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Old 02-14-2014, 07:18 PM
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StainlessSteelCynic StainlessSteelCynic is offline
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By my recollection of the rules, you're absolutely correct, there's nothing dealing with wear on anything other than vehicles.
Seems to be part of the larger issue where "wear & tear" from everyday use is mostly ignored in all the game systems I'm familiar with.

Way back, one of the guys I knew decided to use the vehicle wear rules for weapons, basically to modify the purchase/resale value of the weapon. He liked the idea, we didn't because it meant some extra book keeping.
In hindsight though, the extra book keeping was a quite trivial addition to keeping track of food, fuel and ammo.
I have used something related to this where I had all the general equipment using Wear Values. For every skill check using that equipment that resulted in a Critical Failure, the Wear Value was increased by one point. Once the Wear Value reached 10, the equipment was too worn for its purpose but might still have some use for other things e.g. rappelling rope was too worn for safe use but it could still be used to tie down a tarpaulin.
Special circumstances could also increase the Wear Value, e.g. a backpack partially singed by a fire would get a one point increase, if it was partially burnt it would receive a two point increase. If it was actually hauled out of a fire it would automatically be set to Wear value 10 (the damage causing a loss of overall integrity blah blah blah).

I did this because I think for any post-apocalypse setting, a wear value for items enhances the sense of decay that supposed to be portrayed.

Enough waxing philosophic... rules for weapon wear could go something like this: -
1. All weapons have a Wear Value just like vehicles (starts at 0 & ends at 10, a 0 Value indicating hardly any use/factory new while 10 indicates a weapon so badly worn it's probably not even useful for spare parts)
2. Wear Value affects cost like it does for vehicles
3. For every day (a full 24 hours for the purpose of book keeping) that a weapon is used in a combat situation without being maintained an increment of 0.1 is added to its Wear Value. Once this increment has gone from 0.9 to 1.0, the Wear Value of the weapon is increased by 1
4. The increment increase will be halted by proper maintenance of the weapon after it has been used (maybe it resets the increment climb back to zero perhaps?)
5. A successful use of Gunsmithing can decrease the Wear Value by one full point. Outstanding success reduces the Value by two full points. A failure on a Gunsmithing test means the weapon was not repaired, a Critical Failure increases the Wear Value by one full point.
Special Weapons that are not stored properly when not in use incur the Wear Value increment but at a rate of 0.1 increase per full month. Exceptionally bad storage (such as being buried in damp soil or left near sea water without protection) increases the Wear increment by 0.1 per full week.

I must admit something of a dead end when it comes to incorporating barrel wear. I was thinking this would be something of a judgement call because of the volume of use a machinegun barrel gets compared to a combat rifle let alone a hunting rifle. Thinking again, it could be something like the Special rules listed above but along the lines of for every combat engagement were a barrel change did not take place, the Wear increment is increased by 0.1 point for the barrel. However, we'd still have to figure how this affects Small Arms Skill Checks.

You could even use Wear Value to influence the results of a weapon malfunction from a failed skill check. Using something like the rules mechanic for end of career/start of the war, a malfunction occurs and then the Player rolls 1d10. If the result is equal to/greater than the Wear Value, it's a minor malfunction. If the result is less than the Wear Value, it's a major malfunction (or even a breakage of some part in the weapon?)

Everybody else, feel free to critique, the more feedback and ideas we can get, the better rules set we can devise.
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