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Posted by: MikeKozar Jul 30 2011, 07:52 AM

I'm working on a write-up of my defense-in-depth security template, and I'm looking at my Heavy Responders. This is a tricky slot to write-up in advance, since the whole idea of a HRT is to put the fear of corporate wrath into the PCs; A Heavy Response Team needs to represent unquestionably overwhelming force. At the same time, I'd like to inject some of the corporate personality that Shadowrunners are rebelling against, in the sense that these guys are cookie-cutter cannon fodder, not as special or as tricked-out as the PCs.

My current write-up has them with a bodyware/gear budget of about 100k each, for a team of 12-18. They wind up with full military combat armor with a gas seal, a ballistic shield, an Ares Alpha with Smoke, Flashbang, and CS grenades. Wired Reflexes 1, Reaction Enhancers 3, Muscle replacement 1 and aluminum bone lacing. I like this write-up because it feels like a serious threat, while being individually less impressive then the PCs. With all the soak dice, these guys won't die quickly, and generous use of grenades, supressive fire, and aimed bursts give them a good chance at taking down a PC. Equip a few of them with Panther XXLs, and we have a serious match.

Anyway, that's what I'm kicking around. Not invincible, but effective, if I'm judging it right. I'm curious what you guys use for your ultimate corp team, short of Prime Runners. What do you generally equip your HRTs with?

Posted by: Dakka Dakka Jul 30 2011, 09:05 AM

I don't know your PCs but this team looks like TPK if played tactically sound, especially if your PCs (4 I assume) are confronted all 12-18 of them. Contrary to D&D rising numbers of opponents do not give diminishing returns, quite the opposite actually.

What's wrong with the SpecOps teams form the BBB? Red Samurai and or Tir Ghosts should do alright. You may want to outfit them with some gear form other books though (MilSpec armor, TacNet etc.)

If at all possible, to "put the fear of corporate wrath into the PCs", add a mage/Spirit with counterspelling to the team. Otherwise it might be a pretty onesided encounter.

I don't think they would need more ware, just give them decent to good skills and use them. Infiltration for ambushes (Surprise!) makes even below average shooters very dangerous, especially when there are lots of them. Perception will save their lives, if the PCs try to ambush them. They should also be good in athletics. That way they will probably not tire before the PCs in a chase. A hacker may also be a good idea depending on how secure your PCs networks are.
"Damn my clip just ejected"
"Mine too, and where is my map and FFID?"
"Oh crap!" *sees flashbang rolling in.*

Posted by: Smokeskin Jul 30 2011, 09:26 AM

If your PCs guns and armor make milspec armor and assault cannons necessary, then go with it - I'd go with less, but then I don't like heavy hardware campaigns.

I agree with the power level of the HRT team, but go with fewer but very savvy guys that employ dirty tricks. Spirit support, invisible point men, ambush teams that are concealed, nausea gas, thermal smoke and ultrasound vision, radar sensor sniping through walls.

Imo the ideal encounter with an HRT goes like this: They blindside the runners, runners beat the assault off but are hurt, pinned down and in lots of trouble, but eventually catch a small break and manage to make a dramatic escape before reinforcements close in. Sort of like than scene in Leon.

Posted by: LurkerOutThere Jul 30 2011, 09:31 AM

You mean other then the fact they are a big joke? Seriously the best of the best with more or less limitless government budgets and training have trouble challenging the hacker's some of my players build let alone the street sam. Personally I don't have a problem with TPK if the players take on a high end response force head on or stick it out for a protracted fire fight with milspec armed opposition. The red samurai and tir ghosts to me look about where I'd expect sixth world SWAT to be, not those premier and legendary organizations.

Posted by: PoliteMan Jul 30 2011, 10:34 AM

What corp are you developing this for? Ares should have a different HRT from MCT, which should be different from Shiawise or SK.

Part of this is if you want them to be uniquely threatening but uniform, you need a common theme tying them together. When 6 identical HRT guys burst with medium Machine Guns and military armor, yous should know it's Ares, whereas MCT sends in two Cyborgs. That's what makes the Red Samurai so great, they can be very uniform because of their distinctive appearance and it's easy to tie them into a fighting style, for example, they might easily be the best close combatants out of all the corp HRT teams because of the focus on bushido.

Posted by: Omenowl Jul 30 2011, 11:49 AM

I found the Tir ghosts and special forces teams to have stats simply too high. Seems like these guys were more like 20 year veteran team leaders rather than guys with 10 years of experience.

Anyway, I would go with 3 helicopters each carrying 6 to 8 troops (a team). 2 teams and 1 veteran team. This will help prevent a single missile from taking out the entire HRT. The HRT maybe contracted out with only a few teams available in the entire city. This could give players a chance to do a diversionary run to tie up the HRT, while they do the real run somewhere else.

Basic teams: The basic ware would be similar to the lonestar cybersuite for two teams. Each team would have a mage primarily for counterspelling and banishing and a watcher spirit. Magic probably 3 with spellcasting/banishing of 3+ speciality for counterspelling. Stats would be in the 3 to 4 range with the odd 5 stat to represent a singularized specialty. Each would have SWAT armor equipped with mobility or strength additions and chemical seal. Helmets would contain flare compensation, radio, thermal and low light options. At least one member would have an assault rifle with grenade launcher (equipped with gas grenades). 1 would have a ballastic shield, 1 with an automatic shotgun and underbarrel netgun, the rest would be equipped with SMGs. Each weapon would be equipped with a dual selector for ammo. Stickn N Shock would be one clip and the second clip would be APDS. Goal is to capture the runners first, with the lethal option only if a member goes down. Remember the team may not know who is friend or foe and they don't want to kill their own employees.

The veteran team would be your basic archetypes. Street Samurai, Hacker, Combat Mage, and Drone rigger. Include a specialty type such as a sniper, a summoner/banisher, and/or utility mage. Final is your leader. Assume tacnets are being used and controlled.

Assume initial response is offsite mage sending in spirits and an offsite spider sending in drones to contain the shadowrunners. The idea is to keep the players pinned down until the HRT arrives. The HRT will take 20-30 minutes to arrive. They need to get the alert, suited up and arrive onsite. Once the HRT is onsite they will try to give the characters an escape route to get them out of the facility.

Posted by: Faelan Jul 30 2011, 12:45 PM

I rarely have a problem making the presented NPC Templates matter. Heavy Response Teams are going into a facility or location after the shit has hit the fan. The individual load out and skill of each member while important on a basic level is ultimately not where they make their pay. Their mission is to recover any lost data, material, or personnel, while eliminating or capturing the individuals responsible for the breach in security. They will not fly in guns blazing unless they are 1) 100% percent sure there is no surface to air, air to air, or credible magic threat, or 2) they are retarded and want a flashy way to commit suicide. If they are flying in they will secure the perimeter, cover avenues of approach and escape, with fire, personnel, or mechanical assets. This includes air, ground, water, and underground routes. They will do so as quietly as possible, and utilize any video feeds to prioritize targets. Your runner team has to leave the facility at some point, and when it does the highest threat individual is taking a .50 caliber Raufoss round to the grape. They are not going to rush in and become fodder they are going to wait and ambush your team, and any equipment upgrades would be solely for the purpose of avoiding detection up to and including spirits with concealment. In my games if the team has stuck around long enough for a Heavy Response Team to arrive they are probably looking at a near TPK, unless they have pulled out all the heavy shit, have a big enough team to cover the approaches while they screw around and eat up time, or go completely over the top with prepared explosives, but in general they are screwed.

Posted by: PoliteMan Jul 30 2011, 04:33 PM

Faelan:
You've never had a demolitions PC in a game before, have you?

I think what you've recommended is very sensible but it sounds like something out of a SWAT manual. I don't think that would work against shadowrunners for a couple reasons:
#1 There is no reason to surrender. You can negotiate with modern criminals and they'll generally surrender because jail beats death. Shadowrunners have no legal rights, especially on corporate turf. The odds of them surrendering is low, which causes additional problems because...
#2 They're very well armed. Even excusing the inevitable demolitions enthusiast, your average shadowrunner probably has enough firepower and cunning to cause millions of nuyen in "distractions" before you finally gun them down, which is bad because....
#3 They're probably in a very important area, surrounded by valuable and fragile equipment/people.

Besides, efficiency isn't very dramatic.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Jul 30 2011, 04:37 PM

Ummmmm... Surrender is always a better option than Death. Just Sayin'. Besides, you tend to get some great stories resulting from a Capture over a Death. With Death, your Story ends. With a Capture, it may only just be beginning.

Posted by: PoliteMan Jul 30 2011, 04:56 PM

Except if the corp captures you, they can do things worse than death to you, overwrite your memories, torture, experimentation. Surrendering only makes sense if you expect some kind of baseline decency out of your captors: a la Geneva Convention or criminal law. Yes, fighting your way out might be a longshot, but the odds on surrendering are probably even worse unless you have someway to assure they won't just shoot you once you drop your gun.

And yes, you can get some great stories out of surrenders. I don't think that would be the norm in SR and based on the TPK comments here, I don't think it's the norm at a lot of tables.

Posted by: suoq Jul 30 2011, 05:06 PM

I'm a little host on how to build a standard HRT for a game with starting characters ranging from the rulebook Street Sam to a dumpshock Street Sam. Unless I know what dice pools your team is throwing (and then everyone starts arguing about that) I can't tell if you're under or overpowered.

From a player point of view, HRT teams don't scare me. They make a lot of noise and my job is to be gone BEFORE they get there. If I'm fighting a HRT, I'm either the distraction or I've messed up so badly I deserve to go back to chargen. From a certain perspective, HRT are an asset to the shadowrunners. If I can get a HRT team to kill my target or simply completely destroy any forensic evidence then so much the better. And the more heavily armored they are, the easier it may be to look like one and not be detected by any onlookers once HRT is on the scene. (Half the team shoots the joint up, HRT gets called, the other half infiltrates as HRT in the smoke and confusion, using as many Stonebrooke Smokeclouds as necessary.)

The main problem with a HRT is that they're designed to assault a defended position and I don't see it as my job to defend any position. I see it as my job to recon, plan, execute quickly, and disappear. My hero is D. B. Cooper, not Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Posted by: HunterHerne Jul 30 2011, 05:23 PM

I have to agree with you here. The HRT can be as tough as they come, but the players should be given enough time to escape before they show up, even if he uses other means to slow the team down (Drones, spirits, run of the mill security, even a security door or twenty). Regardless, there should be two versions of the HRT, in my opinion. The team that assaults, making themselves known and fortifying a position to block most (if not all) possible exits, and a smaller Tactical Response Team, whose job it is to go in and find the intruders, capturing or killing them as necessary.

Posted by: Dakka Dakka Jul 30 2011, 05:49 PM

The problem is, in SR violent confrontations are usually over very quickly - for either side. So any demands for surrender will most likely be met by the PCs either trying to get away or starting to reduce the opposition. The more likely outcome is,if the HTR is successful, that the PCs will be either unconscious or dead. In the former case the GM can freely decide if it is capture or death.

@ HunterHerne: I agree on (at least) two types of teams, but those will rarely operate separately.

Posted by: Faelan Jul 30 2011, 05:58 PM

Wrong. I have had demo experts, problem is I have done plenty of demo IRL, so I kind of know what it takes. Most teams can't afford principally the time to set shit up correctly so they have to waste explosives, which are never cheap, and well are not universally accessible.

Not a SWAT manual, basic CQB for which I was among other subjects an instructor. There is no reason sound tactics would not work against runners.
1. Capture was the last option, if you did not notice, and likely after incapacitation, not negotiation.
2. So is the HRT and they have a lot more back up, have probably practiced at the facility prior to the runners attempt to steal shit, and don't have to hack systems to be left alone.
3. Not after they leave it or did you not read the post. I would not hit them in the facility, they have to leave, they are getting ambushed, and I have no problem giving an HRT team whatever they need to remain undetected. Hell they might even be followed to scoop up additional intel. Top priority after being compromised is making sure no one does it again and making examples always helps.

Your demo guy just so you understand the reality of demolitions has to have time, access, and equipment. Wireless anything in a high security facility is non existent, assume it is completely jammed, and will require good old fashioned real wires, detonators, blasting caps, detcord, or even blackpowder with pull timers. This all assumes once again time and access, both of which are tight on a run. Blowing additional holes are easily accounted for by the HRT reserve which is left in the air. Once again if HRT shows up you are screwed, and if you are not the GM is simply not running them as a threat.

Posted by: suoq Jul 30 2011, 06:46 PM

Assuming normal radio frequenciesare completely jammed that leaves, at a minimum, visual spectrum. So get any device that measures the amount of light. Trigger it with a laser. Point it as some FAB and trigger it with magic. Put a smartlink on it and copy an agent onto the smartlink. (Add autosofts as the GM requires.) Use a microtapper bug as the trigger and use the building's wires to communicate with the microtapper.

Note that if the wireless is completely jammed, the HRT has no standard communication/tacnet. It may well be that the team wants the HRT to come on site to force the area to drop the jamming on HRT frequencies, allowing the detonation to take place wirelessly on those frequencies.

Out of curiosity, how many out-of-the-box solutions do you want to deal with your in-the-box HRT team?

Posted by: Faelan Jul 30 2011, 09:54 PM

Requires line of sight. Who is going to control sight lines? Not your runners.



Once again line of sight. Is your tiny team really going to be spread out enough to cover all these.



Since communicating with the agent is out what determines when he blows?



Assuming you have control of all interior systems and assuming the wires are not cut.



Except an HRT won't need comm. Comm is nice but real operators don't require it.



What do you think tactics are? They are not some cookie cutter method. Sure if you suck, you might have a checklist you work down covering contingencies, and it ends there. High Threat Response Teams are essentially the Megacorporate answer to Spec Ops. Where do you think a lot of runners come from? They sure as hell don't grow on trees.

My point about all of this is that they are nearly as good as you on a one for one basis with the skills that matter. They outnumber you at least 10-1. They have air superiority. They have all the assets they need, and you don't. They train without comm, they train at the facility you are hitting, they play through tons of different scenarios where your runners are planning to play. They have every advantage. To suggest they have to be in the box idiots who are doomed to be cannon fodder is frankly garbage. Your runners only advantage is surprise. Get in and get out as quickly as you can, and if you don't, if you wait for the big guns to arrive, expect a near party kill at best.

Posted by: suoq Jul 30 2011, 11:23 PM

I only need line of site to devices that have their own line of site to other devices. There is no reason, given the devices in this game that laser sighting can't be used to sync all the timers.

He's an agent. He blows when he's programed to blow, be that a detectable event or a timer. He can be programmed based on our recon.


I don't need control. I need access. And if they're cutting their interior wires as part of their defense plan, then we can use that to monitor them. If wires are cut, we're blown and need to move.

Good. The HRT is crippling their communication. That's knowledge we can use to our advantage.

No. They have major disadvantages. We are attacking them with our plan based on our knowledge about them. It is our JOB to know who they are, what they do, and how they have been trained to defend the facility and to use that knowledge to OUR advantage. It is our JOB to exploit their training and practices. It's not our job to stand our ground against them, but that's what kind of opponents HRT, by their very name, are designed to fight against. We are not there to play their game and that's their disadvantage.

If we were there to take hostages until our demands were met, yes, we would be dead meat. If if your runner team is taking that job where a HRT operates, then yes, they deserve to die. If your demolition teams sits and slugs it out with HRT then, in my opinion, you should feel free to kill them.

Posted by: Ascalaphus Jul 30 2011, 11:27 PM

Surrender is different depending on who you're dealing with. In an MCT Zero-Zone, there's this nifty No Survivors policy. Those HTR teams probably gas the area with Ringu.

On the other side of the spectrum, Horizon would probably flood the radio spectrum with AR summaries of their extremely reasonable terms of surrender; "If you'll just put down your weapons and not hurt anyone or damage anything, we can find some middle ground that lets everyone live happily ever after..."

MCT is kind of rabid about security; they'd rather lose money on a damaged facility, than let anyone get away. That's a daring business decision, but the result is that very few people dare to attack a Zero-Zone.
Horizon on the other hand has a vested interest (their oh-so-precious reputation) in making sure no employees end up traumatized. They'd employ suave hostage negotiators, and a dash of mind control if your consumer profile indicates they can get away with it. All to limit damages.

