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Posted by: stevebugge Jun 26 2006, 09:20 PM

So this is a thread dedicated to good/crazy/wacky/creative ways for runners to make their pads more defensible for if/when the opposition makes housecalls.

If you have an idea post it.
If you have useful constructive commentary on someone's idea that's cool.
If you just want to rip on people for ever letting the opposition track them down, take it somewhere else.

Stuff that I find particularly interesting is either creative modifications to normal stuff or normal stuff that has good dual uses.
Architecture and layout can be important, and escape routes too.
Do you keep stashes of emergency supplies around?

Oh and of course feel free to add any "My Char was attacked at home and did this to fight off/Escape or got totally pwned by the attackers" stories. Those could be fun too. (GM's are free to sound off from the other side of this too)

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 26 2006, 09:43 PM

Monowire strung inside the windows is always nice.

If you're living in a Z-zone or a D-zone, you can probably get away with lacing the exterior walls of your apartments with something that you can electrify.

Posted by: Dewar Jun 26 2006, 09:52 PM

I wonder, could you get that security glass they have in schools these days with the metal webbing, but make the webbing monowire instead? It would be a rude treat if someone tried to punch in the window.

Posted by: Dragonscript Jun 26 2006, 09:56 PM

Tripod mounted auto-pistols with extended clips that will shoot at anything that doesn't pass a verification test.

Posted by: Lagomorph Jun 26 2006, 09:59 PM

Escape routes are usually death traps if you're attacked, it's likely they'll know about them and then be waiting when you go out the back.

Thats why you should instead, have a section of wall wired to blow so that you can make an escape route with out having it known.

edit:

When my rigger's junk yard was attacked by deus' drone army, I made a maze of the yard by tipping the towers of junked cars over. Though, deus attacks don't occur every day, and if they do, you should really consider moving...

Posted by: Nim Jun 26 2006, 10:36 PM

Posted by: PH3NOmenon Jun 26 2006, 11:37 PM

Posted by: Emrak Jun 26 2006, 11:58 PM

Get two apts side-by-side. Set one up with cheap yard sale furniture, lamps, and ALL your electronic wireless gizmos. Rent this one out in your "real" name (whichever one you use the most).

Then, in the closet, cut a hole in the wall through to the next apt. Put a "door" there that looks as closely like the original wall as you can make it. In the 2nd apt, board up/brick up the windows on the inside. This is where you will actually live. If you're a rigger you can prolly even run the power lines into the 1st apt so it looks like there isn't even any electric service to the 2nd apt.

Go into the front door of apt 1, flip on the lights, AC/heat, then go through the closet hidden door into apt 2 and lead a life of peace. Sure, the hidden door will prolly be found after a rudimentary search, but it'll buy you ALOT of time when your dinner is disturbed.


EDIT:
and oh yeah...C4 the hell outta the 1st apt with a remote detonator.

Posted by: HappyDaze Jun 26 2006, 11:58 PM

My runnersw typically have two (or more) resudences. The first is generally in a upper-scale neighborhood (A or better) and simply relies upon local security providers. The runners never bring anything incrimnating with them (especially not the commlinks they use in conjuntion with their "Street IDs"), generally only keeping a weapon licensed to their (fake) SIN.

A variety of disposable false SINs can cover the commute to the second residence, and generally each is only used once.

The second residence is typically in a much lower class 'hood (D or lower) and is where the runner lives while on the job. They never bring their 'legit' commlinks or any other linking materials to this site. These sites are the only ones the other runners in the group know about for obvious reasons. Here much of the illegal home security might be possible, but generally its easier to just keep moving around since no matter how much you can put in to hardeneing the place the big boys can always put more into cracking it if they find it and really want to get you.

Posted by: SL James Jun 27 2006, 01:02 AM

Posted by: HappyDaze Jun 27 2006, 01:30 AM

Perhaps because most places you'd actually rent or buy - as opposed to build yourself from scratch - will have windows. They also make a fine alternate fire escape, and the alternative is having more doors. With the strength of high-tech transparent plastics in the world of SR, the window might be almost as strong as the surrounding wall, eliminating some of the perceived security flaw.

Posted by: Samaels Ghost Jun 27 2006, 01:36 AM

Posted by: Samaels Ghost Jun 27 2006, 01:40 AM

Plascrete can be transparent, iirc. Why have glass?

Posted by: Ankle Biter Jun 27 2006, 02:57 AM

Ankle biter's house is a sight to behold. 2 storys of modern magnificence, with heat signatures moving around the top floor, only barely visible through the surprisingly thick insulated walls. Those would be my pet goats, living in the C12 room.

