The "Medicine Shop" is called a "Valkyrie Station." I was insisting on one of those from the get-go.

A few notes:

1. Ear is our rigger, I figure that if we are fighting, he can be doing better things than working a LMG.
1a. Milk Ducks operates a LMG at a 3 because of his specialisation
1b. I have a 2
2. I was suggesting the shop, mostly as a joke. However, note that between me and ears we have alot of armorer skill running around.
3. I think that ship repairs might be best left to a drydock, between us we can probably jury rig the ship to run long enough to get there
4. We might want to invest in leasing a warehouse for our "runs."
5. Perhaps we can let kids run up on the warehouse in the Zodiac while most of us play "Opposing Forces."

Actually, runs we can offer:

1. the kids start on our boat, and assault the warehouse.
2. the kids start at the warehouse and assault the boat.
3. the kids are on the boat and have to fend off an attack
4. the kids are at the warehouse and have to fend off an attack

We can either be their opponents, or--if they can put together a large enough group--we can let them play against eachother with us giving them "professional advice."

Uh, things such as what?

Mad mechanic skillz? Check.
Rigger? Run fer the hills!

Karoline and Whizbang are rolling the rigging aptitude in the party. Ears is a combat guy who likes to build stuff...but he has in own very favorite gun, so that does limit the needs for a common LMG. However, if we need to lay down suppressive fire, they still might be worthwhile, I'll probably switch them to be on pods and therefore cheaper. But I am pretty sure Knight will like the added fire potential and will most likely be skilled with those weapons. Enough of the skill is running around that I feel justified in purchasing two of these weapons, but if you guys want we can reduce it to one.

Previews experience with firepower heavy groups tells me: If you know how many machine guns you have you need to get more.

Seriously, put them on a smart firing platform, load 'em with blanks and scare the rich kids senseless with simulated fire from everywhere.
Throw in real ammo and you just got yourself a cute guard dog.

Aww, come on ears, you know you want to be our rigger

Anyway, I suppose a nautical or aeronautics would be best as those will be the specialties of my character (And generally the most useful on a boat) though I personally have trouble picturing a vast difference between the tools required to fix drones/vehicles of various sizes. Perhaps we could pay double to have it apply to all types of mechanics? I mean they all need wrenches and... ummm... other mechanic tools... It isn't like the difference between nautical and aeronautics based tools are going to be quite as huge as the difference between nautical and hardware or nautical and medicine (You know, good medicine)

I'll just wait for Penta to say one way or the other.

P.S. If a medicine 'shop' is sufficient to do so, I think my character will have the requisite skills to install 'ware.

Cyber/Bio repair to me would seem to require a facility. The medical station is essentially a non-mobile medkit, by the desc in Aug (pg 124). You need to pick its rating.

Now, were you to go with a medical shop, mobile or non-mobile, it's kind of like a nursing station. It can do standard lab tests, store medications, etc. It's essentially a clinic.

A medical facility, finally, is an OR, if you make an inference from Aug that Tacoma General has 6 medical facilities...6 sounds, conveniently, like a nice number of operating rooms for a big hospital to have.

Didn't figure the medical station would be able to do cyber/bio repair, but would a medical shop? Perhaps even enough to do ware instillation. I mean you generally go to a shadow 'clinic' to get your wares anyway, and there is a description of some places where you have wares installed being little more than a clean(ish) room with some medical supplies.

Also, did you have any ruling on getting a 'general' mechanic shop that would be able to handle all four types at something like double the price of a normal shop? (Since they all use such similar tools)

I addressed the medicine issue a post above.

As far as the difference between nautical and aeronautics...

I'm going to split the difference. If you pick one, you have the tools to do the other as if you were defaulting, so at a -1 penalty.

Additionally, in the nautical case - you don't really have the capabilities in a shop to perform major repairs, which would require a drydock. This is especially the case for hull damage. You can, at best, patch damage.

In the aeronautics case - Major repairs require a facility, but "line repairs" (basically, anything that would logically only require swapping parts) can be done with a shop.

