Settlement/Survivor/Economy Revamp test build.

[knightofrubus]

Hello its me again! So, the attached link leads to a small revamp of the Economy mechanics for 4th edition MP. Mind, this is a more 'modern' take and features a bit/lot more abstraction. This is designed to work with basic game and existing survivor groups and will have more assets, examples and actions added to it overtime.
Now, I do have a small favor to ask, in particular please please please criticize the heck out of this thing and tell me what sort of Assets in particular you'd like to see added. Should there be special Survivor Group only options? Should Regions have specific resources to them that a settlement might get access to? Feedback is always welcome!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=182jWfxX-aWM5uMHLbDQERqeroodlI_J1075liJMRdms


-EDITS-
-Switched out the ABC code into an optional rule.
-Added in a broad set of example Resources
-added in Infrastructure assets
-added the new settlement action, muster as well as the Forces Statistic as a way to gauge encounter group sizes/frequency from the settlement
-minor grammatical and formatting changes.

[mmartin798]

I am a bit busier than when I tried to tackle the economics in 4e, but I will try to build a comparable town as I did before and see how it goes. I will post results when I have them.

[knightofrubus]

No hurries like I said this is fairly abstracted so it might not give as a concise picture as the economy rules. It also can only build a pretty basic settlement without player intervention currently. But definitely keep let me know how it goes!

[nuke11]

I gave it a read thou yesterday and found it very interesting. Not really sure about the name GRID thou, but over all an interesting idea and I await the continuation of it.

I like the idea of turning a settlement into a living item that changes month over month based on what is going on in it.

[knightofrubus]

Yeah I am not quite happy with Grid but it's a bit quicker to say than infrastructure. I might start expanding assets and resources here in the future. Though currently I'm working on a T2K/Morrow project hybrid with a few twists.

[mmartin798]

I had some time to play with this. Overall, it is a nice simplification of settlements. I was not able to do a direct comparison to my previous work, as I was not sure how all the things about Sommerset would be represented in this simplified setting. There are a couple of things I did notice that you may want to look at further.

Given the way that the Organization Code is calculated, you will never be able to have codes I or B. Since they are single values and not divisible by 2 you can't reach them.

The other was the Domain sizes. They just feel a little small. Sommerset was the town I built using the economics rules. Sommerset is a town of 5000 people that is part of the KFS. Sommerset is supplied coal from elsewhere that they turn into rubber for tires used by the military and civilian vehicles of the KFS. Sommerset also produces all the food it needs to support itself in addition to lumber and opiates it exports to New Manhatten. The land area used to do just this is 406.2km^2. If the coal trains ever stopped coming to Sommerset, they could not support themselves. This is why the Domain sizes felt small to me.

Finally I had this observation. If the Technology Organization code is H or I, the maximum value for all the secondary values will be lower than their current values. I was not sure it this was an oversight or a desired outcome to illustrate the inefficiecies of the low tech level.

[knightofrubus]

I was worried the lower end might be hard to achieve, though I guess that does make a certain modicum of sense as you can't really call a dude in a hut in the woods a 'settlement'. I might tweak that more in the future to make those lower or odd tiers more accessible. The Code B though I need to tweak, I was using the basic technology code system as a base to work from. So while a settlement may not immediately be able to reach Code B in some areas they might be able to build up to a critical point.

As to low technology being such a hamper it was definitely meant to be. It also is why players bringing tech into a settlement is such a huge boon as it circumvents trying to scrape and scrounge slowly to get back to something better.

The Domain sizes likely DO need tweaking as they are actually straight out of the Encounters chart in the 4th ed. Book and I am unashamed to say I was lazy in bringing it over. However, I'll poke around and take a look at it. Its interesting you brought up interactions with other settlements as I haven't quite figured out how I want to do things like Treaties/War etc. Likely as they are allied under the same banner it confers some special options to both settlements. It also, would not be shocking a town devoted strongly to industry might run into that issue of feeding itself if it isn't consistently bringing trade in. Trade offs for specialization is a very real thing in the real world after all and with the devastation that is implied in setting it's not hard to imagine many places are just on this side of seeing a famine break out. Mind, as assets such as farms and factories get added in that will help bulk out the town and make it more a living breathing thing.

Comments are enabled by the way so if something really sticks out please let me know in the doc I'm always looking for feedback after all as this is something to help the community out and I hope people can tweak it to their own games as they see fit.

[knightofrubus]

Just a minor update. Added in how project assets operate as well as the start of a materials flow set of rules for allowing better representation of supply chains and the like.