Bulk Quantities of Equipment, Can Players affect the market? Options

[stevebugge]

Normally supply isn't to much of an issue in the Shadow Markets. Rare items are already very expensive and have availabiliy ratings to indicate a limited market. Common items are usually readily available in reasonable quantities, but what happens when a player decides to buy a lot of something? If it's being bought through the black market should the price and delivery time go up? How much? If they try to buy through legitimate channels big orders will leave records and may raise flags. I'm curious how people would deal with some of these situations as far as markets and law enforcement inquiries would go:

Runner trying to buy 1000kg of Commercial Explosives.

Runner trying to purchase 144000 Data Chip Blanks.

Runner purchasing 5000 RFID Chips.

Runner Trying to purchase 10,000,000 Rounds of Standard Ammo.


EDIT: In light of this:

[Geekkake]

By the time you're ready (and need) to make bulk purchases, you've probably got at least one low-maintenance shell company set up, or have a contact who has such things. This is good for laundering money, buying stuff on credit, etc. You can wring them dry for relatively short amounts of cash, discard them, and start more on another fake SIN.

These shell companies are excellent for throwing off pursuit with questionable purchases. Make the purchase, then, *gasp*! the company folds, leaving behind only a P.O. Box registered to one "I.P. Freely", with a SIN that falls apart like boiled meat.

[Shrike30]

Obviously, a push in the shadow markets that says "I'll buy any C-12 you've got... I don't care how much it costs..." is going to draw attention. Honestly, the shadow market is not really set up to handle bulk illegal purchases through normal channels, and any fixer with half a brain is gonna say "I got a solution to yer problem, but it ain't cheap."

This solution is usually a run. Hire some guys to break into a shipping facility and redirect some cargo, or into a manufacturing plant and change what the autolathes are producing, or into an army base to steal a truck full of equipment. If the runners don't want to do this themselves, they can be their own Johnsons or, more likely, have their fixer set it up for them. This could easily lead to anything from an encounter to an entire campaign arc.

For the record, buying 10k rounds of ammunition isn't going to get anyone's hackles up. You can buy quantities like that on the Internet today with a credit card. :P

[HappyDaze]

Depending upon your Notoriety, trying to buy 1,000 kg of C-12 is likely to get you turned-in to the authorities - by your own contact! Why? No one really likes the idea of a street-level WMD in the hands of a total wildcard (shadowrunner).

[Clyde]

You needn't be using the 10,000 kg for terrorist purposes. The runners could easily have a job supplying a mercenary unit outside normal channels.

I think massive purposes like this do merit a Shadowrun, however. See the novel "The Dogs of War" for a good fictional example of how bulk acquisition may be handled under the radar (in that book: combat boots, camouflage uniforms, rucksacks, 100 Schmeisser machine pistols, bazookas, mortars, some twenty thousand rounds of ammunition and a merchant ship).

[Jaid]

[Toptomcat]

Commercial explosives are used in quantanties far surpassing that on a daily baisis in the mining industry.

[stevebugge]

[Slump]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Bira]

Getting that many RFID tags or data chips also shouldn't be too much problem. Either setting up a shell company and purchasing through it, or raiding a single warehouse should get you those things.

[Clyde]

I think the main lesson we can draw from this, however, is that someone has to go through some special effort at looking legitimate to load up on that quantity of illegal gear: setting up shell companies, obtaining fake licenses, etc.

Basically, I'd say that bulk purchases don't much affect the shadow economy because they've got to be special ordered. A smaller (but still large) purchase, however could be different. It's one of the YMMV things - maybe in your campaign somebody buying up 10 Ares Predators will deplete the shadow market for those guns (and raise prices) and in someone else's its 50 Ares Alphas.