Ares’ Secure Rail Transporter (SRT)

The Ares’ SRT is the definitive secure cargo transport. Wither they are highly valuable (like Orichalcum, magic focuses, gold, or deltaware implants) or highly dangerous (like cyberzombies, bioweapons, or prisoners) the SRT can get it there safe and unmolested. Bristling with autocannons and protected by drones the heavily armored vehicle rides the rails with the firepower of a small army. When the rails are blocked there is a heavy tool arm to cut apart the obstruction. If the rails are destroyed the hovercraft add-ons allow it to take to the air for limited amounts of time to maneuver around the disruption. Integrated Biofibers even prevent enemy mages and spirits from projecting into vital areas of the train. Most companies declare their trains to be facilities, and there for have Extra-territoriality. While they are secure, they are not cheap; a standard train will cost upwards of 15 million . For the few logistics companies that own them freight charges tend to range from 10 to 100 per Kg (approximately 50,000 :nuyen per ton).

Common stats:
Hand:
Accel: 5/25
Speed: 100
Pilot: 6
Body: 20
Armor: 25 (Smart Armor)
Sensors: 6
Signal: 6
Hardening: 6
Avail: 32F

Equipment (all)
Life Support (lvl2)
Personal Armor 10
Rail Propulsion (Primary)
Hovercraft Upgrade (Add On backup limited to 2 hours of use in 24 hours.)
Anti-Theft System (Electrified Hull)
Force 6 Biofiber panels
Tac-Net software
Fiber Optic Network (All systems are wireless except for the drones and communications)

Engine:
Crew: 1 Driver rigger, 1 drone rigger and off duty rigger.
One engine can pull 5 cars without a reduction of speed. After that drop the top speed 5 per car.
Cost: 5,000,000
Mechanical Arm (Grapple)
- Jackhammer
- Hydraulic Press
- Welding Laser
- Chainsaw
Fuzzy Logic
Multilaunch drone rack- 20 Dragonfly drones
Missile Defense System
Manual Controls (Drive by wire)
Ram Plate
Rigger Adaptation
Satellite uplink
Crew quarters (3 coffin sized sleeping areas)
(1)Reinforced armored remote flexible weapon mount (Top)
-Ares Firelance Vehicle Laser
(2)Reinforced armored remote flexible weapon mount (1 per side)
-GE Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon
-1,000 round ammo storage

Cargo Car:
Crew: 4 door gunners on duty, 2 off duty.
Cost: 2,500,000
Missile Defense System
Mechanical Arm (Grapple for loading cargo)
Cargo area: 15 meters x 5 meters x 5 meters. Can hold 10 tons of cargo
Crew quarters (6 coffin sized sleeping areas)
(4) Reinforced armored manual flexible weapon mount (2 per side)
-GE Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon
-1,000 round ammo storage


Caboose:
Crew: 3 door gunners on duty, 2 gunners off duty, 1 backup rigger.
Cost: 3,500,000
Crew quarters (6 coffin sized sleeping areas)
Large landing drone rack
- McDonnell-Douglas Nimrod (Aerial Combat Drone)
Missile Defense System
(1)Reinforced armored manual flexible weapon mount (Top)
-Fleche Hail Barrage Rocket Launcher
- Anti-Vehicle Rockets
(3) Reinforced armored manual flexible weapon mount (2 per side; 1 rear)
-GE Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon
-1,000 round ammo storage

I see one glaring weakness that I would exploit but would be a simple fix. Where's the Hardening. I understand it is a fiber optic system but even an optical system has components that are EMP susceptible. Other than that this thing is a monster. It's is the equivalent of a military transport with that amount of firepower. I would hate to hit this thing with a frontal assault.

If I couldn't hit it with EMP to disable a majority of the systems I'd have to hire a team of Hackers and Riggers to disable the thing before attempting to even get close.

I definitely like it.

I thought Hardening was assumed now a days? I'll have to see about that.

It does have a few weaknesses; but I figure what is going to stop a Draco-form from stealing your stuff if it really wants too. And moving goods over long distances via air travel is to risky/expensive.

EDIT: Added hardening 6 per Arsenal pg 58. Not sure if it needs to be spelt out, but its there.

BRodda: I really enjoy your posts- you have some really creativity ideas.

This is quite interesting tho. I've been working on a little somethin' somethin', (potentially for DDH if that ever gets off the ground) that involves a run on a train, except its a commuter train (intercepting a data courier). Maybe we could collaborate? Any ideas on how you would "demilitarize" this bad boy and stat a passenger car?

P.S. I could send you a preview of some maps if you promise not to share... (PM me an email address if you're interested).

Those are either VERY weak engines, or extremely heavy-when-empty rail cars. Considering the average empty cargo rail car is about 30-ish tons, your cargo capacity is very low, granted, however, you are loading them up with lots of armor and guns.

Size is pretty good for a box car, although some cars are longer, and some are shorter, depending on their usage. For the sake of easyness, however, keep them all the same length.

One engine not being able to pull twenty five cars, even when they are empty, seems a bit weak-sauce.

Your average engine is somewhere between 2500 and 3500 horsepower, and can safely pull .6 tons of weight per horsepower. These engines of yours are probably a bit better than average, we'll say around 4000 horsepower, meaning they can each pull up to 6666.66 tons of cargo safely. Round to 6600 for simplicity.

I'd make it that each engine can pull a maximum of 50 cars(for brake system pressure reasons), with each car weighing some 50 tons empty.

Each car then being able to handle up to 100 tons of cargo (but more commonly being loaded with far less).

Therefore one engine could pull about 44 cars at max loaded weight of 150 tons each (50 ton car with 100 ton cargo) at 6600 tons total.

The train would have to be capable of reaching at least 15mph, or about 24 kph, or 20 game speed units, at max load to be economically sound. Therefore speed could be reduced by a maximum of 80 game speed units at maximum load. Speed should be subtracted at 1 point per 82.5 tons of weight to keep this system viable, although a better reduction formula would be 1 point for every 100 tons of cargo, leaving some speed for the train to work with even at maximum load.

Ugh...all this math is making me hurt...

Realism should be capable to being had with only a slight increase in math on the GM's part, not the massive word problem I posted above.

Never mind doing all the calculations... My final suggestion is to:
-make each engine handle up to 50 cars
-each car hold up to 100 tons of cargo
-and the speed reduction formula to be about 10 points for every 7 cars (closest I could come up with while still keeping it simple enough to approximate in one's head or do with a simple calculator)

Don't worry about the math, I'm an engineer

A few notes on why I chose some of the numbers I did:

1) Each car carries more armor than a Citymaster. Add on that, the bioplanks and all the armaments and I figured each car weighs as much as 10 normal cars.

2) The relatively low cargo carrying space and weight also has to do with the fact there has to be living quarters and space to move around for the 6 security personnel in the car. So its not just packed to the gills with cargo room.

3) The biggest by far reasons for the weight restrictions however was the hover capability. A floating 500 Ton train stained my believability to much. I was going to put in a line about maximum number of cars that would be pulled without using hovermode, but I figured that they would never load them heaver than they could hover.

Shoot me a PM and I'll give you my personal email to tone down the train.

I'm not sure whether to start a new thread or to necro this one, but here goes:

I've been thinking about setting up a train robbery/job of some kind for my SR players. Maybe make it a train datasteal or extraction, for that extra 2070 flavor. We got Awakened wilds in the North Woods in our game (playing in Minnesota), so that could throw in some extra stuff too.

That's all I got. Thoughts? Has anyone done a 'train job' kind of run?