To be really honest, I cannot fathom what is meant by an aeronautics mechanics or nautical mechanics 'kit'. I can barely fathom what is meant by a shop. A facili8ty is the most-readily imaginable creature out of the three - a drydock or repair depot.

Karoline makes a good point. Can we get add some surgical ability to our medical station by purchasing the appropriate medical supplies? Scalpels, a surgical table, clamps, suction machines, by pass, blood infusers, that sort of that thing? Just enough to take patch up any serious bullet wounds and it won't be a full OR.

That is unless our God Penta rules a standard medical station (rating 6 preferably) would take care of such wounds without additional medical supplies/equipment?

The fluff is really, really inconsistent as to what's required to install/repair 'ware....And frankly, I'm not sure, even after reading aug, what a medical shop is supposed to be. A clinic was just my best guess.

I'm going to rule on the general mechanic shop issue later. You're right that the tools are similar - but the problem is what the hell do the rules envision at each level of repair? Facility is easy - a drydock, a repair depot, etc. Shop is harder to envisage. Kit...Well, damn, I can't think of many nautical or aerospace repair tasks that, realistically, require any less than what might be envisaged by a shop. A shop, I might let you get away with (very) jury-rigged patches to the ship. Aircraft I have no good handle on. And a kit, well. A kit I can't possibly imagine. Aircraft and ships are simply too complex for that in the real world.

In short, it needs some arguing.

Now now, I'm not your God...I'm God's delegated assistant.

This is really an issue where I'd like opinions: What do -you guys- see a medical kit/station/shop/facility being?

Similar for nautical mechanics and aeronautics mechanics. What do you see a kit/shop/facility as?

Well, I'd imagine that a kit/shop is more designed to deal with drones than with a full fledged plane/boat. That and it would include the sorts of tools to go repair the engine and just general maintenance. I never figured a shop on a boat would be able to handle hull type repairs of any kind on the boat itself.

Woo, description time! (No posts for so long and now we're getting all overlapped)

So, for a nautical/aeronatuics mechanic kit I would envision something like a collection of the different kinds of adjustable wrenches (Monkey wrench, allen wrench, etc). Throw in some screwdrivers, bolts, nuts, lugs, washers, whatever, and of course some 2072 duck tape and you have enough to handle basic repairs to a vehicle (Basically all the kind of stuff you might have to work on your own car)

A shop would include all of these tools, but with a wider verity. It wouldn't just have adjustable monkey wrench, it would have dozens of different sized ones, for working with really small or hard to get at things, as well as particular large things. It would also very notably include space and tools to hold parts. Clamps, adjustable lights, plugs, maybe even going down to things like soldering tools. That is the sort of thing a real diehard car head might have converted their garage into. Basically everything they really need to work on their car more or less.

A facility would be a shop on a large scale, and would more or less be similar to the garage where you take your car to get fixed. For the most part they have the same tools as what is in a shop, but they all come in power verity, and they have hydraulic lifts .

I think a dry-dock would be something entirely different from a nautical mechanic facility. It would be the place you put your ship while you use the attached facility to work on it.

As for the medicine verities, I see medicine kit as being the 2072 equivalent of the medieval 'doctors bag' in which you have scalpel, tweasers, needle, thread, bandages, forceps, and all the bare requirements of performing a surgery wherever you are.

At the shop level I see something along the lines of your standard OR. It is clean, it has tons of tools and drugs and movable lights. At the facility level I see more ER grade things, and just a better OR. It includes the electronic microscope with giant plasma TV, it has limitless shelves of supplies, it likely has its own sink. It is also just plain -bigger- so that more staff can move around easily. And in the world of SR I'm sure some of the defining diffrences between shop and facility would be things like robotic arms or drones to help out with tasks, integrated specialized software, and large databases of relevant knowledge.

