Equipping the Project

[cosmicfish]

There are a lot of posts on here suggesting various vehicles that Teams could use, ranging from one-off prototypes to limited production vehicles to widely-fielded vehicles, and there seem to be realistic problems with all of these. So I wanted to ask some questions of the forum:

What percentage of equipment (especially weapons and vehicles) are obtained by:

1) Building them from scratch (like the MARS-One and Science-One vehicles)

2) Buying surplus

3) Buying commercial and modifying to "military" standards

4) Buying the production lines and running off extra

Each method has problems:

1) A lot of engineering and lots of hard-to-conceal manufacturing

2 and 4) Most of the good stuff is watched pretty closely and might be hard to move

3) For most of the vehicles needed, this would be extremely difficult.

The Project suffers from the problems of every large organization, a large variety of vehicles provides a diverse set of specialized tools that can handle a large range of problems, but logistically it is better to have few vehicles that can individually decently handle a lot of problems.

So how is this balanced in your games?

If we assume that the Project has 10,000 people (my low-end estimate of project strength), and that you need about 1 vehicle for every 8 people (accounting both for the fact that some teams have 2-3 vehicles and that a base of 50 might only have 2 vehicles) then that is still 1250 armored, fusion-powered vehicles that need to be acquired. If the Project has 50,000 people (my high-end estimate) then the same math gives us 6250 such vehicles.

Any way you look at it, this is a lot of vehicles.

[mmartin798]

This is a difficult question for me. I use many vehicles that are not military because not all of them need to be. Any decent tractor pulling a box trailer or flatbed trailer has lots of utility transporting materials in areas that seen as stable. Likewise a modified Conqueror UEV-490 pulled by a fusion powered Ford Expedition may serve a Science team quite well. Both cases, other than the conversion to fusion power adding run-flat tires, these are relatively common purchases. So for me, I first have to answer the question, how many vehicles need to be military vehicles or derived from them.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

This is a difficult question for me. I use many vehicles that are not military because not all of them need to be.

I disagree wholeheartedly on this one. My first professional job as an engineer was looking into reliability of military equipment for a defense contractor (won't get any more specific on an open forum). Civilian equipment is made with vastly different expectations of reliability, ruggedness, survivability, and "combat" performance. There are relatively few civilian vehicles that can even be modified to that standard, which is why military inventories look the way they do - if someone could make a Ford Expedition do what a Humvee does, the Humvee would never have existed in the first place.

Remember also that you have some basic survivability requirements that are going to be pretty severe compared to civilian vehicles - even armoring to 7.62mm NATO will turn a well-performing vehicle into a beast that is straining just to move. And if you are going to put a nuclear reactor of ANY type into a vehicle I would really hope that armoring would be a high priority!

[mmartin798]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

There are relatively few civilian vehicles that can even be modified to that standard, which is why military inventories look the way they do - if someone could make a Ford Expedition do what a Humvee does, the Humvee would never have existed in the first place.

This statement is true for vehicles in a tactical role. In Morrow Projects military forces, of course you don't use civilian vehicles. But in the operation plan, not everyone is not going to be in a combat theater. The US Army employs a great number of civilian vehicles in non-tactical roles such as busses, ambulances and more. I would also expects a number of these to be fusion powered even without armor. Morrow has fusion powered FAV/DPVs which have little armor

[dragoon500ly]

With the planned wake-up date being five years after, then planning on modified civilian vehicles becomes much more likely. V-150s are classed as police vehicles, so they don't come under the same level of scrutiny as saw, a M-113. Armored SUVs make sense in this scenario, there are over 200 companies involved in modifying such vehicles for government, corporate and personnel use. An a argument can be made for such modified vehicles, due to large sections of the road network still being usable. Playing with the 150-year wakeup...then these modified vehicles will be less likely to be useable over most terrain. In the end, it boils down to what the PD is most comfortable with.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

With the planned wake-up date being five years after, then planning on modified civilian vehicles becomes much more likely... Armored SUVs make sense in this scenario, there are over 200 companies involved in modifying such vehicles for government, corporate and personnel use. An a argument can be made for such modified vehicles, due to large sections of the road network still being usable. Playing with the 150-year wakeup...then these modified vehicles will be less likely to be useable over most terrain. In the end, it boils down to what the PD is most comfortable with.

Armored SUV's are generally designed for minimal off-roading and/or minimal protection - they use SUV's because they can haul the armor, but that seriously degrades their off-road performance. And even modern armored cars (Brinks, for example) can only handle a small amount of small arms fire before they are compromised, but TMP can't expect to outrun their enemies nor rely on backup in any short time frame. Assuming the 5-year plan, the Project is looking at a war-torn environment with gangs, militia groups, mini-empires, and the remains of invading forces, all of which will have easy access to substantial small arms and probably some access to heavy weapons and vehicles.

The 150-year plan makes rebuilding much harder, but I think it is actually the safer scenario for the Project. 5 years in there are thousands of civilian 50-cal rifles and all those armored SUV's, most still operating and presumably many of them in unfriendly hands.

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

V-150s are classed as police vehicles

The base APC perhaps, put a 20mm or a TOW on it and that goes out the window. Seriously, it is unlikely that any vehicle suitable for MARS, Recon, or Science (possibly) is going to pass as a police vehicle.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

This statement is true for vehicles in a tactical role. In Morrow Projects military forces, of course you don't use civilian vehicles. But in the operation plan, not everyone is not going to be in a combat theater. The US Army employs a great number of civilian vehicles in non-tactical roles such as busses, ambulances and more. I would also expects a number of these to be fusion powered even without armor.

The US Army deploys those vehicles in vastly different situations than the Project, both in terms of the ability to provide safe zones and the ability to provide escort outside those zones. A 10,000-person Project has 300 miles to cover per Project member, that does not suggest a situation where even the "least combat" Project Team is going to be able to depend on anyone else to protect them.

Originally Posted by mmartin798

Morrow has fusion powered FAV/DPVs which have little armor

They also have scout hovercraft and mortar carriers, not every canon decision makes sense. FAV's, if used, should be battery powered and charge off of some larger vehicle that can actually support a team in the field.