Balance of power. Options

[FuelDrop]

The corporations have, from a runner's point of view, limitless resources. I don't care how badass your pet runner is, compared to one of the AAA's he is barely above a wageslave.

This is as it should be. If you have anyone other than another AAA or high end AA corp even approaching the power and influence of one of the big 10 and they're not a great dragon or immortal elf... well, I hate to be a stop-having-fun guy, but... I'm going to leave it there before I get flamed off the site.

Anyway. The big ten have resources that eclipse any two modern governments combined. The only thing that eclipses their actual power is their greed, hence the obvious question: how much of their assets are they willing to sink into their elite forces?

Let's look at this analytically. At its most basic level the megas want as much return for as little investment as possible. This is true of everything they do. Megacorps are also, ultimately, conservative. The status quo is good for them, and they would only act to upset it if they were certain they could come out on top... unless they're Aztechnology of course.
Now these two conditions are part of the reason the corporations hire shadowrunners: They're highly elite individuals who provide their own 'Ware and training while not risking a corp war if they fail and get captured.

However, sometimes you need to make a statement and trot out elite troops with your brand name on them. This could be a show of force in response to a particularly bloody shadowrun, a statement that the mcguffin is not going anywhere, or to show that you'd have better luck getting cold fusion in your bathtub than assassinating the guy they're guarding.

Now we face the corporate dilemma: How much cash and training are we willing to drop into a meatbag who, no matter how elite, can be taken down with a hunting rifle and a lucky shot? Likewise, how willing are you to put your very finite supply of awakened individuals into harms way?

We go back to the corps being conservative. Firstly, they minimize the risk by looking at exactly how much force needs to be applied to a situation, and what they expect to gain out of it. If the force being risked has a high price-tag and the potential gain is relatively low (EG taking down a shadowrunner team who hit you several days ago merely for revenge, and not doing it via drone-launched missiles but with elite special forces in tight quarters combat) then they're likely to either seek a less risky option or just ignore it entirely. Once again, Aztechnology bucks the trend by being extremely vengeful regardless of cost. Watch out for those guys.

This means that you can reasonably expect the corporations to keep various degrees of special forces available to them, so they can use the right tool for the job. It also means that if your runners are discreet then they're more likely to lowball the response than escalate, as if a lucky shot takes their guy out then you're better off having the special forces lite take the loss than your chrome monsters.

So now the question: How much chrome are corps really willing to put in their elite forces? at what point does it stop being cost efficient?