Been quiet for a few pages, but only because the conversation's a bit over my head. I have very little actual SR-game experience, so my input is worth very little in discussions like this. I've been monitoring everything, though, and I really like how things are taking shape. Keep up the good work guys, hopefully we can start playing soon.

-milk.

Nooo! My triple post!

Anyway, finally got a chance to look over the mods to the yacht (With my book on hand) and had a few questions:
First off, doesn't the ECM 6 mean that we will be basically unable to use wireless on the ship? I guess that would be only when we turn it on, but I just want to make sure that I'm right about that.

Second, what is the operation time of the ship? I notice we've gone through and gotten improved economy and an additional fuel tank, so I'm just curious what kind of run time we have. (Since we have 4x normal operation time)

Do we have drone that is designated to use the drone rack?

Those are my big questions for now.

So, read through arsenal and it says that you only require a medical shop in order to be able to perform the surgery required to install wares, so a medical shop might be nice to help with healing, reduce ware cost, and make getting the ware easier as you don't need to find someone to install it.

Quick bits:

I'm basically not using op time from Arsenal - rather, I'm borrowing the Classique's fuel economy from R3 and using that.

Hours of op time makes wonderful sense in a car running on solar/grid power. Not so much when you speak of a ship, running on diesel, that should be able to go for days, if not weeks between refuelings.

If anyone has a better idea, throw it at me.
---

You may be -able- in theory to install ware with a shop...But I'm gonna rule "Not on a ship". At least, not of this size.

Why? Because ships pitch. And roll. And generally do not stay still, even when stopped. As it would suck if the scalpel slipped or something...Well. You can think it out from there.

There's also the purely OOC consideration that it would make things too easy.

However, I will allow maintenance of ware aboard ship.

Karoline:

ECM 6 will effectively jam pretty much everything yeah. Thats kind of the point. If you are concerned about getting jammed as we go into a high speed boat chase, we have skinlinks to the ship, it would, however, sever remote connections to any drones you might be using. The ECM is a final line of defense that we will HOPEFULLY never need. As you may note in our "group gear" section we have a pretty nice directional jammer that will hopefully see much more use.

I don't have R3, but from what Penta says it sounds like we can go at least a month between refueling. Seems wise to me to have that kind of flexibility for when it becomes "hiding time".

Currently the drone rack is empty, feel free to negotiate with whizbang for its real-estate.

I don't have too much of an opinion as far as the shops go, but I will say this: GM has said that repairs to our ship while on ship will be difficult. With that statement being made, lets go with an aeronautics shop so that we can default it into a nautical shop in case of emergency. As for medical shops, it would be a nice option to get our wares installed by a PC, but I agree with Penta, a shipboard surgical room is very risky business. And besides, the hardest part of getting wares installed is finding someone who can do it, not finding a place where it can be done. As long as we have someone we can trust while we are under, we can rent out a seedy medical shop in any one of a dozen port cities.

Totally agreed. Arsenal does make mention that ships tend to have weeks to months of op time. Telling me that your using the fuel economy from R3 doesn't help much though, as I don't know what that is. I'm curious how long we can stay on the water without refueling (Food and water concerns aside).

As for the medical stuff, if it is an OOC concern then we won't have it and that is that Pitching/rolling wouldn't be a big issue on a ship of this size as long as we're in calm water. Even more so since that pitching tends to be very steady and thus doesn't affect things much once you have your sea legs. Regardless I'll not argue the point any more, if GM doesn't want us to have it, we don't have it. The med station should suffice for taking care of basic injuries, and cyberware repairs can come on over to the machine shop

Edit: Alright, just wanted to check that that was what would happen. I need to know that sort of thing in advance so I can set my drones up to respond to the ECM being kicked in.

Hmmm, negotiation is only a 1.. going to be hard to get that space

Oh, and agreed about having a very long op time. I suppose we could even carry some extra fuel in the cargo hold for last ditch needs.

Well, I thought it was in this thread...Ugh, lemme look through R3R (damned un-OCR'd PDFs) and find the base fuel economy.

