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[flabort]

Core Thread
This is a side-specific thread. If you are participating in one of the other two teams, please don't read this thread any further than this post; if you'd like to participate in this game, please read the first post in the above linked thread first.

The year is 10 AA, you are on an unknown planet far away from Earth. Your identity as a community is still nebulous, your settlement only just organized. You were abducted, along with the others in your eventual nation, exactly 10 years ago by your reckoning. It was likely longer, due to you being in stasis in transit. Now you've organized, and found out about two other settlements on the continent you now call home - and you hate them, for one reason or another. The name they gave themselves, their system of government, the language they speak, the colors of their skin, or perhaps it's just the fact that they've been settled onto valuable resources that you feel you need for continued survival.

You enjoy the pleasant view of pasture lands, rich for farming and raising flocks of... something. The problem is that there are many predators, and many more herbivores that have developed defenses against the predators that could tear you apart. And they aren't from the nice friendly planet Earth.

Spoiler: Starter Designs (click to show/hide)

Transport Capacity: 0 (1 Oil available)
Resources: 2 Ore, 1 Oil (0/1 imported)
Weapons

• Makeshift Earth Rifle (Cheap): Based on designs from home, cobbled together from native materials with remaining architecture. Mediocre accuracy at Long Range, good Accuracy at Medium. 1 Ore
• Scrap Pulse Pistol (Cheap): Barely understood alien tech you were able to reconstruct after some difficulty. Firing modes basically break down into "Painful Burns", "Stun", and "Seriously Maim"; no "Kill" mode, though enough exposure to any of the three modes will do it. It's battery powered but the pulses of hot... stuff (maybe plasma?) use a lot of energy. Accurate up to short range, prone to malfunction. 2 Ore, 1 Oil

Other

• Standard Uniform: A plain uniform with very little decoration or utility. There is a space for rank insignia, and some colored markings but it's rather plain.

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

Rayleigh: Located in lush pastures towards the temperate zone of the planet, this city enjoys scenic views and aggressive plains wildlife that is either highly energetic carnivores or massively armored herbivores, with a few scavengers thrown in. It's actually reminiscent of Africa or Australia, with alien fauna. [2/2 Rayligh, 2 Ore, 1 Oil]
Sujia: This region of small cities has a firm foundation on rocky cliffs, in a rather dry area. Signs that this area was terraformed to be this harsh are common, with great big gouges carved out of the landscape with intense heat, leaving glassy edges. The signs that this area was purposefully made harder to survive in indicate that the dryness is also artificially engineered somehow too. 2/2 Sujia, 2 Ore, 1 Oil]
Yūi: This city was put near the border of the planet's Antarctic circle. The sun shines much longer over the day during the first half of the year, leaving very little time for sleeping, and is only present for a couple hours each day during the latter half of the year. [2/2 SDRB, 2 Ore, 1 Oil]
The Alien Tower: Access is restricted to this tower by automated defenses that automatically attack anyone trying to cross the surrounding moat by sea or air. It's more like a small ocean than a moat, and the salt water attests to that. A laser grid surrounds the water, and deadly flying robot drones patrol the ground. Armaments, unknown. [2/2 Aliens] (control of any 2 of A, C, D, F, G, or I will allow access, albeit this is a risky attack route)
A: Prairies: Green and gold grasses sway back and forth in this rather straightforward area. Wild animals may be a threat, and there's nowhere to hide.[4/4 Rayleigh]
B: Desert: Hot days and dry weather makes this area inhospitable, but it has rich ore deposits just under the shifting surfaces. Windswept dunes may provide cover, but don't count on it. [2/4 Rayleigh,2/4 Sujia,1 Ore]
C: Outback: This area supports only hardy life, and venomous creatures lurk between the sparse but thriving flora. The ground is dried out and cracked, and may give way underfoot without warning. [4/4 Sujia, 1 Oil
D: Canyons: The boxy (and somewhat artificial) wide canyons make this area easy to march across but also easy to make an ambush in. [4/4 Sujia]
E: Mountains: The tall peaks here still aren't tall enough to block the view of the Alien Tower from the far shore. Treacherous footing and tight spaces are ideal for surprise tactics. [2/4 Sujia, 2/4 SDRB, 1 Ore]
F: Taiga: The forests here are almost permanently snowed over, moisture being carried east over the Tundra and stopped by the Mountains. The dense tree growth requires close quarters, but the trees are so nutrient absorbent as to actually pull oil out of the ground. [4/4 SDRB, 1 Oil]
G: Tundra Strong winds and snow storms make this area often have low visibility, but the gentle hills are fairly easy to get across. [4/4 SDRB]
H: Abyss A giant crack in the ground, which the adjacent oceans pour into with no sign of ever running out. Outcroppings of giant stone form islands large enough to support their own biospheres, but they are suspended in mid air. This area interferes with sensors, making it hard to navigate, but the islands are connected with sturdy and ancient alien metal bridges. [2/4 SDRB, 2/4 Rayleigh, 1 Ore]
I: Savannah The flora here ranges between sparse, and densely forested. Watering holes attract many species of fauna, which seem to have a peace agreement here, though once into the open areas all bets of safety are off.  [4/4 Rayleigh, 1 Oil]

