Ground Effect is a condition that applies to all flying vehicles. It's aerodynamics, not a class of vehicle in itself.

Using Wing in Ground Effect simply means the vehicle is designed to take advantage of those aerodynamics, meaning it is designed to be efficient and capable of flying at a height one wing span above the ground.

This does not preclude it from also having a hover craft or normal flying characteristics, or from having VTOL capabilities in addition to any other ones.

In fact, from the T Bird description and use, I would expect a vehicle that can only operate in VTOL mode unless it is using the Ground Effect for traveling over distances.

hi hi

So, why would you want to have short stubby wings when doing so reduces your effective altitude?



So small craft are out, and they're going to have a lot more problems going supersonic.

WIG aerodynamics

It isn't really an ekranoplan at that point now is it? Wingspan is a pretty vital component of a vehicle that is taking advantage of ground effect.

The hull could be designed as a lifting body as well, which would provide lift and count as wingspan, but not much control surface for maneuvers.

The notion of a T-Bird operating similar to a tank fits with this as well. Tanks don't move as well in treed areas. Tanks would have to go through or around trees, but a T-Bird would have the option of using VTOL for brief periods for extra altitude.

Covered that already.



Only at lower velocities.

hi hi

I suppose I'll have to repeat myself. If you want to go fast, ground effect works against you, not for you.

I figured that was why you would want a vehicle that could fly over obstacles, but I don't really mind either option. Sea tanks are just as cool as flying tanks.

Lifting bodies don't do so well at low altitudes.

- HopeX reentry vehicle simulations.

X-38 development.

To sum up: flying vec-thrust bricks, like it says in Rigger 3. Slow (compared to aircraft), short range, heavy.

If anyone here knows what he's talking about, it's Tzeentch. He'll talk tech-drek at ya till your ears bleed.

Me, I go with the flying brick description, because that's what it was in first edition.

just one thing, while the harrier (and the F-35B, if it ever enters proper production) can do vertical takeoff, its rarely done outside of air shows.

this because a rolling takeoff where the nozzles are vectored somewhere between horizontal and vertical is much more fuel efficient and allows for more payload. But its hover ability is the primary way for it to land. Heck, i think it has a hover time measured in seconds.

also, from what i recall rigger3 mentioned that a t-bird could do vertical takeoff, but because of the safety zone needed for the exhaust and such it usually did a rolling start.

and i suspect the SR t-bird is a mix of the hardwired panzer, ducted fan helicopters for urban use, and a tank. Do anyone here have the main book from the blue planet rpg? That game have a class of vehicles known as jumpcrafts. Not that different from a SR t-bird.

At least that would be the baseline T-Bird. Given their flight profile it seems natural that many are constructed to gain some benefit from ground effects and have a limited lifting body shape, because if you can get some extra lift for free why not use it.

TLDR Version: Use the Rigger 3 rules and text


-- Rigger 3, p. 69. Yes it has a pretty dangerous jetwash and can cause deafness due to the noise.
* Counts as taking off/landing on an unusual surface +1 modifier.
* 15m jetwash that causes 8M Physical damage. Cannot use Combat Pool dice to aid in resisting it.
* Nearby vehicles with Body of 2 or less also need to make a test against 4L vehicle damage.
* Body (4) Test or suffer partial hearing loss.

-- Rigger 3 has the best (and as far as I can tell, most accurate) description of panzer operations.


-- As a note, in GURPS Blue Planet they are built as flying bricks (no wings, fair streamlining, brute-force lift provided by hydrogen-burning vectored-thrust turbofans. A few have lifting body hulls. They are basically Shadowrun panzers though.

-- You don't want to go exceedingly fast, you want to take the strain off the engines and burn less fuel. The fact that petroleum-derived fuels are still around is useful, due to their high energy densities compared to hydrogen and alcohol.

-- NASA lifting bodies were designed just to glide back down to Eath. Panzers don't need to fly entirely without wings, they just need anything to help offload some of the work the turbofans do. Even watercraft can benefit from lifting body design in order to help get as much of the hull out of the water as possible (i.e. sections of the hull are designed as airfoils).

