[mako42]

Does anyone know who manufactures the Chameleon suit and to what armor it stacks with if any?
Same with 2nd Skin (I believe Zoe, but not sure) and form fitting body armor?
Official references would be awesome!
Though any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[Mirikon]

FFBA and chameleon suits are generic, and by RAW wouldn't stack with anything. Mainly because people cheesed the hell out of things like that in the past.

[JimmyCrisis]

If it doesn't have a listed manufacturer, then it's up to the GM.  Theoretically anyone could make your stealth suit.

I was having issues with the "brand loyalty" perk, and that's one way I worked around it.  I made a former Renraku employee with the perk, and he gets the bonus from any Renraku subsidiary as well... that includes Ultimax, Shin Chou Kyogo, Genecraft, Gaz-Niki, Securitech, WorkShop... lots of stuff.  On the other hand, he takes the penalty on gear from any other corporation, group or business.

How your GM interprets that perk is completely up to them, however.

[PiXeL01]

All the megas manufacture everything, so if your GM is lenient then maybe he'll let you find the same type of equipment just a little bit more expensive but by the right corporation.

[SunRunner]

Not all the Megas manufacture everything of equal quality. Most of them will have an in house brand for most normal products but to be specific Renraku is known for have a pathetic and low quality set of offerings when it come to magical supplies. Anything you want on the tech side of things is going to be available and of high quality especially if its matrix or software tech.

[Joush]

FFBA and chameleon suits are generic, and by RAW wouldn't stack with anything. Mainly because people cheesed the hell out of things like that in the past.

Previously FFBA was intended to be stacked with other armor. It was a questionable idea (and a huge bit of armor level inflation in SR 4 across the life of the edition) but I wouldn't call people using it as it was intended (as an under layer of armor) as cheesing it.

That said, it's hard to say that the game designers should have just disallowed armor stacking. It feels complicated in a way that adds little to the fun and leads to a lot of sub optimal options.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Armor stacking was permitted looong long before 4e.  Only two layers were allowed, the second layer was at half, FFBA and its variants stacked fully but certain things didn't work with them (i.e. no, hosehead, you cannot wear your 'underwear that's safe (and fun!) to wear' with your security or military armor), and any armor over a certain point inflicted agility and movement penalties.

You've always been able to turn a troll into a frickin' MBT.  Here's the thing: that's what they're for.  But doing so - armoring anyone up that much - becomes howlingly obvious.  The first fight might go your way, but there are 'social modifiers', and I'm not talking about the champaigne and cocktails set, I'm talking about how people respond.  Barrens?  You walk through a wasteland, or you suffer constant small-arms harrassment as people try to pick you off in order to loot your Very Expensive Armor.  Cops?  Heaven forbid a Lone Star / Knight Errant patrol sees you, because the HTR team is gonna be on it's way, and remember that these are the guys who perfected the art of turning Tanked-Up Trolls into 3m pillars of home heating.

You can load up the armor; you can IRL, you can in the game.  Can you get through it?  Sure, by some method, eventually.  Might take an anti-tank round, but it'll get through.  Are you virtually invulnerable until then?  If you can take the lickin' and keep on tickin', yeah.  And it provides a challenge for the GM.

And IMO, any GM who counterattacks this sort of behavior head-on is in for a headache, because he's going to wind up with a TPK.  Shadowrun isn't about combat; it's about precisely-applied pressure.  That pressure can be violence, whether actual, threatened, or implied; it can be social, informational, and all sorts of other stuff.  And that pressure can be - IMO should be - applied in both directions.  Armored up?  Watch your Notoriety go up by one or two or three for each and every run during which you stomp around all kitted up like that.  You'll very soon have a reputation as nothing more than a clumsy, high-tech thug, and your own teammates are going to have to disassociate with you because they aren't, and their reputations are taking the hit just being seen with you ...

[JimmyCrisis]

As a GM, I've discovered that three things are good for killing the MBT troll:  Bombs, Vehicle Ramming tests, and Mages.  None of which need necessarily result in a TPK.

