Who still manufactures the Icarus Flight System?

[slade2501]

UTI made the originals, but I thought I read somewhere that new ones were in production (not sure if the Black Market or someone else)?

[glitterboy2098]

i'd guess one of the black market factions, probably having reverse engineered the UTI system. iirc the CS took over the UTI facilities, and given they've fielded similar systems of their own afterwards, i'd guess they also reverse engineered them.

[slade2501]

And I would argue that the Black Market has a better capacity to reverse engineer most technologies due to its comparative lack of compartmentalization and willingness to access aliens themselves on their own technology, as a general rule. Yes the CS has more raw resources but uses them in a more inefficient manner.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I would think nobody would be manufacturing it because a generic Sky Cycle from the main book is better and cheaper and I can't imagine sales were ever going to sustain it long term. the Icarus Flight System strikes me very much as a Fad: it got popular for a while, and after 3-4 years when all the juicers who used it are dead or detoxed, it's going to fall off a cliff and production would be discontinued. Given what happened to UTI, I don't think anyone is going to pick up the torch. They're too gimmicky and too expensive for what they actually offer to sustain long-term sales. You can get a Sky Cycle with comparable speeds, better weapons, and more durability for half the price and without the restrictive skill requirements. Nobody is going to reverse engineer them because they are quite litterally not worth the money as is, let alone if you have to throw a 5-year R&D program at them first.

Not to say they'd cease to exist, especially if you have a character or player who wants it. They're the right kind of dumb to have a rabid fan base, its' just not a big enough one to sustain it: eventually everyone who wants one will have one. Over time It'd just become the domain of a Legacy system, rare, even more expensive, and even harder to keep running as spare parts and Operators who know how to service them become more scarce as well. In a sense, it'd be easier than playing a Glitter Boy, but i'd definatly make the players do salvage auctions for spare parts if they wanted to keep them running. Good fun!

Honestly, why should Glitter boys have all the fun. Just look at the Classic Car fans. There should be more obscure Power Armors and gear with rabid fan bases keeping them alive even as tech marches on.

[Orin J.]

it's always been hinted that there's "small shop" manufacturers of generic products, so while i don't see much demand for them i'd assume there's some shop somewhere (merctown? silverspire? hell, put it in the strip) producing comperable knockoffs for the novelty market.