I honestly think that the pit slave weapons and tool upgrades are fine as they are. All this talk of how "strength advances are pointless" seems to have come from people having played with the pit slave hired gun last TribeMeet, rather than actually running a pit slave gang - a strength advance for a hired gun pit slave has a 16% chance of being rolled, versus a ~5.6% chance for a gang-based pit slave.
Strength could be used with the knife the hired guns get (or any one-handed melee weapon a normal pit slave can manage to get), so it's not wasted in combat; strength also gets used in situations like escaping being on fire and the Body Slam skill.
Tool upgrades allow for getting higher strength melee combat weapons, in contrast to most other gangs getting access to high strength heavy weapons that shoot across the table.
Tool upgrades being 15 credits is a good price, making it a tactical long-term choice whether you upgrade a pit slave weapon or have that cash to cover a bad game and poor income, another body down the line or some more exotic equipment rolled on the trading post.
For reference, I didn't buy a single tool upgrade last TribeMeet, made one hire to replace a dead result, and won 3 out of 4 games. I bought a grapnel and some stinger mould, and had to sell the grapnel in replacing the dead result. I also rolled no strength advances across 9(10, if you count the replacement and their free advance) pit slaves over the weekend - over 35 advances total.
We're talking about affecting the rules for a gang based on people taking a hired gun, am I missing something? Were the fixed strength melee weapons really a problem? Have people come up against crazy strong pit slave weapons thanks to tool upgrades really early in a campaign (or any time in a campaign, for that matter) that weren't pinned/put down/OOA by a hail of sustained fire or high strength shots before reaching close combat?
I'd rather have the option to buy increased strength weapons, like other gangs buying their heavy weapons, than just rely on a pitiful chance dice roll to maybe make them better - the strongest strength weaponry available to pit slaves apart from tool upgraded pit slave weapons is a meltagun (with its fabulous 12" max range), followed by a plasma gun, both of which can only be wielded by technos and the chief (on account of pit slaves only having one real arm to hold weapons with), and they're worth another body in the gang. House gangs can get heavy weapons much better than those at gang creation, that can sit out of harm's way at the top of a building in their deployment zone and still cause wounds, and compensate for the cost with cheap juves instead of gangers.
If we're looking to make pit slave weapons S User+#, will we be changing chainswords (which are functionally identical to chainsaws) and shock mauls?
Sounds reasonable?
@spafe is, so far, the only person I know who has taken any. I've not actually played against another pit slave gang
Maybe I make some pit fighter models up and give them a try next event? I was thinking of a hobby project for doing a different gang tbh, but knowing me and my hobby time dedication, a couple of pit fighters might be an easier target.
If we were to talk about changing how pit slave gangs work, how about a juve equivalent? Juve statline, 6 xp to account for the free advance, ferocity and muscle skill choices but otherwise functionally identical to pit slaves, 30/35 credits? They become full pit slaves at 21 xp and basically gain access to combat skills.
