CW 6e Equipment Tech Level and Avaiiability Ratings

[HeatDeath]

I 've build an UNOFFICIAL spreadsheet that divides all of the CW6e equipment into technology levels that tell you where the equipment can be obtained or repaired. This is designed to facilitate campaign games where the players may find themselves in e.g. a small town in the middle of nowhere, and asking themselves very important questions like "Is there a shop here who can repair my shot-up Betatron? Or at least sell me some steel plate to weld over the holes from our last fight?"

The spreadsheet can be found at this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

The weapons are divided into Technology Levels, a la GURPS, with a tab on the spreadsheet for each tech level. I've used the GURPS Tech Levels as a base, but the descriptions are modified to more clearly sort the equipment by the types of materials and precision of the engineering involved, to more clearly tell you whether you can reasonably expect to be able to purchase or repair the item in a settlement of that size.

• TL5 - This is the technology level available at a Bandit Camp or small Wastelands town. This is basically anything that can be cut from steel - simple mechanical actions, crude explosives, crude machining or forging. Also anything more or less ubiquitous in the grey- or black-market: handcannons, assault rifles, concussion grenades.
  
• TL6 - This is the technology level available at a large town or small city. Anything that doesn't involve electronics or plastics can generally be repaired or rebuilt.
  
• TL7 - This is electronics, plastics, and more exotic materials. Equipment on this list could typically be obtained or repaired in a large city.
  
• TL8 - This is the technology level of a coastal megacity. It adds advanced electronics, lasers, and equipment with very high power densities.
  
• TL9 - This is the bleeding edge - equipment generally only available in the mechanic's bays of multi-million dollar world-class arena dueling teams. This adds the shock weapon class, advanced nanotech coatings, and highly advanced self-driving software like that found in the autopilot accessory.

Generally speaking, a facility at a given tech level will be able to repair or build equipment at a lower tech level.

Additionally, I've given each Tech Level some additional capability attributes to provide more granularity in the availability of equipment manufacturing and repair capabilities. Eg, what if the garage you're holed up in the rough part of a big city doesn't have hoists for moving large pieces of equipment around? What if the refugee camp's only welder is on the fritz?

Each piece of equipment has been given a Y if its manufacturing or repair requires a certain capability. If a piece of equipment has a Y under that attribute, a facility will need that capability to build or repair it:

• Large: equipment with this attribute requires large cranes, hoists, or lifts for repair or manufacturing.
• Welding: requires welding capability.
• Welding - Large: requires the capability to weld very large or heavy pieces of metal.
• Precision Machining: requires lathes or milling machines to precisely shape metal.
• Precision Machining - Large: requires large heavy duty machine shop tools that can handle very heavy workpieces.
• Advanced Materials: requires the ability to shape and machine composites, fiber optics, laser media, specific alloys, etc.
• Electronics: requires the ability to assemble circuit boards and other electronic components. See note below.
• High Power Density: requires the ability to work with high energy batteries, wiring, and power systems.
• Exotic Chemistry: requires the ability to formulate extremely specific and difficult chemical compounds.
• Nanotech: requires the ability to create and manipulate microscopic self-assembling materials or active electronics.
• Advanced Software: requires the ability to create and deploy software involving advanced machine learning or related techniques.

Regarding electronics, the simplest electronics are found at TL7. Generally speaking, a TL7 facility will be able to provide replacements for damaged equipment with the electronics requirement, but not repair damaged electronics. The capability to begin to repair damaged electronic equipment by rebuilding them with undamaged components - i.e. replacing screens, mainboards, reflashing memory chips - is a TL8 capability. Actually repairing electronics - e.g. patching a hole in a shot out circuit board, re-laying traces, and soldering replacement components - is a TL9 capacity.

[owenmp]

HeatDeath,

Thank you for posting your apocawesome Tech Level Rules for Car Wars 6E. They should also be useful when designing arena combat tournaments.

You may be interested in Tech Level Rules for Car Wars 4E by Tony Kontes, rules that might be able to be exported to Car Wars 6E.

Boneheadz Command Center
http://boneheadzcommand.blogspot.com

Tech Levels in Car Wars
https://boneheadzcommand.blogspot.co...r-wars_20.html
Boneheadz Command Center
October 20, 2013

[philreed]

ADMIN NOTE: This is unofficial, and the game does not deal in "tech levels" or any of the suggestions made here. That said, definitely have fun with things! We just don't want to confuse new players who open the rules and wonder where the tech level rules are hiding.

[HeatDeath]

Post edited to make it's unofficial nature clearer. Thank you Phil.