Edit: Found it in thread from 2 years ago when I last tried this concept - H & W Classique (Yacht) at 500 liters of diesel economy at 2 km/liter, 1000 km range.

I'm gonna adjust the fuel economy to 2.6 km/liter to represent more efficient engines since the Crash 2.0...And since Rigger 3 generally. Adjust the range accordingly.

So, we have 2.6 * 500 * 2 * 2 = 5200 km range, which is about 3250 miles. We can float around basically as long as our supplies hold out, though if we just float too long we're eventually going to have to burn some fuel to keep electrical stuff on the ship working, though I'd imagine that would be fairly darn minimal.

So, sounds like we have about as much operation time as we have food on the ship

I should note that that's for cruising speed...Not a tactically-useful speed.

Please do not ask me the speed of the ship in knots or meters per turn...I would have to do hydrodynamics. I don't know *how* to do hydrodynamics.

I would thus have to ThorCow you.

UGH! My head is too full of numbers, I am resigning as gear designated gear getter guy after this post. We are still missing any sort of food or water (how do you want to handle that stuff Penta). And I was not able to get us TWO zodiac ships but I got us 1 tricked out one...

Purchases with the 500,000 Loan:

Thank you for the numbers work, CD. You've earned the 2 karma previously awarded.

I stated...a bunch of pages back how I'm going to handle food. Water we're...Y'know what, we're gonna assume it's included with food.

You have 17640 for this stuff, since it wasn't included with the rest (and since if you don't spend part of the loan, you lose it).

To recap, though, from here, as I stated there:

"Nutrisoy for low lifestyle is cheap with minimal flavorings, costing maybe cents for a day's worth; 14 days provisions costs maybe :nuyen:1000 for a group of 10 people with ordinary eating rates. Middle lifestyle, you get nutrisoy, but it's with every flavor assortment you can imagine, and you also get fresh fruits and veggies, though the cost is closer to :nuyen:2500. High, it's fresh fruits, a limited supply of real meat, and real alcohol, costing closer to :nuyen:5000. Keep in mind that, while the USN is "dry" mostly because of the long-ago Prohibitionist motives of Josephus Daniels, there are good reasons why you don't want alcohol aboard ship.)"

Water is included with all levels of provisions. I could price it out, and if I were motivated to I would, because fresh water is something generally rationed aboard ships. But for our purposes, presume you have enough for daily needs (short showers, not long showers, that kind of thing), regardless of provision level picked otherwise.

You buy provisions in 14-day increments.

Weather forecasts:

Again, to recap from that post:



I see no reason why you wouldn't spend the 1100 nuyen per month that it costs for full-featured weather data.

Fuel costs:

Diesel prices can (and probably will) change. But at game start, 5 per liter works. Your ship comes to you with a full tank for free. Please note that storing diesel in the cargo hold is a good idea at first glance, but there's no way to refuel the tanks from within the ship.

Don't ships have an external and accessible fueling port? It is a pain to refill by hand since the seas are rolling, but it's possible.

BTW, I like the ship's load-out. Perhaps it could use some Drones, but I'll leave it to the riggers. The ships get my thumbs up!

Just skimming through the posts I missed, but ECM doesn't block OUR stuff. We can set it to not blanket our own frequencies and whatnot so it doesn't disrupt us.

I'm all for not dying due to lack of medical care.

Ladies! Gentlemen! Species that can't pick between the two!

Once you spend that final 17640 of your employer's loan (I highly recommend using it for provisions, weather data subscriptions, and so forth - whatever you don't spend, you lose), I'd also like to see the ship packet done.

What is the ship packet?

Well, as Milk ducks noted a lot of pages ago, in a campaign like this, your home ship is as much a character as you guys are.

this post lays out what I'm looking for in the ship packet:

Name it. (The prefix is MY, Motor Yacht.)

Pick what country it's flagged with, and where it's port of registry is within that country.

Ship dimensions and basic data (floorplan recommended) - I really, really recommend this step include a floorplan, but won't insist upon it. It'd just be a great help, and I could see awarding karma to the best floorplan and illustrations presented.)

