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

[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.