So in doing some thinking about all things 40k I was wondering how rare and old the gear in the books is?

For example is a Hand-Held Auspex recently built (being little more that a year or two old) or is it ancient in excess of 100, 1000, or more years old?

If no one understands science and everything is pattern built, when something is rare, very rare or more finite - seems to me it would designated an "old" age status - i.e. passed down and such.

I think I read something about the lowly masses at Footfall passing down voidsuits from father to son - so they can be menials who work there...

In media; an example comes to mind - the Space Marine Game by THQ, (granted this was astartes gear) many of the "better" weapons in the game were held in these "safes" that were genelocked - you as a player walk up - it opens and reveals the prize within (from a gun to a chainsword)...

So I'll stop here and wait to see what the community thinks - this will affect my game in a major way once I get a handle on this facet of play / story

Looking Forward to some Guidance

Morbid

Things being mind bogglingly ancient in 40K is kind of like things being unnecessarily big, it's part of the setting. I prefer to apply a little bit of common sense to the whole thing with a little checklist.

How useful/effective is it? Things that are more effective are more valuable than the alternative (if there is one eg warp engines) are more likely to be recovered/rebuilt/salvaged/maintained.

How expensive is it? More expensive means more likely to be recovered/rebuilt/salvaged/maintained than replaced with new purchase.

How complex/high tech is it? High tech being difficult to replace is more likely to be very carefully maintained/recovered/salvaged/rebuilt/protected.

How 'special' is it (for example bolters have a special place in Imperial society)? Special and reverred means it is more likely to be recovered/salvaged/rebuilt/maintained.

How sturdy is it? Sturdy things are more capable of surviving to be recovered/rebuilt/salvaged/maintained.

How likely is it to see hard damaging use? Items that aren't going to be banged around are more likely to survive a long time to be etc/etc/etc/etc.

Bolters are highly effective compared to say a las gun (the common alternative), very expensive, relatively high tech, special to imperial society, and both sturdy and likely to get banged up. So that's five marks for and one against, meaning it's likely you'll find plenty of ancient examples.

A mono knife is moderately effective, not very expensive, fairly simple, not important or special at all, probably not super sturdy, and very likely to see hard physical use. Not likely to see a lot of really old ones.

The tricor-errr hand auspex is effective, but not super expensive, seems high tech, special in an omnissian (all tech is sacred) manner but otherwise not overly, and it's probably not overly sturdy but also not likely to be used to bash down any doors. So you've got a middle of the line one here where the age probably varies and the average age is certainly more than a throwaway tool.

I think Spatula has the right idea here. Items in 40k have a longer shelf life than modern equipment, so a randomly selected items are likely a decade or five old at least. One thing I do think he missed, however, was "How many are thrown into the meatgrinder." Many items, particularly weapons used by the Millitarum, are under constant production because they're constantly being consumed in the fires of war. It wouldn't be hard to find a newly minted Lasgun, where as a newly minted flashlight might be harder simply because they're not destroyed at the same rate.

It's also more of a exponential scale, then geometric - If something is old, it's more revered, and therefore will have better care taken to preserve it, allowing it to get even older. A 1000 year old Auspex is going to spend most of it's time under glass and being cared for, while the 100 year old one that does the exact same thing gets taken out to the training range daily.

Unless your dealing with truly lost technology (which is fairly rare) I see most of the really old items falling into three categories:

1) Blue Collar Heirloom: A useful or critical piece of equipment that is to expensive for a menial to buy - hence why the family Heirloom is so valuable, it makes life possible.

2) Icon of the Wealthy: Commissioned for a wealthy individual, this unit has seen little but cleaning maintenance for it's life, save to be taken out to empress people on occasion.

3) The Lost: The Imperium is a big place, sometimes things get misplaced for a century... or a couple millennia.

I see your points and do enjoy the formulaic breakdown most of all... blue collar, icon, and lost categories!

This helps me conceptualize tremendously.

My whole outlook was to apply "upkeep" tests after someone took crit damage to their "exposed" gear (armor, melee or ranged weapon in hand at the time of damage), etc... was the gist of what I was aiming at - by legitimizing that "gear is old and prone to damage"

In this way I wanted gear to become things you could/would conceivably replace - so that in your whole romp from Rank 1 to Rank 9 you might have to replace your primary weapon at least once to twice during the course of all that time - now apply that to other "exposed" gear and I have a system (maybe an economy) whereas the Players not only look for new prizes but also are challenged by keeping their gear and/or replacing/recouping said gear...

