System Failure, Bear with me, I just read it. Options

[Samaels Ghost]

Just read a lot of System Failure, and I'm confused. If those EMPs only took out power sources, caused minor hardware failures, and destroyed low end systems, why upgrade the Matrix as a whole? Why the whole wireless web? All the fiberoptics networks are still there, right? Decks and other electronics got their power supplies fried but those could be replaced and no doubt quite a few deckers are capable of repairing their own. I live near St. Louis and we just had similar situation. Bad weather and power outages = dead old people and pissed off citizens. SF even compares the whole incident to a very bad storm. Two weeks after our storms, St. Louis is mostly back together. Granted, SR's world got their actual power plants and what not destroyed, but it's nothing a concerted effort couldn't fix in a few weeks.

Why the replacement for the old Matrix? How fast has everything actually recovered? Where was this technology (wireless networks, smaller than deck computers) BEFORE the crash? All the players who ended up on top after the crash seem to have known that this would happen and held their cards to play them just at the right time. Is it a coincedence or conspiracy?

[BookWyrm]

System Failure is pretty much an adventure "reason" why the big leap from SR3 to SR4. This way, it covers the gap with enough information, scenarios & sub scenarios so that while you take time to upgrade/convert your game to SR4, you still have enough material to keep running SR3-based adventures, or close the book on the SR Universe.

As for the big upgrade, again, it's to bridge the gap between SR3 & SR4 for long time players. From what I could read, it was being planned in the storyline but the actions of the terrorists just made it easier.

[Ancient History]

It wasn't just the power outages, Winternight took out several of the major Matrix junctions - transoceanic optical cable hubs and the like - and Jormungand completely trashed system architecture. The cost to reboot the Matrix would have been at least as much to install a new wireless system over top of it, and wireless makes more economic sense in the long run.

[Samaels Ghost]

That makes some sense. What about decks though? Are they up to snuff compared to the newer commlink? Except for size, of course. I imagine all those runners with Excailburs are pretty peeved :dead:

[WhiskeyMac]

The wireless Matrix was introduced in the Matrix book for 3rd edition. It is just technological progress to have it evolve to the stage it is at now. Also, instead of having to replace all those trans-global hubs and stuff, they just had to jury-rig or install some new radio towers and they got it much cheaper and efficient.

I also wonder about decks. So my kick-ass modified to hell and back Fairlight Excalibur is now just useful as a club compared to the Street Sammie's MetaLink? That doesn't make sense that they would go obsolete so fast. Of course, nowadays, a computer is obsolete by the time it is introduced, so go figure.

[Teux]

Obsolete so fast?

The 6 years between crash 2.0 and 2070 is the same amount of time it took us to go from a nascent internet to the beginning of the dot com bubble.

It's the time gap between 800Mhz processors and 4Ghz processors.

Computer technology moves fast. Six years to go totally wireless after a complete crash sounds about right to me...

[Bull]

Also keep in mind this...

I easily imagine a sesssion of the corporate court where the reps spent a couple days talking about it, and decided that all the companies they represented were going to push for this change. So over a period of several years, the 10 companies that produce 95%+ of, well, everything are phasing out the older tech and phasing in the new wireless stuff. Plus integrating it into society via marketing and the like.

SOTA is a bitch.

Bull

[Samaels Ghost]

Good business move, now that I think of it.

"You gonna fix our Matrix, Corps?"
"Nah"
"...Why not? We really liked it :) "
"We've got a new one for you to buy :D"
"Buy? :( How much is that going to cost?"
" :nuyen: :vegm: :nuyen: "

[SL James]

[Samaels Ghost]

Magic nukes....whatever. Silly idea to begin with. I'll just tell my GM I'm magically moding all my guns from no on so that they fire bullets so fast they become plasma or something equally absurd.

[Critias]

[BookWyrm]

[Aaron]

[Critias]

[Frag-o Delux]

So these magic nukes didnt kill thousands of people? Not just in the blast wave, but because all kinds of critical systems were destroyed, like life support systems in hospitals and such? The world didnt turn into a huge police state trying to figure out where these nukes came from? Huge riots didnt break out because now everyone that only used nuyen credits now doesnt have any moeny or food? They couldnt get into their houses because the electronic locks now dont work? They couldnt find their way across town or find a shelter on a map, because in SR3 they all but siad people are illiterate in the the 2060s, and since the gird guide system would have been fried their grid guide systems couldnt guide them to shelters? I mean I know people that can barely drive around our home town today, imagine if your car did all your driving for you anyway. Too bad cars wont work either as their alternators would be fried and electric cars would be screwed. Not to mention all the exsisting radio towers would have been damaged. And how would you be marketed a new wireless net work when your home electricity would be caught off for a long time, and Im not just saying because the power plant up the road is wiped out, but your home wiring would be damaged and all your home electronics. So you wouldnt know what happened for a long time anyway, seeing that you wont be able to hear from the emergency people in the first place. So what countries went to war with each other when this happened? I mean they wouldnt have been any wiser to what happened then anyone else and would have seen it as an attack by their enemies and started shooting at each other.

With the nukes that size set off around the world to cause a global system failure of the matrix the extent of damage done to non-matrix systems would far out weigh the need to replace the matrix. Then you have to consider all the things that were totally reliant on the matrix, such as all the megas, I mean they didnt make the Omega rule of not screwing with each others daily operations or communications for no reason. The one real place to hurt the magas would be their sat links and matrix nodes. The fact that any of the Big 10 are nearly as powerful as they once were just 6 years later is absurd. The fact that the nations of the world are even around is also crazy. Im not a satellite expert, but wouldnt the EMP also travel up and damage the sats? And arent sats still controlled by ground based stations? I mean if they are, how long before the birds lose their way and come tumbling back into earth?

