I've talked about this briefly before, but with all the new crafting and makeshift stuff being added into the game (prog3s, craftable radio rigs, craftable robot parts), I feel like addition of very low end, crappy counterparts of items needed for specific archetypes to function could exist to be found/made in game for either free with a bit of work/pretty cheap. This tier of item would be competetively unviable (as in oldbies and midbies shouldn't be able to make use of the items to high effectiveness) and would only serve for lower end characters to fuck around with the mechanics of their archetype and generally experiment with it. It could create another layer of conflict which exists really only in the super lowbie tier where different immies of an archetype try to compete with each other by using their shitty gear without risk of getting stomped by an angry oldbie when they're just trying to use their skills.
Something that I've already suggested are things like low end chem benches to make bad drugs.
