Making vehicles faster - 3 pts or 1?

Burning Empires Tech Burner
1

Mike (Countercheck) and I are confuddled by these two passages:

Page 384, under “Vehicle”:

Vehicular Speed may be increased or decreased; there are three grades: Ground Speed, Atmospheric Speed and Space Speed. Increasing Speed one category step costs +3 pts. Decreasing Speed one category step costs -2 pts.

Page 388, under “Device: Technological Stat”:

Human Speed costs 4 pts for 1D, +2 pts per additional die. …
Surface Speed costs 5 pts for 1D, +2 pts per additional die…
Atmospheric Speed costs 6 pts for 1D, +2 pts per additional die…
Space Speed costs 10 pts for 1D, +2 pts per additional die…

I can see two ways of interpreting this pair of passages:

  1. Increasing a vehicle’s speed from (say) Atmospheric 7 to Atmospheric 8 increases its cost by three points; decreasing it from Atmospheric 7 to Atmospheric 6 reduces cost by two points; changing from Atmospheric to Surface or to Space isn’t covered by the rules. Pg. 384 applies; pg. 388 doesn’t.

  2. Increasing a vehicle’s speed from (again, for example) Atmospheric 7 to Atmospheric 8 costs two points, as per page 388; decreasing it by 8 to 7 reduces cost by two points. Changing from Atmospheric to Space costs three points, as per pg. 384; changng from Atmospheric to Surface reduces cost by two points, again as per pg. 384.

I’ve been assuming (1) in my designs so far, but that begs the question of what the rules on page 388 apply to, if not vehicles.

2

This is not an unclear section of the Tech Burner. I’m mystified at the mole mountain you’ve built on this one.

Page 384 refers to Vehicular Speed categories. Just what it says! No mention of dice just Ground Speed, Atmospheric Speed and Space Speed. So if you wanted to make a grav car from an extant ground car you could just add +3 pts to the cost. Or if you wanted to make an Assault Sled into a tank, you could just subtract -2 pts from the vehicle’s cost.

Otherwise, you buy Speed as a whole stat:
Atmospheric Speed 7 costs 18 pts.
Atmospheric Speed 8 costs 20 pts.

If you want to pay a more reasonable cost for your Speed upgrade, buy an advantage die.

Remind me never to use synonyms in my writing again.
-Luke

3

Murphy’s Law of writing: If there is any possible way of misconstruing what you’ve written, someone will find it.

In this case, that someone appears to be me. I’ll revise various bits of tech I’ve done accordingly.