Bolthole or Recon Base?
 

So here's a question, while TM1-1 tells us that the bolthole is designed to be abandoned, who out there goes with the freezing facility becoming a permanent base for the team?

I agree it could be used. At worse it could be a root celler. Why not give the team a starting base ??

I can see a single use bolthole for a Recon Team, their job, after all, is get off their collective rears and explore their area and make contact with the locals.

I've seen several games where the PD allowed a permanent base and it resulted in the team going to all of their caches and transport the treasure back to home base...:confused:

I can see such a base for a Science Team or possibly a MARS Team, but Recon...

Use a bolt hole as a permanent base, no. A bolt hole has no sanitary facilities to deal with waste and no food storage or prep area for meals. It is not intended to exist or function for a long, indefinite period without regard to unforeseeable conditions. It is not designed for permanent occupation.

Depending on the environmental conditions and situation the team might use the bolt hole as a temporary base for a short time, from a week to a month.

IMO, the first thing a team does once outside its bolt hole is to do circular recon sweeps of the surrounding area at increasing intervals of about 75 meters to a max of 600 meters as quietly as possible. Of course, this depends on the location of the bolt hole, whether in hills, mountains, desert, forest, snow, etc. 1. Observe, 2. Assess, 3. Act

YMMV

Bolt hole for EVERYONE...... for exactly that reason. They have a base to report to.......... Their Regional Base..... First, locate the rest of their Combined Group and activate them... then find their Regional Base.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

There is only one thing harder to get the PC group out of than their bolthole.

The V-150.

Seriously, have them wake to the critical failure alarm and rising water...... The bolthole will be completely under water in +6 hours because the river has changed course and debris has blocked the damn.

Have them awoken to a radiation alarm.... the containment of the fusion plant has been compromised by 150 years and failure is imminent.

Something that makes the hole unusable.

I concur, if the player's won't leave voluntary, then it's time for the PD to get creative!

My only thought about the Science Team is the possibility that the PhD types may be older and not as physically fit...so, maybe a permanent base with lab facilities.

MARS Teams might have access to helicopters or other aviation assets, hence a need for maintenance facilities.

Just a few thoughts...

A science team with a permanent lab someplace makes sense. You don't want your scientists playing with an unknown pathogen using a hood constructed from scavenged plexiglass, duct tape, hair dryers and fiberglass insulation. Though a case could be made for a mobile lab built inside a large trailer or two.

An aviation base would be large for just the maintenance hangers. If you are going to use that much land, it sounds more like a regional base for these types of assets rather than a team bolthole.

The more I sit here and plot, the more I like the idea of a dedicated Science Base, this would allow for state of the art dedicated labs with the mobile labs restricted to mobile teams, maybe one such base per region?

I agree that a MARS Team with aviation support would most likely based out of a regional command base.

I can see a possibility of a MARS/Aviation Team dedicated to a specific mission, say taking custody of nuke warheads. This would require a larger than normal bolthole, but still, a single use facility.

Thoughts?

From your comment, I will assume you mean this is a separate, dedicated base and not part of a regional base. I do think this idea has merit and can be explored. I am seeing something like the Wildfire facility from Andromeda Strain. The number would be small and they would be isolated from major population centers. Would their locations be widely known within the Project or only to Science teams, regional commands and Prime bases?

I think I'm going to go with regional command and above only having access to location. Science Teams will have radio contact with "Wildfire" only.

Just thinking about a Science Base, and what they might have to research, than I can see them being separate from any other Morrow facility.

I'm going to have to reevaluate what goes into the various regions of the Project, I just keep coming up with facilities that need to be included in any reasonable attempt to rebuild after a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

I think these science labs will mostly be dealing with diseases and finding treatments. Even if you go with Universal Antibody/Antidote. you will run out of doses quicker then the facility to make more can be brought online. With Atlanta and the CDC nuked out of existence, these bases become the source for vaccines and treatments for bioweapons and mutated pathogens. Assuming that, they would have source strains of various types in storage and we would have to assume Biosafety Level 4 labs and security measures to keep things in control. So they are basically Wildfire with some manufacturing ability to mass produce the vaccines and armed guards.

Science Teams have a Science One.....

I just nerf it. I remove almost all the weapons and add more scientific equipment. No missiles and other stuff.

That or an NBC vehicle. Either a V150 converted to NBC recon or M93 Fox.

I am just not into giving the PCs a base for a start. I will give them a base or let them keep one they build by mid Campaign..... Early campaign, I just make it to hazardous to build and occupy.

A fresh PhD can be as young as 28? 32? With experience in their field 35 - 40 years old? Those that are really older or not fit are probably assigned to Regional Bases or something dedicated as you say.

I always run with very few MARS One/Science One vehicles, usually 2-3 supporting one of the national command bases. I do run decontamination teams that use the M-93.

As far as a "Wildfire" base, my thinking is changing to maybe one on either side of the Mississippi River and using as them as NPCs.

On transforming boltholes into bases:

As has already been noted, boltholes lack a lot of amenities that a permanent base, including sanitary facilities, and are not designed to be particularly defensible. You could certainly build a base around a bolthole, using it as command room, but it would need a lot of supporting structure.

On Recon, MARS, and Science bases:

While all the branches certainly have need of substantial support and command facilities, I don't see that trickling down to the level of most teams. The problem is simply that the field teams are (to my understanding, at least) meant to be mobile. The average team is expected to be travelling over a large area providing services to TMP and the populace as needed. And given the post-war changes it would be extraordinarily hard to predict safe and appropriate places to situate said bases at the team level. Teams may establish bases down the road, but for the first year or two I would expect them to spend almost all their time travelling around their area of responsibility.

On SCIENCE ONE:

In an ideal world, scientific surveys would largely be performed in the field by technicians, not PhD's, and would primarily consist of collecting samples that would then be sent to permanent facilities for any analysis requiring machinery or electronics. TMP is not a perfect world. Transportation is slow and permanent facilities are vulnerable and hard to place. Something like the SCIENCE ONE would be a reasonable (for a game) compromise, shortening the chain between the source and the analysis and allowing strained resources to be repositioned as needed.

On the vehicle itself, I would imagine that the core vehicle would be mostly empty, with electric, plumbing, air, and network connections that would allow it to be configured either as a medical vehicle, biochemical lab, environmental lab, or more esoteric uses. The two halves of the vehicle would share the same propulsion system, none of this halftrack nonsense.

I like the idea of a dedicated Science base..... Maybe scale it to less than 50 personnel. Somewhere a Team in the field could send samples for analysis..... Something Level 4 containment with on site destruction possible.

Makes sense when you are expecting manufactured plagues and diseases. This extends to agricultural disease, such as blights, meant to wreck the food supply or animal stocks.

That science base can lend other support like super computer time for engineering tasks...... Aligning the mirror sats for transmitting the power down links too.