You start with one Research Credit, and one Alien Credit. The first team to vote for a name for themselves and their city gets another Research Credit, the team with the best lore about life where they live at the end of turn 2 gets another Alien Credit, and the team with the best lore about their faction and why they don't like the other guys between turn 2 and the end of turn 4 gets another Research Credit.

You have two designs each design and revision phase for the first 4 turns. Use them wisely.

[frostgiant]

On the wide-open land that they had been sent to, one could see danger coming from miles away, sometimes hundreds of miles depending on the size of the danger in question, However, Even seeing the danger did little to protect from it. it couldn't be brought down from a distance, Massive size and armored forms protecting them from basic rifle fire. It could be running from, more than outpacing any for of propulsion they could create in the early days.

The only means of survival that was possible was the creation of Massive, Stone walls thick enough to give even the strongest plains creature second thoughts about running it down. Using these walls they would be able to hold the creatures at bay, protecting their early settlements from the "Indigenous" fauna and giving them enough time to finally pump enough lead/arrows and even boiling oil unto them at times.

The walls were in life. Inside the walls, a human was safe, with the only danger being other humans. Outside the walls, and the other massive fortifications that had been built during the ten years of life on this planet, one could very well see death coming Miles out. and if they could get back behind the walls in time, It wouldn't matter one bit.

As one can expect, this heavy reliance on walls and superheavy fortifications quickly set itself in popular culture. Fortifications = Goo, No Fortification = bad being a very simple fact taught to all young people who grow up inside of their walled settlements.
Farms are walled off to prevent the trampling of crops, Livestock are wall into to protect them from hunters. The Settlments of the Builders could very well be likened to a series of walls, expanding outward.
And this is because that is indeed how they were built. when the settlements expand, the walls are the first thing builtat all times, everything else coming afterwards.

The Capital city, is named after its architect, who had designed every single part of it, including the walls up until his death. As such the city bears the name Ironside, named after Jacob Ironside who had Planned it out. This is a common occurrence, with towns and small villages being named after the architects who design it, or at the very least, design the walls that surround it. If a wall was built by an architect different from the one the town was named after, it will instead be named specifically after that person.

If one wished to look even further into the importance of Architects and builders in their culture, one need not look any further then the fact that their very ruling council, who govern and decide the path of these people, is made up of the Heads of various builder guilds. Every guild is granted 1 seat on the council, with that seat occupied by the head of that guild. this means that not only are the architects of ironside one of the most important individuals on a cultural level, but they also hold massive amounts of power on a political level as well.

One can see danger coming from miles away on the plains, and without a wall, the Builders Republic would be defenseless.  is it any wonder why fortifications have dug themselves such a present and centre stage theatre in the mind of its citizens?
(City Name: Ironside
Nation name: Builders republic)

i present lore.

[Vostok]

A few ideas for getting us started:

1. Radios. Early spark-gap transmitters are dead simple, and I can probably describe them in enough detail to get away with it. Regardless of specific type it'd be a good way to get a foot in the door with long distance comms and batteries.

2. Fractional horsepower motors. Opens the door for power tools (anything from a lathe to a drill to a bandsaw) in manufacturing and *maybe* larger motors for more serious shit.

3. Trucks: Move things (and men) around more quickly and get resources from the outside in.

4. Machine Guns: A no-brainer, really. More firepower definitely helps.

5. Combat engineering kit. Landmines, entrenching tools, saws, chainsaws, anything you need to dig in, build bridges, blow up bridges, mine an area, or do anything in between.