On the flip side if the attacks were so small as to only effect the minor systems of the matrix, the cost of replacing it would be cheaper then trying to shuffle all new systems into place. The exsisting equipment would have been scavenged from exsisting non critical sites and relocated to get the critical systems back up and running, then the system would have been slowly replaced like it has been since forever. I was replacing the old cell equipment with the newer GSM stuff today, and in the future itll be no different. Its all about money.

But also, if this winternight group is so hell bent on ending humanity why only do such little damage to the matrix? Wouldnt their attacks been much larger in scale? Setting off all thos nukes and creating the EMP wave I described would be it. Why are cities like Seattle or DeeCee still around? Wouldnt setting off a nuke in these towns done a lot of damage? In DeeCee alone you have a ton of agencies that would be crippled if those buildings where super heated in a fraction of a second. And talk about loosing the Matrix. Right in Alexandria across the river, still well with in a blast zone of a nuke, there are 7 of the root servers of the internet today. You know the .com .org stuff. Those servers poof you no longer can surf the internet reliably. There are a couple of those servers in LA I believe, but I can see them being moved in SR.

I would have nuked Denver to see a real show get started.

The whole nuke/EMP frying the matrix and rebuilding in 6 years with a new sub culture built around brand new tech is so funny it hurts.

Fanpro or who ever is in control, (dont correct me Adam, if I cared enough about who owned what I would have remembered by now) should have just nuked the world, then bumped the time line ahead 20 years, and rebooted the system. The reason everyone above is giving for such a quick restart is to let the older players still feel continuity. The players that moved to SR4 would do so anyway, they didnt need such a rushed BS story behind the matrix reboot. The new players that started with SR4 probably wouldnt care anyway other then hearing the old farts wax poetically about old days. The players that stayed in SR3 dont care either, other then to laugh at all the stuff messed up in SR4 then see the projected publishing of the new books and laugh knowing its going to be a very very long time before those things get fixed. Its really funny that the hole reboot of the matrix is the back story to moving to SR4 and the Matrix sourcebook is one of the last to be published. They could have also really saved soome time going to the new system (SR4) with out the 5 year skip, and just added the wireless stuff. Its already there, it just sucked. The bandwidth was too limiting. They could have just released SR4 just like they released all the other edition upgrades as a new edition with no reason other they they felt it improved the game and added the wireless stuff and made all the changes they did.

Yeah SOTA is such a bitch that in 12 years the Fairlight was the top dog cyber deck, then some crappy story comes along and makes not only the Fairlight obsolete but every thing deck related obsolete. Then gives you iPod hackers.

[Synner]

Just to set the record straight, hundreds of thousands of people do die (not only from the EMP strikes but also from the nano- and bio-weapons they release to keep Jormungand safe). However, the EMP strikes target only a dozen or so cities and several of them are neutralized. It is important to remember that most SR electronics are optical and hardened. As explained in System Failure the Winternight EMP strikes are not intended to destroy the Sixth World's technology base but rather "turn it off" by attacking its vulnerable elements. Though cascades would inevitably happen over powerlines and the second Crash doesn't damage the systems and software per se but the infrastructure and power supplies.

Regarding the nuclear devices themselves, they are mostly modified suitcase nukes and low yield warheads - something with a groundzero of about 4-500 m (you know the sort Ares used in Chicago) - in a 1km altitude airburst. The airburst is important because it extends the area affected by the resulting EMP burst/pinch - has the side-effect that heatwave, radioactive fallout and especially shockwaves are significantly less than those of a ground-level detonation.

Note that what Winternight is trying to do with the EMPs is blind the world, temporarily disrupt the Matrix, and ensure Jormungand is crippled befoire the main event begins with the detonation of the fault-line nukes. After the first crash the power players of the Sixth World could only ever be more paranoid and careful than current day powers and were Winternight's strike solely EMP based it would probably have done even less damage. With Jormungand on the loose the odds change significantly because that's one contingency no corp or government could have expected or prepared for.

So yes, some areas descend into chaos with blackouts, widescale rioting, racial violence, thousands of collateral casualties, soldiers on the streets, enough chaos to mask a coup d'etat, etc. But in places like Washington DC critical systems would be back on line in a couple of days tops, the brass would be hiding out in bunkers, and backup systems and auxiliary power would kick in in the interim.

Finally, anyway you paint it most of the Megas take a huge hit from the Crash and the easiest way for them to recoup is to cash in on reconstruction. There's a lot of money to be made in rebuilding but there's a lot more to be made if they convince the world it needs a safer, next gen Matrix.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[SL James]

[Smokeskin]

[SL James]

Anyway, I cannot in good conscience say anything more about the book or the plots in System Failure beyond what I have already said in the past.

[hobgoblin]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[hobgoblin]

hmm, i would have guessed that the guns would have had a mechanical failsafe when the smartlinks dropped out...

or had they gone triggerless?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[hobgoblin]

it realy depends. if they where ex-goverment i would expect them to use whatever they got that fittet their "standards" at the lowest cost possible...

[JongWK]

[SL James]

Which is where it would have been in the first place, since all that Matrix traffic would (like IRL where like half of all international traffic is routed through) go through northern Virginia (actually more west than south of Washington), and not Washington. Given the ~20km radius mentioned in SF, if placed properly it should have barely touched the city (if at all) if it had been moved as few as ~10km. The only safe place to have dragged it would have been south towards Quantico and the CAS border.

