Hello, #5,
Let's see if I can help out any at all, or just ramble madly...
The Wealth score represents not only how much ready cash the character has on hand, but how many favors they can pull in getting "stuff" as well. Remember that Influences play a role in acquisition checks too...
The acquisition check actually IS buying the stuff, later on after character creation...just not the extra bookkeeping involved...
No, there's no real limit to how many weapons a character can possess aside from what you as a gamemaster sets with the tone and style of the campaign you are running (as opposed to how many they can carry, which is pretty much limited by their Strength and the encumbrance rules).
As far as the "dice 10 times or even more for purchasing weapons&items", there's a couple of ways to look at it depending on what you are actually meaning by that. If you are talking about 10 times for DIFFERENT weapons&items, I say go for it, as long as they are prepared to face the consequences, depending upon what style of game you are running.
Firearms have always been pretty hard to get by with in England, from what I understand. It's not like there are gun shops on every street corner, usually right next to liquor stores (like here in America). And the legality of much of the heavy artillery is pretty questionable as well. They just have much stricter controls in place.
So therefore, in a street-level Imperial game, the "buy a million different guns" character is packing heat in literally two different forms with each gun they have. The more artillery, the more trouble...slap them with that as often as possible (which is to say, extremely often if you are the disapproving GM).
Now, if they want street-level improvised weapons, cool. Straight razors, billy clubs, truncheons, butcher knives, whatever...
But if it's a military campaign, or the characters are in America, or they are wilderness explorers, then there shouldn't be any problems there.
On the other hand, if you are saying they want to dice a million times for the same item over and over again, let's look at that a different way. Just because they CAN buy 150 zipguns because their Wealth score is high enough and it won't be affected by said expenditure at all, who says that those 150 zipguns are currently available, just lying around waiting for the character to pick them up?
That kind of thing is a sensibility issue, really. Saying no to a player is possible, especially when it's something that's patently dumb like that. EVEN if it's supposedly "in the rules".
(Yeah, I had a guy who wanted to dice for 100 rolls of duct tape in my first d20 Modern campaign, just because he had the Wealth and it would never go down by buying them. I said "piss off, you get 5 rolls...deal with that...")
If they are going through character creation doing that maybe you should focus them more towards buying their expensive equipment first and the cheapos last.
Enough on that...
"Normal" money does exist in Etherscope, and can be described in the roleplaying aspect of the exchanges being made if you want to roleplay it out. There's a section of the d20 Modern rulebook that gives out some $ values for Wealth scores, once I get home I can post a listing here if you like (or if any of our friends here have that handy maybe they could? It'll be another week before I get to it, being in San Jose right now). I realize that it would actually be pounds, etc., so it would reflect differently.
Here's some various ways I would use to handle the expectations vs. the lack of a real rise in Wealth bonus in Etherscope:
-Make an item available to a character who previously failed an acquisition check for it (either they rounded up enough money after the job or the person/Influence they were checking with "just found what you were looking for off the back of a truck" and gave it to them at a reduced rate)
-Give them spoils in the form of items they might not have quite enough Wealth to acquire before
-Give them Influence bonuses with the crowd they completed the job for, making it more likely to be able to acquire goods from those persons specifically and allow those specific groups to have more of the items available for purchase
-Have the characters be "gifted" with an item or two in thanks for a job well done by the guilty parties...ermm, their employers...
Etherscope is a setting in which upward mobility should be very very difficult, except for those already on top (and they really don't have much higher to go), so giving out Wealth bonuses really isn't appropriate unless something really special happens, thus the Windfall feat being required.
I'll post something before too long, some variant rules I use for buying feats and skill points with experience points based off of some Spycraft variant rule. I'll have to adjust them a bit for Etherscope, but they make for a different kind of reward you could give as well. Prolly put them on my site as well...still working on it, but it's where I will end up putting all my junk.
Think I am done for the night, if you need me to elucidate on any of my rambling further just let me know