[CitizenJoe]

Alright, so I'm looking through some supplements to help flesh out some chemical plants in the Barrens when I notice the price of acid.  It is listed as ¥500 x Rating.  So I start looking deeper because that seems really expensive.  Apparently that is for one dose, not a 55 gallon drum.  Now, admittedly, these acids are illogically strong, but those prices seem out of whack compared to what is available right now.  I an get a liter of concentrated (98%) sulfuric acid delivered to my door for under $20.  And a liter of 70% nitric acid for under $40.  Same goes for Hydrochloric. 

Assuming a dose is one liter, the prices realistically should be about 1% of  the listed price.  But if a 'dose' is a 30 gallon tank (a reasonable shipping size), then the prices are just about right.  And that is based off of the ballpark figure of 1 nuyen ~ 1 2012 US Dollar.

Going the other direction, looking at parachutes.  Canopies alone are thousands of dollars as opposed to the few hundred nuyen for the SR models. 

Overall, it seems that transportation prices in shadowrun have dropped to very low levels.

[tzizimine]

All I can say is that the prices out of the core book are meant for end users (i.e. PCs) that are without regular channels that give discounts. If you're looking for pricing from a manufacturing plant to a distributor (i.e. without markups for shipping, regulation, storage, etc), than it wouldn't surprise me for a 30% to 80% discount.

[CitizenJoe]

I thought that was what the street index was all about (i.e. 2 for acids).  Even then, we're talking about markups on the order of 100 fold.  And you can get most of those acids at a local supply warehouse like Grainger, never mind simply manufacturing them yourself or through shadow chemists.

From a meta standpoint, I understand why it is done.  Acids are incredibly useful and if they were cheap, everyone would be using it.  The only other thing I can think of is that the prices listed aren't actually for the acid, but rather the delivery system so you don't kill yourself while using it.

[Ajax]

Yes, it it a pure bit of metagame injected right into the core rules, to discourage players from making use of some of the nasty things you can do with  chemistry. Noah over at The Spoony Experiement has an excellent retelling of what life was like back in SR2 when DMSO and other drugs were added by the Shadowtech splatbook. I give you the Squirt Gun Wars.*

* Warning, may cause PTSD outbreaks in veteran Shadowrun GMs.

[tzizimine]

Oh... I remember the fun one could have with DMSO and hallucigenics...


As for the street index, that's getting the chemically illegally. So the difference between Black market (Street Index), Casual Legal (standard pricing) and repeat customer (discount)