Building something like a jet plane would be prohibitively expensive 100 years ago, even if all the theory and designs were available - there simply wasn't that level of infrastructure and technology available in society. A 2GHz processor ten years ago was not something you would see in anyone's computer, today, they're everywhere. You can't judge the costs of tomorrow by the costs of today. Things become standards or even commodities. Maybe the world of SR2070 has military patrol submarines as a much more standard part of a nation's armed forces, or even something private security firms will use.

Military jets got even more expensive though, as did much of the other military hardware.

The cost of a submarine has increased as technology sophistication has increased. The Seawolf-class nuclear submarine costs 1.75 billion dollars (FY92) to comission. Conceptual design start is at 12 years, construction at 6 years with comissioning and delivery at 0 years, decomissioning at 30 years. Maintenance, overhaul, and decomission costs in total 667 million dollars for the Seawolf class during that period of time. An extension of its operating life to 35 years, consisting of one overhaul of 200 million dollars increases its overall maintenance costs to 867 million dollars. In 1994 the United States was looking at limiting itself from production of 2-3 submarines a year to 1, lowering itself from a fleet ~65 to 40.

I don't think the submarine being referred to is anything close to equal to a Seawolf-class nuclear submarine. Though there is a nuclear attack sub listed in Rigger 3, and I believe the price is a bit closer to what you're talking about.

It should also be noted that the Sub in question is tiny in comparison to a big SSN like the Seawolf or the Los Angelas class. While judging the subs actual size and displacement is probably impossible, I would wager that they are good deal smaller then even common SSK subs of today. Given that, the listed price may not be so far out of line.

If anyone is interested I served on board submarines for 4 years. They were SSBN's, but if anyone wants to run scenarios on submarines I may be able to give you some interesting insight.

The F 117 costs over 1 Billions dollars, before pay load.

The F-22's cost a lot too. When they were blown up in the Transformers movie I was thinking how much it would have cost US taxpayers if it was real.

Then again, I think the money valuation is SR is very different from what we are used to now. I mean many of the bioware mods done would probably cost millions if they were possible to even do today. Maybe even 100's of millions.

Hah! This says so much about you, or the society we live in these days... where people see a fighter jet blown up by a giant robot and ponder the waste of their tax dollars. I'm not sure exactly what it says, but I think it's healthy.

On the subject of the sub, I agree with the spiralling costs of the cutting edge giant subs, but I see the little patrol one in Arsenal as the kind of trickle down lesser project that would be available for cheap. As technology rolls forward, it leaves behind a wake of more basic implementations that cost less but suit more basic needs.

William Gibson put something very well, once: "The future is here, it's just not widely distributed."

In SR2070, the cutting edge may still eat up MithralMAge's tax dollars at a shocking rate, but the rest of society has by this point got its hands on some of the future, too.

My thoughts, And as to who wears MilSpec armour... LARP'ers with too much money?

Khadim.

In April 2006, the cost of the F-22A was assessed by the Government Accountability Office to be $361 million per aircraft. This cost reflects the F-22A total program cost, divided by the number of fighters the Air Force is programmed to buy; and which has so far invested $28 billion in the Raptor's research, development and testing. That money, referred to as a "sunk cost", is already spent and is separate from money used for future decision-making, including procuring a copy of the jet. The Unit Procurement Cost was estimated at $177.6 million in 2006 based on a production run of 181 airframes.

As for submarines, looking over production of United States submarines over a period of 1960 to 2006, weapons and payload have developed whereby they carry more missiles, torpedoes, mines and are expected to operate in multifunction roles. Correspondingly, displacement with submarines have increased.

The Russian Federation has developed smaller, diesel-electric patrol submarines, such as the Project 677 Lada class. Germany continues its production of Type 214 submarines for the German Navy and its partners.

Actually, the German (as well as the Italian) Navy employs the more advanced Type 212-class submarines.
Nevertheless, I assume, that the submarine mentioned in Arsenal is something more similar to those "conventional hunter/killer-subs" like the Type 212/214 oder Lada-class-submarines, than being a nuclear powered missile-platform (Even, if the Type 212-sub isn't really cheap, costing about 400 million €/boat plus 150 million € development costs, sadly I found no price-tag for the 214ers).

