It would be awesome, but it would destroy the game. But it would be awesome!

Military-grade hardened armor is powered, and there are rules in Rigger 3 for creating vehicles than can be used to create mecha.

Is it REALLY awesome? And adaptable for SR4?

Every time someone makes a thread title in all caps, god kills a kitten.

actually, SR3 had one kind of powered armor as i recall. i don't think hardened armor was really powered (although it was most likely environmental, but not neccessarily... i think it had to be added in).

but anyways, there was an underwater powered armor. that was it for that.

there were also rules for building vehicles that moved around by walking, and that had arms. you could certainly have built mecha, but with the rules, i don't think you could have made actual powered armor (although a few simple houserules would have solved everything, as i recall... the only difference with the powered armor was that the RAS override wasn't operative, pretty much, i think, and you didn't suffer any penalties for it).

anyways, they seem to have basically planned for the possibility i would say... i mean, what else are you supposed to do with pilot anthroform skill? it's either that, or they intend to make rules for rigging humans with skillwires, and i'm personally leaning towards mecha or mecha-like vehicles.

[edit]

I completely forget whose site this is. Regardless, I give you... Teh Awesome!

edit: You're thinking of the JIM suit in SR3. It was basically an anthroform submersible that seating one. Do a search of the Shadowrun forums; you'll find plenty of threads about power armor.

God only kills kittens if the capitalization's unwarranted. Which it isn't, since POWER ARMOR IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!

in SR4, there is only one vehicle i am aware of that should obviously use the pilot anthroform skill. personally, i consider i unlikely that they put in an entirely separate pilot skill just for the Kanmushi, and therefore presume they intend to expand on the number of drones that would require pilot anthroform.

of course, two other vehicles *may* use the skill (also both drones), as they are defined as "crawlers". of course, if they just mean tracked vehicles (which i personally could also see the description as applying to) then they would presumably be ground vehicles. it's hard to say based on SR4 only, since there are no labelled pictures of the various drones AFAICT. of course, a better knowledge of SR3 than i have might help with the other two drones. the aztechnology crawler, and the GM-Nissan doberman are the two.

in fact, iirc, anthroform is better classified as humanoid in shape, as i understand it... which, if it is meant to mean humanoid, then not even the kanmushi requires pilot anthroform.

basically, what i am saying is that the fact that they have included a skill specifically to pilot anthroforms indicates that they are planning to introduce some anthroform type vehicles at some point.

of course, i could be wrong, mind you.

Why on earth would you want to add mecha to Shadowrun?

Do you not see his capitals?
They indicate emphasis.

Emphasis implies immediate, overpowering, jaw-clenching NEED.

couldn't you work out a suit of powered armour using some cyberware rules?

i.e. while you're wearing it your attributes are as if you had cyberlimbs, bone lacing and some headware but you're limited to one initiative pass at a penalty to initiative and take a penalty to all tests involving fine motor control.

You couldn't wear anything under it and it would be more than obvious that you were wearing it to security forces.

and then somebody hacks it and hilarity ensues

I do not know if it would ruin the game having power armour.

I KNow it would be extremley hard to get like Mile Spec Armour, and i don't feeli it would unbalance the game but potentially increase the opposition difficulty.

I feel that mature Drone/Rigger technology killed the concept of power armor.

ANthro drones wouldn't have the soft messy part in the middle, so they can be smaller for identical capabilities. With a rigger in residence, you have nearly identical capabilities, with much less exposure to risk. If one drone takes a Panther sabot round, you just jump into another, and let the damaged one keep up as best it can.

Unless someone really fragged the mana cycle mechwarrior should be an adept discipline. Of course, someone already fragged the mana cycle twice now, halting it for some time in the Fourth World and accelerating it in the Sixth, so it is quite possible.

One of my players comes up to me one day, "I want power armor.". I say, "sure buddy, here you go.", and in comes the Lone Star T.A.C. unit that has been tracking him since the National Bank of Seattle "incident" consisting of a 3 man point team all wearing power armor. "All you have to do is take it.". Don't feel too bad for him... he never checked for tracers from the bank loot and never moved his safehouse which Lone Star knew about from the Seattle Harbor Master "incident". The fact he was able to pull off the bank job was shear luck combined with a bit of karma. In the end it was his time .
I have no problem with power armor in Shadowrun, keeping in mind that it is very expensive, and the only people who could reasonably afford its cost and upkeep would be corps. Keep in mind when I refer to power armor I am not talking 20-50 foot mechs (Those just aren't economically/logistically viable even to me to use in SR).

