Greeting all, In 3 weeks I'm due to start playing a rigger/wheelman in a friends Shadowrun game and I'd like some pointers on vehicle modifications using Rigger3. After skimming through the stock vehicles I've decided to go with a Ford Americar as base vehicle as its inexpensive, very common and has enough seats for our team but heres where I start to get alittle overwhelmed.So please if your so inclined hit me with your ideas on a fast,low key shadowrunning machine.My budget is 100,000

Thank you Eric

is your character a good mechanic, or does he have access to one?

Thanks for the quick reply,yes my character has good (4/6 specialization in americar)mechanical build and repair skill and also a electronic build repair skill of 4. I also have mechanic contact( car build/repair skill of 6) whos a buddy with a facility.
P.S. I know I could do better with a GMC bulldog,I just wanted to try something different.

Thanks Eric

Most important features for my vehicles:

- That morphy license plate doohickey. (sorry, no book access and actual terminology fails me ATM)
- A good transponder library.
- The color changing paint stuff.

These three things are instant cool, especially when mixed with something as "common and generic" as an Americar.

Yeah, it shouldn't need to be said, but if you're starting from an Americar, anything that compromises its ability to blend in makes the whole build pretty pointless. Hopefully we won't see any americar builds with non-retractable weapons or turrets.

Yes I plan to keep the build very low key from a visual prospective. These are things I've considered incorperating
1.Turbocharging 3 (top speed and acceleraton.I think lv3 is the most I can use on a Americar. ends up being accel 11 and 150 speed).
2.Improved suspension 1(lower handling now 3/.
3.Photovoltaic Chameleon Paint (I love this stuff.flashy neon yellow paint to faded paint and primered fenders in 1 second.top 3 most popular Americar colors in car memory).
4.Morphing license plate with Transponder library chip(too James Bond/Transporter not to have).
5.Runflat perfermance tires(a must have on a shadowrunner car).
6.Concealed armor(but how much?)
7.rigger adaptation(a must)
8.Nitrous Oxide Injectors lv 3 to 5(how much is too much)
9.anti theft system(a must)
10. some sort of secret smuggling compartments(are there rules for these in Rigger3?)
these are my thoughts so far.Thanks for any input

Eric

I'm away from my book at the moment but you might want some electronics. Specifically a signal booster so you can control drones better.

And so long as you shut it off before doing something crazy a good autonav can provide some extra dice when you need them for when you're just driving too fast.

Oh and be sure to have a repair kit in the thing with a focus on making bullet holes and the like vanish fast. This sort of goes with the paint/plate/transponder. You may change those things but if you pull out of that parking garage riddled with holes you're going to cause suspicion.

Oh yeah, cleaning materials too. When the back seat gets raked by LMG fire before you ducked into cover you don't want to be stuck in a "Pulp Fiction" scenario.

i'd go for maybe 4 points of concealed vehicular armor, 5 if you can swing it, and a whole bunch of personal armor. 4 points of vehicle armor will stop light pistols and most SMGs; 5 points will stop most ARs, sport rifles, and some LMGs. and if you get another, say, 5 points of personal armor, that's a total 10 points of armor against anything anybody shoots at you.

since you're a mechanic, definitely go for turbocharging or, if you think you can do it, a custom engine. though i don't recall offhand if you can do that as a customization.

i believe you can get both improved suspension and offroad suspension--if so, get a few points of offroad. you're a rigger, so even with an on-road handling of 4 or 5, your total TN for most maneuvers is still going to be 2 or 3. offroad, though, a base handling of 8 is going to be harder to deal with, especially if your pursuit is designed for offroading. and hey, if they're not designed for offroading, a quick cut across the median can stop them cold and throw off your pursuit entirely.

make sure you get the electric anti-theft system. that's, what, 7S damage or so? enough to burn out a tracer, if it's on the skin of your vehicle.

well, reddish-brown.

I would seriously advise rethinking the choice of an Americar. Vehicles in Shadowrun in general are extremely cramped, in terms of trying to fit Rigger toys into them—I don't think anything smaller than a Van is worth looking at for a primary unless you want your only weapon to be your front bumper and your only serious defense to be your Control Pool.