Umm...so by making an updated, even by today's standards, "attack sub" the corporation is gaining what exactly? To be frank, if these new subs can't be used for spec ops insertions, launching cruise missiles and torpedoes, is stealthy as all hell (by advanced SR standards), and still carry a decent amount of recon sensors then it's, well, whack and nigh on worthless by even modern standards.

Umm... the USS Boston (the sub in question) appears capable of doing all those things. It mount torpedos, signature reduction, and drone racks. In the SR setting where covert ops are generally favored over armed intervention it would appear to be a just about perfect tool.

Anyone with a shred of style? If I was a shadowrunner, working, mostly, in urban environs, I wouldn't want to run around looking like a corporate stooge.

I think you're neglecting the setting. Balkanization, combined with a corporate-slanted world structure basically ensures that the only armed conflicts are going to be contractors vs locals, or at the Desert Wars. Remember, there's a lot of aquacologies for smaller submarines to both watch, as well as insert personnel onto.

one thought that visited my mind was that rather then hand out the armor to the special ops, hand them out to the engineering platoons that need to do all kinds of crazy things, and fight, more or less at the same time...

We use heavier armour for EOD work, but even so we do go out on patrol and for instance in bridge demolition work that does not demand heavier armour. Every day is a different day with us REs.

-Chrysalis

And I feel that this same balkanization is what will drive military technology to more use of OTS technology and increasing multi-role operational capabilities. Why pay 'X' new-yen for a sub that can only launch torpedoes, have a reduced signature, and carries drone racks when you can design it with a bit more money to also carry SDVs and add cruise missile capabilities? It's a lot easier to get the bean counters to Ok a bit more money to add a capability to an existing project than it is to get them to Ok a whole new project that does something that should have been thought of in the first place.

Add that there will be multiple suppliers to worry about rather than the pork barrel "one supplier only" BS we see today, dramatically increased use of OTS technology instead of all custom parts, and the complete lack of the cost-plus contracting we see today where the budget and the timeframes don't really matter, and you will start seeing dramatic reductions in costs for most military equipment for SR vs what we see today. The buzzwords by SR will be "On time, on budget, and to specifications" rather than "Whenever we get around to it, after we milk it for as much scrilla as possible, and it might work after a few years of tinkering."

This is what happens. See the F16. But what that typically results in is something that costs nearly as much as multiple seperate platforms and can't do any job particularly effectively. There are almost always subtle tradeoffs needed to make the new mission work that compromise the original design mission.

So being the finest dogfighting aircraft in the world for two decades was a "tradeoff"? *looks confused*

Because that's what your customers want. Some shipping corporation or pirate raider or oil company or espionage crew don't want something with city-threatening cruise missiles because they'd never use it and it would just make them a target that governments had to hunt down and destroy out of defense. Why pay millions extra for something you don't want?

In SR2070 there is a market for such small vessels. And there is also the technology to produce such a product at a reasonable cost. Therefore it exists.

Yes, but that is is spite of the changes, not because of. They had to modify the wing to carry the air-ground ordinance and increase the diameter of the fuselage to handle the radar. This increased the range at which you could see the aircraft. The addition of the nuclear control cabling was bitterly resisted, etc. The initial production aircraft was about 25% heavier than the prototypes, with commensurate loss of performance.

So you're saying that it's cheaper to have two separate systems with their individual training, logistics, and maintenance than one such system that is truly omni-role, and thus, is much easier to take care of. Sure, if you don't want it, that's one thing. But if you do want it, it's much cheaper to have the capabilities you want in a single efficient platform.

As for the last bit, why wouldn't they want a cruise missile capability (in the case of a full-on military-only submarine)? With all of this balkanization, everyone is a potential enemy. You have armed border guards, fer chrisakes. It's not like the world of SR is a stable place, after all.

