Omega Order, What is it? Options

[renaissancefox]

I've heard references made to an Omega Order. All I've managed to gather is that it's a sanction that gets handed down from the Corporate Court to a corporation. I went through Corporate Download, and found another mention of the Order, but nothing more.

So... What exactly is an Omega Order?

[knasser]

I think this was first detailed in the Corporate Shadowfiles sourcebook for 2nd ed. which has to be one of the best written RPG supplements I've ever read. I don't recall seeing the Omega order actually detailed anywhere since, though I might have missed it. As I recall, it involves a complete freezing of the corp's assets and a prevention of trading. It was the nuclear weapon of the corporate court - the only authority that could issue one. Placing the order for even just a few hours would wreak havoc on even the AAA's.

[FiveVenoms]

If I recall correctly, and I'm sure some trivia-savvy Dumpshocker will correct and/or clarify here, it's when the Corporate Court authorizes an 'attack', physical or financial, on a Megacorps assets (or part of them, at least) without fear of reprisal from the Corporate Court. Declaring open season, if you will.

[hyzmarca]

Its the Corporate Court's version of Orbital Bovine Bombardment.

Essentially, the CC seizes all of your assets and divies them up between the Big 10 (or Big 9 if you happen to be a AAA). To accomplish this seizure the members of the Corpoate Court are all allowed and possibly required to use their full military might. This usually involves the officers of the targeted corporation having Thor Shots shot droped on them among other demonstrations of excessive force. Nuclear detonations are quite possible.

Of course, I could be wrong. Did they issue an Omega Order agaisnt Dankwalther?

At any rate, it is bad.

Edit:knasser may be right.

[Shrike30]

Y'all basically have it nailed... Omega Orders are when the CC lets everyone in the business world know that it's fine if they want to play a little slap-and-tickle with the corporation on the recieving end, because the CC isn't going to take action against them. Anything they walk away with is theirs.

There's pure profit in this. *EVERYONE* wants in on it.

[knasser]

[knasser]

[Geekkake]

[ShadowDragon8685]

I always understood an Omega Order as "Open Season". It's something the Corporate Court issues when it wants to school a Mega or AA. To put it in today's terms, it would be like the U.N. unanimously declaring that none of it's members would initiate any reprisal on anyone who wants to go school North Korea, for example.


Essentially, it's legitimizing a corporate war, saying "They're marked men. Go get 'em, you keep what you kill." For those of you who play Btech, it's like authorizing a War of Absorbtion on another Clan, only the authorization applies to every other Clan. Essentially it's "They're dead dogs, take whatever you want from them."

[Backgammon]

No, everyone is turning around the ball....

An Omega Order is "Open Season". As you know, the corps are always hitting each other. But it's not "personnal", just business, and the corps shrug when something blows up. Sometimes, however, things do get personal and out of hand: a corp war.

Corp wars are no good. It's not just business. It's revenge and dirty and violent, and BAD FOR BUSINESS for everyone else. The Corporate Court will thus always step in, smack some sense into both corps and things will cool down.

However, when a corp does something very very bad, such as arrogantly refusing to listen to the CC, the CC can call an Omega Order. This is both a duty and an opportunity. It means all other corps can and should innitiate acts of aggression towards the corp, possibly even in unison. The result is that the victim will quickly start taking such massive losses, that in order to survive, it will have to surrender to the CC's will.

It is worth noting that NO OMEGA ORDER HAS EVER BEEN GIVEN OUT. The only thing that came close to it is the Veracruz Incident, in which Ares, Mitsuhama and Fuchi (I think) banded together to run a joint military strike against an Aztechnology military base, with the CC's consent. It stopped at that, however, as Aztechnology got the message and backed down.

There is no real definition as to what an Omega Order entails precisely. Maybe the CC will seize assets, maybe it won't. Maybe shit will explode, maybe it won't. All it means, basically, is that the CC will no longer protect you in anyway.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Backgammon....


Ever hear the name 'Fuchi Industrial Electronics?' Ring any bells? If you didn't start playing until 2055/2060, it might not. :)

The CC handed out an OO, and that's why you'll occasionally hear an old timer going "Hey, remember that Run we did on the Fuchi place in Seattle", and all the new guys around him are going "Fuchi? Wtf is that? Some japanese restraunt?

[Shrike30]

The biggest problem is, Fuchi used to be one of my most regularly appearing corporations, partially due to the fact that if it was vaguely technical, it was probably Fuchi.

Here I am, gearing back into SR, and my fallback corporation is gone :P

[PBTHHHHT]

Uh, Shadowdragon, Backgammon has been on the forums since '02 and who knows how long before the forums got restarted. I think he's played shadowrun for a while including the storylines before 2055/2060.

edit: not to imply anything, but I'm pretty sure Back knows what Fuchi was in the game.

