Okay, since I was bored today, I compared real fighter jets and their Shadowrun equivalents. And I noticed the prices.

... what.

An F-22 Raptor has a single unit cost of about 189.3 million USD. For that, you get a top-of-the-line 5th generation air superiority fighter. Of course, arms salers are always bulk sales, but bear with me.

In Shadowrun, used F-22 clock in at 15.5 Nuyen. You get an obsolescent craft (you can upgrade it for 1.5 million though) that has decent stats. Time is not kind to old military hardware and it's 60 years in the future, so that price drop is coneivable. Same with other planes, like the Rafale (90 mn to 7 mn), Eurofighter (117 mn to 8,9 mn) or PAK FA (57 mn to 9 mn).

However, Shadowrun's top-end air superiority fighter, the Dassault Zeta Bravo, is on sale at 3,8 million per unit. What the hell. Even if slaves developed the plane and it is built in nanoprinting shenanigans, 3.8 million for the world's standard in high-performance air supremacy? Hello? You'd get 0.02 raptors for that price when it was new, or 0.23 raptors when it is 70 years old! What is this, a fire sale for top-of-the-line fighter jets?

Was there some thought behind this, like, it's built in nanovats and was developed using only existing components and magic so it didn't end up a desaster like the F35? Or was it just a random number so PCs could afford the plane too because reasons?

"Ares Macrotechnology, in conjunction with Lockheed, bring you... the Dassault Zeta Bravo! Now even the most frugal of warlords can afford to buy the best. Already an established power? Our pricing sceme will encourage you to upgrade immediately instead of doing what governments do and sit on ancient tech for 40 years!"

...it's got to be a marketing thing, right? I mean some of the F-22 can be chalked up to the government always overpaying, most often grossly, an item's value (In some cases 4-5x), but that doesn't explain the DZB. I would have to put it down to a marketing decision.. just like how the Predator IV is 350 , but an equivalent pistol IRL is $1000+

Even if the US would buy the cheapest alternative, the Su PAK-FA (less stealthy, but you get 3,3 for a Raptor's worth), we'd still be looking at 57 million per unit.

Yeah, could be marketing, but for such an expensive and, in the end, niche product? The Predator can probably cut cost by bulk production and cheap production methods, but even there, we have "only" a third of the price of a real equivalent, not 2% (that'd be a pistol for 20 Nuyen). The mind boggles more than a bit.

Prices in SR are wonky. First, 1 nuyen does not equal 1 USD in value. the Nuyen is probably closer to the pound, though probably valued slightly higher then that as well.

Second, the price of an F22 is based on the contract price, which was measured in billions split between X planes. That number got cut off by the obama administration but not before the full contract was paid. which increases the base cost of the F22 by a fair bit.

The .gov contract for these things are built to also pay for the rather substantial RnD costs. *if* a corp handled the R&D in house and sold them by the gross to everyone, they could probably drop the price substantially... but 3.8 mill seems low.

Maybe 10ish Million in that particular case

R&D in-house doesn't pay itself either. It is unlikely to be much more effective either, though there might be less interference from all kinds of agencies that want another capability in (which drove the F35 to projected unit prices of 400 mil per plane for the F35C). The corp still has to recuperate these costs. So not that much of a difference really. Maybe the price won't be a s high as the F22, but substantially lower than their Russian or Chinese equivalents seems very unlikely.

Plus, who is Aztech trying to undercut here? Tehy have the Fairlight Excalibur of fighter jets. Unmatched, unsurpassed. Well, the Kanyuk, which clocks in at ... 3 mil. And is from War.

I think we found where this madness originated ...

On the docks of Bogota, I see.

Don't forget that militaries don't have the budgets they used to. Governments are strapped, and kept so by the Corporations.

The Megas, of course, keep the best stuff for themselves, and sell the same gear to AA-Level Corps as they do to Governments.

I am not questioning that at all. I am questioning the pprice they demand for their gear. 3.8 Million ... with luck, you find used indian MiG 21 for that price per unit today (the lowest-priced fighter with a somewhat fitting profile would be a basic MiG 29, which clocks in at 11 million USD apiece). You'd be hard pressed to find a decent MBT for that price, let alone the extremely complex composition of cutting edge materials, software and sensors that make an air superiority fighter.

