I hope all you Dumpshockers are on the verge of some kind of nice weekend. If your weekend involves Shadowrun--and it should, right?--we have a new PDF product for you. Unfriendly Skies is now available at the Battleshop and Drivethrurpg. Here's what it's got:

WINGS TO FLY

It’s a big world, and not all of the work that’s available is sitting right outside your front door. Sometimes you might need to hop across a country, across a continent, or across an ocean. Other times you might look to the air to find a way across a border that’s too tough to cross on the ground. And then there are the times you might need something in the air that can pack a much-needed punch.

Unfriendly Skies provides descriptions and game information for thirty-two aircraft, including the EuroWars-tested MiG-63, the slow but easy-to-overlook Skyswimmer, and the luxurious Platinum II. The book also includes information on the basics of air travel in 2073, including information on which paths you may or may not want to follow if you are trying to lay low.

Get your runners into the skies and moving fast with the options Unfriendly Skies provides. Unfriendly Skies is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

do wonder if this clear up the randomness that is launch weapons..

Anybody ready to review this?

I would have to say it's a very interesting read. Not something that a lot of Shadowrunner groups would use all of, but certainly things to take into consideration for the universe. The inclusion of civilian and corporate passenger craft is excellent, as is the additional rotorcraft. The blimp section I found a bit lacking, but then again, I loves me my blimps.

I'm slightly upset over the lack of the Avro Aircar, but that's another issue altogether.

EDIT: Forgot the downsides, bad Dumpshocker!

The usual about the lack of concrete passenger space (Hard numbers for each craft, I mean. There's "Suggestions" given just like in SR4A.) and cargo rules. Which, when you consider what we're likely to use these things for as GMs or PCs, is really telling.

Yeah, not even the a little bit. The standard upgrades on the combat aircraft are consistent with Arsenal and MilSpecTech - a handful of mounts for guns, make up your own rules for launch weapons.

I'm still reading it over, but here are my initial impressions: The page and half description of air travel seems a little cursory, but not bad otherwise. I think an opportunity to discuss private air travel and some detail about smuggling was missed, though. What are the typical rules for operating a chopper in a city's airspace? What sensors and patrols do smugglers have to beat, and how do they usually do that? These are the kinds of things that would be of great interest to shadowrunners who might actually take possession of the aircraft listed in the book.

The production values for the vehicles are on par with MilSpecTech. Some good artwork, some serviceable, and some just goofy looking (zeppelins particularly). Write-ups seem decent so far. Nothing obviously broken about the stats yet, though I am scratching my head a bit about the sub-orbital speeds, but I think I kind of know what they were going for. The shadowtalk has been amusing me. The in-character chatter about including the sub-orbitals was some good fourth-wall poking. Good mix of aircraft too, I think.

Suborbitals have insane speeds everywhere I've seen them statted. Also, the SOTA book (I believe) states that your runners are more likely to win a fistfight with a Great Dragon than pilot one... and then gives the rules for that

Also, are there LAVs-are-there-LAVs-arethereLAVs?!

Okay, bought it. The download file is not broken.


No. Maybe in Eurowars Vintage. There are a couple low-end jet fighters - Mig 63, Hawker-Siddley Fiebrand, Evo Reckoner; the SU-41 and two helicopters, the MK Sperber and the EC Tiger attack helicopters.

On a quick glance (More deatiled when I have the time): The art's good, though sometimes inconsistent with the description (the china clipper looks pretty tiny, as does the grande concorde, and why is the Firebrand designated a transport plane and looks like a light and overarmed fighter?), some is brushed up old art, some is original, and at least one is a photomanip (the SK Lakota).

I get the impression that launch weapons is something they expect to be fired at runners, not by runners...

'Runners will launch weapons... Of vehicles they steal.

Aha, so, both MiG and Su make fighters still? That's a nice thing to know.

Pah, SR art is never consistent with the descriptions, time to get used to it.


I still believe launch weapons should be usable and also should represent what their analogues from the RL are capable of. Not being able to hit a barn's door is hard to believe for an epitome of of tech 60 years into the future.

Apparently, though by SR time, the Su-41 design is more than 70 years old. then again, so is the Eurofighter, which also is still around, and the primary plane the SU-41 fought against, apparently. So maybe it's leftovers or something. The Mig 63 is a relatively new design though.


Will you leave my little nitpicks alone?