Many corporations will be somewhere in the middle; the HTR leader might decide that letting the runners leave the compound would be a tactically better choice, because that gives less chance of collateral damage. But in all cases, it should feel like a sort of cat and mouse game; the HTR team controls all the exits, and is trying to nudge the runners into a killing ground of the HTR's choosing.

The HTR wouldn't assault the runner's location; just close off all the exits, and let the runners come to the HTR's (by then fortified) position, where the terrain will be totally against the runners.



Compare it to a SWAT team in a hostage situation: they surround the hostage-takers, try to find a good angle to shoot, but they don't engage until they're certain they'll win. Unless the runners start shooting hostages/seriously damaging the location; at that point it's a matter of salvaging, rather than preventing damage.

Posted by: Faelan Jul 30 2011, 11:46 PM

Once again assuming you have had time, assuming you had all of that figured in your combat load out, and assuming unexpected events have not disrupted your line of sight.



Only good if you definitely want to blow something up.




Assuming the system you hacked into is the actual security system. When someone takes over the security of a facility IRL there are often no records of changes. Your comments are based on you knowing everything and them being unprepared.



Not really you as a runner are more reliant on comm, by killing comm they likely deprive you easy command and control of your drones, they force a small team to become individuals with no support and allow their numbers to speak for itself. You lose the only force multiplier left to you.



You are assuming you know everything about them, where as in the real world that is a very rare occurrence, and in the game as a GM I would make it exceedingly difficult to obtain all that information. As to you not standing your ground, what did I say in my last post...that's right your best bet is to not be there when they get there, if you are, you are likely screwed.



Once again if you are there when they get there you are likely dead. If you stick around you deserve what you get. If you took a job asking you to go toe to toe with HRT then you are likely suicidal. My point has always been that 1) you can't really expect to win a direct confrontation, 2) you can only expect to slow them down and buy time to escape, likely at the cost of someone dying, 3) you can always expect things to go wrong, 4) you should always assume they know as much about you as you know about them, and 5) assuming it is a one way information street is a conceit you will only get in a game. Your mileage obviously varies, I can't help but inject some of my real world knowledge and experience into the game. The run that never gets detected never happens. You will get detected the question is when. On a good run you have gotten what you wanted, and are already in the process of vacating the premises. On a bad run they were expecting you. If you don't get detected then security was garbage, or you pulled a perfect con.

Posted by: suoq Jul 30 2011, 11:55 PM

I'm going to try to explain this in a simpler way, in order to try and avoid the pissiness this forum seems to be the egg sac for.

HRT is designed, by the very nature of it's mission, to be applied against OVERT operations.
Shadowrun teams should be, by the nature of their missions, performing COVERT operations.

As such, HRT teams are not the enemies of a Shadowrun team. They are more suited to be the TOOL of a Shadowrun team than the oppressor against the Shadowrun team.

And yes. I am ASSUMING the Shadowrun team knows what they're doing because knowing what they're doing is their job. If they don't know what they're doing, then yes, they're going to die, because they're not doing their job. If the people at your table are the idiots you seem to be saying they are, then yes, the HRT should be capable of killing them.

Posted by: Miri Jul 30 2011, 11:59 PM

Good ECCM programs.

Posted by: Faelan Jul 31 2011, 12:03 AM

I know what you mean



Yes, and one your Shadowrun team has been detected and HRT is called in your cover is blown.



If you are the one calling them in to lock down a facility right after you have slipped away for instance, sure.



...and I am ASSUMING the HRT team knows what they're doing because knowing is their job. If they don't know what they're doing, they get killed by a bunch of annoying Shadowrunners, see how that works. Tactical decision games are what you do to prepare for combat. WHen a facility is part of your job you will run hundreds of TDG's involving the facility and different scenarios. The facility is one of your primary duties. For runners it is just another facility, and you get one shot to do it right. If the HRT team is not running through all these TDG's then your runners deserve to school them. The runners need to remain COVERT and once they become OVERT they need to disappear as quickly as possible before they become DEAD.

Posted by: Faelan Jul 31 2011, 12:05 AM

Because all runners have milspec programs, and the security for the corp that makes it does not

Posted by: Blitz66 Jul 31 2011, 12:09 AM

Faelan, you have a number of well-reasoned arguments as to why HRT forces would completely pwn the face off any group of runners that got caught in a run. Well done.

I don't think I'd ever play a combat-oriented character in a game you were running. If such a character has to do his job, he's already dead, apparently. Just hasn't yet gotten the memo.

Posted by: Miri Jul 31 2011, 12:13 AM

Getting hold of a rank 5 or 6 ECCM program isn't THAT hard. It is considered a Hacking Program and thus costs Rating x 1000 and availability (Rating x2)R

Posted by: CanRay Jul 31 2011, 12:40 AM

"I am Heavy Weapons Troll... And this, is Sasha!"

Posted by: Faelan Jul 31 2011, 12:44 AM

Sorry my combat oriented players understand a couple of things. 1) Violence will happen, 2) when it does happen make sure it is completely overwhelming, quick, and fairly quiet, 3) numbers always win in the end don't be there when that happens, and 4) anything that can go wrong will go wrong, when that happens see 1, 2, and 3. They only get the memo when they underestimate their enemy and stick around to find out.

So to put it simply. Rent a cops local armed security...sure no problem. Bodyguard...sure but it might be a real challenge. Army of dudes in milspec armor who have all the toys you could want and are almost as well trained as you...did you buy a cemetery lot because you will likely need it in the near future.

Posted by: LurkerOutThere Jul 31 2011, 03:33 AM

All attack/defense situations basically boil down to this:

Defender chooses terrain. He may change and modify that terrain according to his ability and requirements. You can turn the corp lab into a fortress where the scientists live on site and nothing gets in or out, but it will raise it's own set of problems. Likewise a mall has to remain open to it's customers.

Attacker chooses time and circumstances of attack.

Now Shadowrunners are traditionally the attacker, for most people a HTRT response presumes the Shadowrunners have become the defenders, either defending their safehouse from a corp cleaner squad or the corp facility from oncoming forces while they finish cracking the safe/hacking the mainframe/whatever.

In the above scenario the HTRT will have lots of advantages but all of them are not guaranteed. For example lets say the HTRT is a subcontractor, a KE swat or firewatch team. Chance are they havn't drilled specificly for that building and instead have a set of blueprints and operations plan. They may have some level of security access but in all likelyhood the building will either be working agaisnt them or in some cases will have had it's defenses subverted by the runners (at least a good runner team).

So zgain, in a stand up fight your average runner team should get mauled by a HTRT if the HTRT has a chance to shift the conflict to where it's optimal. A shadowrunner teams job is to make the situation as non optimal as possible. Sometimes the simplest way to do that is not to stick around for the fight, cover your tracks when you leave, and not cause so much property damage it becomes financially attractive to send a HTRT after you.

Posted by: MikeKozar Jul 31 2011, 06:00 AM

For me, the HRT should definitely be a TPK in a head-to-head fight. These guys are the reason why the anarchists and rival corps haven't simply blown the hell out of the megacorp. The big difference between Shadowrun and other RPGs is that you are almost always on a hit and run mission - you shouldn't be able to fight your way to the top of a skyscraper, killing everything in your way, and then loot the CEO's office. You're not the first one to think of that, and the last guys to try all got killed, probably by the HRT. The threat of HRT dictates a lot of the interesting mission objectives in Shadowrun - we need to infiltrate, block the alarms, silence the guard, and get out fast in case we missed something. To that end, if the PCs blow the objective, trigger the alarm, and ignore warnings to run, they need to meet something that will make them regret it.

Using a large squad of augmented soldiers seems to drive that home pretty well for my table - if they're not outnumbered 3:1, they usually can carry the day. Someone suggested using a pair of cyberzombies for MCT; Prime Runners don't last very long against our team, and I can't imagine cyberzombies would fair much better. I would be interested to hear about a build that could wipe out a shadow team, though.

Posted by: HunterHerne Jul 31 2011, 03:32 PM

After re-reading some of the manatech section in Arsenal, might I suggest giving HTRT pointmen a Lucifer Lamp? Not sure how anyone else runs these, but it seems like it would allow anyone to "see" astral forms.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 2 2011, 12:03 AM

Ok, as HunterHerne said correctly, it's a High Threat Response team, not Heavy Response Team.

This, quite frankly, also means they get called in - more or less automatically - when the shit hits the fan, and they are not just good at assaulting fortified positions. They are good at doing everything that normal corpsec can't do: Counter-infiltration, hostile submission, hostage rescue, etc. Basically whenever a few corpsec bio-monitors go blank these guys will get flashing lights in their centers of operation.

However, it also means they will need to do stuff to make sure they meet the threat in the correct manner, which is recon. And that gives PCs some time to get the hell out, or prepare a counter-strategy. Of course, it's always the question of whether you wish to roll or simply decide these things. I would do a mix - maybe give them one meaningful roll for each round or other time interval the PCs dillydally.
In the end, I think it's a question of information:
Can the HTRT get enough info quickly enough to apply the correct tactics? If so, then pure numbers won't matter so much: Surpise and prepared tactics will do the trick.
If not, they will make mistakes, their numbers will matter more. And then the runners just have to plow through their ridiculous personal defences, while being pounded by ridiculous firepower - whether backed by high DPs is a seperate matter, and depends very much on the table. In those cases where they basically did not get enough info, they can also just fly in with a big show of force, because ultimately, scaring the enemy is better than getting killed. I think that's part of their public face: Everyone knows HTRT will come in with heavy weapons blazing. What they don't know is that while Team 1 is flying in with a fully lit up gunship and heavy personal armour, team 2 is actually inflitrating the compound. (If there is a point to that, valuable infrastructure or personel, for instance.)

IMHO their dice pools are secondary, they can be lower, even by a good deal, than PC DPs. What you can do is simply metagame their tactics (that is, use a direct counter to prepared PC tactics), or really just play them smarter. Of course equipment also plays a part: hardened armour and the like are good for the showy Team 1. And the other team gets full stealth gear, silenced weapons, spirits with concealment, etc.

So you end up with a two-fold threat: One team with high defences, the other with high stealth. Both have good firepower and above average DPs. So if the PCs are caught in the middle, they should be toast. However, if they manage to either overrun or sneak by the showy team, of out-smart or out-gun the stealth team, then they have a chance for escape.

Posted by: suoq Aug 2 2011, 12:43 AM

I must be missing something here.

1) What is the goal of the HRT/HTRT? My impression is that it's to secure the area that they are tasked to protect.
2) What is the goal of the Shadowrun team? My impression is that it's to do a job undetected and then get out.

From my point of view, once HRT/HTRT is Oscar Mike, the Shadowrun team has either: a) failed to do their job undetected or b) has deliberately pulled HRT/HTRT to a location as part of their plan. At that point, the objective of getting out matches nicely with HRT/HTRT securing the now abandoned area.

Why are the two groups fighting each other. What happens at your tables that causes this to happen?

Posted by: onlyghostdanceswhiledrunk Aug 2 2011, 12:49 AM

In the case of my table it would be that the players get cocky, forget immersion or really REALLY roll an ass-ton of glitches. Plus I have quite a few guys who arent good at common sense and therefore have to be taught that certain things can be done but will also be done to them.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 2 2011, 01:30 AM

Securing the area generally includes taking tactically important positions surrounding the area in question. These include natural egress and ingress points, high ground, any easily defensible positions, or doing so with fields of fire, on call air support, or indirect fire. Once assuming these positions dedicated teams will retain covering positions, while other teams begin the process of either direct assault, or infiltrating and then assaulting, while ongoing drone reconnaissance, humint reconnaissance, hacker probes, and satellite overlook. They will then clear the facility systematically, and after the area is cleared they will then pull in outlying units and finish securing the facility in question. At this point they have hopefully recovered any assets and potentially captured those responsible. If they have not captured them, other teams will begin a manhunt, forensics units will arrive, and everythign will be documented. If the Shadowrunnners did things right they go on the lam and disappear in the night because they were already gone, when the HTRT got there.



My impression is that going undetected is an occurrence which movies and literature have made to seem far more common than they realistically would be. If that is how you like your Shadowrun, good for you. For me I like a balanced approach, and in this case Shadowrunners will almost always be detected, what matters is when they are detected. The earlier they are detected the greater the chance of failure. If you have ever had to infiltrate into a fortified position, you will understand what I am getting at. It takes hours to get in, and once you do, you better be silencing the opposition, and while you are doing that something is bound to go wrong, hopefully by then your job is almost done.



In my games they almost always fail to do things completely undetected, so the Corporate Po-Po is on the way.



Generally speaking calling the enemy and getting him to show up intentionally is most often going to be a waste of time, unless they are 1) poorly trained, 2) don't understand their job, or 3) the team has an inside guy to run interference. It's kind of like letting a rabid dog loose in a room you happen to be in, and assuming it will bite the other guy.



At my table this has not happened very often. Usually it occurs when the reward is spectacular, and the runners greed gets the better of them, instead of leaving like they should. If they play smart the two never meet.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 2 2011, 06:48 AM

There's three things about this that are bugging me:
#1 It sounds like it works well on your table but it seems a little...hardcore to me, especially for new players, many of whom come in with a very combat-centered mindset. I think for most groups, running HRT like this is asking for a TPK.
#2 On the realism, I just don't buy this from a business perspective. If you're dropping a dozen elite guys with PC+ level gear on a target area, complete with magical, matrix, and drone support, and you have enough of these to respond to a threat to any of your facilities within 10 minutes (a random number, but it seems pretty quick for response) then you're probably spending more on security than you're making off the facility. Remember, not only does your facility have all the usual business expenses, the HRT doesn't include regular security to keep people from getting in. This is in my opinion the most hardcore option and also the most expensive, and a global megacorp focused on the bottom line is probably going to find a cheaper alternative.
#3 Again, megacorp policies will differ. Say your PCs are kidnapping Researcher Frank when HRT rolls in, now they're trapped in a room full of delicate, expensive things: research equipment, nexi, people. MCT might bust the door down and eat the loss but Shiawise or Horizon is probably going to let the runners get out and track them down later; better to let the dangerous criminals steal one researcher that they might be able to recover later than watch all the researchers get gunned down in a firefight.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 07:33 AM

What gets me is, once you accept Faelan's premise about the infallibility of HTR teams, there's little reason why you can't extend it to on-site everyday security. Do they have home-field advantage? Of course they do - they work that facility every day, the security system is theirs, they have every territory-related advantage the higher-paid guys have plus more, because their unit is specialized in this one location. Do they have a procedure to handle intruders? Sure they do. They just aren't issued their gear and kicked out into the hallway to keep suspicious-types away. Training happens. Do they have access to sweet gear? Of course they do. Maybe they don't have top-notch milspec stuff, because that's expensive, but there's not much chance a group of runners is going to out-resource them. Are they motivated enough to do the job properly? Of course they are. They're on-site security. Anybody who wants to commit crimes in the facility might just kill them to get the opportunity to do so.

You don't find mall cops pulling serious security duties in a sensitive area. Mall cops are mall cops because you don't see serious action at a mall. Maybe on-site security is not the best-trained or equipped in the world, but at worst they're like regular infantry compared to elite forces. Regular infantry with a defensive position and a numbers advantage is not to be trifled with.

Unless, maybe, you can thwart them with some combination of stealth, speed, power, cunning, and judiciously applied mayhem. And once you accept that, for all their advantages, soldiers are fallible and strategies confoundable, then why is HTR granted such extreme reverence? They're not any less mortal than the rest. The unit is not a plot device. They're just more enemies trying to stop you from accomplishing your objective and getting out clean. Highly trained and well equipped, sure, but not guaranteed defeat by any means.

Posted by: crash2029 Aug 2 2011, 07:58 AM

Personally I see HRT vs Runners as Merrimack vs Monitor rather than Cortez vs Montezuma. But that's just me.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 2 2011, 09:03 AM

Personally, I don't think anyone is infallible.

What is the major problem with ANY kind of security? Lazy people. And that's that. People get lax, because they go to work there EVERY DAY doing the SAME BORING ROUTINE. Standing guard somewhere is probably the most boring job in the world, until something happens. You don't see smart people taking these jobs because smart people probably would be completely destroyed by the boredom. Unless they have constant drills or the installation is in a high risk area where people are always looking for trouble, guard duty sucks, as a job. It's not even like soldiers, who probably do guard duty on rotation, and other stuff in between. These guys do these stupid jobs all the time, all their lives.