"All you have to do is take it"

Oh, that is classic. The moment, the line, the setup, oh!

That is the kind of thing GMs long for their entire career.

Power armor is about as feasible as cyber-zombies. You spend many thousands, possibly millions of nuyen on a single combat item that has less battlefield effectiveness than a (relatively less expensive) fully-loaded LAV.
Technologically, there is no reason why not. But is it worthwhile? Not really. If you keep it semi-realistic, you will wind up wind an overpriced, maintainance-intensive suit that can still be taken out by a single sprawl ganger with a 1,000 rocket launcher. If you make the suit either reliable and/or reasonably priced (under 250,000 , including the specialized gear required to maintain/repair it and Black Market mark-up) then I believe you are being a little too generous.

That said, my players received two sets of light powered armor, with just enough musculature to negate it's own encumbrance, though not enough to actually enhance strength, from their employer. Many times the price-tag isn't measured in nuyen

What about personal energy shields? And how effective are anti-bullet barriers?

For the record?

System Failure Spoiler....




No, I'm not terribly evil yet, but it's a cool concept!

I hereby designate the first power-armor organization in Shadowrun to be called the Drop Bear clan.

The closest I intend to get to mecha in SR is a few think tanks (from GitS) guarding ultra-secure facilities.

edit: Something like the S-K Thinktank in this thread.

Jamming doesn't matter if you're hooked up through wires, or laser communications.

It's only wireless.

OH, the "Plug your Mecha In" route. 'cause, y'know, trails of fiberoptic cable behind you don't get in the way at all, and they aren't obvious targets.

And lasers, huh? well, 'cause it's lasers, it must be better. Sure, you need direct LOS, and smoke, raised dust, high humidity and other comomn battlefeild conditions royally muck up their usefulness, but com'n! It's Lasers!

Good lord... whatever happened to just getting some infantry on the ground?

I can understand drones being rigged in as overwatch/surveillance and to provide fire support, but being your primary unit on the ground?

Commo gear of the future is good and powerful, but the possibilities of counter-hacking (or someone simply firing an antiradiation missile of their own targeted at your ECCM) would seriously worry me. Personally, I think I'd rather field powered armor.

I should like to point out that "Powered Armor" conjures different ideas for different people.

Armor - that is to say, something worn to protect you from getting bullets in you - that is 'powered' - that is to say, has some manner of integrated 'extra' load-bearing capability - is a pretty good idea when it comes to infantry.

Any accusations that armor that helps you carry extra stuff is 'more expensive than an LAV and less useful' is projection of an idea as to what the phrase means.

Just to point that out.

You wouldn't think that powered armor would be too hard to do in SR. Take the military-grade body armor, fit it with a bunch of the myomer that we already use in cyberlimbs, build in trodes or a datajack connection to allow the suit to pick up on the movement of the wearer and move with him, and you're set for low end stuff. Strength augs and the like rapidly boost your user up to the level where using an MMG like an unarmored person would use a rifle wouldn't be hard, carrying a couple hundred pounds of gear wouldn't be hard... and it's not horribly out of whack with the rest of the world.

If we want to start talking the higher-end CP2020 style APCA suits which are heavier than cars and carry low-caliber railguns, that's another thing entirely...

But...they've already made a man portable Laser back in SR2, and then in SR3 it was even more portable, in the form of a redline....

I WANT STARSHIP TROOPERS LEVEL POWER ARMOR GRRRR!!!!!!! Although that's probably pretty much impossible cost-wise and probabtly not due until maybe SR10, which will probably move beyond cyberpunk.

by then, the next age has gone and passed and it's time of Kerensky and mechwarriors... Nooooo!

If only there were a game system that allowed power armor and mechs.

Ah one of the great Shadowtalk quotes in FoF

"This has got to be BullDrek NOTHING drops in cost by 90% in just 3 years"

Neon Samurai (IIRC) commenting on the ARES MPIII costing only 150000 after the ARES MP cost 1500000 in the Street Sam Catalogue

Dude... I just got an idea... I'll use the first Battlemech developed in Earth history as a plot point!!! The runners will have to fight it, or pilot it, if they're stealthy and awesome enough.