At least it's not like putting the SF bomb northeast of the Presidio.

[Frag-o Delux]

Actually if you go south of DC, follow route 1/395 into Arlington, just as you pass the Pentagon there is a road, I believe its Courthouse road, suprise suprise its got Arlingtons district courts there. If you follow that road down. Look to your left, youll see the Verizon building, across from that is the AT&T building. In the AT&T building is housed a fiber optic line, named the golden pathway. In the middle of the night is one piss poor quality rent a cop watching that building. That fiberline handles tons of government lines. To be honest its not just one line, its about 200 of them.

Why all that information? Because that should be one of the hardest buildings in the world to get into and a guy making less then $10 hour is all that keeps you out. And the building certainly isnt hardened, I would use my cell phone in there all the time. If I can use my cell phone standing next to the fiber node, then EMP can get it. And I know for absolute sure the equipment itself isnt hardened, I installed tons of it.

And why would you shield all the fibersystems in the world? Thats a shit load of money wasted accept if you have a plot to contrive. The only good reason to shield electronics is if you expect that type of attack and what corp would or if you are tryign to stop people from listening in on calls and with fiber you cant just listen to magnetic bleed to hear signals.

The whole nuke/EMP only tiny bits of the world effect plot is contrived. Makes no sense. Then the we only wanted to blind the world while we set off fault line nukes makes the whole thing even stupider. If the world is caught off gaurd by these EMP bombs, why wouldnt they be caught off gaurd by the big fault line nukes?

Everyone sitting around the conspiracy table:

Guy #1:what we are going to do is set off really fucking huge nukes on the fault lines in a very Max Zorin type plot. But not only are we going to flood Silicon Valley but destroy the world like we have been plotting for years. *goes through a step by step plan on how they are going to covertly do this task*

Guy #2: Umm, what if we also set off a bunch of smaller ones a few days before to "Blind" the world, so they are caught off gaurd by the second wave of nuke attacks?

Guy #1: That sounds good, let start acquiring a shit load more nuclear equipment and fissile material and hope the GM doesnt use the walls have ears rules on us.

Guy #3 whispering to guy#4: Why are we using nukes, hasnt their been a lot of previous history of nuclear weapons not working, the Lone Eagle event I think its been called in the news? and all those nuclear plants self destructing. Yeah I see us pullling this off with no problems at all.

Guy #5: I would like to also point out to this distinguished panel we have worked hard and and time to pay off is at hand. We have covered every possible problem.

Guy #3: My cousin Ted works for the phone company, he said they have hardened all the equipment in the hundreads and hundreds of phone offices, routing stations, and switch boxes. How will this effect our EMP attacks?

Guy #5: It wont effect us at all.

Cell phone towers are worse for EMP attacks, just because those huge ass antennas are exspensive already, do you think they are going to shield all that cable?

Eh, still seems contrived and silly.

[ethinos]

Shadowrun is our parallel universe of what could have been. They have real magic, elves, trolls, vampires, and friggin' dragons. Ok...so,

Why start nitpicking about "contrived and silly" now?

You'd think that you would be used to odd things happening in the Shadowrun world.

[Samaels Ghost]

Wait, I still don't unterstand how these "the major Matrix junctions - transoceanic optical cable hubs and the like" were taken out. If such important hardware was hardened, as it should be, these hubs should have survived. It seems like, if anything needed to be protected from such an incident, it would be these hubs. So the reprocussions and direct damage were:

EMPs attacks:

• Minor unprotected hardware fried
• Electric Grid and other power sources fried
• Blast probably pretty nasty to those close by

Jorgamund Virus:

• Many major Matrix grids stripped and useless
• Captian Chaos dead-ski
• Sattelites taken down (how?)
• The Morgue is gone, so is Shadowland and others.

Were the major Matrix hubs taken out by the EMPs or the Virus? It seems as if the EMPs shouldn't be able to affect these hubs.

[SL James]

Don't think too hard about it. Your brain will try to escape your body. Just accept it happened and move on.

Now, if you'll excuse me, mine is trying to sneak out the back door...

[Synner]

The EMPs took out the power systems and components the hubs run off. The power grids, appliances and systems with less hardening are still blitzed but the important hardware would only be damaged by cascading power surges (and even then damage would be minor). Most of the damage to the world grid was done by the Virus, the EMPs had an entirely different goal. The hubs (already corrupted by the Virus) aren't so much destroyed as taken offline thereby crippling the Virus - they would still need to be replace because of the damage done by Dissonance corruption.

The whole point of the EMP strikes was to:

a) kill or cripple Jormungand (necessary in Winternight's attempt to playout the Ragnarok myth)
b) make sure Pax didn't get her way (no telling what Loki's child could do to Fate if she succeeded)
c) neuter authorities, interfering with any attempt to organize a counterstrike, while causing widespread panic among the population (before opening the gates of hell with the fault line nukes - which represent the unleashing of the elemental hordes of Muspelheim upon the Earth).

The thing to keep in mind about Winternight's plot is that the most important aspect is that it is not focused on causing untold devastation, it is about ritualistically reproducing aspects of the Ragnarok mythos step by step to set the skein of Fate straight.

[Samaels Ghost]

Alright, thanks. That makes a little more sense. Then again, I said that before....

[Frag-o Delux]

Because I got started on this silly rant in the worse/best metaplot thread and it just gets sillier the more I think about it.

