Do the cops often trap you in your hangar? But that's got style, hands down.


18 actually. I'd prefer the LC P-2 (same body score, faster, moremaneuverable, more stealth oriented) and upgrade it to VSTOL. YMMV. Upon rereading though, I was wrong about the LCP-2 being wore than the ED Mistral, because it's actually just a bit better, too. Pity they didn't pick up the old R3R alternative model names, though.

*Sighs* Never gamed yet. Three groups lined up and each and every one of them fell through.

And I love the alternative names for things. Might have to do something about that if we can ever get the Dumpshock Data Haven back on track...

That sucks, man.


The Embraer-Dassault Mistral is based on the now oop Ares Daytripper, because Aztech bought design and rights to it from Ares when they introduced their new tilt-wing traveller machines. Similar models are: Cessna C860 and CASA J-329 Kestrel (Rigger 3, German edition, supposedly identical to Rigger 3 Revised). Also, according to the same book, the Mistral off the shelf seats 17, including pilot and copilot, and is accessible by one side door and a tail-mounted freight ramp.

I will take this opportunity to, once again, complain about the lack of seating and cargo space per vehicle, rather than generic "Here's a suggestion" bit. Yeah, it makes rules easier, but still, it's not that much more complex.

It's not like we're trying to figure out the fuel efficiency of a Methane-powered vehicle after all.

EDIT: And, yes, it sucks. Very badly.

+1 (and really, with these modding rules, the increase in ease is marginal at best).

And let's not talk about fuel efficiency. That part of Rigger 3 still gives me nightmares. Nominal ranges per battery/gas tank filling would be nice though.


Tried online gaming? It's a little more reliable in my experience.

Can't do online. Don't know why, just can't.

Pity. Helped me still have my games on and off even though all the people I play with are either constantly on the move, or do live someplacefar off now. I do miss the old get-togehters, though.

I guess it has something to do with RL changes between 1st and 2nd edition - while the original Shadowrun was developed the USSR was still around, then it was suddenly gone.

Heh, had a look at the pdf today.

while for the most part the tactical helicopters looks sane, the aircrafts towards the back do no.

The MIG got 3 point, one will likely be taken up by a gun. Non are listed as reinforced, but if one assume so then the best bet for carrying a large payload is the Hail Barrage. Anything else will result in 1 gun and 2 launch weapons! The image looks like a F-16/F-35 knockoff, and the F-165 can carry 7 launch weapons plus gun. And that do not account for the ability to carry multiple rounds via racks.

the SU seems modeled on the F-22, but even there things go weird. 2 concealed? Try 8+gun. The 3 external was close to the 4 tho. But those 4 can again take racks.

Not sure how these are supposed to be used. En mass, or via heavy drone support?

Well, hobgoblin, just as I've noted up there - current gen Sus have 9 to 11 hardpoints, plus a chin-mounted Gryazev-Shpagin...
I believe the low number of weapons is meant to tone down the craft's relative power, minding that the design is at least 40 years old; but still, that all just doesn't make much sense...

This (And earlier) is also a time of downchecking military equipment to make it last longer and not be as expensive.

Even taking training into consideration, Metahuman Life just got so cheap that military equipment got to be too expensive. (Take the comments about the bombs costing more than the targets destroyed today, and magnify it through a Corporate Boardroom!).

The Combat Multiplier cost more than to just send in the base "Combat" itself in at a multiple number of times.

To whit: More boots, less fancy jets that can mount multiple weapon racks.

Uh, you see, CanRay, the chassis, the avionics and the engines - you know, the expensive parts of the jet besides the pilot (although a good fighter jet pilot is goddamn expensive, as well) - they cost the same whether you mount three weapons or eleven. And the planes discussed are dual-engine jet fighters, there's just no reason for them not to be armed. Hell, the Reckoner, which is basically L-39 70 years later, is armed almost no worse than the Founder, which is supposed to "incorporate the first Euro-War experience". I guess that experience was "do not start wars for no fraggin reason", huh?