The entire house is a deathtrap, every single floorpanel, lightswitch and other actuator is rigged to go boom, or to drop you into a narrow deep pit filled with water, for extra concussion/chunky salsa fun, then go boom. Parts of the floor are not there, they are just holograms/ED countermeasures. On a semi random basis, some of the traps are only wired to the alarm, not the lethal countermeasures.

The air has a background count from the level of feverish invention I put into making that place deadly. I even have a stolen can of Strain 3 in there, I think.

It is warded to opacity, and patrolled by carefully programmed, then switched to 0 i/o Steel Lynxes.

It has a carefully concealed sewer entrance I dug myself. I use that to go to my real house in the high rent district. No way am I domb enough to sleep amongst all that boom-boom.

Some of the countermeasures in place there are.

walls with a massive electrical potential accross them. If an electrical conductor moves between them, well, you ever seen a tesla coil? The cool thing about this is that only flawless insulated armour, or what Anklebiter uses, a couple of conductive rods wired together, one in each hand, can get through this without saying "Hiya" to all the current that some carefully arranged capacators, and the national grid, can apply.

The epilepsy-inducing strobe lighting. (I rely on my silly willpower and rarely edge to get through without going "wibble")

The wall panels transparent on only the thermal wavelength with sentry guns behind them. (same temp as the wall, you can't see it, it can see you)

The cannon. Yo ho, bug spirit motherlover, let's see your hardened armour block this.

The trode netted animals on spirit watch.

The really heavy falling weights. I don't care if it don't kill you, if you don't got a strength of 24, you can't lift it.

The deoxygenated zone. I don't care if you have a gas mask, your day just got a lot worse.

The hot and cold rooms designed to ruin the day of people in ruthenium. Hot as in steam, cold as in mist from the breath. I may not see you, but lookie lookie a puff of steam, whatever could that mean?

The constant white noise generaors looking for a moving patch of silence.

Chemsniffers, in case the stealth Adept forgot his envirosealed armour, a rudeimentary MRI (big magnet) in case he has a single solitary drop of anything that can conduct electricity like, err, blood.

Radar. Cause, hey, it's a part of vehicle sensors, why not.

Ventialtion ducts. You mean those tightly packed bundles of steel rods strung with monowire, and surprising amounts of other nasties?

The cameas are pinpricks scattered randomly about the place. The cameras you can see are designed to do nasty things to anything that touches them.

The windows are just ruthenium pictures of closed curtains.

Sheets of clingfilm blocking entire corridoors wired to anything from gas traps to nails erupting from the floor.

My GM was generous with the cash, and we scored big off of big D's Will. I also had about 4 years downtime to play with.

Posted by: HappyDaze Jun 27 2006, 10:31 AM

Ankle Biter,

How dark/gritty and/or "realistic" is your game? From the "super-house" you posted above, I'm seeing runners in your world being way above the streets and operating on a nearly super-heroic level - which is fine, but you really should spell out the context of your world to help people understand how all of that is possible.

Also, beware of opponents that simply decide to nuke your home from orbit...it's the only way to be sure. Loading an armored vehicle with 1000kg of C-12 and ramming it through the wall will be the poorman's approach to cracking "super-house". No defense in SR4 truly beats a good offense - that's why Shadowrunners live to be on the offense and generally die when placed on the defense.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 27 2006, 11:15 AM

Yeah. After the first guy/team who knocks on your doors gets taken out, they will fall back on the armored, airborne, or orbital options, depending on who the are and how bad they want you.

Posted by: Abbandon Jun 27 2006, 11:39 AM

You guys suck. I ripped off a do not disturb sign from a coffin motel and now my place is damn near invincable.

Posted by: Ophis Jun 27 2006, 01:08 PM

As Anklebiter's Gm for that house, I saw it being built (and over paid him enough on runs, to allow it to happen.) The style of the runners could be described as close to super heroic, certainly A-B's team (full deltaware packages, seven figure payouts.) He mostly bought security...

That and he's batshit mad...

Posted by: nezumi Jun 27 2006, 02:32 PM

The first step is to look for security through obscurity. Make sure its a neighborhood where not a lot of people know your real identity, but they know you well enough to be willing to give a shout if they see something suspicious. Make sure the place is reasonably difficult to find, however you probably want it close enough to bystanders that they're unlikely to use Thor shots on you or otherwise bring out the really big guns unless it's really necessary.

