During my groups last adventure, we had a climatic chase through the city streets whlie being followed by an Ares Dragon chopper. Its door was open and had a gunner with a rather large heavy weapon I don't recall what. (I'm sure some of you will know what adventure that was)

Well I won't go into how it happend. But the chopper that was chasing us. Is now OUR chopper.
Now the chopper is worth 495,000 nuyen.
At a fenced value of 30% it come to 148500 Nuyen. A large chunk of change.
Now we could keep it, but a chopper isn't actually useful on most runs. As we are currently located only in denver. It won't help for geting around, flying over the national borders sounds like a bad idea to me.

So should we sell it or keep it.

Remember that big and flashy means noticable. Just have your face try and get more than 30% and hope for the best.

I´d second the notion of selling the helicopter.

You can easily fly accross national borders in Denver - its the norm rather than an exception due to the number of borders inside the town. My reason is that the runners are better off hiring a suitable heli everytime the actually need one, keeping the 100k+ change for other things.

Or it's the start of a brand new smuggling business...

Jack,

Welcome to Dumpshock.

There are some definite perks to having your own chopper, even if it's a get-out-of-Dodge fallback that you keep in a warehouse somewhere. Does your team have a rigger with mechanic contacts? If so, there's lots of stuff you could do to the chopper to make it even more worth keeping.

If that's not an option at all though, you are looking at a pretty good chunk of change. Time for some new 'ware.

If border crossings are common for you guys, you might wanna put the funds towards fake id's, or maybe some ECM or ED for whatever vehicles you got now. Or maybe purchase some friends among the guards and whatnot.

Edit: You could negotiate for a higher price than 30%. Some GM's will follow the canon rules (opposed negotiation test, every net success changes the price by 5% of the listed price.) Some will want to purely RP it.

Point of curiosity: Who would you sell it to?

It's going to be really hard to hide a chopper. And expensive if you want to hide it somewhere reasonably secure. I think you're better off 1. Buying a new SIN, highest possible rating and 2. Selling the chopper under that SIN, asap. To an extremely loyal fence. Because someone is going to be pissed when they find out it's on the market....

Hard to hide? We always just stuck stuff like that in a medium lifestyle- ranked warehouse type building purchased in a bad area like the Barrens, and paid off the local gangers to ignore it and harass anyone that came looking.

OPSEC, the fine art of keeping things a secret by not telling everyone about them.

I'm sure how this is handled varies immensely from game to game, just throwing mine out there.

Lorechaser has a great point about the repercussions possible when the previous owner finds out about a pending sale. Best to buy some spray paint and fix that bad boy up. Maybe add a spoiler.

...try disposing of a 6 engine Soviet Antonov 335 super transport.

Yes, the team in my last campaign had to deal with this.

Not as easy as a Lockheed Titan

If you can't sell it for what you feel is a decent price and can't find a way to hide and maintain it, consider stripping it for weaponry and parts if there's a rigger in the group. Just off the top of my head, the ECM, ECCM, sensors, weapons, and possibly the armor could probably be Max Max'd onto something else.

Probably a good idea to sell the chopper to a chop shop. (get it? )

if you don't want to get into the smuggling business, sell the chopper. but like Adam said, it sounds like you've got a nice opportunity to break into smuggling. i mean, you've got a free helicopter, and you're in Denver, the smuggling capital of the continent.

Your technomancer can always register a machine sprite or three while you work on building up a pilot skill. And then there's always skill wires as well. The question is do you really have a use for it, or would you be better off with the cash? None of your characters are particularily cash oriented, so it may be best to hang on to it just to lend you some flexibility.

In the mean time, finish off the other team while you're between jobs. If they're the type to take it personally (I would, wouldn't you?) and they're already short a few people, better safe than sorry.

well if they're not liekly to come back at you later, no worries.

With the game you guys have going, check with your GM and see if you're likely to branch out and then decide. If not, sell it, buy some new cars with armor, invest in foci, spread some money around time with your face and buy yourself some new friends.

Or possibly barter it.

Contact your Fence. Try to negotiate for 40% of the chopper's price in goods.

He may be all over that....

I'd rip out anything that could be traced, like most of the avionics. Fence 'em, and upgrade.