"War is bad for business. We're in the business of doing business. Thus, we do not wish war. So, we will make bad military products to encourage people not to have expensive wars that destroy valuable property. Infantry is so much cheaper and far less destructive. And we can sell in bulk to Infantry."

Haha, that logic'd work if S&K was making that MiG

Really? Who owns MiG then?

Oh, you think so huh? Who owns them? And the people they answer to? And those people? And the people above them?

The Corporate Court does not want War in any way, shape, or form. It is literally "Bad For Business". It destroys property values, expensive factories, and so on. Oh, sure, the Military Industrial Complex is a great way to make a profit, as long as it's kept in check.

And that, not-so-gentle'runners is why we have Desert Wars!

Minding that MiG is not listed among the S&K subsidiaries neither in Corporate Download nor in Corporate Guide, while Shadows of Asia states that some parts of the Russian economy are still planned, I presume that MiG, as well as Su, Il or other military industry like Nizhniy Tagil Inc. or Krasnoe Sormovo are state-owned. Or at least the state has the majority vote.

War is incredibly profitable, especially when it happens somewhere where your rival's factories and workers are, while yours are not. That's why the military contractors in the USA say nothing against Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya.
Same way the Sixth World has a bunch of countries corps do not really care about, like, say, the Awakened Yakut, which chopped up the megacorp negotiators when they arrived to discuss the feature business plans.

Yeah, but US Military Contractors aren't countries in their own rights...

And wars have a nasty tendency of spilling over into their extraterritorial land.

What? No drones? No vehicle mods? No new miniguns to put on those attack choppers? Nothing affordable at character creation? How bout some rules for upgrading vehicle armor with Modifications like personal armor (the vehicle mod that does this is way way worse.)

Would it kill you guys to make a supplement the average game will want to purchase?

I'm an average gamer and I bought and liked it. Gives something for PCs to strive for. The art for the jets is right out of left field (As has been commented on, so I'm leaving that Dead Centaur to mature in the desert heat.).

Anyhow, it's "Unfriendly Skies: New stuff that flies", just what it says on the tin.

If you want Drones, they're in "This Old Drone" and "MilSpecTech". Rules for upgrading armour is in Arsenal (And if you don't like it, Houserule.).

And it sold, so, no, it's not killing them at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

That said, I still wish there was a flying MPUV now...

DON'T check 'this old drone' because the stats are totally out there. Or rather, if you check it, write your own stats. Because CGL don't do Errata, eve on phenomenally broken product like this.


It's a booster rockets and LTA add-on vehicle mod away. Or were you looking for something like this?

I'm (We're) Average... I bought it...

Something like that.

Depends on what you do in the Air Force.

Indeed, I know a Pararescue vet who may take umbrage to saying all the officers do is fly away on stuff they don't take care of

That one was coined after the beginning of the air force, after WWI. It was a lot truer then. And as far as I can tell (as I work at the French ministry of defense), you can really see the difference in the officers behavior, no matter what their actual specialty is.

*cough*

B-52H, ca. 1962 at the most recent.

KC-135, ca. 1960 to 1964 for the ones still airborne.

Expected retirement dates for both are now somewhere in the vicinity of 2040... and both were supposedly to have been retired sometime in the 1980s, then again in the 1990s, and... you get the idea. It's not totally inconceivable that somebody is still flying a BUFF in 2070. Actually, desktop forge technology would make keeping the beasties in the air EASIER than it is NOW because the new parts would outperform the originals and not just be re-machined bits from retired aircraft or one-off hand-builds by the heroic depot matinenance personnel.

The [?]C-130[?] is still in production TODAY so it's hard to gauge how old any particular airframe might be, and thus not as effective an example, but you're right about being a turbo-prop.

