I was looking through the turrent available in the Rigger 3 Revised book and I noticed the parts for adding turrents to vehicles are virtually impossible to get a hold of. Mini turrents are the easiest to get ahold of and they have an availability of 13. Remote turrents are even worse, with a basic mico turrent having an parts availability of 17. It is far easier to simply get a hold of a Steel Lynx Ground Combat Drone (and with an availability of 8, even accessible to starting characters (though I would much rather mount a anti-aircraft pop-up turrent on a Ferret). I think turrents should be a little easier to come by, at least for , at least mini and micro remote turrnets, considering I could probably get the parts at Radio Shack.

In the immortal words of Blackjack... if you don't like the rule in the book, change it.

I do agree. I think the availability is far out of whack and I dropped them by 4, if I remember correctly.

There IS NO F$@#1&G "N" in the word "TURRET".

There is NO NO F$@#1&G word as "turreNt".

Stop raping the english language. This one of the most common and annoying misspellings for a two syllable word I have ever seen in my life.

[edit] sorry [/edit]

It's common?
At least written language doesn't have people adding a T to the word chess.

~J

Sorry... sorry...

Playing online games, specifically SubSpace, where 80% of the playerbase misspelled the word and honestly didn't know the difference, it got to me after a while.

Oh, and to nitpick, your double-negative sentence up there states that there is a word "turrent".

~J

Yeah, cause the whole "Oh and to nitpick" part is a separate utterance.

I always thought the Finnish rules for punctuation were difficult, but English has like 150 pages worth of stuff on just how to use a comma correctly. You guys need to do something about your language in the near future, or else the rest of the world will. With a very small part of the world's population living in countries where English is the main language, but everyone being "forced" to use it, it's going to get simplified over time, whether you native speakers like it or not.

The word turret is safe, however. There's no way it can be misspelled turrent if you think about it at all.

Back to topic: The availability of turret-related stuff should be really high. Turrets aren't exactly common on the street. I challenge you to find a non-military vehicle that has a turret in it. If it's a ground vehicle, it must also be unarmored. Of course in Shadowrun, where they are so fricken useful, everyone would want one which would reduce the availability. And everything in the ~10 range is already really hard to get at.

So if it came up in my games, I'd probably drop the availabilities to ~9 and 11.

Well, comma rules aren't too bad once you get used to them.

Like, you know?

They're there when on both sides when you can eliminate the part of the sentence without destroying the overall meaning, or when you would take a breath while speaking it.

Anyways, my group normally steals their stuff, so that's not much of a problem. Although I would keep the availability. It's not like it's really easy to make one "fall off the truck", if you get my meaning.

Crazy Finns. The language becomes more complex the more people that speak it.

It used to be a nice Germanic tounge until the Frogs invaded in 1066. Then we Americans got a hold of it, and it adopted worlds from all over the English empire.

But it's not like you'd be looking for a "plug and play" turret. You could go out and buy a mechanical arm and pretty have all the parts you need to make a micro or mini turret, except the housing (which would be the easy part).

The "oh," was an exclaimation that I decided didn't have enough weight for an exclaimation point. My use of and to continue from there is questionable, but I believe my comma was correct.

We really do have strange discussions here, don't we?

~J

::begins singing::

"Interjections (Hey!)
Show excitement, (Yow!)
Or emotion. (Ouch!)
They're generally set apart from a sentence
By an exclamation point,
Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong."

ah yes, Schoolhouse Rock was da bomb!

Well, Bit did apologize -- and I was still trying to figure out what a turrent was anyway...

-Siege

Yes, sort of like having the ability to scrounge and jury rig things.

I over use commas all the time. I make them my bitches.

I over use commas all the time. I make them, my bitches.

~J

Almost, but, not, quite correct.

^^
Comma use as taught by Captain James T Kirk

Quick! Mount hostilities! Make them Finlandize!

~J

Austere if you're going to simplify the English language could you please hurry it up.
I have enough problems with this language already.

