Good find Jester, that was bad-ass.
Tobias:
After going over the article once more it seems that it's talking about HAL 3. He says that HAL 4
will be lighter, which makes me think it's still in development. So, I'd say it's 20k for HAL 3.
The thing is, HAL 3 can already increase your strength by approximately 10 times. To apply this in SR I don't think it would be a literal 10 times, since the attribute ratings seem to be exponential (at least they weren't in SR3). In SR4 you can carry 10 kilograms per Strength point. Once thing to realize is that the suit isn't agile or quick enough to function in melee combat, so in reality the strength boost will only help with lifting/carrying or as recoil compensation.
To make it more balanced, you could say that HAL 3 added 3 points to your Str, HAL 4 added 4 points, and so on... I'd stop it at HAL 6 as this is where SR stops for any attribute augmentation (for game balance). The costs should be exponential as well. Keep in mind that the HAL 3 system, as seen in that video Jester linked, isn't armored in any way. To add armor to make it an actual powered
armor you'd have to pay a lot more. Once the rigger book comes out you could pull the costs of adding armor to a vehicle and apply it to the HAL system. Or, you could look at Rigger 3 and jury-rig a cost-per-point of armor ratio.
If you wanted to whip something up quick you could use the rules for cybernetic limbs, adding armor and strength wherever you see fit. I don't think you could add agility to the suit, as it seems to be a bit cumbersome and slow. So basically you'd be buying a cyber torso, 2 arms and 2 legs, but wouldn't be paying any essence. To offset this, I would double or even triple the costs of the limbs and augments, and while wearing the suit the user wouldn't be able to run (or at a minimum run multiplier 2). I would still make the suit limited by the capacity rating of the cyber limbs with a max rating of 6 for any augment (only Strength and Armor allowed). I'd still have to play test the idea, but that I think would be plausible. You could make it an item that a runner team must acquire then when one of the players goes 'cool! power armor' and puts it on some guys rush in and take him out in melee. That'd be fun
Once the next sourcebooks come out we could redo the design.
