Mobile Tech Team

[kato]

Alright. We all know that techs in BT act as teams. We know from ATOW that they have certain equipment. We also have no idea how they get around, other than it apparently being in a discrete fashion since no one accounts for them. Been tinkering with that a bit.

So:

Small 3-ton Tech Truck

Mass: 4999 kg
Chassis: Wheeled, Tractor
Tech Level: C
Engine: 4/6 ICE
Range: 500 km
Armor: 2/2/2/2 BAR2
Seating: 1 driver + 6 passengers
Weapons: Unarmed
Cargo: Glove Box 3 kg / Cabin Stowage 100 kg / Cargo Bed 2890 kg

Carried cargo consists of:

• per person: 1 basic toolkit, 1 emergency ration
• generally: 1 repair platform plus 12 portable power units; also 1 advanced medical kit

The power units are sufficient for exactly one standard work day operations for the repair platform; the 500 km range is "default" for a single operation per SO.

In addition however between two light trucks - or a truck and a rather light trailer - all relevant repair kits plus 140 m² of radiation sheeting can be carried. These can even be nicely split up into a "general" repair team - vehicle/cutting-joining/electronics/weapons - and a mech-specific one - myomer-actuator/fission-fusion/radiation-sheeting.

Now, what does that do? Basically, in ATOW, those kits all together give us a +1 on all Technician-type skill rolls. Which is basically the same as a mobile field base gives us in comparison to field conditions in SO. Hence this is a mobile field base. Except: We also have the repair platform. So this is a mobile field base that has 20% faster repair times.

Oh, and if you want to make it more interesting, make it tech-platoon-based. Four vehicles. 28 men. All kits including aerospace available, which i'm omitting above. And space for one exoskeleton per team with a 1-ton lift capacity for some some hauling plus tents to house everyone in the field. And enough left over for a long-range communications kit and communicators for everyone in the platoon.

Also:

Cost, Truck, as cargo/passenger version: 6,434 C-Bills
Cost, carried kits and equipment: 26,579 C-Bills average

Battle Value: 18

[Daryk]

Interesting idea.  I usually roll with 5-ton combat vehicles (jeeps), and 9-ton, 15-ton, and 45-ton trucks all using the same (25 rated) engine.  Fractional accounting and fusion engines work together beautifully, and the cost is well under 100K per vehicle (not as cheap as yours, of course), but they also have 10 points of BAR 10 armor per facing, so it takes more than a PPC to one-shot them (heck, the cost of the armor before the tonnage multiplier is 25K).
Jeep:

Code: [Select]

Tonnage:                  5.00
Internal Structure:       0.50
Control:                  0.25
Engine (25 Fusion: 9/14): 0.75
Armor:                    2.50
  Front: 10
  Sides: 10/10
  Rear:  10
Cargo (Infantry):         1.00
Trailer Hitches (F/R):    0.00
Cost: 49,542 C-Bills9-ton Truck:

Code: [Select]

Tonnage:                  9.00
Internal Structure:       0.90
Control:                  0.45
Engine (25 Fusion: 5/8):  0.75
Armor:                    2.50
  Front: 10
  Sides: 10/10
  Rear:  10
Cargo:                    4.40
Trailer Hitches (F/R):    0.00
Cost: 55,908 C-Bills

[AdmiralObvious]

I think that if you plan on using these as repair platforms in even the slightest of hostile environments, you're gonna need at minimum BAR 4 armor to not have to spend most of your time repairing the truck itself. Ideally you'd be using BAR 7 or higher, as that's low level military/industrial equipment territory, especially if you plan on using it as a type of mobile HQ. BAR 2, to me at least is civilian grade vehicle "armor".

[kato]

The problem is that once i put on armor i can't put them in a single small vehicle per team realistically.

So these aren't the guys that you send out to repair "in the field". These are the guys who simply use their vehicles to move their gear from your dropship to your base where they set up without having to rely on inorganic transport assets. Keeping them squishy targets also keeps the vehicles being a "discrete" item; they're just for mobility, not for protection.

We could add armor by omitting the repair platforms, cutting that 20% repair speed quirk. That'd lower our manpower efficiency though. On a platoon-based approach, a 28-man tech platoon with the above gear including repair platforms has the exact same manpower efficiency (and multipliers) as packing it on a superheavy "repair vehicle" with five MFB items and the same 28 guys (25 for MFB, 3 for vehicle). That's something i'd want to keep.