[CanRay]

Look around the streets today; it'll be much the same.  Smaller compact cars, high-efficiency sedans, a few sports cars, a few choppers and rice rockets.  Big trucks, medium trucks, pickup trucks.  Every once in a while you'll see something unusual -- a seriously hot sports car, an odd sort of truck like a dump truck, whatever.  Look up -- the occasional plane or helicopter.

Maybe in your city.  It's almost time for folks to put the classic cars away here. 

One nice thing about my new city, next to no road salt.  Which means that old classic cars last a whole lot longer!    There's some real beauties out there that are typical summer drivers for even regular people.  And the car shows close down half of downtown!  And that's just the locals.

Makes me almost wish I could drive and had mechanical abilities.  I'd have fixed up my inheritance...

[kirk]

What do you see when you look at at the streets of 2072? Wheels, Hover, Leggs personal blimps what does your imagination conjure up?

Look around the streets today; it'll be much the same.  Smaller compact cars, high-efficiency sedans, a few sports cars, a few choppers and rice rockets.  Big trucks, medium trucks, pickup trucks.  Every once in a while you'll see something unusual -- a seriously hot sports car, an odd sort of truck like a dump truck, whatever.  Look up -- the occasional plane or helicopter.

It's just that some of your medium trucks will be drone delivery service, some of your huge trucks will be rigged, some of your bikes will be 'serious' SMG-armed ganger bikes, that sort of thing.  It's the stuff upstairs that'll be different -- a lot more flying crap in the air, spotter drones and suchlike.

Nah, I'll still complain it took me 20-years and I missed out on so many good campaigns like Bug City and the Arcology and such.

One of the things I want to do is to run/co-run a game that starts in 2050 and flows through the SR history, enabling the GM to toss in foreshadowing, or plan runs that are connected to interesting other things in the game world.  So playing SR4 doesn't mean you can't be in a game that doesn't play through those events.

digressive disagreement here. MOST of your longhaul (big trucks) will be drones, with "call for rigger under these conditions".

[KarmaInferno]

I remember using a blimp restaurant as a backdrop in SR2 - was an interesting adventure for the runners I was GMing for.

Heehee, I am reminded of The Fifth Element.

Actually, that universe would be kinda nifty to set a Shadowrun campaign in.



-k

[kirk]

I remember using a blimp restaurant as a backdrop in SR2 - was an interesting adventure for the runners I was GMing for.

One of the things the folk in my Atlanta based campaign will get as common knowledge pretty soon is that the mass transit system started using 'commuter zeppelins' a while back.

See, the source books say that there are a couple of things in the barrens that are still going concerns. One of them is the zoo. That caught my attention: who the crap is going to drive their kids through the barrens to see the zoo? Further, according to the fluff buses aren't used much at all any more -- and who wants to send their kids on a low-armor vehicle that way?

So I got to reading the fluff and the side stuff and realized that the Commuter and Skyswimmer (both Unfriendly Skies) would work very well. They can't do the dense coverage given by the current bus system, but they solve the 'bypass the ugly' problem for direct point to point transportation very well indeed. And while we're at it you can use it for the longer-range commutes of the area. (Atlanta isn't small. Atlanta MSA is almost twice as large, population and area, as the Seattle MSA. New York, LA, and Chicago are larger.)

So in the Atlanta area, one of the general transit methods is airship.

[CanRay]

One of the ideas a friend of mine had (BTW:  I consider him insane and unable to stop thinking, that's saying something!) had an idea for a "Blimp Bus" that he fully statted out, that flies from tenement rooftop-to-rooftop to stay away from the gang activity on the ground, charging to move the low-income workers living in the Barrens to the factories and dockyards.  The only problem he had to work out was wind patters and how to get a Free Spirit of Air to work for the company and how to pay him/her/it.

This is one of his more sane ideas.

[Mason]

How high is your group during an average session, Canray? XD

[CanRay]

How high is your group during an average session, Canray? XD

Um...  Let's see...  I think I'm the only one that drinks (And almost never during games), actually.  The guy I'm talking about has the rare Guinness.  And none do any other forms of drugs (Well, I'm on some doctor's medication.  But it's not the type of stuff that'd cause this.).

And I'd have to HAVE an average session first.   

[kirk]

One of the smaller "failings" of the shadowrun airships is how slow they go.  I mean, the goodyear blimp which is neither rigid nor semirigid can do 50 mph (66 m per combat turn).  The historical rigid and semirigid bodies did twice that with WWI / pre WWII era propellers and engines.

As Barskor showed in a couple of other threads, you get better performance by taking pretty much any ground vehicle and attaching an LTA envelope to it.

That said, heavy winds are still a problem. (shrug).

[CanRay]

Updrafts in a city are also a major issue.  That's why the mooring lines on the Empire State Building were never used, IIRC. 

[kirk]

updrafts around high office buildings, yes. Other crosswinds as well from the canyons they form.

But if you're not dealing with lots of skyscrapers you don't have a problem -- well, not anywhere near as much of a problem.

[CanRay]

Wish I could remember what my friend that worked monitoring the emissions at the smelter back home said about air drafts around the stacks...  Well, other than they smelt badly of sulfur and if there was no wind the air would eat car paint, but I already knew that.

[kirk]

Oh goo, stacks...

Look, if you're near a place with a chimney and you can get away with setting smoke-pots everywhere, you can get an idea of the fun with stacks by surrounding the chimney (with fire going) with four smokepots. Use different colors, put them about a meter away in four directions to get the best effect. Just unreal the way they can get to twisting, especially if there's a light breeze. It's actually better for the aircraft if there's a strong breeze.

The other thing is if you can get on a roof or balcony about ten stories up in a downtown district where the buildings are 20 to 30 stories up and toss some balloons out. The nasty effect is about two meters out. Heck, you can almost see it if you'll release helium filled balloons from the street. Just watch about the time they reach tenth story (that's where the rough stuff usually starts - don't ask me why because I'd get the details wrong.)

But if you've got a big area of low (under 5 story) buildings or a park, your airship can do the landing. If it's surrounded by tall buildings it actually works better: windscreen effects take over.  Talk to some urban helicopter pilots to get the stories. Get them a couple of beers to get the fun stories.

[CanRay]

Talk to some urban helicopter pilots to get the stories. Get them a couple of beers to get the fun stories.

I think I might just do that in a few years if I can find out who the new police copter pilots are...

I keep thinking, however, that a UAV would be a better investment than a full-on whirlybird, but then I remember how windy we get here.  (Almost hurricane weather last night.).