Uh, Su-41 is 70 years old? So, designed around 2000? I'm not aware of any production models with that index in RL, except for maybe one or two mentions on forums where it's confused with Su-47, and a single notice of the MFP project.
Or is it just based on any of the old Soviet models like Su-27?

Why shouldn't I nitpick on nitpicks?

Going by the art, it is a somewhat updated Su-47. The same frame, at least. The Su-47 was designed around 2000, IIRC.

So, forward-swept wings? They seem popular on SR illustrations - look unusual and thus represent the progress, or something?
Su-47 is a test plane/"flying lab" which first took off in 1997. It's a result of a project started as early as 1983 (don't you just love the 90ies in Russia, heh). So, that brings us to almost a hundred years, if it's indeed the same airframe

Shadowrun diverges from RL officially in the late 80's. I've seen some compelling arguments that the divergence must have been even earlier, smaller things that eventually set up the larger things that happen in the SR 90's and 00's (The corporate rulings, the whole Amerind war, etc). Not to mention a vast difference in the way technology developed both pre- and post-Crash.

So in SHadowrun? Yeah, there's a production model with that index that was in development for the last 10 years RL, well... It's RL, not game. So it don't count.

Bull

I have to say many of the pics look like they where designed for crimson skies, many airplanes have turboprops for no reason. Also the most of the airplanes are really slow, some Jets are slower than helicopters...

cya
Tycho

The turbopropped airplanes for the most part are brushed up Rigger Blackbook art, so they precede Crimson Skies by a few years. Besides, propeller engines have their pros in modern aviation; whether executive jets are better equipped with these, though, YMMV.

Well, SR USSR was not that different, was it? It still fell apart in 1991, it's around the 2000ies when the differences with RL really started to show.
So we can as well suppose that SR Sukhoi developed the same aircraft RL Sukhoi did :ь

C-130s are Turboprop Planes, and are still in common military usage today, despite being close to 50-years old. (I think the Canadian Armed Forces still have some of the original airframes as well. Which will, hopefully, finally be retired soon.).

And then there's the AC-130, which is a C-130 that you don't pick a fight with.

SR includes some elements of real life as neeeded, and "retcons" major events in. In this case, obviously Sukhoi developed a different aircraft at a different time. I wouldn't think too hard about it, or worry too much in the long run. Shadowrun tends to run into trouble if you try applying too much real world logic to it's background and history anyways. If you end up nitpicking every minor detail, it will likely implode in a puff of logic

Bull

Iirc, props are nice if your looking for short runways as they handle low speeds better.

for instance, there are some crazy claims about this birdy up in northern Norway:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w...HC-6_Twin_Otter

One claim is that the pilot was able to come in 90 degrees off from the runway, due to strong crosswinds, but at the last moment bring it around and land.

Hell, the local saying is that if the Twin Otter do not fly cause of weather one better stay in doors. And they fly even in weather the military will not send a C-130 into...

The deHavilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (And it's upgrade the Turbo Beaver) have been around forever. Some of the original airframes are still seeing use. And so on.

"High Technology is not always Better Technology." is something I've said a number of times, and there are times that even technophiles will agree with me.

Also, if you build/test something to work under Canadian Conditions, you can pretty much be sure that it'll work anywhere. (Yes, Canada even has Deserts, so even in those hot, dry places.). Also, Canadian designs typically have the idea that modifications and jury rigging will need to be done in the field (We have to do so much of it already anyhow), so even if local conditions make things difficult (IE: Fine sand of Afghanistan.), a fix is probably just around the corner and easily done.

And that's why I like the Ford-Canada Buffalo.

(I've also flown on the Dash-8 Turboprop a number of times. Aside from worrying about how the engines appeared to have been repaired, and being put in the place where the guy in the WWII Bomber Movies always gets cut in half when the prop gets shot off, it was a very nice ride.).

Wouldn't SR have begun deviating in the pre-Sumerian days, sometime around the 1st or 2nd world? I mean, this is the 6th world and dragons/immortal elves were sleeping for quite a bit, even if we discount the ED stuff.

Deserts do not have to be hot, they are however very very dry

there isn't really enough realworld knowledge about the world at that time to retcon much. And (early) ED actually ties in what little is known. Check out who the Aryans were and where they probably came from ...

It all depends on what version of SR you take as canon.

In SR1 it was still USSR in 2016:

Without any further explanations, that was changed in SR2 to Russia:

According to SR1 page 19 the USSR does not fragment until the end of the Euro-War.