No, it's almost always much cheaper to have four platforms do one thing well rather than one platform that does 4 things well. Find me a military program that was improved and made less expensive by making it multi-role. The DDG-1000? The F-4? The F/A-18A? The LCS program? Those that didn't get strangled in the cradle ended having major operational limitations, like the range and payload of the F/A-18A compared to the range and payload of the A-6 that it replaced.

Not to mention that "Quantity has a quality all its own."

The idea would be to have a true platform strategy, like the CVR(T). If you build four roles into one model, you put three roles to waste most of the time.

The benefit of having modular payloads depends on the cost of the carrying platform vs. the payload model, and the cost of a module change.

Or the JSF program.

The idea of one platform being a land based, a carrier based, and a VTOL aircraft with the swapping of a few (Ok, a lot of but still a lot less than a whole new aircraft) parts. The basic airframe is sound and you can add to it by swapping out a few modules and the like. The cost saving is enormous as you have a single airframe and engine system to worry about for logistics minus the extra mission-specific modules. There is also talk of making all of the non-VTOL craft carrier-capable as the beefier landing systems will require less maintenance from a land-based FOB.
The savings in not having to worry about double the pilots for one other system, and triple for two is also great because all of the pilots could theoretically start in the same school and then branch out for further specialist training for their roles. Add that the pilots could also be swapped between programs a lot easier without the run-up training from scratch and your training budget is much less over the service life of the aircraft.

My point isn't that you can make a single-seat fighter a ground attack, bomber, air-superiority, dogfighter all at once. It's the idea that military programs, due to their much more limited funding, will be forced into every program being at least some sort of (by today's, or perhaps yesterday's to be truly accurate, reckoning) multi-role. Air superiority fighters that can drop bombs halfway decent if they have to (like the F22 can do now). Ground attack capability added to an air superiority fighter (Strike Eagle anyone?). That sort of thing.

By having one airframe (or tank, or submarine, or ship, or...) and add-on modules for it you will reduce training, logistics, maintenance, and operational costs greatly which will have to be the case because it's the only way anyone will buy the damn things for that much money since the "superpowers" are now the guys selling these things to your rinky-dink balkanized half-ass "country" in the first place.

Am I the only one who really doesn't like the idea of using drones to do military work simply because it isn't any fun? Maybe it's all that exposure to Warhammer 40k speaking, but I find the concept of a bunch of marines blasting bugs a great deal more interesting than I do a bunch of drones zipping in and gassing them.

"Ok boys, saddle up"

"Umm...it's only been like 5 minutes, Sarge. How can the drone sweep be done?"

"Well, the general in charge has decided that sending in the drones with gas isn't exciting enough for him. So we're the first unit of the Brigade to head in there and get killed so he can get his rocks off."

"WTF?!?"

"Hey, think of it this way, Wilson. At least your family will get that 100K check for your insurance you're always worried about. Besides, once we and Platoon 47 die, he'll probably send in the drones after all to finish the job so we'll have not died for nothing..."

*LOL*

More like, "lets go because it's what the genre that the GM in charge is aiming for demands". Not everyone wants to run a military sim, and when I get that urge, I plan on using Phoenix Command or GURPS, not Shadowrun 4e, which is only slightly more realistic than d20.

You might want to try Millenium's End then. It plays pretty realistically and a lot faster than ol' PC.

I said:


You responded:



You seem to have had remarkable difficulty in understanding my post. There are people who want patrol subs. Therefore someone makes patrol subs and sells them to these people. You say: "Sure, if you don't want it, that's one thing." No - that is THE thing. If you're marketing to people who want a submersible with short range armaments, why would you tack on ten million nuyen's worth of land-strike capability? And yes, actually, quite often it is cheaper to have a cut down device doing only what you need it to do.



I have already answered this in the very post you replied to. Twice. The first I will illustrate with the following short scene:


Make any sense? No? Nor does blowing millions on cruise missiles for something I want to guard my shipping, not to mention increased crewing costs, maintenance, etc. etc.

