No. It. Doesn't. (See, I can do that too...)
You just go on wearing those Blinders...

"Clothing in 2072 comes with some incredible options to enhance its wearer’s quality of life. Commlinks, music players, and other electronic devices are often woven right into the fabric, powered by interwoven batteries or special fabrics with solar recharging capability. Electrochromic threads that change color with low voltage, flexible screens, woven fiberoptics, and similar features allow you to alter the color or display complex images and patterns. Combined with a wireless link, you can set your clothing to display messages and images from a library file on your commlink, change color according to the weather forecast, or even glow brighter when in the vicinity of more commlinks. More advanced ruthenium polymer systems can take on any color the user wishes in seconds, scanning the surroundings so she can melt into the background (or stand out from a crowd)."

Price check on the mentioned "[e]lectrochromic threads that change color with low voltage, flexible screens, woven fiberoptics, and similar features," please, complete with page references and quotes if you don't mind.

Oh wait, there isn't one and there aren't any. Because it's a standard feature of clothing. Which is why it's described as a standard feature of clothing.

And no, it's not Ruthenium Polymers. That's a specific set of rules with significantly more advanced functionality, and what they're describing in the last sentence of the quote. There is no "basic ruthenium" beyond a fluff description of how the standard feature works. "Fluff" is used to describe how the rule -- in this case, the color and pattern-changing aspects of clothing -- works. That is a rule. Black and white. Quoted and referenced countless times.

Yes, it is Ruthenium Polymers. And it is NOT a standard feature of clothing. It is an OPTION. One that you pay for. Buy a basic clothing suit for 20 Nuyen and you will not have them. Purchase one for 3,000 Nuyen and I may or may not throw them in for you, depending upon who manufactures the suit. They are not free. There is no RULE that you are quoting. You are quoting ONLY FLUFF.

As for sufficierntly more advanced for BASIC ruthenium, your definition will still net you zero mechanical gain whatsoever. If you want an effect, you have to pay for it.

Let me highlight something you quoted for you...



Note the term Options. See, it is not a STANDARD Feature of Clothing, it is an OPTIONAL One. My car comes with hundreds of Options. However, I do not get them unless I pay for them. You may have these OPTIONS in your clothing all you want. YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM. The reason that you do not see a specific price in the main book is because they subsumed it into a single line item price (And left it to the GM to adjudicate, until a latrer book was introduced). Clothing costs from 20 Nueyn to 100,000 Nuyen. Now, you do the math. You want the "Options" of rutheniuum that you are talking about, you have to pay for it. It will not come stock in a suit that only costs 300 Nuyen, because the technology cost that by itself.

You want to take it further, you add more options (Cameras, processors, and Color matching softweare) and you can now have a Chameleon Suit.

Fortunately for us, we have another book that now provides all of the particulars of exactly how much ruthenium costs. So now, we can add it to anything we want. It does not change the fact that the FLUFF you are talking about PROVIDES ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT MECHANICALLY. You get NO modifier for changing the pattern on your clothing for hiding, because there is No modifier for that unless you are using very specific configurations of clothing (Camouflage or Chameleon Suit, or specific articles of clothing that have specifically been modded to provide such benefits). You can argue that it is free with every article of clothing you buy. But you are wrong, and I call Shennanigans on that. And if you really look deep down inside of yourself, you will have to agree. You do not get something for nothing in Shadowrun.

Nice Try, but you still fail.

Oh and official Price Check in Main Book. As Indicated above:



I am sure you could have found that if you had really thought to look. Glad to be of service to you.

It also says nothing about camouflage effects of any kind. If you can make a Camo Suit change to a new camo setting (-2), then you can make any clothing do so. There's no mention of that anywhere, so it makes much more sense to assume neither is possible. Or, again, that you can color-change to your heart's content for zero mechanic effect.

All clothing can color shift.

None of it nets you the stealth bonus unless it specifically says it does.

Designer business suit: Color shift? Yes. Stealth bonus? No.

Camouflage Suit: Color shift? Yes. Stealth bonus? Yes, if the pattern is matched to the environment.

Chameleon Suit:: Color shift? Yes. Stealth bonus? Yes, better than the Camouflage Suit.



-k

Query: Why doesn't the business suit do it, if it can colour shift and you shift it to an appropriate colour pattern?

***

The argument being made to suggest that Camo can be reprogrammed applies equally to all armour. So either it can't be reprogrammed (more likely) or ALL clothing can be, makign camo redundant in the first place.