So there might be some who go out of their way looking for trouble, but others will just settle into this comfortable routine, where every bit of extra work just distracts them from their method of dealing with the boredom. (Image linked trids, for instance. Especially the oh so powerful security rigger will probably have a penchant for sideline entertainment.)

There is also that other thing: If you are a security guard, doing a crappy job, do you really WANT to find trouble? Do you really look hard for it? The rigger might, because he's far removed, and trashing a few drones won't hurt him. But a meat guard, IMHO, just really doesn't want to find the trouble, or else the trouble might find him. In any case the biggest line of defence for a guard is his RFID tag biomonitor. (Never take a job where you don't get one.)

And all these things are the reason you need an HTRT: A team that attacks never has these problems of actually NOT being on the alert. No doubt they will need a while to get there, during which the normal security is hopefully whipped into shape and does their part in stalling the intrusion - all the while hoping they don't get killed. I would say that they definitely need a while to arrive on site - even hours. But then I would also say that most runs shouldn't realistically be over in five minutes. Getting in and out takes time, and if they raise an alarm it might even take longer.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 2 2011, 10:19 AM

Sticking around for the HTRT should likely result in TPK, especially with new players.



Having a team of these within 10 minutes essentially means in Shadowrun that you have a team like this covering a roughly sixty mile radius of a major metropolis. I am sure lesser facilities in out of the way places have response times reaching upwards towards the hour mark and beyond.



You might attempt to negotiate with them, hahahaha. The expensive equipment you refer to, and the researcher are all replaceable, your reputation is not. Usually loss of said researcher to the competition or the data in question is a far greater loss.

Posted by: Minimax le Rouge Aug 2 2011, 10:45 AM

The 100.000.000 Nuyen equipement and the Genius who lead your 1.000.000.000 Nuyen research investment are surely repleaceable.
Your reputation could always be preserved, thanks marketing and com. spec.

Let them out, try to negociate, cover it up with your communication specialists. At least, blow them up outside if the negociation go wrong for you.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 2 2011, 10:59 AM

Have you actually had good experiences with TPKs for new players, people just learning the system and setting? Because it seems like the sort of thing that makes people quit.


60 miles? Ignoring assembling the team, distributing the equipment, briefing, unloading, organizing with the local corpsec, and setting up those wonderful positions you discussed, ignoring all that, you need to be traveling 360 mph minimum to get that 60 mile radius. And in SR, with all the different corp owned airspace, there's no way they're going in a straight line. All that, an expensive helicopter with a skilled pilot to cover, adds a lot to the units cost and you're only going to get than 10 min response time within a 10-20 mile radius.



Aztech sure seems to find their reputation easy to fix. Do you think SK or Horizon can't spin this stuff? Corpsec teams should respond and do respond but there's limits, and one of those is that they have to be aware of collateral damage. There is absolutely no point in calling in HRT to prevent the Shadowrunners from making off with a researcher if the entire research team dies in the ensuing firefight. Especially not when you can just pay that same SR team (or another one, if you're vengeful) to go steal the researcher back tomorrow.

Posted by: suoq Aug 2 2011, 11:20 AM

Efficiency. Security, by it's nature is not only expensive, it makes a facility less efficient. In order to prevent unauthorized access, it frequently prevents or delays authorized access and a mistake on someone's part means an impact to production.

In security there are three types of requirements for access. Low security requires one type, higher security requires two, heaviest security requires all three:
1) Something you have (key,passcard)
2) Something you are (biometric)
4) Something you know (password)

For all intents and purposes, in Shadowrun, we can add:
3) Something you ccast (spell)

(Just to make the mnemonic "hack").

Assuming the location is spending X on a HRT/HTRT then it seems that they need to be spending an equal or greater amount preventing and detecting intrusion first. This makes for a very inefficient and expensive facility, made even more expensive by the private team that, if the facility is secure, does nothing but train. Given the relative cheapness of building a SCIF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information_Facility) the size and value of a facility to have a private HRT/HTRT team strikes me as being a very expensive high-risk target. Mentally, I'm thinking Building 500 at STRATCOM, but NORAD is an equally good example. In such a facility we're dealing with multiple layers of security, multiple types of requirements for access and minimal entrances per layer. (Underground, shielded, one or two entrances to the facility, with a single monitored entrance to higher security areas, onion security layers, etc. etc. All of that is cheap compared to a private HRT/HTRT team as described above.)

In such a facility, passing through the layers of security is time consuming and inefficient. To me, one sane way to approach it from a Shadowrun standpoint is to become the HRT/HTRT team and respond to a threat the Shadowrun team themselves creates. Accepting Faelan's premise of facility wide communications shutdown and jamming, the ability to anyone to verify or question the HRT/HTRT's identity is seriously compromised. Then, accepting his premise that they will "clear the facility systematically", that means complete access to HRT/HTRT team, something very hard to fake up for a normal facility employee given the multiple types of requirements. By being the HRT/HTRT team the Shadowrunners can have access to the facility for as long as they can avoid/confuse/keep busy the real HRT/HTRT team. This won't be long, but making sure it's long enough should be part of the planning phase.

As I see it, the presence of a HRT/HTRT team means the facility should be secure. In order to be secure, the facility will end up being inefficient, due to passwords, passcodes, biometrics, etc. In order to do their job efficiently, the HRT /HTRT team needs to bypass that security. In short, such a team is possibly the weakest link in the security of the facility, being easy to misidentify, obeyed by the locals, and granted access above that of the locals.

-----------------

I would like to second Polite Man on his disbelief of a 10 minute response to anything within 60 miles. I would also like to note that in order to have such a response AND have teams trained that means you need a team for every shift sitting ready, plus rotations for teams that are training, plus replacements for individuals either resting or recovering from action or training accidents. So figure out how many people are getting there within 10 minutes and start multiplying by the number of teams to do this 24/7 to find the facility cost of gear, training, personnel, etc.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 2 2011, 12:46 PM

@suoq: I would agree with those initial assessments, mostly. However, I think most runners won't be able to pull off such a stunt as you described, easily, seeing as how corps will have means of (more or less) secure identification of their HTR teams - security tags, passkeys, etc. Quite possibly, if a facility goes into high alert it will lock down, and ONLY the HTR team or management reps will have the proper keys to reopen it.

I disagree that the facility will be completley jammed. Rather, heavy ECM might be prescent, but this should be modulated to enable private communications for the HTRT.

Impersonating such a team will not only require looking like them, the entire matrix and security package has to fit, too. (As with, for instance, impersonating soldiers.) While it might be possible to bluff your way past a few guards, the electronic security measures present will simply have to be overriden normally, and at that point you would have been better off to not alert the HTRT in the first place. Also, the investment into impersonating an HTRT could very well be significant, in the range of several 10s of thousands per runner (armour, weapons, commlinks, tags, etc., let alone getting the specifics of these items), so it's clearly only an option for the most lucrative jobs.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 12:53 PM

Here is the thing about an Urban Defensive Force that many may not truly understand. A propperly trained security Force can generally handle odds greater than they are (Often on several orders of magnitude). I did extensive work in such areas when I was in the Marine Corps. I remember an exercise, at Fort Ord, where an Agressor Squad (12 men; armed with some explosive devices (Flashbangs simulating Grenades and explosive packets), M16's, 3 Squad Automatic Weapons (LMG) and a M60 Gunner (MMG)) defended the Town against an attacking force. These men were given a day to prep the town and familiarize themselves with the layout. This is the scenario that the Fort Ord Facility was designed for, complete with buildings, sewer and storm systems, city hall, the works (it is a complete small town, for all intents and purposes). These 12 men decimated almost an entire batallion prior to their defeat. It took them about 8 hours to do so. Home field advantage is a powerful thing, and training on that home field gives a great deal of control to those defending it.

In Shadowrun, this means that the Shadowrunners MUST rely upon speed and stealth (often mutually exclusive) to accomplish their missions. Once discovered, the odds will be continuously stacked against them until they are captured, they are dead, or they escape. This will not take as long as many think it will. On-site security will likely have their contingencies such that a few minutes is all that is needed to secure the facility. Backup is probably only 10-20 minutes or so away, with Heavier backup likely inbound shortly thereafter if the facility warrants such things.

Now, in a pink Mohawk game, well, the action is the thing. And it can be quite fun, with over the top action, gun play, and explosions controlling the field. In anything else, the characters just cannot afford to be hung up in the area. They need to complete their mission and disengage as fast as they can do so or be overwhelmed by the opposition. No matter how good you think you are, Numbers will eventually matter.

Just my perspective, of course, and your mileage may vary...

Posted by: Aku Aug 2 2011, 01:05 PM

I'm not sure I'd give HRT home field. After all, these teams are allocated to EVERY building that corp owns in a given area. They may have a few guys in the squad that have it for a given building (simulating the "This guy rose the ranks from this place")

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 01:07 PM

Maybe, maybe not. But the In-Place Security Force should definitely have such an advantage. Which was the point of my above post. Any force with such an advantage is a force to be reckoned with.

And yes, not all security forces are created equal. But the point still stands.

Posted by: Traul Aug 2 2011, 01:16 PM

I think you are missing an intermediate step here. First, this would make the HTR extremely vulnerable to diversion. Second, the HTR is not the appropriate response to every situation. It is against runners, but the corp has to defend against many other scenarios: gang rampage, AI or spirits on the loose, industrial accident,... The HTR will not move without a confirmed and quantified threat.

The first response should be focused on rescue (we're talking about a biomonitor, right?), recon (drones, offsite security hacker, projecting mage,...) and maybe an intermediate response team designed to assess the situation, handle a small gang on their own and call in the appropriate reinforcements (HTR, riot control, mana hazard,...)

Posted by: Aku Aug 2 2011, 01:49 PM

And even with the standard security, I would say maybe, maybe not. To me, part of the (unwritten) aspect of home ground is caring or being interested enough in an area to look for and know where all of it's advantages and disadvantages are. If you're the type of person that can walk the same route for 5 years and go "Huh, i didnt know there was a water fountain there!" You're probably not noticing the little things that give a location it's home ground.

And again, not all corp sec are equal, so while Azentech may have "Fort Az" which is an exact replica where every corpsec unit goes and trains before being let out into the wild, Horizon may not have Fort Hor (pun intended if you say it outloud)

Posted by: suoq Aug 2 2011, 02:43 PM

Agreed. After all, we are, for reasons I don't begin to understand, talking about facilities that appear to be specifically defended against Shadowrunners.

If you read above, you'll see I said the same thing as you did. Rather than repeatedly argue against the same point over and over, I just ignored it and went with what I considered was a bad assumption.

Agreed. The problem with such a facility is that those restrictions are likely to apply to all personnel. With the exception of expense, going in as the HTRT/HRT seems the easiest and safest option to me. I'm open to other suggestions however, but I suspect you'll find that security in this thread is at least as disproportional as the HTRT/HRT team is. If not, I'd like to understand why.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 02:55 PM

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
I'm familiar with the scenario, as I'm prior service military myself. And you'll notice that my post does point out that home-field advantage SHOULD be assumed for on-site security, not just HTR. I am giving on-site security more credit, relative to HTR, than other posters.

My point is that, when you've got speed, stealth, firepower, and a good plan on your side, you can introduce a lot of entropy to the system in a hurry if in need. Still being there when the alarm sounds is Bad News, for sure, but it's time to GTFO, not to shrug and set off the cranial bomb because you're already dead. That is the level of screwed you are when Faelan's version of HTR shows up, and my question is, if HTR is capable of that, why is the on-site security, with as many advantages, something you can fight your way past if things go pear-shaped? Once you accept Faelan's premise of invincible HTR bringing inevitable death or capture, logically, all the other corporate opposition is nearly as capable, so you will never escape if you ever sound the alarm. Never bother taking a combat skill, because it is complete stealth or ruin. This is not a Shadowrun I want to play in.

Though really, I do have to agree that if you're fighting for 15-20 minutes or so, you're probably stuck and therefore screwed, whether or not HTR is called. It's the alleged infallibility of HTR itself that's getting under my skin.

@Aku, again I remind you that on-site security for a sensitive location is not made up of TV mall cops who don't care to see what's in front of them.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 03:29 PM

No, I get what you are saying. I am in agreement that when things go south, you should be looking to leave, rather than hunkering down for the long haul. The skills all have their places. My contention is that Actively fighting your way into, and then out of, the Facility is going to be a losing proposition. Fighting should almost always be the last resort, because ONCE THE ALARM HAS SOUNDED, well, your clock is ticking and you just do not have that much time to clear the area before there is just too much opposition for you to handle.

I do not agree that HTRT's are invincible, but they do tend to have resources and training on their side. Eventually, assumming that you stay the course and do not vacate, you will be outnumbered, out resourced, and out gunned. It really is that simple. Now, sometimes, your plans will include such contingencies (when they are viable), and you may just WANT that scenario to happen so that you can disappear in the confusion, but that will not always work (probably much less often than you would like, actually).



Indeed... Time is your enemy once an alarm has sounded.

As for On-Site Security. Yes, it is a boring job, and it is really easy to get distracted. BUT, when you are employing Security for a High-Level, Secure Facility (you know, the ones that the Shadowrunners are often hired to penetreate), you do not employ Mall Cops. Your Security Forces are going to be highly trained individuals, who minimize, or eliminate, such distractions, because they are PAID to be professional and competent. If they are not, they will lose their jobs (and likely their lives if penetrated). This is a STRONG incentive to perform well. Places with this level of security do not put guards on watch for 12 hours at a whack. When I was A Guard at Marine Barracks Fallbrook, We stood 4 hour watches, with 3 rotations. In comparison, when I worked security, post military service, my watches were 12 hours long. Guess which job I was more alert at.

Security Forces do their job or people get hurt/killed. It is just that simple. Are mistakes made? Of course. But it generally happens when shifts become to long, or too routine. Both are anathema to a good security plan, and will likely be eliminated by profession organizations.

Posted by: suoq Aug 2 2011, 04:06 PM

Quoting so I can show this to the Air Force cop at our table later.

When I served at Offutt, I used to love to ask the people who do high level security how they cope with the boredom. The best two answers I got were "I target pigeons" and "I count how many stars (with generals being rated by the number of stars on their uniform) I think I can take out before someone returns fire."

For a modern perspective on what highly trained individuals might be like, read or watch (your choice) Generation Kill.

Semper Gumby.

Posted by: CanRay Aug 2 2011, 04:09 PM

"What was that? A rock? Jesus, boy, now I'm insulted. I'm going to spray the opposite direction with autoshotgun now and see what happens."

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 04:30 PM

I have heard similar comments. Hell, as a mind exercise, we used to create elaborate plans on how to take over the base with as few personnel as necessary. The fact remains that Security Duty IS boring, and often Tedious. Professional Organizations tend to minimize or eliminate the things that get people killed, primarily by removing the biggest contributor to that, which is long duration duty, which saps attention. The less time you are actively engaged, the more alert you tend to be.

Having Grown up in an Air Force City (San Antonio), I will say this for Airforce SP's. They are generally one of the most interesting, and entertaining, Guards to watch on a Gate Post. Though Marines look better in their Blues...

Semper Gumby indeed...

Posted by: Aku Aug 2 2011, 06:07 PM

@TJ, no matter the job, there will always be people less motivated to do it than other people

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 06:23 PM

No arguments there either... BUT, in a position where people can die if you do not do your job, you will be replaced if you cannot do your job. To do otherwise risks life and investment.

Posted by: Aku Aug 2 2011, 07:14 PM

but i dont see home ground, as a quality, as "doing the job" i see it as going above and beyond to KNOW the layout, as opposed to just learning it

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 07:24 PM

If you've worked there a week, you are vastly more familiar with the facility than the guys breaking in to steal stuff. Being a high-speed eager beaver not required. Your identification is in the system. Defenses are after them, not you. AR assistance is available to you, not them. Basically, the home team ALWAYS has the edge, even the rookies.

And no, security guards being bored and silly on the job is not the same thing as security guards not being alert. If a guy is even reasonably well trained, he can go from snacking and telling dirty jokes to rifle at the ready in a second at the slightest unexpected noise. I'd have found it funny, if I didn't have my rifle at the ready at the time.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 2 2011, 07:41 PM

Heh... Well Put...