As turbo-prop aircraft OUT of production go, how about the P-3C Orion Maritime Patrol Aircraft? It's actually based on the old Lockheed Electra airliner, ca. 1957 - 1961 give or take with a first flight in 1959. They MAY start phasing them out of service in 2013 if the new P-8 Poseidon actually keeps on schedule. I'll believe that when I see it - "There aren't any subs left to hunt now that the Russians are out of the game!" Right. Tell that to the Chinese who surfaced a NUCLEAR (not a Diesel-Electric) sub within SIGHT of a US carrier in the Sea of Japan INSIDE all the ASW escorts and sub-hunting aircraft while ON AN EXERCISE! Sorry, pushed my own button there and I digressed.

-Kerenshara

Actually, talking with some of the folks here in Winnipeg, it turns out that every now and then some Redneck finds a crashed trainer from WWI or WWII (Manitoba was a major training area for the British Empire/Commonwealth during those times) and gets them up and flying again. It's getting rarer and rarer, but it still happens.

And you're right about the nanoforge bit, it's certainly going to make old equipment performable again. I mean, hell, it actually found a way to improve on the AK-97!

On the flipside, the feed material for those nanoforges are RFID rigged out the wazoo, and it makes for some really visible equipment to the forces that provide said material. Not always a good thing. (And because they're deeply imbedded, a simple tag eraser isn't going to cut it.).

I'd like to have seen something on a larger MILITRAY VTOL. I see the "Osprey" for DocWagon^TM but things being what they are, the need for a LARGE true VTOL aircraft would seem to be self-obvious, especially for the corps if they have isolated outposts needing resupply or evacuation.

I was thinking something like we saw in Avatar with ducted fans in multiples or a double-wing "Osprey" tilt-rotor at the least. As forces get smaller, the need to deploy tactically rapidly will continue to grow to where conventional aircraft, even STOL aircraft like the one featured in Unfriendly Skies won't be sufficient to the need, and the current V-22 system is inadequate. It's a huge improvement on the (ancienct) CH-46 Seaknights and their Vietnam-era bullet holes, but with improving materials technology it would be fairly trivial to maximize the technology. That was MY big disappointment, anyhow.



-Kerenshara

Go back and re-read the fluff... untagged stock is available TO THE CORPS and GOVERNMENTS or on the black-market at exorbitant prices and high availability. It's the stuff you buy at the [6^th World Hardware Store] that's tagged to Hades and back. The corps and/or government s would be the ones mostly making the aforementioned parts... or those in their employ who could demand a supply of the tag-free stocks. Further, remember the signal range on RFID tags: 0. You've got to be within zilch range to find them by the tag (say, walking through the metal detector built into the door frame of the corp you're trying to infiltrate?); they're there more for "tracking" sources than as a "Hey! I'm over HERE Stupid!" kind of thing. Like a supply of nannie-manufactured illegal weapons show up on the market and KE scans the things and finds them loaded with stock from batch [email="47A-66$#-@~99-2072"]47A-66$#-@~99-2072[/email] and they run that back against records and find out Binky the Ork bought them at his corner store, and a raid on the registered address for the SIN turns up Binky counting his Nuyenn as his forges burble happily behind him. That night, on the news, "a 27-year-old ork was killed in a police standoff with Knight Errant security forces forced to employ deadly force when the suspect produced a high-powered weapon and..."

(Yes, the pun is intentional.)

-Kerenshara

Isn't that what LAVs are supposed to be? Air Mobile forces in the same way Vietnam had Air Calvary using Hueys, only larger and faster, but with less ability to hover in place (Not a smart idea in a combat situation anyhow.)?

That's how I'd read the Cascade Orks selling the Skraacha to the Native American Nations, using it as a Fast Troop and Materials Transport that could also be provided to "The Private Sector" (Read: Smugglers.).

Anyhow, IIRC, there's a picture of a Helicarrier in Arsenal as well...

Can't fault the logic in that. Especially if the local government is making their own feed stocks to ensure they're clean.