The other critical question: what rating is your VCR? Speccing out a vehicle for a VCR-1 is totally different from speccing one out for a VCR-3, in terms of what you can get away with, and they're both moderately different from doing it for a VCR-2.

~J

On space. You could remove the manual controls for some CF and fill the space with goodies so that it looks the same.

Removed manual controls is a good idea, but it gets you very little space back. If your teammates don't have datajacks, avoid this—you never know when you're going to take a double-dose of Narcoject to the back of the neck.

Edit: also, Removed Manual Controls is a design-time only option.

~J

Wow big response thanks.To answer some questions I know the Americar is'nt the perfect vehicle in shadowrun for modifiction,I just want to try something different and in line with my character concept.I don't plan on using drones,I'm a straight up wheelman type rigger with VCR 2(just starting the game using the priority system and pretty short on starting cash).If I get a chance I'll post my character later but it will be pretty tame by most players characters I've seen.

Eric

Ok found some time. This is "Redline" my rigger character
Priorty A skills 50pt
Clubs 4
Pistols 4
Unarmed 4
Athletics 4
Stealth 4
Etiquette 4
Intimidation 4
Electronics 4
Electronics B/R 4
Car 6
Car B/R 4/6 Americar

Priority B 400,000 nuyen

Priorty C Attributes 24pts
Body 4
Quickness 4
Strength 4
Charisma 4
Intel 4
Will 4

Priorty D Race Human

For cyberware I'm going to have a alpha grade VCR2,2 alpha grade datajacks,alpha grade smartlink,alpha grade cybereyes, and a alpha grade headware radio or GPS and orientation system. none of it visually obvious.

My concept is basically a small time courier/smuggler trying his hand in the shadowrunning realm using what he has to best effect.I have no interest in ass kicking or power play I just want to experiement with the rigging rules.

Thank you Eric

That's… a lot of fours. What books are you using? I'd also advise against specializing at chargen—you sacrifice too much for it, in my opinion (that being skill specializations, natch—I'd advise Car B/R 5 instead of Car B/R 4 (Americar 6).)

You're going to want a good Sensor package. Normally I recommend Sensors 5 at minimum, but that eats up a huge chunk of your space. I'm not sure where to go there.

~J

I don't know about smuggling compartments. Ask your GM.

You also might want to see if your GM is into ECM ECCM ED ECD stuff. A little ED (see p32) can make for some potential fun.

Anyway a couple things you might have missed in the small print.

#1 you can reduce "personal space" in the car to make room for stuff. You get 1.5 CF per seated passenger. So an americar should pick you up 7.5 CF for this. This is what I would use to get your concealed armor up where it should be. And this actually makes perfect sense. When you're adding armor into the doors/ceiling/floor etc the result is that the elbowroom by the door goes down, and the floor and ceiling have less clearence, making things a bit more crowded.

#2 p118 (don't know what it isn't listed as a customization but it's easy to calculate what the DP would add to an americar. Here you're ripping out control surfaces like the steering column and all that. You only gain 2 CF for that, and then you have to use your VCR. But why wouldn't you? Also serves as an additional measure of security for your vehicle. You can conceal/trap the datajack port. When someone breaks into the car they'd quickly find the steering wheel and ignition aren't attached to anything and the pedals are totally gone and an ED control box or something is down there instead. Conceivably this could also be a place to stick a smuggling compartment!

so now total CF to play with in the Americar is up to 21.5 Note that if you wanted to you can also remove seats totally and gain back load and I think 6CF a pop. But that might be a bit more obvious to the naked eye and you might not be able to fit the whole team.

Speaking of the team are you going to have to jam a troll in here? You might want to pull a seat and make them sit on the floor or somesuch.

finally

#3 microturrets

Turrets, especially pop up ones, are really out of the americars league.

That is except for the microturret ,which doesn't show up in the tables, but is there in the small text on p141. It'll just hold something like an assault rifle, but that can still be a lot of fun! At only 1CF per pop-up turret you could possibly even have more than one!