But, Karma, there's no rules connection between general color shifting and Camo Suit's pattern bonus. It requires a weird position that there's something very special about Camo that no other clothing (jumpsuits, anything) can equally do.

Logically it should, but by the rules it doesn't because the bonus is coming from the Camouflage Suit, not the actual pattern. Dumb as that is. Good luck trying to reason that to some of the people around here, though.

This is different from Chameleon Suits and Ruthenium Polymers, because the rules for Ruthenium Polymers grants that benefit to any armor/clothing it's applied to.

You shouldn't have to defend anything with 'dumb as that is', especially when it's a player munchkin-ing an extra power out of existing gear. In the frequent cases where the rules are a mess, go with the non-dumb choice.

Indeed.....

Why do I feel like I threw gasoline & a lit flare into a room filled with butane?

After reading all the posts, seems like Chameleon Coating or Ruthenium Coating your outfit/gear is better & more cost effective then owning camouflaged clothing & gear. Someone did bring up a good point that if the gear gets damaged, will the Chameleon effect (an energy based, technological effect) or Ruthenium still work/function? There's no rules that saw otherwise.

Seems there are some technological gaps (like most sci-fi themed games/shows) where 1 aspect has jumped beyond other fields & the implications haven't been thoroughly thought through. (Case in point, Star Wars. Laser guns, FTL travel, Force Fields... but Jedi still used hend-held walkie talkies to talk to droids to handle hacking/electronic warfare for them, & no one wears anti-grav boots or use powered armor/clothing to scale walls or jump over pits.).

I really don't understand the confusion here, when I read SR4A (pg 326), it specifically says:



With how this future sci fi clothing is described prior to that:



...are you seriously taking that as the computer only designed the print on the cloth and you have to take it off, turn it inside out and its still makes sense as armored? What makes it any different than something like a less effective Full Body Armor then?

I choose to think of it as a futuristic ghilli suit that is less flexible to enviromental change than the Chameleon, which I think of as essentially a Predator cloaking device or the cloak ability of the armor in the PC game Crysis whose battery doesn't run out as fast.

Why choose one over the other? To me, its because you really, really want that extra stealth dice. In which case you are probably springing for other perks as well to defeat other methods of perception.

Plus, I would think you could program the Camo to have socially acceptable patterns as well. Show up looking like one thing, leave looking a different pattern.

It seems like there would be some effect on the clothing's color shifting ability from damage. Particularly if the color-changing ability is a civilian mod, it may not react to well to bullets.

Given the abilities of programmable, color-changing fabric in the write-up, it seems like there should be a step between the camo suit and the chameleon. Either an optional armor quality or a separate item that costs a little more than a standard camo suit and gives you a little variety. Personally, 1200 is a little too expensive for a piece of armor that you would need to repurchase for every different terrain you might encounter anyway, particularly when you add in all the individual mods each piece would need. I'd rather have a base set of armor (form-fit, vest and so on), and then wear terrain appropriate camouflage (whether it be a ghillie suit or tuxedo) over it.

Funny, I always read the "All have reversible day/night patterns" as meaning the current-day version of "reversible" clothing - you take your jacket or pants or whatever and turn it inside-out, and there's a different pattern on that side.




-k

I agree with Tymeaus when he says that all the fancy stuff is optional and not included with every piece of clothing but I do disagree that adding electrochromic threads,flexible screens and woven fiber optics will drive the price into the thousands, I mean just look at what you can buy at Think Geek today in the real world, we can expect better by 2072. I'm also going to have to agree with Ol' Scratch, Ruthenium Polymers are different then the other stuff that you can add to clothing.

You're agreeing with TJ, then: his point (AFAIK) was that the 'advanced' stuff (-4) is due to the cameras/processor package… and the cost.

Ok, seriously the non-dumb choice is usually the most flexible one.

However, we have a clear case of missing rules with just a suggestion in the fluff, so it's really not a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of missing content - i.e. rules for lesser ruthenium. So basically you just need to create a price point for that. You could go with the price of that second skin suit.

That and, I have to admit, the non-dumb choice would be to simply give everyone who can download a camo pattern and apply it to a given piece of clothing the same bonus as the camo suit. I've never given these special "computer generated" patterns any special credit - they are just patterns. And in any case, anything electronic can be copied, somehow. And clearly the game balance won't suddenly die just becomes someone can turn his business suit into urban camo in a jiffy. He will still need something for his head .