Posted by: Traul Aug 2 2011, 08:54 PM

Not so sure: Aku's remark also applies to managers

Posted by: Faelan Aug 2 2011, 09:01 PM

Blitz please don't put words in my mouth. I have never said the HTRT are infallible, and there is plenty of reason you can't extend it to on-site everyday security. It is called cost. You have one HTRT for a Major City, having that grade of security everywhere not including equipment, the training alone would be prohibitive, not to mention commensurate pay to to ensure loyalty and interest.



Your local security gets paid a lot less, to be a deterrent, not a solution. At best they are expected to slow down an intrusion enough to allow the big boys to get there, at worst they just want to go home at the end of the day. Depending on the facility you are hitting you can hit glorified mall cops, or expensive trained killers. Value of the target will generally determine the security level. The more someone is willing to pay you the Shadowrunnner to liberate somethin, the more the owners are likely to spend to protect it.



Regular Infantry is actually better at what it does than Special Forces. Small unit tactics for retrieval, assasination, hostage rescue, are different from what happens in a unit whose primary focus is killing combatants.



Trying to compare mall security guards with HTRT is rather disingenous, and once again I never said HTRT is infallible, but neither are Shadowrunners. When an Elite Team of killers is coming after your ass assuming that you will win is called calculating some seriously flawed odds, it is also called the high risk option. Last time I checked survival generally depends on the low risk option, of course sometimes your survival to greed quotient is skewed and you pick the high risk option. That is what HTRT is and if your runners are using them like their own personal on call bitches, or mowing them down like a WWI movie, then you are simply being lazy. My point has always been that HTRT is a serious, and capable threat, one any smart Shadowrunner will at the least respect. Tactics are a two way street, HTRT is equally capable of doing the same things runners do, and chances are they have access to a far larger database of incidents to study and compare it to.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 2 2011, 09:19 PM

I usually warn them several times, that bad shit is going to happen, that there are consequences for their actions, and usually all this before play even begins. If they can't handle it then I really don't want them at my table. I never have a shortage of players so I would guess I am doing something right.



Osprey, love it, live it, kick ass with it. Corporate Airspace as is undoubtedly limited in elevation or travel anywhere around a city would be completely screwed. As to assembling and all that. Personnel on standby, don't need to have anything distributed, get briefed on the way to the LZ, and generally take 2.5 minutes from getting kicked out of your bunk to launching off a LHD. I'm sure HTRT whose only job is responding to security has one team on standby at all times. Which means throw your shit on, and step out to the launchpad, and go. Try closer to one minute. If you don't want to believe me feel free to look at FMFM's that detail acceptable time frames. This was for TRAP missions.



Right. Sure they are aware of collateral damage, my point is that HTRT will make the most sound tactical decision when they have the information,whether that means taking you out, or following you, is determined by the situation. Did I say somewhere that everything happens 100% of the time, no. So stop arguing with a phantom position. I have never said they will always kick the shit out of shadowrunners. I have said they are far from being the tools or useless idiots that some people are making them out to be.

Posted by: Ascalaphus Aug 2 2011, 09:44 PM

Maybe airport firefighters are an interesting analogy to consider:

* Airports are sprawling; getting to the place of the incident isn't always easy. But the firefighters will have a plan on how to get to every point on the airport.
* If an incident happens, people need to be evacuated. Firefighters will be trained in where to expect people, how to handle them, where to bring them to.
* Firefighters need to cooperate with local staff from the incident site. Local staff should be trained in what to do if a fire breaks out, which includes knowing which parts to leave to the firefighters.
* Different things can go wrong in different parts of the airport. The firefighters need all manner of different game plans.
* Response times are crucial. Arriving five minutes later can be disastrous.
* There may be terrorism involved. They need to know how to cooperate with various other agencies that get involved when an incident happens.
* Airports are also high-value locations.
* It's important to know what went wrong; what's burning? They have a system for figuring out the nature of the incident as quickly as possible.
* There will be a lot of panicked civilians running around. These should be gotten out of the way alive.
* The firefighters should stay alive themselves.

All these difficulties mean that airport firefighters need quite a lot of training for various scenarios, and even so they need to be adaptable, and gather information quickly even while moving to the location of the incident.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 09:50 PM

Faelan, I invite you to reread your posts on the first page as if someone else wrote them, and see if you don't get a sense that the writer of those posts is saying that the real pros are going to mop the floor with anybody they encounter. It's just a matter of getting them there.

In a sensitive location, on-site security is not meant to slow anyone down so the "big boys" can get there. That's baffling. It sounds like you're talking about a setting designed with HTR as protagonists. In a mall, maybe an airport, sure. In a secure facility? No.

You'll note that I did not specifically name the Special Forces. There is a reason. They are not combat oriented. There are other small elite heavily armed units whose jobs are not to take and hold positions, like regular infantry, but to bring lots of force to bear on a target quickly. Like HTR compared to good on-site security.

I'll agree with your last paragraph, though. Time, positioning, and reinforcement issues aside, nobody should want the best trained and armed security personnel available involved when there's crime to be done. Using them in a plan is dumb. Mowing them down is a sucker's game. You want to engage no security personnel at all, if possible, and the softest and fewest targets possible if it's unavoidable, and then GTFO. HTR being present is the opposite of what a good plan should be. The only thing I really took issue with was the whole "if HTR is present, they'll either shoot you now or follow you home and shoot everybody later" idea from the first page, where you were talking about the extreme likelihood of TPK if HTR was involved. It's not a good day, for sure, but it's basically one tricked-out team against another team that should be trying like hell to not be there.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 2 2011, 10:27 PM

It's funny that you mention Mall Cops. The original facility I was writing up that led to this discussion actually employed four levels of security, and the first one was literally Mall Cops. These guys were armed with taser and sidearm, and employed in areas on corporate property that were open to the public. I feel that there is some value in having lightly armed and equipped units trained to sound the alarm, specifically to counter stealth tactics and social engineering - these guys are making the etiquette checks when your team is trying to blend in in full combat armor, watching the pretty landscaping for suspicious drones, and sitting on the switch for the security door. Are they a pushover in a firefight? Sure, against a Shadow team...but if they can sound the alarm, then they're a different kind of threat, one that makes the non-combat skills worth buying. From a gameplay perspective, these guys make the Face and Infiltrator important, and keep the team honest when they're not mirrorshading hard enough.

Of course, if the players decide they're in a Pink Mohawk campaign...well, that's what the Heavy Responders are for.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 2 2011, 11:02 PM

Heh, in pink mohawk, the only thing to give runners a.... run for their money is an HTRT. I think if you want a really hard fight to happen, you bring something like that. Corpsec and mall cops are too much of a pushover. Now if only SR4 had a time-optimized combat system...

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 11:09 PM

Tiered on-site security is quite an investment, but sweet if you can justify the expense for the facility. Sounds like your installation is partly commercial or tourist oriented, partly something else. Suboptimal in general, but best setup for the tiers as you describe them. For a more typical situation, two tiers is plenty, I think.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 2 2011, 11:24 PM

My central point was this from the very first post "In my games if the team has stuck around long enough for a Heavy Response Team to arrive they are probably looking at a near TPK," I just bolded the arrive part. If they are waiting for big guns to get there, big guns are going to get used. Spec Ops team caught in the middle of doing something sneaky will likely get pounded into dust when a platoon of infantry with the heavy shit shows up. Once again never said anything about infallible, in fact everything I have posted was merely to illustrate that they are credible.



Depends on the facility as always. The fact that you are suggesting it is baffling, is baffling to me. There are plenty of instances where the site security might be as simple as a couple of bodyguards. Their mission is to make sure the principal comes to no harm. Against a team of Shadowrunners their only credible plan is to slow them down so the big boys can arrive.



HTRT are the protagonists if you are the corper. I am merely arguing that they are a credible threat, one which will usually evolve into a very lethal threat if the runnners decide to stick around for the party instead of getting out of dodge.



Good I was not entirely sure where you were going with that. Another issue is what is good on-site security? What are the degrees of security, the scale if you will? I think we are all working off of different assumptions.



Once again I never said that. It was all predicated on the team waiting too long. There is such a thing as a point of no return. When they hit that is dependent on the situation, but when they do that hammer is gonna fall, and it is gonna hurt. Everything the HTRT tea, does is dependent on the situation, and they generally have greater resources all around to bring to bear on the problem, which in my mind if they are credible means the runners are likely screwed. Something they can avoid entirely by not sticking around long enough for the opposition to field a real team.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 2 2011, 11:28 PM

I was trying to do a run in the MCT tower, but official write-ups were scarce. I wound up doing one major skyraker tower with four large skyscraper towers around it. At the base of these five towers is an enclosed atrium and shopping mall, the better to reach out to consumers. Our team wound up going up one of the smaller towers, which let me leave the true scope of MCT operations up to the imagination.

The four tiers I wound up using were: Guard, Armed Guard, Heavy Response Team, Prime Runners. They wound up getting about 1k, 10k, 100k, and 1,000k in gear respectively. With a good command center coordinating response, this plan had a good chance of stomping on any level of incursion without overcommiting resources (i.e., drunk execs are handled by Guards, Anarchists with Uzis are handled by Armed Guards, Cyborg Anarchists with miniguns and grenade launchers are handled by the HRT, and the corp execs are safe and sound with their bodyguards just in case.) The protocol required calling in the nature of the threat before deploying the HRT - Supersoldiers, Arcane Hazard, Information Warfare, Mechanized Assault - so that the team could be given the proper support. Even if they did not know there was a mage, however, a dozen entry-level cybersamurai stand a good chance of turning the wizkid into an unfortunate statistic.

If the basic HRT determine that the threat is more then they can handle, the field commander might order them to deploy Kamikaze to give them an extra edge. If that doesn't work...well, there's always the nightmares up at Tier 4.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 2 2011, 11:51 PM

Looks like we're just operating on different levels of assumptions. I already took HTR as a credible threat, and took your efforts to build their credibility further as building them to Wrath of the Almighty levels. I don't think I was the only one to read it that way, but if that wasn't your intent, cool.

I also assume that HTR is not utilized in situations that don't warrant a sizeable on-site staff, because if something is not insanely well protected, the delay of HTR response is going to be a huge factor. 99% of the time, a lightly defended objective will either be secured or long gone by the time HTR can be there. We're talking serious installations, to be both practical and worth the expense. This, I think, answers a number of your questions. I say 'good' security, in this situation, meaning staff and resources that can be reasonably expected to keep a very important and expensive target secure under most circumstances.

I am all about runners making tracks when things get violent. Seriously, there is no other option for a runner that wants to blow out the candles on his next soy-based birthday cake. Even if there is no such thing as HTR, normal corpsec can surround you and cut off escape if you take too long, and then you're done. My character's prologue involved a bad team that tried to stand and fight KE after a firefight in a bar, and he disguised himself as an injured bystander, took an ambulance ride, and bailed out en route. Never even asked if those guys survived, because screw that. The point being, you bail FAST when violence starts, and it's not just HTR you're avoiding.

Posted by: CanRay Aug 2 2011, 11:52 PM

Well, I have a Soldier, a Scout, an Engineer, a Medic, some sneaky guy that loves masks whose name I can't remember, and some pyromaniac.

Oh, and a Black Scottish Cyclops.

Posted by: Omenowl Aug 3 2011, 02:51 AM

The question is how long does an HRT take to arrive.

Drones and Spirits will probably arrive within 2 to 5 minutes. Drones will be located onsite and activated by an offsite spider. Spirits will be summoned by an offsite mage. These will be mostly to handle lower level threats such as gangers, anarchists, etc. Poorly organized and poorly armed groups. They will do the initial evaluation of the threat and alert the HRT.

The team has to be alerted and activated. This would probably be determined by the entry method, the perceived threat, the onsite security, and criticality of the facility.

Once the team is alerted they will begin to assemble and suit up. I assume this is not a low level of security where they just throw on some clothes. They probably double check their equipment, make sure each piece of armor is properly fastened, etc. This could take 15 to 30 minutes just for the suiting up. Their time to actually assemble could vary from 5 minutes to 3 hours. Most teams will not sit around in a room waiting for an attack unless they have prior warning. Having a team onsite for 24 hours would probably have 4-5 full teams, which allows for rotations, leave, etc.

Once they are alerted they will be ready to go waiting for the word to activate. They will be contacting presidents, etc to determine the threat response. Do they capture or kill the assailants, what are acceptable civilian casualties, acceptable damage, etc. This maybe done in conjunction with travel time if they are activated. Most HRT teams will travel by helicopter only to avoid traffic, obstacles, etc. It also gives them an opportunity for the freedom of movement, observation, multiple entry points, etc. Figure 1 minute per 2km of distance travelled.

Now a hub, very remote and/or major facility with families would have an HRT onsite. I just don't see anywhere else having a team arriving within the time period even bad shadowrunners would take to get out.

Posted by: suoq Aug 3 2011, 03:36 AM

Spent some time watching videos of various response teams suiting up, running drills, etc. It's interesting to realize just how long they take to do things. My impression was that their jobs require them to be very methodical and that they're trained to respond to what are, essentially, static situations.

Some notes on response times:
http://acolumbinesite.com/swat.html - Columbine SWAT response times. Truly depressing.
http://franklinlakes.patch.com/articles/wyckoff-neighborhood-on-lockdown-county-swat-team-on-scene - again, if you're looking for fast response, it isn't here.
http://cmeswat.com/Example%20Eval%20Hostage%20Rescue%20Scen.pdf - Note that in this Evaluation, the expected response time of 2 hours was met.

Basic response time issues I'm finding in research:
1) Gathering of personnel and gear. Note that the personnel and the gear may well be in different locations as it's more cost-effective to have the members of the team on duty in normal uniform than sitting in a response room. When this happens, the gear is brought to the location's staging area and the personnel suit up there.
2) Lack of intel. Unlike a GM that knows all, these teams often have a safe perimeter and very little information about the current state of the target location. This requires caution which takes time.
3) Chain of command. Someone has to have the authority to make the decision to commit the team. These people want to make the decision based on accurate information, something they simply don't have. Denied information, the ability to make the correct decision is greatly reduced and as such denial of information can result in delays on deployment.

What I would expect, and what other people here seem to expect does not appear to be in line with what happens in the field. Logistics, Intel, and the Chain of Command all seem to turn what we would like to be a Fast Action Response Team into a F.A.R.T.

Edit: Note that I am not advocating realistic response times in-game. Unrealistic response times seem more cinematic and fun.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 3 2011, 03:39 AM

Think of firefighters, here. The HRT is only useful if it can arrive before the attackers have time to take hostiges/plant charges/burn research. It would be in the corp's best interest to have a team ready to go in two minutes, as per above, and with enough money and training that can happen. While the troops are grabbing weapons and helmets, somebody is firing up the transport, and a command center is figuring out everything they need to know. It's important to remember that this isn't some publicly-funded SWAT team that needs to drive to the office, these guys are Commandos, and they're on duty. Given the amount of damage just one Pink Mohawk mission can call down on corp property (and you know that even in your mirrorshades campaign there are anarchist trolls still pissed about the Night of Rage) you can believe that these guys will have funding and resources that LAPD SWAT couldn't dream of.

Considering that the Corps have Extraterritoriality, there wouldn't even need to be paperwork - everything we do is legal, because we're doing it. Command and Control would warn them if they're about to blow up a reactor or flamethrower a daycare (probably) but these guys are pros, and probably have a pretty good game plan out of the gate. For instance: Smoke/CS/Flashbang, go thermal, put a couple rounds in anything still shooting back, apply first aid and haul them to interrogation. Cleaners will scrub the place down and the next day Research Assistant Smith is trying to figure out how his coffee mug got broke.

Finally, remember that the HRT is a game mechanic, and should be justified and handwaved enough to be a boogieman to threaten your players with. It doesn't matter where the private army is coming from, just that they are on the way and you have *just* enough time to crack that safe and get to the roof.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 3 2011, 03:56 AM

I think this is the major disconnect. HRT teams are not the corporate protagonist, if anything the Johnson is. While combat has a place, this is basically a game of corporate espionage. I have two major problems with what you're proposing.

