I just wanted to share this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8442808.stm

The link is about a conflict between Japanese whalers (boo!) and the activists boats. Check out the details of the boat at the bottom of the article. It's the James Bond black ops boat from Hell.

Sleeps 6, 78 feet long, a range of up to 13,000 miles, top speed of 40 knots and capable of submerging up to 23 feet and oh, armors glass windshield and kevlar plating-official to defendd against icebergs but that sounds unlikely if I'm being a suspcious type.

I'm guessing unofficially to defend against POed Japanese whalers. How many icebergs are around Japan anyway?

The article said the boat was built for a round the world race and was bought by the protestors a couple of years ago. But you look at that puppy and all I can think is serious black ops craft. The bit there doesn't mention it but earlier reports refered to it as a 'stealth' craft.

It's a race craft.

The boat in question looks too suspicious to be used by any sensible 'runner. It practically shouts "I'm up to no good."

I'd rather have a Mark V (and the SEAL platoon that usually comes with it.)

It's certainly nice in a futuristic looking way but for $2.5 million and those performance statistics it's not very good. A much better boat in my opinion are the smuggler boats that Crompton Marine - a firm from Lincolnshire here in the UK - were building for naughty people doing the Morocco/Algeria to southern Spain run a few years back. Take a standard 20 meter RIB, make a few modifications to get a nice low profile to help avoid radar, enlarge the fuel tanks, and then add eight 250-horsepower engines. Here's a picture of the eight engines and another from a different angle at sea. For only £350,000 you get a boat that can apparently carry five people, five tons of 'cargo', and has 2000-horsepower with a top speed of 60 knots. Even taking the best of exchange rates that's still $1.8 million cheaper and 20 knots faster. In my games boats like these are fairly common in the Adriatic doing the Balkans-Italy run and in lots of other places.



Nice but rather expensive. Ah US Naval Special Warfare Command and the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, always a good background for your small boat smuggler/pirate types.

Too bad the Ady Gil sank.

That 8 engine boat may be good for coastal ops, but I don't see it having near the range of the Ady Gil. It also doesn't look to have berths, or much in the way of prolonged cruise amenities (head, berth, galley.)

Yeah, you won't get far without a kitchen

am I the only one that hopes the Japanese win these conflicts? Seeing those whales hunted and pulled out the water makes me hungry for some sushi!

I don't think whale is used in sushi, though I guess it could be.

Oh absolutely, it's definately a short to mid-range smuggler/covert specialist as designed. To equal the Ady Gil for range you'd have to have it carried by a larger vessel that stood far off the target whilst it ran in and back.


Bottled water and ration packs. Chances are you're either going to be some sort of government/private sneaky types in which case you'll do as you're ordered or you're specialist entrepreneurs that will put up with it in return for large amounts of cash.

Googling would suggest otherwise.

True, but on a longer voyage, morale will plummet quickly without a kitchen. Especially on a small boat like this where the only things to do are eat and sleep.

Edit:


Ewww... that doesn't look appetizing at all

We all know this is what the average runner can afford for his at-sea ops.

http://www.tonyrogers.com/humor/images/somali_pirates.jpg

Not really. A Yacht is only listed at 17k. That's well within the price range of your average runner.

whale sushi looks appetising to me. Fried chicken fingers looks very nasty.

a yacht for 17k would be a very very small one... most should be in the 100k nY+ range. That is still not too bad I'd think for a team though unless they lost it every single run; in which case they are supid or the GM is an ass.

If you think about the Sea Nymph of the core rulebook, it's 170K, not 17K...

Oh? I hadn't noticed that get errataed.

This is the current goal for one of my runners.

The Ady Gil was originally named Earthrace, and was built to "break the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a powerboat", which it did on June 27, 2008.

Afterwards it was loaned to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for "non-confrontational" use. During such use it was sideswiped by a Japanese whaler, which completely destroyed the bow of the Ady Gil eventually sinking her. There was no apparent damage to the whaler.

The reason the boat would be good for runners is stealth; note that it can operate as a submarine. The flaw is that it is built from light-weight composites for racing purposes. Many games overlook that for very fast (or flying) vehicles, the construction required means that any collision or crash basically totals the vehicle.