It seems unreasonable to put this much effort into arguing over what the rules say; clearly, the rules are uneven and don't all fit together well. So why not focus on what the rules should be, on what rules might be most desirable, and why?

That's what I was saying, Brainpiercing: if you say all clothing is 'smart', you have to say that it's all like Camo Suit. You can't use this fluff to upgrade *just* Camo Suit.

There's also the down side to color-changing camo-- that once it gets hacked you're running around in a glowing, neon-pink onesie for the rest of the combat.

It would seem like the benefit to color-changing fabrics might be something as simple as it's never inappropriate. It may not be capable of giving you a benefit for camo, but it never gives you the penalty either.

One thing that has never made sense to me is that if the camo suit gives you a penalty if your in the wrong terrain, then almost all clothing should give you a penalty almost all the time. In my mind (and perhaps only there, but accompany me on this flight of fancy), you're better off with a suit of jungle cammies in a dark alley than you are in a white t-shirt. If a GM gave me the "inappropriate camo" penalty for a white t-shirt I'd understand, but it'd still technically be a house rule.

I'm with TJ as well. I've done this in the past... paid extra to add ruthenium to a camo suit. (not the full fledged chameleon system). It makes sense, I don't believe it's bulit-in for free... otherwise there would be no cause for the camo to be reversible.

Paying an extra 1000 for the Ruthenium isn't all that expensive in the large scheme of things considering the benefits it can provide.

What makes the chameleon system special is the cameras and sensors... which change your coloring to draw what's behind you on your front so that people can 'see' through you. Without all that advanced stuff, there's no reason you should be able to simply swap out camo themes with a little bit of work and an edit program. (or change to a work jumpsuit with Joe's Plumbing monogrammed on the back... nothing like a good disguise).

House rules are fine. But that's exactly what it is; a house rule.

By the rules, all clothing is assumed to have these properties. It's not instant color/pattern-shifting, but it can be reprogrammed. And just like how all cyberware is assumed to be wireless by default, you can opt to not have this property in your clothing if you feel its inappropriate (such as with super cheap clothing like Flats) or you just don't want your clothes getting hacked. But by default, every single outfit in the game has it unless stated otherwise, either directly or implied. No extra cost required, just like there's no extra cost for your implants being wireless.

Whether you can apply a camouflage pattern to normal clothing in order to duplicate the benefits of a Camouflage Suit is a completely different debate and has no bearing on that basic rule. By a strict adherence to the rules, however, it's not possible because the bonus is coming from the Camouflage Suit itself. To fix this, "camouflage" should simply be an armor modification option with the Camouflage Suit being an example of armor that comes with it. (To be honest, I think it should just be done away with completely because in my experience, it's only helpful from a long range. If someone's standing next to you, they're not at all hard to see. At all.)

On the other hand, being able to alter the Camouflage Suit's pattern so that it can be used in different environments is, at best, iffy but by default it should be assumed to be acceptable due to the description of what and how both the Camouflage Suit and the color/pattern-shifting technology is described. The bonus is still coming from the Camouflage Suit. You're simply using the technology to alter the environment to which it is compatible, which is completely in line with its described capabilities.

That's what each side always thinks of the other. That's the whole point of the conversation, is to figure out, or come to an agreement on, which position is the rules-as-written and which the house rule. Saying, "Your position is a house rule" begs the question, and is also kind of dickish. [And, of course, unutterably pointless, as I mentioned before: it doesn't matter what rule is written in the book, only what rule will best work at the table. But that's a conversation I don't think we're going to have.]

Considering that it's written plainly in black-and-white, and the only counterargument is "I don't like it, so I'm changing it something else" or "I'm making up a price of 1,000 nuyen" makes it -- by definition -- a house rule. Call me dickish all you like, it's not going to change that fact.

Believe it or not, it's possible to be wrong about something.


That's been discussed, too. And, again, it's an argument about Camouflage Suits and why that's the only way to get those benefits. That's what's broken and needs to be addressed. Why can't just buy another set of clothing with a camouflage pattern already printed on it? No shifting needed. It's camouflaged, too. Why doesn't it get the bonus?

Or are we not even allowed to have ordinary, low-tech clothing with complex patterns and colors on it, too?

Yep. So's the thing they're saying. The rules are broken. Get over it. And I'm not just talking to you: you just happened to be the last person to have posted. Personally, I think you're absolutely correct in your interpretation, I just don't think it matters.


Oh, I believe it. I don't have any experience with it personally, mind you.


