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fourstring_samurai
seattle(and other big city) vehicles run on an electro grid, right? so, are the vehicles recharged periodically like a gas fill up or are they continually powered by the grid?

thanks!
Zazen
Continually powered, I believe. I think they have a battery good enough to keep going for a few hours off the grid, though.
Cray74
QUOTE (fourstring_samurai)
seattle(and other big city) vehicles run on an electro grid, right? so, are the vehicles recharged periodically like a gas fill up or are they continually powered by the grid?

Some vehicles are electrical and, yes, have "GridLink" to gain power from the road instead of tapping their batteries. While these vehicles are on the Gridlinked roads, they are continuously powered from the road; there's no need to recharge. Indeed, they can charge up their batteries while on the road.

However, those electric vehicles are not necessarily the majority; they tend to be the economy subcompact car types [1]. Various internal combustion power plants are still quite common: gasoline, diesel, and methane engines are quite common.

[1] Mostly because SR vehicle construction rules unfairly penalize electric motors. I could see penalizing the range of battery-powered electric motor vehicles, but diesel- and turbine-powered electric motors (used widely on RL freight trains and large ocean-going ships, respectively) have plenty of horsepower.
Ol' Scratch
Penalize electric motors? Eh? They're some of the best Power Plants in the game, especially Electric Fuel Cells and especially for civilian purposes.

Without any modifications, a standard EFC sedan goes 60mph/96kph (and up to 105mph/168kph without any engine customization or turbocharging), has a Load of 450kg, and can go up to 150 (to 375) kilometers without recharging. The basic cost for a barebones EFC power plant in one is only 4,000 nuyen.

A baseline gasoline-powered sedan travels at about 75mph/120kph (and up to 120mph/192kph without turbo/customization), but only has a Load of 300kg. Other than a slight speed boost, it's only other useful trait is that it has a range of 480km (to 840km max)... but with the EFC you can get a GridLink or even a SunCell and never have to worry about refueling (especially with the latter). The basic cost for a gasoline-powered sedan is 2,500 nuyen; not a hefty price reduction, especially considering the cost in gas you have to pay over the long run.

don't really see how that's an unfair penalty whatsoever.
Cray74
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein)
Penalize electric motors? Eh? They're some of the best Power Plants in the game, especially Electric Fuel Cells and especially for civilian purposes.

Yes, the EFC does alright. However, can you make a battery-powered car with the acceleration and top speed of Saab Dynamit?
Ol' Scratch
Mostly an unfair question because there is no Sports Car power plant available in an EFC or Battery plants, but I'll do it with a Sedan just to prove the point anyway. Saab Dynamit: Speed 250, Acceleration 15.

Sedan EFC Power Plant: Speed 140, Acceleration 12. Engine Customization 2 for Speed +60. Turbocharging 3 for Speed +45 and Acceleration +3.

Final Stats: Speed 245, Acceleration 15. And that's in a Sedan chassis and power plant, not the Sports Car chassis and power plant that the Dynamit uses.

Sedan Battery Power Plant: Base Speed 100, Acceleration 9. Engine Customization 4 for Speed +90 and Acceleration +2. Turbocharging 3 for Speed +45 and Acceleration +3.

Final Stats: Speed 235 and Acceleration 14. Which, again, is in a Sedan chassis and plant. Note also that the Saab Dynamit comes with Turbocharging 2 standard itself.
Cray74
Outstanding. Thank you, and I stand corrected.
Cray74
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein)
Sedan Battery Power Plant:  Base Speed 100, Acceleration 9.  Engine Customization 4 for Speed +90 and Acceleration +2.  Turbocharging 3 for Speed +45 and Acceleration +3.

Final Stats:  Speed 235 and Acceleration 14.  Which, again, is in a Sedan chassis and plant.  Note also that the Saab Dynamit comes with Turbocharging 2 standard itself.

Two questions:

1) The limit of customization (speed) is 75% of the original. In the case of an electric sedan, that's 100, so the new max is 175. However, you've added +90 (3 levels of customization), which would give a speed of 190. Question: Do you apply the full customization speed bonus (+30/level), or truncate it if the bonus would exceed the maximum (i.e., it's limited to 175)? (As I sketch up my own electric sports car, I'd obviously prefer the former, not the latter, but I wasn't certain.)

