Edit: nwm.

10 million a copy was a rough guess.
7,814,000 a copy is the cost if you can't use clones.
1,709,500 a copy if you can use clones (plus a 1 time 100,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) fee for the whole brigade)

I made a mistake in my numbers, forgot to include the super soldiers cyber ware (stupid 600K nano hive). Final cost per 4,000 is 6,578,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (plus a 100,000 infrastructure cost for the cloning facilities). Meaning that each clone costs as much as 1.6445 US Marines.

As for what they can do, I haven't finished them yet. Here's the sheet. Weapons, armor, and drones are in the notes section. I allocated 200K for gear and have some left over (the armor and drones come to like 120K and the guns come to 43,400).

I'll willing to go up too 2 million per solider when all's said and done. 1.75 million would be a nice number to hit, thats 140% of the cost of a US marine.

EDIT: cost changed because I added in some more ware.

Thanks for the sheet, but I'm still a bit confused. When you say cloned do you mean that you assume that the clone gets all the delta-bioware for free? Is there a rule that says you can do that, because it doesn't make much sense to me since the augmentations are (for the most part) not genetic.

ETA: You seem to have made a minor mistake BTW. You have trauma dampers costing 0.4 essence, they only cost 0,2 or 0.1 if they're deltaware like the rest of the equibment.

You're still comparing dollars to nuyen, which we really can't.

Type 0 system. The logic for why it works is that your genetic material is cultured as the base for standard bioware and hence it is a genetically perfect match and thus you get Standard Ware as delta grade. It doesn't apply to cultured ware because there it is always gene tailored, hence no mass production discount. Seeing as how all my clones are genetically identical to one another it seems quite reasonable to assume that said ware can be mass produced and works like Type 0 except that you can also mass produce cultured ware.


Thanks. The extra essense will be nice (if I didn't already include it in the final essence number)


Actually you can. You compare buying power.

A fast food meal at McDonald's costs anywhere from 5-10 bucks a person depending on what you get, SR lists the same price. It has the cost of a movie ticket at 15 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , again similar to RL. Club fees are also similar. As are the Hotel rooms. In fact most of the common costs are on a 1-1 exchange rate.

Guys, they invented the desert wars for this kind of stuff. Now prep your own air mobile infantry force. In the red corner we have a 4x 5,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) /dog (airborne) heavy infantry unit on a kill and destroy mission versus the blue corner a one hundred 5,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) /dog with the primary objective to stay alive...

Talk tactics, equipment, whatelset and get on with this (otherwise try the Imperial Guard versus Space Marines in Warhammer 40k).

Cheers

And the 4 guy's use their Fly-Spy drones for scouting, and once they find large concentrations of enemies they break out the Seven-7.

I'm 99% sure that clones in shadowrun are stricly for spare parts and don't have any kind of real brain functions, so you can't clone an army for yourself.



I can't for a live of me remember were i got this but i think nuyen is 5 dollars.

Those are force grown clones, I'm not force growing them. I'm waiting the 9 months for them to gestate and then raising them just like you do normal kids (well not just like but you get the idea).


So McDonald's costs 25-50 bucks per person? A nice restaurant costs 500 per person? Etc. I can easily believe that the 2070 UCAS dollar is 5/1 on the (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) what I can't believe is that the 2000 dollar is at the same place. And if you look at buying power of the 2008 dollar it equals what is shown on the common costs table in the beginning of the Street Gear section and even holds up in the weapons section (I haven't looked at vehicles yet).

25 or so years ago, you'd get change from a buck! It was even in their advertisements at the time. Hell, I remember regularly buying McDonald's cheeseburgers for 15 cents. I can easily envision prices continuing to rise at around the present rate.

The 2070 CAS dollar is 5:1 with the 2070 Nuyen.

The 2007 US dollar is 1:2 or so with the 2070 nuyen. That analysis is a bit crap because I haven't done an in depth comparsion with my purchasing power parity (PPP) analysis, so it could really be anywhere between parity and 1:3 or 4. Use whatever is least advantageous for you.

Inflation, which fortune is commenting about is what you address via purchasing power parity analysis. His 15 cent cheese burger in 1970 can be compared to a 3 dollar cheese burger today, and with a really poxy PPP analysis, I can conclude that a 1970 dollar is worth 13.5 dollars today. (It's a poxy analysis because that is not anything close to the real PPP levels, but you can see how this works.)

