I like the idea playing an aircraft based rigger. It's doable in 5th edition, but the prices and cash on hand in 4th aren't the same.

Specifically I'm looking for a craft with improved take-off and landing to allow for "hot drops" or hot-zone pick-ups. I also want it to be able to move an entire Shadowrun team, not just 1-3 people.

So here's my theory:
A Nissan Hound from Mil Spect Tech is $265,000 and Availability 13R craft.
It's a combat ready helicopter used by HTR Teams. Improved Takeoff and Landing 2, Lock-On Countermeasures, 2 Weapon Mounts (internal, flexible, manned), 2 Weapon Mounts (external, fixed, remote). Sounds great right? I'm picturing the two "internal" mounts as door guns on either side, and the fixed weapons facing forward.

Let's bring in the Used Vehicle rules from Arsenal. Let's say Gremlins 2 for 20% discount and +4 Availability.
That's $212,000 (17R).

Now let's bring in the Blackmarket Pipeline quality from Runner's Companion. That's now $190,800 (17R).

That's accessible with the Restricted Gear quality from Runner's Companion, with some cash left over for further modifications.

I'm thinking:
Rigger Adaptation, for the obvious reasons. $2,500 & 1 slot.
Extra Entry/Exit Points, to make it possible to drop from floor hatches, side doors, rear hatches, etc. $5,000 & 1 slot.
Enhanced Winch in the ceiling of the main chopper, for deploying and retrieving people/gear through that new floor hatch... or just haling heavy cargo. $5,000 & 2 slot.
Signature Masking Rating 6 to help conceal the craft from detection (any sensors) on runs. $12,000, 6 slots and Availability 14F!
Drone Rack: Small Landing for deploying and retrieving a Drone. $5,000 & 3 slots.
Spoof Chip to conceal it's nature in the $500 and 0 slots.

With the Blackmarket Pipeline quality, the final price for these add-ons is $27,000, 13 of 15 slots, and another Restricted Gear Quality.

That's $217,800 (44bp) and 20 BP of qualities (10 Black Market, 10 Restricted Gear). We still have 4 weapon mounts, and a "small" drone launcher empty, plus all the basic gear a runner needs, rigger related gear... plus the actual character and all.

Hmmm... this could get tough, but I think it might be possible.

Why would you need an additional Restricted Gear Quality?
The Signature Masking is applied to the Helicopter... it is a part of the Helicopter, and has an easier, less hard to acquire, availability than the Helicopter (Availability 14 vs. the Used Availability of 17). No reason you should need 2 Restricted Gear Qualities to acquire it. Buy the Vehicle and the modifications and there you go. I item, with a Single Legality and Availability... In this case, 17F.

Unless you are assuming that you are buying the upgrades later (did not look like it) as something that you added after the fact. But seeing as you need a facility to add Signature Masking, and seeing that you do not have the funds to purchase a facility at character generation if you are getting the vehicle above... My guess would be that you purchased the vehicle with the modifications already in place... *shrug*

I would say that if you're going to invest heavily in a "Party Van" or in this case, "Team Choppa," you shouldget every player to contribute from their own starting nuyen for it.

Also very true - Only way to really get what you want.

If you were Born Rich and happen to have a lot of In Debt you can max out starting chargen cash at 330,000 .

Sure, but I am a firm believer that if a team is going to benefit from shared resources like vehicles, they should be willing to pitch in on said vehicles.

Build the chopper and then tell the GM you want to use a large chunk of your starting cash to finance a run to steal it. You and your team get the chopper, the GM gets a ready made adventure and everyone has fun.

That is always a way to go too...

The Serpent (My Unaugmented, Mundane Russian Mercenary) managed to get his Attack Chopper using that very method, along with many tons of expendables and materia. A Barge is a wonderful thing to transport stuff on.

Get one or two Ares Air Supply / Redball Express drones for escort. Fully VTOL capable, relatively inexpensive, lots of cargo room, and a remarkable amount of Body for a drone allowing all sorts of modifications.

In a pinch, you can probably even transport teammates with them as long as they dress warmly, have an oxygen supply, and don't mind being strapped down to a cargo sled.


-k

I don't think it works this way, or at least I don't expect it to. For each thing with a higher restriction you want to start with you need a restricted gear quality. Unless the vehicle or weapon mod is included in the description, those seem to count at our table, even if they are part of the larger thing once gameplay starts. You don't get a free pass to install a lot of restricted mods in a thing just because it's already restricted itself. 5 karma per restriction, with only a few exceptions, like a power pack coming with a laser weapon.