6. Telephones. This would likely be the basic carbon microphone variety and some sort of an automated switching system (the No. 5 crossbar switch comes to mind). Different way of getting at comms, and gets us experience working with relays for pulse-dialing et cetera.

[Vostok]

Not sure if double posting isn’t kosher, but here goes jothing...

The Spartan is a simple, “jack of all trades” helicopter intended to serve both as a technology demonstrator and to provide our engineers with basic helicopter building experience. In its base form, it carries only a door gun on either side and fourteen passengers, but it’s easy to pilot, cheap to manufacture, and has plenty of room for modifications later on.

The SA-2 is a fairly straightforward GPMG that uses non-disintegrating metallic belts and the same ammunition as our rifle. Reverse engineered from a deactivated MG42 donated by a WWII vet in the city, it’s more or less the same design adapted for our standard infantry round and manufacturing techniques.

Designed to fill an indirect fire support role in the absence of prime movers needed to move heavier artillery, the FA-1 is a lightweight mortar designed to be operated and carried by a four-man team that advances with the infantry. It's nothing particularly imaginative--just a stokes mortar descendant like pretty much every mortar since WWI that isn't on a truck--but it's light enough to be carried taken apart on the backs of the soldiers meant to operate it and puts high explosive shells where you want them to go.

In support of our war effort, engineers from the Thompson Iron Works and veterans from the community worked to recreate as much of the standard combat engineering equipment as was feasible without a serious undertaking. What they came up with were a collapsible entrenching tool, a bangalore torpedo knockoff, concertina wire, and a rudimentary claymore analogue.

[flabort]

As the GM, I'd say doubleposting is fine with a certain amount of time in between. 48 hours is more than enough for me, though ask your teammates how long they'd say.

[m1895]

SA-2 GPMG (1): m1895
Fear and Loathing BCEE (1): m1895
FA-1 light mortar ():
MH-1 Helicopter ():

[Vostok]

SA-2 GPMG (2): m1895, Vostok
Fear and Loathing BCEE (2): m1895, Vostok
FA-1 light mortar ():
MH-1 Helicopter ():

[Doomblade187]

Wall mounted beam cannon

Actually an early version of the pulse pistol without power settings, the wall mounted plasma cannons held the line against megafauna. Now that we are going to war, we have improved the accuracy at range and focused the beam, extending the effective range. We also added a power control setting.

[Vostok]

Should we focus on static defenses mounted to our home base this early on? I mean, if anything pushing out faster and harder than the other guys to contest area away from our back yard would be a better idea, because if everything goes well nothing serious would even get within range of those wall-mounted cannons.

[Vostok]

Thrown into this brave new world by aliens, what became Rayleigh was cut off from basically all of the infrastructure needed to keep a modern city running. To prevent the descent into anarchy that would undoubtedly ensue if the city's infrastructure were allowed to decay, the local governments from the pre-abduction cities came together to form a unified government: the city-state of Rayleigh. Bringing engineers and other technical experts on board, they did everything they can to create the requisite infrastructure to keep power plants running, get the sewage system unfucked, and generally avoid the collapse of civilization. This process took just shy of half a decade, and by the end of it industry experts as a demographic became a more-or-less permanent fixture of the city-state's government. Today, the goverment of Rayleigh is run by a council that oversees and coordinates the various departments, such as the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, which are led by subject matter experts and enjoy considerable autonomy.

At first, the city's solution to the issue of megafauna revolved around the construction of massive fixed-fortifications, such as the massive bastion fort system that currently rings the city. It quickly became evident, however, that this wasn't going to scale up well enough to cover any reasonable amount of the shit we need from outside the city to keep civilization running. By the time you've built enough wall and fortification to cover all the farmland needed to feed the city and all the other fun stuff like mines and shit, you're well on your way to bankruptcy and tying up a significant amount of your labor force just maintaining that shit. The veteran community was helpful to point out at town hall meetings that if you're passively hiding behind walls, you're relinquishing the initiative to whomever's attacking you, and if they're human they can...just lob explosives over your fancy walls with mortars and shit. This is why you ask the experts and listen to their advice when they tell you that your plan was fucking retarded, people.

