Mental Exercise: Anti-Dragon Task Force, Government/Megacorp Forces taking on Dragons Options

[Fuchs]

Without rehashing the discussion from another thread, this thread is about how a government or megacorp force could kill a rampaging Great Dragon.

Assume you're in charge to create a force that could deal with a Great Dragon on a rampage and trying to attack your capital/capitol/corp HQ. You don't have to worry about plots and indirect attacks.

Conditions:
- It's an open, straight battle. (No discussion whether or not a dragon would ever be caught in such a battle, or if a Dragon can out-plot the army before the battle. That's not in question.)
- Dragon has no allies other than spirits/watchers. Remote-support by hackers is possible, but will be at most equal to the corresponding hacker force of the military (i.e. no "and the dragon's hackers wreck the comm net of the military since dragon's hackers are better" arguments)
- Military Forces and corresponding budget (i.e. "whatever you need"). Not a bunch of runners.
- Size of the force is whatever is deemed reasonable to protect a capital or corp HQ, including tanks, air support, drone support, etc.
- Use the stats from the BBB for the Great Dragon. For troops you can use minmaxed starting characters or prime runners, just without any limit on gear. The troops can be handpicked, and can be specially trained for this. This does include mages with high initiation grades. You are not limited to 1% of the force being magically active. Every mage can have the maximum number of spirits bound in preparation of this, and is assumed to have done so under conditions that allow riskier summonings than usually done in the field (rest of the mages standing by to step in, trauma Team ready, edge being used, etc.) Special training can (and probably should) include dealing with astral threats and use of the latest bio-tech that allows astral spotting for mundanes.
- No nukes or similar weapons of mass destruction.
- BBB, Arsenal, Augmentation, Street Magic. No self-made spells, poisons, or viruses.
- Assume you have access to 40 years of information about dragons, a few dead normal dragons for dissection, and extensive footage and sensor/simsense data from normal dragons in combat against (hired) mercenaries or runners from the last 10 years.
- Use the most cost-effective way you can think of.
- Bonus points if the force is rapidly deployable, and can easily interface with and integrate other forces in place at a location.
- No "but the dragon/tactical net has better tactics and strategies, so would win anyway" arguments.


To restate it: This is not about whether or not Great Dragons would ever be facing an army on their own, and in the open. I doubt anyone thinks a creature that could get a megacorp, and save the european matrix from crash 2.0 without anyone noticing the preparations would not be able to avoid such a confrontation, and use indirect means and influence. This is not about what Lofwyr would have in the way of special spells, or what secret weapon Ares has ready. This is simply by the books.

And please, be fair: Whatever you give to one side, consider whether or not the other side can get it as well, and how they could counter it, within the conditions specified.

Any takers?

[Stahlseele]

troll with maxed out strength and a bow(or something similar like a harpoon or something like that) with gamma-scopolamine or something like this on the tip of the arrow to pierce through the dragon and get the chemtech into him

[Fuchs]

troll with maxed out strength and a bow(or something similar like a harpoon or something like that) with gamma-scopolamine or something like this on the tip of the arrow to pierce through the dragon and get the chemtech into him

How does the troll spot the dragon, who is concealed by a spirit/invisible? What's the range of the troll's bow, compared to the range of the dragon? What hardened armor can the arrov penetrate?

[Ancient History]

Well, last time they used stealth planes with combat lasers.

[Stahlseele]

How does the troll spot the dragon, who is concealed by a spirit/invisible? What's the range of the troll's bow, compared to the range of the dragon? What hardened armor can the arrov penetrate?

Radar/Ultra-Sound, Range was in SR3 deducted from strength and was only surpassed by assault cannon, sniper rifle and things like the ares great dragon and i think heavy MG's . . and with THAT kind of Power the Arrow comes through basically allmost everything . .
And the Troll can have the same kind of hiding the dragon gets from some friendly mage or something like that . . probably more likely another dragon as those would be most likely to try and take out another dragon . .

[Fuchs]

Please, no fluff. Just game mechanics. Fluff only leads to "but they'd never gone through his armor" "Sure they would have" "They'd never have seen him" "He'd never have seen them" arguments.

An Ares Firelance vehicle laser can only handle up to 24 hardened armor. Is that enough to get through a Great Dragon's Hide? With armor spell?

