Let me discuss some of the finer points of the rule.
1) The Free Dice Chart is there to reward countries for existing, that is why you get 1 die for pretty much not being captured. If you cannot qualify for that one die, you are probably about to be captured, so you won’t be too worried about technology (At least the imaginary people living in your country) as you are probably too busy packing all your belongings and becoming Refugees anyway!
2) From there the price chart increases SIGNIFICANTLY. 50 - 89 IPC for 2 rolls is about where Japan, Germany and the United States are going to be for most of the game, everyone else will be at 1 roll per game. That seems about right, these were the three biggest economies and militaries ON THE GAME BOARD for most of the time Global has been out and played. It is only appropriate that the United States, Germany and Japan have more resources to throw away on technologies than, for instance, Italy or Australia.
- France and China are barred for two reasons. France is barred because it usually never has its capitol anyway, on the off chance it does get it’s capitol, it is unrealistic to assume they immediately start hiring scientists. China is barred because that was the decision made in the vote that created the free dice system. Not only that, but I believe Larry also barred China from technology in his renditions of the game as well.
4) The technology tree is really my baby. What I did here was to take some of the technologies usually looked down on (War Bonds, Rockets, Radar) and combine them with the ones everyone seems to drool over (Long Range Aircraft, Heavy Bombers). The idea was to match them in a realistic fashion and in a way that a technology perceived as stronger off set the technology perceived as weaker. Then some tweaks were added in, some originally, some from the discussion thread. For instance, Battleships getting AA Gun was from the thread - it was originally 3 hit battleships. War Bonds being best of 2 dice +2 was an original submission and was designed to offset SBR damage. That was the motivation behind the technologies in the way they were combined. Lastly the reason it was combined into one chart was two fold: A) It was plain easier to add two technologies together for all 12 technologies and reduce the chart to six options. and B) we only have six sided dice. (Fine, you and I might have 30 sided dice, 8 sided, whatever. Joe Schmuck who just bought the game and never played RPGs probably only has 6 sided dice to be found anywhere on his block, let alone his house.) That pretty much locked us into 6 technologies, or 2 trees and I wanted to avoid having people who already only had a 3% chance get dropped to less than half of that.
5) The turn order was changed REALLY early. The idea was to negate “ambushes” ala Axis and Allies Revised - Out of the Box rules where LRA on Germany 1 became an “I win” button. So we applied the same solution that Larry Harris applied for AAR, we moved the application of technologies to the end of the round. Since that was moved, and since it was voted on to have free dice based on what cash you had, it only made sense to have the actual dice rolls at the end too. So basically, you buy your units and your technology dice during purchase units and after you collect your income, you determine how many total dice you have to throw.
6) So essentially, I took all of what was said and agreed upon, made sure it did not violate what was voted on (at the time, none did - only when the you only count certain income complaint was issued did we have a contradiction between the two) and put it in one coherent post. Later I expounded upon what exactly each technology said (instead of a brief description like LRA means your figs, tacs and strats get +2 range - which works for us, but not for those unfamiliar with our terminology.)