[X] My Assistant

[ShadowDragon8685]

SAM batteries and AMD would be a good addition. I mean, all that work only to have your place destroyed by a missile?

[GB1]

[nezumi]

Forget a mountain villa/bunker, just live on a space station! Come on, it's not THAT much more impractical than the bat cave!

[Nim]

[Slump]

All my security is passive. Cameras and microphones, nothing even ultrasonic. The only way to determine that your ambush has been compromised is if you manage to discover a camera or microphone. All of the security equipment is hardwired to a laser-link that's mounted in the facade of the building, pointing to a sensor on the building across the street (also hidden in a recess), which leads to a host which I can call into using a cell phone.

[PlatonicPimp]

The key is escape. You can never keep a fixed location safe in modern/future warfare. Holding ground is inadvisable unless you have superior firepower, which you don't against the megas.

My runners were Nomadic. They all belonged to a circus, which moved from town to town. when the heat came, they just moved.

In addition, here is some Real world advice.

1st, you need a 72 hour bag. This has all the gear you need to survive for 72 hours in a easy to carry form. For everyone this usually includes change of clothes, fire starters, food and water, raingear etc. Look up the phrase 72 hour bag in google for examples.
Runners will want to add guns and ammo, armor, and a spare commlink with pristine fake sins.

2, security delays the attacker, it rarely stops them. It only stops them if it delays them long enough for you to go on the offensive. Security exists to give you time. It does this either by giving you advance warning or by delaying your attacker. Use this time to escape. sensors fall into the first catagory, as do informants. locks, armored doors, traps and such are the second category. Anything intended to hold ground will fail.

3rd: multiple escape routes. For fire escape, each primary occupancy room should have 2 exits. For security purposes this will hold true as well. by exit I mean a way to leave the room, eventually getting you out. The entire place should have at least 4 different ways to escpae, with varied tactics. one means of escape is actually to stay put. Places to hide are as useful as escape routes if your attackers are leaving at any point. this means you'll want to make them think you left, or were never there. Secret doors and hollow walls, hidden stairs and panels, attic spaces are all good ones. Tunnels should exit at lest 100' away from the building in question, and ideally should have multiple means of egress. this means you shouldn't have just one tunnel, buta whole tunnel SYSTEM to escape with.

4th: a place to run TOO. a bolt hole, a contact, the nearest state park, something. for civilians this is usually a nearby relative or friend, in a runners case it may be a specially prepared bolt hole or just a hotel chosen at random and payed for our of the credstick in the 72 hour bag.

5th: PRACTICE. every 6 months or so, make a drill out of running to the hills. make it like a camping trip. take the oppourtinuty to update/restock your 72 hour bag. Heck, for a runner, you should probably just MOVE every 6 months as a matter of course anyway.

[SL James]

[ShadowDragon8685]

I thought I got yelled at for suggesting the "facefull of claymore" approach to home (proactive) defense......

[Clyde]

Doors and windows are the main entry threat. A heavy security door, or something armored, is a good start. Don't forget to protect the lock - its screws need to be set deeply into the frame around the door. Multiple locks (like an extra deadbolt) help hold off kicks by sharing the force between two locks instead of one. You can also get a metal crossbar or a "police lock" which is a bar that angles out from the door to a notch in the floor. With those the only way through the door is for someone inside to open it or to get a battering ram.

Windows can be replaced with ballistic composite (even in a cruddy neighborhood, if you're handy enough). Quick release metal bars are another neat option: they keep people out but can be unlatched to escape. To keep someone from knocking a hole in the window and unlocking it make sure to have window stops installed. Another option is window film: some of the stuff is tinted to keep out UV rays and excess sunlight (an hostile spells), but the stuff also makes it harder to break the window out because it holds the broken pieces of glass together. This is nice for reducing damage from flying glass in an earthquake or explosion.