[Magus]

Troll Throwing Adept with Astral Perception throwing AV rounds by hand at the DG.
Troll has cyberarms maxed out to Strength with a CyberTorso up to 20 ( I think this is the max with a torso) Redline the strength to the max.
Trauma Dampners to help with the Stun Damage.
4 points of Power Throw and Missle Mastery
so a +8 to the strength for range/DV
(Someone help me out here with the Str DV- don't have AUG on me at the moment.)

The AV round would penetrate the Hardened armor with ease.

[FrankTrollman]

A Great Dragon is offensively incredibly powerful. With a Magic of 12, a Sorcery of 10, some kinds of magical Foci in the Rating 8-12 range, and the probable ability to call upon Force 10-12 spirits for Aid Sorcery they can and will reduce anything you bring to slag in a huge area out to the limit of vision as soon as their 24+ Initiative allows them to act. Also it's going to be acting 4 times a round. Which basically narrows options to two:

• Attack the Dragon from outside line of sight.
• Bring multiple targets into line of sight so quickly and in such loose formation that the hammer of a Force 18 Powerball isn't of intense concern.

The first is, contrary to Draconic fanboyism, entirely possible. It's extremely difficult because it is logical to assume that it will come equipped with an Extended Detection spell at about Force 20. This gives it the ability to notice when your troops come within two and a half kilometers. Well outside the range of any weapon in the basic book. But in Arsenal they have weapons which can target enemies out to ten kilometers, which means that you can "sneak up" on the dragon just by camping out on a hill on the other side of the country.

The second is even more possible when you realize the speed that is attainable by LAVs being movemented by Force 8 Spirits. A MiG 67 covers over six kilometers in a combat round, a Banshee covers eight klicks every combat round. It seriously goes from horizon to melee range in an initiative pass.

Once you've established the ability to get an action, it is imperative that you kill it in a single combat round. This basically involves throwing the kitchen sink at it until it dies. Deployed Drones should slap in with full long bursts from microwave cannons, and spirits should try to get in a Confusion (which is very unlikely to work, but nothing else they do has any chance of success). Barriers, even huge barriers will go down quick to a few hits from a heavy cannon.

But the coup de grace will be given with a good old fashion Aztech Heavy Gauss Gun. And by "a" I mean twelve. His defense pool sapped by microwaves and cannon fire, the Heavy Gauss Guns will be basically a success test upping the already formidable damage code of 18P to something larger still. The AP halves the hardened armor from 20 to 10 and then subtracts 10, meaning that the Dragon's armor does not even apply. The Barrier will already be down, so really we're just looking at half the hits on the Dragon's large Armor spell - combined with the Dragon's Body of 25. So it rolls like 33 dice, gets 11 hits, and suffers 7+ Physical wounds on each and every attack. We'll assume that it can negate one attack per Edge (it has 6), so only the latter half dozen actually matter. But as it "only" has 21 physical boxes it is seriously going down straight off with 3 Heavy Gauss guns to go.

Overkill? Hellz yeah, but that's the Aztech way.

---

The real problem is targetting in the first place. The Dragon will almost certainly be benefitting from huge Concealment, rendering it literally unfindable by mundane perception even while giving you fat bonuses for rampaging through the streets of your town breaking shit. That's why you're going to want to coordinate attacks at a location identified by astral observers and just ignore your own sensory input altogether. The Dragon is lit up like an astral chrismas tree to do half this crap, so finding his dual natured heiny ain't hard.

All your attacks will be at -6 for blindfire, but at 3 main guns per LAV I don't even pretend to care.

Let's show them what a run away military budget can do!

-Frank

[Fuchs]

I wonder how effective a platoon of astrally-percieving target spotters with target designators linked to/built in their eyes would be. Concealment won't work on the astral, so the dragon is fully visible there, and one could easily triangulate the dragons positions by overlapping the vectors from the gaze/laser rangefinder of the spotters. The adepts would just have to keep the dragon in their sight, and the system would feed its location to all drones and vehicles and soldiers in the network. So, they would not be firing blindly at all.

Of course, those spotters are vulnerable to confusion and other attacks by spirits and the Dragon, but that's why there are lots of those - and of course, magical cover, possibly by the very same spotters.)

