Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Actually a squad of gears might actually be cheaper. I found this just the other day (http://www.marketplace.org/2011/02/22/economy/globalist-quiz/cost-soldier-deployed-afghanistan) and it mentions that the cost for deploying one infantry man (just one guy) is 1.2 million. So following that theory it costs 36 million for just one platoon (including logistics costs). So if one gear pilot is about the same (biggest offset being the pilots better pay, which doesn't change things by much), you could be looking at around 15-20 million to deploy and support a squad of gears, which has the firepower of a company of infantry at the least. While this was in US dollars, I wouldn't imagine that it would be much difference in scale using the local economy. Also, before anyone else brings it up, the article was specifically about deploying to isolated regions with poor infrastructure, which pretty much sums up what most of NuCoal territory should be like.

My biggest reasoning for why gears would be attractive is that they minimize man power. Five guys (one pilot, and back in base 3 mechanics/janitors/cooks/logistics, 1 command staff/whatnot) compared to a squad (10 infantry, 40 support personal assuming a 1/5 ratio for combat to non-combat support). And the gear has far more firepower, is more comfortable in harsh environments (A/C is cheap), and has added mobility integrated into it, rather than needing APCs/trucks. A gear heavy army would let them stretch their manpower farther than conventional infantry.

That would be cheaper too. A squad of ten (using US pay scale) led by a Sargent and corporal costs $209,498 in pay. A 2nd Lieutenant earns $35,668.80. That's yearly of course.
Than you have the 10 times larger logistics. Maintenance would be roughly the same. The squad would need an APC or a truck, while the gear is a gear, but gears are, despite their complexity, designed to be rugged, so most of it's non-combat maintenance should be mostly upkeep. So they'd be about the same though with a truck edging out for being cheaper to keep running.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Wait a sec, "Gears are cheap"?

Relatively so, yes.

A Gear is a highly-complex military machine. If we compare to the real world, the cheapest things the US used to field were armored HUMVEES at a cost of $200k each. They are being replaced by $500k-$1M MRAPs. If you move up the tech level, a Predator drones was $4M, and they are being replaced by $7-15M drones.

If we try to equate Gears to equipment, there is no way that a basic, mass-production Gear (e.g. Hunter) is less than $1M (like a MRAP). The sheer complexity of a Gear's articulation, miniaturization, motors and SMS suggests we're in the $4M range to produce.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect here, probably because you think that Gears are exclusively combat machines. They are not. They are offshoots of the construction and work machines that terranovans were already using and which were firstly brought from Earth almost 2 thousand cycles ago. "Out of the setting", they were also designed so that every piece of technology used in the basic Gears with the exception of the "black box" (the ONNET) was already able to be produced at the time of the writing (halfway the 90s): that's why all the internal parts of the Gears are hydraulics instead of myomer fibers or somesuch, why they use ICEs instead of more esoteric engines, and so on and so forth.

That's about 20-25% cheaper than a M1 Abrams MBT, but it's not like fielding an infantryman with a rifle.

No, of course it's not like fielding an infantryman with a rifle, but they are not just 25% cheaper than a MBT. Let's talk numbers a bit.

These are terranovan civilian work Gears:





These or other similar models are used throughout the whole globe in a multitude of jobs. Rovers, bandits, mercenaries, militias and marshalls everywhere use uparmed and armored variants for raids or defense (those would be roughly equivalent to our real world's technicals). A regular wrok Gear costs around 10.000 to 30.000 marks/dinars.

Now, this is an Elan, a northern utility vehicle similar to a jeep or Humvee:



The regular, unarmed and mostly unarmored version costs 31.500 marks/dinars, and there are more expensive upengined, upgunned and uparmored versions, and a really much more expensive spotter version, too (345k marks), but given all the upgrades is basically another, much more specialized vehicle.

Now, a regular Hunter/Jäger costs 221k marks/dinars new, and the polar leagues have been churning them out for centuries by now. Comparatively, a regular MBT goes for around 1.5M each, with the more specialized variants costing a lot more.

Plus there's the training aspect. Plus logistics, etc. Militaries are expensive, and now we're talking about land battleships?