Ship background (is it new? old? Well-maintained? Used and rusty?) - even the newest ship can have a history.

If you can't think up stuff, I can - the only thing I can't do *taps his cane* is the graphical stuff.
---

Once the ship packet is done, and once the final characters are in (we're really waiting on the characters, I think), then we're off.

While you're waiting, this post lays out some of the OOC and IC background of the campaign.

Yes, I checked all my "Shadowrun case law" (every. Single. Book. that mentions the UCAS Constitution) to make sure the Constitutional bit still applied. I even looked into real case law, too, because I didn't want to be shown up by some US Supreme Court decision.

Keep in mind: Your characters do not know about the Letters of Marque.

They MAY know about the Secret Session of Congress, if they keep up on the news, but it took place 4 weeks ago - an eternity in NewsTime, and it was wedged in between the final weeks of the 2072 campaign for President. It would be a very rare thing (IRL, the House has only met in closed session 8 times since 1825; The Senate rather more frequently, 54 times since 1929 (before that they met commonly in closed session); I can imagine further closed sessions in the SR timeline but won't guess when they occurred - suffice to say, it'd be rare, and memorable)...And for once, perhaps because of the (bipartisani? multipartisan? howevermany parties are in the Congress in SR...) nature of the debate and the resolutions which followed from it, nothing leaked. Well, yet, anyway. Washington, it appears, can still keep secrets tightly-held when it wants to.

Campaign start is 1 June, 2072. (Actually putting us a bit ahead of the SR timeline - but what happens in SR will happen in-game, to the extent your GM has the books.) A bit moved back from the original 1 October start, but I remembered that 2072 is an election year - hence nothing gets DONE in Congress after about June, anyway.

Hurricane season starts that day - no storms are on the radar screens at the National Hurricane Center, but the season is forecasted to be active.

Oh, yeah. Memorial Day, as celebrated in the CAS and UCAS, was a few days back, marking the unofficial start of the summer season. Tourists are already flooding Miami.

Yeah, but I'm not sure (anybody a boater IRL that can say?) if that port is accessible when you're at sea. Particularly if the engine or generators are running.

Yes, it's a really !@#$%^&*()_)(*&^%$#@!#$%^&*() to fuel a yacht by hand, I got involved in helping out with that once... we ended up towing it back to the docks.

Okay, I have some concerns about the running gear:



Autopicker? I see alot of stealth being thrown around, and I'm not really sure how stealthy you can be abord a ship...

Catalyst Sticks are cool and all, but do we need 4 of them? Especially considering that I know at least one person already bought one in their personal stash...

6 Chemsuits? Again... that seems a little overkill, and I don't anticipate us having to go after something radioactive or a chemical agent of some sort as we are not equipped to transport it. That seems like something we should pick up if we're told we'll need it. I can see gas masks or respirators, but not full chemsuits.

Climbing Gear for what? We need a rope ladder and a couple of poles to lift it up. We're not going to be scaling mountains here... a set or two of rappelling gear, perhaps, but not climbing gear.

10 GPS units? Dear god! 1, perhaps 2, but not 10...

Grapple Gun requires an exotic skill that no one seems to have taken yet. I still say we're better off lifting up a rope ladder with some poles.

Light Sticks... okay, I can go with this, but we might want to check into how many of our combat personell have low-light/themographic vision. I know I do...

Medical Station... I thought we were installing a Valkyrie Unit on the boat? That's like having an ambulance onboard... I don't see us needing a full medical station if we have the VU. We can carry regular medkits.

3 Monofiliment Chainsaws... do we really need 3? I bought one for my personal stash so we'd actually have 4... I don't really see us needing more than 1 or 2; unless we are going to have fencing matches with them.

Rappelling gloves, I don't think we really need 10 pairs of them, seeing as how there's not much we can really rappel from... I might be able to air-drop a couple of people off my Sparrow and they can fast-rope down, but not that many.

