Can I get some suggestions on how you guys would stat out a military flight suit, like what you would expect a T-bird or F-B Eagle pilot to use? I'm not really sure where to go with this. I was thinking something like form fitting body armour with some insulation mods and something like the massagers available in the Victory line clothing to simulate the effects of the g-suit pilots wear. So ideas?

i would make it customized Chameleon suit (with massagers) and SWAT/Military Grade armor Helmet..

FFBA? I'd suggest Industrious coverall with a massage liner. Unless we're talking those fancy g-suits. Then it's all FFBA.

I agree with seriously mike. They are looking for something that will cover them and be comfortable, not armo/ camo stuff which is EXPENSIVE and they will hopefully never need. A pilot is supposed to take his plane up and bring it back, same for tankers. The government is NOT paying thousands of for something most of them will never ever use.

Seriously from RL NATO approached Fabrique National, the belgium arm of Browning to make a carbine for tankers in case they need to bail out. It had to be small, so it wouldn't take up space in the tank, and reliable. The nice boys at FN over engineered the piece giving it a 50 round mag top loaded, with high velocity rounds and scope with a plastic shell and tightly built works in a bull pup design keeping it all around 3 feet long, maybe a little less, capable of ss or BF and even fully loaded it weighed only about 5 pounds. The problem was all this pushed the price of the P-90 to about $1,800-$2,000 per unit as opposed to $700 for an M-16. Too expensive for tankers but very popular with special forces. The civilian PS-90 is only semiauto capable, off the shelf, and had a barrel 18" longer-making it harder to hide but even more accurate and it fits wonderfully in the hands of a small woman.

P90 ain't 3 feet long. Closer to two, pretty comfy to hold, absolute bitch to reload.

As much as it pains me to agree with anything Snow Fox says I think she hit the nail on the head. A flight suit is designed for comfort, and is not supposed to hinder you bringing back the multi-million dollar piece of machinery you're entrusted with. Not to mention how would all that extra weight affect the ejection process?

I could see massaging liners. I could see some sort of relief tube, and as long as you keep the lines separate some sort of canteen or camel back knock off. But armor? Seems like it'd get in the way-and be risky to wear something that constricts your body even more when potentially pulling some heavy G maneuvers? Doesn't seem too likely.

Tankers are going to not want to be weighed down with armor while they move, you can stand up in a A-1 Abrhams turret space and pilots might find their co-ordination compromised by it, in effect secrificing their primary ability for protection in the worst case senario. And anything powerful to take pout a tank or jet is not going to be slowed down by personal body armor.


You're right I just measured from but to the base of the extended barrell and it's only 19 inches. Sliding those pointy little 5.7mm rounds into the mag where they twist is a pain, litterally.

Turret's also have a limited amount of space available-for a variety of reasons. This means a lot of Track Commanders or people popping up into a TC hatch leave their 782 gear on the deck-so they don't get jammed up in the turret. Some hang it over the back of their seats-or jam into free space in the turret.

Flight Suit for High-G?

Probably a Rigger's Cocoon.

This. T-birders and pilots have a snugly (and armored) cocoon for their meat body while they are jacked into their vehicles. Inside the cocoon they probably wear something tight-fitting (don't creases pressing into the skin), massage liners also sound like a reasonable idea...and Hardwired had those, too.
Another idea would be the Blood Circuit Control System, while there are no hard rules for high-G effects, that system sounds like a perfect implanted G-suit.

For such a crew suit some measure of fire protection seems like a good idea.

OK. Thanks for the ideas. I'm not sure why the turret info on tanks is there since I can't imagine someone popping out of turret hatch on aircraft that travel 1000 kph but I appreciate the insight.

To pop the turret hatch to get off when it's landed, maybe?

I'm not sure about the flight suit but I can do some solid guessing about the tankers.

They're concerned about fire. They're concerned about chemicals. And they're concerned about bumping into hard pieces of metal and composite that are not shaped for human comfort. The TC (Turret Commander) also wants some bullet protection if/when he sticks his head and upper torso out of the vehicle for situational awareness.

In a lot of ways, the Urban Explorer with fire and chemical protection plus helmet goes a long way to being the solution.

They also have a tendency to jostle out of alignment inn field conditions leading to essentially a jammed magazine. I don't know if they have fixed the problem but in the not so distant past it was an open secret that the magazine and hence the firearm had a serious defect.

Improved rigger's cocoon - the medical one.

"Deluxe Rigger's Cocoon - The black box will go before you do."

Yeah I get that. I just wouldn't think that the turret on a t-bird was something anyone would stick their head out of. High air speed and fragile bodies sticking out of them don't mix well. Honestly though, I'd never thought about what tankers wore in SR while in the tank. Why wasn't this in WAR!?
I think the Urban Explorer as a base will work fine for what I want, since it has a higher impact value and that seems important to avoid getting bumps and bruises while riding in a flying tank doing 1000kph. Insulation, Chem and Fire protection along with the massagers seem good and yeah, I know the pilot will likely be in a cocoon but the other crew aren't going to be so they need something to wear while riding around. This is what I was looking for.