Speaking of Finlandizing, we have a university up here called Finlandia University, yep that's right abreviated FU. I wonder who thought that one up. I'd like to shake his hand.

m-w.com sez:
Main Entry: Fin·land·iza·tion
Pronunciation: "fin-l&n-d&-'zA-sh&n, (")fin-"lan-
Function: noun
Etymology: Finland
: a foreign policy of neutrality under the influence of the Soviet Union; also : the conversion to such a policy
- Fin·land·ize /'fin-l&n-"dIz, (")fin-'lan-/ transitive verb

I suppose it could also be used for a foreign policy of neutrality under the influence of just some major power and not neccessarily Soviet Union.

Fucking Kekkonen...

AAAAAAAAUGH BADGER NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Gm's Fiat. Ares OHVDBRES(1) Fires from orbit and kills Neon Tiger! AAAAAAH

(1) Orbital Hyper Velocity Directed Bovine Reentry System.

DIEEEEEE!

That's disturbing. I just realized that I know people who, because of their accents, really would say "assualt"

~J

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

Well, Khrushchev did roll the tanks in on Budapest during peacetime... it really wasn't so much of a consideration in many ways then. If the Soviets had moved in on Finland, odds are no one would have tried to stop them, what with the US forces and allies already praying for the Soviet forces not to make a move on West Germany/West Berlin.

~J

OK

1. I'm english. Actually english from that place where Kevin Costner can walk from the south coast the three hundred miles to Nottingham by nightfall. Apparently. And as an english person - the language is stupid, and I've got a pretty good handle on it. I mean, any language where you could theoretically spell 'fish' p-h-o-g-h-t-i is screwed up, ok? No argument there. There's no point arguing about it, he's right, on all counts, including grammar rules not changing. Officially anyway. Of course they have in reality, but not in the way its taught.

2. the thread's supposed to be about turrets being too hard to get hold of, so I'm actually gonna try to answer that. The english discussion is actually really interesting, so I'm not complaining or anything, but turreNt availability is quite interesting too

(fwiw, I've never ever heard them called or seen them spelled 'turrents'. But I kinda like it. Combat-ready dried fruit with a 360 degree arc of fire... and I'm going to call them turrents from here on in just to annoy Bit Basher. I'm sure I'll suffer for this, but to be honest that first post of Bit's was so funny I want to see what happens when the ire is turned my way!)

So...

Like someone said, its military tech to obtain turrents as parts to add to something, so yeah, they're damn near impossible to get hold of. That's the rule calling. Anything to explain the rule calling though, is a houserule and pure opinion. Fortunately, I've got lots of both, and will be using them liberally through the rest of this...

You can buy security grade vehicles with turrets on. Why? Well, there are entire vehicles out there that because they've been in service for a while or because of the comparitively low armour ratings or other capabilities, qualify as Security grade even though they are made up of mostly military or ex-military level tech. But that's because its an overall package rating. Individual parts might still be military tech, according to the customisation/design rules.

IMO I would argue entire turrent replacement of a branded vehicle could be more easily obtained than parts for a turrent you were going to build yourself. And if that vehicle is security grade, then I would also argue that availability/SI ratings for parts specific to that vehicle should be security grade too, which might lower or raise the availability/SI for those parts. But I wouldn't feel out of order to rule they may only be realistically useable on that specific production line vehicle. Trying to use them on a different one might even cause Stress or something.

Also, AFAIK, Availability, like street index, is for buying goods illegally. For getting stuff legit I would only use it as a rough gauge as to whether somewhere will stock whatever it is, depending on what the shop is. Even if they don't, if they have the clearance to buy it I'd probably just use the time period as how long it will take for them to get whatever it is in stock. A turrent isn't likely to be stocked by any shop in existence, but if you go direct to the manufacturer with your security permits they'll maybe fix it for you.

Now, obviously, most players WILL be getting whatever it is illegally. In which case you're damn right its hard to get turrents or turrent parts (y'know, like seeds and cell membranes... ahem.). I mean, where the hell would you get the parts, even if you could botch it with bits of cyberarm as someone else mentioned? 'Uh, yeah, i'd like some bearings and a rim please, about yae big. Oh, and they have to be able to withstand sudden pressure equal to, say, ten fifty calibre rounds per second...?' No.

Ok, I (probably obviously) know nothing about how turrents are made (except that the best ones come from French and Californian vinyards ), but the point is, this stuff is made for a specific purpose. If the player character had the relevant design and B/R skills, i'd certainly let them put one together out of reasonable sounding bits, but barring that or a contact to do the same, they're gonna have to get all their bits from a manufacturer who makes combat turrents, either legit or via smugglers and the black market - but SOMEone has to at some point have got them from a military/ heavy security supplier.

