IO Development: Technology Propagation

It’s amusing to me that if this book ends up ballooning and I’m forced to split it (I’ve already seen over-and-under bets on if that’s going to happen), that one of the section that’s furthest along, the Alternate Eras Rules, would most likely be split off into its own volume.

Yet we’re aways yet from hitting that decision….

In the meantime, dates, dates, dates. While the core rulebook line is far from perfect (some organization issues I wish we might have found better solutions to, for example), one of the things I’ve loved about it is the ability to provide hard dates for when items came into production. Looking through the Equipment sections of TechManual and Tactical Operations immediately immerses players in the march of history across centuries and the rise and fall of various factions, technologies and more.

However, Mercenaries Supplemental II gave us a bigger vision of the possibilities. In that sourcebook you had a table showing the years in which the various returning technologies from lostech propagated throughout the Inner Sphere. This really allowed players to know with certainty, based upon the year and faction, when they might face a certain type of technology; particularly useful for GMs running larger campaigns.

With that in mind, the following series of tables have been generated (as usual, this may be tweaked before the end):

INNER SPHERE TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (2021-2439)
INNER SPHERE TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (2440-2784)
INNER SPHERE EXTINCT TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (2785-2950)
INNER SPHERE RECOVERED TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (3011-3049)
INNER SPHERE UPGRADED TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (3050-3061)
INNER SPHERE UPGRADED TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (3062-3067)
INNER SPHERE UPGRADED TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (3068-3085)
INNER SPHERE UPGRADED TECHNOLOGIES PROPAGATION TABLE (3086-3130)

As we move past the Jihad into the Dark Age Era, the tables above then dove-tail into the following three tables:

TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT TABLE: 3085
TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT TABLE: 3130
TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT TABLE: 3150

The “Technology Advancement Table: 3085” is the “3090” table found in Technical Readout: Prototypes, appropriately massaged to fit in with the over-arcing rules/style of this section.

Using the Era Digest: Age of War and want to know when House Kurita developed the Autocanon/10? Driving a campaign in between Historical: Reunification War and Era Report: 2750/Historical: Liberation of Terra, Vol 1 and want to know if the FedSuns force raiding into House Kurita will run into Gauss rifles in the year 2591 (a year after the Terran Hegemony invented them)? Or you running a planetary invasion against House Liao in 2863 and want to know if their factories have already lost the ability to build double heat sinks?

By taking those nascent rules from Mercenaries Supplemental II and giving them the usual core rulebook “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink” treatment, players will have an unparalleled ability to run campaigns during any era and through any faction, introducing technologies (or taking them away) with canon accuracy and rules that help players make such decisions in their campaigns with relative ease.

See ya next time.

Randall