So, is no response a tentative, "Okay,"?

Any character with SURGE is going to have a high bar to pass. I will state now that your employer places a high priority on discretion - and to a point that includes not sticking out. From an OOC perspective, a lot of SURGE is...well, really cheesy, IMHO. I'm not implacably opposed to it showing up in my games, but I will admit that the prospect of a SURGE'd shadowrunner seems unlikely.

This looks intriguing, as a concept. The EW rules in SR4(A), though, are really more of a sideline to rigging or hacking. (This is in comparison to EW with Rigger 3 or R3R, where they became a team role in and of themselves almost.)
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I should note I'm not going to reply to every post. Simply ain't time. If I see problems, or a need to comment, I will - otherwise, I'll likely focus on more general stuff in my posts.

I really think as a team we could do with some air support. A Nimrod or two would cover it nicely and add to our tactical capability in combat. Long range spotter plus it can carry AV missiles and an other heavy weapon.

Seems fine. I'd link it to Logic.

Where's the Nimrod listed? Can't find it in SR4A or Arsenal.

Arsenal security drones IIRC

I'm trying to think how else the position of Comms Officer could be filled, though: perhaps more of a dedicated hacker? On the other hand, the open seas makes EW far more important, because if your network gets compromised, you're pretty screwed, unlike in an urban environment where there's always the ambient Matrix.

If not, our crew is going to be large enough to support one jack-of-all-trades, master-of-one, I think.

Incidentally: drones and weapons. Are they going to be personal property, or ship's property? I can see justifications either way, and while I anticipate that the response will be always-pleasing "some of both", it's still an interesting question.

For that matter, all "run relevant" equipment has a reasonably strong case for being owned by the ship. I guess most of that question is how militarized the crew actually is. A highly military and professional crew will probably be okay with most of the "big guns" being owned on a collective basis, while people who lack that background will probably be all antsy about "right to property" and stupid things like that

Okay, at Body 4 the Nimrod is probably too big to launch from anything besides a carrier, so far as ships go. I know that when the last group used a H&W Classique III as their yacht, I ruled that it lacked the open space on the deck for anything bigger than body 2 drones, in terms of launch/recovery. And we played the Classique III probably too big for its size, then. (Body gives no hint of a vehicle's true size, especially for ships, we found. We played it as something like 60m, a megayacht, when it might well actually have been intended as much smaller. Ships, you really need to know the thing's overall length, or have some hint of it.)

I second this question, I want to bring my Colorado Sylph and AmphOp Upgraded Steel Lynx!

You basically got it right re who "owns" what. It Depends. The biggest thing I as GM see as "common property" is the ship, and anything else bought with that loan.

Re Comms officer: I leave it up to you guys, I just laid down vague descriptions so people knew why the position was included. Last camapign, it was played as the team's hacker, yes.

People can fill multiple posts, or if the crew gets big enough that you want to divide some posts, that's doable too.

One thing as I ponder all that: You guys should know OOCly that your employer is basically the UCAS Navy. I explain how this makes sense militarily and bureaucratically eventually, or at least I intend to. Keep that in mind when you're designing characters - they're not going to scrape the bottom of the barrel so far as personality types go, for instance. They'll pick from the shadowrunners on the market, naturally, but they can afford to be picky. They don't need to be ex-mil or UCAS citizens. They can be experienced or newbiie as shadowrunners.

They really should be over...Okay, metatype differences make this odd, but for sanity's sake they should be at least 17 or 18.

They should really be amenable to being in at least a quasi-military environment. They don't need to like it, but it would have been laid out at the meet that the mission will be at sea and in a military environment. I mean, hey, consider whom your employer is.

(ICly, of course, you don't know who your employer is. I don't keep it a secret from the characters for very long at all - they don't try to keep it a secret once you've all signed on and stuff, but you don't know at the time of campaign start when you meet the Johnson.)

Um, yeah. Storage. How would you store a Sylph?

After looking at drone sizes and drone rack rules.. if we have a boat as big as the Classique III it can fit a large drone rack to hold the Nimrod. It would probably take up space on the boat that might be better used for something else though. So if you do allow the Nimrod/Large Drone Rack to fit on the ship we'll probably want to vote as a team on whether we want one or not... and it would fall under the ship's gear rule too, would probably be purchased with the loan that the employer gives us for the ship even. Just my 2

I should probably answer the actual question.

From my point of view as a GM: It depends. If you buy it with the 500k loan, it's group property, unambiguously.

If you show up with it, yeah, it can go either way. Small arms are probably unambiguously personal property.

Drones could be either, I'll let you guys decide that.

Bigger weapons? Again, it could depend.

How big is it? Body 8, maybe the size of a car? I've seen water scooters on the back of yachts, so maybe a bigger one might fit? If not, I'll swap it for a Bolt, reluctantly. Tbh, I was afraid of how this would come up. I like the idea of having a mini-fleet instead of just one ship. While I'm on the subject, how many minitorpedoes fit inside a small torpedo launcher?

My instinct says 1 torp per launcher.

FWIW, my view on the "sole ship vs mini-fleet issue":

I'm not going to hold you guys back, but I'm a fan of one ship. The way I see it, in a campaign like this, the ship should almost be a character of its own, sort of, with a history and everything. That's much easier to do with one ship with maybe a few boats than a bunch of ships.

Well, can my lifestyle be at sea? Basically my own mini-arkoblock.

How would you say I reload the launcher? Complex Action or a number of Turns? I just wanna bring one little boat along as an interceptor anyway. Also, what's FWIW?

It's VTOL and launch-able from a LAV in flight by RAW though a large drone rack might be needed to launch and retrieve it.