Even in pound or Euros, 3.8 million apiece is hilariously low for such a plane.


Don't mock the brave subway jockeys of Bogotá. Many didn't come back from their hazardous travels up or down the Tequendama Fall.

Oh, this is nothing against the B-6 LeMay from MilSpecTech2.
21.000.000 nY versus ~2.000.000.000$ for a B-2 Spirit.

Yeah, that slipped by me. Good Ghost ... On the other hand, back in 1E? A Banshee was 10 mn, and an Eagle was 50 mn. Sounds more reasonable to me.

It isn't quite that bad. Here are the conversion rates for nuyen to UCAS dollars.
http://old.shadowrun4.com/resources/codb.shtml

At a 4:1 rate the planes clock in at 15.2 million dollars each. Yeah, still cheap but not quite so bad. That also puts the Ares Predator IV at $1,400, which is actually more expensive than a comparable IRL gun. I think part of the problem is equating nuyen to current US dollars. Though I will agree the prices still seem very low on some stuff.
On the other hand, since they have figured out how to make panzers work, which is basically a flying tank that can break the sound barrier, and be relatively economical, perhaps the cost for the tech going into an airplane is just that much cheaper in SR.

Or maybe the corps are no longer allowed to put all kinds of "general research costs" on government contracts. If the military industrial complex was about providing value to the customer, stuff would be much cheaper. Nanotech production processes will also help. And then weapons research is on a curve of diminishing returns. At some point you can skimp on RD altogether and use tried-and-true tech.

Try to relate the costs to lifestyle costs. A Predator IV costs about 1/6 of a low lifestyle. I have ~1.000€ / month, and i would set my lifestyle as "low". A standard light pistol (Glock 17) costs about 500€, or 1/2 of my low lifestyle, a heavy pistol (Glock 20, 21, 22, 23, 24) costs ~650-1000€.

But the UCASD is not a key currency anymore. The Nuyen is, however. Granted, there might be some deflation due to the Nuyen's strength (and the UCAS' economical weakness - it has, for instance, the same poverty levels as contemporary India, which is worse even than the contemporary US). Equating UCASD and USD is not feasible, I think. USA and UCAS are miles and miles apart in everything.

Poverty Rate may not be a good indicator if, as nowadays, every country use a different method to determine where stands the Poverty Line.

If you stick to canon, according to Shadows of North America, the UCAS nonetheless have Per Capita Income of 28,000¥, which would give a GDP (if calculated as sum total of incomes) of 4.8 trillions nuyen. Of course, we don't know what the tax level is. The Corporate expects megacorporation to pay taxes, minus I guess an accepted level of fiscal optimization, but I'm not sure corporate employees would pay income taxes if they live inside extraterritorial facilities and if VAT is payed in extraterritorial shops. It's thus difficult to estimate the actual UCAS budget.

The income numbers are, on the other hand, problematic unto themselves, since if you look at all the Shadows of ... sourcebook (circa 2062-2064), you'd have a lot of people complaining that Japan isn't where it ought to be:

India 9.6 trillion
UCAS 4.8 trillion
Aztlan 4.1 trillion
Japan 4 trillion
Germany 3.2 trillion
CAS 2.7 trillion
Russia 2.4 trillion
France 2.1 trillion
Korea 2 trillion

If you add Shadows of Latin America, Aztlan would actually be in second place with 5.8 trillion, followed by Amazonia, 5.2 trillion.

Shadows of North America also mentions the CAS having six active Army divisions, two Marine expeditionary force and sisteen air combat squadrons, has the largest army in North America. So, logically, the UCAS have less than that.

Even just comparing Nuyen to Nuyen prices does not make sense -- not just when comparing a 60 year old plane to a cutting-edge model, there are plenty of instances in every gear book.


As far as the economic properties of the Nuyen go, according to the BBB a fast food meal costs 5-10 ¥.

Probably this, or at least I can't imagine any other reason. All SR aircraft prices, whether military or civilian, are ridiculously low by RL standards. IIRC the Gulfstream executive jet in Arsenal costs slightly over one million N¥, while the RL Gulfstream G500 starts at 36M USD (according to wikipedia). AFAIK even small utility helicopters like the MD500 cost low seven-figure amounts IRL.
So if you went with close-to-RL prices, by the time the PCs could afford a plane, you'd be asking why they aren't happily retired with a permanent high or even luxury lifestyle.

