[X] My Assistant

[Cthulhudreams]

So you're actually serious about employing a bunch of guys like Josef Mengele to kill old people?

You know you are going to have to hire sociopaths for the task, and when you hire monsters, you get certifiable monsters. What happens when Horizon gets hold of that and puts it up infront of the world media? You know last time that happened it created something so horrible that many people today do not want to accept it?

[Saint Sithney]

Yeah, the last time it happened, you didn't even notice.
Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler ever did. He and Mao each managed about 20 million murdered in the names of Totalitarian Socialism (which is much the same as the corporate structure.)
These days there's really too much genocide to keep track of anymore.

Maybe you prefer to think of Corps as friendly places and the guards you gun down as loving husbands and fathers? ¯\(°_o)/¯

[Cthulhudreams]

Aha, again, you undo yourself with your own examples:

1) You are proposing guards are very poorly trained and kept serfs. In both those regimes, being in the security forces was one of the best jobs around. You got great pay, good conditions, and your units were always the best equiped and best trained. This is totally the opposite of the low education then elimination when your job is over model you proposed previously.

Which model are you proposing? Please be more clear, I thought you were proposing a poor, undertrained and oppressed guard force, but now I see you are using as examples a very large and very highly trained guard force, chosen for impeccable family connections and political alignment, then paid and kept well to keep them that way? The guards in russia got preferential treatment for their entire family!

You're looking at medium/high lifestyles for all troops, not low - is that what you intended? Along with first pick of top of the line equipment from your factories?

2) These guys were very well trained, equiped and kept precisely because the regimes knew that they could see the conditions in other countries, and it was very easy for them to defect.

3) These regimes relied on total isolation of their people to prevent everyone else not in the guards from knowing what is going on in other areas. This is not possible in the 6th world because the Renraku Archelogy is literally across the street from a major Ares installation. The guard has to walk 5 feet down a street in broad daylight to defect. He is also constantly barraged by a huge amount of infomation that is almost impossible to block, let alone censor. You cannot control what he sees and what he knows.

Your examples completely undercut your point!

Also your numbers about stalin are pretty dicey. While there is no doubt 20 mil went missing, quite a number probably died of starvation from gross mismanagement, rather than active killing. Not that that is good, but just an FYI

[3278]

...not sure what the difference is.

If this is actually true, you have my sympathy.

Okay, large scale argiculture is really difficult in the 6th world, because if you try and herd some cattle, you'll eventually have calves that breath fire and/or turn people to stone, which is an issue for you the farmer.Which is why everything is made from soy.

Where are you getting this information? Firstly, that livestock consistently mutate at a rate high enough to be an issue of concern, and secondly that this is the reason for making most inexpensive food from soy?

So most people exist eating vat food, which is actually pretty cheap.

Absolutely. But you said the SINless could not work, and could not obtain money. How are they paying for [even inexpensive] vat food?

You can scrape by on very low incomes. The barrens are Mogadishu. The cops don't go there... ever, and you can buy guns, cocaine and prostitutes on the street off the local gangers. Ther eis also lots of small manufacturing business, food stands, all sorts of stuff slum style because Renraku cannot operate out here...

Again, according to you, without a SIN, you can't have a job. How do the SINless get the small manufacturing jobs you're discussing? Without a SIN, how does one buy the food to sell in the stand?

...the local gangers cut their teeth throwing flaming trash cans through Renraku's shopfronts in the A zones.

So the local gangers must have SINs to be able to enter the A zones in your setting; how do they not simply get arrested when they come into the A zones and start throwing flaming trash cans about?

However, the narcotics trade is HUGE. Like.. MASSIVE. It's 1930's china in size. It's bigger than the total earnings of the US government. It cannot operate in the corporate concessions and the A zones because the police are all over it like a rash (you can literally get 10 importing cocaine convictions for walking down the street in the concessions), so people from here take their money with them and go over the boarder to buy it.

So in essence, your underground economy is fueled entirely by the drug trade, and while you can't sell in A zones - because the police would be all over you - you can go to the Barrens, buy it, and bring it back, without any police problems? How do people buy and use narcotics without being tracked and arrested, particularly given the number of them that are peeing in corporate toilets? And don't other employers test for narcotics use, as they do today?

[Saint Sithney]

Well, taking the Archelogy as an example, how many months was it a completely sealed up house of horrors before anyone even checked up on the inside? Even with a shopping mall on the bottom 3 floors, the place was very cloistered off.

I see the skilled guards or corp army guys sort of like Spartans. Warriors trained from age 5 onward to be killers. Hard men who are kept from wants other than killing and death. What needs would they have for fancy things, as they've known nothing else but soldiering? However, most guards will not be these people. That's just the high-threat response team. Most will just be there to make sure to block the exits when the alarm is sounded. The "service level" kind of guys who basically exist only for public relations purposes and because they're harder to hack. They're cops who patrol the softest beat in the 6th world. In actual combat they're basically just crappy human alarms whose biomonitors set off the bells when they get capped. And they ask those questions that robots cant. Some gun skills, but some social skills as well. If they manage to prove themselves as combat veterans, their kids will likely be taken from them and put to the purposes of the corp as soldiers. Much of the internal security would be handled by drones orchestrated by a team of maybe 4 guys in a security room. They're there to track threats on the Big Board, maneuvering defenses toward them and personnel/resources away. Just guys to provide overwatch and general electronic awareness. Meanwhile, they can pipe in riggers from all over the world to meet the needs for drone combat. Add in a wage-mage for every 30k population, and you're a nice little fortress/community.