As to the second reason I gave, I'll simply repeat it - it makes you a target. In SR2070, floating around the Pacific with a few torpedos is legitimate self-defense. Keeping ready firepower that could devastate a major city of a developed nation when you're not yourself backed by a developed nation, is just asking for trouble. You've put yourself in a whole different league where the only likely outcome is you getting squished.

I don't see why you have an issue with a small, armed submarine, but in the setting of SR2070 it makes excellent sense. I'd buy one.

And it depends on the mindset of the players - we tend to think pragmatically and, on occasion, outside the box.

If we don't have drones, fine. If the drones can't function because of the weather, fine. Its one thing to invent or introduce a genre-breaking gadget, if that is even possible, but its quite another to willfully discard something available in game in order to get a warm fuzzy.

The Ghost of Games Past is sitting on my shoulder, hitting me over the head for the time I talked my then GM into letting us re-fit a stock light cargo freighter into a proton torpedo launching platform.

While grotesque and horribly abusive, the fleeting expression of horror on the command deck of the pursuing Star Destroyer was...poetry.

-Siege

I would just like to point out I see absolutely no reason why a cruise missile cold not be placed in the drone racks. I figure your average cruise missile is probably about the same size as a body 3 drone...

2ndly, given that we have no example of what the stats might be of a big honking SSN like the Los Angleas class or it 2070 counterpart (if it exists), its not really fair to try and compare it to the USS Boston. For all we know the USS Boston might be on par or superior. Even if it isn't, I have a hard time beliving that one big SSN could defeat the 10 or so patrol subs you could buy for the same nuyen.

A probably more important question would be does the sub fit in Shadowrun? The USS Boston is probably as large a sub as the runners could hope to steal/borrow/buy and then use in combat. Anything bigger would more properly just be a setting. And you don't need stats for that .

And now we come to my dirty little secret. You see, I don't have to make sense. I can just blather on and on and sooner or later one of you kind people will get my point across for me.

Thank you, sir...

So talk shite for a while until someone says something sensible and then latch on to it? You were arguing against the existence of the small sub in Arsenal earlier. MaxMahem's point, if workable (I don't know much about cruise missiles) supports their presence.

It is quite possible in RAW SR4, the Heimdall missile is a mini-drone.

Looking at pictures of cruise missiles, they look about the right size for a Large drone. Or at least you could pass them off as one. And I don't know if it's the technical definition, but if cruise missile means only a missile that can fly and navigate for itself, then that missile in Arsenal qualifies. We probably need a larger class of drone for some of the bigger ones, but seems right to me. You can have cruise missiles on the smaller sub, then.

An attack sub is perfect for anti-piracy work. Keep all transport capability above sea, and your defense below sea-level. Any pirates that steal your ships are easy prey:

2 torpedo tubes for high-tech torpedos : ships
2 large landing drone racks for two tricked-out nimrods: fast boats

Following the technology curve of yesterday, today and the future....The VN era RIM-8 Talos by today's standards would be Intermediate range Ballistic missile. So by 2070 the size of a cruise missile could be small to micro drone.

WMS

See what I mean? I blather, you make sense for me. Batting 1000 for me here, boys. You ever think about joining the Major Leagues with a swing like that?

Now add that the US military has developed a multi-function warhead for an infantry-sized missile and you're good to go. Imagine these subs being able to not only track and target the enemy but to launch an independently-targetable missile, potentially with multiple independent warheads per missile if you have the space, that can scan, determine the composition and size of the target, and then explode in the most efficient manner to take out said target. The current version will fragment for infantry, create a self-forged penetrator for light skinned and armored vehicles, and finally a HEAT explosion via the Monroe Effect for harder targets. I can see multiple smaller warheads striking multiple weak spots in a larger target's hull and/or superstructure rather than hitting it with one rip-snorting charge if that proves to be more efficient overall, to have each warhead hit an independently-mobile target in the most efficient manner, or any combination of these options.

Of course, this also begs the question, "Why don't SR infantry weapons have this capability as well rather than going with the 1960s model of a different warhead and/or delivery system for each type of target?"