That, however, was retconned in SR2 (published in 1992), where it is just assumed that the collapse of the USSR has already happened, and it is not even mentioned.

That's because crash 2.0 corrupted all the data.

Yeah, I know. Euro War I made more sense in the first edition, too (very little, but still at least some, unlike the current story). But with the established canon (namely, the SoA write-up of Russian history), it seems like until at least 2000 Russian history went more or less like in RL; the real divergence starts with the Border Wars (which are never really described explicitly, but the bits on Russian history in Target:Runner Havens lead me to believe they led to reunification of at least the European former Soviet Republics back into some horrific Frankenstein monsterish USSR 1.1, and the whole gig lasting as long as 25 years).

Well, not the Baltic republics, they were just overrun, but with Belarus and Ukraine, recognised as Little Russia and Littler Russia in Tom Clancy books.

But yes, for some reason Russia decided it would become USSR 2.0, with no ressources (however that happened to Russia). and then decided to try and conquer known ressource rich states such as Germany for their vast natural ressources.

I don't remember all that much on the Baltic states, but when grabbing your former republics, why not grab those midgets as well? It's not like they had anything to match an army which the entirety of Europe had trouble fighting.

Well, Russia attacked Poland (or rather, Poland "annexed parts of Belarus to help the refugees of the Border Wars", and Russia stroke back). The only reason my group had to offer for moving on and attacking everyone at once was that there was simply no place for all the soldiers Russia sent to Poland there, so in the jam the guys just pushed a bunch of people over the borders, and it went on.

Okay, so you meant a more chinese reunification. Usually, I take this with a slant of 'voluntary'.

Still, Russia staring a war for ressources is like Saudi Arabia occupying Egypt for it's oil fields.

Who'd voluntary join Russia? This is SR, not RL.

Well, minding that by the beginning of the Euro Wars Russia had lost Siberia...

Well, yes. But I'm specifically talking modern timeline and how events came about to shape Shadowrun politically and technologically.

But again, this proves the point that you really have to look even further back. But late 80's is where the "Hard" break comes in, and we as writers and freelancers are free to disregard real life and recent history as needed.

Bull

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage

Now, if you excuse me, I have to start figuring out how to use a Rotodrone to tenderize a steak.

It's a common trope (though pretty much wrong) that Belarus and Ukraine totally would, usually in conjunction with Russian Nationalists™ taking power. Target: Smuggler Havens (and later shadows of Europe and Shadows of Asia) went with that pretty much, just like a bazillion of shooter games and action movies.

There's voluntary, and there's what APPEARS to be voluntary. That can make all the difference.

And there's "you can get no food except by joining the Army" voluntary...

The latter, in reality, has a strong tendency to blow up thoroughly into the extra smart oppressing party's faces.

Could someone with this PDF shine some light on how much of the PDF could be used by out-of-the-box characters? Is this more of a GM-book with stats for toys he might toss his players way, or a PC-book with options for riggers who want to take to the skies? Not that most Runners have need for personally-owned aircraft, in my experience, but if you had a PC who wanted to - and didn't mind investing BP in a toy he wouldn't get to take out very often - could he actually use anything in the PDF, or is it all million-nuyen aircraft with availability in the 30s?

Edit: I did look at the preview (which made adobe cry with a couple of errors), and the two stat blocks I could see did have prices well above anything a PC could generally acquire (without the GM allowing one to be stole, or handing out way too much cred) - which is probably just fine for aircraft, and keeps them out of the hands of street-level criminals... I'm just curious if that is the case with everything in the book, or if there are some "discount" options that PCs could actually pick up (like some of the light helicopters in BBB and Arsenal).

Not much available for starting characters... Experienced characters will have to save up if they want to buy one of these things.

Lots of items to steal, however.

But mostly a GM book for "The Target is flying in on $Plane, you are to extract him while he's still in the air, as the security at both airports are too high."

Anyone (I'm looking at you, Mr. Hardy) can post a breakdown of vehicle types?

Well, most of them can fly.

Usually. If the parts are in. And the mechanic on call isn't unconscious from drinking that rotgut he distills himself.

In the glorious Red Army, mechanics got some 50 liters of pure ethanol per each take-off scheduled.
The Party cared for its children!

The relations between officers and NCO can be of three kinds :
- in the army, the officers can stay in his tent while the NCO goes on the front line
- in the navy, the officers and NCO are on the same ship
- in the air force, the NCO stay on the ground, looking at their officers taking off in the aircrafts they took care off...

