So the SR books list how much it costs to buy something. They also list how long it takes to make something. However, They do not list how much it costs to make something.

How do you guys handle this?

It's harder to find, but the books do have suggestions for those costs.

Arsenal suggests 10% cost, same Avail for chemicals (drugs, etc.), while SR4A suggests 50% cost for building with Hardware (and other skills, possibly). Appropriate tools are required, and 'build' means 'assemble', not 'fabricate/design'. Not everything is possible to be player-built (esp. for new designs), so the GM should decide.

Ah, I never even noticed those. Do you by chance know where abouts they are?

Designing, as near as I can tell, seems to be free. It just takes more time. Obviously the GM has the last say in what can or cannot be made though.

Thanks for your help.

Well, designing isn't really possible, as far as the rules are concerned. This is usually appropriate, because of the time, expertise, and resources real designs should require. SR4A 'Using Build/Repair' does give an example of *jury-rigging* things (the example is something simple, a flashlight?). Arsenal does talk about about to *acquire* designs.

Chemical costs/rules are in Arsenal under 'Using Chemistry'; Hardware is in SR4A under 'Using Hardware'.

It lists a flashlight and a shiv, because the poor guy is in a building in the barrens whose basement has devil rats. And yeah, basically what Yerameyahu said.

The dose-scaling from Arsenal is really bad.

50 doses at a time from a 100,000¥ facility? I mean, I know that sort of equipment is really expensive, old Walter White could make a lot more than 50 hits of crank in a couple day's time.

A facility is not run by a single person though. I have always interpreted it as 50 Doese PER PERSON working on the project (and if I remember correctly, the roll for Chemicals is in Hours, so you could, in theory, actually make much, much more in a 24 hour period than 50 Doses))... So the Question becomes, how many people can work in a facility? It is arbitrary, to be sure, but manufacturing is always going to be arbitrary in Shadowrun, because it is not designed to emulate that aspect of reality.

Depends on the drug, of course. Maybe they really are that hard to make? 99.9% of Using Chemistry is abusive anyway, so it's not a high priority to model manufacturing mechanics, I'd think.

Indeed... not a high priority...

Well, I guess you can not give the prices in general.
Building a flash light might come out a top of the cost of buying one.

Cooking some drugs might come out to be just 10% of the base cost or even less.

Well, drugs are definitely (if arbitrarily) 10%.

Yep, but I would be willing to bet that that is even too much for some drugs. Custom tailored designer drugs, however, should cost a lot more than 10% for materials in my opinion... But that is just me...

Indeed. It's arbitrary, inflexible, and not really useful. *shrug*. As the book says, you shouldn't use the rules for anything but casual play. No drug factories.

Agreed... WE mostly use the rules for basement explosives... not much use for rcreating the SOTA stuff in my opinion...

I helped a guy figure out that if he produces P4MO with some Renraku Manservants with autosofts using teamwork you can produce over a million every couple days. And it's perfectly legal.

Well, you mean that it fits within the rules… except for the one that specifically says, 'don't let anyone abuse these simple rules'.

No, I meant that P4MO is a "-" availability item, so it is easy to find and has no laws preventing its use in the UCAS. It is street-legal. Other people I know keep wanting to mass-produce K-10 because it's 900 a pop, but P4MO is 2k each and street legal.

So I've got a question related to cooking up some medicine, namely, the medicines necessary to keep a Cyberzombie kickin'. The only cost I could find listed for them was 2000 per month, so how would I extrapolate that out to the cost of materials? Assume I've got a MicroFac to play chemist with.

Those are highly specialized medicines known only by a select few.

Even if you could make it without a facility, you wouldn't know what the combination/dosage was.

A MicroFac counts as a facility. What level of chemistry would be needed to know how to make them, do you think? The character in question was a cyberlogician researcher type, so he's certainly got the capacity to learn them.

If I was going to let you do such a ridiculous thing?

chemistry of 5, with a specific knowledge skill: Cybermancy medicines of at least a 3 maybe 4.

I'd make you build the formula, and everytime you had issues with aquiring some of the base ingredients, I'd make you re-do the formula.

Then I'd do an extended test, logic+chemistry threshold of say 24, interval of 1 week.
If you ever roll an interval with 0 successes you have to start over. A glitch means some weird error crops up in the formula, a crit glitch the stuff is actually toxic/dangerous.

Even then, I feel dirty having made it so easy.

The availability on some of the base ingredients would be through the roof. Some of it, might only be available through raiding Shadow Clinics, and specialty Corps that specialize in Cybermancy.

Well, my GM is going to let me do such a ridiculous thing, so thanks for the help! Though I'm not sure about the interval of 1 week part - I mean, the corps have to be able to make this stuff too, to keep their CZs running. Anyway, sorry to threadjack, and thanks for the help.

Corps are global companies, though. Anyway, that's definitely a situation for 'GM eyeball it so it's hard enough', and the 10% cost suggestion doesn't really apply to anything *really* exotic, like this. I mean, either he'll let you get the drugs or not; it's arbitrary and up to him. After that, it's just negotiation.

Corps have facilities, and engineers, scientists, etc doing teamwork tests on this stuff.

The corps spend months/years doing research to develop the formula.
Then a team of engineers spend months to a couple of years upscaling the manufacturing so they can make the stuff.
Then, they feed a specific formula into their facility and out pops the right stuff.
But they do big batches, they have quality control on the ingredients, etc.

You're in a completely different ball park.

Well, extrapolating from my real world chemistry knowledge:

Anything that is generically available or comes with a 'store brand' competitor will be close to cost to purchase, maybe save 10%, maybe cost an extra 10%.

Anything that has a patent on it should only cost 10-20% in raw materials. Exclusivity is pricey.

Anything material that is restricted is probably in the realm of 10-50% in raw materials. The heavy the restriction, the higher the mark-up.

Custom made materials are also probably only 10-20% in raw materials, a lot of that cost is for labor, experience and exclusivity.

Well, I've linked this to my GM, so he'll make the decision. You have a point though, that I'm in a different ball park. The thing is, I've basically been able to steal the formulae to the drugs before leaving the corp's employ, so I should be alright on that front.

It depends, of course. If we're talking about antimatter, then the raw materials are indeed less than the finished product (and storage). Regardless of the numbers, the fact is that secret biochemical concoctions developed by a handful of the most powerful organizations on earth… are hard to make yourself.

This is a plot device. It's not a situation for realism or 'simulationism'.

Then you would really just need a hgih enough chemistry skill to understand it.

If you have a chemistry skill of 4 or 5, then I would let you make the medicine as long as the following were true.

1) you had no problems getting all the raw materials
2) you had sufficient downtime to make it.
3) you had access to a clean environment/room.

If you're going to be trying to make these things in the sewers.. that's gonna be an issue

4) you had the formula

I never leave home without it!