Prime Base version 2.0
 

So Prime Base now consists of a complex of sites and facilities that are spread over a fairly large part of Nevada:

An unmanned SETI receiver array linked to the old Microwave tower system that then links either through a ground line or various microwave links to the base

An entrance to the base in the middle of the desert, either a town or a paper recycling facility or some such, about ten miles from the ridge, connected to the Base via a deep tunnel.

An entrance on top of the ridge which until it uncorks has almost no footprint. It consists of a large rock. Under the large rock is a tube that is twice as deep as the depth of the tunnel into the base. The top half is full of sand and the bottom half is empty. There is a plate in the center. The plate holds the sand in place and when removed the sand flows downward filling the void and opening up the upper half to the surface. The shaft has a set of handholds as well as points to tie off. It is wide enough so that a prefabricated spiral ramp can be installed when the base goes active after the war. There is also a prefabricated airlock hatch that includes a MPID access point.

There is the tunnel from this to the base and the decon facility as I described a zillion years ago.

There are five cylinders, Operations, Support and Three Life Cylinders

Around the bottom of the pentagon shaped array of cylinders there are a number of rings of annexes and such. These could also operate as deep "lifeboat" shelters if a nuke actual hits that close to the base

The five cylinders are attached to each other by the type of tubes mentioned in the original module, except they now make a pentagram rather than a triangle. there is also a much smaller cylinder in the center that serves as a utilities and transportation hub, sort of a giant transcore.

The Grand Deception only uses the top level of three cylinders, the others are blocked off.

The shaft from the surface had the rock put back in place and the spiral ramp removed. The hand holds were also removed. This leaves a clean shaft a couple of hundred feet deep that characters will need to repel into.

The Players may find the shaft because they hear water echoing through it as it drips into it, and they find the rock eschew with a void space of some-kind beneath it. The upper airlock has been badly corroded over the time and is now leaking like a sieve, The badly rusted remains of the card reader will be there, but it will not function. The bottom door opens to what should be the spiral ramp, so there is a hundred fifty foot drop into the darkness!

A particularly mean PD might put just enough water in the shaft above the sand to cover up the doors into the tunnel and force the players to pull several zillion buckets of water up the shaft so they can get to the door without swimming.

I don't see the value in the vertical tunnel. It is a clever idea, but is the Project really going to use a vertical tunnel as their primary (or only!) access? Or was this meant to be an emergency entrance/exit? The geometry of this is bothering me, making it a one-at-a-time escape hatch is one thing, regular access makes this massive and massively inefficient.

If you do keep the tunnel, use demolitions or pyrotechnics to destroy the barrier. A few hundred feet of dirt on that plate is going to mean using literally ridiculous amounts of hydraulics to move it.

I might keep that as an emergency entrance or for the techs who will service the surface sensors, perhaps never even opened, perhaps as one of several. Keep the long tunnel for pre-war and immediately-post-war operations, let it have been destroyed/damaged by the ages. Add another large vehicle entrance (horizontal, not vertical!) that was meant to be the primary entrance once the base was "safe" post war, but that was never uncovered.

So perhaps the players find the pre-war tunnel, caved in from above, and fight their way through the grand deception. Or perhaps they take it the other direction and find the town, and find a reference to maintenance tunnels on the ridge.

The vertical shaft is the "scout" entrance, that sits on top of the ridge. When the base is really active it will use the tunnels down on the valley that exits through the old mine

I am still not sure that a 150'+ spiral staircase is a practical entrance/exit for any kind of regular use. And that's a shaft that is at least 4' wide if you hate the people who are going to use it, 6' wide if you don't, 8'+ if they need to take anything bulky with them.

Both 3rd and 4th editions have a clear number of personal at PB, 150 persons.

So if you are going to increase this number and the size of the base, that will not jive well with what is already written in the 4th edition.

An update module for Prime Base will need to be developed that covers both 3rd and 4th editions, unless TML has made the decision that everything before the 4th edition is no longer supported, then you have about 15 to 20 more years of update possibilities.

I would disagree on this point. The 3rd edition project manual mentions 150. The module, made for use in 3rd edition clearly state that the max total population is 838. My reading of 4th edition does not even make a specific number. So canon does not make any of this conversation moot nor inconsistent with 4th edition.