Avoid the top floor and the very bottom floor. 2nd or 3rd is probably best, or underground. No windows if you can help it. Rings of apartments around you can be preferable to alert you of incoming people. If you have no exterior walls, it'll be awfully difficult for anyone to get to you without your being alerted first.

Rely heavily on surveillance measures, and try to diversify the tools you use. Dogs, cameras, wires with bells on, laser tripwires, motion detectors, heat sensors, fake locks, etc. A lot of this stuff is pretty cheap, but when well placed it can make a difference. Also invest in something to measure siesmic activity or other vibrations in the walls, in case they attempt to breach through.

Avoid keeping anything really valuable with you. All your eggs in one basket, right? Keep things with evidence or things you don't want lost somewhere else, so they can't nab that on their way to you.

An escape route is necessary, but the details of it depend on your particular situation. Setting up your own emergency breach charges can get you out fast without doing much that'd alert the enemy well in advance. But where do you get out to? It only takes two snipers to cover a small building. A garage is fairly obvious (although turbo boosting through a wall on your motorcycle so you land on the roof of the neighboring warehouse would r0x0rz). The best solution I can think of is to have something through the floor, and just make (or have) a tunnel down to that. A back door into the Ork underground will make pursuit pretty tough, although I doubt the orks will like you much either. Into a ghoul nest? An old subway tube? There are possibilities, explore them.

Of course, you also want your interior apartment somehow warded or guarded. Warding exterior walls paints your apartment, so you want to avoid that. SR2 was nice in that you could just grow biologics in your apartment and provide cover like that, but that's no longer the case. Now astral surveillance is your big enemy, and you'll have to fight hard to overcome it. Of course, hidden tunnels are still hidden tunnels (albeit, much easier to find now), but rigged walls will be spotted pretty easily. Warding, warding, warding. Ward some neighbors too, just in case.

Ultimately though, the problem is two fold.
1) Realize you're under attack with time to react
2) Escape

Odds are, killing everyone won't be an option (or at least, if it is an option, #1 was not likely to be as much of a challenge). So you need to make sure you have a plan for escaping overwhelming odds.

Edit: I look forward to the first day Anklebiter comes home toasted and gets, well, toasted by his own traps. Remember, what can kill the other guy can likely kill you too.

Posted by: Ankle Biter Jun 27 2006, 03:28 PM

Posted by: nezumi Jun 27 2006, 03:56 PM

Wouldn't it have been easier then to say you just have a fake house full of explosives and leave it at that? Anyway, the question isn't "how do you decorate your fake house", it's how you decorate (and/or hide) your REAL house. If Ankle biter spent half a mil on his fake house and so now lives in #41 off Mariette St., he's going to be in a heap of trouble if the guys attacking him do their research first and figure out which is your real house.

Posted by: stevebugge Jun 27 2006, 04:02 PM

That really was more the question. Things like do you armor plate your furniture to turn it in to hardened cover? I tend to like with the early warning and escape method or live where people can't find you easily methods of staying safe, though hiding in plain sight can be very effective too, nothing like having lots of witnesses as a deterent.

Posted by: 2bit Jun 27 2006, 04:39 PM

Posted by: Gustave Jun 27 2006, 07:33 PM

Make a house on top of a mountain. Make only one road leading up to the mountaintop villa, and wire the whole thing to explode if it's needed. Place HMG turrets around the forest, and make the whole place a mine field. Place very strong signal jammers in Fly-Spies and program them to follow any intruders spotted. Have turrets and patrolling drones have no outside connections whatsoever. If they spot an intruder, they use a face scanner, if it's your face they hold off on shooting for 10 seconds. Then you swipe your ID card and it opens panels so it can scan your hand print, DNA sample, voice, and eye(good ways to keep others from getting these are always wearing gloves, wearing masks while on jobs, and having the cybereyes that change and using false eyes when not on your property). Then it won't shoot you until you get out of it's sensor range(then if you enter again you have to do those things again). If any drones or turrets are taken out, instead of using wireless communication they send out a high pitched screech and detonate a flash grenade. The light and sound will draw nearby drones and alert you to the intrusion(via cameras and microphones set to look for these signs). In case of an aerial attack, have several SAMs and anti-missile systems(and preferably private airspace so you don't take down legit planes).

