As suggested by Fist, this is to discuss player transportation both locally and nationally in SR.

I remember when I started playing, in Seattle you just took the Monorail everywhere. After actually visiting Seattle, this option seems bad. Then everyone just bought bikes, but how conspicuous are they? And do you really want to be on the run from Lone Star without a wall of armor between you and them?

How do you get around or not?

one one of his first runs, Italy took his share of the loot (we busted up some ghouls who were robbing an electronics store, then took their van and the electronics they'd loaded into it) a beat-up van that i never bothered statting up. due to its ugly brown color, it was dubbed Babyshit. he's used it ever since.

my otaku, GG Beat, uses electroskates--rollerblades with a tiny but powerful electric motor that is charged up by spinning the wheels (ie, skating around). the motor can provide a short burst of high speed every few minutes. he also does the Snow Crash thing and hitches rides down the freeway by latching onto the bumper of a passing car.

many of my characters take the cab, bus, or monorail. i've been doing it myself for years, and it works out okay once you get the hang of tracking the schedules.

The teams in my games usually end up having at least one member that owns a car or a van. I've had players do everything from drive the uber-subtle Westwind Turbo to insisting on taking public trans whenever possible.

When I play, my characters tend toward bikes for personal trans needs, and maybe an Americar for when I'm stuck lugging the team around.

Usually with my group we utilized bikes to a major extent. We also used hovercraft but treated them more like repulsorlift type vehicles over air-cushion vehicles. Occassionally we would have someone with a van or car but usually it was bikes. Now with SR4 and jetpacks being canon I've created a few characters that utilize jetpacks with glider wings.

MFB: It's called Pooning and Girth created some netbooks about it. Called like RadTech or something like that.

It really depends on the character, but several times they have used Jackrabbits for the cheap disposable cars. Usual transport may be an americar or bike, if the character decides that a taxi or rail isn't enough. Plus, there's the usual white van or armored SUV as the party vehicle.

My teams also had at least one character with a van and another with another vehicle. That way the team could do legwork in different place, like the mage/corp type in his areas and the street sammie in his. The van was normally the vehicle used on runs since it could hold everyone plus some drones.

Longer range travel varied. If the Johnson made arrangements, that was often flying. My characters, especially the mages, would prefer the train, since it was easier to smuggle things like refined alchemical materials and orichalcum there than on planes, and was cheaper than hiring actual smugglers. The mages avoid ballistic aircraft since they go outside the Manasphere.

Also, my mages would frequently use a combination of Invisibility and Air Spirit Movement power to travel short distances. That is also useful for getting on top of buildings not protected by spirits or for a hasty retreat when the run goes sour.

My fave way is using influence to flag down a cabbie, mind controlling said cabbie, and altering his memory after.

...the biggest getaway vehicle one of the groups I GM-ed for got a hold of was an Antonov AN335, a 6 engine behemoth of a cargo aircraft.

For some of my PCs...

...Leela and the "Original" KK usually used Rollerblades (and Pooning was definitely in their playbooks)
...After Leela ended up in the UK, she travelled by Chauffeured Limousine.
...Tomoe Sasaki had a buddy contact who owned Emerald Towncars.
...Violet usually hacked - er - called A Johnny Cab (kind of like the mage Wasabi mentioned but in a technological sense)

@WhisekyMac: Jetpacks? Where? I always wanted to have a James Bond 007/Rocketeer type character.

In a campaign I was in the DM had a company in Seattle called "One Eyed Jacks", the company provided runners with various levels of transportation.

The founder and owner his street name was "One Eyed Jack", he had cyber eye feature IIRC blended both cyber eye functions into one large "eye". The cyber eye looked like a large set of sunglasses without the ear pieces.

His company was most useful to runners.

Kyoto Kid: Check Pg. 126 under the Pilot Exotic Vehicle skill. 3rd entry in. Jet Packs! However, they don't stat them out in the corebook.

I've created 4 different versions of a Jet Pack. They might be goofy but it's a rough draft:

Sikorsky-Bell Flying Fox: This economy vector-thrust jetpack has a limited hover capability with a flight ceiling of 15 meters and comes in various styles and colors. Can fold up for easy storage and is the size of a small backpack.

VTOL/VSTOL Handling Accel Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor Avail Cost
S-B Flying Fox +2 10/20 80 2 2 4 3 6 3,500¥

Sikorsky-Bell Falcon: This vector-thrust jetpack was designed for paramilitary service with a flight ceiling of 30 meters and has a limited hover capability. Can fold up for easy storage and is the size of a backpack.

VTOL/VSTOL Handling Accel Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor Avail Cost
S-B Falcon +2 15/30 100 3 3 7 3 8R 7,500¥

Sikorsky-Bell Eagle: This vector-thrust jetpack was designed for military service with a flight ceiling of 50 meters and sustained hover capability. Can fold up for easy storage and is the size of a hiking backpack.

VTOL/VSTOL Handling Accel Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor Avail Cost
S-B Eagle +3 20/40 120 3 4 10 3 12F 12,000¥

Sikorsky-Bell Firefly: This SOTA vector-thrust jetpack was designed for Special Forces with a flight ceiling of 75 meters, sustained hover capability and built-in weapon clamps. Comes equipped with Clearsight 3 and Maneuverability 3 autosofts. Can fold up for easy storage and is the size of a bulky backpack.