And now that freelancers and a soon to possibly be developer is trying to defend it its even funner. See even he agrees the plot is stupid, the system is fiber optic and hardened, so it would be foolish to replace all that with wireless systems since all the fiber stuff is safe from EMP and the rest was hardened against it. It would be far more costly to replace a fully functional system that could be repaired in just a few days with a entirely new and unproven techonolgy. And yeah they would recoup the costs of the new technology if joe average ever heard of it, seeing that their trideos are now fried or could go to the local store to buy it, but their cars now dont work and gridguide cant show them how to get to the mall. And our esteemed freelancer obviously has never been in DC. Nothing gets done in a couple days there. Even driving across DC takes most of the day, now get rid of gridguide and add even more faulty lights itll be several days before you find out everything broke. The good thing is there are plenty of hotdog vendors ont he corners and plenty of whores on the opposite corners, so youll have plenty of stuff to do while stuck in traffic.

And to be perfectly honest they could have said the wireless matrix was shit out by magic fairies in 30 seconds after the EMP bombs went off, Im not playing SR4. Im done buying books, especially to replace a system that was fine for the most part with a system that isnt an improvement. The biggest gripe right now is the messed up hacking rules and the wireless book is at the bottom of the chart for printing. Oh and the screwy cyber arm rules havent been improved over the old system.

Its too bad they didn't release Shadows of South America before going over to SR4, they would have gotten at least another $60 out of me.

[Samaels Ghost]

[Synner]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Synner]

[Samaels Ghost]

I don't think Winternight is supposed to be sensible. They're fuckin' wackos.

And with the massive drops in profits for the corps (you can't sell shit without the 'trix) I bet they were pressured into it. The Crash hurts their pocketbooks and that's something the Corps have been listening to for a long time. The Corps don't like to start Corp wars because there is no profit. They do a lot of things that make little sense without greed and fear of losing ANY money. Corps listen to the Corporate Court, but don't really HAVE to (the megas, anyways). They could just do anything they want, but they reign it in listen to the tools on the bench.
My point is, Cooperation in the face of falling profits has been something the corps have been doing for a while.

[Frag-o Delux]

Ok, Im done, I just dont see the point behind winternight setting off nukes to hurt the world and do it in such a half ass spectacular way to utterly fail in everything they did. While being able to acquire all those nuclear weapons and magical know how to do what the hell it was they did fail to see the world is magically protected from EMP except the key points that they wanted to hurt. Then all the megas get along well enough to get together to rebuild the matrix in peace and harmony with the other megas. Oh, and do it all in 5 years, but not only rebuild in 5 years, but a whole new culture build up around this technology. Grandma is barely cold from her recent burial caused by terrorists setting off nukes around the world.

[SL James]

[Samaels Ghost]

They're FUCKING INSANE! What other reason do they need? They believe in fanatical doctrine. They actually wanted to bring around Ragnarok. There isnt a GOOD reason for them to do these things. They're just wacko.

[SL James]

If they were really serious about hastening the end of the world, they should have formed a powerful religious-political organization like Jerry Falwell did.

Woops. Tangent.

[Samaels Ghost]

Nah, I think you're right on track! Destroying the world for no reason.

[Frag-o Delux]

No if they really wanted to bring around the end of the world they would have flat out nuked cities and watched everyone blame each other and nuke each other in turn. Not turn off the internet for a day, but then again I see what happens when my neighbor loses his cable for a couple hours.

And Im not talking about the group in the game, Im talking about the developers. There is or was no point in using them in the little capacity they did just to bring around the wireless matrix, like Synner has said, it was on its way anyway. IF they didnt jump to SR4 we would have SOTA 2065 around this time and it would be here according to him. So having some half baked threat from a book printed 6 years ago with other half baked threats make a big useless splash to introduce a new game doesnt seem right and not very well thought out.

We (my group) have been using the wireless matrix since Matrix was printed. If you read in the book you could add a radio link to your cyberdeck and run a radio signal utility on your deck and use the matrix wirelessly, along with Maser, Laser, celluar and a bunch of other things. The only limiting factor much like any other jack point was bandwidth.

[SL James]

[Samaels Ghost]

It was already explained that the schemes of Winternight were symbolic as much as they were to achieve a specific real world goal. Sure you could just nuke everyone, but they're religious wackos. It has to MEAN something. It has to be done a certain way and with certain symbolism. Otherwise it would just be insane....

[Frag-o Delux]

[SL James]

[Zen Shooter01]

Think SF this way -

Religious fanatics and a mad AI go crazy.

The wireless matrix rises from the ashes.

Move on.

Yeah, it's silly. Just don't set your campaign in that year and you'll survive.

[Frag-o Delux]

[Conskill]

[Zen Shooter01]

Thank you, Conskill - from the Wagnerian school of SR GMs. ;)

[SL James]

That's a pretty damn cool idea, Frag.

[Conskill]

[Samaels Ghost]

Being in the middle of a shitstorm you have NO control over can be pretty disheartening for players.

[Ancient History]

Yeah. Life can be like that.

[SL James]

Are you suggesting I'm a sadistic GM?

Who have you been speaking with? I'll kill them! Er... I'll... uh... KILL THEM!!!

[Samaels Ghost]

turn off that hate engine. it'll destroy us all!

[Frag-o Delux]

[Ancient History]

[Demonseed Elite]

Important fact about System Failure and the "end of Third Edition." At least some of the authors of SF (such as myself, who developed and wrote the Singularity track line) were not aware that Fourth Edition was in development nor that System Failure would be the end of Third Edition until well into the writing of SF.