Wouldn't exactly call that stuff original artwork.

I think he means original. In the sense some of those images are from the source books that firist covered T-Birds.

What you are looking for is a class B or class C Ground Effect Vehicle. Here is the wiki link.

hi hi

If they spend very much of their time out of ground effect, they really are aircraft. The Cascade Skraacha isn't going to be using ground effect at all if it is flying through the cascades.

In that instance, it becomes about course plotting, piloting assistance systems, and reaction speed. Just like the description of t-bird smuggler/pilots.

Some of the experimental GEV craft were designed as troop transports, so they were quite heavy, and would be capable of replacing cargo space with armor and guns. They could run at 2m off the ground, but could go up to 100m where it was more fuel-efficient to fly. They were low altitude flying bricks, just like the t-birds.

I like to think of the UD-4 Dropship from ALIENS http://colonialmarines.wikispaces.com/Vehi...enne%20Dropship and its "big brother" the Dragon from AVATAR http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wik...on_Assault_Ship as LAVs/T-Birds. This setup with the smaller VTOLs like the transport/gunship(IRL Heuy,Blackhawk,etc...) http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Samson_16 & the Scorpion(IRL Apache,Commanche,Cobra,etc...) Gunships http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Scorpion_Gunship or other designs (manned or drone/UAVs) providing support(escort/recon,etc...) would best represent a high tech & well trained(i.e. SpecialForces SOAR/SAS units or Firewatch/Tir Ghosts; etc...) military/corp strike team of Prime Runner caliber.

The UD4 is and aerospace craft, though it does have similarities to a t-bird.

The Avatar craft are rotorcraft.

those avatar crafts looks like the orca from c&c.

that aliens dropship is really stuck in my mind, and i would love to see one go all out on some target or other.

I always had the impression that a T-Bird was designed as something like a tank that accelerates with jetengines and lifts with repulsorlift technology but then they decided SR had no repulsorlift tech but thought the design was pretty cool and never fully explained the lift aspect - after all IIRC the upper limit for them to fly above ground was 1500 meters, wasnt it ?

Yup. Flying brick, jet-powered, vectored-thrust, short range, flies low and slow (for an aircraft).

We've always gone with the "flying tanks styled like bricks" in our games.

In my mind, I've always pictured them as being something like the main craft from Terrahawks - seen here

Boxy, stubby, fairly heavy, no particularly aerodynamic, armed and armoured to the teeth, and you need your own private oil well to keep them going.

The advantages to the design:
VTOL takeoffs possible - perfect for smugglers coming out of forest clearings, sinkhole hideaways, out of ravines.
Heavily armoured - capable of shrugging off small arms fire - immune to pistol and rifle rounds, requires MMG/HMGs firing in bursts to stand a chance of affecting them, and missiles or heavy cannon to really threaten them.
Good armamment - sturdy airframes allow mounting of heavier turrets and large weapon systems - missile pods, railguns, heavy cannons etc; a T-bird can carry weaponry that can threaten any other vehicle on the battlefield.
Ground effect design - designed to take advantage of ground effect to reduce fuel consumption and allow nap-of-the-earth movement both for stealth and protection, the vector thrust design gives good turning circles and response times.
Adequate payload - the boxy hull form means that it's possible to pack a reasonable cargo inside, making smuggling a viable concern, although they're still not great for bulk cargo. However, a few packing crates full of California-Hots, Cuban cigars, some strips of Nova-meth or a couple of boxes of cutting edge AV rounds all work fine.

