Early Phase Cache Upgrades

[Desert Mariner]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Overall, I think it's a really bad idea to switch gear on teams if they haven't been trained on the new equipment. Unless you are specifically making it part of the gameplay to mess around with PCs or even as a storyline plot for some NPCs, I feel that the Project would not be so enamoured of new gear that they would upgrade a team's gear without the team having the training to use it. I like to believe the Project wasn't that dumb - but that's just me!

I just reread the 3e Introduction, the end of the 2nd paragraph address this directly...

"In 1987, the Project carried out a complete updating of all previously "stored" equipment, opening the buried and sealed chambers of the sleepers without waking them and leaving behind new equipment, vehicles, and the instruction manuals on how to operate them."

In the 4e About the Morrow Project section (page 190), the 2nd paragraph takes this a bit further…

“In 1987 and on two additional occasions, the Project carried out a complete updating of all the previously “stored” equipment. The first time by opening the buried and sealed chambers of the sleepers without waking them and leaving behind new equipment, vehicles, and the instruction manuals on how to operate them. The second and third time things were done differently because of operational and security concerns. On these subsequent updates new caches were buried and the location was transmitted to the bolt-hole computer using references to existing cache locations.”

Note that the subsequent changes mentioned above took place in 1999 and 2013, per The War of 2017 on page 278.

So, it does appear the authors intended to throw some initial confusion into the mix regarding equipment operation.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Desert Mariner

So, it does appear the authors intended to throw some initial confusion into the mix regarding equipment operation.

I don't think the authors ever really thought this out. They definitely threw in some confusion, a LOT, but I don't think it was intended. Because it would make any real emergency lethal for the team. Need to evacuate? You don't know your vehicle. Bolthole under attack? You have strange weapons in pieces in cosmoline, hope you have time to read the manuals, and hope you have enough weapons knowledge to handle the recoil and ballistics in combat.

The strange part is that they then wrote those emergencies into the scenarios. Not a good idea. I've worked with guys like those who would be on the Council of Tomorrow, they seem too sharp to let something like this happen.

[mmartin798]

There are some upgrades that would have made sense, since the basic operation of the device is the same, even if the maintenance is different. Like taking the 2nd generation AN/PVS-5s out and replacing them with 3rd generation AN/PVS-7s or AN/PVS-15s. But they didn't do that. Replacing weapons makes very little sense. I might be able to see M16A1s being replaced with M16A4s as the weapon is very similar, though you have the problem of less than optimal ammo pairing with M193 in some caches and M855 in others. Unless the caches with the older M193 are removed or marked as downgraded caches in the autonav for the team.

[Desert Mariner]

I should have said it was done with intention or they blew an opportunity to correct the record when they rewrote that passage for 4e.