Yeah, in addition to serving as a framework for RPG repair and replacement rules, a cool thing you can do with this with immediate application to your game is to use the TL lists to build thematic cars from various TL factions by restricting your equipment to a given TL or below.

The fun thing is they'll still be balanced against each other via build points!

E.g. a melee-heavy TL5 Wasteland Raider against a TL9 drone vehicle from the former-Tesla-Gigafactory AI Hive! The possibilities are endless!

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

E.g. a melee-heavy TL5 Wasteland Raider against a TL9 drone vehicle from the former-Tesla-Gigafactory AI Hive! The possibilities are endless!

Did that in NOVA back-when -- one of our more-genocidally-minded types designed a "drone" car for wiping out dreg-gangs without having to worry about "morality" of the crews. (I was playing the dregs; let's just say: It went *very* badly for him. >:) )

[HeatDeath]

There's a chilling piece of short fanfic somewhere in the Ogre forum about an escaped spy having blended into a stream of refugees, an underling worried that the soldiers might not want to fire on the refugees to get the spy, and an evil general remarking casually that having an Ogre under his command makes that a solvable problem.

[EDIT: Ha! Found it! Post 24 on this page: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...efugees&page=3 ]

There's a temptation to think that differing tech levels between combatants should make for a one-sided curbstomp. An Ogre vs. a tank battalion defending a refugee column, or a TL9 drone car vs. a wasteland Raider. The higher tech level should just win, we think - it shouldn't even be a contest. But all that means is that the scenario wasn't balanced correctly.

One of the beautiful things about 6e is the rigorous mathematical foundation of the build system makes for units that are so finely balanced, that you can quite easily partition the equipment into tech levels but still have balanced duels.

And that's interesting to me.

The tech levels I have delineated above are purely thematic and fluff - they don't affect the game at all. A 10BP TL9 drone car will remain balanced against a 10BP TL5 raider. And that's a good thing.

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

There's a temptation to think that differing tech levels between combatants should make for a one-sided curbstomp.

That's what the guy with the dreg-shredder thought. What he did not reckon with was me, and my knowledge of "insurgent" tactics.

For ex.: The battle was played out on the original Midville maps -- which included a department store. My side rigged the old store mannequins to look like a cluster of dregs hiding in the building. The drone came thundering up, rammed through the wall -- and plunged straight through the strategically-weakened floor into the basement filled with "dragon's teeth" obstacles.

Also: Have you ever noticed how much a typical streetside storm drain looks like a slit-bunker? I have. I had my troops shooting from those; the TH penalty to shoot at them was *huge*. And the less said of the AV Crossbows shooting "Bangalore Torpedo" bolts (the 2' bolt described in _Chassis & Crossbow_, loaded with homemade Plastique)....

End Result: I was able to annihilate his $500,000 force using maybe $50,000 in gear, through superior strategy and tactics.

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've created...." >;)

[HeatDeath]

[Replying in Older Editions forum.]

[HeatDeath]

So last night I finally bindered my last set of cards. My 4th binder - green - is arranged by tech levels with dividers, and sorted by weapon, type, upgrades, accessories, sidearms and gear within each tech level, except for TL5, which is more broadly sorted offensive, defensive, maneuverability, and TL8, which is sorted as everything else, then lasers.

I really like the way just that little bit of fluff about each component - the tech level and special requirements for manufacture an repair - really feel like they bind the build system back into the game world - gives everything just a little more context, ya know?

To hear tell, apparently the early design of 6e went a little bit down the rabbit hole with worldbuilding and factions and tech levels and equipment availability and all that sort of thing early in the development, and then [and rightly so] retreated from that mostly to deliver what ended up being a really well-balanced set of equipment available without restrictions to all players in all basic games. But it's still nice to be able, now that they've got a very solid game system into everyone's hands, to go back and add some of that fluff as an optional layer.

[tiwahu]

I love this tech level and availability ratings idea.

By the way, I needed to simplify the attributes down to single letter for abbreviated display in some places, so I came up with these:


┌───┬─────────────────────
│ L │ Large
├───┼─────────────────────
│ W │ Welding
├───┼─────────────────────
│ P │ Precision Machining
├───┼─────────────────────
│ M │ Advanced Materials
├───┼─────────────────────
│ E │ Electronics
├───┼─────────────────────
│ H │ High Power Density
├───┼─────────────────────
│ C │ Exotic Chemistry
├───┼─────────────────────
│ N │ Nanotech
├───┼─────────────────────
│ S │ Advanced Software
└───┴─────────────────────


A single card can have multiple, of course. Hope they make sense.