The first is a realism issue. While it sounds like we have a bunch of people with military experience here and that's wonderful but HRT are not military units, they're corporate units. They're not going to be equipped or trained to military standards because military units worry about effectiveness (eg. killing as many people as possible) while corporations worry about efficiency (how can we kill as many people for the least amount of money). Money is always going to be a constraint because the corporation wants to maximize profits and faces significant opportunity costs. If you spend two million nuyen on an HRT team, that's two million you're not spending on something else: you could spend it in Magicians and power foci (like Wuxing), you could spend it on spies and bribes to let you know when shadowrunner's might attack (like Horizon or Shiawise), you might invest in drones and hackers/riggers (like MCT). Every corp faces tradeoffs in terms of their security, you can have great onsite security, or a strong HRT, or excellent intelligence, or excellent Matrix security, or great magical security, but you probably don't have enough to max each of those out. And each corp is going to choose which areas they focus on differently. Ares with Firewatch and Renraku with the Red Samurai take strong HRT teams, that's great. If every corp has the same defense, same focus, well, it might work for your table but you're missing out on a lot of potential depth.

The second is a general fun issue. I don't like TPKs, it's very hard to roleplay and get into a character if they all die. I don't like automatic TPKs, because they're just not fun.

I'm glad you apparently run such great games that you have no shortage of players waiting. I don't; if somebody isn't having fun I want to know. I want to try to help new players, not just threaten them with consequences, because SR is a very different game from most RPGs. And if all the players are having problems with something, like TPKs, then it's probably time for me to adjust my game, go a bit more pink mohawk. And I think most GMs fall into that category, they need to be patient and coddle new players, they avoid TPKs, and they respond to what their players want.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 3 2011, 04:11 AM

You understand that these corps have fought hard to earn the right to defend their own territory? They literally have their own private army, not to mention enemies that are not above employing thieves and saboteurs to wreck up our pretty little corp. Also, this is set in a corporate distopia, where the corps have an obscene amount of money to throw around. Remember that this game was heavily inspired by Robocop.



I agree that the HRT should not actually hit the PCs if the PCs are careful. Ideally, I want to have the HRT in my pocket as a plot device, explaining why the mission is hit-and-run, not shoot-and-loot. If the players decide to go toe-to-toe with a corp army, I want the corp army to put fear in them, but that should only ever happen once. More useful is establishing that these guys *exist*, and then using them as part of the world - SnakeDancer got gunned down by the MCT Heavies last week, and is currently being interrogated - let's bust him out and he'll owe us big time. The safehouse is crawling with Heavies - we need to get out of town, fast! The biodrone hybrids are tearing through this place, and our weapons aren't working - the heavies show up and distract the monsters long enough for us to fall back and regroup! HRTs are a part of the Shadowrun world for me, they're why I justify the anarchists letting this go on so long, but I'm not after a TPK. I just want my players to think I am.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 3 2011, 06:18 AM

Yes, they've fought hard to defend their own territory and they're all going to defend their territory differently. It doesn't matter how much money they have, presuming it's some non-infinite amount then every nuyen going into an HRT team isn't going into another defensive program like Matrix security or intelligence. And that's ignoring the broader corporate picture, giving every member of an HRT team Wired Reflexes 1 instead of Wired Reflexes 2 makes them less effective but that 300,000 could hire five more corporate drones and they'll bring in additional money every year. The only time the corp is ever going to spend the money on HRT is if they prevent more in losses than those additional corporate could make in profits.


Hmm, I can dig this. As long as they're mostly "offscreen", no harm. I'd just be cautious when whenever they actually appear "onscreen", things could go bad real fast.

Posted by: Midas Aug 3 2011, 06:59 AM

Form the fluff in SR, most megacorps (note the word MEGA, as in big) have on-site security at each facility and an HTRT overwatch ready to go in to any one of their many facilities should the alarm be raised. If a corp has the sort of paydata, research gizmo or brainiac that runners would be paid to get their hands on it doesn't make sense not to have an off-site HTRT on standby to protect these assets if needed. Larger corps will have their own flavour of HTRT, smaller corps may subcontract to a parent corp or Lone Star/Knight Errant, whatever.

On-site security is the first line of defence. Given the number of wars in SR multiverse history, these guys could be ex-military but now they are civvies with a cushy job and a family safely ensconced in corp housing. They are there to protect the facility from minor threats such as gangers etc., but if the facility is targetted by a highly trained group of runners their main job is to (1) sound the alarm, (2) lockdown the facility and/or protect its most sensitive assets (server room, research lab or whatever), and (3) do their best to thwart/slow down the runners until the HTRT arrive. These guys have dependents and a pretty crappy wage, so they will do their best to do their job (they don't want to lose it and have their family thrown out to fend for themselves) but won't die for the cause if they can help it.

As many have said and the fluff recommends, once the alarm is sounded it is time for the runners to finish their job and get the hell out of dodge. Within 10 mins or so (could be less, could be more), two things will happen. (1) The cavalry will arrive and surround the place, whether it is city cops, corp security or a mixture of both. (2) HTRT will be scrambled to go in and secure the facility.

According to the fluff, the HTRT should be highly-skilled and well equipped (mill spec armour, APDS, grenades [although probably more of the flash bang/smoke variety to minimize structural damage], drone and magical support). HTRT hackers should have backdoor access to the matrix and quite probably overrides for on-site drones, ICE etc. Yes, prime runners might eat an HTRT team for breakfast, but for lesser mortals taking on an HTRT squad should be something to be avoided if possible. The HTRT should be tactically astute, so getting the drop on them shouldn't be easy. They will use drones to scout ahead and use security doors etc to protect their backs. Yes PC's can take on HTRT units, but at least in my games unless they have a good plan they are potentially facing heavy casualties or worse.

I usually have 2 HTRT squads, one to secure the most sensitive part of the facility, and the second to move to neutralize the threat. The first squad's hacker will head to the CPU (ready for cybercombat) to check if data has been taken. The second group's hacker backdoors to security to get hold of the facility's eyes, ears, drones etc. and locate the threat. Team 1's hacker moniters team 2's hacker's biomoniter, and should something happen to him, hacker 1 will shutdown they system - so if the HTRT can't have the facility's eyes, they will at least blind the PC's as well.

YMMV, but if HTRT are just PC cannon fodder in your game, either your team are prime runners or the GM ain't playing them right.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 3 2011, 10:10 AM

Well... each of these things will provide a certain amount of insight - in 60-70 years, things might be different. Of course, basically ALL time frames in SR are compressed, due to the ridiculously short amounts of time people actually spend in combat. Which means, if you want HTR to be a credible threat, you HAVE to cheat the response time.

Right now, you can have firefights between less than 10 people on either side last hours, and even with few losses, because the attacks are pressed forward. Even classic terror attacks take a LONG time. Long enough to bring in relevant reinforcements. In SR, a fight is over in about 5-6 seconds, tops, with basically NO hostiles left within tactical distance. Everyone is either winner, dead, or running. The scenario that was mentioned earlier, with one platoon or so defending the mockup town, was a forced advance situation, but still took 8 hours. And the reason is simply, that in real life, people don't (normally) simply run forward when under fire. Of course there are relevant military tactics that advocate just this, but at that point the commander is calculating losses in ranges of 30-50%, and basically the only combatants corps can afford to lose in such numbers are dumb, cheap grunts. (And the military can't actually afford this at all, anymore.)

A solution would be to enforce non-combat actions in combat - if you encounter a difficult tactical situation, and withdraw to change the plans, play that out in mission time, instead of the usual out-game discussion that takes all of 0 time in game.



So you have to put the threat on the few minutes that actual mission completion takes, or on extraction. Even so, unless you have your runners actually move in turns along a very large tactical map, there aren't many good game mechanics to produce the kind of tension you want here: You basically have the clock ticking, while the runners do their thing, but all the time it's completely up to you whether they manage or not, because time frames for non-combat actions are so vague. Even if you roll the response time (perhaps 2d6x10 minutes for HTR), it's still the GM ensuring either success or failure, because it's up to him to say "you take 5 minutes to cross the perimeter" or, "you take 20 minutes to sneak across the perimeter". Of course there are rules for this, too, but they require a far greater amount of tedium - measuring distances, calculating movement speeds with varying modifiers, etc.




This I would say is accurate, and makes sure that short of a hostage situation, or when regular corpsec has managed to box in the runners, they don't get to meet HTR. There is one other case where you could meet them: In an assault on the runner team. If a corp wants to make a point and set and example, I would not use regular corpsec for attacks on runner teams. I would use mercs, other runners, OR HTR teams, in order of how much the target team pissed off the corp. At that point the shit has really hit the fan.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 3 2011, 01:59 PM

So assuming the HTRT is stationed within 10 klicks of said secured facility, cause you know when setting up the location of the facility they would never consider the HTRT ability to get there and support the "standard security". A smart corp who thought all this out would have multiple facitilities and multiple HTRT on Standby for security reason. It only gets tricky when said lab/research facilitiy is secret, in which case mother corp might not know what sonny or daughter VP is up to so you would not have an HTRT. Though in this case they might hire local professionals (shadow runners, gangers, Yakuza, Mob, etc,etc) to pull guard duty. But assuming this is on mother corp's I know it is mine list, I'd assume the HTRT team is based out of the corp ZERO zone facilitities in the area (response time is immdiate in the Zero zone). I'd picture the scene of the HTRT team almost ready to go, and either running VR sims or playing cards when the wistle blows, grabbing their helmets (cause they wear their security armor while on call--massaging liners are standard along with biomonitors) and going to their waiting VTOL craft or Van. THis would include a mage or two (depending on corp).

Ok now that is the physical part of it....

Matrix: A facilitiy on alert has two options:swarm the system, or physically shut it down. Their response time is 1 combat turn, and well this can get ugly for the hacker if he/she/it faces off against 5 other hackers.....the PC hacker may control the system, but it will not be long before an OPFOR hacker commands the system to reboot the user access IDs. In addition, probably a couple of rating 6 jammers would be activated at the facility. To me most of a buildings matrix in any secure location would be hardwired. Yes it is a little more expensive, but not prohibitively so.

Astral: Probably within the 2-3 combat turns, astral HTRT will begin sweep of the facitility. They will most certainly be doing recon and using watchers to relay the information back to HQ. Also they can summon spirits or call their bonded ones on the astral to go in an mess with the runners.

The expense of this is shared by the dozen or so research facilities/factories located in the response time frame there. It would probably be possible to have 50 or so members of the HTRT stationed there--not that all would be sent, with more available from further afield.


BTW---this is why I don't do Pink Mohawk.......

Posted by: Faelan Aug 3 2011, 09:17 PM

Stop right there. Shadowrun is a game about a dystopian future, where magic exists, and corporations are effectively their own countries. The tip of the iceberg for shadow activity is listed on p.18 and 19 of the SR4A. Some of these activities could be a part of espionage, they could also be done for their own sake, they could be done for personal reasons, they could even be done for the greater good, essentially saying SR is one thing is pigeonholing the setting, and in my opinion is a seriously flawed view of the game.



Well I know I was in the USMC for 8 years, and I know Tymaeus was also a gungi gumby man, and HTRT are military units. What do you think Corporate Security is? They start and run wars in third world nations, the advisors of 2072 are Corporate types, or their proxies. 20 years of Shadowrun cannon disagrees with your point, so please accept that it is not the default.



Every corporation will have different methods, doctrine, tables of organization, combat loads, things they stress and things they don't, but if you are suggesting that they will lack something you are seriously mistaken. Corporations copy each other because success is something you copy. If you know that without a specific type of unit, another corporation is going to completely own your ass in that field, you step up and compete. While each will have their strengths, they are not going to be lacking in any of those areas entirely.



I don't like TPKs, in fact I hate them, but if after everything I hinted at, all the clues I dropped, the blatant direct "You may want to reconsider that course of action..." after all that if I don't "Bring It", my fun would be ruined, not for that session but for every session after. I don't get off on TPKs unless I somehow managed to pick up a crew of complete idiots to game with.



How many TPK's have I had? Did I say it anywhere, no. So let's not play that card, or the fun card. Clearly if my players were not having fun I would not have players. I run a balanced game, leaning towards no particular style of play with great fervor. The one thing I stick to is what I tell them, so if I am giving them warnings I better back it up. Also SR is not a very different game, it is an RPG like any other, what the GM does with it is the same as any other game.

Posted by: CanRay Aug 3 2011, 09:21 PM

You want to see my Heavy Response Team?

Fine: http://www.imfdb.org/w/images/b/bf/HanselandGretelBAR.jpg.

Posted by: Aku Aug 3 2011, 09:24 PM

Psh. my http://www.latinoreview.com/images/stories/blu-ray_dvd-screencaps_2/a-team-original.jpg

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 3 2011, 10:50 PM

Huh? We're discussing corporate HRT teams fighting armed intruders to a corporate building aiming at espionage, sabotage, or assassination. In a game called Shadowrun. If we were discussing a general campaign, or a mercenary mission, or a "ancient/arcane mysteries" mission, or any of the alternatives I'd totally agree with you. And yes, very rarely a team might risk their lives to break into a highly secure facility for something other than money. I don't think those 1-in-a-hundred runs are what's being discussed. And there's a real danger to viewing HRT as the corporate protagonist, there's a danger in promoting a "GM v PC attitude". When the Johnson is the protagonist, the goal is for the run to succeed, when HRT is the corporate protagonist, the goal is for the run to fail.


Thank you for serving but I think that experience is going to work against you here for a simple reason:
The USMC is not (I hope) a profit-maximizing corporation.
A Megacorp is.

They're going to minimize costs wherever they can, even if it leads to increased deaths at one of their facilities. The HRT will only get as much funding as the corp would lose from shadowruns if they downgraded the HRT to have weaker gear/ware.

I'm not discussing a corp having or not having an HRT. I'm discussing how effective that HRT team is going to be given certain cost restraints. Let me put this in more concrete terms.

Let's presume the average SR has 3 IP. A corp can easily afford to upgrade all their HRT teams from Wired Reflexes II to Wired Reflexes III, which will give the HRT a significant advantage over the shadowrunners. However, since you probably need alphaware due to essence restrictions, there's an increased cost of 168,000 per person to upgrade the team from Wired Reflexes II to Alphaware Wired Reflexes III. Over 30 people (2 HRTs), that's a bit over 5 million nuyen. Will that increased capability save the megacorp an extra five million nuyen? If not, the HRT will not get it.

In business terms, it's actually worse than that. If the corp could reinvest that 5 million nuyen into another factory, then for the HRT to get those Alphaware Wired Reflexes III, they need to save the corp an additional 5 million nuyen over what they would have saved the corp if they only had Wired Reflexes II, plus whatever profits that potential factory would have made.

These are circumstances I hope the USMC does not face. But they are circumstances HRT, and any loss prevention department, face in a megacorp. Because HRT are not military units, although they act like them, they're corporate units.


I think your experiences as a GM are unique in several ways:
#1 Most of us do not have a surplus of fellow gamers to play with. Look at poor CanRay, who's been trying to find a group in the frozen wastes of Canada since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
#2 So you warn your players not to do something, they do it, and you punish them with a TPK because otherwise you can't have fun? There's no other solution besides a TPK? And if all the players are doing something (and probably think it's a reasonable idea) and you think it's dumb, they're idiots?
#3 SR tends to throw new players because the violence is a lot more brutal and it requires much more stealth and subtlety than D&D or a lot of common RPGs. The only players I've seen who quickly adjust to the SR mindset are Trail/Call of Cthulu players.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 3 2011, 11:39 PM

I feel the need to reiterate a few things. First, HRT members do not need to be prime runners - my original build had them at 100k per unit, including upgraded military armor and weapons, an extra IP and enough bodyware to make them survivable. By your math, that's an initial investment of 3 million nuyen. Assuming a fairly high survival rate, call it 2/3, we wind up reinvesting about 1 million nuyen per year to keep it running. That sounds like a lot of money to you and me, but let's consider that these companies pull in billions and trillions of nuyen. Further, if you don't believe that a Shadow team can deal a million nuyen of damage in one good night, you haven't been running the sorts of missions I have.

You make a good point that the corps will not want to overfund their security, but by definition, that security is only sufficiently funded if it can stop guys like us from breaking in, killing dozens of valuable people, destroying equipment and making our trade secrets public domain. In short, if they deliberately field incompetent security forces for accounting reasons (as you suggest) then that mistake is going to be corrected the first time somebody's pet project (or pet project manager) goes up in flames because accounting were cutting corners.

I also feel like you aren't giving private militaries enough credit. Police forces, including SWAT, have to jump through a lot of hoops to get funding increased - consider the big fight in the papers this week over how the US government needs to slash spending. Without that funding, you don't get teams on standby, you don't get 24 hour command and control, you don't get the best people and gear - you compromise. Conversely, if Damien Knight decides he wants Firewatch Seattle to be ready to fight a small war in less time then it takes him to order a pizza, guess what? He gets what he wants.