[djinni]

Dangit frank you stole my kill!
you forgot the AR icon that the "team of hackers" (ie, the 14 year old kid living down the street) insert to the network to identify the target location to fire at, that'll negate the -6 blindfire modifier. in addition to the +4 AR bonus they get (max)

btw fuchs you saw cloverfield yesterday didn't ya?

[DireRadiant]

Nuke em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

[Blade]

He said no nukes.

I'd also go for the army of fast moving sniping drones with heavy weapon (the biggest you can get). Drones will fare better against the magical attack (less visible in astral, harder to affect with magic...), and they can be coordinated to shoot at the same time (hardwired, you don't want to use a network that'll be jammed to easily), preventing any healing.

Maybe use swarms of very small drones as spotters and diversion.
You can also deploy some mages as cannon fooder: the dragon and spirit will tend to consider them as a higher threat than the drones.

[mfb]

Frank's strat is the best one i've seen thus far, but even that's not foolproof. if Ghostw--er, Generic Great Dragon is dodging around between skyscrapers, it's going to be difficult to get a solid hit on him with some weapons. one imagines that a gauss projectile is fast enough and hard enough that structural materials may as well be tissue paper (incidentally, cool mental image: dragon whipping down a city street, twisting to dodge plumes of concrete powdered by a hail of gauss cannon fire), but the microwave cannon won't fare as well, and traditional projectiles will at least be deflected to greater or lesser degree.

also, if i were a great dragon, i'd have a sustained astral static spell (or whatever the SR4 equiv is). my draconic senses would likely be badass enough that it wouldn't greatly affect me, especially since i'd be able to rely on physical perception, but the astral spotters employed by the anti-dragon task force would have a harder time. it might or might not stop them completely, but it would at least tip the odds a few points in the dragon's favor.

[Dashifen]

you forgot the AR icon that the "team of hackers" (ie, the 14 year old kid living down the street) insert to the network to identify the target location to fire at, that'll negate the -6 blindfire modifier. in addition to the +4 AR bonus they get (max)

I would probably allow this to negate blind fire, but I'm not sure I'd give them the +4 on top of that. Frankly, that's essentially like giving a +10 bonus just for having one or more hackers on site. That's a bit much, IMO.

I guess the strategy of hoping the other Greats would intervene and trying to stay alive in the mean time is probably not going to work (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[...] i'd have a sustained astral static spell (or whatever the SR4 equiv is) [...]

It's called Mana Static (p. 173, Street Magic)

[djinni]

I would probably allow this to negate blind fire, but I'm not sure I'd give them the +4 on top of that. Frankly, that's essentially like giving a +10 bonus just for having one or more hackers on site. That's a bit much, IMO.

they are already recieving the +4, its not inaddition to... its just something he forgot to mention. they are not recieving the +4 from the geek in the closet they are receiving it due to the military grade boomerang/combat assist ie battletac systems they have.

[mfb]

you forgot the AR icon that the "team of hackers" (ie, the 14 year old kid living down the street) insert to the network to identify the target location to fire at, that'll negate the -6 blindfire modifier. in addition to the +4 AR bonus they get (max)

i missed this. i'm not sure it makes much sense. if the dragon is under the effects of the Concealment power, how exactly is this hacker maintaining the awareness of the dragon's location necessary to mark that location with an ARO? you can't put an ARO on something if you don't know where it is, and you can't keep an ARO on something if you lose track of where it is.

[Fuchs]

i missed this. i'm not sure it makes much sense. if the dragon is under the effects of the Concealment power, how exactly is this hacker maintaining the awareness of the dragon's location necessary to mark that location with an ARO? you can't put an ARO on something if you don't know where it is, and you can't keep an ARO on something if you lose track of where it is.

A bunch of astrally perceiving spotter, whose cybereyes are linked to a math SPU that calculates the vector they are looking at, and triangulates the position from several of those vectors. Not that precise, but enough to nail a huge flying lizard.

(All they have to do is keep their head/eyes pointed at the dragon's location, the software does the rest. Alternatively, tell them to simply keep a laster targetting designator on the dragon.)

Mana static is not centered on the caster, and affects himself as well, and won't move, and has to be made permanent. So, it's not exactly serving the dragon that well in this situation.

[Dashifen]

Mana static is not centered on the caster, and affects himself as well, and won't move, and has to be made permanent. So, it's not exactly serving the dragon that well in this situation.