Netspeak for "For what it's worth"

Any chance we might get some Karma points? I mean, the guys are supposed to be no noobs and have certainly seen a bit of business prior to joining the Navy.

Xahn, re lifestyle: Nope. On Land. You can, alternately, skip buying a lifestyle and just live on the ship, in which case you roll whatever Low lifestyle rolls for starting nuyen.

Xahn, re launcher: I....have no idea. My gut says it takes way longer than a 3-sec combat turn.

Grinder: Mmmm. Thinking on this. My instinct is to say "No karma", because characters very well could be noobs. Note that the 20 points "slack space" I gave for BP also applies to karmagen, equivalently in value.

And for what it's worth, you aren't joining the Navy. You're, um...contractors.

Fair. The lifestyle was a long shot. I can have the sheet done tonight, where do you want it?

Alright; I have some more specific char related questions, now. Sadly, I can't PM yet, and my plan of spamming the boards to get to 10 quickly was one I quickly reconsidered. Should I ask the questions here, or do you want to drop me an email line? I think my email should be in the profile. Otherwise, PM me yours and we can get going.

By the way, all 4e books are allowed, right? (Specifically, Companion, Arsenal, and Unwired. Maybe Augmentation.)

20 BP is not that much Karma. I was thinking of 50 Karma Points. Makes sense for the Navy to hire a bunch of competent guys, I guess.

Not a problem, I've already been stating out a character without free knowledge skills. He was also originally built by SR4A rules anyway, so no trouble there. As for the difference between karmagen and BP, it can be summed up as focused abilities versus broad talents. BP encourages concentration in stats, as it doesn't cost more to buy higher levels. Karmagen is the opposite. Buying more skills costs less than buying higher-level skills.

Currently, he looks like mildly powerful adept (2 magic after a little augmentation). He has a fair number of knowledge skills, especially academic, to reflect his scholarly background.

I'll PM my email.

Minchandre: Check my profile. I have a number of contact options enabled. (I would *like* everything by email...Makes organization a lot simpler.) Hopefully, IM or something might work....?

The 4e books you listed are all legal, though not everything may be useful. (Genetic stuff in partciular seems ICly very new, and possibly only the province of specialized clinics.)

Oh, really? I was thinking of getting PuSHeD to reflect his background. (+1 to logic tests) >_>

That's my gut instinct, Faraday. As in, without digging through my books, that's how it seems.

Apparently, probationary members aren't allowed to send email.

Anyway, I do HAVE an AIM account (minchandre), but I haven't used it in a long time. I can boot it up if you want, though. We could also use Skype (to chat). Finally, email always works and I check mine several times a day.

Incidentally, what's your position on Availability <=12, but also F? Some GMs allow it, some don't, I've found.

From what I've read, some genetic enhancements are legal, if expensive, and don't require significant searching. Some of them are hard to get, being more extreme and cutting-edge. Adapsin is so new, it's not even on the market.

Mmmm, I'll allow it. So far as communications: AIM is always a good idea.

Yeah, that's basically where I'm confused. I can't figure out how "new" genetech is supposed to be.

I just go by availability. If it's under 12 (and legal), a character could reasonably get it. Especially a SINer.

There's a fair argument to be made in that regard, yes. I'll concede the point.

Thinking ahead slightly, does anyone have a better suggestion for the boat itself than a Morgan Cutlass?

My fellow players, what's your stance on this?

Btw, where can I download DamienKnight's XLS chargen sheet?

As long as our GM recognizes we are roughly equivalent to new 400 BP characters, we'll be ok.

Character Generator

You're supposed to be on my side, not the GM's

Thanks for the link!

Will transfer my character build at the char sheet this week and likely modify a bit while doing it (just noted that my stats math was wrong).

I might post my build here as I think it could do with some optimization and such. Though I've yet to work out all mt DPs ect

Which book is this?

The Morgan Cutlass is a patrol boat in the main sourcebook, Xahn. SR4A p. 349. Arsenal has several viable options, many of which are superior to the Cutlass in one degree or another. Speed is something that's very important for both pirates and privateers, so that certainly shouldn't be overlooked.

Whatever it is, it needs Amenities. If we had more money on this loan, I'd suggest the Celebrian Striker. It's perfect for what we need, with Weapon Mounts, Drone Racks... We could probably put a MDS on it as well with that Improved Sensor Array! The description actually says "capable of independent action." All we need now is 2,000,000 . Mind you, if I was the UCAS Navy (and I could be), and I was hiring privateers, the idea of giving up a corvette to shadowrunners sounds... Iffy. I'd maybe do it, but don't expect the thing isn't so filled with trackers that Lone Star could actually find it without a map!

Instead of some massive, heavily armed ship, we could go with a single ship large enough to support the team and to act as a launcher for either smaller boats and/or jetskis. I'm not sure how the cost works out, but it could very well be a viable alternative. Not only would it let us have the speed and maneuverability to keep up with anything we encounter, but it let us flank targets and hit them from multiple sides while letting everyone who wanted to have their own vehicle and perform their own actions. The main ship could then sit in the background using long-range weapons while we zip around as tiny, hard to hit targets.

Could even throw in a small helicopter or two, too.

Just something to consider.

Like a minicarrier? I'm for this idea!

Any one know where a quiver is stated out in the books? My elf character is going to be proficient with a bow and actually like to carry the arrows around in, besides sticking them into a backpack.

It's one of those "they don't need stats" things. If you really need to do so, look up Smart Ammo Pouches in Arsenal and try to extrapolate something from that. It's about as close as you'll get as far as I know.

okey-dokey, thank you