Absolutely! In the training respect tanks are comparatively more expensive because you have to train multiple crewmembers, but Gear pilots have more specialized training. There's also the fact that you need to train the Gear's ONNET too, of course... and yeah, logistics are very expensive ^^

Sure there's magic technology, but Gears are not rifles, and small countries are not outfitting 5% of their population with them. The economics just won't work. Pretending you have a whopping 50% of the population working, it's 10 workers per soldier. Each worker therefore shoulders 10% of the cost of the gear, or $500k taxes. That's 10X the current average American household income! And it assumes there's no bureaucracy or admin cost, no civil government.

Firstly, I've taken the 5% quote mostly out of my ass, but I seem to remember it was in the ballpark for TN, which is heavily militarized usually, and much more in the "current" timeline after basically two world wars (by whic I mean, I seem to remember having read it, but not from where).

Secondly, that 5% would not be combat personnel, but total personnel, including all the logistics. Combat personnel would be a fraction of that.

Anyways, grain of salt and all that ^^.

As for cost on the Joe Average NuCoal tax payer. No clue. I'd suspect that most conventional infantry would be US style national guardsmen (part timers) though that wouldn't save the NuCoal gov. that much in the end.

Assuming what I wrote in my previous post is accurate at all to NuCoal's situation, they might have a smaller, but "better" (cost effective) equipped military. maybe only using .5-1.5 of their already small population in the military.

John Prins wrote:
Gears are cheap thanks to mass production. The Polar powers benefit from this a lot (and Paxton, who supplies both polar and smaller powers). NuCoal probably doesn't have the volume to get the cost-savings associated with the really big production runs. It would have made a lot more sense for NuCoal to be using Paxton gears, as the price difference is enormous.

NuCoal would also need to create the manufacturing plants needed to build Gears, since they don't have much in that regard. The logical way would have been to turn to Paxton or buy used, or refurbishing work gears for militia work and the like.

Still, I can see that being bootstrapped in relatively short amounts of time, but the bigger sticking point for me is research time for new gears. If they were just putting out cosmetically different knockoffs of Polar/Paxton gears, it would have made lots more sense.

Exactly, yes, and that's been my point for years. Had they fielded variants of Bears, Pythons, Hunters, Jägers, Tigers, Sidewinders, Ferrets and similarly dated or mass produced Gears (meaning, stuff you can extrapolate from and build without needing too many resources or development brainpower) it would have made a lot more sense. Most of the actual minis could have been used as-is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mmmpi wrote:
As for cost on the Joe Average NuCoal tax payer. No clue. I'd suspect that most conventional infantry would be US style national guardsmen (part timers) though that wouldn't save the NuCoal gov. that much in the end.

Assuming what I wrote in my previous post is accurate at all to NuCoal's situation, they might have a smaller, but "better" (cost effective) equipped military. maybe only using .5-1.5 of their already small population in the military.

There's a reason they sought to ally with Port Arthur, all in all...

Assuming the previously used 3 million people for NuCoal, and using Russia as an example (not as well off economy, not as well off infrastructure, relatively heavily militarized) let's see what we get. The average Russian makes $7,400 dollars a year*, and pays 13% in taxes. That's $957.84 in taxes a year (let's say $1,000 for easier math). Times that by 3,000,000 people. NuCoal's government(s) have 3 billion dollars for it's entire annual budget. Admittedly that's to cover everything; military, infrastructure repair, improvement and upgrades, economic stimulation, keeping itself payed, ect. Russia spent 7.5% of it's tax money on it's military. So for NuCoal, that would be $225,000,000 for the military.

*I used the pre-embargo average


Automatically Appended Next Post:
*Some* more advanced designs might be reasonable. One or two of the cities (can't remember which just now) do weapons testing for the polar leagues. That would give experience into building one or two new designs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fort Neil has the test pilots. Also, a large amount of polar equipment might be implied as five out of eight sub lists have allies: north/south/both.

Definitely could have showed it better if that's what was actually intended though.

