Good evening folks.
So… my smuggler game of SR3 is just picking up a new plot arc. As part of this arc, I’m planning on taking away their current air vehicle – a tilt-wing that is modelled on a V22 Osprey but kitted out by Aztlan as a special forces insertion craft.
My current plan is as part of the plot segment that takes away their old vehicle, to then give them a new one once they resolve that particular bit of plot – and to actually upgrade them slightly. Currently I’m thinking along the lines of a Heavy Tilt-wing chassis, and modelling that in-game as something like this: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-db01...770a1d322c03-lq
My thinking here is that the flexibility of an air vehicle really helps the story progress and makes international travel far more feasible. If I push them back to a ground vehicle, not only does the travel take much longer, but it also confines them to contiguous landmasses. Now granted, as they’re based in the Trans-Caucus League, that covers Europe, Africa and Asia – so that’s 70% of the world! But driving from their current location down to South-Africa or across to Vladivostok for instance is a pretty major road trip, and will chew up a lot of time.
So, on that basis, I think an air-vehicle is really needed. Beyond that, I could give them a number of different types of vehicles – choppers, tilt-wings, t-birds/LAVs or jets.
1. Choppers tend to be slower, but can be significant cargo carriers – they could always be given back something like their first chopper, which could quite happily stow an APC in the back, and gives them VTOL capability, which really helps with accessing smuggler bases and remote locations.
2. Another tilt-wing matches their current capability – faster than a chopper, but otherwise much the same.
3. A T-bird has a certain cool factor, and means they can have some fun combat scenes… well, fun for them, as lots of other people bounce off their mahoosive amounts of armour, even with anti-vehicle weapons. But – the fuel consumption on a T-bird is just so batshit crazy, that I’m not sure it’s practical for them. For a military that can afford the bills and have the logistics – cool. But for a team that has to fund their own gas… not so much.
4. And the last option is a jet. Give them a Learjet, and they can do some quality smuggling in a nice fast, small, discreet jet with good range and speed, but limited cargo. Scale up and there’s no technical reason why they couldn’t be flying around in something the size of a 737. With that amount of cargo space they could afford to smuggle even low-value high mass cargo – flying in 200t of potable water to some remote desert location for instance. But, then they’re reliant on having access to 2km long runways, which probably means commercial airports and lots of paperwork and high rating fake SINs…
Ho Hum. I mean technically there are other options like air-ships. But, I don’t think that fits in that well with the campaign theme, and they’re also not that quick!
So, I’m still leaning towards a heavy tilt-wing, because of the mix of speed, flexibility and cargo capacity. But, I thought I’d put a poll out and ask – and find out from anyone that’s been keeping up with the story or my BTS posts, what they think? The other option of course would be to give the team a nice big fat chunk of cash, to let them go after and source a vehicle of their own, and make it their choice – though that does mean they have to work contacts instead of getting their Deus Ex Machina gift from the plot events. It also means they might be very tempted to throw a chunk of that cash at cyber/bioware upgrades, gadgets, guns and ammo and other things other than what it was technically given to them for, and then scrimp on the transport – which will make future missions very tricky potentially…
I’m also thinking that when they get hold of the vehicle, to present it as something that is named. I’m hoping that if the name is ‘cool’ enough, the team would refer to it rather than the vehicle or it’s type, and we can edge towards it being considered almost part of the team or addressed as such – so along the lines of the crew on Star Trek referring to the Enterprise by name for instance.
Details of the truck, first helicopter they had (which got trashed by a fighter attack) and the current tilt-wing, so you can see what sort of thing they have access to.