So, when I came up with the ideas that would form the backbone of the Singularity trackline, I wasn't attempting to use them to explain the transition to Fourth Edition, to break the game world, or to make a nice excuse to skip five years of time. I was just trying to wrap up the Deus storyline.

[Charon]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Runners are never in control - they just exploit circumstances.
And when the worlds goes nuts, good people cry 'catastrophe' - bad people sing 'opportunity'.

[Charon]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Charon]

[Zen Shooter01]

Ancient History:

The idea that Gavrilo Princip started World War I is very simplistic. There were huge forces of history straining against each other already; Princip just joggled the faultline. And if it hadn't been him, it would probably have been someone else, somewhere else - but those forces were going to be unleashed.

[Charon]

[Ancient History]

Yaar, I hear ya. But of all the events leading up to it, that was the tipping point.

[/edit]The really crucial moments in history are almost always intimate, even if unseen. It's personal relationships, and it's the cracks where shadowrunners shine. The unnamed man that stopped a member of the Continental Congress from being mugged, the whore who gave syphillis to the prince, the drug dealer that cut the drugs that eventually killed Elvis. It's all a chain of circumstantial events...and some of them get the spotlight, and some don't.

[Frag-o Delux]

IF you look further intot he assassination of the archduke youll know on the same day 2 other people along with Princip tried to kill the archduke. One failied, one chickened out. The one that failed threw a bomb at the Duke missing and killing and wounding many people around the dukes cariage. When the duke got out to help the wounded people Princip shot and killed him.

History is full of half truth and simplistic variations.

All of history is heavily dependent on what has happened before, it has to be, people dont do things for no reason, not even mental cases, they too need inspiration to creat the situation to do the things they do. They just dont make sense to us, but in their minds it makes perfect sence.

And I still say runners have more control over their lives. A wage slave works and breaths when their company says to, they have one way to make a living, the way the corporation says too. I runner has a lot more leeway in how they go about making a living. Even with kissing ass and all that in your post.

[Charon]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Grinder]

[Demonseed Elite]

SR4 was just top-secret. Even to freelancers, if you weren't one of the ones working on it. I didn't become involved in SR4 until the playtesting phase, so that's when I was informed about it.

I changed very little about the Singularity plotline. Most of the changes were in my writing of the "Hello World" section, because it had to be changed to a sort of lead-in to technomancers, whereas originally I didn't even know about technomancers!

[Charon]

[Frag-o Delux]

[Samaels Ghost]

Sure, runners can go out on a limb and try to improved their situation. Stealing weapons that may help you out on a future run is a good example. But wageslaves can too. They can take a risk to get ahead in the company. Maybe they invest money in a high-risk project and its success catapults them up a rung or two on the corporate ladder.

Runners may be free, but it is unfair to play down the life of a wageslave. Some wageslaves may get stepped on by their bosses, but a majority do not. It is a comfortable life, if not a glamorous one. Runners can die everytime they go to work. They can be arrested everytime they do their job. They depend on megacorps to pay them their salary and would be flat broke if it wasn't for them. A wageslave in a very high-risk situation may be killed, but his runner counterparts are far more likely to be.


I play SR not so I can battle evil AIs and save the world from magical nukes. Some people may be into that sort of mission. System Failure gives them that option, but does not force anyone to participate in adventures that they feel are beyond the scope of their campaign. For those who think SF is too grand to partake in, limit the exposure your runners have to it. Make it background noise. Have the Matrix crash, have the terrorist news reports, have the world change ever so slightly, but keep your own game in motion. Just because the timeline jumped five years does not mean your game has to. play in 2066 or even earlier. Now if events in System Failure directly contradict events in your own campaign, you have one of two options:

1) stop interfering with things that you know are going to be changed later. If your team's decker faced Deus head to head in cyber combat and destroyed him, you've gone too far. If your PCs are interacting with President Haffner in any capacity, you've gone too far. If any major cannon NPC is featured in your campaign, then killed, you've gone too far. This is the way it has always been in SR. It is very dependant on the running storyline. Either follow it side-by-side or go buy a new system.

2)Ignore the cannon. Your campaign is more important than what some book says. If you have fun in your weekly gaming sessions, keep it that way. Like you said, the point of playing this is to have fun. The new edition isn't telling you what to do anymore than other editions and sourcebooks have.

Considering what I said before about personally not wanting anything to do with Evil AIs and grand schemes, I would still like to point out that I have very little contempt for SF. I look at it as a source book, not an adventure module. It might be fun to play a group of runners that were involved in the events of SF then retire them to being NPCs in the campaign my group does want to continue. I don't want to disarm magical nukes, but playing in the wireless world with a set of rules that, while is not perfect, is streamlined to the point where i can introduce the game to friends and they can join in the next day I do like. The 2070 setting is very interesting. I really enjoy it. If you like 2060 better, go back and go away. My players can have fun without fighting Winternight head to head. Can you?

[Charon]

[Samaels Ghost]

I think he just metioned helcopter. militray helicopters

[Frag-o Delux]

[Samaels Ghost]

came off a little more aggressive than I thought it would. I'm not hatin'!

[Frag-o Delux]

[SL James]

[Samaels Ghost]

^^^That makes it sound WAY cooler! ^^^

[Asheron]

Frag, I gotta take Charon's side on this.

Yeah, MP lasers are pretty cheap and they're not gonna spend too much to secure them, but they will make damn sure that anyone stealing them gets found out and murdered because they will spend that much money making sure rumor gets out that you don't mess with Ares security unless you want to die fast and young.

