Salvage and Scrap.....

[.45cultist]

What would be the values of scrapping and salvage of prewar machinery in the 4TH Ed? Tearing a building apart for I-beams, rebar could be mining, but what about autos,pumps, appliances? I guess two values, one for saving screws,wires, parts, and one for lazing it into pieces small enough to go in a fusion forge. Surely it saves some man hours if it's out of the rock.

[rob]

I my game, the PCs have scavenged for nylon mesh screening, hardware cloth that survived, old soda cans, copper piping, their cyro tubes and just about anything else (especially tools) from the before the war. You name it, it can/could be useful in a post apocalyptic future.

[ArmySGT.]

What would be the values of scrapping and salvage of prewar machinery in the 4TH Ed? Tearing a building apart for I-beams, rebar could be mining, but what about autos,pumps, appliances? I guess two values, one for saving screws,wires, parts, and one for lazing it into pieces small enough to go in a fusion forge. Surely it saves some man hours if it's out of the rock.
I would give it a 1 to 0.75 or 1 to 0.5 scrap for refined ratio to account for slag and dead air space in the scrap.

[.45cultist]

I would give it a 1 to 0.75 or 1 to 0.5 scrap for refined ratio to account for slag and dead air space in the scrap.

That makes sense, do you think it would be at 1/4th to half the man hours to refine? X tons in Y man hours.

[ArmySGT.]

That makes sense, do you think it would be at 1/4th to half the man hours to refine? X tons in Y man hours.

Depends upon where you salvage from and the effort to separate from rubble.

A standing building might be 3 hours per 10 kilos and a heap of rubble 9 hours per 5 kilo. Just because the difficulty of finding runs of wire or shifting crap.

[.45cultist]

Using TLA, one gets 5 tons of ore from a mine, 10 tons otherwise as a base per man hour.Smelter does 10,000 tons per day as a base number.

[ArmySGT.]

Using TLA, one gets 5 tons of ore from a mine, 10 tons otherwise as a base per man hour.Smelter does 10,000 tons per day as a base number.

Sorry, I missed the 4th ed. request and I was building on the fly.

I'll give it a read..... but, like the rest of the econ; I don't have much hope for a clear answer.

[.45cultist]

Sorry, I missed the 4th ed. request and I was building on the fly.

I'll give it a read..... but, like the rest of the econ; I don't have much hope for a clear answer.

I think your rules for buildings makes sense, and would wave the penalty for cars and manhole lids, beer kegs.

[cosmicfish]

I am kind of curious as to how much will really be salvageable after 150 years. I mean, metals can certainly last that long if they are maintained, but we are talking about scavenging materials that have been sitting unattended and exposed to the elements for a century and a half. I think it would take a fair amount of work to extract anything usable, and even then it wouldn't be a huge quantity for the effort.

[ArmySGT.]

That makes sense, do you think it would be at 1/4th to half the man hours to refine? X tons in Y man hours.

Still haven't read it..... This would be a PDs call based upon the exposure and deterioration of a given material. The more oxidized the material the lower the purity and higher the waste material that must be removed.

Also you must consider the material in the finished state at year zero versus year 150. If it was painted and protected from the elements and for how long.

Lets take two F150 pickup trucks...... both a heaps and worth more as steel than as an effort to make them run.......... One is on a street, the other is in a parking garage. The one on the street has been in the weather and the paint cooked off or oxidized by the relentless sun. The one in the garage has been under a concrete roof with only the humidity as an enemy.

Another to consider is the material itself and the resistance of the alloy to corrosion...... Or a coating on the material itself..... Fenders may have rotted away, but a chromed fender largely intact.

[bobcat]

in one of my games i had a community running at around 1950's tech level based around a metal foundry from before the war. (i didn't wanna nuke my home town so the place survived :D ) a big part of their economy was scrap/salvage from anywhere they could get it from for the manufacture of goods. actually used this as a plot device to send the team on some road clearing missions including sending them to lead a convoy up to Corning and evaluate the condition of the glassworks there(it did get nuked).