To be fair, we're not suggesting "Rocks fall, everyone dies" here. The idea is that the Shadowrunners are taking on someone that is ostensibly more powerful then they are. The only reason that Shadowrunning works is that the big, bad corps don't have time to bring their big guns to bear before the Shadow team has already vanished. If the team give the corp forces time to mount a serious defense, then that defense should be sufficient to stop the attack. This isn't a GM vs Player mentality, it's one of the basic, canonical expectations of the run versus a megacorp. In fact, I think it is fair to say that if Megacorp A realizes that Megacorp B is unwilling or unable to stop mercenaries from destroying valuable property, they would seriously consider a hostile takeover by way of a frontal assault. Like you said, it's all about the bottom line, and having a competitor lose all three factories has got to help somebody's quarterly profits.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 3 2011, 11:51 PM

If you're playing D&D, and the PCs go find the biggest red dragon in the setting at level 1, despite your warnings, what do you do? Tell them the dragon is in a deep sleep and thus isn't awake and killing them despite intruding in its lair? Well, when they declare they're going to butcher the dragon in its sleep, steal its horde, and sell his body parts to wizards, what do you do then? Do you let them do it, or does the dragon wake up and nuke them? "Letting the players do whatever they want without consequences" makes for a short, awful game.

HTR, while not being a dragon, is a threat far more easily avoidable than defeatable. All you have to do is GET OUT once your presence is discovered. Your players, going into the game, should know that they're not intended to gun down all opposition, but run away, killing as necessary to escape, so they can live to run away again another day. They're not heroic invincible supermen. They're common, possibly uncommon criminals. If they don't know that, somebody has failed.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 3 2011, 11:58 PM

I'm not sure we're disagreeing on principles so much as degrees. Here's the gear I usually use for low-level HRT teams, UCAS soldiers, etc.

Ware: Military Suite
Muscle Replacement III 15,000 3.0
Wired Reflexes I 11,000 2.0
5.0*1.2*0.9=5.94
26,000*0,5*0.9=11,700
Armor: 24,100
Softweave Medium Military Armor with Helmet, Vision Magnification, Vision Enhancement 3, and Thermographic.
Weapon: 3,865
Ares Alpha with Stock, Gas Vent 3, Shock Pad, and Airburst Link.
Recoil: 7
Ammo: 100 rounds of ADPS
Micro Grenades: 3 Flash Bangs, 3 High Explosive.
Total: 43,665

In general, I would encourage the use of used cyberware suites. It makes sense that companies would be able to afford their own customized cyberware suites for troops, making them used decreases cost greatly and enforces the uniformity/disposable nature of corpsec.
That's well below what a Sam can do but they can survive a lot and dish out a fair bit of damage with automatics/heavy weapons of 4.

Edit for blitz: I don't see HRT as a red dragon, especially since SR has dragons. In D&D, a good session has you kill everything because the game very carefully sets out level appropriate encounters. In SR, a good session is where you don't kill anyone because the planning was just that good. There's a big mindset switch involved there. How many newbie groups have you seen or heard of with the psychotic Sam who threatens or tries to kill everything? It's a cliche because it's very common.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 4 2011, 12:11 AM

If that's the problem, it's because someone didn't make it clear that gunning down all opposition wasn't the point. Personally, in such a group, let the psycho sammy play rear guard, and recruit his replacement tomorrow, because yikes. I'm a new player myself, but this is a game of a small band of criminals against extremely powerful entities of all types, and you don't survive that kind of thing by standing and slugging it out, as the fluff makes abundantly clear.

Posted by: Mardrax Aug 4 2011, 12:24 AM

Except you don't want them destroyed. You want their valuable research and production data copied, and the originals destroyed, earning you the fruits of years of their labour for the cost of hiring one runner team. With no one to implicate you when you release a slight variation on the product for the holiday season.

Oh, and for those who argue penny-turning accountants: really now?
What do you presume just one year-long research project is worth?
How's about when it nears reaching fruition in a couple years?
How's about its lead researcher, who can lead these this well as long as we keep up the leonisation treatment?
How's about a facility that houses several of these projects on varying scales?
How's about several of these facilities?

Because that's the value that HTRT team will be defending, among other things. And on that kind of scale, that investment of 10 million is laughable.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 4 2011, 01:14 AM

No actually we are discussing this:



I don't see anything about espionage. There is nothing about the context at all, though the location is mentioned later on. So once again someone is imagining things. Also a note to what I said about the corporate protagonist:



You know like from the point of view of the people the Shadowrunners are doing things to. Likewise from their point of view the Johnson would be an antagonist. Got it, read the posts if you want to have a discussion that makes sense.



The fact that I have owned a business for ten years should have no bearing on my ability to understand what maximizing profit is either. The books cleary disagree with you on this point. HTRT exist, in numbers, and every Megacorp has them, because otherwise the other Megacorps would eat them for breakfast.



No one suggested that runners were not individually better than HTRT, so the below scenario is rather pointless, not to mention trying to get everyone to agree to what you have presented as an average expense scenario would be futile so I am essentially going to ignore it and skip on to the rest of your post.



I have lived in multiple cities, states, and even countries and have never had a problem getting a group together. Also I know I am not some unique flower because I have many friends I don't game with who also GM and never seem to have a problem getting a group together. I truly feel sorry for your pain, but I have to say the only place I have ever seen this shortage is on boards like these. I have suggestions for getting in touch with other gamers but I don't want to seem rude or presumptious, so if you want them please PM me.



Once again ...what I said was:



Why would my fun be ruined...let me think...could it be because from that day on you will always be expected to cave to the players demands no matter how outlandish, ridiculous, or foolish they are. Read all the posts again you might begin to understand where I am coming from with the TPK being a direct result of WAITING FOR THE HTRT to get there. Is that stupid 99.9999% of the time. Heck yes. As a GM you are there to help bring a world to life for the players, and a world without consequences is just a case of being there to help them with their mental masturbation. Lastly to answer your question I have had nothing but good things come out of TPK's and character deaths in small doses. The last time I actually had a TPK was in 1993, the campaign following that quick cluster lasted over 3000 gaming hours in a two year period. You know why because they knew I was going to deliver a real challenge, and if they screwed up bad enough they would pay dearly. So they did their best not to screw up, and the hammer did not fall.



1. You are the only person talking about new players.
2. The violence in SR is no more brutal than any other RPG.
3. SR does require more stealth or subtlety than D&D unless your GM makes it so.
4. Any RPG requires stealth or subtlety if the GM makes it so.
5. I have taken complete RP newbies and turned them into hardcore gamers.

Your problem is that you are applying the same kind of exclusivity I used to see Vampire players pull. Many of my players have also been D&D only gamers, and now they play just about anything. The second you realize it is just a game, and not THE GAME, you will be a lot better off.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 4 2011, 01:35 AM

You realize you are using retail costs. The cost for the Megacorp that makes them is should we say less. Training the personnel is the biggest expense, not the gear.



Corpsec is disposable if you want your bodyguard to turn on you at the worst time. They are disposable, but it sure as hell is not done lightly. These guys are not some worker drones in the factory.



If you are a beginner sure, and after the first few sessions the experienced GM does not use CR or level appropriate encounters, or better yet is not using anything later than 2nd Edition , I know I am a grognard...whatever.



If you are playing a mirrorshades game.



Not really. It is entirely dependent on the GM to set the mood, and present the themes. If that is the kind of game he wants he will do it regardless of system.



Not many actually. Most people realize that if you threaten to kill a stone cold killer he is likely to kill you the second your back is turned. It is kind of common sense.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 4 2011, 02:05 AM

Security isn't just HRT though. Corporate Download (SR3) had an interesting section where they broke each corp down by a number of factors. We'll drop PR and Black Ops, because they're not really applicable, so that leaves:
Intelligence (because if you know they're coming, they're not a threat)
Counter-Intelligence (because the more they know about you, the less secure you are)
Efficiency (Because if it takes command fifteen minutes to analyze the intrusion and decide to dispatch HRT, it doesn't matter how fast HRT is, the shadowrunners are already gone).
Physical Security
Matrix Security
Magical Security

Let's add HRT as a seventh group (normally I'd put them in Physical Security, with some support from Magical and Matrix, but this gives them a lot more money and reflects a corp that really values it's HRT).

Now take a billion nuyen research lab. This corp has decided to spend 20% of it's budget on security (pretty high, all things considered, they haven't even hired anybody or built/bought the site)
So that's 200 million nuyen for security.
Split that evenly among all the departments, that's about 28.5 million nuyen for HRT.
Say there's only 30 HRT members, enough to guard that facility round the clock but other facilities will need to chip in if they want HRT coverage.

Now consider that 5 million for Alphaware Wired Reflexes III. Would you include that in the team? You still need to hire elite troops, buy the rest of their ware, equipment, transport, etc. For me, that's a maybe, leaning towards yes. Which is how it should be, a corp which spends a lot of money on security, and a lot of money on their HRT, would probably spring for that extra boost at a very important facility. Ares or Renraku probably would. But this is giving the HRT a huge cut of the budget and every other department (Matrix Security, Counter Intelligence, etc) has about 4.5 million nuyen less than than their equivalent competitor. Is that tradeoff worth it? Is your facility more secure if you have a stronger HRT team and weaker Matrix Security, or Intelligence, or any of the other factors?

This comes back to my original point. In the security for any installation, there's so many different groups doing so much different stuff, the only way HRT gets their great gear is other groups suffer serious cuts. Everyone is going to focus on different things. Some corps will go heavy on HRT, like Ares and Renraku, and others are going to focus on different areas.


Going back to the OP. I think the dividing line here is whether HRT implies superior tactics/gear to the PCS, resulting in a TPK, or if HRT implies equal/slightly below PC level tactics and gear, resulting in a brutal fight where the PCs can make a tactical retreat (or just run away screaming). I tend towards the later and I think that's where your original build was. I wouldn't encourage you to increase it to automatic TPK levels for three reasons.
#1 I don't think it's realistic. The logistics, the economics, the corporate policy, only a few corps are realistically going to devote those kind of resources to their HRT teams.
#2 No one likes TPKs. Why would you increase the odds that the team is gonna get wiped out by one player's temporary stupidity when a weaker HRT will get the exact same effect (the PCs running)?
#3 Each corp is different and that's half the fun of it. Some corps should have strong HRT teams, some should have weak ones. Other corps should have excellent Matrix security, or Magical security, or something so every corp is a bit different.

I'm not quite sure where this is going at this point. I fell like I've gone over these points a couple times and I don't see anyone changing their minds. *shrug*

Mike, I would recommend using the cybersuite rules for you corp HRT team though.

Posted by: toturi Aug 4 2011, 02:16 AM

As I see it, players have 2 primary options in dealing with HRT (or its alphabet soup cousins),
1) Force
2) Finesse

Either you have enough force to go through the HRT or you have enough finesse to make the HRT irrelevant. Users of force tend to be labelled "Pink Mohawk", users of finesse "Mirror Shades/Black Trenchcoat". I do not advocate either approach in my games, both are equally valid and players have to adapt and base their response on the merits of the situation. Sometimes it will be (in that I as the GM think it is) better to use brute force. Sometimes finesse works better.

What I do stress to my players is that whatever path they choose for their characters, they had better make sure they are really good at it. If you are using force, be sure to be able to take down the security response. If you choose finesse, make sure you can (and enable your team mates to) avoid detection.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 4 2011, 02:21 AM

As you know, PoliteMan, I had some of the same objections you state in your post, and I think they're perfectly reasonable still. What got me reconciled (enough) to Faelan's POV was just a shift in emphasis.

You're still reading it as I initially was. "Sticking around for the HTRT should likely result in TPK" Which makes HTR the big issue. Try reading it this way. "Sticking around for the HTRT should likely result in TPK" Sticking around on-site means that you're going to get surrounded by security personnel of some sort. If you're surrounded by a police barricade, are you screwed because SWAT is on its way, or because you're surrounded by a police barricade and they can keep bringing in resources all day long and there's not a thing you can do to stop them or get away? And if you're not penned in on-site, what are you doing hanging out for so long that HTR showed up? You should be long gone!

If HTR didn't exist, you'd still be screwed, because they'll call in reinforcements from somewhere, and you don't want to be there, whether it's more security just like the rest, the Village People, or the Avengers, because a small special ops style team stuck in enemy territory with no way out is just not looking at a happy ending. If you're not gone before it becomes an issue, then you're dead.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 4 2011, 02:53 AM

Blitz:
I have to admit, that's persuasive, although that's not the vibe I'm getting from Faelan. Maybe I'm just misreading him.

I'd still rather go for HRT not being a TPK because you can get some epic moments out of it.

Say we're on a run, five minutes from the target, and someone screws up, fails a infiltration roll, forgets to erase the Access Log, or just does something dumb. HRT is on it's way.

If HRT is a TPK, then we make a quick calculation. If we can make it to the target and back out with some leeway time, then we go for it. If not we run for it. Done, failed, 'cause there's no point in trying to fight HRT.

If HRT isn't a TPK, then we "get dangerous". The Sam pulls out his "special occasions" gun; the Mage starts looking up the overcasting rules; the Face drops Kamikaze, Cram, and Jazz; the Hacker preps the system crashing worm/virus; and Rigger gets ready to drive through a wall with his "tank" to get us out once we've got the target. It's fragging GO time. It's gonna cost us, we're gonna be shooting it out with the best, just trying to get away, and there's a good chance one of us will die. At best, the corp is gonna be scouring the city for whoever shot up their prize facility and we're gonna be eating rats for a month. But there's still a chance.

If HRT is a TPK, then the run is ten minutes from done, one way or another. If HRT isn't a TPK, then the run is ten minutes away from epic.

Posted by: Blitz66 Aug 4 2011, 03:15 AM

PoliteMan, I was just trying to reconcile the argument, but wow. I like the cut of your jib. Sounds like the GM has decided that finesse only works part of the time, and the only way to win this one is to either walk away or let your hair get tall, linear, and a light reddish color - and every once in a while, that can be cool as hell.

I'm definitely in agreement that HTR shouldn't be a definite TPK. Probably going to be a death or two in the scenario you describe, but if the payoff is good enough, it just might be time to roll the dice.

Posted by: Faelan Aug 4 2011, 10:26 AM

For the most part you are.



Sure you can get epic moments out of it, the problem is when? You keep talking about new players, which in my mind means new characters, which to me = TPK. Think of it as a sliding scale where Newbies have zero margin for error, and Prime Runners have a shitload of margin for error, but regardless if you WAIT for them to get there and get surrounded, numbers will eventually tell the tale. If yo WAIT for HTRT they set the OODA loop, if you are doing something other than waiting like trying to get away you begin to get into their OODA loop. The better you are the better you will be at doing that increasing your survival chances.



That is all fine and dandy but epicness is always salted by how easy it was. If that happens for a bunch of new inexperienced characters, it is not epic, it is Monty Haul. If it is for a group of experienced veterans, then it is pretty friggin epic. It would not be epic if it were not a real threat, and it cannot be a real threat if a TPK is not in the cards at all. Whether it is or not in fact as long as the players believe it is, and I just don't see how many times you can smoke and mirror it without ever delivering. I mean at least a serious stay in the hospital.

Posted by: suoq Aug 4 2011, 12:27 PM

As far as I can tell, you're getting killed by your own hyperbole.

I realize on dumpshock as well as much of the rest of the internet, that in order to state a case, one often feels they must overstate a case. That being said, lets take a second and look at how this got started:

Here is the situation as you have painted it.
1) You've explained the shadowrun team has no chance to escape.
2) You've explained the shadowrun team is likely to not know the response team is out there.
3) You've explained that the shadowrun team will find out about the threat when their "highest threat individual is taking a .50 caliber Raufoss round to the grape".

You then start claiming a bunch of IRL experience, which quite honestly, I doubt anyone cares about. Those that do believe you should at least realize that shadowrun has nothing to do with real life and more than an action film does. But moving on.


So you confirm what you said above. if the characters are detected and HRT shows up, the characters are screwed and from the description of surrounded and sniper shots, that certainly sounds like a TPK to me.

OK. So the characters need to be undetected or know that they've been detected and get out before HRT shows up.

