That stuff was not 'in the course of their duties' - it's a fairly specific term that covers situations like this: You're on an armed patrol in a combat area. A civilian unexpectedly runs out at you, you shout the challenge, they don't respond, it's dark so you think they have a gun and shoot them.

Edit: To be clear - it has a specific legal meaning, like 'the reasonable man' or 'the idiot in a hurry' or whatever. There is an associated test to be met.

Wrong, they were in the middle of combat operations and decided to take a break to rape and pillage (My Lai)... the argument was that they were just following orders...

Same in Abu Gharib... they were just following orders, in the course of their duties...

I will admit that the distinction can be Made that once they diverted from "normal operations" that they were then not acting in their capacity, but this is not an accurate picture (and is for the Courts to decide)... Lowering themselves to their baser instincts was a choice that they made and they use their position to try to evade prosecution... in the case of My Lai, it worked for 25 of the 26 charged with the crime ("Following Ordders")... What a load of crap...

The military is held accountable to Codes of Military Justice, and during times of peace (and often times of war) to the Laws of their host country... Military crimes and war crimes are still punished in this world, though not as often as they should be in my opinion... But that is neither here nor there...

And from your example above, when they discover that the individual running was a child carrying a blanket wrapped baby, and did not speak the language, there is a military investigation for wrongful death... When something like this occurs, there is always at least a military investigation (or there is a coverup), and sometimes there is a civilian investigation, depending upon the country in which it happened... there have been several examples of such instances in both Afganistan and Iraq...


Keep the Faith

Yeah, there is a military security design manual (an old one, the current one is FOUO) that says a fence adds something like 10 seconds of time to the break in. It doesn't matter (within broad limits) how tall it is or what it has topping it. Unless you have something crazy like a double fence with mines between them....

If you can actually use it as the point where you detect the break in (instead of when they set off the alarm in the room you want to protect) it's great, as it adds at least a minute to the time the response team has to catch them. Otherwise it's a pretty pointless waste of money.

And yeah, assault rifles and MGs are really high threat. The only thing that gets you higher on the chart are RPGs and mortars.

This I can definitely agree with...

Keep the Faith

<<pointless>>

This is a bit of an aside, but one thing that both amuses and disheartens me is the fact that some people think of a residential privacy fence as an extra degree of security when in reality it's quite the opposite. Now, it's true that a simple solid fence might dissuade Dennis the Menace from trampling the azaleas, but when it comes to anyone with a bit of determination all you're really doing is providing them with some handy cover on the way to patio door (which, knowing most people, is made of glass and never locked). Oh, sure, it'll look a bit suspicious if they have to go up and over the fence, but that takes but a moment and after that they're free to wander around the backyard with impunity.

I remember when I was in high school a couple of bored teenagers committed a string of petty burglaries around our fairly affluent neighborhood. Predictably, they went up and over backyard fences and would help themselves to the fridge and maybe take off with a wallet. They were only caught when they tried getting into a home that featured no fence or fancy landscaping, which meant it was easy for the stereotypical retired busybody to spot them and report it to the police.


Moral of the story: Fences are often kind of silly, and there's a reason why real security fences aren't all solid and opaque.

However, it is greatly improved if you have dogs. Everything is more secure with dogs. Heck it just looks more dangerous so people will go elsewhere.

Now, I can't prove the veracity of this since I saw it on television once (can always trust the trid, ammirite?), but I've heard before that actually just having a sign that you have a dog or a security system is actually more effective than owning either, simply because you can put it in an area where you can be certain people will see it. Plus, if the dog is anything like mine, it's entirely possible that an intruder will just be warmly greeted and considered a new very special friend.

Oh exactly. Crims are not dumb, they can easily look at the houses in the street and do a risk reward calculation. Dogs are actually particularly cool because unless you're some sort of K-9 ninja, there is no way in hell you can tell what a dog does just by glancing at it. Is it an attack dog? Sniffer Dog?

