Shadowrun technological development does not follow a logical path

a) the technology exists, and is feasible.

b) An A.I. has the skills and patience needed to plan perform all the needed physical actions. c) because A.I.'s can be legal citizens of a country, they would have the right to create these devices, and travel in space just as anyone else would .An industrial nanoforge can make all the parts, and nano-hives can make the raw materials.

While the needed equipment may require permits, none of it is illegal.

There is nothing stopping the construction of the ship legally.

Space is like international waters, you do not have any legal rights to attack anyone else's stuff unless you are at war. Doing so makes you at war. So anyone who attacked it would now be subject to the full measures of international law, and quite possibly the corperate courts, as this A.I. may be a corperate citizen.

This would also likely mean that the A.I. would likely respond to that attack in kind. If you think an A.I. is dangerous because it wants to leave the planet to get away from crazy people, find out what happens when it wants to hear them scream, because you would.

Why would an AI bother with a ship? Wouldn't it just wait until someone moved equipment to Mars, and then send themselves by signal? If they sent a powerful enough sprite ahead of themselves to secure the system it would continue receiving for the needed duration to upload the AI. Then the AI needs to hack into something powerful enough to send a signal that far, and do so. Then they could pull a Deus, and Evo's Mars colony would suddenly stop communications with Earth.

That could work, though I don't see where this would improve the AI's image any. Is a nice campaign background though.

Bah. Helping image. If they just put backup receivers on a plethora of small bodies in the belt they would be immortal as long as they were in broadcasting range. Ew. Cylons.

Fallacy #1: it doesn't, at least not as advanced and freely available as you make it.

Fallacy #2: Being a legal citizen does not mean you can do anything you want. Space is a restricted environment, and not open to anyone who wants to go there. Nuclear technology is severely restricted and not available to anyone who wants it.

Fallacy #2a: Nanotechnology is the most regulated technology in the SR world. That is even stated in the one book you appear to have read. No way anyone without the best of connections is going to get an industrial nanoforge and omnipotent self-replicating nanites.

Falacy #3: Of course is possession of many of these items illegal for average citizens. That's the nature of regulated items.

Fallacy #4: Of course there is, starting with Corp Court orders and anti-terror, anti-smuggling and nuclear control laws.

Committing crime exempts you from protection by the body you are a citizen of, unless said body feels like fighting everybody with a vested interest in keeping highly dangerous technology out of the hands of a group of creatures who have abused such technologies on a genocidal level repeatedly in the past.

Of course, that flat out makes no sense, assuming anyone would want to go to war over an uppity citizen who accumulates highly restricted material for unknown and possibly dangerous purposes. Going by SR4's background, this is a case for the Dawkins Group, and the AI would be quietly disposed of, or the Corp Court, and the AI would be less queitly disposed of.

No, the AI would find out how much it sucks to be tied to a physical body when it is hit by a thor shot, the common way SR solves the problem of uppity entities like that.

Why would an AI bother with a ship?

Wouldn't it just wait until someone moved equipment to Mars, and then send themselves by signal? If they sent a powerful enough sprite ahead of themselves to secure the system it would continue receiving for the needed duration to upload the AI. Then the AI needs to hack into something powerful enough to send a signal that far, and do so. Then they could pull a Deus, and Evo's Mars colony would suddenly stop communications with Earth.

Another reason to prevent them leaving in a belkan-made super plane built from legally available ultra nanites and nuclear reactors from the DIY store.

Just take a second to sit back and look at your position for a moment. You claim they should be hated, and feared, yet you want to keep them around, because you obviously don't want them going anywhere? You've be arguing for several days now, that a creature you'd gladly murder should NOT be allowed to exile itself outside of your paranoid grasp. Wow glad to see someone didn't watch terminator one too many times or anything.

Because its sick of putting up with biggoted asshats, and wants to build its own matrix somewhere where the sub-sentient furrless monkeys are less of a problem.

The orbital tribe known as the Snow Angels were former Russian astronauts who assisted in the construction of the Shibanokuji Freefall Resort. Weary of life planet-side, the group established a sizeable living space in a cargo storage bay, away from the orbital’s tourist and population centers.

