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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

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")

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. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

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,...)

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)

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.

@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.