Finding out requires sticking around for ages, and the last thing you want to do is 'lurk suspiciously' while an armed security team is watching you.

I hear that. The most terrifying dog I have ever encountered was a St. Bernard that would stealthily approach strangers on his lot but not do anything to announce himself. It's only when you made eye contact or started moving away from him after he sat down that he'd start barking. As long as you stood still, he'd just stare you down, which was still rather worrisome. He wasn't actually trained to attack, as it turns out, but as you can imagine he still scared the hell out of people. It was frankly just bad enough that you turned around to see a big fraggin' dog.

This implies that once someone is viewing a "sim module," they are no longer capable of any action whatsoever. This does not reflect the knowledge I possess regarding the system. Could you elaborate, please?


Please explain the logic underlying this conclusion. The shadowrunners would have a chance of escape, but no certainty of it, just as they'd have had a chance of being captured, but no certainty of it; this is absolutely the opposite of railroading.


Professionally I've done some work here, too, and I think that figure is utterly ridiculous. I don't know what sort of checkpoint you're talking about, but these figures are distorted by orders of magnitude.


...okay, then. We're not playing the same Shadowrun. That's cool. Later.

I don't think that's true, but I also don't think you're completely off base. The Corporate Court is one option, and I think if you played your cards right you could get National Courts to intervene-however I think you'd be correct to say that these are exceptions not the rule.

Of course all of this assume there is no internal courts in various extraterritorial entities.



I think there's an assumption that Lethal force has to be used in these situations. Even in a corporate zero zone I think it'd make sense to start with nonlethal options-a dead infiltrator can't tell you who hired him, or how he found the loop holes in your security system. Now I do think you're correct in that if faced with overwhelming force any reasonable security officer would defend themselves, anyway possible.



I agree, that armed opposition has drastically shifted Use of Force paradigms but again dead men tell no tales. When you're discussing this kind of investment-a zero zone must cost billions of dollars a year-why wouldn't you pursue it to the next step? The team you shoot dead on the wire isn't the guy with the bucks who will just hire another, smarter stronger team, with better equipment.

Don't get me wrong I'm not completely disagreeing with you. I do agree that lethal force would be more common place in 207x than now, and that there are more tools in the box for LEO's and SEO's. But I don't think it precludes nonlethal options. But I think this all comes down to a personal play style argument. if you prefer a little more lethal, hey the game allows that! If I want a little less lethal, hey! The game allows that too!

Sure. But why not shoot him with ammunition that won't kill him, and thus eliminate any chance you have of learning who sent him, what he was coming for, how he found the weaknesses in your defenses, and so on. You may learn nothing in the interrogation - although that's highly unlikely - but it costs you very little to try, given the possible benefits. Since nonlethal means are at least as effective as lethal means, you can afford to knock him out, try to find out what he knows, and then kill him if you want to. If you kill him first, you lose any other possibilities.


Whereas the Use of Force mandate specified by your employer is very much a concern, in the future as in the past. If nonlethal measures were vastly less effective than lethal ones - as they are today - then yes, jumping right to the killing is reasonable if the opposition is highly lethal, but that's simply not true in Shadowrun.

As regards fences - speaking generally here, and not in response to any specific persons - they should, in my view, remain important portions of any layered security plan. Provided they don't obscure visibility, fences serve a number of significant purposes, the most obvious of which is preventing access by casual criminals. No fence will keep a dedicated, prepared operator out of your facility, but it will slow them - even slightly - and give another chance to detect the point of ingress. Since dedicated, prepared operators are rare, this function is significant. Double layers of fence with no-mans-land between costs very little compared to the possible savings.

Will a fence be enough? Almost certainly not. But they are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, an important, comparatively low-price, highly effective portion of the overall security plan. They're not applicable in all situations, and they're not a panacea for all ills, but they're important, nevertheless.

