Construction Costs? Options

[DamienKnight]

Body Armor? Are we talking about Milspec here... I think, it would be a good way to start looking for construction plans. Doesn't have one? No problem, a dozen (skilled) helpers, a big laboratory and aproximatly a million nuyen will let him build his own prototype (with flaws) in less then 5 years.

See Troy Hurtubise, who has created the most advanced body armor in the world to date. He has invented explosion and flame retardant materials that are unprecidented.

The Mark VI, which he designed and built from scratch, took him Seven Years and 150,000 dollars. This is without any Engineering or Armor design experience. He never even got a college degree (took some courses). He was attacked by a bear then decided to make Bear Proof armor, and has gone on from there.

Now just imagine what he could do if he started with a 200,000 facility, and an Armoring skill of 4 or 5? And we arent even talking about making Powered Bear Proof Explosion Proof Fireproof nearly-invincible armor. We are just talking about a standard suit of body armor.

On top of that, he could probably get a blueprint or design off the matrix, granted it may be a few years old or cost a bit. He could even take a suit of body armor and reverse engineer it to create a blueprint, then manufacture duplicates.

Point being, its not quite a million dollar 5 year journey if you already have skill and a facility.

[the_real_elwood]

See Troy Hurtubise, who has created the most advanced body armor in the world to date. He has invented explosion and flame retardant materials that are unprecidented.

The Mark VI, which he designed and built from scratch, took him Seven Years and 150,000 dollars. This is without any Engineering or Armor design experience. He never even got a college degree (took some courses). He was attacked by a bear then decided to make Bear Proof armor, and has gone on from there.

Now just imagine what he could do if he started with a 200,000 facility, and an Armoring skill of 4 or 5? And we arent even talking about making Powered Bear Proof Explosion Proof Fireproof nearly-invincible armor. We are just talking about a standard suit of body armor.

On top of that, he could probably get a blueprint or design off the matrix, granted it may be a few years old or cost a bit. He could even take a suit of body armor and reverse engineer it to create a blueprint, then manufacture duplicates.

Point being, its not quite a million dollar 5 year journey if you already have skill and a facility.

Are you kidding me? Don't reference that guy as justification for anything. He's a crackpot, and there's a reason why no one is jumping at the opportunity to license his armor design. But if you think it's so great, then I'd invite you to get shot at while you're wearing it. REAL armor companies do spend lots of time and money on design, and they do use sophisticated production techniques to make their stuff. Designing your own armor is no easy feat, and would take a significant amount of time. Modifying an existing design and then producing it in your own facility is much easier.

[Mithral MAge]

Are you kidding me? Don't reference that guy as justification for anything. He's a crackpot, and there's a reason why no one is jumping at the opportunity to license his armor design. But if you think it's so great, then I'd invite you to get shot at while you're wearing it. REAL armor companies do spend lots of time and money on design, and they do use sophisticated production techniques to make their stuff. Designing your own armor is no easy feat, and would take a significant amount of time. Modifying an existing design and then producing it in your own facility is much easier.

They called the guy who discovered how to cure 90% of all ulcers a crack pot as well. Then the NAtional Enquirer published his cure and now 90% of all ulcers get cured.

The frickin National Enquirer.

So I wouldn't necessarily believe the "experts" are right about anyone being a crack pot, or not.

As for "facility", and costing 100,000 creds, I would guess they have plenty of fabrication type machines in the facility, such as a kiln, one that goes to 2600+ degrees celcius, just like the one at my college. Everything melts at 2600 degrees C. I also know the powdered titanium is available to the ceramics class.

As for the ballistic gel, if its anything like current ballistic gel it is simple enough to make in your kitchen if you know the ingredients.

As for realistic pricing most retail pricing is anywhere from 3 to 8 times what the cost to manufacture was. Even higher, in the case of blue jeans. Those are 10 to 30 times what their cost of manufacture was, depending on the name brand.

$20 dollar jeans were manufactured in Mexico for less than $2.00.

Now, why would it be cheap for someone to manufacture stuff in their facility? They don't charge themselves for the labor. Usually, the single biggest cost of manufacturing, after building the facility itself.

[Cain]

I don't have a problem with "Parts are Parts", so long as Parts X are for Facility X, and Parts Y are for Facility Y. No using gun parts to build computers.


The only thing is, monowire is written as only being able to be crafted by nanites. And some say, in zero-G as well. With that in mind, I'd only allow someone to generate monowire from scratch if they had a nanoforge availiable to them.