Intended Play-style;
My rare (favorite) gun broke - either gamble with a PF Test and wait for the item to be delivered (delayed gratification) or... go off on an adventure (instant gratification) and get the item direct from a rumored person, place, or thing...

Thoughts?

Morbid

I think there's a wonderful adventure in:

"My 2,000 year old Master Crafted Ryza heirloom plasma pistol has been damaged! Let us head to the Lathes and find out what the 1 Magus in the sector who understands Ryzan plasma technology wants in exchange for repairing it!"

If its important, make a chart:

01-50 Item is New, less than 75 years old, Mfg was local; may be knock-off

51-75 Item is kinda New, from 75 to less than 250 years old, mfg = local.

76-87 Item is Older, more than 250 years old, and made at a nearby forge world.

87-93 Item is Venerable, from 250 to 500 years old

94-96 Item is Ancient, and made at a forge world. (maybe made via STC devices) North of a millenia ago.

97-98 Item is quite Ancient, over 3000 years old, and comes from lost technology.

99 - Item is not that Ancient, but does come directly from STC mfg on a major forge world (Ryza, Mars, Voss)

00 - Same as 99, however item is also over 2000 years old.

A thought that has occurred to me is that unlike in modern times tech in 40k doesn't really progress. Things in rl Don't need to last because in a few years the new and improved model is out. Back in the day it wasn't strange for a craftsman to pass on his tools to his apprentice or child, or boat/automobile/radio etc.

We live in a much more disposable society than we used to, partially because of the advancement of technology.

I see your points and do enjoy the formulaic breakdown most of all... blue collar, icon, and lost categories!

This helps me conceptualize tremendously.

My whole outlook was to apply "upkeep" tests after someone took crit damage to their "exposed" gear (armor, melee or ranged weapon in hand at the time of damage), etc... was the gist of what I was aiming at - by legitimizing that "gear is old and prone to damage"

In this way I wanted gear to become things you could/would conceivably replace - so that in your whole romp from Rank 1 to Rank 9 you might have to replace your primary weapon at least once to twice during the course of all that time - now apply that to other "exposed" gear and I have a system (maybe an economy) whereas the Players not only look for new prizes but also are challenged by keeping their gear and/or replacing/recouping said gear...

Intended Play-style;

My rare (favorite) gun broke - either gamble with a PF Test and wait for the item to be delivered (delayed gratification) or... go off on an adventure (instant gratification) and get the item direct from a rumored person, place, or thing...

Thoughts?

Don´t stretch this . The characters have a whole ship that will see battle once in a while. If you start to demand them to "go questing for parts" when one rare item in their belongings becomes damaged (instead of assuming that there are some parts stocked on this ship of theirs, checking with an Profit Factor test) they will start to cringe as soon as one of the ship systems suffers ("hell, if it was hard to get something to fix my gun, how hard will it get to fix the hit on that ship component?")

In addition, an RT player might start to feel silly if he can buy complete shuttles but has problems acquiring the spare parts for his plasma pistol. Having them fix their equipiment once in a while is fine, mind you! But Tech-Use / Trade (Technomant) should come in here first.

That being said, if the weapon is "best quality" or "above very rare", do as you outlined above. That is the kind of stuff you are unlikely to have spare parts for since they are to rare to have a stock of them ready. In case of the "best quality", it is not about the parts but the craftsmanship. The pc can try to do it themselves (high penalty on the test), but if they fail they realize they simply have not the skill to make it work like it was before (reducing quality).

This bit seems backwards to me

MorbidDon, on 17 Apr 2015 - 1:32 PM, said: "gear is old and prone to damage"

The Imperium is somewhere between stagnant and slow decay. So, the older the item:

• The better the technology is likely to be. (See archeotech - they are noticeably better than the equivalent '41st millenium' gun or component)
• The more attention will be paid to maintenance. If it's old, it must be better, so is more worthy of veneration by the Ad Mech. And, a Rogue Trader can afford to spend much more on repairs for their special plasma pistol than, say, a guardsmen on their lasgun.
• The sturdier the components. Present day, aviation electronics are usually tighter specs/longer expected lifespan/more hand picked than regular gear (and you pay for that quality, too) So, was your gun made with low-grade steel from a hive manufactorium, or from Lathe-wrought null-grav steel/adamantium alloy blended by a Magos Alchemica?

Heck, there's the stories like "we carefully maintain the nonregulation paint job on this Terminator armor because the Space Marine inside dies if we cover up it's emblems".