But what if the enemy, with their own nanoforges get their hands on the feed? Wouldn't it also make sense to have your own back door in there as well?

Then again, if those back doors are found, then the troops are at a great disadvantage due to...

DAMNIT! Now my brain hurts! This is why I didn't take that CSIS guy up on his job offer!Signal 0 is 3 metres. (SR4A Page 222). Short, yes, but cluster drop some retransmitting sensors all over the place where you think there's some OpForce located, and...

Or one guy who the CO hates in a Lockheed Sparrow with some jacked up sensors specifically tunned for RFID tags...

LAV's (Low Altitude Vehicles) are good for speed, mediocre at best for range, CAN NOT benefit from in-flight refueling, and positively lousy for payload beyong their own mass. Not a one of the LAVs as presented or even described can haul something more than a Shadowrun-er, SpecOps team. Awesome for smuggling and raiding and insertion of SCOUT forces, no way to really move whole companies of troops. WAR! still talks about company size units, and so do other books in things like Desert Wars.

So LAVs are not like 'Nam Air Cav. Think of them as specialized descendants of the Harrier as opposed to the Huey. The Huey takes more power to hover, but In Ground Effect can pull that off for as long as it has fuel. Not only is the Harrier pushing it's engines to the maximum in VTOL mode, but it has an actual finite time limit in that mode per-mission. Put another way, LAVs can hover, but it's not their nature. I keep saying this: LAVs are WIGE (Wing In Ground Effect) aircraft, not true VTOLs.

And as to hovering being a bad idea in combat, yes and no. Think of the argument about the A-10 Thunderbolt II (aka Warthog) - It's a dumptruck of a plane with a top speed most airliners would sneer at. But when supporting ground troops, that lower speed means it can loiter in the combat zone on-call whereas a true fast-mover is more of a single-strike aircraft, with limited engegement time. Granted, sensors and computers in 2070 are much more capable of self-direction, but we don't see much of that in the Fluff. The human element still has primacy. Why is that? Because IFF can fail, and the human brain can make judgement calls much more effectively.

And there are plenty of circumstances where you want you ARMED transports to "hover" (or just fly overhead slowly and menacingly) overhead. Note how recently we're seeing airborne sniping becoming a more common tactic? Cripes, the US Coast Guard uses it daily in stopping drug runners! The smartlink combined with a full-up comlink and tied into the aircraft's flight control system would be the next best thing to a unmoving platform, calculating lead/trail and other factors lik bank.

Anyhow, I'm liking the meat of this discussion, sorry if I'm turning out my signature Wall-o-Text.

-Kerenshara

"What if the enemy captures our fuel?" See: German primary objective in the Battle of the Bulge. It's an axiom of military operations.

The feed is mostly inert. The RFIDs are "tags", not a computer network. It's not like being able to slip in lines of code to the finished device's OS. These things aren't Star Trek "replicators"; you have to assemble the parts and load the software. That is assuming you can use them to make something as advanced as the (optical) computer circuitry of 2070 with them. In one of the books it discussed how nanites are used in a lot of heavy manufacture, but this ain't them. This is a 3-D "inkjet" printer that builds working parts a few molecules at a time. It may even use nanites to some extent, but it's not the level seen in real manufacturing. I just don't see how your stock could be tampered with short of destroying it, like gasoline.



Ah, true of ground operations, yes, and a very good point. But we're talking about aircraft. You're going to fill every square decimeter with an rfid? To keep them in place, you'd need drones. No, in flight operations, it's just not pat.

Now for ground operations it's another matter. And I imagine since the tags are passive, you'd still be able to scan your recaptured stocks before you used it, neh?

-Kerenshara

Sorry, thinking of Security Tags which only go off when a certain command is sent to them. Such as a certain cow going:
"I'm Being Stolen!"

Right, right. I keep thinking like a ground pounder. I don't check my verticals, either. 'Course, I'm just a dumb civvie puke, so what the hell do I know really?