And if you guys really want to get into the factory vs facility thing: neither one actually makes things from scratch. You don't send in metal ingots and raw rubber, and expect to get a car with tires. You send in prefabricated parts, which are then assembled.

Personally, I picture a facility as one of those major shops on Pimp my Ride. You know, the ones that can take apart a car and rebuild it from the frame up? It also has points that aren't moveable, such as mechanic's pits or full-size hydraulic car-lifters. Technically, they *can* be moved; but you'd have to re-dig a hole for them, lay concrete, etc, etc. A shop can fit in the back of a decent-sized van, but a facility requires a commercial flatbed, and some parts might not be movable at all.

[MJBurrage]

As a gross simplification of distribution and productions costs:

• Consumer pays store 100
• Store paid distributor ~50
• Distributor paid producer around 20–30
• Producer may have paid subcontractor 10–15

In other words the direct cost of mass production is about 10% of the retail price. The other 90% covers indirect costs, labour, and profit at each level of production.

Amazon skips the store, as they are their own distributor, which is how they sell things at 30–40% off, give free shipping, and still make a profit.

When you buy a book from its publisher, you are skipping 1–2 step in the normal chain, and therefore are at least doubling the publishers gross income.

P.S. Having said all that you should still buy game books from your local store whenever possible since those stores are key to creating new customers, and those new customers are key to the paper RPG hobby not going away.

[the_real_elwood]

They called the guy who discovered how to cure 90% of all ulcers a crack pot as well. Then the NAtional Enquirer published his cure and now 90% of all ulcers get cured.

The frickin National Enquirer.

So I wouldn't necessarily believe the "experts" are right about anyone being a crack pot, or not.

As for "facility", and costing 100,000 creds, I would guess they have plenty of fabrication type machines in the facility, such as a kiln, one that goes to 2600+ degrees celcius, just like the one at my college. Everything melts at 2600 degrees C. I also know the powdered titanium is available to the ceramics class.

As for the ballistic gel, if its anything like current ballistic gel it is simple enough to make in your kitchen if you know the ingredients.

As for realistic pricing most retail pricing is anywhere from 3 to 8 times what the cost to manufacture was. Even higher, in the case of blue jeans. Those are 10 to 30 times what their cost of manufacture was, depending on the name brand.

$20 dollar jeans were manufactured in Mexico for less than $2.00.

Now, why would it be cheap for someone to manufacture stuff in their facility? They don't charge themselves for the labor. Usually, the single biggest cost of manufacturing, after building the facility itself.

You can search that guy's name on Youtube and see a video of his creation. See for yourself how much of a crackpot he is. But honestly, the proof is in the pudding, and he has nothing to show for his creation. Also, the gel pack stuff that was referenced earlier isn't the same thing as the ballistics gel on mythbusters. The description of the gel says that it hardens when a bullet hits it from the shockwave coming from the impact, so it's a little more complex of a material than the ballistics gel you can make in your kitchen. THAT ballistics gel is just something that has roughly the same density as flesh.

[Tarantula]

You mean a non-newtonian fluid? Ya know, like cornstarch + water? Cause thats hard to make (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

[kzt]

"Homemade body armor? Sure. After all, what could possibly go wrong?"

[psychophipps]

As for the ballistic gel, if its anything like current ballistic gel it is simple enough to make in your kitchen if you know the ingredients.

$20 dollar jeans were manufactured in Mexico for less than $2.00.

If you're talking about that new nano-gel stuff that hardens when it's struck (and I'm pretty sure they are because I read about it in a science magazine and pretty soon saw it in a SR sourcebook) then it's definitely not something you can just mix up in your basement. It takes very precise materials (read: expensive and far from common) and very precise mixtures to make the stuff work as advertised.

And yes, $20 jeans cost less than $2.00 to make. Of course, shipping and all of the inter-related tasks isn't free, either.

[psychophipps]

You mean a non-newtonian fluid? Ya know, like cornstarch + water? Cause that's hard to make (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

Tell you what. You make a cornstarch and water gel suit and I'll shoot you a few times with my Glock. We'll see what force wins.

[MaxMahem]

Its is my opinion that people on this board worry entirely to much about reality, and not enough about gameability. Is it plausible that a character could make him self a suit of high-tech mil-spec armor out of raw materials at his home facility at huge cost savings? Possibly.

Is it a good idea in game to allow a character to do it? Probably not. I mean, if he can make mil-spec armor at such a cost savings, why is he shadowrunning? He should become a professional armor maker, of course them we would have to change the name of the game to ArmorMakerRun, and it probably wouldn't be as catchy.