Asgard Data Haven [LINK]. The data haven is located in a former Fuchi Low Earth Orbit Electronic Intelligence satellite. When Fuchi broke apart in 2060, records of the satellite were either misplaced or
perhaps purposefully deleted. A pair of orbital hackers/scavengers named Pandora (see file Subject 22PA21) and Heimdall (see file Subject 05HL13) later discovered it and re-tasked the module for their own purposes. The subject and another hacker, Cinnabar (see file Subject 91CB00) were brought along as co-administrators in an illegal paydata auction house.

LEO-based shadowrunners
According to our field assets, [Orbital DK] has worked with the ZonePhreaks team on multiple occasions and maintains cordial relationships with shadow assets both in orbit and in the lunar colonies.

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I'm done arguing here.

Take your meds or see a shrink, man. Seriously, some people ...

Maybe you should. You're arguing against logic, physics, the established setting (ignoring, for instance, the entire timeline) and obviously are high on some weird techno fetish. What do you want to accomplish here?

No need derailing this any further.

I haven't read 10 Jackpointers yet. The only references I have for space come from the Wiki, Augmentation, and Arsenal. Do we have a list of publications that touch on space travel?

-- I've been sort of working on that, but I agree it's something that could prove useful.
-- The most recent (3rd/4th edition) books of note are:

Year of the Comet (2061 probe race spurs investment)
Target: Wastelands (overview of 2062 situation)
Emergence (2070 AI space terrorist and AI heading to Alpha Centauri on the slowest slowboat of slowness ever -- seriously what's the delta-V of an asteroid mining platform, about 30 mps?)
Arsenal (2072 rules/gear)
Corporate Guide (2072 references to space projects)

A High Altitude Platform (HAP) is a quasi-stationary aircraft which provide means of delivering a service to a large area while staying thousands of feet above in the air for long periods of time. A HAP differs from other aircraft in the sense that it is specially designed to operate at a very high altitude (17–22 km) ^[1] and is able to stay there for hours, even days.
[...]

As a space port Due to the height more than 90% of atmospheric matter is below the HAP. This reduces atmospheric drag for starting rockets. As a rough estimate, a rocket that reaches an altitude of 20 km when launched from the ground will reach 100 km if launched at an altitude of 20 km from a balloon.^[8] It also allows the usage of (long) mass drivers for launching goods or humans into orbit.
--Wikipedia High Altitude Platform

Base Vehicle for Modification

Hyundai Shin-Hyung
Handling: +2
Accel: 20/45
Speed: 160
Pilot: 1
Body: 10
Armor: 5 (I assume it's concealed, as this is a street car)
Sensor: 1
Availability: - (Easy to find!)
Price: 17000 (Cheap enough for our runners!)

Also, we have a juicy 14 slots to play with... yum yum....

So what do we want? What are our Power Armor essentials? What makes Power Armor.... well, POWER ARMOR?

-2 Fully Articulated Mechanical Arms
-Walker Mode
-Rigger Adaptation (obviously)
-Rigger Cocoon (Basic is fine, though Enhanced is super cool if you can swing the 14 availability)
-Life Support (preferably Level 2 for a fully sealed Environment.... even works in space!)
-Armor (the more the merrier! if we remove the concealed armor we can get obvious Armor up to 20 and even free up an extra mod slot, as obvious only costs 1 slot and concealed is 2)
-Pimped Ride (more a requirement than a want... I'm sorry, but that Power Armor sticks out like a sore thumb and the mechanics of Pimped Ride are perfect)

IMHO, these are the bare essentials. Notice it doesn't include a weapon... but with the fully articulated arms you can easily carry some.... and you can always still mod some in (see below)
So altogether.... those essential mods come to *drumroll* ...

Arms = 4 slots/ nuyen.gif 8000
Walker Mode = 2 slots/ nuyen.gif 5000
Rigger Adaption = 1 slot/ nuyen.gif 2500
Rigger Cacoon (basic) = 1 slot/ nuyen.gif 1500
Life Support (Level 2) = 3 slot/ nuyen.gif 20000 <--- This is the big expense in nuyen and slots, but I think it's something that SkepticInc would especially be interested in for those Space runs
Normal Armor 20 (replaces concealed 5) = +1 slot/ nuyen.gif 4000
Pimped Ride (Level 2) = 1 slot/ nuyen.gif 5000

Including the downgrade form Concealed to Normal Armor, that's a net of 11 mod slots used and 46000 nuyen spent. No mod is over 12 Availability, so it's all available in chargen without the restricted quality.

