Walker Mode (All, Groundcraft of Body 10 or Less Only): Speed and Acceleration are halved (round down), while Handling is increased by +1 and the vehicle’s ability to pass hazardous terrain is greatly improved.

I've been trying to build a RAW walker-based vehicle to act as security inside my Facility, or as a weapons platform when stuff needs to die. Here's what I've got so far:

Hyundai Shin-Hyung (sedan) base
+2 Handling
20/45 accel
180 spd
1 pilot (upgraded to 3 min)
10 body
5 armour
1 sensor
17k
4 Extra mod Slots

Weapon Mount, Turret, remote (2 slots)
Weapon mount, fixed (forward), remote (1 slot)
Weapon mount, fixed (forward), remote (1 slot)
Walker Mode (2 slots)
Rigger cocoon II (2 slots)
Armour r20 (1 slot)
Improved Sensors (1 slot)
Amenities (Squatter) (0)
Engine customization (accel) (1 slot)
Turbocharger (1 slot)
Off road suspension (1 slot)
Extra fuel tanks (1 slot)
Smart tires x6

Handling
+4 on road
+6 off road
Accel
20-40%+20%+5 (21)
45-40%+20%+5 (46)
Speed
180-40% (108)
Body
10
Armour
20
Sensor
1 (extra large vehicle)
cost
lots.

Squatter amenities means that the sedan can carry 9 other passengers in minimal comfort and drop them off at the assault point
Weapons are all full auto belt fed assault rifles/LMG's.
Forward mounted weapons are "subscribed" together, meaning that firing one gun fires both, (split dice pools or defend seperately, ymmv)


How would you build it differently/what vehicle base would you use?

- if you're inside the facility, you probably don't need an extra fuel tank.
- it's a walker. i don't think smart tires do anything any more.
- off-road suspension seems a bit weird for a walker...
- i'm not convinced a rigger cocoon is really needed. just rig it from afar.

holy hell ! ... how big are the corridors in your facility ?

what is it guarding that you are not worried about destroying with twin-linked miniguns ?

What about crash cages and stuff for the occupants ? enviroment seals and chemical protection ?

ruthenium polymer coating for sneaking up on Shadowrunners ! ...

Jumpjets and some Pulse lasers or gauss rifle

and needs more missile launchers

needs a Pilot installed for autonomous action :-

" Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.
Four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force! "

I would also ask the point of improved sensor array on a full size vehicle. You already have 12 capacity in the sensor suite. You can add pretty much anything to that.

You're probably right about the fuel tank, I just don't like the idea that it might get stuck somewhere I cant power it. Gridlink override maybe?

Walker mode has some fluff about "having multiple wheels" and it gets me more handling so why not?

Raw says that if an "on road vehicle" goes off road it immediately crashes. Unless it has off road suspension. Agreed, silly, immunity to "thats bull crikey", pretty good.

Rigger cocoon is mostly because this would likely be a dream toy to every rigger/hacker that comes across it. So "I hit it with enough jamming to isolate it, hack it and turn it to my bidding" becomes "the rigger wants to know if you would prefer paste or smear."


@machten: drone/automotive "tool" facility with ambushers delight, not corp facility. Its also an arms race between me and the gm, the last vehicle we fought was an armoured zugsmachine with a tank cannon and enough armour to soak both AV mines we used.

I'm a paranoid dronophile technomancer. So all of my drones and my resonance well? Crash cages would be nice, not quite sure how the vehicle rules work with armour and personal protection. Also it will likely never have people in it. Theyre a little afraid I think.

Poly coating is just asking for trouble, one failed perception check... though it would negate the -6vis modifier for being the size of a tank.

Theres rules for jumpjets?!? And I wish it had pulse lasers or gauss rifles, but you have to mount those to reinforced, heavy turret mounts. And those are mod slot holes. Same goes for missle launchers.

I'm currently trying to figure out pilot upgrading and pilot wih various mods. But yes it should have pilot and autosofts.

@mantis: I was going to try to add a missle defence system to it, and was under the impression that imp. Sensors added to the sensor rating.

No, but there damn well should be, so we can ALL make mecha !

Actually, who says you cannot install multiple VTOL engines if you are building this from scratch !!!