Next, the house. You can have the villa rigged up like AnkleBiters house if you really want to, but you could just leave it as a relaxing place. The real house, however, would be underground inside the mountain(free wards, woo!). There you set up several escape routes that you make yourself(in fact you should make the whole underground place yourself, it will be harder, but nobody but you will know about it). Obviously the entire place will be rigged to blow if you feel the need, nobody will be getting off that mountain alive

You could probably add several other things, that is just off the top of their head.

Posted by: Nim Jun 27 2006, 07:57 PM

Hmm. Let's see, Gustave.

You've got a subterranean facility constructed by a paranoid recluse, below an elaborate mansion that was never actually designed to be lived in but IS a complete deathtrap. Teams that raid it will start off by trying to make sense of it all, but quickly realize it's useless and simplify their goals to: a) collecting as much useful stuff as possible and b) escaping alive.

Congratulations. I think you've just re-invented the TSR module

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 27 2006, 07:57 PM

SAM batteries and AMD would be a good addition. I mean, all that work only to have your place destroyed by a missile?

Posted by: GB1 Jun 27 2006, 08:03 PM

Posted by: nezumi Jun 27 2006, 08:50 PM

Forget a mountain villa/bunker, just live on a space station! Come on, it's not THAT much more impractical than the bat cave!

Posted by: Nim Jun 27 2006, 08:52 PM

Posted by: Slump Jun 27 2006, 11:07 PM

All my security is passive. Cameras and microphones, nothing even ultrasonic. The only way to determine that your ambush has been compromised is if you manage to discover a camera or microphone. All of the security equipment is hardwired to a laser-link that's mounted in the facade of the building, pointing to a sensor on the building across the street (also hidden in a recess), which leads to a host which I can call into using a cell phone.

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 28 2006, 12:19 AM

The key is escape. You can never keep a fixed location safe in modern/future warfare. Holding ground is inadvisable unless you have superior firepower, which you don't against the megas.

My runners were Nomadic. They all belonged to a circus, which moved from town to town. when the heat came, they just moved.

In addition, here is some Real world advice.

1st, you need a 72 hour bag. This has all the gear you need to survive for 72 hours in a easy to carry form. For everyone this usually includes change of clothes, fire starters, food and water, raingear etc. Look up the phrase 72 hour bag in google for examples.
Runners will want to add guns and ammo, armor, and a spare commlink with pristine fake sins.

2, security delays the attacker, it rarely stops them. It only stops them if it delays them long enough for you to go on the offensive. Security exists to give you time. It does this either by giving you advance warning or by delaying your attacker. Use this time to escape. sensors fall into the first catagory, as do informants. locks, armored doors, traps and such are the second category. Anything intended to hold ground will fail.

3rd: multiple escape routes. For fire escape, each primary occupancy room should have 2 exits. For security purposes this will hold true as well. by exit I mean a way to leave the room, eventually getting you out. The entire place should have at least 4 different ways to escpae, with varied tactics. one means of escape is actually to stay put. Places to hide are as useful as escape routes if your attackers are leaving at any point. this means you'll want to make them think you left, or were never there. Secret doors and hollow walls, hidden stairs and panels, attic spaces are all good ones. Tunnels should exit at lest 100' away from the building in question, and ideally should have multiple means of egress. this means you shouldn't have just one tunnel, buta whole tunnel SYSTEM to escape with.

4th: a place to run TOO. a bolt hole, a contact, the nearest state park, something. for civilians this is usually a nearby relative or friend, in a runners case it may be a specially prepared bolt hole or just a hotel chosen at random and payed for our of the credstick in the 72 hour bag.

5th: PRACTICE. every 6 months or so, make a drill out of running to the hills. make it like a camping trip. take the oppourtinuty to update/restock your 72 hour bag. Heck, for a runner, you should probably just MOVE every 6 months as a matter of course anyway.

Posted by: SL James Jun 28 2006, 01:46 AM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 28 2006, 03:47 AM

I thought I got yelled at for suggesting the "facefull of claymore" approach to home (proactive) defense......

Posted by: Clyde Jun 28 2006, 04:00 AM

Doors and windows are the main entry threat. A heavy security door, or something armored, is a good start. Don't forget to protect the lock - its screws need to be set deeply into the frame around the door. Multiple locks (like an extra deadbolt) help hold off kicks by sharing the force between two locks instead of one. You can also get a metal crossbar or a "police lock" which is a bar that angles out from the door to a notch in the floor. With those the only way through the door is for someone inside to open it or to get a battering ram.