But that's just at a major site. Minor work sites would have basically just the social guards and drones with off-site magical/technical backup. The High Threat response teams would show up no more than 15 minutes after an alarm is sounded.


To answer your next question, the cop-style guards, as basically non-essential personnel, would be housed, again, in efficient little apartments on site. Low overhead, easy to control. Corps can provide a middling way of life for a low price tag, and besides, you never see Enterprise crew complain about their limited accommodations since it's all part of the service (sorry, been watching ST:TNG recently. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/upsidedown.gif) ) These are the type of guys who will work until they're genuinely old. And, again, the corps are going to find a way to keep them poor, same as how they keep the poor poor today. Company Town style. But they won't mind so much. They know how cold it is out on those Calvinist streets. They've like as not seen the damned and SINless walking around, and they know they're much happier in their little rooms, watching their little doors, bound to the weight of their little guns.

[Cthulhudreams]

If this is actually true, you have my sympathy.


Where are you getting this information? Firstly, that livestock consistently mutate at a rate high enough to be an issue of concern, and secondly that this is the reason for making most inexpensive food from soy?

Nowhere! But we know that like 40% of people turn into metahumanity, so why is it different for cows? Maybe it isn't, but I don't care. Plus it's a cool flavour touch that explains why meat is really expensive suddenly. If the soy thing is really easy it explains why soy is cheap, but not why meat is expensive.

Absolutely. But you said the SINless could not work, and could not obtain money. How are they paying for [even inexpensive] vat food?


Again, according to you, without a SIN, you can't have a job. How do the SINless get the small manufacturing jobs you're discussing? Without a SIN, how does one buy the food to sell in the stand?

I assume you've seen a slum at some point - you keep criticizing me for this sort of stuff. Like that. They arn't jobs in the conventional economy because they only sell their products to other slum inhabitants. They don't get money, they barter it (typically). look, the barrens are like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela

They have

The cocaine trade has impacted Brazil and in turn its favelas, which tend to be ruled by drug lords. Regular shoot-outs between traffickers and police and other criminals, as well as assorted illegal activities, lead to murder rates in excess of 40 per 100,000 inhabitants in the city of Rio and much higher rates in some Rio favelas....Drug use is highly concentrated in these areas run by local gangs in each highly populated favela. Drug sales and use run rampant at night when many Favelas host their own baile, or dance party, where many different social classes can be found. These drug sales make up "a business that in some of the occupied areas rakes in as much as US$ 150 million per month, according to official estimates released by the Rio media.

but also a bunch of micro industry doing stuff from making clothes to selling cola.

So the local gangers must have SINs to be able to enter the A zones in your setting; how do they not simply get arrested when they come into the A zones and start throwing flaming trash cans about?

They start a riot. There are lots of SINless who are dead keen on the idea! Riots are pretty regular feature of whats going on. Again, it's like China in 1930s - the concessions got attacked many times.

So in essence, your underground economy is fueled entirely by the drug trade, and while you can't sell in A zones - because the police would be all over you - you can go to the Barrens, buy it, and bring it back, without any police problems? How do people buy and use narcotics without being tracked and arrested, particularly given the number of them that are peeing in corporate toilets? And don't other employers test for narcotics use, as they do today?

I presume you've heard of opium dens. Also, see previous about dance parties. As for why employers don't check? They make many of the drugs! Plus there is no equipment in the book that enables the detection of drugs, so I presume it's quite hard to do.

[Cthulhudreams]

Well, taking the Archelogy as an example, how many months was it a completely sealed up house of horrors before anyone even checked up on the inside? Even with a shopping mall on the bottom 3 floors, the place was very cloistered off.

It's illegal for anyone except renraku to check, as that would be trespass. Renraku didn't want to admit what was going wrong. But everyone knew about it - it made the news.

I see the skilled guards or corp army guys sort of like Spartans.

Ah, so you're actually proposing an elite guards model - you need to be clear! This can definately work.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I dunno about you, but I'm uncomfortable about giving people classed as mentally disabled hand grenades. It just has a certain ring of 'looming disaster' to it.



The second line of SINless makes no sense conceptually. Assuming you still want to eat, you need to get a job. Which means you get a SIN. Which means the second line of SINless evaporates.

It's just impossible to stay off the net unless you have no skills (in which case the net is happy for you to do that) or no desire to eat.