Have you thought about heat? This mofo's gonna generate a lot of heat. Don't you know that putting any weapons on a bipedal 'mech automatically makes them overheat like a mofo?

You're gonna want at least Double Heat Sinks on that thing, or maybe a laser heat sink to dazzle and awe folks. But you'll need something practical, too, something to punch a hole in armor, then something to exploit the hole. Flechette rounds in a full-auto, belt-fet Panther XXL could work for the exploiter, but you should go all out for the six-rack short range missile launcher. As for the holepuncher, a stout laser weapon or a gauss rifle should suffice, but you can always go oldschool and go with an autocannon.

Oh, and I don't recommend firing off jump-jets inside your own facility. That's likely to light something aflame. For the same reason you should try to avoid the temptation to use fire as a weapon.

Do they make heat sinks in large fin like structures? That would make this thing so much more awesome. If kind of impractical. I wouldnt have thought I would be generating a lot of heat with external lmgs. While were on the topic, were you thinking of the mercury ship laser, or the shockwave? And your preference for gauss rifles? High power thunderstruck, or something more like the light auto tank mounted one? (The name escapes me)


@mach_ten: improved take off and landing is only two slots! Now to make a vtol version. Mostly just to cause brain pain. "The mech did what? What do you mean its flying!"

it's called jumpjets, but isn't there something like them in the official books somewhere?
could have sworn there was mentioning of something like that . .

They are called Rocket Boosters (Table/Description, Page 141/143, Arsenal) and they work very much like Jump Jets do.

Ah, yeah, these

i would hesitate to designate a mech as an on-road vehicle...

Hmm, are there vehicle sized roller-skates? O.o

As would I, but as the base vehicle is an "on road" vehicle...

Also, I was thinking this thing would be a hexapedial, not bipedal. Bipedal mechs die due to square cube law. Their feet would have to be Huge. like 4 foot diameter circles. Also because they're unwieldy and ugly.

@stahlseele: Depends on how "BS-Lenient", read as "Pink Mohawk", your GM would be. Though you could probably get Raptor legs in Mecha size.

Hexapedal . . no, nothing with more than the allowed ammount of Legs. 4.
Much better. And easier, simply attach one on each Corner and call it a day.

There's a limit on the amount of legs? Oh well, I'll just have to go build the legged tanks from Ghost in the Shell.

Technically, no, i guess not per the rules . . but everything with more than 4 legs looks like a too big bug <.<

Where's a mage when you need one? Get him to glamour it as a giant insect spirit and then message my ares contact saying "expect lots of work in seattle soon. Also, how much do I get paid for this?"

Updated:

Hyundai Shin-Hyung (sedan) base
+2 Handling
20/45 accel
180 spd
1 pilot (upgraded to 3 min)
10 body
5 armour
1 sensor
17k
4 Extra mod Slots

Weapon Mount, Turret, remote (3 slots)
Weapon mount, fixed (forward), remote (1 slot)
Weapon mount, fixed (forward), remote (1 slot)
Walker Mode (2 slots)
Armour r20 (1 slot)
Amenities (Squatter) (0)
Engine customization (accel) (2 slots)
Turbocharger (1 slot)
Personal armour r10 (1 slot)
Ammo Bins (left) (1 slot)
Ammo Bins (right) (1 slot)
Smart tires x4

Weapons are two ares MP-LMG with underbarrel Enfield GL-67 Grenade Launcher and top mount ext. smartlinks, loaded with standard ammo and HE grenades on the fixed weapons, and an Ares MP-LMG with underbarrel Enfield GL-67 Grenade Launcher and top mount ext. smartlink, filled with AV ammo, and loaded with AV grenades.

Fixed some of the slot values, added personal armour, wasnt too sure about dropping personal armour and ammo bins for lvl2 life support when it wont always be used as troop transport

for "Heavy Vehicle" aka "why is this even around" I changed it as below

Weapon Mount, Reinforced, Heavy Turret, remote (6 slots)
Weapon mount, fixed (forward), remote (1 slot)
Walker Mode (2 slots)
Armour r20 (1 slot)
Amenities (Squatter) (0)
Engine customization (accel) (2 slots)
Gridlink Override (1 slot)
Personal armour r10 (1 slot)
Smart tires x4

mount the heavy turret with either a S-K Taurus Light Gauss Cannon, or a Ares Firelance Vehicle Laser, use the GridGuide override as a free source of power. Kill things that you find are in your way with either a Ferro-Tungsten round moving at mach 3+ or an invisible laser. For bonus points to "dear god", swap Engine Customization with Chameleon Coating. Load the fixed weapon mount with the LMG above. Possibly with Tungsten-Flechette Ammunition.