So a short sweet gameable answer is he can build it in about a month for half-cost. Set the threshold/interval on his test appropriately. This preserves balance in the game, but still gives him some use out of his skill (as he is still getting a major cost savings and getting to ignore Availability).

----

Of course some may not be satisfied with this, so why exactly might he not be able to mass-produce custom mil-spec armor at his facility? The answer, in a word, is Time. For PC's time is money. While he likely could build and design said armor from scratch at a tremendous cost savings, the amount of time it would take would be prohibitive.

#1. This character doesn't just want an armored jacket, he wants custom Mil-Spec armor with (almost) all the fixings. Designs for that don't just exist out on the net someplace for him. If those designs exist at all they are carefully guarded trade secrets of the company who designed them. While it might be possible for a character to design such a piece of Armor himself, it is more likely carried out by a team of professional armor designers at the corp to save time. Doing it on his own would take much more time. Possibly a year? Of course he could 'acquire' those plans somehow. Sounds like a good hook for a run to me.

#2. While his facility probably does have all the tools, furnaces, and what not to build the armor from scratch, this is likely not the most efficient manner of doing it. Or the way your typical armor factory does it. They likely buy armor plate, ballistic fiber, and what not from another factory that specilises in thier manufacture. As doing it this way is faster and cheaper. Of course your character can still weave his own ballistic fiber if he wants, but it is much more time consuming. Buy the semi-finished parts is much faster, but of course this is more expensive.

#3. He has a facility, not a factory. Think of it like a proto-type lab or something. He can of course build virtually anything (appropriate to the facility) from scratch here, but there is a big gap between being able to build it, and being able to mass-produce it. His facility is based around doing small jobs, not huge ones. So mass-production is out of the picture. (Not sure if this would be a concurn of yours, but I know my players would think of it).

[Ol' Scratch]

It's not really an issue of saving money. Nuyen is easy to get in the shadows, especially with the new costs of things in SR4. Availability isn't even really an issue anymore as it can be rendered null and void by time (it's just a Negotiation + Charisma extended test; 20/1 week in the case of milspec armor). Since downtime can be from days to months, it's... well, it's not really a big issue. Especially if you have a hardcore Face in your group who could knock that down in no time.

If you really have an issue with characters making things instead of buying them, just use the item's Availability in the same way for the crafting tests. In other words, milspec armor would require an Armorer + Logic (20/1 week) extended test. For every 25% of the base cost of the item they put into it (representing buying the more difficult components instead of having to homeforge/jury-rig them) adds an extra die to each test, up to a maximum of 10 dice. Maybe give a -1 Threshold bonus for each "level" of tools the player has.

What's a rule like this accomplish It grants characters an alternative. Especially those characters where having hot-shot social skills aren't appropriate for the concept, but having crafting skills are. Now instead of having to wait months and paying the full price (if not more) for an item, they can either craft their own in about the same amount of time or do it less time for more money.

The end result is the same: The character still winds up with the item. So, honestly, I don't get why people get their panties in a bunch about things like this. If as a GM you have some reason to not want players to have certain items, well, you can be narrow-minded and simply outright ban it from your game. Personally I'd rather just let the players go through the effort only to learn that there are consequences for possessing and using that kind of gear where it's not appropriate. But that's just me, apparently.

[the_real_elwood]

Well, what really happened in this thread is that the OP asked a simple and reasonable question about what cost he should charge his player for the materials to make a suit of armor. A general consensus was reached in a couple of posts, and the rest of the thread has been pretty much entirely people arguing about the fluff-related details of making some armor. I don't think anyone really disagrees with the precept of letting the character make a suit of armor at a reduced cost from the list price stated in the handbook.

[Ol' Scratch]

The majority of my previous post had to do more with keeping with the abstracts that Shadowrun is grounded in, as opposed to the attempts at hyper-realism (and especially the whining and pouting about how it's just not realistic OMFG).

[Mithral MAge]

The majority of my previous post had to do more with keeping with the abstracts that Shadowrun is grounded in, as opposed to the attempts at hyper-realism (and especially the whining and pouting about how it's just not realistic OMFG).

The only reason I worry about the realism is I was in manufacturing for a few years, taking raw materials and turning them into finished products, including casting, molding, etc...

So I just wanted a sense of where the SR rules are in comparison to my understanding of manufacturing, price mark ups, etc...

I have that now.