This may have been discusseed before and maybe some people already do this, but I wanted to share my house rule for Tech rolls. I like the AA50 style of getting the keep rolling each turn but thought it was too cheap to get a tech. I don’t like the G40 rule as it seems to difficult to get a tech. The solution we came up with was this. You pay 5 ipcs for a roll and also get a chip. Of course you can buy more rolls and get a chip. As long as you don’t hit a 6, each consecutive turn that country gets to roll again for each chip he has at a cost of 2 ipcs per chip to represent the contiuned funding of a technolgy already in the works. Gives you a discount but also makes it more costly to get that tech. Similar to AA50, once a tech is rolled, you lose the chips and have to start again on the next tech if you want more. You don’t have to pay each time if you can’t afford to fund the roll for a turn, and you can roll the extra rolls for only as many chips as you want. So if you have paid 15 ipcs for 3 chips and the next turn only want to roll for one chip, it is just 2 ipcs and you get one roll. getting a 6 we forfeit all chips though even if you don’t pay for each to roll that turn. Anyways, this is a way we have found more people will try tech rolls. Without it, no one ever seemed to try and that takes away a whole lot of fun. Hope that all made sense. Just wanted to throw it out there to see if anyone would want to try it or if anyone has a house rule to get more tech rolls going in a game.
Good idea - it doesn’t make sense to make no progress at all when you’ve spent money on a project.
I like this idea. Has anyone played a PC game called Hearts of Iron? In that game you invest in certain tech but they take awhile to develop. So you should be able to get the techs you want but over a period of time. There are pre-requisite techs needed that have to be developed. If you want heavy tanks you will have to first invest in some other things such as heavier artillery weapons that would be mounted on the heavier tanks. So in the game you could create pathways to desired techs by investing and building towards things like jet technology, Tiger tanks, etc. Then you might add in the dice rolling to impede or allow advancement - roll a six and you are stuck and can’t progress forward. Maybe Jet technology takes five turns of investment, unless you hit some sixes. Also, each turn you might pay some “investment” fee to keep the advancement going (funding). Pay the fee before you roll for setbacks. When you first begin investing in a tech the initial “investment fee” might be higher than the subsequent rounds. Countries could choose to go heavier in tech and have multiple researches going on at the same time, but that would also effect their purchases each round too. Thoughts?
Yes I love Hearts of Iron - I’ve thought you could develop the powerful weapons like an atomic bomb in steps - perhaps make a chart with a progression on it. The more game-changing the weapon, the more steps it would take to produce.