2) The limit on turbocharging (superconductive drive) is 1.25 of the vehicle's "original maximum speed." Question: Is that the 100 of a maxed-out sedan/electric battery engine (in which case the limit is 125, or 2 turbocharging levels, pre-customization) or is that 125% of the post-customization speed? (In this case, I'd prefer the latter, but again I'm not certain.)
Ol' Scratch
I'm a little tired, so I hope I can be somewhat coherent in this response.

First, there's really no sense in using a Battery plant for a sports car (I prefer to call them muscle cars since we're using a tweaked Sedan chassis and plant) built for speed. It's like using Methane for one in lieu of Gasoline or Diesel (or in Shadowrun's case, Jet Turbine). So I'm going to stick with the Electric Fuel Cell for the rest of this discussion.

1) Yes, the limit for Engine Customization is, indeed, +75% (I think better in percentages) of the original maximum. In my mind, that means the maximum design speed, meaning before any other extras are added (like turbocharging and whatnot), but not design features like Speed Increase or Smart Materials. So in our Sedan's EFC Power Plant, that maximum can be as high as 140 through Speed Increase alone. That means we can crank it up to 245, or +105. Engine Customization boosts Speed by +30 per level, and I (and I'm sure this is a house rule) always round up in cases like this, but we'll go ahead and round down just to avoid disagreement for now. We can give it 3 full Speed Customization jobs, or +90 Speed.

2) The same holds true for Superconductive Drive. It let's us hike up the speed by +25% over the base maximum, which for us is +35. Using the rounding down mentality, that means we can add in two levels for +30 Speed.

That gives us a Speed of 140 + 90 + 30 or 260. If we rounded up, it would be as high as 305 (140 + 120 + 45).

This assumes that we went with the maximum Speed Increase during the design process, too. If we had added Smart Materials (which could help us get around the lack of a Sports Car plant), our max Speed potential would be 161 base, which let's us get Custom 4 and Super 3, for a final Speed of 326(!). If we rounded up, it would be 371(!!!).

Cranking Load and Acceleration follow the same philosophy. At least that's my take. I mean, if the limit were +75%/+25% of the original Speed (not max Speed), that would be kinda silly to me, especially since most of the other vehicles already designed that have Turbocharging/Superconductive Drive seem to break that philosophy.

And yeah, I did mess up with the Battery example above. I wasn't paying attention to the Maximum Limits when I threw it together. And now that I think about it, you are probably supposed to truncate; it's the only way Superconductive Drive could really work since it affects three different attributes of the vehicle, and it wouldn't be fair to limit all of them to the worst one. At least to me.
Cray74
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein)
First, there's really no sense in using a Battery plant for a sports car


Is there something less effective about battery power plants for sports cars than other sport car power plants?

QUOTE
2)  The same holds true for Superconductive Drive.  It let's us hike up the speed by +25% over the base maximum, which for us is +35. 


That's what I wanted to know, thank you.

QUOTE
And now that I think about it, you are probably supposed to truncate;


And thank you again. That's what I suspected.
Ol' Scratch
Oh my god, I guess they do allow for Sports Car Battery plants just by giving the "All Others" category. That's so silly since they don't provide one for Electric Fuel Cells. Sorry. I stand corrected in a major way.
Cray74
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein)
Oh my god, I guess they do allow for Sports Car Battery plants just by giving the "All Others" category. That's so silly since they don't provide one for Electric Fuel Cells. Sorry. I stand corrected in a major way.

The existance/non-existance of sport car battery power plants wasn't exactly something I was trying to prove, so while you might've made a small oversight, I don't think your recent recognition of them counts as a "major correction." wink.gif
Zach21035
Oh... my... god...

We've just had a debate where nobody got flamed, nobody got yelled at, and nobody got accused of not reading eachothers posts. And they wound up agreeing with eachother.

Cray74, Dr. Funkenstein, you are my new heroes.
Ol' Scratch
The really sad thing is that the battery plant for a sports car would be outperformed by the sedan battery plant. biggrin.gif
DV8
Why any shadowrunner would use GridGuide or a non-internal combustion engine is beyond me. You'll be traced in no-time, and if you're in a high-speed chase, Lone Star'll cut the power to certain grid-sections so you'll be dead in the water. Oh, and there's the problem of going into the Puyallup, of course.
thunderchild
QUOTE (DV8)
Why any shadowrunner would use GridGuide or a non-internal combustion engine is beyond me. You'll be traced in no-time, and if you're in a high-speed chase, Lone Star'll cut the power to certain grid-sections so you'll be dead in the water. Oh, and there's the problem of going into the Puyallup, of course.