Nevermind. They need to know that they've been detected and get out before HRT shows up

So the HRT can move at an average of 360 miles per hour and get ready while doing so. The characters IF they know they've been detected have 10 minutes to wipe their traces and clear the facility past the perimeter that will be set up. And wiping all traces is necessary because

So, what you've painted for everyone, is essentially, an unwinnable scenario. Something I believe most people playing a role playing game have no interest in. There is no character growth here, there is only

If you don't understand why, as written, this doesn't sound like fun or good advice for a new GM then there's not much anyone can do to change your mind. Please understand that the "Not Fun" reaction people are having is going to cause them to disagree with you. They then have to say something before some new GM thinks they agree with you and employes the same level of severity you employ at their table. I'm all for a kick-ass HRT team, but I'm also for the players coming up with a solution and pulling it off. I'm there to create an exciting story with them, not run a brutal simulation that demands perfection. If you want to call that "Monty Haul" feel free. It wouldn't be the first time in this thread you've looked down on the people who disagree with you.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 4 2011, 12:32 PM

But if you always default to TPKs, there's no room to improvise, no room to create cool scenes, there's "escaped alive" or "dead". If HRT doesn't mean a automatic TPK, there's tons of room to improvise, as a GM you have a million different options, your players have intentionally put themselves in a very difficult situation and they're expecting danger and consequences. You're free to think up any nasty consequences you want.

It's not (at least hopefully) like PCs hear "HRT inbound" and think "Well, time to get a cup of coffee". They're not just sitting around like morons; they're trying to achieve the mission, even though they know their odds are dropping by the minute. Maybe they need to finish this mission or they don't eat next month, maybe they hate corp X and they're willing to risk death to hurt them, maybe they just have a string of bad rolls. Do these things deserve a TPK?

There's a ton of space between TPK and Monty Haul campaigns. Individual players can die, they can lose limbs, their cyberware can be damaged or destroyed, they can be captured, they can escape but they're indebted to an NPC who drives the next mission, they can become the most wanted men in Seattle, etc. The GM has a huge amount of leeway, you can basically write the next session just based off the consequences of this run. Why would a GM intentionally limit himself to TPKs just for a "challenge" factor.

Because SR isn't a tactical simulator. Quite frankly, if all I wanted was a tactical challenge I'd go play a video game, or a wargame, or a different RPG. Of all the RPGs to use as a "challenging" system for players, why would you pick SR, a system infamous on these boards for imbalances and rule absurdities? We come for the story and the more options the GM has to craft his part of the story, the better it's likely to be. If HRT surrounds the players and you have to choose between a TPK and continuing the story, why would you automatically choose a TPK just for a challenge in a system that is blatantly not good at tactical simulations.

Finally, if there's anything that's going to depress new players, it's a TPK. It kills the story, because the PCs are integral to the story, and it has a tendency to punish new players more heavily because they don't know how to build characters. An optimized character out of chargen is likely to beat a sample character with 100 Karma. I honestly can't imagine dropping a TPK on a bunch of players still trying to learn to scan for nodes because they didn't run the moment HRT got called in.

Why would you limit yourself to TPKs when there's so many other fun and evil options to explore. I just don't get it, especially because SR is a poor "challenging" tactical game.

Edit (Slightly long):
Finally, while obliterating Anonymous Guard #3 silently with over whelming firepower is very "smart", eventually the players are gonna want more. The Sam wants to shoot it out with the Red Samurai, the Mage wants to face down greater spirits and master mages, the Rigger wants crazy chases with helicoptors and motorcycles and explosions, the Hacker wants to storm the unbreakable node and crash the system. At some point they're going to want to fight the elites, not the grunts, because those are the epic experiences we remember. Those are the climaxes of the story. And HRT is a great way to provide that, to create those memorable moments; you can't do that, however, if HRT is a TPK.

Posted by: Kliko Aug 4 2011, 01:04 PM

Use an intermediary Fast Response Team for that.

Think lowly-paid orks choppering in with gel-round fed machine guns for clearing the facility, think drones for suppresive fire, think some nice shooting action for the players (which is at least fun for the street sam). Think smoke grenades, tear gas grenades, think action!

They still hang out for say more than 2-3 hours? Get the Corporate HTR, make it a challenge but offer a way out. Players screw up, ok. It happens, but remember whatever playing style you and the players prefer (make sure beforehand you're on the same level), the game is supposed to be fun!

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 4 2011, 02:24 PM

I'm adding my $0.02. You'd think that. But lets suppose the potential profit for all the research in the response time area? If it is in the billions of nuyen (and for megacorps they are looking at profits in the billions), then the highly trained force costing 50 million would not be too far fetched. Also, some of those costs are sunk costs not related to ongoing expenses. And they are going to be "the best of the best of the best". The corp is not going to give alphaware grade wired reflexes III to some grunt strait out of boot camp. He's going to give it to the grunt who has had a few scrapes, is motivated to protect mother corp, and has the aptitude for this kind of work. Also there is PR angle to this and profits from Desert Wars to think about!

Yea if it is a small project worth only a couple million to the corp---they are probably going to be cheap on the security.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 4 2011, 02:48 PM

But even so, if that small project is in the area the HTRT is designated to respond in, then a few men may get allocated to it. Certainly not the full squad, just in case something else happens, but 3-4 men to scout and take down a small group, if possible, is not a bad investment.

The thing is, HTRT might be a multi million nuyen investment. But they likely protect several reasearch facilities in a given area that have hundred million, or multi-billion forecasts.

Posted by: suoq Aug 4 2011, 02:55 PM

This may be a weakness of the HTRT team that the shadowrunners can exploit.
It may also be a weakness of the HTRT team that some other team of runners are using the shadowrunners to exploit.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 4 2011, 03:45 PM

Which is exactly what I was thinking as I wrote it.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 4 2011, 05:36 PM

Spirit HRT

All this assumes that the corp goes for a strictly physical response. I like the idea of the cybersam team hitting the PCs, I think doing anything else is less fun, but consider the astral angle. If I were going for a TPK, I would just have the corp page every contracted wagemage in North America and have them send the biggest spirit they can summon on short notice. If we give them a full ten rounds to do the summoning, instruct the spirit, and have the spirit travel astrally to the facility, we're looking at something like 30 seconds from the alarm going off to a nightmare. Spirits are hard to kill, fast to arrive, eminently expendable and can be replaced in under a minute, not to mention bringing things like binding, fear, and elemental attack. Consider that the corp is probably has enough mages on staff that if just half of them pause for a minute and summon, you would see a *lot* of spirits, and no additional cost for running a HRT.

I'm not sure how other GMs handle spirits, but I pretty much have to pretend they don't exist. From a strategic POV they look a lot like God-mode. Vengeful, Old Testament God-mode.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 4 2011, 05:44 PM

Thing to remember about spirits is that the players are going to go through stick and shock like crazy . But for the most part, the corp could be sending force 4 spirits ad nauseum. Force 5 and 6 might happen on occasion, and above that only rarely. THe main reason is, most mages are probably a 4 in the magic attribute and they aren't going to risk that asset. Also, spirits being summoned in othe parts of the continent could prove problematic. They might run into something and it would probably take something along the lines of bug city to bring out that kind of response.

Posted by: Traul Aug 4 2011, 06:00 PM

How do you give them the address? There is no Google map in the Astral.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 4 2011, 06:03 PM

I assume there is going to be at least one mage connected to the HTRT, that has at least sent a spirit to scout and maybe try softening up the team, followed very closely by scout drones. The actual team only makes a move to intercept the intruders once the Mage and rigger check in, whether the fight is continuing, or the drones and spirit(s) are disposed of.

Some corps might have a mage or two on the HTRT on a permanent basis, most likely Aztechnology, Wuxing and S-K. Others might rotate a mage into the squads, similar to how a wage-mage might have to do on-site security once in a while. MCT, I doubt would have a mage on any HTRT, as they are too valuable, and MCT has a penchant for mechanical security, especially Drones. But back them up with a spirit, and they can be a force to be reconed with, without putting a mage in immediate danger.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 4 2011, 07:53 PM

I don't see why a Wuxing research team in New York couldn't pop a few spirits and have them fly to Seattle; the writeup on astral travel talks about going around the world fairly easily, so why not just fly above any obstructions? Why couldn't they do it? (Honest question, I feel like I missed your point.)



Details that could be easily sorted out by a sophisticated command and control center - assuming the mages are getting orders via AR, whatever info would be required to communicate location could be sent, whether a simulated flight video that the mage could thought-send, or specific directions like "1235.21 miles from this point at exactly 275.1432`, talk to the man named Captain Venkman and follow his orders as you would mine."


Honestly, I want this plan to be impossible, but I worry that spirits per RAW are too badly unbalanced to handwave. For me, the idea that a military response force *wouldn't* be entirely combat spirits strains belief.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 4 2011, 08:34 PM

Cause they might be stopped at the Suiox or Salish border and just zotted for target practice if detected. The fact is there is no IFF in the astral, and more than likely the sovereign nations would object to such intrusions and blast them out of the astral sky. Also if traced back to Wuxing, it might cause wuxing some embarassment in terms of PR as to why they needed 100 spirits in seattle. Explaining that a research facility was under attack by terrorists would mean that the reasearch facility existed that contained something valuable enough to protect in such a manner.

I agree the response could be massive depending on the corp, but for the most part game wise I could see them sending a dozen or so spirits to defend the facilility pretty easily. Also I agree that this does get into the "do I want a TPK?" territory pretty quickly.

Posted by: Mardrax Aug 5 2011, 12:21 AM

This is why there's such a thing as metaplanar shortcuts.

Posted by: toturi Aug 5 2011, 12:36 AM

IIRC, metaplanar shortcuts are quite limited. Can the spirit shortcut to a location it's never been to before? Or do all summoned spirits get shown around all the sites they could be deployed to beforehand? "Hey, boss, I'm taking my posse for the orientation flight. Give Seattle a call, I got a headache smacking my head on a ward the last time!"

One problem I can foresee with giving highly specific instructions to a spirit is that it needs to be intelligent enough to comprehend and execute and whether the spirit was well treated/abused.

Posted by: onlyghostdanceswhiledrunk Aug 5 2011, 01:04 AM

I thought street magic cleared that one up? Isnt it specifically mentioned that the spirit may only shortcut to places that it or its summoner has specifically been?

Posted by: Mardrax Aug 5 2011, 01:08 AM

Spirits have F worth of mental stats. They're more intelligent than the average human.
Also, as long as they have tasks remaining, they're going to do whatever you tell them, no questions asked. Even if you tell them to sit still while mister Blood spirit devours their karma.

The question is of course wether you told it what you want specifically enough. The badly treated ones might just take a different but equally valid interpretation of your order.


So every summoner in the region has a trip around a number of key locations, or even all facilities in the region, or country, on being hired.
Low investment, high return on added safety.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 5 2011, 01:13 AM

Yeah... most summoned spirits don't have much karma (especially if you're using BP character gen), and even if they did, forcing a spirit to take that would be a bad idea, if I were GMing. Pretty much every spirit you summon afterwards is going to be a nuisance, using edge to resist, and forcing you to use more tasks for things that normally wouldn't require it.

Posted by: Mardrax Aug 5 2011, 01:22 AM

No one said it was smart.
Then again, that Blood shaman might just be using other spirits to feed his pet Barney, purple eater of souls, and ally spirit.
Also, what does your form of chargen have to do with how much karma spirits you pull from their homeplane have? 0_o

Even though mages tend to treat them like nameless fodder, spirits have lives too. Do stuff to earn karma, make a pact here or there to earn some. All to make them grow from tiny F1 spirits to those mighty F8s that have people cry wolf at possession spirits. There's no reason why they'd be more or less likely to have any than your average person.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 5 2011, 01:29 AM

Except that in Street Magic, it says free spirits (and hence I'd have to assume most spirits on their home plane) can't earn karma, and must either get it gifted from others, or take it (such as the afore mentioned blood spirit). The build point thing was just my personal thing. I tend to create a lot of NPC character sheets, from people the current team may meet, to people that only appear on news feeds, including free spirits. Not necessarily important to most people.

Posted by: toturi Aug 5 2011, 01:29 AM

I have no doubt that the higher Force spirits are likely to be smarter than the average human, but just because the spirit is smarter doesn't mean that it is any more able to successfully execute its orders. As long as the spirits have tasks remaining, the spirits will do as they are instructed, unless the order is something that they are unable to comply with - not within their capability to.

Posted by: onlyghostdanceswhiledrunk Aug 5 2011, 02:09 AM

Right so joe schmoe wage mage has the clearance to see the nice new deltaware-cyborg facility? Opening up that kind of access allows for even MOOORE exploitation.

I wouldnt think this would be relevant for the high-sec, no-one knows they exist places.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 5 2011, 03:05 AM

Quick question (I don't usually play mages):

Presumably this facility is going to be heavily warded. I'm not sure exactly how much control the creators have over who can pass through their wards, p.194 from SRA4 makes it seem like even the mages own spirits couldn't automatically pass through, but it seems likely that series of wards that would allow dozens of spirits from who knows how many different traditions to pass through is either impossible or a gigantic security hole. And more mundane security features like biofiber won't allow them in at all.

I'm not big on magic but it seems like a spirit HRT team would require the facility to basically shut down their magical security just to let them in.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 5 2011, 03:05 AM

I am big on double-posting though.

Posted by: Aku Aug 5 2011, 03:34 AM

I thought whoever created the ward could allow permissions to whoever they wanted

Posted by: toturi Aug 5 2011, 04:41 AM

Yes, the creator of the ward can allow whoever they wish to pass through. If he knew to allow them to pass through.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 5 2011, 11:46 AM

Which I would assume would only be on-site paranimals, and maybe the astral sig of the corps local mages, including HTRT linked ones.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 5 2011, 11:56 AM

Well, you could extend it to a variety of corp mages at different locations, which would give you an effective spirit HRT team. However, it seems like it would also make all your facilities vulnerable to someone with Flexible Signature. Whether the benefits outweigh the costs, *shrug*

Posted by: Aku Aug 5 2011, 11:56 AM

This is one splace SR4/a fell flat, compared to 3. in 3, it explicitly said if you summon 3 of the same type of spirits, you get bob, jane, and sue (spirit threesome!). Next time, if you summon only 2 spirits, you get bob and jane (in that order), if on yet another occassion, you summon 4, you get bob, jane, sue, and a spirit to be named at that time, SR$/a has no such stipulation, so we dont really know if we get the same or different spirits every time we summon, afaik

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 5 2011, 12:16 PM

I've just assumed it to be a random spirit you summon. One that likely doesn't know what happened before. Unless it's bound, then I encourage players to give them a name (and will name NPC mage bound spirits)

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 5 2011, 02:06 PM

And the spirits of any Mages on the HTRT nearby. This is probably the real reason you wouldn't get agent smith'd by the spirits of the corps. They figure all the HTRTs in the local response area (and maybe some from elsewhere in the metroplex) could be allowed in. Any more and the costs get prohibitive. Also, IFF for spirits attacking people on site could get tricky. Freindly fire isn't.

Posted by: MikeKozar Aug 5 2011, 03:14 PM

The section on wards in the SR4A book is thin. It says that the ward's creator can allow people through at will, that they know if someone is attempting to get through, and that warding a location requires no special materials.

From that we can infer that whichever wagemage was responsible for putting up the barrier is also going to be contracted to call security when the ward is attacked; it seems like a feature that site security would want, and would be willing to negotiate for. (Of course, Corp negotiations tend to be along the lines of "Nice SIN. Shame if something happened to it.") So, assume that corps want the warding mage on call, and make sure that happens.

Since there are no special materials, it sounds like we don't need blood, hair, or some other physical link to provide a 'key' - if there is a method for permanent passive access, it is not explicitly called out. We don't know if the warding mage needs to shake hands with every person getting passive access so they can add their astral signature or something. What we *do* know is that the mage can open the ward at will, and that he owns a phone.

So, maybe there could be an astral "guest list", but let's go ahead and assume the least efficient scenario - every time somebody hits the ward, the mage taps a button to ping the site's security office. When the contact is valid, like some executive with a sustained Enhance Charisma, the site's security office verifies the person at the gate is credentialed and pings the mage back to allow entry.

I don't see any reason why this system would be particularly expensive to run, or in any way unreasonable for a corp security setup. The practical offshoot is that if the corp attack spirit is at the ward, the summoner knows through the spirit/summoner link and pings the office, who ping the warding mage, who lets the spirit in.