The disadvantages
The vector thrust design is dangerous at close range to anyone below/behind the craft
VTOL takeoffs drink fuel at alarming rates, drastically cutting range.
The vehicle relies on the thrust to keep moving - if the fuel runs out, or the engine is damaged, then it has no aerodynamic qualities to speak off - it flies with all the grace of a brick. Unlike a rotor craft, you can't auto-rotate, and unlike a standard plane design, there's no hope of gliding. It's flying for Yoda - do, or do not. There is no try.
Vector thrust craft are fuel inefficient in a general sense (let alone in VTOL) - no where near as good as a rotorcraft or standard plane, and miles away from blimps. However, they combine several good qualities that make them desirable from a military point of view, which makes them worthwhile. And what makes them good for the military makes them good for smugglers or shadowrunners.
They're complicated and expensive to make and maintain, compared to other forms of flying craft.
They have a high stall speed. You can either go straight up in VTOL mode, drinking fuel, or be flying along in forward motion - far off the ground but still at relatively low altitude, and using a chunk of fuel (though nowhere near as much as VTOL), or in ground effect - close enough to the ground to gain fuel efficiency. They transition from one mode to the other fairly quickly, and can't really loiter or "drift" around the battlefield.

That's how we tend to play with them at least, and it works for our group and campaigns. YMMV!

In the world of railguns and man portalble lasers, anti aircraft weaponry makes top speed secondary in crossing boarders. The primary concern has to be avoiding detection and stayign out of LOS. The ground hugging T-Bird fits this roll exactly. Man or Man, this thread makes me want to get a T-Bird for my reaction-based adept.

And now my internal mvie screen plays an image of a big old meaty bird with 6 linked HMG's in front. BTW are there rules for fixed mount weapons being linked together like HMG's on the front of a plane?

What on earth would need 6 HMGs?

For de awesome?

Why 6 HMG when you could shit 6 heavy auto cannons in the saem slots or a few rail guns.

Because Auto Cannons go "Blam Blam" and HMG's go "dakka dakka dakka." And Dakka Dakka is how we do it in the UCAS. Blam Blam is for those pinko commie California hippies.

Besides, if you shoot deer with the autocannon, there is no meat left to cook.

I find 5.56/7.62mm to be cheaper per belt than superplast rounds. Which isn't to say I wouldn't have a combination of both on there for armored and unarmored targets, like a reinforced platoon or something similar.

I was really asking why 6.

Because five is too few, and seven is far too many.

Nah I'd rather just have 6 heavy autocannons there ammon is as cheap as an ARs and they hit almost twice as hard per shot.

Weight/capacity I think would become an issue. Yeah, MG's don't pack as much of a punch as an AC, but the ammo is lighter so you get more rounds for the capacity. More weight in weapons = less weight in cargo.

And SR gives no toss.

My impression of the SR fluff has been that t-birds are used for long-range smuggling across the length and breadth of the former U.S. In the very recently published DotA: Midnight, the plot features t-bird trips with frequent stops to avoid patrols and to refuel. So it seems like high fuel consumption is taken care of by making short hops between small settlements or waystations that cater to smugglers. However, my problem with this scenario is that the smuggler waystations would have to be pretty well-equipped and supplied to keep the t-birds running. If the t-birds need huge quantities of JP-8 (or the 2072 equivalent) then how hard would it be for the authorities to shut down t-bird smuggling entirely? Just find out which small towns in the middle of nowhere (and with no airport) are shipping in large quantities of military jet fuel. I guess we could rationalize that in 2072 even a small shop could service a t-bird but the fuel thing leaves me wondering. Thoughts?

Well, while JP-8 was originally formulated as a jet fuel, that's not all its used for. In the US Army, we use JP-8 to run just about every vehicle in the inventory -- HMMWVs, Five-Tons, LMTVs, you name it. Since these big gas-guzzling vehicles can run on it. . . well, suffice to say, if I ran a T-Bird refueling stop, I'd make sure that I had a front that ran a legitimate truck stop, construction vehicle repair/operation, or local airport as a smokescreen/additional business venture.

Of corse in SR a shit load of things use electricity even if it makes no sense.

Ok, this thread must be locked before someone else starts quoting monty python too.

also, the stop could be done by tanker truck rather then a dedicated location.

have the tanker have a legitimate delivery papers in the area (to a shell company or private property set up by the org), and then stop in some available spot during the refueling.

heck, the jas gripen (latest swedish fighter jet) is built to, if all else fails, use existing roads as runways, and be refueled and rearmed by a couple of trucks and needed personnel. And i think the harrier have been used in a similar fashion to cut down on flight time between base and operations area.

oh, and jp-8 is basically kerosene/paraffin with some extras, so i could see it being delivered under the radar as a kerosene shipment for some out of the way location that refuses to give up against the awakened fauna.