Instead of using massive walls and fortifications to passively keep the enemy out, Rayleigh moved towards a model of fortresses as a means of area denial. The strength of a fortress under this model lay not in the strength its walls or whatever big guns you can stick on them, but in the garrison it contains, which can actually sally out and do shit. To this end, Rayleigh operates a network of forward operating bases around the city and critical areas, interconnected with underground telephone wire and a road system. Manpower for this endeavor was provided by a national service system, where all able-bodied males between the ages of 18 and 35 not engaged in a profession deemed "vital to society's function" (i.e. research and development or the defense industries) are required to register as reservists, and are called on for a two two-week tours of duty each year. The military units stationed inside these bases actively undertake "search and destroy" missions, patrolling the areas around their FOBs and keeping the number of megafauna down by killing them and/or disrupting their reproduction whenever possible. Now, the megafauna provide an additional source of food for the people of Rayleigh and are scarcely seen in places that aren't, quote, "the arse-end of nowhere," though the occasional oversized meal on legs wild animal does occasionally show up, only to be promptly shot and killed by reservists looking to get something extra for dinner. The meat of a dire wolf is said to taste like a particularly rubbery steak with a funny aftertaste, though the lack of land suitable for grazing (due to bigass predators occasionally popping up and wiping out entire herds to the point where it was no longer economically viable) means that the point of comparison was hard to come by.
(City name: Rayleigh)
(Nation name: Rayleigh Confederation?)

I present a counterproposal for lore.

[flabort]

I advise you to vote not just on the designs, but also on the name; you have two name candidates (Ironside/Builder's Republic vs Rayleigh/Rayleigh Confederation) but no votes on your name.

[m1895]

SA-2 GPMG (2): m1895, Vostok
Fear and Loathing BCEE (2): m1895, Vostok
FA-1 light mortar ():
MH-1 Helicopter ():
Lore
Rayleigh/Rayleigh confederation (1): m1895
Ironside/Builder's Republic ():

[Vostok]

SA-2 GPMG (2): m1895, Vostok
Fear and Loathing BCEE (2): m1895, Vostok
FA-1 light mortar ():
MH-1 Helicopter ():
Lore
Rayleigh/Rayleigh confederation (2): m1895, Vostok
Ironside/Builder's Republic ():

Edit: design dump for next turn, maybe?

Spoiler: Designs (click to show/hide)

The WMC 2/12 ton, 6x6 truck is exactly what it sounds like: a bigass truck that you use to haul shit from point A to point B. Unlike most military shit, there wasn't really that technical difficulty building this thing because everybody and their mother had a car before the abduction and nothing was really classified. All Westmoreland needed to do was leverage the existing automobile experience from all the mechanics they had on hand and take apart a few working examples to come up with a heavy-duty all terrain military truck.

The resulting truck is a simple, robust machine that can cross rivers, drive through swamps, and really just doesn't give a fuck about what you're trying to drive it through. Supply chains for most electronic parts were disrupted during the abduction, printed circuit boards and the like are still in short supply, so the truck was built with improved versions of old analog mechanisms from the 70s and 80s, so fuel efficiency suffers somewhat and maintenance is a tad more frequent than modern vehicles of the same type, but it works well enough and gets the job done with minimal fanfare.

Leveraging our experience from building FOBs and preexisting knowledge from before the abduction, the Army Corps of Engineering devised a set of equipment to quickly and efficiently build military installations in forward operating areas.

The first among these is a collapsible gabion made from wire mesh and a heavy-duty fabric liner, designed to be filled with dirt or whatever's available in the area to create a "building block" for walls or levees. In other words, it's basically a 1.4 meter tall standbag on steroids that can be used for pretty much anything. The second item is...basically reinforced aluminum tiling designed to hook together with neighboring pieces to form a runway. When taken in conjunction with construction vehicles and construction materials flown in by helicopter or trucked in, we now have the ability to throw together airbases, fire support bases, and forward operating bases in general really close to the front line within days.

Using examples of cold war airplanes we had sitting around in an air and space museum, working airplanes from the half of an air national guard base that survived the abduction, and whatever manufacturing expertise they had on hand, the Union Aircraft Corporation created what is, in effect, a 1960s fighter jet with modern electronics and design sensibilities.

The plane looks like an F4D Skyray and more or less flies like one, because the air and space museum had one on display that wasn't already mangled to hell and back. With our limited manufacturing experience at the moment, trying for something supersonic would take forever and probably kill all our test pilots in the process, so UAC decided to stick to a less-ambitious design that can actually get in the sky without an insane amount of effort. The design was simplified somewhat by deleting the wing folding mechanism and removing the bits needed to launch the plane from a catapult. On the inside, the plane is built with modern fly-by-wire technology copied from the working Air National Guard planes, a modern cockpit layout with HUDs, LCDs and shit, and a scaled-down "monkey model" version of the AESA radar seen on the F-16. Armament on the plane is limited to the four 20mm cannons mounted on the leading edge of the wing and whatever bombs we can manage to stuff onto the hardpoints right now, but it does have all the facilities in place to equip guided missiles in the future should current development efforts come up with some.