Maybe those Bradley tanks and Apache choppers aren't guarded super closely. But seriously who can hotwire a tank or chopper? I doubt it's like stealing an '89 Chrysler. And a good deal of military stuff is on military bases, where they can and will shoot you on sight. If you try, and manage to get away with it, they'll probably find out about it and they have a good chance to find out who it was. And if you do caught, well there goes the next 40 years of your life in Federal Prison. Worth it? I don't think so.

Global piracy? It doesn't surprise me at all, but it wouldn't surprise me if the cargo ships had heavily armed guards, too.

Yeah, smuggling and theft happen, but it's not exceptionally common, esp. military hardware.

[Frag-o Delux]

[Charon]

All right, try to find something wrong with that SR setup I'd be using for Seattle if a run called for raiding an AresArms warehouse.

Ares Clearing House : Next to SeaTac airport, Ares has a medium size industrial park (perhaps 1 square mile) where they keep three fairly big warehouse. One dedicated to AresArms, another to AresSpace and a third one IDed to Ares Macrotechnology which serves the needs of other branch of Ares. These are to accommodate both the Ares manufactures and Shop as well as for exporting toward Asia. There are also 6 other Warehouses belonging to multinationals smaller than AA status who rent space in Ares park for obvious reasons ; extraterritoriality. If you get in the Industrial park, Clearly IDed as such and fenced in by two ring, the first fence being a friendly warning the second having sensors and various nasty surprises, flood light at night and mono-wire, and you are in Ares land.

Most of the stuff coming in an out of here is airlifted (Remember, next to the airport) unless its resale value is so cheap that the shipping cost would but a serious dent in the profitability of the corp. Do remember that in SR the risks of hijacking land cargo is more common (Which means higher insurance premiums) and airlifting cargo is more effcient than today. So in any case where the $/Kg ratio isn't too low, like anything weapons or drug related, for example, airlifting will be more common. In these case, the savings in insurance alone would justify the airlift. If it's a shipment of food on the other hand, it's pretty obvious that it's cheaper and more efficient to move it by land.

The warehouse storing the most expensive goods probably contain above 600 millions in resale value. The 9 together might bot be too far from the 3 billion mark. And that's what they contain at any one time. Over the course of a year, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that over 30 billions in goods transit through the clearing house.

So what's 100 million in security? Especially if Ares split the cost with the multinationals renting space in their industrial park. Especially if using cheap ass security would jack the insurance cost through the roof anyway.

So this industrial park has a dedicated Fast Response Team (Maybe 15 member strong). Enough securitys mage to keep about 6 spirit in patrol over the area at all time (Plus a few binded spirit between them to call upon on an emergency). Probably over 20 drones patrolling and 3 or 4 riggers. Plus sensors. Security inside the warehouse is up to the individual corporations and you can expect some to be fairly satisfied with this setup and only have a handful of standard guards, cameras and tough maglocks inside their warehouse whereas the AresArms or AresSpace dedicated warehouse probably has additional fun inside on top of what's defending the park itself.

To get good 24/7 coverage in 6 shifts or so, it means at least 90 FRT, 12 security mage and 24 riggers in rotatation. If they cost you on average 500 000$ a year (Salary, ongoing formation, equipments and upgrades etc.) you still only spend 63 millions a year, a far cry from the total value of the stock you are defending and of the insurance premium you'd have to pay if you left it undefended. And the price tags is shared between 9 warehouses and 7 companies.


---

Now, I don't think this is excessive. A good runner team somehow determined to break in one of the warehouse could do it with solid planning and some financing. It's a FRT, not uber commandos filled to the brim with deltaware. And these 6 to 8 spirits patrolling are of a strenght that two resonably experienced but not super stars mage could conjure up with spirit foci without being stunned silly for the rest of their shifts, these are not monstrous +8 level spirits. And these drones aren't experimental tech worth 1 million bucks apiece, more like typical security drones. Their electronic seucirty and friewalls are tough, but they're not Zurich Orbital's. Beating this security can be done.

But this is not a simple smash and grab one man B&E job. It's a whole mission, and not one I'd recommand for less than a first tier runner team.

If lifting military equipment from Ares was easy, everyone would do it and gangers would all have panther assault cannon.

[Frag-o Delux]

So you have 126 guys, all with a high profiency of training, all should be making about $30,000 a year, more in the case of the rigger and mage (a lot more for the mage) plus benefits like health care and vacation time, maybe death benefits. Ares is known for their training and highly skilled troops, so if you take a rumored number I read in Janes or some DoD document, its cost the US about 1 million to train one raw recruit. To be FRT, a rigger and security mage I would assume it would cost a lot more, so well stick with 1 million to train. Thats $126 million just in training on these guys. Then incidentals like uniforms and stuff.

You also have to look at the maintenance crew youll have to keep on hand for all those cheap drones and aircraft coming and going, plus and air traffic control crew to get all those aircraft in and out, which Ill still debate the cost of airlifting everything is cheaper then trucks, especialy with the Bergen around. If Sea-Tac even lets them fly in and out of there. Extraterroritorial or not, they still need to permission to fly out of that land and if sea-tac says stay in a holding pattern, you stay in a holding pattern. Or you dont ever leave that zone. If Sea-Tac is busy you can expect to not be let out that often. Meaning unschedueled delays and over time charges. The aircraft mechanics alone are a ton of cash to keep on hand all the time. Aircraft them selves cost a shit load to keep in operation compared to trucks.