That's because they're partly ad-supported. Everytime they drop a bomb, they also drop tons of flyers for the corporation's bunkers, and they leave ads in the sky behind them:
"That was a blast! Thanks to Aztechnology top of the line armament system."

On a more serious note, the price of commodity items is mostly correct, but the price of gear is dictated more by game balance than by anything else. You don't need to look at fighter jets to find ridiculous prices.

Your initial example seems to assume that $ = Nuyen, which has never been my assumption.

If you compare the value of both currencies, your assumption is very much wrong.
Compare the price of middle class cars, or the services on SR4a, p. 314 with today's cost averages in the US.
The Big Mac Index is very similar.

Even if they are different, comparing just nuyen to nuyen costs across vehicles reveals some seriously weird pricing.



-k

Interestingly enough, I found SR price for most things makes the cost of living in Seattle circa 2070 in nuyen, very similar to Paris circa 2010 in Euro, including lifestyle, food, entertainment, transport, cars, bikes, comlinks-versus-computers, etc. (though SR lifestyle rules would be more on target for two incomes rather than a single).

My point exactly

My personal lifestyle, including my apartment, food, electricity, internet services, and other running costs is also very close to what an SR lifestyle would cost.

Whether it is meters or dollars, I think we can definitively say that CGL just doesn't get units of measurement right.

What, isn't an America-class landing ship 884 meters, or 2900 feet, long?

IMO the Pricing Logic of SR is broken by default.

If I look at todays business models I see a lot of things "cross-subsidized" to get the sale. So the "low" price for the planes comes from the added contracts for services, wear parts and support. With even Police and Emergency Medical services in the hands of private corporations it seems plausible that handing out the "item" cheap follows up in over-priced service contracts which you need to get the thing off the ground. The average flight to maintenance time with a new generation fighter plane can be about 1:30 or more. And the Politicians can pride themselves in buying cheap equippment, ignoring reocurring costs which I would place arround 6% per year for military planes just for standing in the hanger, double that if it is properly maintained so it can be used when needed. That is without the cost of getting the Hanger, Personell, Training, Security, Weaponry etc. you would want to have arround such a thing.

So by selling a few fighter planes cheap, you have a customer for years to come who doesn't have the option of cutting your revenue stream or loosing all of his investment and a hefty penalty clause in the contract. As Corporations go, they solve 2 problems with one strike: They Invest their Assets in future revenue, which is always better than to keep it lying arround under the cushion, securing profits and creating dependency. With part of the Investments used to get your trusted Senator to buy the planes to go fight over that precious little orichalcum mine/ oil field the same consortium gets to explore later.

It is like getting your smartphone for a buck when agreeing to a minutes plan from your mobile phone provider, binding you for 2+ years and effectivly taking you hostage to the competition for said amount of time.

-sorry for any errors, all numbers are made up or estimates without a credible source and i am not a native speaker, so appologies for any mistakes made.

IMO the Pricing Logic of SR is broken by default.

love,
Sunshine

Its more to do with what happens when you convert movement speeds into real world over time distances, since everything is in meeters. People on rollerskates can keep up with cars going the speed limit, easy.

The Shadowrun background includes a plague outbreak that killed one out of four people, *another* plague outbreak that killed one out of *ten* people, major earthquakes in LA and NYC, the near-total destruction of the Internet and its eventual replacement with something that works rather differently, *another* slightly less near-total destruction of the Internet's replacement, a more or less literal zombie-apocalypse virus, an Invasion Of Insect-Creatures Beyond Reality, a nuclear/biological/chemical exchange in the Middle East, fusion power, two major European wars, a devastating civil war and subsequent Balkanization of the world's largest economy and food exporter, wide adoption of several different kinds of transhuman tech, the advent of several different human subspecies with widely varying mental and physical traits, molecular nanotechnology, several different kinds of ancient and smarter-than-human beings manipulating events on national and global scales, corporate extraterritoriality and a subsequent decline in the relative degree of power of nation-states, magic, microwave energy satellites, immersive and faster-than-meatspace VR, both transhuman and roughly human-equivilent AIs, the reemergence of the city-state, a Soviet Union that hung on until the 2030s...