———
Related note, an old rigger character of mine used a limousine with ruthenium polymers and full submersion capable amphibious modification. It also had a drone rack using micro-skimmer drones that had the same submersion capable amphibious modifications. So I could sneak around borders as a quiet-running submarine and blend in to almost any city as just a limousine. The drones (which could be launched and retrieved under or above water gave situational awareness during combat, and when using boat ramps (to remain unobserved). The catch was that it could not (without magical aid) outrun any dedicated water craft.

not quite true the A-10 is very durable. for fast or flying vehicles one can make them heavy and very durable; one simply must burn more fuel in a large powerplant to make up for the extra weight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V0k9UoJIGk

or one can go black lagoon, using a leftover MTB:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Torpedo_Boat

or maybe scale up to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skjold_class_patrol_boat



oh, i guess this could also work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_Boat,_River

The A-10 is a good example of design in that it has at least triple redundancy and much of the design is focused around keeping the pilot alive and the vehicle flyble enough to return to base. That does not mean it would not be damaged beyond a reasonable point of repair by any collision, only that it has enough redundancy for that last return flight.

After it gets back it may be rebuilt with enough parts; but so could any totaled vehicle. I was using totaled the same way insurance does (the repair cost is more than the second-hand value of a replacement, I.E. cheaper to replace than repair.) In the case of manned combat aircraft, the amount of maintenance per flight hour is high enough to effect these economic calculation.

Just an example: According to the USAF, the variable cost per flying hour—so not including purchase or procurement costs, just what it cost to operate once you have it—"for the F-22 in 2008 was $19K, while for the F-15 was $17K"

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/z...mages/zubr6.jpg

There's always demand for more smuggling space...

What I find funny is that the anti-whaling protesters call the collision "an unprovoked attack". Really? Because whalers are in the business of sailing around and looking for anti-whaling protesters to ram into?

Now you're just not using your imagination.

But it's very hard to play handball in such a small space!

Also, going fast, almost anyone who tries to read/do anything involving a small screen like a game boy is just asking for sea-sickness. Of course, my plan would be to just pack the MREs and that sweet new "My Little Pony 198: Fluffernutter and the Decimation of Toyville" sim.

-bangs head on keyboard-

I saw the news story when it first broke. At first I thought it was a joke because the activists boat looks like something Batman would use.

Errated maybe not. 170K is the SR4A price, and it makes much more sense.

It is designed this way because it goes through high waves rather than over them, and so need to be partially submerged for a short time without taking water, but it cannot operate as a submarine.

I have seen multiple sources that describe the boat as fully submersible down to 7 meters.

Have you seen the outfit in question on Whale Wars? I give them credit - the only weapon they have against the Japanese is PR, but I've gotta say, they're such professional bullshit artists that you'd think they work for Horizon. That said, the show is equally terrifying; they had two people with some fairly serious injuries after tripping and falling while on their ship doing nothing in calm water. The fact that they haven't had any KIAs yet is absolutely unfathomable to me, although that'll indubitably change since this marked their second ramming attempt on a ship of vastly superior tonnage.

Look at the design : only internal combustion engines, no ballast, no vertical control surfaces, no life support... and it's obvious that while it is designed to resist being submerged that deep (which is likely to happen while moving fast in rough sea) it's not made to operate underwater, even for a short time.

Oh yeah, I've seen the show. They are all crazy. Not that I condone whaling, but these guys terrorize the Japanese whaling ships and go out of their way to make things like this happen. And I know what you mean about the injuries. In one of the few episodes I've seen a woman had her pelvis broken while riding on the side of a zodiac raft, which is a life threatening injury. She was very lucky she didn't bleed into her pelvis and die.

On the high-end boats, what of the Spirit of Australia?
http://www.kenwarby.com/images/spirit.jpg
It hit 317.6 mph back in 1978.
Wouldn't someone be able to make a faster boat or extend it's range as three weeks on the water is fairly normal for a slower boat, though a speed boat probably will only give you a few hours at best.

the link I posted includes that it can submerge up to 7 meters. My guess is it'slike the WW1 &2 german subs that can run underwater on electric engines