Windows can be replaced with ballistic composite (even in a cruddy neighborhood, if you're handy enough). Quick release metal bars are another neat option: they keep people out but can be unlatched to escape. To keep someone from knocking a hole in the window and unlocking it make sure to have window stops installed. Another option is window film: some of the stuff is tinted to keep out UV rays and excess sunlight (an hostile spells), but the stuff also makes it harder to break the window out because it holds the broken pieces of glass together. This is nice for reducing damage from flying glass in an earthquake or explosion.

Alarms are a good idea, too. Motion sensor systems - even if they just turn on a floodlight outside - can help as well. The idea is to keep ordinary gutterpunks away from your place (because there are easier pickings) and to give you warning that there's trouble. Nothing sucks like waking up with an HK-227X pointed right at your face - set up defenses tough enough that you have warning and can try another way out.

Drones, sentry guns, claymores, smoke bombs, tear gas, etc. are all fun tricks to screw with incoming baddies. Actually, rigging your house up with a gas system and having a mask by the bed would be pretty slick.

Finally, you want to try hard to have an escape route planned ahead of time. Expect obvious tricks like snipers covering back windows or a snatch team with a net gun (or grenade launcher) at the back door. Simple countermeasures will probably help a lot. Pre packed explosives might create a back door where there wasn't one before - just make sure your renter's insurance is paid up.

Posted by: Navaruk Jun 28 2006, 04:04 AM

You could substitute claymore for the classic shotgun ammunition and a rat trap approach. This gives us less collateral damage yet still slows the pursuers down, and you have something left over to interrogate (or sell off as spare organs) should you confront them.

Posted by: SL James Jun 28 2006, 04:12 AM

Posted by: evil1i Jun 28 2006, 07:18 AM

OK - where I live the typical good quality inner city apartment (3 Bedroom 1.5 Bathroom, Living, Dining, Services and Balcony) would set you back around $500,000+ depending on quality and location. So looking to secure that I'd expect to spend around $100,000 , anything more and you are getting into ridiculous levels of expenditure and if you've gotten to that level who cares about money

1. Entrance is restricted by having 3 floor to ceiling aquariums creating a choke point. These aquariums should also be made of armoured glass to protect against small arms fire. If they try to ditch a grenade in the front door it should be stopped by the arrangement of the aquariums and the blast should be dissipated by them too.

2. The balcony should have a small chest that is used as seat normally but contains 3 essential things.
a. 72 hour bag mentioned earlier
b. enough rope/cable to reach the ground below your apartment (this includes getting off of a near ground roof/outdoor area - eg all the way to the ground.
c. a smoke grenade + delayed claymore mine that are rigged to go off a few seconds (for the smoke grenade) and then how ever long it takes to reach the ground after that (for the claymore)

3. All doors should be opaque armoured glass

4. Bed spread, cushions, throw rugs, carpets, wall hangings aplenty! All made from or lined with ballistic cloth. These can then all be used in a hurry to resist some if not all of the damage from small arms and grenades. Time enough to get the heck out of dodge!

5. Dining table and chairs can also be made from armoured glass.

All these are so that you can escape not stay and fight. Always fight on a place of your choosing and assume that if they have decided to make that your place of living they know enough or are confident enough to overwhelm/defeat/avoid any counter-attack you may try and also means that any defences you use are not able to back-fire malfunction of trip you up should you get drunk/high or have guest over that don't know not to step there!

Posted by: nezumi Jun 28 2006, 02:06 PM

evil - landmine waiting under your balcony. End of story.

Keep in mind, while 2 exits per room is nice, it's also a liability. More exits mean more entrances. However, well placed C4 is an instant exit in a place of your choosing.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 28 2006, 06:40 PM

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 28 2006, 06:42 PM

Posted by: SL James Jun 28 2006, 08:25 PM

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 28 2006, 09:51 PM

Posted by: HappyDaze Jun 28 2006, 09:55 PM

Chem-sniffers on police drones set to patrol should detect your megaton of platique from a distance. They exist in my SR mainly to detect terrorist threats - such as explosive vests and car bombs - but they will also pick-up on a "house-bomb" that can take out a few blocks.

Posted by: SL James Jun 29 2006, 01:41 AM

Well, this would be mostly for dangerou amateurs. A professional wouldn't be stupid enough to hit you on your home turf. Unless they're written by a horrible author, like Chimera whacking James O'Malley in his home.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 29 2006, 06:58 AM

The ultimate deterrant to people trying to take you alive (or dead) in your house?

Rig the whole place with C-XII.

Not just a little bit. A lot. A smegging lot.