Survival Kits, okay... I think this is one of those things that people should choose to buy on their own, because you can make arguments for and against needing one.

Tag Erasers... we just need one or two... not five.

I'm also not convinced we actually need a white noise generator. Who is going to be listening in on our conversations in the middle of the ocean?

Wire clippers... again, I think 5 sets is just overkill. 2 at the most.


Also, why are we putting personal armor on the Classique? Isn't that a little pointless? Personal armor is supposed to be like bullet-proof glass and stuff for small vehicles and does nothing for us if we already have 20+ points of real armor, it's just redundant. I think we should drop it in favor of the Valkyrie Module. Also, why are we putting a pilot program on the Zodiac? And a smoke projector? With the high-visibility of the water, I don't think that a smoke projector will be of much real use.

Why is our shop aeronautics rather than nautical?

Why do we need 10 fake SINs? Don't we have to specify what exactly they are and who's biometrics they line up with specifically?

Rather than ex-ex, I think we should use APDS. We have enough personal arms to fend off a small army, we need anti-vehicular weapons. Anyone coming after us is going to be doing so in something with alot of armor and teeth. We're better off punching alot of holes in their craft...

5000Y of explosives is alot when we only have 1 point of demolitions in the entire group (as of this posting). I mean... are we going to sneak onto the ship with stealth ropes and such, or are we going to cut it to bits and blow it up with our chainsaws and explosives?

What are the bikes for again? That's 13000Y for two racing bikes... can we get something cheaper that we can actually use to put stuff in and transport it (and perhaps us?)?




I'm REALLY sorry to be such a douche about all of this, but I just want to make sure that we are spending out money in the most efficient manner possible.

I think we do need to go over our expenses to make sure we're not wasting anything, but if I may reply?

Autopicker's not just for stealth, it's sometimes easier to stick that into something that shoot off the lock or break it somehow.

There are 4 Chemsuits of Rating 6, that might come in handy. 6 sets of Climbing Gear is also probably useful, even if we have our own we need backups. These probably include ascent and descent harness, more gloves, carabiners and crampons. Perhaps not all useful but we could make use of the harnesses.

The GPS is probably for our own use, perhaps even disposable. But I think we can make do with 5.

Grapple Guns only require an Exotic skill if you want to use it as a weapon. Light sticks are fine, I'd take even more just for the fun of it.

I don't know what either of those are. Is it in Arsenal? Probably glossed over that. And yes we need 3 mono chainsaws!

Why do you think we won't be rapelling down as often? Some of those freighters get real big. White Noise Generator... hmm I should probably get one. It only takes a Clairaudience spell to hear us, or for some kinda audio amp to do so. Regardless, it's just good ol' paranoia.


Personal Armour - It's for the glass, the stuff that can break while we're getting shot at.



I like that. Ballistic cloth lining the interior, non frangible interior stuff, and curtains of flexible armour. I'm not gonna complain about having 10 free armour while we're getting shot at.

Can we get APDS rounds? I went for Ex-Ex because APDS is 16F. Otherwise go right ahead and swap 'em!

We bought 5000 of explosives?

We do need some sorta ground vehicle don't we? I would suggest a hovercraft if we weren't nearly broke already. The GMC Everglades is 25,500 while a GAZ Pickup truck is 12,000. I'd argue for a Hovercraft, but we'll need to put Rigger Adaptation on it too.

MusicMan I wasn't trying to counter you or anything, just providing a different view. You brought up some great points and it pays to be that critical for shared resources.



I'm also working on a packet. But I've yet to nail the actual "look". Do we want shiny new or old? Reliable or work of art? Because some of these yachts are just purdy. And some are not. Some even have floorplans too! But they don't put in sleeping quarters and the engine room and the like.

My point about the armor is that I don't think they stack, I think that it is redundant... perhaps we need a VoG for that...

I maintain that we could go further with dropping the personal armor and getting a Valkyrie unit. We're not a warship, we don't need that much armor.