A brilliant, talented and creative economist might be able to incompletely account for the effect of one of these events on a global economy and the prices therein. Perhaps even two. But expecting a world that's been through all that to have an economy with prices that have anything other than the vaguest relation to modern-day goods is fairly silly.

Ultimately, everyone saying that prices at that level are more about game balance than economics are dead-on. If you want an in-universe explanation for it, I like CanRay's explanation the best. No one power in Shadowrun is as economically and militarily dominant over all others as the modern-day United States is over everyone else, so nobody can fund anything near as expensive as modern-day fighter jets.
Also, fighter jets are war-between-great-powers kind of gear. Those DO happen in Shadowrun, but rather less often than smouldering insurgencies and smaller-scale engagements: in all likelihood things like attack helicopters, T-birds and drones are eating up more of everyone's aviation R&D budget than full-scale jet fighters, lowering demand and driving prices down.

Also, the Nuyen is a completely artificial currency with no more backing than the Corporate Court saying, "It's worth this much BECAUSE WE SAY SO! If you don't like it, kiss your economy good-bye."

But even the Corporate Court isn't superior to anyone else in a military manner (Thor Satellites notwithstanding), and doesn't want to become the economic world ruler at all. They had their chance, they literally did not want it. "We'd have to take out the trash and not get paid for it!" or something to that effect.

So, yeah, effectively you get budget fighter jets that are probably the equal of, or even inferior to, today's systems because of the lack of demand.

Like practically every other real-world currency since 1976, yes.



Better avionics and better radar if nothing else. And the pilots being augmented, reflex-boosted riggers would make the exact same aircraft considerably more dangerous. But yes, it certainly doesn't seem like the airframe, powerplant, maneuverability or armament have seen more than minor, evolutionary changes over time: the materials will be better, the performance characteristics better, but nothing really dramatically different from modern configurations, with the possible exception that the cannon might be replaced with a vehicle laser.

That in mind, it's unsurprising that prices for fighter jets have fallen over time: the modern equivalent of what they're doing would be to take an old F-4 Phantom from the sixties and make something that's essentially the same design, but with modern electronics and materials. A lot of Third World countries do more or less exactly that today.

Frickin' Lasers sold separately.

This is the most concise SR background summary I've read lately, I will print this, laminate it and had it out to new players. Thank You, Toptomcat!

I try to imagine a situation where the price of a fighter jet would become relevant in my sr games. I won't say its impossible to have characters have that kind of money (the whole team, maybe over the course of an entire campaign, including resale value of implants and aquired magical or special gear). And even if that would happen I think my group would go for the "permanent lifestyles with new faces and SIN" and retire out of spite. On the other hand envisioning a discussion between the npc hacker and the ork rigger while sneaking through a military facility hanger, discovering one of these and plotting resale potential...

love,
Sunshine

Calculating just how much the person you stole it from wants to kill you very, very dead.

I always wonder how you sell such things. Back alley off a truck doesn't really work, nor would craigslist. "For Sale, 1 slightly used stealth fighter,1 mil OBO. Please, serious offers only. Willing to trade for hamster." And where exactly do you keep it while waiting for the sale to go through? Won't exactly fit in your mom's garage.

You get it in the Weapon Black Markets of Lagos, Canton Confederation or Kai Tak

A Weapons fair in the CAS? In a world made of dragons, every man should own a stealth fighter to defend his home aganst monsters from hell.

Or at least a drone that can launch small drones.

Cascade Orks might even have the odd Weapons Black Market.

Yeah, just like in Tomorrow Never Dies!

Indeed...

*Blares "Aces High" while tooling around in a jet*

You're doing it right!

I think part of the reason they're so cheep is they're comparativly disposable. In a world with magic a spirt or powerbolt can knock these out of the sky with compaitive ease, at least from a cost vs. damage angle. Todays (and certaintly tomarows) drones are quickly matching the usefullness and firepower of combat aircraft. Fighters and bombers are the dinosours of the modern age soon to go extinct to drones and, at least int SR, magic.