Where did you find rules saying that vehicles without off-road suspension automatically crash? Vehicles with racing slicks (pg 106 AR) and the improved suspension mod (pg 138 AR) have such a rule but general vehicles do not. Or at least not that I could find. Got a page number and book?

Also with the walker mod, I'd rule that the terrain is only as difficult to manoeuvre in as it would be for a human, so long as the vehicle in question was human sized. For a car, probably the same as say a horse, for manoeuvring with the walker mod, assuming you have actual legs on it as opposed to independently mobile wheels or tracks.

After looking through the books, aparently the only negative effects of driving off road is harder vehicle tests. You're right mantis. Not quite sue how I got there. Vehicle rules hurt my brain.

Its a sedan so I think it would likely be more like tank sized all in. I was thinking of using independently connected legs with wheels on the bottom for the given speeds to make sense. It can walk, but on roads it would make more sense to wheel around.


While I'm here, I'll add up a few more plans for other walkers rather than make a new topic.

Steel Lynx
Walker mode
Mimic r1
Weapon mount -integral
Armour r12

A steel lynx that looks like a lynx (or other "medium") cat. Mainly because my gm keeps reminding me that the steel lynx is not lynx shaped.

Steel tiger
This one is a 6body, 20/40accel, 160 speed, custom of the steel lynx. They apparently don't make drones this big, but I needed something smaller than a vehicle to mount a reinforced weapon mount to. Base cost is ~11k (5k x 1.5 +4k for reinforced mount). Not sure if upgraded speeds from larger size are too much.

Walker mode
Mimic r1
Armour r18
Cyberclaws
Weapon mount reinforced - integral

Is the steel tiger too op for play?

Lockheed-Chenowth light strike vehicle from Used Car Lot page 12.

The handling and speed aren't as good, but it comes with a turret AND a flexible mount standard.
Offroad modifications are of debatable use, but you can always remove them if you don't want em.


All you need to do is slap Walker and some Armor on it, and have 7 more slots to do whatever you like with.

I need more vehicle books >.>

You are all thinking about this all wrong! Our questions should not be little things like 'Can we add jump jets?' or 'Should I add a rigger cocoon or rig it from afar?'

NO! YOU ARE ALL FOOLS!

The true purpose of this thread must change, immediately, to pairing an AI pilot to a version made from a big-rig.

We will call it: Optimus Prime!

PS: Sorry for calling everyone fools, I just felt that if I was going to suggest making Optimus Prime then I should do it in the largest 'large ham' way I could. For bonus points, read the post as the Ultimate Warrior (here)

Shadowrun rules and vehicle technology are insufficient to do Optimus Prime justice, FD.

Yeah, I suppose you're right.

Maybe we should make those two annoying 'bots from transformers 2 and shoot LAWs at them until they explode?

I could get behind that.

Last time I checked the vehicle rules for shadowrun were kind of silly to begin with. They work, but not in any nice fashion.

Also, vehicle lasers and gauss cannons are better than LAVs

hmmm... you know, normally i'd never suggest using LAWs, due to the missile rules being absolutely awful.

but, gradually blowing up those two guys with a whole bunch of near misses... i think i could get behind that. death by a thousand cuts... err... explosions... yeah... i think they've earned it.

And I doubt there's a more Micheal Bay way to kill someone...

I dunno, sustained artillery fire would be a contender.
Or as Mr Welch is prone to do, 48 hours straight of orbital bombardment.

if sustained artillery fire is at all accurate or effective (i don't own war, so i legitimately don't know what the rules are in SR4), then it doesn't sound very much like Michael Bay at all... explosions everywhere, except for where the supposed target is

It's not very accurate, but hugely effective . . which is why it's usually sustained so you actually do hit your target often enough to destroy it for good . .