Good call. I haven't read that spell in a while. I could see a GD creating a specialized version of the spell which is sustained and can, thus, be moved but I'm not sure that spell design is an appropriate thing to consider for this scenario.

[djinni]

A bunch of astrally perceiving spotter, whose cybereyes are linked to a math SPU that calculates the vector they are looking at, and triangulates the position from several of those vectors. Not that precise, but enough to nail a huge flying lizard.

(All they have to do is keep their head/eyes pointed at the dragon's location, the software does the rest. Alternatively, tell them to simply keep a laster targetting designator on the dragon.)

yep yep using the team to constantly keep the icon up to date and make sure no one hacks it so everyone fires off in the wrong direction.

[mfb]

Mana static is not centered on the caster, and affects himself as well, and won't move, and has to be made permanent. So, it's not exactly serving the dragon that well in this situation.

just have his spirits cast it, with extended range wherever he goes, if you're shy about designing new spells. yes, it affects the caster as well, but like i said--the dragon's going to have a hell of a lot more perception dice than most spotters will, so it's going to affect him a lot less than them. as well, the dragon is going to be able to rely on his physical perception to see his enemies; the military unit won't be, due to the Concealment that the dragon's spirits will be using on it.

(All they have to do is keep their head/eyes pointed at the dragon's location, the software does the rest. Alternatively, tell them to simply keep a laster targetting designator on the dragon.)

a) the software won't take care of all the rest; Concealment is a physical power, affecting whatever sensors the software uses to track the dragon's location as well as the senses of the hacker; and b) how are they going to keep their heads pointed at the dragon's location if they don't know where he is, again due to the dragon's use of Concealment?

[djinni]

a) the software won't take care of all the rest; Concealment is a physical power, affecting whatever sensors the software uses to track the dragon's location as well as the senses of the hacker; and b) how are they going to keep their heads pointed at the dragon's location if they don't know where he is, again due to the dragon's use of Concealment?

the dragon is taken out of the equation they are using the cross point of the designators for the target location (hence I didn't suggest a laser designator). they are not poking the dragon they are astrally looking at him, the technology isn't. when the focal point changes, so does the Icon, updated by the hacker backup.

[Dashifen]

If they beat the concealment with their perception test, I don't think they'd have to try again. In other words, all you need is one of these spotters to see through the concealment and they can mark the location for the others. Arguably, once the dragon is acquired by the first spotter, they other spotters might get to make another test to see through the concealment.

Also, since concealment is physical, an astral spotter of some kind would be able to see through it more easily. A mage with cybereyes and some good hacking abilities might be the way to go here.

[Fuchs]

just have his spirits cast it, with extended range wherever he goes, if you're shy about designing new spells. yes, it affects the caster as well, but like i said--the dragon's going to have a hell of a lot more perception dice than most spotters will, so it's going to affect him a lot less than them. as well, the dragon is going to be able to rely on his physical perception to see his enemies; the military unit won't be, due to the Concealment that the dragon's spirits will be using on it.

He'll run out of spirit services very soon. And he'll be hampered in doing his magic too, greatly cuting down his firepower. Not to mention that we're talking specially trained spotters - that's a lot of dice to reduce.

a) the software won't take care of all the rest; Concealment is a physical power, affecting whatever sensors the software uses to track the dragon's location as well as the senses of the hacker; and b) how are they going to keep their heads pointed at the dragon's location if they don't know where he is, again due to the dragon's use of Concealment?

You don't understand - concealment does not work on the astral. So, the dragon is easily visible on the astral plane. Now, a spotter is astrally perceiving, so he turns his head when he tracks the dragon. The program just notices where the spotter's head/eyes are turned to, it doesn't track the dragon directly. Take 20 of those readings (vectors), and you have the dragon. Or simply have those spotters hold a GPC device at the direction of the dragon, again - the data is triangulated, and voila!

[Feshy]

A bunch of astrally perceiving spotter, whose cybereyes are linked to a math SPU that calculates the vector they are looking at, and triangulates the position from several of those vectors. Not that precise, but enough to nail a huge flying lizard.

Unless one of those spotters happens to be close, you may be narrowing it down to a few square blocks. Not really sufficient for gauss cannon targeting.

