So, it appears as though the SR people have lost their minds.
Attack helicopters (good luck getting your hands on one) have an availability of 4, and a Hughes Stallion utility helicopter (the most widely produced helicopter in the world) has an availability of 13.
Utility choppers IRL have an availability of about 2. You can find them anywhere.
Am I the only one who's noticed this? Has it maybe been erratted?

Sounds like maybe a typo? 14 instead of 4? Or 40?

You are correct. I meant the auto gyro's.

Availability based on price is dumb. I understand that some system must exist, but logic should override the system when possible.

Just google "used helicopters". Or "buy helicopter".

Anyway, I'd much rather have a consensus house rule than my own, which is always "if you can find it in a catolog, it's always 3".

Hmmm....
Availability = hardpoints + armor (min avail equal to highest of any weapon using a mounting point)?

So the spider drone has an availability 0?
How-abouts:
Base Availability 4
+1 per 2 points of stock armor
+1 for Security Grade
+2 for Military grade
-1 for older, defunct models (I think there is mention of old models, like the Blitzen still for common sale)
+2 for having stock weapons or turrets (not per)
+1 for each stage above standard take-off and landing (STOL, VSTOL, VTOL)

Until you mount a light pistol on it somewhere.
Unless you want different availaibility formulas for each chassis, any formula you use will have flaws at the extremes. In the simple one I put up, it's at the small non-combat drones but not the Strato-9.

Yeah, the vehicle Availability rules are totally broken. I tend to just ignore them and evaluate vehicle purchases on a case-by-case basis. For example, I'll let a starting character have a Hughes Stallion, but not a Strato-9.

At least they made an attempt to fix part of the problem in the revised Rigger 3. A starting character can still get an otherwise unavailable MMG by putting it on a Strato-9, but the railgun-packing miniblimp drone I designed no longer fits through the loophole...

HoV: your system is, as you probably know, incredibly simplistic. Personally, I'd consider anything with a few levels of ED to be significantly harder to get ahold of than anything with an MMG.

~J

Ok, add ED and 1/2 ECM to the math.

So a utitlity chopper would be availability 6 under this system? I can live with that, I guess. I guess the "6" would be local availability. Because while there's always a nice utility chopper available somewhere, it isn't always nearby.

Well if it's an older model chopper, yes.

.where those availability ratings before or after R3R. all military hard wear got a big jump in availability at that time.

Doesn’t explain why its so hard to get a utility chopper. Part of it will be that the rules where worked out for illegitimate purchases most major companies wont make large sales to you is you don’t have a sin and legitimate purchasing leaves a paper trail, not good for a shadow runner.

Unfortunately those availability ratings apply for legitimate purchases as well. This is where it gets screwy, most legal items making being purchased legally are being sold buy a salesman or manufacturing company. If the availability is 14 then they will be refusing most sails, especially if most of there customers are not negotiators (average human 3 charisma and no etiquette skill unless special training 3 dice target 18 ~1 in 72 chance of sucses.)

I would propose this rule.

If you are purchasing from a legal regular supplier of the product the product is legal and the supplier has no reason to suspect that you may not be a completely legal user of the product you get one free /success/ on the etiquette test against availability, additional successes can still reduce availability time, although in some situations (eg buying a standard car off the lot) the GM /may/ wave the time.

This means that when making a legal purchase of goods that do not need a license to own you /always/ get what you want but it may still take some time.

Edward

Ps who buys a strato 9, you steal them from the star, they don’t even have encryption slandered

The section in SR3 on availability speaks only of going through a contact to acquire the item illegally. The section on permits implies that if you have the proper paperwork in a sufficiently convincing ID, that any item you can legally possess (by that ID) has an effective availability of "Always." While it is not stated explicitly that legal purchases do not use availability, the concept of making a shady deal through your fixer to buy a legal vehicle is completely nonsensical. With the current use of internet aided car shopping as a reference, even vehicles should often be available in a short time. Maybe treat items that are just sufficiently uncommon as having a legal availability of 2 with their listed delay.

