Lone Star and you, How to keep them away when on runs. Options

[kzt]

So I assume that if the players plan was "and then we leap off the Aztechnology pyramid and make good our escape" this would work for you? Just do you don't get beat up by your players? :S

[Cthulhudreams]

[toturi]

[Tarantula]

[Cthulhudreams]

With the growing modern trend, antennas are likely to be built into panels and not protruding.

Edit: With the other growing modern trend, there are also likely to be two or three antennas. I'm pretty sure modern BMWs have 2 and thats only for the radio and the GPS system. When you have something like gridguide that really matters, you can probably expect more - which is why you have to be an electronics expert to dig the damn things out.

[kzt]

[Cthulhudreams]

What, you mean your players don't routinely pack foldable hang gliders they can bust out when they are cornered on the top of a tall building? :D

My players actually did that for a game of syndicate - I spent all this time making a fort knox and they broke into a nearby generic office building and hang glidered across to the roof from that circumventing 9/10ths of the defenses.

[Nikoli]

Goody gum drops for them. It's a viable solution to a difficult problem. In SR, though, security designers have this ugly habit of placing turrets on roofs, usually with covering arcs to keep folks from coming in from directly above.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Tarantula]

Easy thing with turrets on roofs, is that they have to lock on with sensors. Give your team chameleon suits with thermal dampening 6.

The drones to spot with sensors are already at -3 for spotting a metahuman, and then -4 for the chameleon suit with cameras, or -6 for a thermal camera.

So, -7 normally, and at the very best of the best, drones will have a 6 sensor + 6 pilot/clearsight. For a total dicepool of 12. 12-7=5. Opposed by the targets infiltration + agility, chances are, this is anywhere from 10 (4 inf + 6 agi) to 21 (7 skill 2 spec, 3 improved ability, 9 agility)... Good luck automated turret.

[Riley37]

I cast Detect One-Upsmanship...

As a player who might want his character to have some cool and clever tactics, well, I'm glad to read these ideas. Some I might use, some not. Investing in dozens of kamikaze drones for a single huge operation is not where my group's game is. But the general idea of "try for distractions to slow pursuit" - maybe there's a variation on my scale. Also, some PCs would consider all hostages including schoolchildren totally fair game and expendable, some only would pin bombs on hostages if they'd taken over the base of a "classic villain" such Alamo 20,000, and some would only intentionally kill a (meta)human who was hostile and dangerous. (I think this can be within genre if you're following "master plan crime" movies; most of the "heroes" of Usual Suspects never shoot anyone who's unarmed, and most of Ocean's 11 have probably never killed in their life, although I bet Basher has blown up a person or two.)

So yeah, know LS and KE and what will make them look elsewhere or give up, what will make them bust out their big guns against you... but also, know your GM.

I'm pretty sure that mine would take "the PCs threaten biological warfare against a whole city" as a cue for "LS makes a public appeal for help, and gets immediate offers of assistance from the local chapters of Wise Warrior and Moon Maiden shamans, some of Draco Foundation's top mages, Catco Seraphim, and Ghostwalker in person; they come up with a counterplan. Afterwards, most of the public will say 'darn, too bad about the hostages, but it was necessary to stop even a threat of bio-terror' ". Then he'd say "okay, let's rewind the story a bit and talk this over".

Another GM might say "wow, that's a cool plan, you totally win." So, know your GM.

[Nikoli]

Oh, please don't mistake me. I love it when players come up with a way i either didn't think of to try or simply forgot to cover. Keeps me on my toes, after all if we as GM's thought of everything there would be no fun in the game.

[Slump]

[Kyoto Kid]

...OK so I may be late on this discussion but there is a simple way to omit the Matrix in the bomb equation.

First conventional the radio detonators keyed to a specific code word or phrase. Next a low power micro-transceiver hardwired to an el cheapo commlink set in hidden mode and subscribed only to the MT (which effectively employs it as an old style hand computer). This transceiver is set to receive and broadcast from/to the primary detonator at a predetermined interval programmed in the commlink's memory. There is also a small microcharge set to destroy this relay link.

Next you have the detonators programmed to send an intermittent "ping" to be received by the relay micro-transceiver at the programmed time the channel is open. If the bomb's signal fails to make contact at the proscribed "call time" (e.g the signal is jammed) the bombs and relay self destruct charge go off. If any other unsubscribed signal is received by the commlink (meaning it has been somehow hacked), it shuts down severing the link. No confirmation on the next "call", the bombs and self destruct charge go off.

To "manually" set the bombs off, the demolitionist calls up the relay using her MT and sends the detonation code to the commlink via the relay MT. The link to the relay is then closed. With the next ping confirmation the detonation code is uploaded to the MT and transmitted. A few moment afterwards, relay's destruct charge goes off.

Yeah a bit involved, but no actual matrix involvement required and it is damn hard to trace.

