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Thank you all for taking your time answering me. I really appreciate it!

I do know how to challenge the PCs during encounters, even though they are quite risk averse and with A+A in recon, A+A in persuasion, A+A in drive and multiple A+A in ranged, they are a sizeable force in every combat. Usually having the chans to begin every encounter by having their snipers ambush the enemies from afar, picking most of the enemies off before they even spot them. Now, I can design encounters to still challenge them but it somewhat negate the promise of low/easy prep, just draw a few encounter cards before the game starts and you're good to go. Fine, I always prep more than that anyways.

Also, I want to clarify, I don't mind my players (PCs) surviving, even being bad ass. I just feel I have a hard time portraying the 2nd game principle, "resources are scarse", since they emerge from every encounter with 10 to 15 new AK's, being worth hundreds or even thousands of "bullets". Only way to make resources scarse after an encounter is if there is nothing to buy, and for a city or town to get by, I feel there has to be some kind of bartering going on.

My players have gone for about ten days since the campaign started. They have got a "Bandvagn 309" as their vehicle. Although converted to run on alcohol, it only consumes 8 liters of fuel while driving on road and has a load capacity of "all the gear in the world". Now, they have a good set up and I don't want to rob them of that, they will encounter forces with much better equipment/vehicles down the road.

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy or do you have a good explanation as to how no equipment survive for the PCs to find? (Sure, if a grenade goes off in a hex, no loot survives but there are usually not that many explosions in any given encounter) Each fallen soldier having at least the weapon they fired during the encounter, perhaps a helmet and a side arm or a knife/frag. Perhaps some water or even a ration and some personal belongings. Times ten or fifteen fallen enemies. That's quite the loot after every fight.

Again, thank you all for your replys.

For me scarcity is all bout needed resources to survive. Weapons and ammo are good and needed but after giving a community a pair of AKs and a handful of bullets they will not accept more of them in exchange of their precious resources like food, alcohol and medicine.

Most communities survives due to some strong leadership and control, not barter, most are communes where they share the essentials and a bit more probably. There is still not a civilization, not even barter economy, barter is used but there is no commerce nor economy.

Scarcity is having all the "money" but no merchandise.

You may show a bit of that side of the post apocalypse a bit more.

My players have gone for about ten days since the campaign started. They have got a "Bandvagn 309" as their vehicle. Although converted to run on alcohol, it only consumes 8 liters of fuel while driving on road and has a load capacity of "all the gear in the world". Now, they have a good set up and I don't want to rob them of that, they will encounter forces with much better equipment/vehicles down the road.

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy or do you have a good explanation as to how no equipment survive for the PCs to find? (Sure, if a grenade goes off in a hex, no loot survives but there are usually not that many explosions in any given encounter) Each fallen soldier having at least the weapon they fired during the encounter, perhaps a helmet and a side arm or a knife/frag. Perhaps some water or even a ration and some personal belongings. Times ten or fifteen fallen enemies. That's quite the loot after every fight.

Again, thank you all for your replys.

Good on your players for finding a loophole! Their vehicle is a little mis-statted, which I'll elaborate on below.

First though, to directly answer your question, my players are generally dismounted, but when mounted I do generally provide about 2 rifles per encounter in loot, plus misc consumables. They haven't generally wanted to loot body armor or helmets yet -- I'd probably let them, but not have traders pay well for bloody body armor.

I haven't found that to be unbalancing so far, because of the mix of throttled ability to sell them, and the fact they often trade them off for social leverage. (And sometimes encumbrance, but that doesn't apply for you.) That said, I could see why it could get out of control in your situation.

Bandvagn 309 wasn't released until 2003, and I'm not sure what stats you are using. The closest book stats are the 206S, which is a mean machine! AV3 on all sides, and a Cons 4, which is half as much as any other tracked vehicle in the game.
If you want to adjust that more toward reality (which I get might feel unfair), the normal road range listed is 330km for 200L. In game terms, that becomes a Cons of 6, not 4 (200L / 33 hexes).

My other suggestion would be that roads should become more dangerous (because of larger forces moving on the roads) for a while. Forcing them offroad doubles the burn rate and reduces the frequency of towns to trade at, so that might help balance out the cash flow to make things start to feel scarce again.

Hope that helps!

Also, I want to clarify, I don't mind my players (PCs) surviving, even being bad ass. I just feel I have a hard time portraying the 2nd game principle, "resources are scarse", since they emerge from every encounter with 10 to 15 new AK's, being worth hundreds or even thousands of "bullets". Only way to make resources scarse after an encounter is if there is nothing to buy, and for a city or town to get by, I feel there has to be some kind of bartering going on.