Regarding friendly fire, this is another case of being able to explain things clearly to the spirit, which is something the corporation has time to work out in advance. Off the top of my head, it could be a command like "Subdue anyone in that building who is carrying a firearm and not dressed in a corporate uniform like mine", but the limits are really just how complex a command the spirit can understand, how much time the commander has to explain, and if the spirit can just watch a prepared set of instructions flash on a screen complete with photos of staff not to be killed. There's an old joke about a gamer who gets a wish from a genie, and pulls out a two-inch thick document that he had his attorney prepare, just in case. The thing about corps is that they have functionally unlimited resources in this game, and that includes having people do prep work for this kind of scenario.

By the way, I checked my math and having New York offices summon for a HRT in Seattle is less effective then I thought. Based on Astral travel speeds listed in SR4A, that trip would take 40 minutes, so assume the two-minute spirit response is just in the metroplex.

Posted by: Mardrax Aug 6 2011, 02:02 AM

You're thinking of masking. It's about auras, not spell signatures.
And yes, but you'd need to have seen the aura of something with access rights. Which you might just copy off a patrolling spirit. That's quite a hefty Masking test though.

Posted by: Omenowl Aug 6 2011, 05:12 AM

Drones with spiders are more than capable of handling 99.99% of incidents. Onsite security is to ensure lockdown, investigate issues, stop minor infractions such as a fist fight, etc. Mages would give backup to the spiders. This is more than enough to give shadowrunners hell and to handle all, but the most extreme incidents. As most sites do not have extraterritoriality there should not be issues with having Knight Errant/Lonestar arrive to back them up with their own SWAT teams.

Now for extraterritoriality site that is an entirely different issue. Now they are protecting not only their corporation, but also their citizens and their families. Any projectiles, explosives, etc leaving the site they are responsible for and if it should hit a citizen in another corporate property with extraterritoriality then you may have a war. They also have to deal with benefits such as healthcare, security, insurance, etc. Kill 10 employees and wound another 20 and they maybe looking at millions of yen losses, losses in productivity, a shaken faith by their workforce. As dystopian as shadowrun is, we cannot assume people suddenly don't care about their families or friends. PTSD can absolutely cripple a research team. So an HTR team will do their absolute best to instill faith into the workforce.

Now all bets are off at a secret facility where the goal of the HTR is to make sure no one leaves the area alive because of the nature of the research (WMDs, cyberzombies, etc.). The public outrage and required cleanup costs would far exceed destroying the facility.

Still an HTR is a highly valuable and expensive asset. 4-5 teams (assumes a 24/7 coverage by at least one team at any given time) each with 12-18 members will cost 15-22 million yen per year in salary, training and benefits. Plus equipment which is probably in the range of 10s to 100s of millions of yen. My bet is most companies have hired an HTR group which is shared by several companies. This way the cost is distributed and the risk is much less.

Posted by: Aku Aug 6 2011, 11:08 AM

So, which do you think would help maintain morale/limit PTSD more, once a building is locked down? The presumed cold hard accuracy of the drones? or seeing the HRt team moving through the hallways?

I disagree with this. One, if you start an HTR company, then the company itself needs to make money as well, so the savings would be minimal. Secondly, While they may be available to low risk locations, I would think a company would keep its higher risk locations privatized, and once you have that established theres no reason to sell off the security for lower risk.

Posted by: suoq Aug 6 2011, 11:22 AM

I troubled by the thought that AAA or AA companies have HRT from other companies on-call.

1) This implies that the company EXPECTS to need a HRT team, i.e. that they don't trust their security.
2) This creates an opportunity for the HRT company or for anyone who can infiltrate the HRT company to get someone into the first company's facility. i.e. the very existance of the contract of the HRT team could be considered an invitation to an event.

I'm much more comfortable with the thought that if an event happens AND the company finds itself unable to cope, then calls are quickly made to organizations that deal with these sorts of problems on a rapid basis. I can see such a firm contracting out as insurance to small firms (to cover their day-to-day), but not with the larger corporations who should have their own private firms that they own, not subcontract to.

This also has the appeal to me that I don't have a fixed, predictable, response team. I like options.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 6 2011, 11:37 AM

Depends on the corp rating. A+ corp, sure, AA corp, maybe, AAA, unlikely. I mean, KS provides corp security but I can't see them providing security to SK, or the Azzies, or...or any megacorp really.

Posted by: Ascalaphus Aug 6 2011, 12:12 PM

It depends a bit on the kind of facility, and on where;

1) A city where a corporation has multiple valuable locations. They'd station an HTR in the local headquarters, and it can be dispatched to any of the other locations as needed.

2) Low-value facility far from the corporation's home grounds: they'd subcontract a local firm to provide HTR if the situation ever came up.

3) A secret facility: HTR on-site, because flying it in as-needed is impractical. It might have a self-destruct mechanism in case all else fails.

4) Isolated high-value facility: likely HTR is stationed on-site, because this facility is too important to let in outsider HTRs (risk of espionage).



In general, corporations like scenario 1 best; a good HTR team is expensive. In fact, an HTR team is extremely expensive, because it needs to be able to deal with a wide range of emergencies, each of which is unlikely to occur. It's very unlikely multiple emergencies will occur. So to keep costs reasonable, a region would have a handful of HTRTs that service all the corp's facilities in the region.



What does all this mean for runners?

In case 3, it's just tough luck. Case 4 isn't too great either, although there's less reason for the corporation to have, say, a nuke buried under the facility to destroy evidence if security is compromised.

In case 1 and 2 however, you could actually divert HTR teams by creating a distraction on other facilities in those HTRTs' "service area". This is what alliances with crazy street gangs like the Halloweeners are good for.



On the other hand, particularly in cases 1 and 2, the facility may (apart from HTR) also have a "stalling response" (SR), designed to keep intruders from escaping before HTR arrives. This would be blast doors closing, lots of radio jamming/wifi inhibition to cut off runners from communicating with each other and their drones. Also: hatches sliding open and drones emerging (piloted by offsite spider) to keep runners busy. Maybe remote mages who hover in the astral while their spirits with Magical Guard materialize to provide counterspelling to the drones.

SR isn't nearly as intense as HTR, but it should give PCs a sense of urgency; they need to get past it before HTR arrives. It's the fight-your-way-out battle that a run ought to have, if the PCs get detected, but it's not a TPK thing. The objective is clear: run the gauntlet and get out, because if HTR gets there you're toast.

HTR could definitely be overwhelming, but you'd rarely get to see them. SR swinging in to lock you in, should be the warning sign players need to tell them that it's time to run. (This to the objection that "running from the HTR only works if you know HTR is on its way".)

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Aug 6 2011, 03:25 PM

Flexible Signature does not allow you to bypass a ward, it only allows you to alter your Signature. Bypassing wards is the provence of Masking alone.

Posted by: Omenowl Aug 7 2011, 01:59 AM

I think most companies have several small sites or those of low importance and would have a contract HTR for those. IE docks with warehouses, multiple use office buildings, etc.

A centralized HTR for several sites, which in of themselves don't have enough to justify an HTR, but as a conglomerate do, would have a corporate HTR.

Top secret facilities or extraterritoriality locations would have their own onsite HTR.

Highly dangerous or critical sites that would cripple the company would have several HTRs with the capability of calling several others to arrive within hours.

These last two are what people view as the archetypical shadowrun, but honestly in my view those are campaign ending /retirement runs. It is a final climax with a TPK or where the players get so much money it no longer has the challenge. Regardless of the outcome everyone knows the campaign is coming to an end and people are ready to move on.

The first two are the bread and butter missions of shadowrunners. It is where they learn the tricks of the trade, garner enemies and friends, get better equipment, and the skills (karma) to pull off the legendary runs.

Posted by: Brainpiercing7.62mm Aug 7 2011, 10:45 PM

I'm having problems with some of the scenarios posted here:

@ HTRT on site: This should be limited to head-quarters or headquarters of security, because the HTRTs are being stationed there.

For secret production/research facilities it doesn't seem to make sense, because their prime defense is their secrecy: They don't want a lot of traffic going in or out, they don't want more personel there than necessary, and keeping just one elite team ready and trained is a major drain on any facility. I would say that most secret facilities should rely on drones and spirits for defense.

For high value production or research facilities, I would expect regular corpsec to be well staffed and equipped. But keeping an HTR team on site seems like overkill, and unnecessary expense.

So I believe a corp that has an HTR team must keep that in a central location within airlift reach of their high-value facilities.

@ Renting an HTRT: Why not? This is business, after all, and business knows no loyalty. Certainly AAAs or even AA+s might have their own, but I don't think too many other corps will. A dedicated security company with no known interest in similar fields of business as the customer is a small enough risk, and the gains are potentially very great. Highly rated security firms could easily rent out their elite troops, since they would hardly ever see enough "use" if they were just used for their own private business. So it is highly probable that many corps without an HTRT of their own will request one from an external source.

Again I think response times of 10 minutes are not realistic, but 30 minutes is possible around big cities, and 60 minutes for more remote installations.

Grades of HTR:

Corpsec in general has one problem: A security guard is ideally quite inconspicuous, while still being effective and efficient at his job. Now, like street cops, it doesn't really help to have everyone run around in heavy armour and with automatic weapons - if anything, that's a security risk.

So, I propose that the first line of increased threat response is not a real HTRT, but rather, a group of regular corpsec guards who are handed out special equipment. Just giving a regular goon heavy armour, an assault rifle and a shot of a given combat drug will dramatically increase his effectiveness for a while - long enough until the real contenders arrive. A lot of police forces really do the same: They can't afford to put every cop on the street with body armour and a big gun, and they also can't afford to keep so many SWAT teams or similar only on call and off street duty. So when a situation arrises they simply recall a select group of regular cops and outfit them with SWAT gear. These special corpsec guards try to contain the threat, while the real HTRT is en route.

That should make for more dramatic fights when trying to escape from a facility.

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 7 2011, 11:28 PM

I disagree with the HTRT being on-site for secret research facilities, as well. The biggest line of defence is secrecy, however, having a good security helps, when something eventually goes wrong. For this, the regular corpsec might have better gear then at another facility, but HTRT, if needed, would get the call, and likely arrive too late. Then it's a matter of internal investigations. For secret bases, it may be prudent to give regular security forces the equivalent of Home-ground, after all, in order to get the job there, they are either highly motivated to do their job, on it's own; or they are highly motivated to do their job because if they don't, no one will find the body.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Aug 8 2011, 01:45 AM

In a secret facility I would place fewer guards, but higher quality ones. Also if the secret facility has a front then there may be more guards.


HTRTs to me would be onsite security for corp zero zones, special facilities like HQs or Arcologies. The could also be the base from which an HTRT would respond to another facility.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Aug 8 2011, 02:24 AM

Ultra-secret facilities are where the cyberzombie security teams live.





-k

Posted by: Omenowl Aug 8 2011, 02:53 AM

Most secret locations would be known. The secret part would be the type of experiments and activities actually occurring there. And you are right the quality of guards would be superior compared to other layered defenses of other facilities. Many secret locations would probably have their own underground ranges, training grounds, etc. The guards probably have several different responses, but access to every threat range of weapon. That said is you don't need or can afford the cost of an HTR for 95-99% of facilities.

The other issue we need to remember is corps probably have insurance. So a third party HTR may actually be the insurance corp's team who decided the liability is worth having their own team on call to protect the facility.

Posted by: Midas Aug 8 2011, 05:02 AM

All these doubts about the economic viability of HTRTs, which are a part of SR canon! Some of you folks just aren't thinking big enough or dystopian enough, IMHO.

OK, first up the Megacorps are huge. Think GM, Ford and Boeing rolled into one and you are probably talking about a smaller megacorp. They are huge behemoths of corporations with economies larger than most countries and a tangled web of diversified interests, from food to tech to entertainment as well as whatever they are famous for. AAA megas will have multiple facilities in every city, as well as a raft of subsidiaries. This makes HTRT very feasible. Smaller corps will probably subcontract HTRT forces from parent corps or from specialists such as Lone Star and Knight Errant who have enough personnel to turn a buck on providing HTRT overlay.

As for expenses for running such forces? Milspec armour, big guns and drones are cheap and largely one-off investments. Cyberware/bioware for HTRT personnel will come at wholesale prices cheaper than laid out in the book; personnel may well be encouraged to buy SOTA 'ware from their salaries for the corp win. With all the wars in SR canon, the sixth world is awash with ex-military folks looking for a quieter, less lethal life. Corps will recruit the lowlier ranks as security guards and the elites as HTRT a la Haliburton, getting highly trained individuals without having to pay a single nuyen for their military training. OK, granted the corp will have to spend some on retraining these guys for their new jobs, but this costs much less than training up someone from scratch.

As for salaries, they won't necessarily be so high. Again, as per SR canon, wageslaves put up with a lot of crap because of the security the corp provides for them and their families. Not having to worry that your wife/hubby will get shot in a driveby on the way to buy groceries, or the knowledge that little Jimmy will get an education at the corp school (as opposed to no education) is priceless. This security is a big reason that wageslaves put up with all the shit the corp throws at them, and why they accept the demanding boss and the long hours they are exhorted to work. Granted HTRT guys would be paid a pretty good salary, but not as much as you might think. Around 15K a month (what HTRT guys would expect to be paid in my universe) keeps a family in a high lifestyle and allows them to put some money away as savings. And remember when you calculate this salary cost, they are paid in corp script which can be used to buy corp-made products and services (with inbuilt profits to recycle into the corp coffers).

Granted running costs for an HTRT facility won't be cheap, but nor will they be extortionately expensive for a mega with 30+ facilities to look after. Most megas will probably have a number of HTRT facilities to cover each sprawl and get the specialists to most facilities in 10 mins or less, but YMMV.

Posted by: PoliteMan Aug 8 2011, 06:28 AM

I obviously didn't clarify this well enough, my bad.

HRTs exist, there's no doubt, they're in the fluff and there's great story reasons to have an "elite" corp fighting force.

The disagreement, from my point of view, was whether the kind of "super HRT team" I thought some people were discussing is feasible, the kind that is an automatic TPK for the party. Just off gear, you're probably looking at 250k a person to match your typical Sam; over a team of, bare minimum, 30 HRT personnel that's a pretty chunk of change and it gets much more expensive if you try to make them better than the Sam because you've hit the Essence wall, now you need to start upgrading things to Alpha or Betaware just to fit new ware in. Add in the fact that they need a ton of support, super-fast transports, Matrix and Magical support, etc and you start to get a force which is simply too expensive for any but the most elite facilities. Other facilities are probably going to have HRT teams, they're just not that good.

It's kind of like Robocop. Yes, Robocop is awesome but wouldn't it be cheaper and more effective just to hire a hundred regular cops? You really only need one Robocop, if that.

Posted by: suoq Aug 8 2011, 12:59 PM

My problem with the on-site Heavy Response Team and expense is not that the corps can't afford it. Obviously, they can.

But if you can afford X nuyen to have a Heavy Response Team on-site wouldn't it be better to spend X-1 nuyen on not needing to have a heavy response team on-site?

For example, in the Omaha write-up I just finished there are 12 secret facilities surrounding the city of Lincoln Nebraska. This type of secret facility exists across much of the US already, a Denver based campaign has options at least as good. They're easy to guard, ward, cut off from hackers, and prevent unwanted access to and they're cheap as heck. Heck, they come nuclear hardened.

From a GM perspective, they're already mapped with published layouts, meaning much of your work and justification is already complete.

These existing facilities are already as brutal to a team of shadowrunners as you need them to be without the constant ongoing expense of on-site heavy response teams rotating shifts with their butts nursing their thumbs.

sample links:
http://www.missilebases.com/properties
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoDcnbevOy8

Posted by: HunterHerne Aug 8 2011, 01:26 PM

I agree. I don't think on-site HTRT is a good idea, ever. The HTRT should be a group of teams that respond to several locations (if there are multiple threats at several facilities, they can call in an off-duty group. There are on-call people at most jobs these days, anyway. Likely more chance of that in a dystopia.). The size of each team (3-5 depending on how many facilities they are actually responsible for) should be about 8, and highly trained.

For the secret facilities, 10-15 well trained guards with basic gear, and heavier gear in accessible locations (hidden compartments with bio-scanner locks and codes), for when they absolutely need it. HTRT shouldn't be necessary. Especially since they'll have extra-territoriality, and the intrusion shouldn't be able to escape (easily) once the alarm goes off.