Rig it all to a biomonitor - if your Physical Track or Stun track ever fills up to full while you're at home, it goes off. As in, massively off.

As in, enough to wipe out the building and the whole fucking block.

Don't hide this fact. A Deterrant weapon is no good if you they don't know about it.

Also, paint your whole house in radio-absorbing paint and antidrone weaponry, so they can't just take you out with a drone.

If they want to kill you or take you alive in your home, they're in deep shit.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jun 29 2006, 07:53 AM

Posted by: HappyDaze Jun 29 2006, 10:21 AM

Wow. That has got to be the the...

OK. If you make a public statement that "I can blow everything to shit" then you are a public threat. Your deterrant will be no such thing as the authorities will do what they can to eliminate you. Remember, this is the same world where Ares set off a nuke in a downtown area to deal with a threat.

Containing you within your own home will be the first step, so congrats - you get to live in your pile of C-12 with dwindling supplies (only what food, water, and fuel for power you have stored on your own). Seiges still work in 2070.

You can't really stop them from using drones. If you're going to sit in a house-bomb with some sort of anti-signal devices set up, then expect them to simply wire their drones with FO cables or to use LOS laser/maser emissions for controlling them all from a command post LTA craft several thousand meters in the air above the whole mess.

Responses prior to the doors getting kicked in can include things like imitating the signals of the biomonitor and using massive transmitters (on the mentioned LTA, or possibly wheeled into position) to push the signal right through your paint. The radio signals might just cook you a bit too...

BTW, what makes you think that they want to take you alive? At this point you're a public meanace and they'll treat you accordingly. You'll be dead within a night's time of announcing your doomsday plan and that's assuming that the authorities didn't find a way to track that much C12 being picked up (yes, even illegal purchases can be tracked if the cops/corps care enough and bulk purchases of C12 tend to attract such attention).

Posted by: Ankle Biter Jun 29 2006, 02:55 PM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Jun 29 2006, 03:14 PM

What, do you think I'm stupid enough to build my Doomsday Device in a populated area?

Z-Zone, fraggers! Get with the program!

And firing a LAW through what you think is a window will only hit a plate of ablative, reactive armor - and get your own rocket in return from the drone launcher situated two floors up.

Posted by: Red Jun 29 2006, 05:22 PM

My 2 nuyen...

I think home defense, like all other things in SR, requires a touch of moderation. Otherwise things can warp into an unrealistic arms race with an enemy that doesn't exist, or with the GM who can always conjure up a bigger gun.

1. Good locks, good windows (polarized glass with controllable tint).
2. A garage to secure your car(s).
3. Plenty of cameras, microphones, and motion sensors hidden on each face of your home which are connected by cable to some central home computer wire no direct wireless (i.e. behind chokepoint)
4. Keep all volitile materials in the basement.
5. Add chemsniffers like you would smoke detectors.
6. Maybe a MAD/Cyberware scanner at the front or back door.
7. One ward, and a lodge/circle in a smaller conference room. Handful of bound spirits based on your group's resources. Concealment, movement, guard can get you out of trouble fairly quickly.
8. 72 hour bag, and monthly practice on how to hightail it out of town.
9. 3 bolt holes.
10. 3 "bolt hole" contacts.

These 10 things are generally accessable. They aren't too expensive. And they aren't a huge waste of resources.

Are far as corporations are concerned, I usually don't imagine corporate managers approving million nuyen budgets for the assassination of runners when the job nets them absolutely zero profit (there are exceptions). PR can handle any incriminating dirt runners ever find, look at Aztechnology. That sort of thing.

As for organized crime, they'll probably use the path of least resistance. A holdout pistol from some random dude when you visit your favorite bar. And they'll use some pitiful squib to do it because life is cheap for them. Or maybe they'll send some guys in a pizza delivery truck with an smg or a grenade in the bag.

I think world is more interesting when you consider that no matter who is involved, they have limited resources. Megacorps have trillions, but those trillions are properly invested in something. Those trillions aren't primarily liquid. Liquid money in the bank doesn't have a favorable ROI.

I try to remember to think to myself. If I was the enemy, was the the path of least resistance to nail this guy? And if I am the runner, what is the path of least resistance to protect myself given the probability of attack given X, Y, and Z.

YMMV

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 29 2006, 06:12 PM

Some guy parked on top of a building a few hundred meters away with a scoped Panther just has to wait for you to come out of your house. Don't like leaving your home? Paranoid as hell? They could just booby-trap your exits the same way you booby-trapped your entrances.