The group I play shadowrun with doesn't have a set team. People seem to have a few characters each (myself included) and decide which one to play depending on what the fixer is saying about the run, or what they want to play/try. The group has been playing for a while, too, so it's not like everyone is making new characters. I fully expect I'll need to pay for this vehicle myself if I want it. I'm ok with that. I want to see how this works without bending the rules.

Tempting, but I'm half doing this as an experiment to see if it's possible, so I'm trying to do it legal.


...anyway, I've been tweaking the build idea a bit and it looks viable, although I'm not done yet. A decent vehicle rigger with a nice ride is a classic build, and it's not too hard to pull off. A response 5 commlink, datajack, and control rig, along with decent skills in Piloting, Gunnery, etc. Born Rich and In Debt get him enough cash to be properly equipped, etc.
There are a lot of side bits that are important here as I go along. A lifestyle that provides enough space to land a helicopter and enough lifestyle qualities to keep it from being too obvious (workspace, no neighbors, etc.) an Aircraft Mechanics Shop to maintain the used bird, and a good contact for getting parts and more professional work done.

For the drone rack/landing pad I'm looking at a Strato-9 Rotodrone from "This Old Drone", thanks to it's Sensor 4 and Reinforced weapon mount. Sensor 4 and a helicopter movement make it a decent observer drone, and it could eventually be equipped with an assault cannon or other serious firepower, although I can't manage that at character start. I guess the 3 light machine guns and modified sniper rifle will have to do for "starters."

Seriously, A fixed forward LMG, and an LMG manual door gun on each side. Plus, a forward mounted extended barrel sniper rifle with dual clips: one clip of EX-ex, one clip of Narcoject+DMSO Capsule rounds. I'd love to strap an under-barrel grenade launcher or 3 onto the bird (forward anti-vehicle airburst linked for dealing with opposing crafts, door guns with smoke grenades for hot-zone pickups) but it's not a starting priority, and that's a lot of extra costs. I could probably scrape up the cash in the build if I reduced other things, but I hate building characters that aren't well rounded or properly fully equipped, even when making one trick pony characters like this.

I'm still tweaking things and thinking up details for the concept, but if I finish it, I'll post it here.

As a heads up, the Eurocopter Tiger from Unfriendly skies is 18F and 210000 nuyen.
If your GM's feeling cooperative, it the best air support you can start with - but only because someone typoed a 0 off it. Its legal, but also a prime candidate for someone going 'hey wait this is dumb'.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=29452 has a guide to starting with a Thunderbird via maximum discounts
An ares snowstar 2070 ( hazard pay) also works with the same trick, as does the S-K lakota and huge aerospace airstar from Unfriendly Skies, the Eh101(euro war antiques) - basically if it has an availability of 16 or under, its compatable with Used Car Discounts. (+4 avail, but you get to use the percentage table from the core book)
There's one other aircraft i'm forgetting. IIRC there's a docwagon chopper in one of the splatbooks that's compatable with the discount methods, but i can't remmeber it.


I've gone for the distributed method, and used Dalmations(the core book large body 4 VTOL scout drones) with rigger cocoons to transport members around.
Hawker-Siddley Mixcoatl's from milspectech 2 are amazing bang for your buck though. 17k @ 9R, but it has improved sensors, a -flexible- weapon mount, and a device rating 5 out of the box.

If you want to be an airborne badass, Spy Games has a skyhook blimp, for all your hotzone extraction needs. Its a wierd read, until you realize its job is to just get the cable in the air, and for a faster aircraft to snag it.

Additionally, as a rigger, you're gonna want to stretch your cash as far as you can: By using the Hardware skill to build modifications and gear yourself, you only pay half price in parts, but must do the assembly yourself. (4A 227, using hardware). For added fun, go recursive and have a Mr Fixit(runner's companion), or a lockheed vulkan(arsenal) do the assembly for you: The Workshop mod is Standard sized, and thus fits on anything not a micro or minidrone: Body 2 and up. No sense in limiting your worker bots to toolkits!

Also, remember the Amenities mod can be used to represent space for people - its used in several prison transports, and has an option to double transport capacity by bottoming it out to squatter.

Hope that helps!

Wait, I can start with a Cascade Skraacha T-Bird!? I need to think this through. A Cascade Ork T-Bird Smuggler is a 5th edition character I'd be interested to try building in 4th. That's actually how I started this thread.

Yup! Its not the best t-bird, but its a t-bird.