4th Ed, page 190 first column, bottom third, first sentence;

"The prime central base of the Morrow Project is a vast underground complex designed to sustain the lives of some one hundred and fifty people through the holocaust as they recorded the data linked with the war."

And onto what PB was to be used for

"Also to act as a central communications point for the rest of the Project when they should wake. So thorough was their recording that this base remains as the only comprehensive source of information on pre-war times."

TML in its various incarnations did not appear to take internal consistency to heart. There are a lot of conflicts in canon, even within a single product, let alone across the entire 30 plus years of versions and modules and such.

Trying to make sense out of all of this is probably impossible. With the yapping I do I try and keep things in my campaign consistent. I don't think a PD can do more than that.

Than that would be a clear starting point between you and Chris. What would be considered cannon in the 3rd and 4th editions for PB and then develop your module from there? If 1000 persons is the new number then when Chris does the next revision to the 4th edition he updates the passages in the rules to reflect this new cannon and we move on waiting for the module to be released.

Prime Base was developed by Nick and Bill at the end of their stages of any interest in the game. So problems will be there and this would be the time to fix the problems that crept in over the years.

Prime Base also needs to make sense as part of a complete Project. Perhaps 150 people makes sense for a Project of a few thousand, but 1000 people in PB means either a lot bigger Project or else a largely ineffective effort.

I think a good rule of thumb would be that Prime Base is 10% of the human assets of the Project, so base you Prime on how big you think your Project is. I have always though that a Project that deploys an average of 1000 people per State is about right.

So if there are 50,000 staffers out in the US (between 500 and 1,000 bolt holes) and there are 4,000 staffers plus dependents at Prime it makes sense to me.

Population in 1990 in the US was around 250 million. Even if there is a 99% kill (very much a worst case scenario) that leaves 2.5 million survivors. 50,000 field people mean 1 staffer per 50 survivors (assuming no losses for teams, but I would assume 10% losses due to bad luck and such). In a scenario with 50% survival that means 50,000 MP team members to help 125 million people or one team member per 2,500 survivors.

The MP teams are designed to be everything from paramedics to police to teachers to physicians. In the US most urban areas have between 1 sworn officer per 400 to 200 people. That doesn't include State Officers and Federal Law Enforcement types.

I think 1 per fifty is way too many but 1 per 2500 is going to make life pretty rough, since all team members are not all things to all people.

I figured it was between 8 and 12 feet. in diameter. It is possible that there was also an elevator package for it, but that in the events surrounding the destruction of the base the elevator was never constructed. Even if it was I suspect that in the effort to make it hard to get into the base the elevator would have been wrapped in det cord and was reduced to a heap of wreckage at the bottom of the shaft.

In fact a "Killer PD" would have the bottom of the shaft flooded to a few feet above the top of the entrance doors and the water would be filled with the shattered, jagged and rusty debris of the elevator.

Is that too cruel?

Where does this rule of thumb come from? I like the size of your Project, but what does the rest of the structure look like?

How many are in a bolthole?? 50-100 on average??

That seems unnecessarily large, and I still don't see why a circular stair. If they are going to use it for any kind of heavy cargo they would definitely need an elevator, and that would make stealthy entrances and exits difficult (as does the sheer size of the opening!) and would make anything other than an emergency ladder impractical. If it is just going to be a couple of Recon teamers or a couple of repairmen, antenna guys climb that far every day - I would make it a narrow tunnel with a ladder and make them climb.

An external elevator structure would be a beacon that would be noticeable for a long distance, and an internal elevator would not work well with your overall concept. This is basically a postern, I wouldn't make it big or complicated or it just becomes a weak point.

Depends on the circumstances. Is it the only entrance? How do the doors open? What kind of gear do they have?

Sorry I dropped a n order of magnitude. Should be 5 to 10

It was a college writing paper initially that became a beloved game for decades.

Bear in mind at a minimum one facility somewhere is going to need to be built to tear down and rebuild TMP vehicles to the hull.

Take these tank plant videos for ideas.
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And Prime Base is a terrible spot for that. Logistically it would be hard to get to. I think there should be a couple of these facilities spread out.