All the bad guys have to do is park a few of those Smart Weapon Mounts nearby in concealed positions with ruthenium "blinds" placed over them. Mount an LAW and a good camera on each. Set them up watching your doors, your windows, your various exits. Get down into the sewers below and cover the rest of the exits. Total cost for the drones and the weapons will be in the low tens of thousands, but if you're a runner who's got his whole Urban Fortress thing going on, you're high-enough profile that you may be worth it. And hey, most of them are going to be reusable when they're done. Get a couple of riggers monitoring everything on a hardwired or LOS connection, then call the guy's contacts up and say "Hey, I hear there's a bunch of AZT guys rolling on X's house... you might want to tell him to keep low."

If the runner bails out of the house, you thump him. If he stays inside, you starve him out (or wait till you catch movement and fire an AV rocket through the wall).

I don't care what you've made your little urban fortress out of, concentrated application of missiles or autocannon fire is going to put a hole in it. Shadowrunners survive by being able to get the fuck outta Dodge, not by being able to stay inside their castle and laugh at the silly corpers outside.

Honestly, you harden your house too much, you know what happens? The corp pays 5k for some ork-hating UCAS flyboy to have a "training accident" while he's on exercises over the Barrens involving a 500 kilo JDAM, with guaranteed protection in the form of a little hacking on the inventory computers. "No, see, you had a drop tank installed there. I ditched it over Lake Washington after the dogfight drill because it was rattling and I was worried about damage to the airframe." Your kill team on the ground gets a drone up in the air and parks a laser designator on the roof of your fortress, and boom... half a ton of Comp-OMG turns your home into a "gas main leak" on the evening news.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 29 2006, 06:52 PM

Shrike, shush it, you'll shatter their fantasies.

Posted by: Nim Jun 29 2006, 07:02 PM

Hmm. You know, that raises another question for me.

Obviously, the BEST defense when you've horked off a corp enough for them to send heavy-weapons teams to go all Trading Spaces ("You renovated our secure facility - now it's our turn!") on your hip, heavily-defended Low Lifestyle pad is...to let them think they've killed you. Merely escape, and they may just keep looking.

So, what're the obstacles to faking your own death, when the opposition has 2070 SOTA technology and some skilled magicians?

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 29 2006, 07:06 PM

Don't leave any traces of your dna for them to analyze. Oh, maybe have corpse you keep in your place (my, my remember to keep the smell to a minimum...) having your height and adjust their dental record/cyber/bioware to be the same as yours. So when they do the massive strike on your place (and hopefully you're not there and managed to escape), they'll find a crisp corpse that matches your features and flag it as mission accomplished.

Posted by: Nim Jun 29 2006, 07:10 PM

Well, if you're going to leave a corpse, it may as well be YOUR corpse. Doesn't have to be intact, if you can guarantee the building will go up...say, because you rigged it yourself for if things got really hairy. At that point, just having an arm or something is enough if it matches your fingerprints, ware, and DNA. But what tests would they run on it if they were skeptical?

They could have a spirit Search for you. Legit cloning places would probably be required to include some sort of genetic tag so that a DNA test would reveal cloned material, but shadow clinics would just ignore that. Hmm.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 29 2006, 07:14 PM

Heh, I was thinking about that too, ya beat me to it. I had forgotten about cloning technology in shadowrun. yeah, forget the corpse of another, use your own corpse. Hehe.

As for the spirit search. Well, I guess holing up in a warded area for a while till the heat passes might help. If you're a mage maybe it's time to initiate and change your astral signature.

Posted by: MikeTrevin Jun 29 2006, 07:40 PM

Someone said weird and whacky ideas. So, here we go, weird and whacky.

-Paint the walls with ruthenium!

No, seriously. Hook them all up into a computer somewhere, and give it the ability to playback odd images. A shadow of someone who isn't there. Make it look like the house is upside down (with pictures of desks and chairs on the walls, but situated so that they're on the 'ceiling'.) Heck, even swirling psychodelic colors designed to give someone a vicious headache.

Before you laugh, some warships in history were painted in confusing patterns- still gray/black/etc., but made to make it difficult for an observer to tell their initial heading.

-Dual duty lights

Get some, buy some, make some- whatever. However, the set up is this; you have lights in your house. Nice, normal lights. Set them up so that you can trigger them to crank the brightness into the Staring at the Sun From Two Feet Away range, and -keep- it there. Or set them to strobe in a nice, nauseating unsteady pattern. While badguys are bewildered and flailing, make good your escape.