My econ numbers were tied to the rapid militarization of the Badlands, and the impossibility of them suddenly fielding massive forces of Gears.

If you're saying that a Gear replaces a Bulldozer, then a basic civilian Gear would be comparable to a Cat D7-series which costs $500-600k each.

A Heavyweight D11 is $2.2M, only half the cost of a $4-5M M1 Abrams MBT.

By ratios, a Hunter Gear is still going to cost at least $1M, maybe $2M. This is roughly consistent with the "dinar" thing of a 1.5Md MBT vs a basic 220kd Gear.

If your 5% is the total military population, then we're only talking 1.5% of the population actually carrying weapons in the military, so the econ holds up a little better.

 Mmmpi wrote:
*Some* more advanced designs might be reasonable. One or two of the cities (can't remember which just now) do weapons testing for the polar leagues. That would give experience into building one or two new designs.

I think you're mistaking Fort Neil (home of Neil Motor Works) and Fort Henry (home of the Fort Henry Weapons Testing Range). That said, NMW has aquired the rights to produce spare parts and provide mainteinance for the Bear and Den Mother Gears after Northco phased out production.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
My econ numbers were tied to the rapid militarization of the Badlands, and the impossibility of them suddenly fielding massive forces of Gears.

If you're saying that a Gear replaces a Bulldozer, then a basic civilian Gear would be comparable to a Cat D7-series which costs $500-600k each.

A Heavyweight D11 is $2.2M, only half the cost of a $4-5M M1 Abrams MBT.

By ratios, a Hunter Gear is still going to cost at least $1M, maybe $2M. This is roughly consistent with the "dinar" thing of a 1.5Md MBT vs a basic 220kd Gear.

If your 5% is the total military population, then we're only talking 1.5% of the population actually carrying weapons in the military, so the econ holds up a little better.

That sounds just about right

 Albertorius wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
*Some* more advanced designs might be reasonable. One or two of the cities (can't remember which just now) do weapons testing for the polar leagues. That would give experience into building one or two new designs.

I think you're mistaking Fort Neil (home of Neil Motor Works) and Fort Henry (home of the Fort Henry Weapons Testing Range).

I was going off of P. 147 (PDF 148). Fort Nell (not Neil like I previously said). It's fluff blurb says they "invented" the Sampson hover APC, worked on the Gallic series of gears. Under special rules has licensed fabrication Sidewinders and Ferrets, and Test pilots.

 Mmmpi wrote:
I was going off of P. 147 (PDF 148). Fort Nell (not Neil like I previously said). It's fluff blurb says they "invented" the Sampson hover APC, worked on the Gallic series of gears. Under special rules has licensed fabrication Sidewinders and Ferrets, and Test pilots.

Current rulebook? That one takes it's stuff from the NuCoal book. I have...significant issues with that book. "Current" stuff simply does not really make sense with the older. I prefer to use the older.

Oh, please. Next, you'll be telling us that Han shot first.

I only really have access to the newest book.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oh, please. Next, you'll be telling us that Han shot first.

I'm... not exactly sure what you mean by that. Why would I say otherwise? It's clear as day

Mmmpi wrote:I only really have access to the newest book.

Ah, sorry. Well, the Sampson, all the Gallic designs, the test pilot program, the license to build Sidewinders and Ferrets (which in and of itself is suspect, as it's weird that they would be so buddy buddy with both Northco, Keimuru and Territorial Arms to get that sweet of a deal with no previous experience)... all of it was created wholecloth and introduced on the NuCoal book. It kind of strains credibility, so I just completely ignore it in my Terra Nova.

In my Terra Nova the "Gallic" designs are mainly cosmetic variants of existing and proven polar and Paxton Gears, which seats much better with my sensibilities, and the Sampson is just a locally refurbished HPC-64, same way as the Fusiliers are the locally assembled/fixed HTs used by the second PAK brigade. And as I don't need to sell minis but I need the setting to make sense to me, it works for me well enough.