Except for the mage, all jobs on a T-Bird should be done in VR. And even the mage probably has some sort of cocoon, just with enough movement for some basic handwaving. Most of the time the mage's body will be limp and drooling anyway, while he is on astral recon.

Or stoned out the gourd on Deepweed.

Disagree about all jobs being in VR. Many, even most, but not all. And some of the ones that won't be VR will be in meatspace.

There will also (for military) be a lot of degraded operations tasks. Things that are done manually when enemy action stops VR.

I think it's a table preference thing.

The jobs I could think of:
- Pilot(s), obviously rigger
- WSO, ditto
- Flight Engineer, another rigger (you can feel if the engines are OK, how great is that?)
- Flight Officer/Commander(t-bird): Handling all the data and acting as extra pair of eyes is a natural VR job
- Electronic warfare, matrix actions all the way
- Magic, obviously not VR but out of his body acting as extra eyes most of the time, and using Magesight Goggles for the rest

There's also the problem that a t-bird crew won't be able to do much in meatspace even if they wanted to. A t-bird has an insane stall speed and should spend most of the time jinking around like a hummingbird on LSD (what else is the point in riding vector-trust bricks?), so the crew will have little choice but staying strapped down.

Pardon me while I bang my head on the desk over here. I keep forgetting - T-bird.

Those are basically all the same job - and you name it, it's the rigger that runs the damn thing. However, adding a pair of eyes and maybe one more guy to control a second turret or shoot while the pilot is piloting might be neat. So two riggers. Now in an MBT you may have one more, but for all their armament, T-Birds are basically freight-trains, so you don't want to waste too much space on crew.

This I would think to be true, any kind of physical tasks will likely have to be postponed until either after landing, or during VTOL/hover.

I think one thing you have to remember is how the vehicle rules work: Any burst of full-auto or any explosive weapon will require a damage resistance test from anyone in the vehicle. That means that you still DO need personal armour, even while in a very tight space. I second FFBA or an Urban Explorer. Or both.

Damn... I should have done that as a science experiment in High School!

I'm actually going to go ahead and suggest using the HEL Suit from Arsenal 54 for this instead. Its got all the features you want, basically being skintight future-suit space wear. Think mass effect.
Its form-fitting, thus not bulky. 5 minute air supply for oh-shit situations.(you know how fighters jets have air masks?). Likely has a plug into the t-birds systems. Limited vacuum protection is a plus, in case of huge holes in the hull, or having to jump out.
The big benefits it comes with: Insulation 4, Fire resistance 2, Chemical protection 2.
At 4/6 armor, its not really any bulkier than an urban explorer.

In the case of re-fluffing this suit to a flight suit, I would probably change the Radiation Shield 3 somehow.(its rx200, so 600 total) Either drop it, and the cost, or put the points into the fire resistance/chemical protection mods instead. For the same effective cost, upgrading the other resistances to Chemical Protection 4(500y) and Fire Resistance 3(100y) seems like a fair compromise.

I looked at that one too Udoshi. I guess I got the image of a fighter pilot's flight suit in my head but really, with implanted commlinks, bio monitors, and the plethora of other tech devices that can be built into a 2070's suit, there is no need for all the pockets, straps and other bits that the modern flight suit comes with. Seems like this one would work just as well, especially in the case where a pilot needs to be lying in the cocoon for long periods of time. Add massaging liners and a few other toys and it's good to go.

Quite frankly... at this point you might as well just issue them an off the rack cheap bulletproof vest they can wear under their tres chic uniforms. That way when your pilot bails... he can still be armored while wearing stolen civvies for his 2070's updated SERES schooling ;P.

Or go down the route of the 'stylish' lines and make up a pants, shirt, overcoat... uniform combo for the really fashionable militaries.

In any case, a 6/4 vest with a +0/+2 helmet is just about perfect for low cost armor that doesn't burden your typical physically fit body 3 non-infantryman. (or for those with a bit more dosh... use the flexible thing in war to reduce the effective encumbrance of the vest to 4/4 (taking 2 points off the higher rating) and then just grab a stock +2/+2 helmet out of arsenal!

The problem with your mental image is that the current day flight suit is a simple cloth jumpsuit with lotsa pockets and velcro. The pressure suit is a separate piece that fits over the pilot's legs to push blood back to his head during high g maneuvers. There's no armor, no built in radio, no rations, no insulation, no special anything. Anything cool is an addon piece to the basic suit.

There are stats for two russian pilot suits in alt.War Yakut shuffle.

The Rigger Cocoon comes with Armor 20...

That's more a problem with the vehicle rules anyway, than with our expectations of what a pilot needs to wear.

"Vehicle" and "damage" in general is a combination of topics which leads to madness

Yeah, but what if you go to the back of your LAV and want to make coffee?

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Heheh.
Someone was thinking that shadowrun flight suits really looked like tie fighter pilots, weren't they?
I'd also point out that biofabrics(biomonitors) and massaging liners are all arsenal clothing options, and could probably be incorporated into such a suit.

double post