-Legitimate Security

Wait, what? Well, you've got a superwhamadyne fake SIN. Put it to use. Buy an actual, real, honest-to-goodness security contract for your house, complete with a Brinks (or whatever) build in security alarm system!

-Treehouse

Oh come -on-. Everyone knows a treehouse is the ultimate in home security, all by itself. Hell, -my- parents never wanted to climb up just to make me take out the trash after I'd pulled up the rope ladder and was pretending to be asleep.

Man, life as a little kid was awesome. More awesome than college is right now. Uh, back on topic.

-Sewer Life

Lifestyle is part where you live, part how you keep it up. What's stopping you from going Ninja Turtle style and setting up a sweet living area in some abandoned part of the sewers? Sure, nothing's going to get rid of that smell, I'll grant you that. But now someone has to travel through potentially confusing tunnels to get to you, and if you're smart, you yourself have mapped the place out so thoroughly that it'll take twenty-plus guys just to cover all the exits!

I'm inclined to believe the corps are not in the habit of sending out 20 man teams just because of you. If they are... might wanna choke back the profile on the kinds of jobs you take and the type of things you do, chummer.

-Vietnam style

Another take on the sewer life, living in tunnels. Sometimes the most effective traps are the unsophisticated ones. Sure, chummer down underground is looking all over for pressure plates, cameras- but is he looking for the monotripwire? Or even a normal tripwire, with a grenade on one end. Or how about that pit you dug several weeks ago and stuck spikes in, defecated over, and then covered with debris? Sure, it'll -stink- and there will be flies, but that's all over in the sewers. When he finds it with his (probably) unarmored foot and the spikes go through, not only is he hurt- now he's got a really high risk of infection!

Admittedly, if that doesn't earn you notoriety points or the ridicule of your friends, you might want to reconsider your position in life.

Posted by: nezumi Jun 29 2006, 08:19 PM

Posted by: Geekkake Jun 29 2006, 08:21 PM

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jun 29 2006, 08:57 PM

Posted by: nezumi Jun 29 2006, 08:57 PM

I had thought of that The difference here is you're not given any background about what's going to happen (the house is going to get destroyed, preferably with you in it), where you are, who you're a clone of, who is trying to kill you, etc. Presumably eventually the clone catches up to the original, kills him and successfully plays the doppleganger.

Posted by: PBTHHHHT Jun 29 2006, 11:24 PM

*insert ominous sound* dum dum duuuummm!

It sounds like an interesting twist. Next time a player chooses amnesia you can punish them with this. They have to find out who their 'original' is and they get to decide if they want to take over their originals life or vice versa, or whatever else you can put into the twist.

Posted by: hyzmarca Jun 30 2006, 05:09 AM

Shutters for the windows. Armored Shutters that look like vertical blinds when open and art when closed. Grenade sumps. Never underestimate the usefulness of grenade sumps. Also, some air tight container for tear gas is very useful.

The best defense is to not make enemies. Don't attack Megacorps. Don't go insane with firepower. And only prey on those who will not be missed unless you can make it look like an accident.

Magicians have many useful options that mundanes do not have. Spirits make decent guards. If you can't get one then get a trained hellhound instead. Fire breath is elemental damage.

For ultimate safety the best home is a mobile home. Sure, living in an RV or a semi-trailor may not give you much space but you can't beat it for convience. A house boat works, as well, but they're more difficult to fit through the drive-in window. For the ultimate in mobility use an airship.

Posted by: Dender Jun 30 2006, 05:37 AM

ok, currently i have an impenitrable defense for my character

step one: live in aurora, a wireless free lotek zone
step two: be a large troll known to decapitate people
step 3: ...
step 4: profit

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 30 2006, 05:31 PM

See, the problem with that one is that you are now competing with the 2845 other large trolls known to decapitate people living on Aurora.

Aurora, by the way, is an arterial, not a neighborhood per se... you don't live in it, you live on it or near it. It runs north from the Battery Street Tunnel (downtown Seattle) to Shoreline (8 miles north), and beyond.

Posted by: stevebugge Jun 30 2006, 05:39 PM

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 30 2006, 07:11 PM

Ya know, I didn't even know that existed

Posted by: MikeTrevin Jul 1 2006, 06:01 AM

Aurora's a wireless free lotek zone in 2070?

That's a bummer. This does not bode well for my Fort Collins ( No, I have -no clue- what the layout of Denver is like in 2070. I can tell you how to get to most of the tourist traps in 2006, tho. )