Confused about Across the Dead Earth

[Rob_bresnen]

Can anyone offer some advice about Across the Dead Earth.

I am trying to work out my own gang, and the rules seem a bit confusing. I can't work out how you decide which weapons and equipment you start with- I can work out the points for the gang members and experience |(although that wasn't as obvious as it should have been).

[Brummie Thug]

Points values for weapons are on the weapon stat pages. With the the exception of grenades which you have to pay per grenade.

[Adm Richie]

Hi! My apologies for the vagaries around this, it has been/is being addressed for the update coming soon (possibly tomorrow).
The current guidance on Gang creation reads:

"Creating your Own Gang and Characters
To do this, start with deciding how many Gang members you want. Each Grunt, that is to say a basic adult, costs 25 points which includes a knife( A knife! Big Whoop). Then simply use the skill trees and weapon charts to personalise your Gang. You’re going to need a Leader – as you can see from the Skill tree for Leaders over on page 73, the Leader Class costs a further 25 points. He or she is going to need more than just a knife to get by, so choose him some weapons from either the Ranged list on page 19, the Melee list on page 26, or better still: both. Each comes with its’ own points value. To make your character more individual, you might want to add some specific character traits. General traits, that is, those which are available to character of ANY class, can be found on page 70, whilst specific Skills can be found in the Skill Tree which you’ve already looked at. Again, these all carry their own points values. With Skill Trees it’s important to remember that you can’t just apply any Skill you like, as the way in which they are acquired is hierarchical. Starting at the top, and going down, a character may only be given a Skill if it is pointed to by an arrow emanating from a Skill they already have. That is to say that as a Leader, I must acquire the Skill Walkie Talkie before I can then choose any other skill. To equip your Leader with the Skill Rough-Houser, therefore, you must equip them first with Walkie-Talkie, and one cannot then apply the Skill Master of Strategy without first equipping the Skill Strategist, as it is from this Skill that Master of Strategy emanates. As you can see, equipping Skills soon costs a great deal of Points, and that’s just your leader! You need a whole Gang to go with him. This is why it is usual for most Gangs to start with Gang members who have a Class assigned but not many further skills beyond.
Now that you have a Leader for your Gang it is entirely up to you how many other members are added, so long as the total number does not exceed the Leader’s Skill level (which is likely to be 7).
To create the rest of your Gang, go through the same basic process: start with a Grunt (25pts), add weapons (ranged on p19, melee p26), general traits (p70) and then a Class and any Skills from that classes Skill Tree (p74-81)."

As of right now it's still very open as to how many points you use, and Rare Items are permitted by agreement between players, would it be beneficial to include a Standard Points Value for a Gang and prescribe the number of Rare Items?
(Of the top of my head I would say 350 pts and 1 rare item for each WHOLE 100 pts in the score limit, so Standard would be 3).


Really helpful (to me, obviously not to you, for which I apologise again) that this has come up now as I go through the changes for the new version, so please comment, question and criticise away!