My two cents on the Ruthie Suits.

I've played SR for a while, and I do use ruthenium suits when my characters can afford them. But they are not good in all situations, and can actually be taken down easily. Remember first that Ruthenium suits ONLY work when the target is still and lighting isn't perfect. Put a ruthenium suit wearer against a single color wall, shine a light on it and you will see an outline of the suit from the shadows of the light generated at the edges of the suit (remember, light DOES NOT pass through ruthenium suits. It's an optical effect that fools the eye, not invisibility) This is where magical invisiblity works better than ruthenuim, since the spell will actually take that edged shading away. But to beat this, you need to make the ruthenum user move. Shake him from his sniper nests, or make the nests really only effective against one or two firing lines. Force him to move to adjust his shot lines. Just because he's a sniper doesn't mean he controls the field. Good snipers know how to plan and build everal nests so they can move from one to the next to maintain a range of shot possiblities (which is why being a sniper is so tiring cause you can spend a whole day building a dozen nests across an area, and only use one of them, maybe two for two minutes of shooting before you leave.)

Another way to beat him is by getting someone in close on him. As before, the suit only works when he's still. If he's bobbing, weaving and throwing down in melee, he sure ain't still.

The last(and cruelest) way to beat him is by using drones. A good Rigger using sensors doesn't get the TN penalty to his roll to spot the sniper. And once he's spotted them, he can go to the Sensory Enhanced Gunnery rules which treat him as any other locked on target for guns, mortars, missles or...mmmmmmm autocannons. To be just a bit more cruel, remember that there is a subset of rules in Rigger 3 that deals with low essence people using Ruthenium Suits (I believe they're optional however). Basically, if your body is dense as an engine block with cyberware, you could be buried six feet deep in Ruthenium, you're still gonna show up on radar

Re dikote and ruthenium: if you coat your clothing in dikote one of two things will happen, depending on how strong you believe dikote is. Either the dikote will prevent you from moving or it will crack and break as soon as you try to move.

Re sensors: A heavily cybered character (essence 0-3) has a signature of 3 IIRC. Ruthenium will not help you against a drone's sensors. At best it will increase your sig by one or two, depending on how much the drone is relying on its camera instead of its ultrasound, thermo, etc.

you can't dikote clothes. even assuming your clothing didn't burn to ash during the application process, you'd still end up with clothes that have been starched with diamond.

Don't forget about the security riggers. As soon as they notice that the pressure sensor has gone off without seeing anybody on thier cameras, they have good cause to send in the aforementioned drones.

There are so many ways to hinder an "invisible" character as long as they need to move that it is not even funny. The cloaks are best used as a stationary concealment device along with thermo blankets and carefully choosing your hiding spot. And yes, you are almost impossible to see the first time, but once you are acquired you are as screwed as the next guy.

And don't forget, partial cover gives you almost the same benefit without spending the

It has been stated above, but it bears repeating. Deacon, you can't dikote anytthing that can't survive a trip through a plasma furnace. That's how dikote is applied.

Even a moderately good sec camera withg thermo/ultrasound will see someone walking out in the opne wearing thermo on a 2+. +12 with full sensors, thermo drops that to a 6 and untrasound to a three, with obvious action for a -4. ending target number -1, round up to 2.

Even assuming you could dikote it, a clear covering will still introduce refraction, which should at the very least reduce effectiveness by 25% if not more.

~J

a few millimeters of clear coating aren't going to refract that much.

Erm, a few milimeters of diamond is quite a bit.

I see a few easy ways of defeating a Ruthie suit:

a) Use thermographic vision, especially if they're not using any heat signature reducing clothing. The best thing to do is to have your ruthie suit built into the heat reducing garment. Even if they have said heat reduction, it isn't going to work for everything. After they fire that first shot the residual heat from their rifle might give them away, even if the muzzle flash isn't visible via supressors.

b) If they're indoors, then that thermograph masking garment becomes a liability. Indoors are almost never the same temperature as outdoors, so the thermo garment will have to constantly adjust to the new temperatures, especially if you're in a compound with different thermostats set at vastly different temperatures. That's gonna happen, some people are cold, some are hot, so the temperature changes between rooms is too much for the thermo garment to be able to handle quickly and efficiently. If you don't allow the thermo garment to be adjustable (automatically or at all) then they're really screwed.

c)The way I see it, ultrasound will light them up clear as day, provided they aren't in a forest or something with a lot of tall clutter behind the PC.

d) Use a simple visual security drone from above if they are outdoors. Even if they're running 12 scanners, most, if not all, of the scanners are going to be applied to hiding a ruthie suit from the side. Couple that drone with a Battletac system (very easily justified if they're breaking into a facility operated by a security rigger) and then just relay that info to everybody on the security team. All of the sudden the entire security team has a general idea where the runner is, and all they have to do then is just pop off a few range timed grenades (of your choice, could even be nice and just use Stun) and the runner is humped. Battletac systems are amazingly useful this exact situation, provided at least one member of the group can see the opposition.

e) Simply light a flare after the first guy goes down. The new bright light/dark shadows will screw up the Ruthie suit, especially in that amount of time between the first bit of light from the flare before the suit has had a chance to change, and the last bit of light from it (the Ruthie suit will take a little bit of time to accomodate the new light information, making it vulnerable). Couple that with the previously mentioned high floating drone and they're really screwed, the new shadows will really give them away to the drone.