VTOL/VSTOL Handling Accel Speed Pilot Body Armor Sensor Avail Cost
S-B Firefly +3 20/50 150 3 4 10 3 16F 30,000¥

What'cha think?

Well for our group we all started with bikes because it was a lot cheaper then cars. Turn out to be a good idea. Getting the package out of a traffic jam as a gun fight between Yakuza and Triad's heats up is much easier when your vehicle can drive between cars.

After a few runs we pooled our cash and bought a bulldog van. Now in general two of use ride escort on bikes while the rest ride in the armored vehicle.

My group started with two of use having motorbikes and our rigger, MrFixIt, having his own van. This left two people without transport which we remedied quickly. Now we have different things for different needs.


High class/Con Jobs (Our face loves his work) - Limo
Time to earn a spot on the news - Wasp Helicopter
Standard Run - MrFixIts Van (with nanopaste paint to change its color and logo on the side)

Things we are attempting to get:
Flying Air Carrier (AKA The Nick Fury)
Titan Sub (AKA Run that will get almost everyone killed)
Nos Boosted Steel Lynx (AKA: Why do we ever listen to the Otaku and the Rigger?)

I've actually thought about the practicality of the flying aircraft carrier from SHIELD too (sadly). I'm not really sure I see a point to it though, besides looking cool. Yeah it can more an airfleet over land, but hey, so can a plan with a refueling tanker in midflight. I dunno, I guess I just think of it as an way way to bring down a lot of planes at once.

We tend to do our runs a little over the top. When asked to destroy a building the first thing the face did was turn to the Otaku and say "Think we could hijack a thorshot?" at which time the face was promptly shot by the troll next to him but you can see we tend to go over and above what we should. Its kinda the reason we have to go into Seattle one at a time to not draw attention :X

Oh I'm fine with over the top if that's what the group is going for. Probably had more than my fair share (although sadly never got to do a thor shot yet).

Sersiouly though, is there anything that makes the flying carrier feasible/worthwhile?

Yes.

Say I am flying away in my jet with my five teams following me in theirs while the Otaku is controlling two more wireless and the rigger has two more controlled wirelessly as well because they were being used as a distraction.

Where are we going to land? In the water?


Besides we are trying to become big a rich so we can become our own corp and own the city of the skies!

In my game : http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=16200&hl=kronk
we have:
A super sub that swims like a paramecium
A Collapsible ship to shore helocopter
the USS Freedom
A Banshea
and a Converted 18 wheeler we call the Kill Dozer. (assault ship to shore transport, comes complete with pilot/assault cyber hound )

...@WhiskeyMac: Those are pretty cool. Thanks. I am going to also convert them over for my SR3 campaign as well. Definitely something I see the military using.

I have also designed a fairly extensive array of vehicles and aircraft for my campaigns. I have been somewhat dismayed about the way electric propulsion is so nerfed in performance. Keep in mind the French just ran a train at over 350mph using electric power. Considering it is 60+ years in the future, I would think that battery and other power generation systems (particularly fuel cells) would have seen more improvement than as presented in SR vehicle designs.

They have Suborbitals, which would basically require scramjets, which in turn have a lot more development hurdles to overcome than I see with electromotive power. For one, just getting an aircraft up to the speed (The SR71 tops out at about Mach 3.5, about half the velocity needed to ignite a ramjet) where the reaction can be sustained is a major technical leap in and of itself. Other issues include fuel and materials technology. The current test vehicles require rocket boosting to achieve the speed necessary for the ramjet to ignite, and the flight is very short duration.

Meanwhile, electric power has been with us for some time now. In RL the stumbling block is basically storage. Batteries are either heavy or (in the case of more exotic types) run too hot. However in looking at the strides in Portable Computer power, there have been some tremendous advancements in battery technology over just the last few years. HP has a notebook battery that, in "long life" power mode, can run for nearly 15 hours before needing a charge.

However, I believe the real future for electric vehicle power are fuel cells. Fuel cells do not need to be plugged in to recharge and can operate on a variety of fuels (though Hydrogen is the most efficient) so they are far more versatile than batteries. There is also a hybrid form of battery/capacitor which can be used for quick bursts of power. This can be recharged through regenerative braking (similar to how the French TGV slows down).

Basically, I have upped the performance attributes for the FC electric vehicle designs I have, bringing them closer to the operational parameters to reciprocating engines.

Better question to ask yet.. how do you justify an airship to the multitude of air traffic control stations and military installations?

You can't just have this floating behemoth and not draw attention from the military.

The flying aircraft carrier idea was tried with derrigibles the size of the Hindenburg around WWI. They were all shelved because of the problems of docking the planes with the base ship. Today's faster planes would only make it worse.

Of course, the real killer was that fighters could get through the screen protecting the carrier and shoot it down. That would be even easier today what with missiles that can fly hundreds of miles. Add to that any battle damage that hits the lifting systems or shuts down the engines and goodbye aerial carrier. At least a sea-based carrier can float if its engines go offline.

...no, Shadowrun: Crimson Skies....