Oi Chums,

Just peicing together the latest stats on the opposition for my groups next run and have been wondering for a while now about flight ceilings. What elevation does a L.A.V. fly at, how high can an attack helo go before they have to stop? I have scanned through the Rigger Black Book, Rigger 2, on up through 4th Ed A just to see if I could find a general table or something on the subject. I remember there being a flight ceiling chart but can't find it so if any of you could point me in the right direction that would be great.

There is a table of this somewhere... I know I just saw it the other day.


I can't find it for the life of me...

I wanna say Rigger 3.

Found it. All numbers are in meters.

Thunderbird* 1,500
Zeppelin 4,000
Helicopter† 6,000
Jet Propeller (single engine) 12,000
Jet Propeller (Twin-engine & Airliner) 12,000
Jet Turbine Fixed Wing Aircraft 17,000
Fighter Aircraft 20,000

*Includes jump-jet fighters operating in vectored-thrust mode
†Includes tilt-wing aircraft operating in auto-rotation/hover mode

How can Tbird ceilings be under a mile? What's the rationale behind that? Wouldn't that mean that if one were transported to Denver that it couldn't even take off? I would think the Tbird ceiling would be limited by whether or not its cabin is pressurized and oxygenated.

Mesh

They're supposed to be near-ground craft.

Low altitude vehicles isn't quite the same as near-ground.
Still the T-bird doesn't make much sense. It's fast, but it stalls out easily, and its' got crappy maneuverability, but it's the prefered smuggler vehicle?

That makes no sense.

Look-down, shoot-down Radar doesn't exist in SR either, apparently.

I know this thing is a sitting target compared to Military jets.

The whole concept of smuggling in a goddamn TANK doesn't make sense, even less once you crossbreed the tank with a flying bedstead. But that is one of those cases where I gladly suspend my disbelief, Hardwired was just too cool

It's a Hover-Tank that can get a bit higher.
It's not MADE to fight against military JETS.
It's there to counter military ground bound units.
You can go in circles around any other ground bound unit.
And you can go OVER them too.
You are faster and can do more crazy maneuvres and still retain similar levels of armor and armament the tracked tanks do.
But any dedicated aircraft will go above your head so far it's not even funny anymore . .

I imagine the TBird (and some others) ceilings are AGL (Above Ground Level) and not Above Sea Level.

So what I'm curious about is Why? What's significant about 1500m to this vehicle? Is there any explanation? I'm not an ultra-realist when it comes to RPGs, but I do like to know why something that behaves in accordance with the laws of physics can or can't do something. An aircraft ceiling is a limit at which the aircraft's normal function or ability to preserve the life of its occupants is compromised to the point at which that function or life ceases. Does anyone have an explanation for the significance of 1500m to the Tbird other than RAW?

Mesh

Because you need bigger engines and more fuel to lift higher and keep going there.
It simply becomes uneconomic to do so.
Even 500m would be enough for this kind of vehicle.
But 1500m takes out out of reach of most handheld weapons and leaves mostly vehicle grade weapons to endanger it.
So technically, it's a better armed and armored helicopter than can sit safely outside of the reach of grunts and fire down upon them . .

I hear your RAW. No problem there, but it's untrue from a physics standpoint. You don't need bigger engines and more fuel to surpass 1500m if your range exceeds 1500m. That's not what a ceiling means. You need acceleration to gain altitude, acceleration that surpasses the pull of gravity. Even a single engine prop plane goes many times past 1500m so I'm still curious if anyone has a physics explanation for this number. I'm gathering it's just a RAW deal. Just curious.

Mesh

Oi Chums,

Thanks Saint that was just what I was looking for. Awesome job.

Uh, you're gonna require more fuel and power to go up than you are to go forward. If that wasn't the case, your average jetliner would be an orbital, and we know this isn't the case.

A T-bird is a directed thrust VTOL brick. VTOL craft are normally hobbled by range and loadout - you burn a lot of fuel to go straight up with no running start, and you're not going to get any decent weapons loadout. That's the trade-off of having no runway.