The cabling costs alone to run all those sensors would cost tons, a double layered fence as well. I am going to assume some sort of barb wire is on the second line at least. Dont forget the support teams, I mean you may have 126 guards, but youll have about a third of that just in clerical and administrative rolls, you know like dispatchers and scheduelers. Mages (at least in SR3) had to pay 1000 nuyen per point the elemental was to conjure it. So you are running into a lot of money there. You could use watchers or spirits that cost nothing to conjure, but watchers are generally idiots and spirits come and go at sun up and sun down leaving a determined person a window to sneak through. Are the places these blimps or what ever just as secure? Then youll need a lot of people just to sweep the aircraft to make sure nothing hitch hiked. Do you have fire fighting crews on hand if one of these aircraft crash land? The equipment for all that as well? Normal small mom and pop airports like Free State down the street from me doesnt but they deal with some dual engine but mostly single enige planes like pipers and cessnas. You are talking about aircraft big enough to make the cost of lifting cargo out of one country to another and be cost effective. Storage warehouses are insured and bonded as well, so the cost of having that size of a warehouse with that sort of cash flow will still have high premiums, and now that its sitting with a run away in the middle of it (1 square mile is nothing for an airport let alone a major warehouse complex) it maybe more. Does Ares own these aircraft? I suppose they could since they own a lot of vehicle manufacturing groups. The grounds keeping to make sure all those devices stay functional is another cost.

The cost of shipping by air after all incidentals are calculated will still be a shit load more then shipping by truck to a dock and loading a super freight ship to sail it to a given destination or to a rail yard to be shipped by train.

Security will never be cost effective enough to keep everyone out, the goal of security is to find a happy medium between cost of security versus cost of loss. In most cases NOT having Ares in huge neon lights and a couple fences will be enough to keep everyone out except a few hard core theives. I live next to the fourth or fifth largest sea port on the east coast of america. More commercial goods flows through this port every year then in your mythical Ares complex. The vast majority of it is patrolled by a hand full of armed gaurds and a couple hands full of non-armed guards. They have miles and miles of fence line and water line to patrol. Virtually no cameras and few lights on the fence and water lines. They have one single fence about 10 foot tall and in some places lined with barb wire. The have rail lines and huge truck entrances all over the place also. Plenty of places for a person to sneak into.

I could go on but I have to go work on another project and this is getting monotonous.

[Grinder]

I love this thread. :) Seriously, I got some interesting ideas and insight into security that will probably help me when I run my next session (whenever that will be).

[Charon]

[Westiex]

Just have a given ceiling on the cost for transit (Shipping space and weight) vs sale cost to determine what gets airlifted and what doesn't. In any case, this sounds like a major distrubution hub, which is going to get quite a bit of attention for just about any type of high end good - electronics, weaponry, luxury items, vehicles ...

Sooner or later the location of the hubs is going to get into the criminal underworld - its something that'd be easy to find for deckers, so a security through obscurity approach won't work.



As for hijacking cargoes - thats a fairly involved plan. Granted, you have the disadvantage of the fact that a FRTeam is going to take a while to get to the cargo, but Joe Shadowrunner is going to want to make sure he hits a shipment of arms (which he then has to fence) as opposed to a shipment of plush Tickle-me-Dunkie dolls.

[Cheops]

As far as stealing from military bases is concerned I don't think it is quite as high end as you guys think. At least where I live the actual bases are BASES. That means that all the families of the servicemen/women are located on base as well as all the support and assistance people you need to maintain what amounts to a small community (such as teachers, shopkeepers, etc). This means a lot of non-uniformed people getting on base each day. Most criminals don't knock over military bases because of nerves alone--getting caught in a military base is much worse than getting caught in a Walmart. However, I wouldn't say it is anymore or less difficult than knocking over any other location.

As far as knocking over military bases and this proposed Ares warehouse complex I gotta ask: are we talking SR3 starting characters or SR4 starting characters? In SR3 you needed to be much more high end than you do in SR4. An SR4 character could pull off either job easily depending on his build. I'd say a team of three starting characters in SR4 with Face, Mage, and Technomancer could do either without a hitch.

[Frag-o Delux]

Um 90 + 12 = 102 + 24 = 126, not 116

Ok, with airlifting. Do you realise we dont use blimps/zepplins any more? Weather my friend will wreck your flight plans a lot. The US Navy had a few of them to do shore patrols, strong storms wrecked 2 of them, the Navy pulled the third to avoid loosing it. After that we have experimented with new zepplins but so far they havent seen a reason to use them. Using them over sporting event sis one thing, but using them to realibily transport cargo is a falicy. SR has them for the wow factor. But in reality those zepplins will be just as dangerous if not more so with the wierd shit of the SR universe. So your insurance premiums cant be realibly accounted for.

You also never accounted for the creation and maintenece of an air strip in the middle of a city next to another major airport hub.

I never said it was to be account for all in one year, and if you do break it down to 20 years, thats still 50K a year, plus 50k for pay and benefits, thats 100K a year for a grunt, mages and riggers will be more. so 126 x 100K = 1.26 million a year just in a cheap estimation of security people, mages and riggers make more and cost more to train. And Im sure youll have refresher courses and other additional training as time goes on thus adding to the cost of the grunt.

The you have support personel that will cost 50k+ because they are administrators and they always get a lot more then the grunts in the field.