[flabort]

Turn 1 Design Phase Results

The SA-2 is a fairly straightforward GPMG that uses non-disintegrating metallic belts and the same ammunition as our rifle. Reverse engineered from a deactivated MG42 donated by a WWII vet in the city, it’s more or less the same design adapted for our standard infantry round and manufacturing techniques.

Easy (8+2)+1 = 11 (Average)
The MG42 formed the basis for many modern weapons on Earth. Being able to study the design of one helped us build the SA-2, which looks about the same. A bipod sits at the end of the barrel, and can be collapsed. This can be augmented with an attachable tripod for even further stability. The weapon is light enough to be carried by one man, but operating it is usually a two or three man job, as one man aims, one man feeds it ammunition, and where there's no place to mount the bipod, a third man can act as a stable platform to fire from. Alternatively, the safer option is to have the third man collect the metallic belts the gun spits out after the ammunition is discharged to minimize the (slim) danger of jamming, or take over in the event either of the other two operators being incapacitated.

The belts can have our standard rifle ammunition installed into them, using a quick loader to unload them from the rifle magazines into the belt quickly, which gives the gun a bit more of a kick than the MG42. The SA-2 can be used for light support, with burst fire to cover a crew of riflemen, or medium support, engaging it's automatic fire for longer. And since it uses the same ammunition we already have, our manufacturing facilities can be expanded rather than building new ones.

It's high rate of fire means that it's accuracy at medium and short ranges can be summed up as "good" with a dozen or so misses in between. It's not accurate at long range. It costs 2 ore, making it Cheap

In support of our war effort, engineers from the Thompson Iron Works and veterans from the community worked to recreate as much of the standard combat engineering equipment as was feasible without a serious undertaking. What they came up with were a collapsible entrenching tool, a bangalore torpedo knockoff, concertina wire, and a rudimentary claymore analogue.

[/quote]
Difficult (10+5)-1 = 14 (Above Average)
Creating the 'Fear and Loathing' Baseline Combat Engineering Equipment, or FAL Kit as our troops are already calling it, was tough due to the explosives involved. However, we think we pulled it off quite well. The simple parts, the entrenching tool and concertina wire, fit nicely into a small cylindrical package together; the collapsible spade fitting on the outside, and an extra long collapsed optional handle going through the center of the coils of wire. The wire is easy to pull out and expand, and the kit includes a few steel stakes with the additional handle for the spade to pin it in place for the creation of fences. As for the entrenching tool, not including the optional handle, it locks into place into a shaped section of it's container, but can be unfolded to make multiple tools. It's two most common uses are as a spade and a pick, but it can become an ice chipper or a pike too with some easily and quickly applied adjustments.

The explosives were trickier. For the torpedo, we needed something small enough to be carried, but long enough to not explode in our troops' hands when trying to clear a path. We considered packing them into crates, as the Bangalore they were inspired by were, but we ultimately decided it would be best if each person could carry something to remove small obstacles with. What we have is a four foot pipe with an explosive charge in the back to propel and ignite the rest of the contents of the tube. Each person outfitted with the FAL Kit carries two torpedoes that fit within the launcher, and a replacement charge; the tube itself could have been scrap steel for all we cared, but we made it out of some good quality metals that would be light enough to carry instead. The torpedoes contain some TNT to increase the spread of the main explosive, which we improvised out of native compounds; the new explosive can create a conical 5 foot area of destruction like it's predecessor, removing concertina wire and mines and sandbags, using a lot less explosives. In all each torpedo only weights 6 pounds. We call it the Ted Torpedo.

The claymore analogue uses the same explosives as the Ted Torpedo, but is packed with ball bearings to send shrapnel flying when it explodes. It's almost like an M18A1 Claymore in every way, except the actual explosive compound, which makes it lighter to carry and excellent for ambushing. A FAL Kit includes one per soldier.

It costs 2 ore for the entrenching tool and wire, and 1 ore and 2 oil for both explosives together, making it Expensive for now.