Also, the correct name is Fort Neil

Well, looking at the stats, a chasseur is basically a hunter or jager that has a lest accurate auto cannon (no split fire), and had it's frame weakened to add hover-skates (3/3 rather than 4/2, and SMS is H:9" rather than G: 6"). It doesn't have room for the panzerfaust or hand grenade either. One could say that hover aside, it's just a cheap knockoff. Actually, hover keeps it from just being a cheap knock off.

The current fluff for it (newest book) says:

"The Chasseur is the primary trooper Gear in
production for NuCoal, the HAPF and PAK. The
ability of the Gear to maintain speed with hover
vehicles makes the Chasseur a versatile unit.
The interchangeability of parts shared with the
Jager Gear simplifies repair and the ability to
match the mobility of the CEF invaders is an
additional plus for all three armies."

So it really IS a jager knock off... At least now.

Went through the other vehicles, and had a bit written out for them, but realized it's just be saying things you already agree with. Mostly about how Neil Motorworks somehow managed to mass produce seven designs (Chasseur Mk:2, Boa, Arbalestier, Lancier, Fusilier, Voltigeur, and Sampson) that had to have their designs massively alterered (MK:2), practically redesigned from the ground up (Boa), or brand new invented (everything else). Same to a lesser extent with Javelin Systems (Espion, Hussar).

But the rest of the designs are based on stuff that could easily be salvaged, or based on something the new fluff says they already have a license to build. You could even argue that the Chevalier is really just a bulked up Sidewinder rather than a grizzly/cobra knock off.

Also, as I said earlier, most of the sub-lists have allies: North/south/both, and one could take that as the use of salvage except for Lance Point which is apparently occupied by Southern Troops.

On an unrelated note, what are the Gallic designs? The ones with french name?


Finally, the way the font in the book is. At 100% size it looks like Ft. Nell. At 106% It's suddenly reveled to be Ft. Neil. Go figure.

The Chasseur is actually a Territorial Arms design, and yes, it's just a regular Jäger with Hover SMS instead of wheels. They were'nt able to sell it to the SRA, so they ended up selling the design and production rights to Erech and Nineveh, who used them in their militias.

The reason why the SRA didn't buy it was mainly due to a very limited autonomy coupled with horribly expensive mainteinance and deployment costs. Erech and Nineveh, being among the foremost gas producers of the globe, didn't much worry about costs, and didn't need extended deployment ranges.

Problem with it for the NuCoal in my Terra Nova is that Erech and Nineveh don't really have many reasons to join (not many economic reasons [actually joining the NuCoal might put them at odds with their main polar markets], location wise they are very far off the main NuCoal territories, and being important for both the poles and in the middle of the Badlands polar armies tend to leave it alone for fear of escalation), so they are independent.

That, coupled with the horrid operational costs and low deployment range makes the Chasseur a design very unsuited for my NuCoal (and no, making it magically operationally cost effective just because didn't happen either... one of the defining points of HT vehicles in setting is low Deployment ranges and high operational costs. Just being named "NuCoal" doesn't change the setting bible, for me at least).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mmmpi wrote:
Went through the other vehicles, and had a bit written out for them, but realized it's just be saying things you already agree with. Mostly about how Neil Motorworks somehow managed to mass produce seven designs (Chasseur Mk:2, Boa, Arbalestier, Lancier, Fusilier, Voltigeur, and Sampson) that had to have their designs massively alterered (MK:2), practically redesigned from the ground up (Boa), or brand new invented (everything else). Same to a lesser extent with Javelin Systems (Espion, Hussar).

Hehehe, yes, basically.

But the rest of the designs are based on stuff that could easily be salvaged, or based on something the new fluff says they already have a license to build. You could even argue that the Chevalier is really just a bulked up Sidewinder rather than a grizzly/cobra knock off.

Actually, the Chevalier should be based off the Bear/Den Mother: NMW already has license to build parts for that one, so it's the logical step.

The Sidewinder or Tiger derived Gear should be the Cuirassier. But first you'd have to find a reasonable way for companies from opposite (and opposing) poles to all sell production rights to the same company.

On an unrelated note, what are the Gallic designs? The ones with french name?