...

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy or do you have a good explanation as to how no equipment survive for the PCs to find? (Sure, if a grenade goes off in a hex, no loot survives but there are usually not that many explosions in any given encounter) Each fallen soldier having at least the weapon they fired during the encounter, perhaps a helmet and a side arm or a knife/frag. Perhaps some water or even a ration and some personal belongings. Times ten or fifteen fallen enemies. That's quite the loot after every fight.

Again, thank you all for your replys.

That's the thing... In my opinion (and in my campaign), weapons, helmets and other things like that (that you'll find in droves on enemies) are not really... "resources".

Because that's just it... they're found in droves.

Weapons are so common that even lowly villages have some. Ammunition is semi-scarce, but only for the more uncommon weapons. 5.56 and 5.45 ammo is easier to find than food, clean water or fuel.
So it's not worth as much as those things are.
Honestly, I don't even look at the "cost" ratings in the book any more. I just base everything on pure trading and if my players rock up in some village with their truck full of AK-74's, Soviet Helmets and a few hundred rounds of ammo, the villagers might agree to buy some ammo at best... and it would be *heavily* tilted in favor of the villagers.

You want to trade for some food?
Sure, that you got?

Oh, AK's? Yeah, no we already have all our guards armed with AK's, we don't need any more. Oh for the villagers? No, they have pistols, shotguns and bolt-action rifles. We don't need AK's for them either.
Helmets? No, again, our guards have helmets already and nobody else needs an extra piss-pot.
Ammo? Sure, what do you have? 5.45? We have about 900 rounds of that already. Enough to supply our guards for quite a while.
How about we trade you 5 rations of domestic food for 200 rounds of ammo? That'll ensure we won't need any more ammo for the rest of the year.
Oh, that's too much? Well, that's what we're offering.

IMHO, the scarcity is not in weapons and other war-related items.

It's in consumables, like fuel, food, water and medicine.

In fact, I'm kind of relishing the situation that my players are in right now. They're fluuuuush with military stuff. They found so much stuff last time we played that they just dumped most of it in a hidden root cellar they found. For "if we lose our stuff".

But they don't have access to any medicine (all their personal medkits are used up). They hardly have any fuel for the vehicles they have. They're running out of food rapidly and they're using water purification tablets and other consumables like that to ensure they have pure water, so that'll run out soon too.

And they just realized that there's not much they can do with all the weapons and military stuff, because the friendly villages they've encountered so far either have that kind of stuff already, or are ruled by military forces... who already have more weapons than they need.

Just keep in mind that for every dead soldier during this 3-year long war, their weapon was most likely picked up by someone else after he died. Ammo too. There's an excess of weapons around. Everybody and their grandma has guns.

What they don't have is food and other vital consumables.

My players have gone for about ten days since the campaign started. They have got a "Bandvagn 309" as their vehicle. Although converted to run on alcohol, it only consumes 8 liters of fuel while driving on road and has a load capacity of "all the gear in the world". Now, they have a good set up and I don't want to rob them of that, they will encounter forces with much better equipment/vehicles down the road.

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy or do you have a good explanation as to how no equipment survive for the PCs to find? (Sure, if a grenade goes off in a hex, no loot survives but there are usually not that many explosions in any given encounter) Each fallen soldier having at least the weapon they fired during the encounter, perhaps a helmet and a side arm or a knife/frag. Perhaps some water or even a ration and some personal belongings. Times ten or fifteen fallen enemies. That's quite the loot after every fight.

Again, thank you all for your replys.

Good on your players for finding a loophole! Their vehicle is a little mis-statted, which I'll elaborate on below.

First though, to directly answer your question, my players are generally dismounted, but when mounted I do generally provide about 2 rifles per encounter in loot, plus misc consumables. They haven't generally wanted to loot body armor or helmets yet -- I'd probably let them, but not have traders pay well for bloody body armor.

I haven't found that to be unbalancing so far, because of the mix of throttled ability to sell them, and the fact they often trade them off for social leverage. (And sometimes encumbrance, but that doesn't apply for you.) That said, I could see why it could get out of control in your situation.

Bandvagn 309 wasn't released until 2003, and I'm not sure what stats you are using. The closest book stats are the 206S, which is a mean machine! AV3 on all sides, and a Cons 4, which is half as much as any other tracked vehicle in the game.
If you want to adjust that more toward reality (which I get might feel unfair), the normal road range listed is 330km for 200L. In game terms, that becomes a Cons of 6, not 4 (200L / 33 hexes).

My other suggestion would be that roads should become more dangerous (because of larger forces moving on the roads) for a while. Forcing them offroad doubles the burn rate and reduces the frequency of towns to trade at, so that might help balance out the cash flow to make things start to feel scarce again.