Perhaps. But seeing as how there are an awful lot of pirates in the Caribbean it may be a good idea to think about defense. Or surprise attacks for that matter.

We already don't have weapon mounts, I don't see the ship turning into a warship anytime soon.


Question: What are the SR3 stats of the Classique? Does it say how long it is? 50-60m sound about right?

Also, do we really need 10 Fake SINs for everyone? Can we not just work it into our existing Fake SINs? I'm sure we all have at least a rating 4, part of that background is working for the ship. Saves us a whopping 40k, enough for a hovercraft and free up stuff for the Zodiacs.

I concur... personal armor is better on a car... if someone shoots at it, you have a very good chance of getting hit. This is a huge ship, it's much, much less likely that you'll be in the way of any stray bullets. The Valkyrie would be more generally useful.

There's a lot of duplication of basic runner gear on the list... We should concentrate more on specific shipboard stuff, I think. Most of that stuff is legal and can be picked up later as needed. I took 2 fake SINs and Boat Licenses myself. 10 seems like overkill. If we're going through them THAT fast, we're in too deep for them to help.

Vis a vis diving gear, how many in the crew have Diving skill? Given that all of them will surely have their own gear, I'd say one suit each for backup would suffice.

A Gaz pickup with rigger adaption and a pintle mount for one of the MGs would be a very useful investment, a good utility vehicle. One or two Thundercloud Morgan ATVs (Only 7,500 nuyen) would be good for scouting on the ground and letting the clients drive around and shoot at things.

Speaking of which, we should get more than just Predators (though that is a good choice to start)... A few AK-97s and MP5-TXs would serve as "real" runner guns, though Smart Targeting systems are a must, or harmless ammo, plus some Lined Coats.

Drones... perhaps a Neptune sub recon drone (22K, Arsenal 122), and a few rotodrones or a Dalmatian.

Kojiro's Gear


Comparing my Gear list with the Shared Gear this is the overlap:

Perhaps we should wait on equipment and see what everyone chooses for their personal stuff before we start putting together "team" equipment.

I also don't think that we need all too much in the way of a ground vehicles. We are not going to be an amphibious operation (at least, that's the impression I've gotten from Penta). We should just have a simple vehicle that we can use as transportation when we make port.



@Budoka

I apologize in advance for this, today just seems to be my "be an a-hole" day...

Nothing personal, but your character has a really narrow array a skills, and you can only fight in extremely close quarters. Why should our team need you if you can only fight in unarmed combat? We already have two characters who can tear things up at close range with shotguns and have useful secondary and tertiary skills, and a third who is deadly with a knife. Your character fills a single role that we have more than covered. You might consider moving a few things around and rethinking your concept just a little.

You also never answered my original question: "what use would the Navy have for someone who is just a martial artist and how did you go through an enlistment and never pick up any firearms skills?" To which I would add, "why would they bother training you as a diver and not give you any particular skills to go with it?" I know Penta approved you, and I hate to call you out like this, but I don't see what, exactly, your character adds to the team that we need. Unless we are in a position where you can hit someone, you are almost totally useless to us... unless I missed something? It's a good concept for an urban group, but I can't see how you function on a ship. I'm sorry...

Gear is quite important in Shadowrun... the personal group gear/ship's locker should be dealt with some input from everyone. More LMGs would be good though, and a LOT more ammo for them. The Gaz is a must, the Thundercloud a useful backup... and small enough that it could be loaded onto the Gaz when/if the Gaz was stored on the ship (Is there the cargo room for that?).

Rusty's Gear



Overlap

Oooo, I just found something in Unwired that would be kick ass: Tacical Networking. Essentially, the software combines all of our information from various sensory inputs and adds dice to certain tests! It is on page 125 of Unwired.

Shall we get it?

Tacsoft:
Availability - Rating x 5
Cost - Rating x 3,000¥
Max Rating: 4

Text from Unwired:


I guess my only question is whether the software can be used on Drones?