My 2007 dollars to 2070 nuyen analysis is a bit poxy too, so you need to think about that. Also: Emperor tippy is underestimating costs for the dollar:nuyen ratio he is choosing to use, unless you feel that some things are hugely cheaper.

In that case the price you quoted for the clone body would be increased ten-fold, if not more. The military would have to feed, clothe, shelter and train their soldiers for at least sixteen years instead of the standard one. If a Marine is worth over a million after one year in the Corps's care, how much would someone who spent nearly two decades be worth? They would also have to factor in the costs of building the infrastructure for a project of this scale and I doubt they would save money by using clones.

Not to mention you have to wait nearly two decades to see if the project would even work. If it did, you would need another two decades to get the first production batch ready for deployment. It would be much more efficient and cost effective to just use hand-picked volunteers from existing personel.

The fundamental problem with the uber-soldier is that in spite of his advantages he still gets squished by the big guns. Armor, airstrikes and arty will kill him dead no matter how expensive his armor is.

To put it another way: why aren't more troops trained to the specifications of the various spec ops groups <i>now</i>?

Because it's not cost-effective, and frankly, the average soldier doesn't need to be that elite.

Actually I accounted for it. Buying the lifestyle.


As I said, it has an 18 year lead time. I don't believe that I have ever said different.


Actually, only some times. And again, you have to hit.



A large part of it is that the military can't find the right people for it. The US military would love to increase their SpecOp's forces but they can't lower the requirements. They will take most anyone who can meet said requirements. It is also infeasible for the military to raise people from birth as soldiers and the benefits it would provide aren't worth the costs associated with it.

In this case the benefits are most assuredly worth it. Ignoring the actual training benefits it allows you to field 3 times as many men for the same cost.

And no the average solider doesn't need to be that elite, but when you can have him be that elite for a minor increase in cost there isn't any real reason not to.

Because spec ops are a hugely overrated waste of time? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Really, they don't do the heavy lifting.

*blinks*

Where the devil did you get that idea?

They er... aren't supposed to do the heavy lifting, that's neither the design nor the intent.

And the lifestyle accounts for being raised by employees with PHDs instead of their parent's time? You can bet that a project like this would get that kind of scrutiny.


One of the big benefits of dropping a 1000kg bomb on a target is that you don't have to hit it directly. Add steering fins and a rigger setup and it won't 'miss' by more than a couple of meters.


This is a related issue, but not that way. The military is constantly recruiting for these positions because it can't keep filled because they leave for the private sector where they can make a lot more money. Mercenary groups like Blackwater pay them at least three times what they get from Uncle Sam.


And that is exactly what the cloning business amounts to. All the more reason to use the best of the enlistees.

Fighting a war entirely with special operations is a recipe for disaster. Special operations is called "special" for a reason. It is basically guerrilla warfare. Fighting a regular war with people trained for guerrilla operations is the height of foolishness, particularly when fielding so many of them that they're unable to use guerrilla tactics.

Luckily, these clones aren't Special Forces. They're stormtroopers. The majority of them wouldn't have any sort of special forces training.

And 8 years is a respectable lead time if you're making clone armies. I can't see any reason why adult clone soldiers would be any more effective than child clone soldiers.

Why? Add in another hundred million for the cost of that if you want.


First you have to find the target, these guys don't just stand around. Then you have to have an airplane in the area. Then said Airplane has to find the guy (again, not exactly easy). And then he drops his bombs, which has to land within 11 meters to even potentially do any damage. Since it has no AP the solider gets to roll 32 dice to soak at most 22p Damage. That averages 12p damage. Bio reduces that to 10p. But if the bomb is off by even 1 meter then that becomes stun damage and it doesn't mean much thanks to the Pain Editor.

So yes, a direct hit with an Iron Bomb will deal an average of 10p if it gets a direct hit. For every meter off reduce the damage by 2 and switch to stun. So no damage at 5 meters. Assuming you use an AIM-27 and it manages to get and keep lock on all the way to the target (not easy seeing as it has to get through a rating 6 Jammer) you get -2 AP and 22P damage. For 30 dice to resist, and again an average of 10p damage. But if your off by a meter it becomes an average of 6s.



True, but they still don't have enough qualified people for all the slots.