Hope that helps!

Ah, you're right, of course. It was the 206S I was thinking of, not the 309. Still though, it's a pretty good vehicle for touring the post apocalyptic landscape. I'll be sure to ret con the fuel consumption though. Good point.
But I have to ask, 2 rifles per encounter? Does your players ever ask you why/how all the other rifles vanished out of the dead bodies? Because mine do. And even I can't come up with a plauseble reason as to why they won't get more gear. Well, except for "let's just pretend because I want you to feel the scarsity of the world" which just don't sit right with me.

Bandvagn 309 wasn't released until 2003, and I'm not sure what stats you are using. The closest book stats are the 206S, which is a mean machine! AV3 on all sides, and a Cons 4, which is half as much as any other tracked vehicle in the game.

Actually (awkshuallyyyy) the 308/309 is the 206S.
The 206S that's in the game is the 308 (which went into production in 1993) and the 309 is a later version, but the only main difference is the engine IIRC.

Also, I want to clarify, I don't mind my players (PCs) surviving, even being bad ass. I just feel I have a hard time portraying the 2nd game principle, "resources are scarse", since they emerge from every encounter with 10 to 15 new AK's, being worth hundreds or even thousands of "bullets". Only way to make resources scarse after an encounter is if there is nothing to buy, and for a city or town to get by, I feel there has to be some kind of bartering going on.

...

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy or do you have a good explanation as to how no equipment survive for the PCs to find? (Sure, if a grenade goes off in a hex, no loot survives but there are usually not that many explosions in any given encounter) Each fallen soldier having at least the weapon they fired during the encounter, perhaps a helmet and a side arm or a knife/frag. Perhaps some water or even a ration and some personal belongings. Times ten or fifteen fallen enemies. That's quite the loot after every fight.

Again, thank you all for your replys.

That's the thing... In my opinion (and in my campaign), weapons, helmets and other things like that (that you'll find in droves on enemies) are not really... "resources".

Because that's just it... they're found in droves.

Weapons are so common that even lowly villages have some. Ammunition is semi-scarce, but only for the more uncommon weapons. 5.56 and 5.45 ammo is easier to find than food, clean water or fuel.
So it's not worth as much as those things are.
Honestly, I don't even look at the "cost" ratings in the book any more. I just base everything on pure trading and if my players rock up in some village with their truck full of AK-74's, Soviet Helmets and a few hundred rounds of ammo, the villagers might agree to buy some ammo at best... and it would be *heavily* tilted in favor of the villagers.

You want to trade for some food?
Sure, that you got?

Oh, AK's? Yeah, no we already have all our guards armed with AK's, we don't need any more. Oh for the villagers? No, they have pistols, shotguns and bolt-action rifles. We don't need AK's for them either.
Helmets? No, again, our guards have helmets already and nobody else needs an extra piss-pot.
Ammo? Sure, what do you have? 5.45? We have about 900 rounds of that already. Enough to supply our guards for quite a while.
How about we trade you 5 rations of domestic food for 200 rounds of ammo? That'll ensure we won't need any more ammo for the rest of the year.
Oh, that's too much? Well, that's what we're offering.

IMHO, the scarcity is not in weapons and other war-related items.

It's in consumables, like fuel, food, water and medicine.

In fact, I'm kind of relishing the situation that my players are in right now. They're fluuuuush with military stuff. They found so much stuff last time we played that they just dumped most of it in a hidden root cellar they found. For "if we lose our stuff".

But they don't have access to any medicine (all their personal medkits are used up). They hardly have any fuel for the vehicles they have. They're running out of food rapidly and they're using water purification tablets and other consumables like that to ensure they have pure water, so that'll run out soon too.

And they just realized that there's not much they can do with all the weapons and military stuff, because the friendly villages they've encountered so far either have that kind of stuff already, or are ruled by military forces... who already have more weapons than they need.

Just keep in mind that for every dead soldier during this 3-year long war, their weapon was most likely picked up by someone else after he died. Ammo too. There's an excess of weapons around. Everybody and their grandma has guns.

What they don't have is food and other vital consumables.

Thank you for your reply.

I've been forced into pretty much the same arguments when bartering, and really play down the ammount of food and gas up for sale. Nice thoughts on the scarcity of resources visavi the ammount of gear. Only problem now is, why is this not shown in the "price" of the weapons? Well, that's easy to argue in the moment.

Bandvagn 309 wasn't released until 2003, and I'm not sure what stats you are using. The closest book stats are the 206S, which is a mean machine! AV3 on all sides, and a Cons 4, which is half as much as any other tracked vehicle in the game.