Basically the all-new designs presented in the book, plus the "new" Chasseur, now not a gas guzzler because of Deus ex Machina:

Chasseur
Chasseur MK II
Lancier
Cuirassier
Jerboa
Chevalier
Espion
Chargeur
Sapeur
Hussar
Fusilier
Voltigeur
Sampson

...plus loads of variants.

On the subject of deus ex machina, I think I've figured out the least awful way for Terra Nova to win against Earth.

While I assume that, if it appears in print, it will be magical Prime Knight/Dune knockoff stuff, what would make the most sense, to my mind, is if the fleet that disappeared at Jerusalem shows up. Having been converted and turned against Earth, it smashes the CEF fleet, and is destroyed itself in the process. Still a silly out, but better than literal magic, and even if it doesn't end the war immediately, it allows for Terra Nova to have orbital and space operations again. (Which means they can send their new landship invasion fleet abroad! Hurray! -_- )

Of course, I've never been one to take two quotes as proof Terra Nova is going to win anyway. They will win, because protagonist, but I've just never felt that the odd reference here and there to things in the 60s and later is proof.

The CEF and the Earth are basically on a self destruction course, so I would hope for a way to shore up dissent on Earth using the lack of results of the CEF to enact a change of leadership and a renewed openness towards the colonies, finally admitting to them and themselves that they need the help of the colonies to save Earth's biosphere.

Then a large number of the CEF fleets would go rogue, and in them the GRELs would start rebellions when the news of Earth's GREL emancipation reached them, so they would form some sort of fifth column/underground railroad inside the rebel fleets, which would allow a lot of cool thematic parallels with slavery.

Basically, I would love to see a "win" ending, defined by humanity not self destructing itself but still with a place for a not-Hitler's last stand.

If someone has a place to host them I picked up my KS pledge at GenCon and can take pictures of the sprues.

 Ahtman wrote:
If someone has a place to host them I picked up my KS pledge at GenCon and can take pictures of the sprues.

I usually host them on Google: https://photos.google.com/

 Ahtman wrote:
If someone has a place to host them I picked up my KS pledge at GenCon and can take pictures of the sprues.

Dakka has a nice, free, and easy to use gallery that I recommend.

 warboss wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
If someone has a place to host them I picked up my KS pledge at GenCon and can take pictures of the sprues.

Dakka has a nice, free, and easy to use gallery that I recommend.

I wasn't sure if these would be eligible to use for Dakka gallery tbh. The Google Pics idea is pretty good as well and seems sort of obvious in hindsight. I will get some pictures up later today.

Whatever works best for you, Ahtman. I would point out that there are official dakka articles that consist entirely of sprue pics to document the parts as well as hundreds of sprue pics in the dakka gallery including my own sprue pics for the swap shop. As long as it is wargaming related (which sprues are), it's good. I'd just recommend clicking the "don't vote on these" option on the pics to save gallery mod the effort of doing so.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Wait a sec, "Gears are cheap"?

Compared to a lot of military equipment, yes.

The old editions made a big point of this - especially with regards to the vehicle build system - that anything that could be fully 'mass produced' was significantly cheaper because a lot of automation technologies could be brought to bear that weren't cost effective in small runs. You can find modern examples of this all over the place. Foxconn in China used to make Apple and Samsung components largely assembled by hand. Now they're deploying thousands of robots to take over the simpler tasks.

The average military gear was 'expensive' only when compared to the non-military version. Construction gears could be had for the modern equivalent of the price of a car. Things like tanks and aircraft were far more limited in production, so their per-unit price was far, far higher. You could get 6-7 gears for the price of a single main battle tank. A single gear had the power of an entire infantry company (or more) and required 1 pilot. If manpower is low, gears are the low cost solution - at least compared to tanks or striders.

Yes, it was a contrivance, but the setting is built around it.

Of course they are eligible for the Dakka Dakka gallery - upload and host away!

It would appear that TN has a different concept of "mass production" compared to what we have on Earth. Your Foxconn example is particularly flawed. Apple has sold something like 1 BILLION iPhones since introduction in 2007.

NuCoal having 3M population of a moderate city and maybe 1% piloting Gears, means they would have a maximum of 30,000 units.