You could also set up a mobile refinery turning the constituent components of JP-8 into actual JP-8 and it would be even harder to track.

I just wish t-birds fit into a 'standard' Shadowrun game better than they do.

I guess, but say that about anything that costs hundreds of thousands of Nuyen and flies.

non-drone riggers are a pain to fit into a SR game in general. Thankfully these days they can multitask more as the VCR is not a large chunk of essence.

Near the end of WWII the Luftwaffe were using the autobahn as a runway.

But I digress...

You wouldn't even need anything as conspicuous as a fuel tanker, You could fit two of these in the back of an extended panel van and all you'd need is maybe a suspension upgrade. Heck, this one is probably 300 gallons and would easily fit into a pickup bed without being noticeable.

Course your route
decide on areas for refueling
have you partners meet you there
?????
profit!

And during the battle of britain UK fighters used open fields, iirc.

still, prop planes are a bit different from a jet fighter
less issue with sucking the engine full of dirt (and the odd rodent), for one.

That's not just something done in WWII, there still are several autobahn stretches prepared to be used as military runways (flat concrete without median, removable guard rails, large parking lots with all the neccessary power cables...). And besides landing strips and odd manholes on bridges, the strategic planning for REFORGER also included various small supply depots and refueling stations, because tanks are not exactly known for their fuel efficiency.


OK, the continental US is not as militarized as central Europe, but after the Ghost Dance war and the resulting balcanization I'd expect a lot of old supply depots and miliatry pipelines to be still around somewhere in the countryside, which nobody has bothered to tear down. Even building your own T-Bird refueling depot shouldn't be too complicated, tanks usually have a pump onboard so all that is really needed would be a large tank buried under the barn. If some official bothers to check, well sir of course I need that fuel, do you think I'm going to plow my fields with one of these things pulled by buffalos?



And some useless trivia: One of those WWII autobahn runways is known as Ramstein Air Base today.

The US Department of Transportation reported to the Department of Defense when they were building the interstate highway system to make many sections of it capable of converted to air bases in short order (at least one location every 300 miles).

By the direction of Eisenhower. An incredibly useful transport system, but also an incredibly useful ad hoc runway for any type of craft. Every so often you'll hear about a plane touching down on an interstate.

As for T-bird refueling, the fuel truck idea is a great one. CAS/Texas smuggling spots to get goods into Aztlan are spotted all over Texas and have air support from the military forces in the area. Cross the border and you're on your own, but generally if you've got local manufacture gear and you're headed over to flood the enemy's market with cheap tchotchkies, they'll look the other way.

Good points by all. You've convinced me that it can be done. I guess my problem arose from the fact that the only way-station depicted in Midnight was a 'pinkskin' town in a NAN nation that caters to smugglers. That's an awfully fixed location but, as was pointed out, there are plenty of excuses for having tanks of fuel on-hand. They could even set up a small private airfield that sees rare legitimate traffic. A careful investigation could still catch them out, but then what? That also assumes that the NAN in question has the resources and the motivation to go after every little town that occasionally plays host to a t-bird smuggler.

My take-away is that t-bird smuggling in SR is feasible but expensive. You'd only want to use high value/mass cargo to compensate for high fuel costs and frequent maintenance, not to mention significant initial investment in the vehicle.

A lot of smugglers end up shipping BTL's and California Red-Hots as the weight-vs-profit ratio is one of the highest. Like any freight hauling, it's all about what's valuable on the market.

Barring the BTL-hock, T-birds are great for people smuggling, too. But yes, either you're using a T-bird for high-value smuggling, or you're using them as close-air support for outpost defense.

No suppressive fire with AC's. The T-Bird in a smuggling role is not about eliminating threats, it is about getting the cargo to the drop off point. use some suppression fire to keep a boarder patrol under cover and stop them from poping off a missle and keep on truckin'.

I guess I would need some rear firing HMG's too. I always did fancy those bomber turrets from the B-17's.