Because your armored Dynamit with the Popup LMG and anti aircraft missiles sucks for nipping down to the stuffershack?
Moonstone Spider
Most electrical power plants give you a hefty sig advantage over the internal combustion ones, in addition to the infinite power options of Suncell and Gridlink. Electrical vehicles can actually make a lot better getaway cars due to evading sensors even if they don't have the speed and acceleration of their internal combustion cousins.
Ol' Scratch
QUOTE (DV8 @ Dec 21 2003, 04:49 AM)
Why any shadowrunner would use GridGuide or a non-internal combustion engine is beyond me. You'll be traced in no-time, and if you're in a high-speed chase, Lone Star'll cut the power to certain grid-sections so you'll be dead in the water. Oh, and there's the problem of going into the Puyallup, of course.

It's a good thing, then, that few vehicles (especially those a Shadowrunner would use) rely entirely on the GridGuide for power, and that they also introduced Transponder Libraries to get around the tracing bit, huh? Not to mention that you could/should be able to turn GridGuide off anytime you like, especially since most GridGuide systems don't supply enough juice for high speeds anyway.

But when you're just cruising around like you are 99.999% of the time, it's nice not having to stop at a gas station.
Cray74
QUOTE (DV8)
Why any shadowrunner would use GridGuide or a non-internal combustion engine is beyond me. You'll be traced in no-time, and if you're in a high-speed chase, Lone Star'll cut the power to certain grid-sections so you'll be dead in the water. Oh, and there's the problem of going into the Puyallup, of course.

Grid Guide or GridLink? One's navigation, the other's power.

Sure, LoneStar can shut down part of the GridLink system, but GridLink'd cars always use GridLink as a supplementary power source. They use their fuel cells or batteries at other times. You can turn off your GridLink connection yourself.

(And if you did mean GridGuide, well, hell, you can turn that off and go to a GPS/map system.)

The advantage of non-internal combustion engines to runners is their signature. Batteries and fuel cells both start with a signature of 5. That's well on your way to stealthmobile without expensive investments.

There's also the advantage of being able to cross tractless deserts and arctic wastes without refueling. You just need SunCells to top off your batteries.
Ol' Scratch
If it's any help, here's a muscle car I designed about a year? ago for an adept "rigger" I was designing. It lacks any rigger adaptation or armaments, and was built purely for speed because he was a speed freak. It has a Speed of 294 (about 220mph/350kph) and an Acceleration of 25, but comes with 2 permanent Stress Points due to the heavy tweakage.

Harlot (2042 Oldsmobile 442 Classc)

It's just the raw stats and a picture as I didn't feel like typing up all the fluff text for it. I would have posted it here, but I didn't feel like fighting with Dumpshock's limited control tags to get the formatting right. smile.gif
Cray74
Most excellent muscle car.
Lantzer
Electrics have their uses. Especially if you're Green.

Suncells are nice for long-distance work, but of limited usefullness inside the Seattle Metroplex. (Clouds. Rain. Acid rain. And smog haze on nice days. Tall shadowy buildings downtown. Winter.)
Frag-o Delux
I am not sure the amount of use in SR, but if it cheaper for Average Joe to use an electric car then it would be a good idea for a runner to use them in certain situations on runs. It would not be smart to drive a Dynamite into Blue Collar Town UCAS if you are looking to do some recon, or your Armored Step Van into Uptightville looking to do an extraction, unless it is a plumbing van. wink.gif I have taken the Monorail into certain places because that is how most people in that area got to and from work, I had a rigger friend close to the area with a get away vehicle, if I needed to get out quick.

EDIT:

Just remembered a funny time. Our GM likes car chases. Well I figured out that a lot of college kids used scooters on campus to get around so I figured I would use one to scope out the mark. Well a SNAFU later we are running on our scooters chasing a guy though town. Funny as hell high speed chase (well aorund 45 Kph) and the screwy rigger had squeezed Nitrous on to his for giggles. He would later crash his in a ball fire trying to break the land speed record chasoing the mark.
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