The "mass production" scale is off by several orders of magnitude, and is simply not comparable. It's like saying the 3M population of all of NuCoal itself is directly comparable to your personal household of 1-4 people.

@Albertorius

Maybe contact with PAK let them install CEF fuel cells? Maybe they send Chasseur patrols out with tanker support.

As for Ft Neil having contracts for both sides, no clue. Someone in intel. dropped the ball. Though stuff like that has happened in real life. It could even have been the Ft. Going: Hey you two arn't fighting right now, but need parts, we're already making Jager parts, why not just slap "hunter" on a few crates and ship them north. Not knowing when they started too, it could be due to the CEF invasion too. Adding an additional manufacturing center could be critical. Finally, it's possible both sided do know and are using it/trying to use it to spy on each other, ala we now know what you're upgrading.

@Firebreak:
As long as it's not a 40K style draw. Winning due to magical unicorn gundam schoolgirls on rollerblades (MUGSOR) would be sub-optimal, but at least it would mean the story is moving.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now that I think about it I should do that for any gear striders I end up with...

Make a KADA army of magical girl wanna be strider pilots...

where's my pink paint and rollerblade conversion kit!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It would appear that TN has a different concept of "mass production" compared to what we have on Earth. Your Foxconn example is particularly flawed. Apple has sold something like 1 BILLION iPhones since introduction in 2007.

NuCoal having 3M population of a moderate city and maybe 1% piloting Gears, means they would have a maximum of 30,000 units.

The "mass production" scale is off by several orders of magnitude, and is simply not comparable. It's like saying the 3M population of all of NuCoal itself is directly comparable to your personal household of 1-4 people.

Mass produced just means built in batches, using an assembly line (as opposed to one by one by hand). The F-22 is mass produced, but they only made 193 of them.

Granted several of the gears listed say they're produced by "Various", so they very well could have some that are built by hand.

Actually, if they're only making 193, that is basically one-off craft assembly compared to cranking out 50,000 Sherman Tanks by the literal boatload.

And...here...we...go...(hopefully this works)

 Mmmpi wrote:

As long as it's not a 40K style draw. Winning due to magical unicorn gundam schoolgirls on rollerblades (MUGSOR) would be sub-optimal, but at least it would mean the story is moving.

Honestly, of the many concerns I have regarding Heavy Gear and it's future, the story moving isn't one of them. If the game and company survives, they'll move things along. Probably. Now, I assume it's going to move in a stupid direction I won't like, but there's always the possibility of something else happening.

And now that I think about it I should do that for any gear striders I end up with...

Make a KADA army of magical girl wanna be strider pilots...

where's my pink paint and rollerblade conversion kit!

I demand that you do this.

Some concept art from the next kickstarter for nucoal posted elsewhere previewed supposedly at gencon. I wasn't there so can't verify it myself though. At least its not a gearstrider but rather a gear/hovercar ala the Hussar tank strider and another contribution from their HAPF absorption into Nucoal. The color scheme seems off for Nucoal though as I thought they were supposed to be light blue.

 Mmmpi wrote:
Maybe contact with PAK let them install CEF fuel cells? Maybe they send Chasseur patrols out with tanker support.

The CEF has the very same low Deployment ranges and energy hog HT movement systems. It would change their fuel need into electricity needs, but you need to create electricity out of something, anyway. The core problem would not change. For the CEF it works out because they have very streamlined energy requirements, having hydrogen as their main source for fuel and ammunition, via fusion reactors.

But even if the NuCoal had access to enough fusion reactors to do it (they don't), consider this: a CEF battle group consumes nearly a million liters of hydrogen per week on standby status, and around double or triple that amount during active duty (and even more during heavy combat situations). The PAK has currently 2 armored brigades, each one made up of 3 regular battle groups, 1 support group and a support company). That's already strain enough as hydrogen requirements for the NuCoal even if they didn't use it for anything else.

