What's up with Weapon Mount legality?, ...it's gotta make sense to somebody. Options

[MikeKozar]

My group is starting a new campaign, with the players older and wiser in the ways of the 'verse. We're ramping up law enforcement and cracking down on illegal gear to try and head off power creep. So far, so good - the GM's decree that we will not start with any gear at Availability F required some careful analysis, and I noticed something: for the most part, F-rated gear falls into a few simple and logical categories:


Military-Grade Firearms: All sniper rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers including those mounted on assault rifles, Grenades (Frag, HE, and White Phosphorus), ammo that increases damage or armor penetration, and assault cannons are F-grade. Flamethrowers and Mortars are Forbidden, as are High-Velocity SMGs and Assault Rifles. Laser weapons are Forbidden.

Military-Grade Augmentation: All bone lacing and all retractable blades. Damage Compensators. Pain Editor. Adrenal Pump, Suprathyroid. Cyberarm Gyromount. Grade 3 Move-by-Wire. Powered Military-grade armor systems.

Breaking and Entering: All jammers and EMP devices. Anything that duplicates a fingerprint, palmprint, voiceprint, or retina. Thermal Camoflage. Stealth Rope. Explosives more powerful then 'commercial grade'. Silencers, Surpressors, and subsonic ammo. Keycard copiers, Maglock Sequencers, Maglock Passkeys. Tag Erasers. Weapons and ammo designed specifically to defeat scanners. Fake Licenses and Fake SINs.

Illegal for a Good Reason:Monofiliment weapons. BTLs. Tailored Pheremones. Deepweed, Gamma-Scopamine, Seven7, K10, Laes. Cranial bombs and self-destruct devices. Hot-sim modded VR gear. Vibroswords.

What really caught me off-guard was that my Rigger had assumed that most good stuff was F-rated, and it turns out that almost all street-level gear can be had with the right license, no sweat. Your Troll can roll in with an Assault Rifle, Body Armor, and a Smartlink Goggle rig, and just explain that "I have a permit for dis." Mostly, I agree with the gear above being cop bait. There are only two things about the Availability rules that confuse me:

1) Chameleon vs Thermal Camouflage. Optical camouflage is legal with the right permits, but thermal camo is classified with the military gear? This suggests that there is some sort of major advantage to Thermal that puts it in the same class of breaking and entering gear as retinal duplicators. Does anybody know why it scares the Corps so bad?

2) Security Drones vs. Modified Drones. The Steel Lynx and company can be had with the right licenses, and assuming you mount them up with legal assault rifles you're golden. On the other hand, if you want to mount weapons to a drone that doesn't normally include it, the Weapon Mount itself is forbidden. This could be worked around by sticking to the official security models or getting your GM to approve something similar as an 'off the shelf' model, but...what about a modified and armed Rotordrone makes it so much more illegal then a stock armed LEBD-1?

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to complain about the letter of the rules, I'm just interested in the spirit of them. If there's a good reason for this in-world, official or not, I'd really like to hear it. Also open to thought about how you guys handle Forbidden items in game.