Alarms are a good idea, too. Motion sensor systems - even if they just turn on a floodlight outside - can help as well. The idea is to keep ordinary gutterpunks away from your place (because there are easier pickings) and to give you warning that there's trouble. Nothing sucks like waking up with an HK-227X pointed right at your face - set up defenses tough enough that you have warning and can try another way out.

Drones, sentry guns, claymores, smoke bombs, tear gas, etc. are all fun tricks to screw with incoming baddies. Actually, rigging your house up with a gas system and having a mask by the bed would be pretty slick.

Finally, you want to try hard to have an escape route planned ahead of time. Expect obvious tricks like snipers covering back windows or a snatch team with a net gun (or grenade launcher) at the back door. Simple countermeasures will probably help a lot. Pre packed explosives might create a back door where there wasn't one before - just make sure your renter's insurance is paid up. :)

[Navaruk]

You could substitute claymore for the classic shotgun ammunition and a rat trap approach. This gives us less collateral damage yet still slows the pursuers down, and you have something left over to interrogate (or sell off as spare organs) should you confront them.

[SL James]

[evil1i]

OK - where I live the typical good quality inner city apartment (3 Bedroom 1.5 Bathroom, Living, Dining, Services and Balcony) would set you back around $500,000+ depending on quality and location. So looking to secure that I'd expect to spend around $100,000 , anything more and you are getting into ridiculous levels of expenditure and if you've gotten to that level who cares about money :)

1. Entrance is restricted by having 3 floor to ceiling aquariums creating a choke point. These aquariums should also be made of armoured glass to protect against small arms fire. If they try to ditch a grenade in the front door it should be stopped by the arrangement of the aquariums and the blast should be dissipated by them too.

2. The balcony should have a small chest that is used as seat normally but contains 3 essential things.
a. 72 hour bag mentioned earlier
b. enough rope/cable to reach the ground below your apartment (this includes getting off of a near ground roof/outdoor area - eg all the way to the ground.
c. a smoke grenade + delayed claymore mine that are rigged to go off a few seconds (for the smoke grenade) and then how ever long it takes to reach the ground after that (for the claymore)

3. All doors should be opaque armoured glass

4. Bed spread, cushions, throw rugs, carpets, wall hangings aplenty! All made from or lined with ballistic cloth. These can then all be used in a hurry to resist some if not all of the damage from small arms and grenades. Time enough to get the heck out of dodge!

5. Dining table and chairs can also be made from armoured glass.

All these are so that you can escape not stay and fight. Always fight on a place of your choosing and assume that if they have decided to make that your place of living they know enough or are confident enough to overwhelm/defeat/avoid any counter-attack you may try and also means that any defences you use are not able to back-fire malfunction of trip you up should you get drunk/high or have guest over that don't know not to step there!

[nezumi]

evil - landmine waiting under your balcony. End of story.

Keep in mind, while 2 exits per room is nice, it's also a liability. More exits mean more entrances. However, well placed C4 is an instant exit in a place of your choosing.

[PBTHHHHT]

[PBTHHHHT]

[SL James]

[PBTHHHHT]

[HappyDaze]

Chem-sniffers on police drones set to patrol should detect your megaton of platique from a distance. They exist in my SR mainly to detect terrorist threats - such as explosive vests and car bombs - but they will also pick-up on a "house-bomb" that can take out a few blocks.

[SL James]

Well, this would be mostly for dangerou amateurs. A professional wouldn't be stupid enough to hit you on your home turf. Unless they're written by a horrible author, like Chimera whacking James O'Malley in his home.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The ultimate deterrant to people trying to take you alive (or dead) in your house?

Rig the whole place with C-XII.

Not just a little bit. A lot. A smegging lot.

Rig it all to a biomonitor - if your Physical Track or Stun track ever fills up to full while you're at home, it goes off. As in, massively off.

As in, enough to wipe out the building and the whole fucking block.