Actually (awkshuallyyyy) the 308/309 is the 206S.
The 206S that's in the game is the 308 (which went into production in 1993) and the 309 is a later version, but the only main difference is the engine IIRC.

Waaay too long since I encountered those so I frankly did not remember. Thanks for clarifying.

Thank you for your reply.

I've been forced into pretty much the same arguments when bartering, and really play down the ammount of food and gas up for sale. Nice thoughts on the scarcity of resources visavi the ammount of gear. Only problem now is, why is this not shown in the "price" of the weapons? Well, that's easy to argue in the moment.

I never let the players see the "price" of anything.

I just go with the "there's no money in this game, the prices are only there to judge a cost at the creation of your characters".

So when they barter they don't have any number to look at. It's just "We have AK's to trade" and the reply is usually "So do we", and they move on to other stuff.

Hell, the only time my players actually had any use for all the AK's they find was when they liberated a city from Soviet troops and found a bunch of refugees hiding in the basements all over the town (who had been mistreated by the Soviets over the years). They decided to just give all the weapons and ammo they found on the soviets in the town to the refugees so they could defend themselves.

Also, one more thing to think about in the trading of guns is whether or not the person you're trading with knows how to use the gun. Oh you have a bunch of AK-47's? Well we don't know how to use those, we were trained on M16's. Or we have no military training at all.
In that case, maybe they will agree to trade food and other consumables for the training (and guns, of course). But that means the players have to spend some time there, in order to be able to trade the weapons in the first place.

Well ... a few thoughts here.

First, though the simplified rules for NPCs help to streamline things, I find some of them imbalancing. I track ammo for NPCs (reloading too frequent with the streamlined rule) and I don't use automatic suppression. I give them group morale (D if no officer present; there must be an NCO).

Second, the most plausible reason loot is no longer there is that ... it ran away. Encounters shouldn't end with everyone dead. My rule is that any military or marauder group you encounter has some kind of rational goal, and they are going to seek to break contact by fire and movement if they can't expect to achieve that goal. And if they take 50% casualties, regardless of CUF saves, they're bugging out. (They may also surrender, which doesn't help the loot problem.) So your PCs can win that firefight, only to discover that the enemy withdrew in good order, leaving nothing. Nobody wants to die and NPCs act accordingly.

Third, any military group you encounter is not going to be operating alone. The Jack of Clubs encounter has PCx1 (off road) Soviet soldiers sent out to mop up US forces ... which is a nonsensically underpowered force. In my world, that's PCx1 as the forward recce element of a larger force, which is PCx3 with an armoured vehicle and a truck-transported Vasilek mortar (which replaces the 2S1 called for in the encounter). The patrol's job is to locate and harass the enemy without becoming decisively engaged, so the larger force can come in and hammer them. The larger force takes a stretch to catch up. Policing up the loot after you take out the patrol takes ... a stretch. You can see the math here.

The point is, if the PCs run into Soviet troops, they're going to be part of some larger force with a poor sense of humour. This is a session-zero discussion: Soviet forces are the ancient red dragon of this world and if you mess with them, they will absolutely breathe fire all over you.

(And not just the Soviets! That marauder roadblock with PCx3? That means probably PCx6 nearby, lounging about or sleeping. They must take shifts! I'll hint at the players: Where are the guys who man this thing at night? Do you really want to be picking through their stuff when the reserve shows up?)

The PCs ought to be wary of sticking around after a fight. But generally, players behave as if their characters spend the aftermath standing around and chatting.

Also, remember that most of the NPCs "killed" in combat are not dead. We simply set a rule that says NPCs with criticals are hors de combat. The guys with zero hit points left are similarly wounded and hors de combat, and you may have some who surrendered (because people don't want to die), so you have to deal with all this. Now, if there are 10-15 "dead" every time (which makes me wonder, how big is your group?) then you won't want to administer all that, but at least remind your group that picking up the spoils takes time and involves risk. Once in a while, a wounded NPC may pull the pin on a grenade....

So, if I refrase my initial question, how do you referees give out loot after an encounter? Do the players find a reasonable amount of gear for each fallen enemy....

Weapons, ammunition, knives, water, and helmets are constant. Rations as the situation dictates. A map when called for. If the encounter calls for it (marauders, stragglers), a random roll on the scrap table. After a while people stop bothering with water, knives helmets ... they're too common and of no great value. A detailed map, on the other hand ... when was the last time you saw one of those?

Yes, the weapons collection will build up ... but any given person will only barter for so many AKMs before he asks what else ya got. Nobody's going to barter away his own food supply for a bunch of guns he doesn't need.