3 Personal Luxury Aircraft
1 Tactical Transport
3 Transport Planes
2 Passenger Planes
1 Glider
1 Tactical Aircraft
5 Light Transports
3 Medium Transports
3 Passenger Liners
2 Jumbo Airliners
2 Cargo Helicopters
1 Utility Helicopter
5 Tactical Aircraft

There ya go!

Jason H.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "The Family Blimp" like it was just a Ford AmeriCar or something.

One of the Light Transport Planes (Lear-Cessna Rover to be exact), however, has a lot of potential uses for a Shadowteam. A bit out of the price range of most Riggers, it's something to save for. I could see it used as a item for Teams that pull in the big money working out of town, especially if modified for Aquatic Landing (Floatiation). I'd liken this bird to being like the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Turbo Beaver. With a bit of work (Extra Entry/Exit Points) it could even be used for parachuting duty. Frankly, the suggestion given in the Shadowtalk lacks... Thought. But is still cool. Yes, I found a new baby.

The two DocWagon items are exceptionally good to have at any time, with all the DocWagon conctractees. Pop Mr. Bullet into the wrong person, and Air Calvary comes in a Tilt-Wing with Wagner blaring from the speakers. Or Black Sabbath. Both would be considered Classical Music by the 2070s.

All the Rotorcraft have practical applications for a well-equipped Shadowteam, but most are in the "Steal It To Own It" category of price. Or, better yet, have a contact that owns one.

The rest of the items are great for GMs that need a piece of equipment or item statted out for a 'Run, rather than the typical "You extract the target at his home/in his car, if he wants the extraction or not."-type runs.

Also, it gives an image of what the hell the group is flying in if they somehow get past airport security.

Makes sense, a huge load of Ethanol every couple of days to stave off the effects from drinking brake fluid

And thanks Jason, if I need something from that list I will remember it...

Yeah ... back in the day my rigger had one of these babies. Saved endlessly for it, but it's worth it, or was during SR2/SR3 times, because of the loads and loads of mod space it had. Not sure if that still applies, but I'd pretty much sign this for this bird otherwise.

I wonder how Orbital DK can tell what kind of a plane the team used for deployment just by looking at it...

The Platinum One's propulsion system makes me wtf. Turbines... and a propeller after them? With the kind of jet stream the turbines leave, that prop is more likely to be used as an airbrake! Same goes for the Skytruck.

Elijah's comment at the Platinum Two made me laugh.

I'm not sure why Doc Wagon needs two different kinds of helicopters and a tilt-wing plane in their fleet; or why their light helis use the twin-rotor scheme used for heavy-lifters...

The Grande Concorde's speed is far too low for a suborbital, same goes for the SV250.

IL-159 “Molyniya”. I'll just leave it as it is... No, actually, not - it's not 1992 any more, there's is goddamn google translate, it would have taken fragging seconds to get the spelling of "Molniya" right.

The Airstar 2050 suggested to be a Body 15 Armour 4 gunship made me laugh yet again.

The Dakota looks goddamn badass.

The Reckoner makes no sense. The description says it's used for rigger training, but it has no Rigger Adaptation. Then the shadowtalkers talk about how VR is good, but real training aircraft is better, and topple it off with "militaries are also not willing to risk losing a multi-million nuyen aircraft to an area jammer or unforeseen turbulence" - because no amount of VR training is preparing you for those, and 1,6m¥ for the Reckoner is not that much to lose!

>This MiG was assigned the marketing name “Founder” in keeping with former NATO codename conventions.
Rrrright.

>The Fixer features enhanced maneuverability and super-cruise capability in an attempt to dominate the dogfight arena.
Minding that super-sound flight without afterburning and highly stealthy design are both on the requirements list for the fifth generation fighters, and War! states SR current gen is the seventh, I can't see how super-cruise ability is making the Su dominate dogfights.
Also, I wonder why modern-day Su fighters have 11 hardpoints and a chin-mounted gun, and the SR MiGs and Sus have three to five...

Body of 14 with Improved Take Off/Landing 1 already in play. So a fair amount of play using the new Slots System in Arsenal.

If I had one, I'd probably upgrade that to TO/L 2 with JATO Rockets. If for nothing else than just driving the thing out of a warehouse and then taking off over the cop cars that were sure we were trapped inside and helpless.