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.

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.

"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."

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

Semper Gumby indeed... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

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

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.

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

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

Heh... Well Put... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Not so sure: Aku's remark also applies to managers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Heh, in pink mohawk, the only thing to give runners a.... run (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif) 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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/wy...t-team-on-scene - again, if you're looking for fast response, it isn't here.
http://cmeswat.com/Example%20Eval%20Hostag...scue%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.

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.

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.