[mcv]

I've been trying to get a handle on what T-birds are and what they look like. I finally thought I'd figured it out, and then one of my players shares some info from SR1, that describes the GMC Banshe as an M1 Abrams floating just above the ground.

I'm in the middle of the SRM 4 Mission "Extraction", which describes GMC Banshees attacking at the 28th floor level. That looks like helicopters. Some descriptions describe t-birds as ground effect vehicles; ekranoplans? Some say they're popular with smugglers, which suggest they're quiet and long range, others say they're wingless Harriers that guzzle fuel like crazy, which suggest noisy and short range. And now SR1 has images where they look like a giant floating truck with turrets that are only used by militaries, with only rumours of some corpsec having access to them.

I guess t-bird just means "some cool scifi vehicle that does whatever the plot needs it to do", but I'd like a bit of consistency in my world.

[FastJack]

Flying bricks... but more rounded!

[Hobbes]

Google Hardwired by John Williams and check out the assorted cover art for further inspiration. 

[mcv]

Flying bricks? Or hovering close to the ground bricks?

That is indeed the image my friend shared, and it looks a bit big to harass a handful of shadowrunners with, even if they are abducting a valuable asset from a skyscraper. Still, an image doesn't fix all the contradictory descriptions. How do other GMs resolve this?

[Hobbes]

Flying Bricks.

And yes, it's on the high end of Threats a Runner team should ever face.  It should be piloted by a Rigger, slaved to a high end RCC or Host even, and have some degree of Astral support as well. 

Its a Big Deal when these things show up.  They're Tanks.  They cost Millions of Nuyen.

Corp security generally won't have them, but any given Mega will have contracts with someone who does.  National Military, High end HTR for hire or Mercenary outfits, Docwagon has some for their HTR evac teams. 

Smugglers also use them for crazy high value cargo.  They are loud and fast, but fly high so "Loud" is kinda whatever.  They're used for moving people/cargo through areas that are really dangerous where slower or more fragile aircraft would be at risk.

[skalchemist]

As an aside, I suspect that if such a vehicle actually existed the cost to actually run the thing would quickly outweigh the original cost to buy it.  What a fuel hog it must be!  With its short stubby wings and brick like form it can't have much aerodynamic lift, so almost all the lift must come from engine thrust.  And the maintenance!

High Roller Runners: Hah, good thing we bought that GMC Banshee, that last run was a breeze! We made 2 Million Nuyen!

Jet Fuel Station Attendant: That's great, that will be 3 Million Nuyen for the tank fill up.

 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

In the early days of SR lore, LAVs (then called Panzers) were explicitly Ground Effect Vehicles.  of course, real life GEVs look nothing like what the Banshee looks like...





some are frikkin' big, like the Soviet "Caspian Sea Monster"


For something akin to Shadowrun's LAVs I'd recommend looking at Ogre's GEVs.  They're basically hover-tanks without the hover skirt.  (and in some artwork, they DO have hoverskirts!).  Of course ground effect vehicles, in real life, were extremely rare outside the 2nd world during the 1970s and 1980s.  And it's not like the Russians were sellin' em to the west after the cold war, so even in the 1990s and beyond they're fairly obscure.  This is relevant because successive waves of authors and writers who know nothing about ground effect have been treating LAVs as having true flight capabilities, in effect becoming something more like grav-tanks from the Renegade Legion IP...

TL;DR:  I treat LAVs as having a flight ceiling of no more than a few meters. Can reach altitudes of 10, maybe 20 meters above ground for short "dives" upwards to clear single obstacles before falling back down to where lift can be sustained.

[mcv]

For something akin to Shadowrun's LAVs I'd recommend looking at Ogre's GEVs.  They're basically hover-tanks without the hover skirt.  (and in some artwork, they DO have hoverskirts!).  Of course ground effect vehicles, in real life, were extremely rare outside the 2nd world during the 1970s and 1980s.  And it's not like the Russians were sellin' em to the west after the cold war, so even in the 1990s and beyond they're fairly obscure.  This is relevant because successive waves of authors and writers who know nothing about ground effect have been treating LAVs as having true flight capabilities, in effect becoming something more like grav-tanks from the Renegade Legion IP...

I guess that's the source of my confusion. On the one hand they get compared to those Russian ekranoplans, on the other hand they're pure vectored thrust and can fly high.

I think if I want to reconcile both ideas, I'd make them extremely noisy and expensive to use when doing pure vectored thrust at altitude, but they become a lot more economical when flying close to the ground and making use of the ground effect.

Although that might too good, giving them all the advantages of both definitions and then some.

[mcv]

Looking at the 5e stats, the primary difference between the various VTOLs and helicopters is speed. Though I'm not sure how much those stats mean; they clearly don't tell the whole story, and there's a speedboat that's faster than any helicopter. There's no information at all about armaments.

[Michael Chandra]

There's fluff explaining helicopter speed, and Rigger 5.0 with different rules, but yeah, it's a bit tricky.

Arsenal gives a Banshee as default stuff: Rigger Cocoon, ECM 2, ECCM 2. A Banshee can have 6 weapon mounts, or 3 heavy, so some may add weapon mounts to gun dow border security.

[Hobbes]

I read Hardwired before I played Shadowrun.  They've always been high speed flyers for me. 

You say Hovertanks I think Hammer's Slammers and I never got that vibe. 

Clearly YMMV.   : )

[Reaver]

This is one of those things, that is a "only in Shadowrin"...

The concept of the Tbird comes from the Russian sea-planes..... but taken to the next level.

For the first 3 editions, Tbirds tended to be a cross between Jets and Helicopters....  They had VTOL and limited hover ability, but where designed for low altitude flight. There are many story examples of tbirds zooming along a tree top heights at near Mach speeds...

From the earlier editions, they are LOUD (they are JET engines after all),  have really crappy fuel economy, AND are not designed for the comercial market...

Now the Banshee.... well you're not far off if you think, "Jet Powered Amored Personnel Carrier"

[mcv]

While their fuel consumption may be expensive, I find their purchase price actually rather affordable. A supersonic flying tank like the Banshee for only 2.5 million? A tank or a jet fighter costs way more than that. An Ares Venture costs as much as a very luxury sports car. (Assuming 1 nuyen is about $1, which it probably isn't.) Certainly the Ares Venture is within reach of experienced shadowrunners.