I can't say that I see the problem with availability... in the real world higher end vehicles often have waiting lists to purchase and not everybody who wants and can afford the latest super car to come out can get one because the factory can't always meet the demand. Utility helicopter production is probably going to mainly corporate contracts which buy in bulk. Trying to convince a dealer to fill your order for one Stallion when Doc Wagon is looking for a dozen new Stallions to upgrade their local fleet is going to be a challenge. Especially if he's only been earmarked thirteen Stallions from the factory, and five other people are looking to buy one.

Availability matters even for legal purchases; I mean, even if you had the ability to legally buy an attack helicopter, how often does one come up for sale to a private individual that would run the shadows?

Keep in mind that a lot of the items that are high availability might be custom made, or contracted for sale to a specific company, or might not be in production anymore.

For example, let's say you want to go buy some military grade armor, and you can do so legally. You'd have to find someone to take your order, arrange for the transfer of several tens of thousands of nuyen, wait for them to make the customized armor (after all, they probably have a backlog of orders), etc. All of this is factored into the availability.

Or, maybe take the Ares Guardian Drone. Maybe Ares basically always needs more. Maybe they're so popular that their entire production capacity is tied up on existing customers; the availability might just represent the need for a runner to find someone in Ares willing to bump back a larger customer to serve your more immediate needs. That's not an easy feat, when all you want to spend is 100k nuyen, and the other customer has a tendancy to spend tens of millions.

When looking at military grade hard wear there are all kinds of issues that are incorporated into availability meaning that having the permit may not be enough to actually get you the item. That is why I limited my suggested mechanic to items that do not need a permit.

The issues of waiting time and production demands I see as being included in the availabilities base time. I am not saying that you should be able to plase a call and get your Hughs WK-2 utility chopper delivered today but within the 13 days availability time they will be able to get you one. Getting it faster means convincing somebody to put you ahead in the que.

Perhaps it should even go so far as to say with no successes you get just in twice the normal availability time.

In the case of vehicles that are purchased in large numbers you would not go to the manufacture for your order of one you would go to a retaler. Eg if you want a single GM-Nissan Doberman and have the credentials to prove that you are a small time but legitimate security contractor you don’t go to GM-Nissan and ask them to ship you a unit any time soon (although they will send it to you eventually). You go to the local GM Nissan security dealership (you will find the address on the GM-Nissan public matrix node) and you ask them to get it for you, being a staple of the line they probably have it in stock although the choice of color may not be as varied.

Edward

That's correct. Armor 5 takes no penalty.

~J

I'm not talking about military grade equipment. I'm talking about a utility helicopter that holds 6 or more people. These are available right now, with no licensing or anything else but a check that doesn't bounce.
There are no laws about owning a helicopter, only about flying them.

I guess it might be more difficult to acquire a new chopper but used ones are for sale everywhere. Anyway, here's a couple of links. It took me about 8 seconds to find these.

http://www.hascorp.com/email/newsletter6602.htm

http://www.lyntonaviation.com/Lynton_Aviat...ft_For_Sale.htm

Sadly though, SR world is far more paranoid. If you want a bottle of aspirin that still has the tamper resistant seal in place then you gotta be somebody's bitch somewhere down the line (SIN) or your stuck with homebrew that is as likely to kill you as fix what's ailing. At least that's how the fluff writers tell it.

Helocopters and even old military fighter jets are all readily available for legal purchase. Availability in shadowrun addresses weather or not you can find someone that is willing to sell you a vehicle without a legal paper trail. There are so many cars and motorbikes in the world that the govenments don't keep track of them but I would imagin that if multimillion dollar helicopters, figher planes, and panzers were suddenly being written off as lost or stollen there would be an investigation.

That said if you have a SIN then a utility helicopter would be readily available but one available to the SINLESS would be rare indeed at least in my world.