[kzt]

Nope. "The act of hacking and/or spoofing is presumed to incorporate an impersonation of a legitimate connection (that's why you need a successful Matrix Perception Test before you can spoof a command)."

[Cthulhudreams]

Okay, this comes down to how you think the matrix rules work. But to my mind, a bomb that is recieving your biomonitor is a node and you can find it with the scan action as an extended test.

Right now, for totally unclear territory because none of this is defined in the rules. But to ME they have to 'present' as whatever they actually are, because you can tell different node types apart - so commlinks present as commlinks, drones as drones, devices as whatever they are. You may presume they don't 'present' but that makes finding nodes to hack pretty weird. How does the 'find hidden nodes' action even work if nodes don't tell you what they are when set to hidden node? Couldn't I just carry a million RFID tags so my commlink is impossible to spot in the spam? Open question.

Of course the hackers could do it the other way, but finding what devices are linked to the biomonitor output, which 'beats' your proposed methodology, and is probably not a bad resolution.

As for KK methadologies, again it depends how you think the matrix is stiched together. It's completely undefined again - all that could be matrixactions, and that stuff might just be part of matrix.

Or it might not! :)

[Irian]

I'm really impressed - but if you would invest that much thought power into NOT getting into trouble, instead of HOW to cope with the trouble, life would be much easier for you :-)

Investing hours of work, expensive equipment, etc. into the worst case scenario seems a little bit... wasted... to me. Why don't you simply use the time for preparations NOT to get cornered in deep sh... ?

[Kyoto Kid]

...I basically play (when I GM) transceiver broadcasts being totally different from wireless comm. Just like today where a two way radio or walkie talkie uses different bands than cell or wifi transmission.

So hence,. no matrix involvement.

As to complexity. For anyone with a decent electronics skill (which is important in modern demolitions) this is not really a big issue. A low power transceiver (rating 1) & a cheap commlink are not that much of an investment for an important demo job. I have seen (and been on) runner teams that have put a lot more :nuyen: into a diversion than what I proposed. Granted I skimmed most of the thread so I am not sure if the hostage thing was a "last ditch" or part of the overall plan. I was just making a suggestion of how to keep the matrix out of the bomb loop.

[kzt]

[Kyoto Kid]

...would the Star really do that considering all the bad PR they already seem to have?

[Alphastream]

There are two types of discussions going on in this thread. One, where detailed tactics are being discussed, assumes that the player and GM both desire detailed tactics and counter-tactics. In that case, discussion of what would work is valid, and can be very fun if no one takes it personally. (As with Wikipedia, anything you write can be fodder for feedback).

In the second discussion, we are talking about what the game should be like. That's up to the GM and players. If the players want a gritty, hard, back-against-the-wall campaign, then these details are great. If the players want a more cinematic campaign, then they would likely not fit. The typical run might not evoke Lone Star, and Lone Star only exists for certain plots and for when the run was too easy. A run where the PCs have to think about things like hostages is either resolved easily (they buy the time to learn of a back door out) or the whole thing is the point (a very difficult situation with a planned out or an intense test of their skills with potential outs based on the PCs and some mastermind force - maybe the head of Lone Star is planning on talking to them, and this is both a test and way of forcing them to agree).

Regardless, the game is always there to be fun. What the PCs can and cannot do is totally up to the PCs and the GM in collaboration, and should always be fun. As soon as visions diverge, then the fun stops. It does not matter what people not at the table think, just that those at the table are having a great time.

Teos

[kzt]

[Alphastream]

On the what might work tip, I keep going back to "it depends on the campaign you run".

For example, the idea of using the media is awesome, given SR history and setting.

So, what does Lone Star know about using the media and expecting media involvement?

On one hand, they should logically, by now, know all about it and employ some of the top media hounds out there to pre-set, intercept, and counter any threat. This could be fun, pitting contact-vs-contact or player-vs-media-contact. It could be a very different and fun challenge.

On the other hand, the old stereotype of the police force (I know, Lone Star is not technically that) not getting the media and sinking in its bureaucracy, can be fun. It can be tons of fun for the PCs to use the media for a quick victory against Lone Star, outsmarting them and adding their names to their "runners we hate" list.

It would, for me, depend on the players I had at the time, or of which I was a part, and the type of campaign. As a GM, I would probably make a decision based on the campaign and how the players are leaning. I'm comfortable I can throw a challenge when needed, so I don't greatly care what type of challenge it is. If they seem to want a media-vs-media scenario, that's the way I would lean. But, if they aren't really into the media and want to get on to the plot (and away from the Star), then I would probably go for an easier resolution and move on.

As a GM, I stress that karma (in the larger sense) rules the world. Steal a car, someone might steal it from you. Steal a car and give it to a bum, bums might save your hide some other day. Etc. Easy come, easy go. Hard fought, hard won and more likely to last a longer time. This way, players know that something with low risk or that is easy generally won't carry the same reward as something that takes greater effort and risk.

Teos

[Kyoto Kid]

[gknoy]