Exactly right. The rule that's there is stupid and contradictory, so write a new rule. Never mind what the old one was: just put that away. What's the new one?

It seems to me like there should be four classes of clothing:

1 Dumb clothing, not camouflaged
2 Dumb clothing, camouflaged
3 Ruthenium-woven clothing, which can change colors and patterns
4 Advanced ruthenium clothing, for that [completely, stupidly, shockingly impossible] stealth effect

Are there any types I'm missing?

Obviously 1 would come in multiple styles and colors: it's regular clothing, by our standards. And obviously 2 would have multiple sub-types [jungle, arctic, baroque], and could be assumed to be day/night reversible unless otherwise specified. A brief discussion would be warranted with 3, explaining some various means of control [wireless, datajack, skinlink, buttons], and what kind of resolution you could expect. And 4 requires all sorts of explanations.

Mechanically, you need a bonus for blending in [available for 1, 2, 3 and 4], with variables for efficacy. You need a penalty for not blending in [available for 1 and 2; not 3 or 4, unless it's broken or something], with variables for stand-out-ish-ness.

What else?

No, a few are saying that. The ones I've been replying to, by and large, have been saying that's not the case.


I mentioned two in my next to last post in the thread, as well as a few others. I personally don't see the point in camouflage clothing in Shadowrun. If there were rules for wartime skirmishes and the like, sure, it plays a part when dealing with long ranges or large groups of people wearing the same camouflaged uniforms. But in close combat? What exactly is it supposed to do and how is it helping you sneak past a guard?

Ruthenium, sure. It's a weak form of technological invisibility. But camouflage, whether a military uniform or a business suit, just isn't going to do squat for you when it comes to Infiltration and the like. Wearing a suit or uniform appropriate to what you're doing -- a suit or janitorial uniform when sneaking into an office building, fatigues when trying to blend in at a military base, hunting gear when out in the wilderness -- is going to be far more beneficial. Wearing fatigues painted blue and gray "urban camouflage" while stomping around inside Horizon's plush office building is going to do jack squat.

I think Bodak quoted a price for thread that changes colour, it's called Second Skin, and it ain't cheap. Glad that you aren't arguing that commlinks and other electronic devices should come for free as well.

Basically it comes down to this: if you want functionality, you gotta pay for it. If you want a fluffy technicolour dreamcoat that gives you no camouflage bonus but changes colour at your whim, the GM might throw it into your lifestyle costs if you have a sufficiently high lifestyle in his/her judgement; if not, he can quote you a price on it.

Case in point.


Second Skin isn't a "thread that changes color." It's an outfit, and one specifically described as being made out of very specific materials and not the various materials mentioned in the general rule. The rule that you're erroneously referencing specifically states that Second Skin requires Ruthenium Polymers to gain the effect. Ruthenium Polymers is a specific rule above and beyond the general rule. It's not a synonym.

For the sake of this ongoing arguement, I'm going to point you all towards Attitude 160: Color Changing Clothing.

It is PRECISELY this, effectively being half-strength ruthenium polymer for 175 nuyen. You do have to pay for what you want. But its nowhere near as expensive as a full polymer+sensor suite coating like the second skin or a dermal sheath option has.

They do, however, stack.

Oh, god. There is no way they stack. I don't care if 'Attitude' specifically says they do.

Good points but I think camo would still be useful in some situations like maybe staking out or sneaking up on a corp compound from some near by woods or some thing. In that case the right camouflage could help hide a 'Runner from any patrols or sentries that might be on the look out.

If I was houseruling, I'd just eliminate the specific Camouflage and Chameleon Suits, give any clothing with appropriate static coloration/patterning to get the +2 bonus, and the +4 to any Ruthenium Polymer type adaptive cloaking capable suits.



-k

Sorry, I'm not seeing it. Could you tell me what the post number is?


It seems like there are a couple of options: fix the broken rules, or just bitch that the rules are broken. You've been complaining that the rule is broken, so I proposed fixing the rule, and your response to that is that we don't need the rules at all. Are you allergic to constructive solutions? It's so dumpshock: you can find 100 people to bitch the weapons rules are broken, but only 2 people who will design a new weapon.


Shadowrun visibility exists beyond "close combat" ranges. Perhaps ranges are different in the games in which you play, but I often encounter situations where the opposition is more than a few - or a few dozen - meters away. And camouflage is helpful for concealment sometimes even at relatively close ranges, particularly in conditions of weak lighting. Camouflage clothing in Shadowrun is a logical inclusion, useful and necessary.