[mdynna]

Fuchi didn't die from an OO. They died because of the machinations of Richard Villiers. He basically "stole" 1/3 of Fuchi to start Novatech. Fuchi was dying because of the internal conflict between the 3 major shareholders. After Villiers took his third the other corps saw Fuchi as ripe for the picking so that's when Fuchi Asia merged with Renraku when Nakatomi bought the 300,000 shares of Renraku (and the board seat) that Miles Lanier had been gifted in Big D's will. Fuchi Europe merged with Shiawase when Yamana married into the corporate family, bringing what remaind of Fuchi with him. (Go find the Blood in the Boardroom campaign for all of this)

The only OO ever issued (or closest thing, to my knowledge) was when Aztechnology (I think it was called ORO back then) used their puppet Aztlan and tried to nationalize (take) all corporate assets. The CC dropped the hammer on them and they backed off.

[Backgammon]

[Glorian]

According to Aztlan Sourcebook, p.42

[ShadowDragon8685]

Huh...

I'll take salt with my dose of crow. I thought they died because the CC called an OO on them.

[TonkaTuff]

Since it's a second-hand reference, I can't begin to give a page number on it, but according to the Timeline Explorer hosted here on Dumpshock, there was what appears to have been an Omega Order issued in 2041 against a corporation called Lanrie. According to the entry, they'd engaged in viral warfare with an unnamed competitor in Miami. In retaliation, their corporate assets and infrastructure were destroyed, and the board of executives were rounded up and executed. Though it doesn't explicitly say it was an Omega Order, that seems most likely as they're enacted by the CC in response to viral attacks and declare open season on the offender.

Though whether all of the events listed in the Explorer are official-canon, or from the creator's own campaign-canon, I can't say. Perhaps someone more familiar with either could shed some light on things?

[Glorian]

The incident with Lanrie is canon. It's from page 177 of the Nigel Findley's novel Shadowplay.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Kinda spooky, really. Since Lanrie wasen't actually a megacorp with it's own extraterritorial jurisdiction, that means that the CC basically put out a hit on CAS citizens and property that lay on CAS land - and went unopposed in doing so.


Can't say I like anything corporate having that kind of authority.

[Ophis]

Welcome to the Shadows kid, thats the way the world is.

[ornot]

I have always had the impression that most of the aggrssive interactions between corps were non-physical anyway. While I don't dispute that an Omega Order would permit the other corps to send in strike teams to steal protoypes, researchers, data and so on (the sort of things corps normally hire Shadowrunners for due to deniability), I also think that it permits all manner of dirty tricks to acquire in one way or another shares, investments and even control of installations, which would normally be frowned upon.

From the name, "Omega Order", I also get the impression that the CC is only meant to have to issue one such to any company, Omega being linked with the final end of things in quite a big way.

[TBRMInsanity]

In short the Omega Order is a free ticket for every corporation in the world to do whatever they want (legal and illegal [usually the latter]) against the targeted corporation. This includes sanctions, backroom stock manipulation, mass extraction (of major and minor personnel), mass extermination (of major and minor personnel), open assult against extraterretrial facilities (ie blow up their coprorate enclaves), and various other shadowrun activites. Only one Corporation has had the Omega Order and that was Aztechnology. It survived the assult but the result was it went from being number one corp in the world to barely AAA status. Aztechnology was forced to pull back most of their resources back to Azland to survive. They are only now comming back from that hit.

[Brahm]

Omega is the end. An Omega Order is a Corp Court sanctioned termination, be it financial, individual, or mass destruction. If you are going that high up the ladder to get the OK to kill an individual or group it usually means you'll bring out the big guns. Whatever you are going to try pull off it is going to create a huge, messy splash that is going to be nigh impossible to cover up and not trace back to you, and you don't care because you are in the "right". It doesn't really get any bigger than orbital bombardment. Of course you also have to deal with whatever non-CC governed entity if you are acting in a jurisdiction outside of one of the CC members, but that's just another big bag or two of money or perhaps a deniable asset to do the job.

Think of it like a UN security counsel resolution granting you permission to go out and attack. It is really just someone making up permission, and a bunch of other people all agreeing (I believe that an OO vote must be unanimous, outside of the target if they hold a seat). But there can obviously be descenters outside the circle, and you'll have to deal with them separately using guns, stealth, deception, negotiation, intimadation, etc.

EDIT: Note that it is really just a type of edict. The specifics of the contents, who can attack, who if anyone gets to loot, duration, limits, etc. can vary from OO to OO.

[Cang]

I picture the CC and the omega order as the modern day Roman catholic Church of the middle ages. At that time you had to be very friendly with the pope, because if you did something to upset the church and the pope (the CC in this case) he could decree a crusade on you and your land (omega order). Excluding the crusades to free the holy land, this order was a way to punish someone who did not follow and obey the Roman catholic church. After such a decree, all the "good" nations (mega corps in our case) could go and were encouraged to go and wage war on the "bad" nation. This meant land and money for the ones doing the invading (if successful) and sorrow for the one on the receiving end. Example; take when England invaded the catholic nation of Ireland (not really middle ages, but stay with me here), the church declared one of these open seasons on England. Well Spain went after England with an armada and.. well.. failed, but that is besides the point. You can understand where i am coming from here.