As long as the RAS override was disabled then dumping someone into full VR would prevent them from moving at all. Of course, I think it would be wise to use a special commlink that had no access to the outside world at all in order to prevent a Decker from working his special brand of magic. Not sure if you'd be able to do anything to a Technomancer since they could in theory hop into VR on their own first, perhaps give them a -2 Dice Mod for being distracted?

I was under the impression that with RAS enabled, the user simply suffered -6 to their dice pools in the real world. This is a good restraint, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly not disabling!

True but in previous editions RAS was the default and you had to actually manually override the safety protocals ala Hot/Cold Sim in order to move at all, and you still took the massive penalty. So I figure that since the fluff is supposed to still be valid that it must still be possible to enable the RAS and imobilize someone.

You can absolutely enable the RAS by default and lock it on, but my point is, in no edition of SR that I'm aware of would RAS actually immobilize someone who tries to move: they face steep penalties, but those penalties are pretty small-scale compared to simply being unconscious. Why give someone a -6 die pool penalty - or a +6 target number penalty - when you can simply render them unconscious?

Hmm, I'll have to double check my books when I get the chance because I could've swore that the penalties were after you've disabled RAS. As for your second point, IF I'm correct and RAS does disable you then you'd render them unconscious first and then use VR to keep them helpless while you decided what to do with them. If you are correct about RAS then yeah, dumping them into VR is pretty much a waste of time and we are back to handcuffs and drugs.

Etraterritorality makes it kind of a moot. In Ares land it is an Ares judge. But on the last part, yeah they might want to ask you questions. But they can always interrogate your commlink later, after they kill you. ANd that is just a matter of time.

One thing to also consider, as a corp, what is the likelihood of the facility being hit? (Low value, or remoteness are factors)

Why?



So why wouldn't they attempt to limit what armed individuals would do? Otherwise why not arm all security personel with rocket launchers and miniguns? Why not let gun down even corporate citizens? Oh wait, because common sense dicates a use of force policy. Sorry for busting your balls.



I do agree that physical evidence can help, and I also agree that it's just a matter of time before you get the nine millimeter bullet billed to your family.



Agreed. One thing here that's difficult for people is to see how a corporation would prioritize things.

Probably the sort of checkpoint run by a government which spends $500 on a new toilet seat or 120 grand on a single air-to-air missile. He's obviously not accounting for the fact that most Megas will produce the weapons used in their own security and pay the workers in a currency they completely create and control.

Not to mention that the corps get to charge their guards so many fees and levies that they might as well be slaves in the first place.

Competent people don't work for people who don't pay well and provide decent gear. If you pay like mall guards you'll get mall guards with automatic weapons.

Exactly, which is why "corp sec" are generally nothing more than jack booted thugs armed with automatic weapons and are just itching for a chance to use them.


Exceptions made for "high end" security of course...

Keep in mind as well that a lot of corp employees will be probably running double duty as security assets rather than being a complete sunk cost, with the classic example being the wage mage who keeps a few watchers up while working on new spell formula or search. Sure, there'll be the occasional dedicated security mage or spider and a couple of guards that spend all of their time on checking the locks and making sure everyone is productive, but that doesn't mean that a coder cannot be allowed to put aside their work for a moment and load up the Attack Program in the event of an emergency.

Hell, one time I had a face who knew his cover was blown fail his perception check and critically glitched his infiltration roll (which I also make in secret*) while trying to find a spot to lay low for a second while the team got to work creating a diversion. He ended up huddling in the corner of the break room (shush, it wasn't a triple A; these guys gave breaks) next to a vending machine, completely oblivious of the secretary who promptly screamed and hosed him down with Pepper Punch and eventually tasered him on the next round. I mean, of course she was going to respond properly; she's technically one of the last people you see before you can get a meeting with the facility director, and this is in a world in which people have guns implanted into their arms.


*I let them stipulate whether they want to buy off glitches and 0 hit tests with Edge, before the roll, I just prefer that they don't know they've screwed up their stealth rolls until somebody spots them; kills the suspense.