I may have pre-planned my countermeasures.  Just maybe. 

[Mirikon]

My personal favorite is using a Possession spirit to have the troll tank strip naked and run into a Humanis meeting before the spirit left him. But the guy deserved it for calling my mage a 'keeb'. Never had trouble in that bar again, and sold the armor for a nice amount, too.

[JimmyCrisis]

I had planned how the tank would get caught by knight errant after kidnapping a KE street patrol lieutenant... my answer was:  mage detective with control thoughts.  Combat starts and you're out of your armor and in handcuffs after one failed save.  Damn that's a powerful spell.

I couldn't spring that on the party, though.  While it was in line with what the response should be, I gave her the option to sacrifice something else to avoid that fate... In this case her street doc contact had to burn down her clinic to destroy the material samples.

[Joush]

As a GM, I've discovered that three things are good for killing the MBT troll:  Bombs, Vehicle Ramming tests, and Mages.  None of which need necessarily result in a TPK.

I may have pre-planned my countermeasures.  Just maybe. 

It's Shadowrun. You can also just shoot them with a gun.

A very good (though hardly the highest around) soak pool might have 24 dice. That's an average of eight successes at damage reduction and relative confidence that damage will be degraded to stun, something that ironically means for people without pain editors they will drop faster* then if they were taking physical damage.

*Assuming you have the errata that causes stun damage to have that effect, of course.

While armored brute will take little damage on average, damage is more reliable then armor in Shadowrun and will start to stack up quickly. Narrow burst and other options can make even a huge soak pool unequal to the task of keeping someone alive for long. It's easy to do a whole lot of damage in SR.

[Tarislar]

I had planned how the tank would get caught by knight errant after kidnapping a KE street patrol lieutenant... my answer was:  mage detective with control thoughts.  Combat starts and you're out of your armor and in handcuffs after one failed save.  Damn that's a powerful spell.

Not that I don't love the idea,  but,  isn't Control Thoughts one of those Violation of your rights spells that cops aren't allowed to use w/o a judge's warrant or something like that. 

[Namikaze]

Not that I don't love the idea,  but,  isn't Control Thoughts one of those Violation of your rights spells that cops aren't allowed to use w/o a judge's warrant or something like that. 

If you kidnapped a KE Lieutenant, you can be certain that the cops that catch you aren't going to go by the book.

[Top Dog]

As a GM, I've discovered that three things are good for killing the MBT troll:  Bombs, Vehicle Ramming tests, and Mages.  None of which need necessarily result in a TPK.

I may have pre-planned my countermeasures.  Just maybe. 

It's Shadowrun. You can also just shoot them with a gun.

A very good (though hardly the highest around) soak pool might have 24 dice. That's an average of eight successes at damage reduction and relative confidence that damage will be degraded to stun, something that ironically means for people without pain editors they will drop faster* then if they were taking physical damage.

*Assuming you have the errata that causes stun damage to have that effect, of course.

While armored brute will take little damage on average, damage is more reliable then armor in Shadowrun and will start to stack up quickly. Narrow burst and other options can make even a huge soak pool unequal to the task of keeping someone alive for long. It's easy to do a whole lot of damage in SR.

While a 24-dice soak pile is nothing to scoff at for the average shadowrunner, that's not what I'd call "very good" or "MBT Troll". I managed to get a street sam at over 30 without even focusing on armor - or being a troll - last time I made a character. If you're actually trying to make a (still functional in other ways) tank troll I'd wager it's not hard to get over the 40's at chargen. And once you get at 14 average soak dice, it's starting to get really hard for ordinary guns to do the job. High-powered rifles with APDS might get the job done, eventually.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Which is why a shaped charge is always the way to go.  Stick it firmly to them somewhere they can't easily reach, then dive for cover and let your demo addict push the button.

Which does lead me to the question: how quickly can you place a charge?  What would it take to affix a shaped charge to a sentient target in the middle of combat?  This, note, would be appropriate for such wonderful things as juggernauts.  Or vehicles.  Or trolls (or anyone else) pretending to be tanks.