So in total, this piece of basic functional Power Armor costs nuyen.gif 63000. Sounds about right to me! Much more than Milspec armor, but still cheaper than high-end 'ware.
Now that extremely modded Hyundai Shin-Hyung Street Racer looks like this....

"Blue Baller" Power Armor
Handling: +3
Accel: 10/23
Speed: 80
Pilot: 1
Body: 10
Armor: 20
Sensor: 1
Upgrades: 2 Mechanical Arms, Walker Mode, Rigger Adaptation, Rigger Cocoon, Life Support 2, Pimped Ride 2
Availability: 12R
Price: nuyen.gif 63000


But let's not forget we still have 3 mod slots to play with even before we get into potential overmodding.
You could even downgrade the Life Support to level 1 and save an additional 2 slots.
Also, you could argue that you could gain a mod slot or two by removing any extra passenger space from the car, as well as cargo space (like the trunk).

A short list of upgrades I would definitely be interested in...

-Assembly Time Improvement (for breaking it down and storing it in a much smaller place, like the back of a van)
-Extreme Environment Mod (as necessary, depending on the field of deployment)
-Ram Plate (Hell Yes! I would treat it as a shield on one arm. It wouldn't raise the armor, but would justify smashing stuff)
-Touch Sensors (for when you really have to feel like you are one with the machine)
-Weapon Mount w/ optional Ammo Bin
-Chameleon Coating
-Upgrading the Rigger Cocoon to Level 2 for some sweet autodoc action
-Body Stabilizer (I would almost consider this a part of the basic suit... super handy for maneuvering and recoil compensation)

-- Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but doesn't this basically boil down to a "power armor package" of modifications that you can slap on anything from an electroglide to a panzer?

crap. I just lost a long detailed post when my internet reset and gave me a newIP.

Okay, long story short, in space using forges and nanites still has 2 challenges, power and heat. Lets say you've got a fusion reactor or a square mile of solar cells for power. Heat is still a problem.

Most metals require temps in the neighborhood of 1000C to smelt. Even with focused lasers, the total energy budget is around 10kWhr/kg which means you need to be able to dispose of around 9kwhr/kg of excess heat. There's no water supply you can waste for evaporative cooking or an atmosphere to convect heat away. That means you need either a large mass to dump heat into or a large black body radiator.

We play a space exploration game and have a desktop forge to make spare parts. But given the power/heat issue we assume we can make 0.1kg metal/hr. Beats calling an orbital supply ship but not close to a replicator.

space isn't cold the way you and I normally think of cold. It's cold because of the vacuum. Here on earth we use vacuum bottles (aka thermos) as insulators. Because there's no atmosphere, there's no ambient temperature.

The carnot cycle depends on having some environment to transmit heat. I'm a civil not a mech eng, but iirc the transfer depends not just on the temperatures but the thermal conductivity and thermal mass. I.e water is probably 20x more efficient as a heat sink than open air. Higher density means higher thermal mass, in general terms. That's why cars use water lines to pull heat off the engine rather than air ducts.

Vacuums are the absence of appreciable pressure, aka the absence of mass close enough to bounce off of you, ergo it is really hard to get heat across a vacuum.

You wind up resorting to black body radiation, aka IR emissions. You could put your heat carrier in a pool of liquid you expose to space and induce evaporative cooking, but that goes to my lack of water.

There's some scifi by Travis Taylor, an actual rocket scientist with like four PhDs, and he has a a hybrid human-aien space ship that has to "chill" every so many hours of operation. They have large inflatable "sails" they fill with a thermally conductive fluid to act as large black body radiators. I think they also use a phase-change material to store the heat until they can chill.

hi hi

You'll have to excuse me if I'm sounding like a nay-sayer, and believe me I'd love to see Rigger 4 in the worst way, but wouldn't free fall be one of those places where you would need power armor the least? I would think the best way to move around would be fans (interior) and jets (exterior) and in those cases extra mass would end up working against you. Vacuum doesn't need armor plating to defend against, you could use a simple piece of form fitting body armor and modify it to provide mechanical counter-pressure and slap a helmet on.

crap. I just lost a long detailed post when my internet reset and gave me a newIP.

Okay, long story short, in space using forges and nanites still has 2 challenges, power and heat. Lets say you've got a fusion reactor or a square mile of solar cells for power. Heat is still a problem.