Don't hide this fact. A Deterrant weapon is no good if you they don't know about it.

Also, paint your whole house in radio-absorbing paint and antidrone weaponry, so they can't just take you out with a drone.

If they want to kill you or take you alive in your home, they're in deep shit.

[Kyoto Kid]

[HappyDaze]

Wow. That has got to be the the...

OK. If you make a public statement that "I can blow everything to shit" then you are a public threat. Your deterrant will be no such thing as the authorities will do what they can to eliminate you. Remember, this is the same world where Ares set off a nuke in a downtown area to deal with a threat.

Containing you within your own home will be the first step, so congrats - you get to live in your pile of C-12 with dwindling supplies (only what food, water, and fuel for power you have stored on your own). Seiges still work in 2070.

You can't really stop them from using drones. If you're going to sit in a house-bomb with some sort of anti-signal devices set up, then expect them to simply wire their drones with FO cables or to use LOS laser/maser emissions for controlling them all from a command post LTA craft several thousand meters in the air above the whole mess.

Responses prior to the doors getting kicked in can include things like imitating the signals of the biomonitor and using massive transmitters (on the mentioned LTA, or possibly wheeled into position) to push the signal right through your paint. The radio signals might just cook you a bit too...

BTW, what makes you think that they want to take you alive? At this point you're a public meanace and they'll treat you accordingly. You'll be dead within a night's time of announcing your doomsday plan and that's assuming that the authorities didn't find a way to track that much C12 being picked up (yes, even illegal purchases can be tracked if the cops/corps care enough and bulk purchases of C12 tend to attract such attention).

[Ankle Biter]

[ShadowDragon8685]

What, do you think I'm stupid enough to build my Doomsday Device in a populated area?

Z-Zone, fraggers! Get with the program!

And firing a LAW through what you think is a window will only hit a plate of ablative, reactive armor - and get your own rocket in return from the drone launcher situated two floors up.

[Red]

My 2 nuyen...

I think home defense, like all other things in SR, requires a touch of moderation. Otherwise things can warp into an unrealistic arms race with an enemy that doesn't exist, or with the GM who can always conjure up a bigger gun.

1. Good locks, good windows (polarized glass with controllable tint).
2. A garage to secure your car(s).
3. Plenty of cameras, microphones, and motion sensors hidden on each face of your home which are connected by cable to some central home computer wire no direct wireless (i.e. behind chokepoint)
4. Keep all volitile materials in the basement.
5. Add chemsniffers like you would smoke detectors.
6. Maybe a MAD/Cyberware scanner at the front or back door.
7. One ward, and a lodge/circle in a smaller conference room. Handful of bound spirits based on your group's resources. Concealment, movement, guard can get you out of trouble fairly quickly.
8. 72 hour bag, and monthly practice on how to hightail it out of town.
9. 3 bolt holes.
10. 3 "bolt hole" contacts.

These 10 things are generally accessable. They aren't too expensive. And they aren't a huge waste of resources.

Are far as corporations are concerned, I usually don't imagine corporate managers approving million nuyen budgets for the assassination of runners when the job nets them absolutely zero profit (there are exceptions). PR can handle any incriminating dirt runners ever find, look at Aztechnology. That sort of thing.

As for organized crime, they'll probably use the path of least resistance. A holdout pistol from some random dude when you visit your favorite bar. And they'll use some pitiful squib to do it because life is cheap for them. Or maybe they'll send some guys in a pizza delivery truck with an smg or a grenade in the bag.

I think world is more interesting when you consider that no matter who is involved, they have limited resources. Megacorps have trillions, but those trillions are properly invested in something. Those trillions aren't primarily liquid. Liquid money in the bank doesn't have a favorable ROI.

I try to remember to think to myself. If I was the enemy, was the the path of least resistance to nail this guy? And if I am the runner, what is the path of least resistance to protect myself given the probability of attack given X, Y, and Z.

YMMV