Franks idea doesn't take int account the dragon's spirits, which may be patrolling at a greater distance -- or may very well be holding actions to intercept such an attempt (using their own movement power, for instance.) It also relies on launching a perfectly coordinated strike from either secret bunkers or from a great distance. It also involves keeping aerial craft out of sight of a dragon until they are within a few kilometers -- or worse, maneuvering a thrust-vectored tank through the city streets at a kilometer a second.

The spirts are the big problem. Dragons summon some monster spirits -- and an army of them at that. If you take out the spirits, the dragon leaves. If you take out the dragon, the spirits rampage. Let's see just what kind of spirits we are looking at:

Conjuring 8, maybe a tradition bonus, some absurdly high-force summoning and binding foci, a stun track that can handle pretty much any drain you might throw at it, edge, twist fate (to keep the spirit from using edge) and quite possibly Invoking -- that's what the dragon has to throw at summoning. If the dragon prepared by binding spirits in the way the opposition is assume to have done, then you can count on the dragon to have around a dozen spirits. Here's what that would look like:

Drain is going to come in two doses: 2x hits on a force test, and 1 or 1.5 x hits on a (force x 2) test. If the spirit tries to use edge, the Dragon can counter, so we ignore that.

The dragon resists drain twice, using 26 dice + 6 edge. My statistical calculator can't actually handle that many due to the limits of double-precision floating point. But 30 exploding dice gives a 60% chance of getting 10 hits, so I'd say that with 32 dice 8 to 10 hits can be assumed. We're overcasting here, so this is physical drain.

Let's be conservative and assume that in the usual case, we don't want any drain after summoning, because it will interfere with binding. Assume further that the dragon has access to a world-class medical team for first aid to further reduce that drain. That's Logic 9 + Skill 6 + specialization 2 + Circumstance Bonus 2 = 19 dice. Further assume the medical team is just as dedicated, and rolls edge (we'll ease up here and go edge 5.) First hit doesn't count on first aid, but we can expect 6-7 hits (or 5-6 boxes.)

That's 14 to 17 boxes of drain resisted or healed with each test -- let's take 15 and work with that. A force 12 spirit has less than a 2% chance of getting 8 or more hits (16 drain.) So we can assume that force 12 can be summoned without drain in 90% of the cases.

Now, for binding, the drain could be worse (though less random), and the spirit has a better chance to resist. However, after binding, the dragon can rest -- as long as it isn't killed. So, that force 12 spirit rolls to resist binding. We'll assume the same drain resist characteristics above -- 15 or so hits resisted with ~90% confidence level. If the binding is not a great form, the odds of getting 16 hits are completely negligeable. If the spirit is greatform, there's almost a 25% chance the dragon will take some drain. The dragon can take up to 9 boxes of drain (minus the first aid assumption of 5 boxes) without going unconscious. The chance of that happening is statistically insignificant.

So, assume that the dragon has Force 12 great form spirits, and force 14+ regular spirits.
Assume you can add another 2+ force to spirit types that the dragon has conjuring and binding focii for.
If the dragon is, for some reason, insane (as you might expect for a great dragon rampaging rather than plotting) these numbers could be higher (they assume essentially no risk to the dragon.)

The dragon is limited in number of these spirits to his charisma of 13.
(Plus a dozen watchers on patrol to look for incoming forces.)

That is a problem the anti-dragon forces face that is greater than the dragon itself. Imagine trying to kill a force 12 great-form plant spirit. Imagine the fireballs tossed by a force 14 (not great form) spirit of man. Try to get Frank's air forces through a force 12 greater air (or fire!) spirit's storm. Multiply that by a baker's dozen, and add a few sprinkles and force points for focii. Imagine further that if you do make it past all that, and you succeed in killing the dragon, all these spirits will go uncontrolled. In your capital city.

Again, take the spirits out first, and the dragon probably leaves. So... that leaves one option. Take them all out together. Remember, some spirits will be astral, some will be holding their actions to defend the dragon, and some will be spread out over a large geographical area. There will also be watchers to avoid, if your plan revolves around surprise.

Edit: I messed up the drain calculations on binding. I forgot just how nasty it was. I probably won't bother to correct them, because I really just wanted to get a scale for the problem.

[Fuchs]

Now just take a dozen or so high level initiates, and have them summon their own spirits for the army. With the same medical ressources. Not the same force, of course, but... they got numbers, and then some.

And if the Dragon leaves, then that was a successful defense.