Not really. Right now the military gets no benefit worth the cost in political capital to train soldiers from birth. In 2070 with SR4 tech that is no longer true. It saves them over 5 million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per solider, gets them better trained soldiers, and allows a drastic simplification of the logistics management


I never said I was doing either. Other people keep calling them special forces.


Yep. Highly effective, very powerful, very professional, stormtroopers.


Actually all of them would have it.


Were you as strong, fast, tough, and fit at the age of 8 as you were at 18? Again, you may be able to get away with 16 but 8 is far to short a time.

I can tell you that people running off to join Blackwater is only a small portion of staffing special forces units. First off their contracts are already the better part of a decade, secondly, and this might come as a surprise to some people.

Not every special forces guy wants to kill people in awful places for the rest of their lives. Well they usually start out that way but a couple pumps in the desert seem to mellow most of them out.

Also, you're really underplaying how difficult it is to find qualified special forces candidates. It's hard to find people who can actually gut their way through all the training without:
A.) Breaking mentally
B.) Breaking physically

I went to school with a guy who washed out of BUD's (SEAL training) because he BROKE HIS PELVIS during hell week. The guy is in ridiculous shape but something in his pelvis took the day off and he sat down and couldn't stand up again. Being in special forces is very very physically demanding (duh) and even after training they're constantly getting injured and taken off the line. Hell, the boat guys were getting fucked up because they were hitting waves too fast and mangling their spines.

Of course with cyber, bio, and 2070 medicine it's going to be a great deal easier to keep your people going. Then it's just a matter of finding people with the right mental fortitude to perform in the special forces community. Of course from my understanding most people who wash out of special forces training are DOR's... drops on request, people who decided "Nope, fuck this, I'm tired of being hypothermic and eating MRE's in the surf while on 2 hours of sleep in 3 days."

You would be if you had force grown muscles, cyber, genetic enhancements, and skillwires.

Maybe. I'm still doubtful. Maybe 16 years lead time. 14 at the bare minimum.

for the sake of argument, i am going to stat out the 1,000 kg bomb mentioned earlier. note that this is not the iron bomb in arsenal, it is a huge explosive device. it does unpleasant things to large areas.

now then, just to keep things nice and even, we'll assume that the bomb casing is 190 kg (this is probably high, but it keeps things even because we're using square roots). so, we'll assume 810 kg of rating 10 explosives for this bomb. that's 90P damage. given we have a casing that weighs 190 kg, i don't think it's unreasonable to treat this thing as using the fragmentation rules as if it had burst a barrier. this means we are looking at a radius of 90 meters, with the bomb still doing DV 30 at a range of 60 meters. 60 meters is not terribly precise. and 30P damage is a lot. even if they do get to add +5 to their armor. furthermore, with that large of an area it is imo not all that improbable to get some chunky salsa effect going (not that the already huge damage wasn't already causing chunky salsa mind you).

expensive? sure, that bomb is gonna cost you 810k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) just for the explosives, never mind the guidance systems etc. but when we're talking about potentially destroying even one of your guys, dropping a 810k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) bomb starts sounding kind of cost effective. if it hits a large group of them? well, let's just say nobody will even think twice about whether this bomb is worth 810k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

(note: i have this odd feeling 1,000 kg is not necessarily the bomb's actual weight, but then again it is my understanding that the weight of the explosives in the rulebook are quite ridiculous anyways).

I think hyz is going off the "cloned tissue in vats time". They'd be decanted with the body of an adult so it'd just be a matter of the brain catching up. Simsense and knowsofts will go a long way towards that.

No, I'm going off of third-world rebel militia recruiting ages. The fact is that there are, as we speak, eight-year-old human beings of both genders wielding AK-47s on the battlefield in the name of freedom and doing a damn good job of it.

Modern soldiers don't need strength. They need endurance, agility, alertness, fast reflexes, energy, sharp senses, good hand-eye coordination, a naive sense of personal invulnerability, and the ability to treat killing other humans beings like a fun cool game. Children have all of these traits and they tend to be more agile and have better reflexes than adults.

Augmentations could easily compensate for any deficiencies in Strength and Body and a lifetime of highly specialized training is more than enough to teach them how to follow orders and kill.

I think DocTaotsu was just trying to point out you can force grow an adult body in less then 6 months, then raise the brain using the same procedures used for making drone clonal brains and install them when they are trained up.