Add a small server in the back. (It's an ARES DRAGON. A few 1U servers won't make much difference).

Machine Spirits a Go-Go!

Sell it if you need the money, otherwise keep it safe, keep it hidden. (Right Frank? )
Never know when you'll want to plow a chopper full of C4 and being remotely piloted into someone or thing.

Keep in mind, the Dragon is one of the most common small transport choppers in the SR world. Apparently Ares over produced them and had to dump them at a lower price (according to R3). Which means that a Dragon painted over to look like a boring transport chopper won't turn too many eyes. The big question is how your GM interrupts the rules on air travel. If it won't be too hard to fly without arousing suspicion, I'd keep it. If he's going to require high level SIN checks at every stop point and whatnot, I'd dump it.

...I'm sure that when outfitted with a passenger module, they are also a common sight as air buses/shuttles in major sprawls. Express couriers (such as ConFed Ex), contractors (construction), and private medical services would also have uses for a heavy lift helicopter, so there are a number of "disguises" that can be used.

Yes, the dragon is one of a few helicopters that can be used by shadowruners.

The main problem you´ll be facing is that any air contact of that size will be traced as long as you are in town.

Active use: You´ll need a method of helicopter ground transport if you want to keep your hide out hidden (recommended). Move fast once you are on the ground.

Support: If you want to keep it, find a means of "legally" owning the heli and don´t use it on the run itself. Thus you are able to use private airports. The Dragon is now your method of getting goods over any border. The samurai will be very grateful. Do not imply the heli in illicid activities!

Everybody is stuck on either selling it or going into smuggling or using it for other neffarious porposes.

Ever thought of how usefull owning a legitimate bussiness could be?

Either start up an Airbus/freight bussiness and hire a manager to handle the bussiness (give him/her/it a percentage of the profit) or lease the chopper to another company. If you lease it out, make sure that you have inserted back-doors that will allow you to easily steal it back if you need to get out of the country in a hurry and don't mind burning a bridge or two.

Get your rigger a good enough SIN with appropriate permits and he can run legitimate freight from time to time as a sideline, there's always someone that needs something moved and that can help in the lean-times, and having a full team of 'runners to back it up means you can advertize as a "High security couriour". Those SINs will just get stronger as the legit bussiness piles up on them.

have u concidered striping all of the expensive bits. fill it full of fuel and c-12 and u got your self some real hurt for somebody u dont like

The Ares Dragon was sold for an amazing 70% its total market value
A GMC Bulldog Step-Van was purchanced. The rest of the cash was split between the three runners who hijacked the chopper.

Hey, all right!!! Good job. Details?

What kind of details,
70% of 495000 is 346500. Minus 35,000 divided by 3.

Just wondering if there was some interesting role playing behind it. Like, big time negotiations with the jumpy fence because he didn't want the opposing team tracking it to him etc etc.

No biggie if there aren't. Just curious.

Followup Idea: The previous owner's got it for 25% of it's legal cost. They don't want you dead, they just want their cut of the profit.

You lack a rigger; I’m willing to bet nobody has the rotorcraft skill.

Sell it. Theoretically you could find a FOF mechanic that could maintain it and install a rating 3+ polite and autosofts to make it useful under its own inelegance but that would invoke the FOF wrong party rules (chance the original owners finds out) and cost a lot of money.

If you still have it when you desperately need a rigger for a job (hiring an NPC to help) you could pay the NPC rigger with the helicopter (or accept his help as part payment for it) then you also get a contact with a rigger that has a helicopter.

And if you have guts you could always contact the other runner teem and ransom there nice helicopter back to them, of cause they may decide to ad themselves to your enemies list and then you have an enemy with a nice helicopter.

If you do keep it negotiate with your GM for photovoltaic chameleon paint. Its not invisibility but you can change from one paint job to another in an instant, keep files on hand for deliveries, air taxi, medical transport and a dozen other things. Duck around a building, turn around change your identity (don’t forget the transponder ID) and scream at the idiot that nearly ran into you.

Edward

The chopper was sold a few hours before your posting.

Which begs the (old) question: why do shadowruns, when stealing choppers is that so much more profitable ?