The advanced ruthenium system, though, can't possibly work; it's a logical impossibility. If any inclusion is absurd, it's that of the "tape a picture of what's behind me to my face" ruthenium invisibility cloak. I let people use it, because they like it, and it's in the rules, but clearly it's completely impossible.


It's a question of what's appropriate to the situation. If the only situations you're ever in take place inside Horizon's plush office building, then by all means urban camouflage will be a positive detriment. But if you're hiding in a ditch while an automated convoy you're about to hijack goes by, it's a necessity. If you're traversing the ice field that surrounds the mining camp where you're going to taint the orichalcum they've discovered, it's a necessity. If you're sneaking through the jungle to overtake the wild basilisk whose gall bladder you just have to have, it's a necessity. Camouflage exists in Shadowrun for the same reasons it exists in the real world, and the world of Shadowrun is as broad as the real world, so those same reasons apply to it. Not every run - at some tables, at least - takes place in an office building, or even in a city. Not every encounter is at close range.

Shadowrun should include camouflage, and it should have working rules to reflect its use. I've proposed a general outline of some: would you like to help develop them into a working replacement for Shadowrun's broken camouflage rules? If you'd just like to fight about shit and complain, that's cool; I was just thinking it'd be cool if one of these conversations ended in something productive.

Ruthenium is much weaker than it used to be (SR3), I think to reflect that it's apparently so objectionably impossible. Perception is basically the best pool, so +4 against that is minor, and I'd say reasonable for background-accurate clothing at all times. 'Invisibility' would be a vastly larger bonus (/enemy penalty).

I agree with that, and with the +2 KarmaInferno mentioned for anything color-appropriate. I'm not sure if I feel that's enough in either case, but I'd want to actually playtest it before I could make that guess; while I can pretty easily ballpark the effect of things in SR3, I'm really not there yet with SR4. In the meantime, +2 / +4 make sense to me. The only question then is the cost of the various things that are available, and they're all pretty fine in the book as written, right?

Nope, its possible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD83dqSfC0Y...feature=related

http://www.giantginkgo.com/archives/000113.php

http://www.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm

it's not to the point cloaking suits yet but the possibility is there.

Both these solutions illustrate the problem: the observer's position must be fixed in order for this "projection of what's behind" method [optical camouflage] to work, because of parallax. These systems are perfect illustrations of why advanced ruthenium invisibility cloaks are impossible.


There are multiple solutions here: the carbon nanotube and metamaterials solutions don't work at all like ruthenium, and the other is just another example of optical camouflage, which then falls afoul of the problems mentioned above. In short, if those videos moved the camera, the illusion would break down entirely: most of the videos mention this in the explanatory text.

*shrug* We'd have to do actual tests of visual spot times or something to see how realistic, but I'm happy giving it the (minor) +4 bonus. Presumably, the magic of ruthenium allows multiple viewpoints.

That's what I'm thinking ,the suit uses cameras the size of this one or maybe smaller placed all over the suit and the ruthenium projects the images.

I think part of the difficulty I have with 2 and 4 is that my expectations for how high Perception should be aren't realistic. When you think about it, 4 dice is the difference between a Veteran and someone who is Untrained. That's a pretty big deal.

A really realistic camouflage system would also need to take into account varying efficacy at varying distances, but that level of accuracy is better left, in my experience, to GM fiat at the moment. Shadowrun ain't no wargame.


The size of the cameras isn't the issue. Let me see if I can explain the problem. [I've tried before, and I sucked, so forgive me in advance if I do that again.]

• Whip out your smartphone.*
• Open your camera app.
• Close one eye.
• Fiddle with the zoom, the distance between your eye and the camera, etc., until you can line up what's on the screen with real life, like "seeing through" the phone, like the phone is a window.
• Awesome. Now, move your head.

See how it doesn't work anymore? It's like that 3d street art: it only works if you're standing in exactly the right place. Also:

• Close one eye again.
• Get everything lined up.
• Awesome, now, open the other eye.

Doesn't work, again, because of parallax. This time, because it's about stereoscopic vision, the effect is much more pronounced at close range, but it doesn't matter: just the fact that it can only work in one position - on a direct line down the barrel of the camera - makes optical camouflage effectively useless.

*A digital camera will also work. Or your imagination. A sketch is fine, too.