As for Ft Neil having contracts for both sides, no clue. Someone in intel. dropped the ball. Though stuff like that has happened in real life. It could even have been the Ft. Going: Hey you two arn't fighting right now, but need parts, we're already making Jager parts, why not just slap "hunter" on a few crates and ship them north. Not knowing when they started too, it could be due to the CEF invasion too. Adding an additional manufacturing center could be critical. Finally, it's possible both sided do know and are using it/trying to use it to spy on each other, ala we now know what you're upgrading.

That last part might make sense if Northco and Territorial Arms still were making Sidewinders and Bears/Den Mothers. They are not, and that's the whole reason why they have offloaded the parts manufacturing to other companies: they've mothballed the assembly lines and most of the surviving vehicles have been sold to Badlands militias and the like, while the few left in the polar armies are on militias or similar paramilitary groups. Or the WFP. Or the MILICIA. Still, it is weird to have all the contracts falling into the hands of the same company, particularly given the polar enmities and the current political situation.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now that I think about it I should do that for any gear striders I end up with...

Make a KADA army of magical girl wanna be strider pilots...

where's my pink paint and rollerblade conversion kit!

That would at least be fun to see ^_^


Automatically Appended Next Post:

John Prins wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Wait a sec, "Gears are cheap"?

Compared to a lot of military equipment, yes.

The old editions made a big point of this - especially with regards to the vehicle build system - that anything that could be fully 'mass produced' was significantly cheaper because a lot of automation technologies could be brought to bear that weren't cost effective in small runs. You can find modern examples of this all over the place. Foxconn in China used to make Apple and Samsung components largely assembled by hand. Now they're deploying thousands of robots to take over the simpler tasks.

The average military gear was 'expensive' only when compared to the non-military version. Construction gears could be had for the modern equivalent of the price of a car. Things like tanks and aircraft were far more limited in production, so their per-unit price was far, far higher. You could get 6-7 gears for the price of a single main battle tank. A single gear had the power of an entire infantry company (or more) and required 1 pilot. If manpower is low, gears are the low cost solution - at least compared to tanks or striders.

Yes, it was a contrivance, but the setting is built around it.

That's a bit of an oversimplification:

In HG, every vehicle has a Production type, which defines the stage of development that a particular vehicle has reached (remember, all this comes from the RPG, it would have no bearing on the minis game other than setting).

Prototypes are hand-crafted and often one-of-a-kind, making them outrageously expensive. Early production runs often still have a bug or two left in them that has yet to be worked out. Mass production runs produce cheap, reliable machines. Limited production runs improve product quality and increase cost. Scratchbuild designs are lovingly hand-crafted with little or no planning. The production type will also define how much care is put into each unit built and how many will be built on average (the "#" column).

Production type defined a number of things: firstly, it defined how many will be built on average (for example, that number for a Testbed Prototype was 1-3, while for a Limited Production vehicle it was 5-500). It also defined how many "Lemon Dice" you had to roll for the design, and how many of those were for design flaws and how many for production flaws (the idea was that you rolled the design defect dice to see how many defects had surfaced during testing, and the production defect dice for your particular machine, to see if it had any problem), as well as the final cost multiplier.

For example, a Testbed Prototype had 12 Design Flaw dice, 2 Production Flaw dice and a cost multiplier of x100. Meanwhile, a Limited Production unit had 1 Design Flaw die, 2 Production Flaw dice and a cost multiplier of x2, whereas a Mass Production unit would have 2 Design Flaw dice, 3 Production Flaw dice and a cost multiplier of x0.5.

Of course, a vehicle would first need to pass through most of the "regular" production types (Testbed Prototype, Early Prototype, Late Prototype, Early Production) before all the kinks were worked out for mass production,so the actual cost to reach that stage would be a lot higher. That means that unless a vehicle would be produced in very high numbers, it would end up being built as either Early Production or Limited Production, with a much higher per-unit cost.

As to prices, there are not really many prices for civilian vehicles on the books, TBH, but a regular 5-ton trucks cost around 8.500 marks/dinars, whereas a Longrunner, which is a specialized long-range desert caravan truck with space for 8 passangers plus driver and 200 m3 of cargo space go for 20k marks/dinars. Also, a one-man Flea short range helicopter costs less than 40k.