Your made up 10% and 5% insurance premiums dont sway me because many factors go into site insurance, the fact that you have an AIRPORT in the middle of a bunch of warehouses will make your insurance premiums huge. The fact that you keep forgetting to account for mechanics to take care of said aircraft and firefighting crews to fight the inevitable crash will make your insurance even higher. Just being an arms company will make your insurance higher. The fact that they are leasing warehouse space to "outside" companies is a security factor, thus higher insurance.

But that all assumes Ares isnt paying a shell company the insurance money so its all actually still in the family just under a different budget now.

Where you are pulling these numbers from I dont know, so i cant debate them logically or with any faith, its all opinion on what the cost of these things would be. The pay the average guard gets in in one of the books, and the average worker gets a large portion of his pay in additional benefits.

Still dont know where you are getting the break even point of 10000 nuyen either, probably more made up numbers. And while you are airlifting your 100K nuyen missiles out and sending widgets out the gate on the trucks, Ill continue to hijack your widgets and sell them to a shady distributer for a fair price and strip the truck for parts. Then Ill use that widget money to buy a SAM and shoot your zepplin down for shits and giggles. You airlift important things, highly valuable things, not everything.

And again I ask, have you ever been around real criminals, you know the guys this game is based around, the guys hollywood makes movies about? You have no F'ing clue how many of those people are out there and the amount of theft, hijacking and other crimes that Im talking are commited every day. The stuff isnt heard about because those places keep that stuff quiet because then theyll have to pay for that security. Corporations dont like to spend money, if they can get away with no security other then a retiree with a pistol, some dogs, a big fence and lack of notoriety in the area theyll do it. If you want your warehouses to have 30 story tall neon signs screaming ARES with zepplins landing in it, yeah you better load the joint with top notch security.

Last year the Police evidence storage site was broken into and robbed of the evidence that was going to be used to convict some big criminal in my area. The building that was used as the evidence storage facility? A little red brick shit hole under a span of the Interstate between a strip club and a truck stop restaurant on a major road. The security? a camera on the front and back door, and a motion sensor inside. I drove pass that building almost everyday, some times a bunch of times in one day. I still drive pass is everyday now, twice a day, but I dont think its the evidence building anymore. Why? Because everyone knows it was the police evidence storage building, it was all over the news for days. The cost to secure it against another raid would be far more costly then to find a new building and rent/buy it and store the stuff there and not tell any one it was there.

One company I use to work for stored $10's of thousands of dollars of electronic equipment, that would have easily been sold on the black market. Guess what security we had? the swip card ket at the gate of the public storage building, the swipe ket at the door of the building and a combination lock on the roll up door. But the main reason no one steals the stuff is because they didnt know it was there. Same with a 53 foot trailer we had on a public parking lot. It was packed with nearlly a million dollars worth of electronics and tools. The security was a combination lock and the fact no one knew what was in it.

The best thing about people not knowing what you have is it doesnt cost a damn thing, and the fewer people you have monkeying around there looking like hard core grunts the less attention the building will get. Whee Ares is goign to put the costly security is in the R&D facilities, and other crucial sites. Not some warehouse storeing lasers and biscuits.

EDIT: I play SR3 and I did the job with a character with about 30 karma earned.

I never made the place a major distribution center, in fact the place my character stole the gun was a warehouse that was just across the street from the manufacturing plant, well down the street.

Major hubs will be just as easy to rob also, like the military bases Cheops talks about will have ass loads of people milling about, much easier to blend into that then an empty warehouse that only 5 guys should be in.

And no, hijacking a truck is not that complicated at all. Any punk can do it, knowing what you are getting is something else though. In real life youll generally have a guy on the inside, usually the rent a cop tellign you what is going out that night. You wait down the street. When the truck gets stoppe at the red light, or because you step in front of it. You have another guy step out and pull the poor guy from the tractor. Depending on who you work with you may just threaten the guy, you may pay him to be quiet for a few minutes, or you pistol whip the bitch unconscience then stuff him int eh sleeper cab.

In SR you have it a lot more easier, you can hack the shipping docs, you can have a mage with the catalogue spell. Sure the trucks are armored, but you could just as easily take control of the rig. In other ways. Why would I pass up the tickle me dunkie dolls? werent they top sellers? I mean on sr ebay they were 5k a piece or something, (actually Im kidding I dont know anythign about that crap) but if I had a truck load of them I could clean up. ANd guess what Im not going to catch a arms smuggling wrap for it. Just grand larceny if Im caught, possibly the hijacking and recieving stolen property, youll catch a ton more shit for guns though. Whats a Predator sell for? 500 nuyen? a fad toy 1000's? Yeah Im going to hijack the gun truck over the tickle me dunkie dolls.

And like Cheops said hitting a military base would just take balls of steel, which runners have. The reason people dont rob military bases is because they think its impossible, they also dont know people that will buy a tank, and if I want a fully automatic rifle, Ill got to a gun show, buy an AR 15 and have a friend make it rock and roll.

[Charon]

[Cheops]

The lowly runner who doesn't have much freedom compared to a wageslave isn't a Shadowrunner. At least not in my games. He is just a common criminal or gangbanger who hasn't made the grade yet to be a shadowrunner. If you can't pull off a B&E against a warehouse (any warehouse) or hijack a shipment then you aren't going to get hired for anything more important than distractions or courier jobs.

In one of my SR3 games they did get hired to knock off Ft. Lewis and it would have succeeded. They got their hands on authentic uniforms and physical masked to look like a major that was on base. The only reason they got caught is because they overthought their earlier plans--one of which included buying 4 military grade 2.5 ton trucks with UCAS markings from their fixer and told him to ASK AROUND about it.