I still think it'd be partially effective, just as static camouflage doesn't make you *invisible*. I'm also okay assuming some kind of magic hologram (=multiple viewpoints) effect; 'ruthenium' is literally handwavium, always has been.

As for the 'actual DP vs. what the book calls average' argument… I don't feel like arguing it yet again. The fact is, people get Perception pools well above 10 easily; it's a reality we have to deal with.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=1123261


Actually, I've mostly been arguing that the color/pattern-shifting actually is a base rule in the game. Or was until Attitude, apparently. For whatever asinine reason, people -- a large number of people -- have been saying its not.

And yes, one of my suggestions was to get rid of the camouflage bonuses altogether. They're so minor as to be negligible in most situations you find yourself in during the game. For those outlier situations where it might come in handy, they can have a rule where a bonus is gained. Sort like the special rules for being in space or in the desert. It's a niche benefit. Camouflage fatigues don't do shit for you when sneaking past a guard lighting conditions be damned, yet by the rules they give you a hefty bonus no matter the situation. Well, aside from having the wrong environmental pattern. Which, mysteriously, doesn't apply if you're wearing a neon orange jumpsuit with flashing lights.


No more than you're allergic to reading comprehension.


Yes, because I never, ever offer up house rules or advice. Ever. Not in a million, billion years would I do such a thing.


Fine, you don't like my suggestion. So fucking what? How does that not make it a suggested fix?

You're absolutely right. You're clearly very constructive. Sorry to have troubled you.

If you're going to send PMs, it's polite to allow yourself to receive them, as well. So I'll just put this here, instead:


No, I just don't think the conversation is worth having. It'd be a waste of my time. You're in this to butt heads with dudes, from what I can tell, and that's totally cool, but I'm not really interested. I blew you off, and if that was rude, I apologize, but, seriously, where's that conversation going to go that's not just a mirror of practically every thread here? Not worth it to me.

Can we be done with this now?

I know what your saying ,and I agree with it but I see the suit projecting every thing within 360 degrees of it at the proper perspectives onto it's surface and thus avoiding the parallax problems. The way I see it working is that each micro camera projects what it sees to the other side of the suit depending on how the wearer is positioned with all of the cameras and the controlling software working together to display every thing correctly. I'm not really that great explaining in writing/type so I hope you I've made things clear enough for you to understand my view point. Any ways if you think about with all the other stuff in Shadowrun that's totally BS debating something like this is kinda silly.

You know the "Ignore User" feature, don't you?

Seriously, Scratch, please stop PMing me. All you're really doing is confirming my perception of you. I'm here to talk about Shadowrun, not to, whatever, "dish out harassment." C'mon, man, I've asked politely a couple times now. Can we just move on?

You know what, I don't? I haven't used the new board software that much [or clearly, that well!]. What do you recommend?

What I'm seeing is just a technical problem to be solved. Ruthenium is just a stupid name, it has nothing to do with what Ruthenium really does (it makes possibly coloured complexes, what they were looking for was rare earths, which are really used to create colours in display technology).
So, let's stick with the stupid name, and apply creativity to fixing the magic-tech:

You want a fix for parallaxing? Use 3-dimensional liquid crystals that actually look different from different angles. At present, you can only do this from a fixed viewpoint, but it all gets so simple once you figure out the future magic-tech. And bam, you're back in SR3-world where RuPo was actually situationally better than invisibility.

And that's not even looking at negative refractive index materials...

Now we do arrive at a point where simply colouring clothing just won't cut it - you need a defined surface structure, hence, it's a complicated mod.

Now the really important question is how to get around the problem of different vision modes without increasing complexity even more: In SR3 there was a funny suit mod that served as thermal insulation and worked against IR vision. It was ridiculously expensive and also crap. However, I'd still want my chameleon suit to do the same... Is there still something like that?

I don't see any reason this would be impossible, or at least by the standard as we apply it to Shadowrun. If you take away the ruthenium part of it, and provide an entirely different type of solution, then there's no reason it can't work, whether through metamaterials or nanotubes or 3d liquid crystals. Most of these solutions would be much more practical on a surface whose relative shape the computer can know, so things that don't change shape [like cars and buildings] or things that change shape in a manner that's easily predictable [like armor suits] would be relatively simple, while complex shapes that change quickly [like flexible clothing] would be much more difficult [though not conceptually impossible]. Shadowrun made this same shift once before, technologically, from ruthenium polymers only working on hard materials to being able to use it on cloaks and whatnot.


Yep! Thermal Damping, p327, SR4a.