Another thing to remember is just because an item is old, that doesn't mean all its' parts are that old. When a part breaks, you replace it. Replacing a single part at a time is maybe enough easier to explain how it stays best craftsmanship. See 'my grandfather's axe'

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheseusShipParadox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

In general, I would assume the umpteen-thousand crewed ship has a machine shop able to fix all combat damage. Your valet removes the lasgun-scorched armor plates after every combat and gets new pieces from stores. You have a room full of frag grenades to replenish your stock. The tech adept builds a new blivet-capacitor when the one in your 'Dragons breath' melta gun starts to overheat. If you did an upkeep test, make it more like "Hmm, with all those repairs we've run out of adamantium. We have enough to fix the Prow armor, or we can dedicate it all to keeping your power armor running."

Of course the PCs will replace their gear. But it should be "a suit of carapace armor worn by Purity Lathamon is rumored to be on this planet. I must find this a holy relic. Sigh, sorry grampa but I will have to put the armor inherited from you back into storage". Oh, and keeping on the leading edge of haute cuisine is a never-ending task.

I was looking for a reason as to how and why gear gets replaced; by the sounds of it there is lil game balance preventing PCs from hoarding gear if breakage isn't an issue...

Well there's also upkeep tests for when things are strained. Did your guy get lucky and survive a hit with a krak missile? After the scenario is over put in an upkeep test for his armor to see if he's got what he needs on hand to repair it or it goes down one craftsmanship level. Went hog wild with the inferno bolt shells as well? Well upkeep test to see if his supply runs dry.

That's sort of what upkeept tests are for.

I suppose it depends on which gear you mean. Rogue traders are basically billionaires and multi-trillionaires. They have an incredible amount of resources on hand, they can get their hands on lots of crazy stuff, usually have the techy guys to maintain it, and they can often replace it if they're near civilization. In general this particular gameline doesn't by default lend itself well to a survivalist low resource sort of game.

But there's always ways to get away with it. Maybe your RTs are a bit cash poor, maybe they have super exotic weapons, or unusual patterns for some normalish devices. Maybe their bolter is a special relic used by a saint tied to their line, but as a result it's replacement parts are somewhat hard to find. This is even easier to do with ships and various modules which are harder to replace than a gun that you're getting a +60 to replace in any large hub.

The way I usually try and mess with gear or make them feel the limits of their resources is when they got out into the wilds. If they're sitting in orbit of some feral planet, trying to convert the natives, defend them from feral orks, and deal with harassing space pirate eldars, well, they can't exactly just roll to replace their special supply of fancy ammo. They can't automatically fix an inferno pistol, that likely needs an entire team of specialists to reducktape.

There's ways to get away with it, ways to make it fun. The biggest consideration is if that sort of stuff would actually be fun for your group. Some groups will love to cross the galaxy to fix their childhood laspistol, some would chafe at even a single short scene to fix their cruisers plasma drives.

@Hoarding of items & breaking isn´t an issue
In regard to anything that can actually be fabricated in the Imperium of men, a prominent member of a RogueTrader Dynasty isn´t really ought to have a Problem of stockpilling said stuff. If their coin and influence cannot grasp it, I hardly see it to be possible at all.

To make things worse (for you), "stockpilling" is exactly what you do if you get yourself an enormours space vessel and prepare for a Long term trip into the unknown. Not doing any stockpilling in replacement parts would be foolish as you can be dead sure that you will Need spareparts and replacement right in the middle of nowhere . Because that is what your job is: heading into nowhere, face things you have never heared about and make a Profit out of it.

So, this answer does not help you, so let´s see what can be done:
The main Problem is that you want to make a Problem for single items (those in the Hands of the command crew) which belong to People that have the ressources of a ship under their command. As stated above, if it is anything mankind is still able to produce, the characters are likely to have spare parts.

Repair time & the reverse-Scotty-Syndrome:
How about the spare parts being available, but the repair itself taking the weapon out of the characters Hands? Not for an entire games session but something like "next encounter" might already help you. Fixing and re-Blessing plasma-weapons might take some time and the Tech-Priest will protest bitterly if the RT tries to make them rush through them. Item should be RARE at least to come to this effect OR should be "best craftsmanship". If the RT -insists- on having the Thing hurried... drop the weapon Quality after a time.. and then, do it again after a while.. after the first battle with an unreliable Plasma pistol, the RT will give the Tech-Priests the proper time.