Would it be easier to find another steel lynx to salvage the turrent from than to find a turrent on its own? Yup, probably. But that steel lynx turrent might not fit anything but a steel lynx because of its design, and if you try to use it to fit on your car or whatever, it might have unforeseen side effects (obviously Gm call). Maybe the hardwiring in the electronics doesn't like the non-company signals its getting from your autonav or something. Maybe even a Stress point.

Now, there will be some companies that supply generic turrent bits, and there's nothing stopping you using them to repair your damaged Lynx if you can't get a specific Lynx turrent from the manufacturer. But they will usually only sell in bulk to other companies to use in their own production lines, and occasionally smaller orders for repairs. They aren't going to be used to selling one or two, because people who bought the other company's production model will go to that company for repairs. The turrent manufacturer will very rarely sell to an end user. This will make them suspicious and will even more thoroughly vet your credentials. All of this would contirbute to a very high availability. You might as well be trying to buy a tank when you consider the number of places you can actually shop for them if you want to get away with it. And that only leaves you the black market - where someone somewhere has to have got this stuff from a military or contract level supplier.

Legwork to coerce someone at the turrent company might work of course, but that's about it.

Which I'm afraid leaves you with either a shadowrun all on its own to get the parts (and who knows what other goodies you might pick up along the way?), or a high availability roll to make.

Wow. Long post. Cup of tea needed, definately.

That was 11 years after the war, when the situation had been stuck on "slight hostilities" for 10 years. Though that might be what the book meant, I've no idea when it takes place. Still, I'd like to know exactly what that "bigger fish" was, since economically Finland would certainly have been a better piece of real-estate than Hungary. Perhaps geographically as well. And Hungary was already a communist state and in the Warsaw Pact, something which Finland never was, and there really was a revolt.

[Edit]Nicely done, spotlite. Brought us back on topic, and with a sensible post with which I agree 99%. I don't know what that 1% is that I don't agree with, but I'm sure it's there somewhere...[/Edit]

I have to say that in the two weeks Ive been reading this forum, Spotlite's reply is the most informative, fun to read and perfect reply I have ever seen on the dumpshock forums.

Thats Crazy-go-nuts good!

Actually, the nonexistance of turrents might explain their high availability...

~J

Dammit, and I was real careful about that. I didn't even use find and replace. I had to try VERY hard to deliberately mis-spell. Every time I did I'd see one of the teachers at my old school standing with a board rubber ready to throw...

Bitbasher: LOL, I'll remember that in future.

Kagetenshi - that's got nothing to do with it, its the fact that you can only grow them on certain types of rare soil....

DamienKnight - thanks for the compliment. That's probably the first post I've written with any coherence, too...

damnit!

I can neither confirm nor deny .. oh to hell with it. It doesn't work when politicians say it, and it won't work for me. Yes, I did it on purpose. BWAH HA HAAA!

Not to hijack the thread or anything back to the topic, but check the Errata on the Official SR site. The turret availability was altered to vehicle base cost / 400 or some such. makes mini and micro available but not the others, which is in line with the vehicles available int he game that are under availability 8.

Well spotted! So some turrets are reasonably easy to get. For the ones that are still hard, I stand by my in-game rationale for why. which is a houserule etc...

Whilst this thread has, in fact, been reasonably resolved, I would like to continue with two (possibly inconcequential and certainly rambling) points:

spotlite: Well done, fellow Brit! Chin chin and all that!

BitBasher: Whilst I applaud your demands for the cessation of sexual hostilities toward the English language, I feel that the Americans, having fought a war for independence, should have given up all rights to the English language. The Queen's English has been taken by other nations and nigh-on destroyed - for example "pants" are worn underneath TROUSERS.
Since any reasonable claim to mastery of the tongue should therefore be denied, you are also denied the right to complain. "Turrent" sounds terribly American to me.

If, however, you are an Englichman who happens to live in the USA, then a) I apologise and b) what the hell are you doing over there you traitorous wretch?






Only pulling your legs... xxx US US