Most metals require temps in the neighborhood of 1000C to smelt. Even with focused lasers, the total energy budget is around 10kWhr/kg which means you need to be able to dispose of around 9kwhr/kg of excess heat. There's no water supply you can waste for evaporative cooking or an atmosphere to convect heat away. That means you need either a large mass to dump heat into or a large black body radiator.

We play a space exploration game and have a desktop forge to make spare parts. But given the power/heat issue we assume we can make 0.1kg metal/hr. Beats calling an orbital supply ship but not close to a replicator.

The energy is easy enough to get. The heat problem however can be an issue. For heat sinks, I usually think long black radiator fins on the shade side of the object. Pump a heated anti freeze through them, and allow them to radiate the heat away. Thats for being in the void. If you're rock side, you can just use the planet itself as a heat sink, as so long as you're not on venus or mercury.

Actually, heat buildup is a critical design issue in superhard underground command centers. Rock just isn't that good at getting rid of heat. Options on earth include things like huge storage areas full of ice kept cold by HVAC before you have to button up.

When you are trying to radiate heat into space I think you just get black body radiation. So when you have megawatts/sec of heat to dump you either need square kms of radiators or to have push the radiator temp up to the point where it glows.

When you are trying to radiate heat into space I think you just get black body radiation. So when you have megawatts/sec of heat to dump you either need square kms of radiators or to have push the radiator temp up to the point where it glows.

That would be gorgeous to see against the dark of the void.

I'm thinking the power armor could help position masses you're working with better, they still have inertia after all. Possibly provide greater rad protection, and puncture/tear resistance to the suit your in. You are however correct in that its added mass would be a hindered to any from of thrust based propulsion.

hi hi

Here is some gear that thought up that people might want to bring with into space or items in space that might make a difference:

• Hull Repair Kit: Like a first aid kit, but for leaks.
• Savior Repair Kit: Just place it on a leak and let the nanites do their thing.
• Slap patches: Come in all shapes and sizes, a stopgap measure against decompression.
• Fire extinguisher: Just like on a submarine, fire bad!

• Personal Re-entry Cocoon: For orbital insertions
• Ultra-high altitude parachute: see above
• G-Suit: Helps prevent blackouts

• Magnetic or Velcro Gloves and Shoes
• Magnetic or Velcro Tape: Quickly mod standard equipment so it doesn't fly off.
• Safety Tethers

--Is there a disadvantage to Gecko Tape gloves that makes it inoperable in vacuum?

Nice equip set, Katze.


No, that kind of intermolecular attraction should work there just fine. Magnetic stuff would work better though.

Wouldn't Flechette ammo be the round of choice in Space though? Or is it suddenly effective against armour in SR4?

I guess it would depend on what kind of flechettes you are using. I think shadowrun uses the ultra thin, basically aluminum foil, strength flechettes. However, flechettes could be more akin to APDS penetrators too. Or technically they could be hollow depleted uranium needles filled with plastic explosives (but I guess those don't exist in shadowrun)''

Magnetic might not be a good choice, as much of a habitat is going to be constructed from nonmagnetic metals and polymers. The gecko stuff is best.

Reh? Why is that? With the mass driver and the upcoming space elevator, why not use ferrous material to reinforce your stations (as it's going to survive a hit from the micrometeorites a heck of a lot better)?

-- I'm unclear what the mass driver or elevator has to do with anything. You're still going to be paying by the kg to get into orbit, and there are better ways to design your station than just laying on battleship armor (if this was an issue it would be far cheaper and easier to use preformed lunar slag anyways). Metal components will probably be aerospace aluminum (or some composite), which is not magnetic.
-- Getting hit with high relative-velocity space junk is going to be much more of a challenge than micrometeorites, and presumably both are handled by a simple housekeeping laser and tracking system. When the station is hit by statistics you treat it like any other hazard that you plan for.

-- I'm unclear what the mass driver or elevator has to do with anything. You're still going to be paying by the kg to get into orbit, and there are better ways to design your station than just laying on battleship armor (if this was an issue it would be far cheaper and easier to use preformed lunar slag anyways). Metal components will probably be aerospace aluminum (or some composite), which is not magnetic.
-- Getting hit with high relative-velocity space junk is going to be much more of a challenge than micrometeorites, and presumably both are handled by a simple housekeeping laser and tracking system. When the station is hit by statistics you treat it like any other hazard that you plan for.