shots.

4) Plants. Dregs sell decent plants and keep only the next to worthless ones (i.e. 5DP damage or more). Dregs have limited facilities to recharge, but have surprisingly good access to Gasohol from their own stills. With cars with small electric plants, Dregs will generally swap it out for the ubiquitous 100 ci gas plant, with the minimum size economy tank. This saves cost, weight and space. If the original plant was large but heavily damaged they will keep it in to save time.

5) Component armour. Dregs will often add component armour for the driver. This is cheaper than buying body armour and helps to compensate for the lack of normal armour. Frequently there will be additional space released by replacing the power plant.

6) Weapons. Dregs tend to use cheap one-shot weapons. As their cars cannot survive sustained combat they prefer to "zoom and boom", closing quickly, firing at point blank range and then peeling off. Ideally they will loose all their ordinance in a single volley and then escape. They will usually strip all existing weapons and sell them and replace then with single shot rockets. Heavy rockets are popular, but to make up for the inherent accuracy issues they may instead employ massed banks of linked mini-rockets instead (on the basis that if you fire enough something will hit).

7) Other components. They will strip and sell the majority of other components. Targeting computers are far too valuable to keep and they do not value life enough to keep safety equipment.

Generally a Dreg vehicle will come out at under $3k. Anything more than that is too valuable to keep.

Note that this represents the best a Dreg can scrounge up. A plant may have taken much more than 5 DPs damage (it just won't cost any less). Many components are 1 DP as they have been jury-rigged. Killing a vehicle generally requires a breach and often a single armour location on a Dreg vehicle will have no plastic armour remaining (and will consequently be more heavily patched with metal). Often there is less than half the armour remaining as there comes a point when is it uneconomical to repair it and replacement is the better option. Garages will often strip out all the salvageable components and sell the chassis and armour to Dregs.