Just look at the T-bird stats in the BBB. Their ranges suck compared to your average fixed-wing. Off the cuff numbers (at work, so I can't et the direct stats of a few of 'em) average about 750 klicks. That's approximately 466 miles on one full tank.

I think it has to do with the lack of wings. To keep an LAV aloft requires pure brute thrust. It might have small wings to aid in maneuvering and provide a token amount of lift, but all of the pictures and descriptions have these things blasting around on thrust alone. You lose your ground effect pretty quickly. I personally think 1,500 meters is WAY too high for a T-Bird, I pictured something that struggles to get to 100 meters off the ground.

*shrug*

Personally, I find it hilarious how they go out of their way to differentiate the different prop planes, and then go ahead and give them all the same ceiling. I suppose it must be a holdover from another table..

Just for some real-life numbers, according to WP the LLRV had a service ceiling of 1,800m...

But only for a few minutes, right? I think T-Birds wouldn't operate at that altitude, but to each his own.

And then you look at the LLRV and think, 'Whyever would I want to be over 20 feet high in this contraption?'

# Maximum speed: 40 mph
# Service ceiling: 6,000 ft (1,800 m)
# Rate of climb: 3,600 ft/min (17.9 m/s)

It had a fraction of a Tbird's power, too: 40mph

It had an open "cockpit" (seat) so I'm also going to guess the ceiling was designed around safety limits for the pilot rather than a limit to how high its rockets could push it. Rockets are also a different propulsion system than a Tbird's.

Mesh

Is the T-bird limit problematic for your game?

Service ceilings typically don't take the cockpit into account - only the vehicle's power output.

I'm honestly looking for info on this so I'll cut out my own smartass remarks. Jetliners travel under 1000mph. You must achieve 17,500mph to break away from Earth's gravity and achieve an orbit so there's no way a jetliner will ever come close before stalling (not to mention the fact that its wings require air passing over them to maintain lift and there is less and less of that stuff the higher you go).

Yes, Tbirds are bricks which means that they are almost completely supporting their weight with downward thrust. On top of that they are also thrusting forward. If they can travel forward 750Km, they have the fuel to travel much farther than 1500m off the ground. I have the impression that 1500m is nothing more than a RAW number picked either for balance or to give a general sense of how high they travel while maintaining full range (750Km), because it does take more fuel to travel upwards... but there's no way 750Km translates to as little as 1500m up when NASA in the 60s was creating VTOL vehicles that had "safe" ranges of 1800m up.

Mesh

I'd say they are far closer to an actual T-Bird than something with propellers and wings

I believe the Low Altitude Vehicle in SR4 is primarily a ground effect vehicle with enough thrust to have a low safe operational ceiling.

p. 100 Arsenal
"Nicknamed t-birds (aka thunderbirds, for the distinctive
noise they make as they blur past), LAVs rely on ground eff ect lift
and very short wings to keep them in the air, and so are limited
by low altitudes and high stall speeds."

Note that ground effect lift is not exactly the same thing as a hover skirt in a typical hover craft.

I don't doubt a T-bird could loft itself above 1500m, but physically you're ridding it of its preferred mode of operation - low-level flying. 1500m is quite likely RAW - but if I were to put an effective ceiling on a T-bird it'd be 'the top of the hills it's flying in between'. Since it's the most unaerodynamic flying craft I've ever seen on paper, I'd go so far as to assume the 1500m ceiling translates to just that - they're going to get serious 'bad atmosphere' effects such as shearing winds and drafts it can't effectively compensate for without having nice bits of upended ground to shield it against. Add in the heavy loads its carrying and the chief reason anyone buys this flying pile of scrap is that it's low and fast enough to make it too much trouble to catch by fast-movers (too slow, lawl) and ground forces (too fast, lawl).

Bad atmosphere and wind, now that I'll buy.

Mesh