Spoiler: Designs (click to show/hide)

Transport Capacity: 0 (1 Oil available)
Resources: 2 Ore, 1 Oil (0/1 imported)
Credits: 1 Research Credit, 1 Alien Credit
Weapons

• Makeshift Earth Rifle (Cheap): Based on designs from home, cobbled together from native materials with remaining architecture. Mediocre accuracy at Long Range, good Accuracy at Medium. 1 Ore
• SA-2 GPMG (Cheap): General purpose machine gun, automatic fire (in bursts or continuous) only, accurate at Medium and Short range. 2 Ore
• Scrap Pulse Pistol (Cheap): Barely understood alien tech you were able to reconstruct after some difficulty. Firing modes basically break down into "Painful Burns", "Stun", and "Seriously Maim"; no "Kill" mode, though enough exposure to any of the three modes will do it. It's battery powered but the pulses of hot... stuff (maybe plasma?) use a lot of energy. Accurate up to short range, prone to malfunction. 2 Ore, 1 Oil

Other

• Standard Uniform: A plain uniform with very little decoration or utility. There is a space for rank insignia, and some colored markings but it's rather plain.
• Fear and Loathing BCEE (Expensive): A kit with about 200 meters compressed concertina wire, a multipurpose entrenching tool, two Ted Torpedoes for clearing obstacles, and a straight up Claymore. 3 Ore 2 Oil; the wire and entrenching tool count as Cheap.

[Vostok]

Bit of a stretch for a "revision," but quite frankly we don't have a whole lot to do for revisions.

Engineers at Horizon Armaments Corporation looked at the devastatingly-effective-at-short-range plasma pistol and thought, "what would happen if we made it BIGGER?" Wonder no more, kids, because the madmen at HARM actually went ahead and did it, creating what is known as the BFR.

The BFR operates on the exact same principles as the plasma pistol: turn battery power into plasma and throw it at the enemy, all using spooky alien bullshit. This time, however, the engineers added a much more powerful capacitor bank, a buttstock, and a longer "barrel," allowing for a much more powerful burst of plasma that goes further in exchange for even more ridiculous energy consumption, an absolutely monstrous weapon, and a far slower rate of fire. Instead of having a fifteen round magazine, the BFR runs on a television-remote-sized power cell inserted into the right side of the receiver with enough "juice" for three shots. Because the gun is XBOX HUEG, it is designed to be broken down in two parts and operated by a two man crew from a bipod to take out enemy fortifications and heavy units with its bullshit "burns through three inches of armor and sets everything on fire" powers.

While attempting to increase the range on the BFR, inspiration struck: what if we were to make a grenade out of our plasma tech to get around the issue of effective range? The idea worked, but the resulting grenade was too heavy and had too large of an effective radius for soldiers to safely throw it by hand (the guy who tested the prototype was posthumously awarded the Rayleigh Cross for his service), so they adapted the thing into a rifle grenade and designed a rifle modification to fire it.

The launcher in question is a fairly standard spigot thing on the front of a rifle barrel, a specialized sight, and a gas cutoff to keep the gun from automatically cycling afterwards. To launch a rifle grenade, you load a specialized blank round into the gun, rest the buttstock against the ground, and fire the damned thing as a ghetto mortar at whatever you want to die horribly. It's awfully anachronistic, but it seems to get the point across.

(notes: Doctrinally, these are to be handed out to dedicated grenadiers instead of everybody and their mother having one, though we could expand to that if cost permits)

The WMC 2/12 ton, 6x6 truck is exactly what it sounds like: a bigass truck that you use to haul shit from point A to point B. Unlike most military shit, there wasn't really that technical difficulty building this thing because everybody and their mother had a car before the abduction and nothing was really classified. All Westmoreland needed to do was leverage the existing automobile experience from all the mechanics they had on hand and take apart a few working trucks on hand to come up with a heavy-duty all terrain military truck based on existing civilian vehicles.

The resulting truck is a simple, robust machine that can cross rivers, drive through swamps, and really just doesn't give a fuck about what you're trying to drive it through. Supply chains for most electronic parts were disrupted during the abduction, printed circuit boards and the like are still in short supply, so the truck was built with improved versions of old analog mechanisms from the 70s and 80s. Fuel efficiency suffers somewhat and maintenance is a tad more frequent than modern vehicles of the same type, but it works well enough and gets the job done with minimal fanfare.

(disregard above for now, that's gonna need to be a design.)