VOG says Yes it can be. In fact, if I recall Buzzkill from SR4, that exemplifies a use of the tactical net perfectly. Drones may be indeed be used to -feed into- the tacnet.

I'm going to leave the stuff re Budoka aside. Budoka, that said, MM brings up legit questions, which deserve answers.

In re your amphibiousness: It may be needed. It may not be. Real-world, it may be that I, or you guys, want a brief change of pace, but without scrapping the campaign. We can certainly move to a land-based mission or two.

I'm -not- sure the yacht has the space for a Gaz, when combined with everything else.

Fortunately my char is flexible, he does not specialize in or only capable of Amphibian Operations. He can do it if needed.

Here's my ruling:

Concealed armor and personal armor do different things. Concealed armor deals with the hull and the exterior of the vessel.

Personal armor armors up the interior of the vessel.

Well, if your retiring I'm happy to take over as chief equipment officer. My character is already largely about equipment management so it totally makes sense.

My character is competent in explosives and already looks to have about 14 DP for it, so that could very much be made useful.

Give me a bit to go through the equipment list and what people are saying and we'll see if we really need everything we have and in the amounts we have. Along these lines I'm also happy to work on the ship blueprints.

I am fairly busy for the rest of this week though, so I won't have tons of time to work on this till Saturday.

Looking through the requirements of the TacNet, the requirements can be quite high:


For the cybered guys, this shouldn't be a problem contributing extra sensory info. However, for use non-cybered, we'd need to buy extra equipment for higher rated TacNet software. Ex: for rating 4 TacNet, each of us would need to contribute 8 sensor modalities.

Also something else:


Although this just applies to test by the software itself and not to test of boosts to character perception, this would definitely apply to situations for drones or having out CommLinks do the perception work for us.

I don't think # of sensor channels means the same thing as # of different types of sensors.

I'm fairly sure it means that your going to have to burn up 8 connections on your commlink to be able to receive and transmit all the data that is needed. I mean I can't even remotely envision every member of the network having to have 8 kinds of sensors on them, that would be ridiculous.

Thanks for the correction! Yes, only types of sensors.

From reading Unwired and SR4a, I'm not seeing any information about that connections and information problem. Real world that is a problem; it could hamper a network by quite a lot. However, may in SR4 there is more than adequate bandwidth...? Certainly there is no commlink penalties I can tell from having multiple sensors running simultaneously...or am I wrong?

I hadn't read it before posting, but just found it in unwired.

Basically each person would have to be able to provide 8 types of input. Visual and audio both count as input, as does lowlight and thermographic vision. Even smell counts if you can transmit that data somehow.



Most people can likely provide the following without trouble: Visual, smartlink, low-light, and thermographic. That lets people work under a rating 2 system without difficulty. And given as rating 2 is all we can manage due to availability I think that works out well. Actually it wouldn't be too hard to add audio and spatial recognizers via earbuds, so even a rating 3 wouldn't be hard. After that we'll likely have to break out sensors for people to have ultrasound and UV or something else.

Not a participant in this thread, but my Face2Face group just went through the rigors of solving TacNet issues which may help you guys in coming to a conclusion over TacNets.

I believe we've ruled that drones can both contribute and gain benefit from TacNets because its adding additional sensory input for the Pilot to use when making judgments. Natural senses can contribute if you have a way to send them. The easiest way to do that is to have a direct neural interface, which is easily obtained by having a datajack. That's what my Bio-Sammy does, so he provides Low-Light, scent, and Hearing as natural senses (I treat cat's eyes as overriding natural vision) through his datajack, then provides thermographic and his smartlink.

Cheers.

Thanks for that info, StealthSigma.

I'm going to take that ruling.

No problem and you're welcome.

Just make sure to keep track of what types of input are being given so that you can know if a check would gain benefit from the TacNet. The only reason any of us provide scent to the TacNet is because our face has his perception specialized in smell along with many augments that boost his scent. Remember that the Rating x 2 in required input is the minimum and that you aren't prevented from contributing more.