As for Dikote, it can only be applied to rigid objects capable of withstanding high temperatures, so to me that means the plates in armor only. Interestingly enough, I don't think much of the armor in Shadowrun uses plates. Case in point, there is only one vest that specifically states that it uses plates (vest w/plates). Why wouldn't they use plates, you ask (or didn't), I see it as a concealibility issue. The more obvious you are with your armor, the more suspicious you are. Why doesn't the armor use plates? I just think that personal armor would have progressed some within 60 years to make plates somewhat obsolete and too bulky for use in social situations. The new ballistic fabrics in the 2060s don't need plates to be decently protective, which works out great for social situations. Now, if you're not in a social situation, that's what security grade armor is for, which is chock full of plates combined with the wizzer new armor fabric tech, which explains the high rating of the armor.

Use a Superflash grenade to burn out the cameras.

i dont recall if this have come up, but how about some grenades spraying ink? if one thinks thats there s a invisible or similar person in the room, pop one of these of and see him

hey, there are some in CC. they are designed for use underwater (similar to a smokebomb on land) but with a small modification (like adding a stronger propellant) and you can have a nice ink bomb that basicly turn the blind fire into atleast a partial cover modifier (or given that if you see the arm you can guess where the rest of the person is, negate it alltogether).

*spalt*

Just use a splash grenade full of paint. Or heck, a paintball grenade.

damn, i knew i had seen a grenade delivering sprays of fluid somewhere. looked in the wrong book (alltho CC have the splash mortar )

You know, if you fill the splash grenade with Gamma Scolpalomine and Food coloring you kill (and knock the hell out) 2 birds with one stone!

Even without the food coloring you'd be able to pretty easily see the target.

nasty, i like

My stealth suite combined 8 scanner ruthenium level 4 thermal dampening and a rating 6 ultrasound detector/emitter al on a rapid transit jumpsuit. Starting character available and everything non magical is at +8 to perception tests (some vehicles may only be +4-+6).

What you need to do to make it reasonable is to remember ruthenium only works when it is clean. Every time the character falls in the garden, stands next to somebody that sprays blood or is in a blast aria (inc bomb grenade or physical spell) there is a chance that his fancy clothes will be dirtied or damaged, represent this by reducing the effective rating of his Ruth suit.

Also damage to a Ruth suit is expensive to repair, the mechanics for armor maintenance are non existent but logic should be applied in cases like this.

If a corporation is worried about its use they could put vid screens on all the walls of the foyer running high movement corporate propaganda, doesn’t look like there to scared but ruthenium wont be able to keep up. Not to be used often but once in a wile it’s a nice trick.

Edward

want a simple way to detect a ruth suit in a portable fashion? a system similar to ultrasound but useing laser should give you a nice outline of the person at least and, with the rate things get smaller, should be in flashlight size about now.

and i fail to see how a ultrasound detector/emitter combo helps mask the person as ultrasound acts on timeing. at best you get a ecm effect by adding extra noise to the image. this will at least tell a smart guards there there is something out there...

Well that and it'd be brutally obvious someone is jamming the ultrasound as the whole display fills with static.

If I read it correctly (and even if I didn't, I don't see why this wouldn't be possible), the ultrasound detector/emitter senses incoming ultrasound waves and emits an exactly opposite ultrasound wave, so they cancel each other out. Functionally, that would create a blind spot in the ultrasound vision, functionally making one invisible to ultrasound.

Well, if your super "OMG I can't see him!" sniper needs a counter, what better way that a counter sniper?
To be fair to your other players, place the counter sniper in a position that would not compromise the rest of the runners.
Also, why not add sensors around facilities for triangulating rifle reports and other sounds.
Another way to get your NPCs to make your snipers position is to watch where their buddies fall, so unless your sniper moves, his position will be found eventually.
Some of the more out of the way facilities might employ minefields, and perhaps even do their own terrain reconnoitering, to locate the best positions to snipe into their own facilities. Such locations could be rigged, or could even have watchers that watch these "hot spots". The watchers could be countered by an awakened buddy, but such a thing would require working together.
You might also try wear and tear on that suit, with a test every N hours, depending on the conditions. If he has to replace it or repair it, he might decide to break it out only for special occasions.

To counter ruth-Ninjas sneaking around, you might try pheromone detectors. The less essence the sneaking char has, the more difficult it would be to detect him. Carbon dioxide detectors could also be used.

[EDIT] please note that I didn't bother to read the rest of the thread, so if I repeated anyones thoughts, I'm sorry.

Yeah, shotguns and/or flechette ammo. Eventually you loose camaras...

It is now Modern Technology. The Japanese (or it may be chinese) have developed a Cloak that literally projects an image of what would be "behind" the person wearing the cloak...

Japanese. It doesn't do it very well, and doesn't work for movement, but they're working on it.

~J

that japanese cloak was nothing more then a wearable projector screen. you had a camera standing behind the person and a projector in front. the cloak itself was just made of a nice neutral color material that reflected the projected image. nothing fancy about it at all. now if said camera was mounted on the persons back, and the cloak itself was changeing colors depending on the indata then it would be interesting. right now i can pull of the same with a home video camera hooked to a home projector and just standing still...

Yeah, if you read the white paper on that cloak it's really a cheat to accomplish that effect that only works from one angle and integrally needs external equipment they choose not to show in the videos.