Why does anyone in SR ever miss? Remember the motie warrior fight in "Mote in God's Eye"?

If you are looking for extreme No-fun in a combat oriented RPG that seems to me to be the way to go. Even if it is "realistic".

Eh, so your just a troll then? This will be my last reply to you in that case.


Are you sure your playing Shadowrun?

I'd rather discard that object simply because if drones are as efficient as they appear to be in Shadowrun, DARPA's dreams have pretty much come true. The human element is mostly unnecessary in warfare except as drone operators and drone mechanics.

One thing that kind of drives me nuts about these forums is that I can be discussing a topic and not get my main idea across correctly for other people to see it froim the direction that I am. Oh, I dance around it pretty well but eventually another poster looks at what I had written and says it the way that I should have put it in the first place. A bit annoying to me, as I'm judged as being pretty communicative on the whole, but quite worthwhile in the end result.

As for the Troll bit...I'm just an idea man, MaxMayhem. You guys post stuff, I respond. You might not like or agree with everything that I post because I tend to see things through the looking glass of "Well, that's nice. But how do they do everything else that this entails?" realism over "Hey, who gives a rip? It's a game!" cinematics, but my ideas are just as valid as anything else anyone posts.

And yes, I'm playing Shadowrun. It's not your Shadowrun or anyone else's here, but it's basically the same game that you play. You'll see all the different stuff in a "standard" SR game (if such a thing exists) combined with some of the mil-spec newtek that is coming into use now but the DevGrtp hasn't gotten around to yet in the sourcebooks, but it's basically the same. Mine is probably a bit nastier, however, in the realm of SOTA bang-bang but that's also why our game tends to have nothing heavier than semi-auto shotguns, the very occasional AR, and SMGs so the PCs aren't all alleypaint in three IP or less.

"You want to roll with the big dogs, you better learn to piss on tall trees", as it were. And we'd rather not have to look over our heads while we urinate, thanks.

Don't forget the Restricted Gear positive quality from Runner's Companion... For 20 BP, you can get heavy milspec armor with all vision enhancements (put ultrasound on an additional camera for ease), all audio enhancements, r4 Ultra-wideband radio, r6 Radio Signal Scanner, r3 Str enhancement, r3 Mobility enhancement, r3 Insulation, and r6 Fire Protection, Thermal Damping, and Nonconductivity, with Ruthenium Polymer coating to boot, and the helmet has r6 Comm integrated. Not a bad use of 20 BPs, IMHO.

Yeah, the real controller for missile size tends to be fuel, which SR4 abstracts. Barring antimatter or other superfuels, missile size should be related to fuel, probably in a square factor, e.g. double range requires four times the size (since you need more fuel to carry the fuel to get you more range).


And going back to milspec: Who uses it? Anyone who wants to take a facility rather than demolish it, especially if it involves a serious NBC threat like a WMD production facility. Armored vehicles can knock the walls down and aircraft can blow the roof in but only MilSpec can kick the doors in and leave the facility intact.

And warhead. 2000 lbs of HE can't fit in a shoe box.

Sure it can! SR has magic, after all...

chemistry, more bang, less mass and volume...

Never liked that line of reasoning. If you can have the same bang in a much smaller package, where are the stats for bombs using that agent in the normal sized package?

Well, given the price and DV of the Azt Series-5 Iron Bomb, the answer is: use the Explosives rules for extrapolation. Dropping close to 900kg of good stuff kind of removes the need for a damage resistance test.

Which may very well be true for the Army, but Shadowrunners don't get the same perks and resources as the Army does.

You can also argue that certain situations are not well-suited to drones or are not as cost-effective - better you lose a dozen troopers than one tank, for example. Environmental conditions interfere with drone control. Humans are harder to hack by opposing drone controllers. Sarah Conner needs a hobby.

But all that said, there are certain situations where if I have a drone available, hypothetical developments in modern warfare notwithstanding, I'll still send it in first. "Anything try to eat the drone? No? Well, either they left or they're getting smarter."

-Siege