Unless you're relying on skillsofts, it does take tons of training to become a competent soldier (just to be clear, I'm not talking about rentacops, I'm talking about the guys who guard Renraku facilities that have important and commercially sensitive data). This means you're talking about way more than just 'standing their and looking mean' you're talking about leading small squads, designing patrols etc.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports.../RAND_TR193.pdf

Looks at how much your AFQT score (not! your training) makes you. Going from Category IV to IIIB results in a 34% increase in accuracy for gunners. The best bit is that category IV personnel don't even know they are doing it wrong. If you ask them to tell you what was incorrect about their operation of the equipment, 97% of cat I personnel will tell you 1 or more issues, almost 30% of IV personnel don't even identify any errors.

You're suggesting putting category 5, who are less capable again, in charge of complex security systems! People who are literally incapable of identifying that the system is not working.

I dunno about you, but I would not be particularly threatened by that sort of person. Check out the survival stats in a battlefield simulation - 68% for Cat I and 26% in IV. Again, will drop further in V we can presume, if the relationship holds down to 16%. They are also about half as likely to actually get the job done.

Anyway, these disadvantages are perhaps best simulated in shadowrun by setting the SINless and slaves stats very low. You're looking at 1s across the board and the uneducated flaw stock.

With everything hat you are positing here though, tehre would be NO SHADOWRUN... if there are no functional sinless there would be no shadowrunners... thus teh dystopian future evaporates... becuase these do actually exist in the hadowrun Univers, your argument are obviously wrong... This is not Real Life we are talking about, we are discussing the capabilities of a lower class of people that would actually function in the underground economy that actually exists in Shadowrun...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That's the rub - drones in SR are stupid cheap. The cheapest you can pay someone is a take home of 2k a month (less than that and they don't eat), and a robot costs 3k-10k upfront. Assuming annual maint costs of 1/3rd of the sticker price, and a capital write off over 3 years, then your drone costs between 6k and 20k, whereas a low paid human costs 72k over the same period.

Edit: I actually figure that people on 'low' lifestyles are people in the services industry that employers haven't worked out how to replace with robots yet.

You are pulling soem really crazy numbers here... what makes you think that the corps have to pay 2k monthly?

Keep the Faith

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Aha, again, you undo yourself with your own examples:

1) You are proposing guards are very poorly trained and kept serfs. In both those regimes, being in the security forces was one of the best jobs around. You got great pay, good conditions, and your units were always the best equiped and best trained. This is totally the opposite of the low education then elimination when your job is over model you proposed previously.

Which model are you proposing? Please be more clear, I thought you were proposing a poor, undertrained and oppressed guard force, but now I see you are using as examples a very large and very highly trained guard force, chosen for impeccable family connections and political alignment, then paid and kept well to keep them that way? The guards in russia got preferential treatment for their entire family!

You're looking at medium/high lifestyles for all troops, not low - is that what you intended? Along with first pick of top of the line equipment from your factories?

2) These guys were very well trained, equiped and kept precisely because the regimes knew that they could see the conditions in other countries, and it was very easy for them to defect.

3) These regimes relied on total isolation of their people to prevent everyone else not in the guards from knowing what is going on in other areas. This is not possible in the 6th world because the Renraku Archelogy is literally across the street from a major Ares installation. The guard has to walk 5 feet down a street in broad daylight to defect. He is also constantly barraged by a huge amount of infomation that is almost impossible to block, let alone censor. You cannot control what he sees and what he knows.

Your examples completely undercut your point!

Also your numbers about stalin are pretty dicey. While there is no doubt 20 mil went missing, quite a number probably died of starvation from gross mismanagement, rather than active killing. Not that that is good, but just an FYI

And yet, when they crossed the line in one fashion or another they were sent to a Siberian Gulag, never to be heard from again...
Never forget that Stalinist Russia ruled through Fear, not loyalty, not high paying Jobs, none of that... it was all about the fear......

And no, if you really look into the numbers, Stalin "retired" more than 20 Million dissidents during his time... That is actually a pretty hard fact to refute... much like the Nazi Camps Eliminated over 6 Million Jews... it is a matter of record...

Keep the Faith

[Cthulhudreams]

Umm, it's 20 million disappeared in the official figures between the two census accounts that are not accounted for in the calculated birth and death rates. It's actually impossible to know how many because most of the records have been disappeared/altered.

[3278]

Nowhere! But we know that like 40% of people turn into metahumanity, so why is it different for cows? Maybe it isn't, but I don't care.

Well, that's a wonderful attitude. I think if you don't care, maybe it'd be useful if instead of presenting your opinions-based-on-nothing as facts - to quote you again, "Okay, large scale argiculture is really difficult in the 6th world, because if you try and herd some cattle, you'll eventually have calves that breath fire and/or turn people to stone, which is an issue for you the farmer.Which is why everything is made from soy." - you might consider mentioning first that you don't care if there's any actual basis for these statements. Yeah?

I assume you've seen a slum at some point - you keep criticizing me for this sort of stuff. Like that. They arn't jobs in the conventional economy because they only sell their products to other slum inhabitants. They don't get money, they barter it (typically).

...but also a bunch of micro industry doing stuff from making clothes to selling cola.

That's not what you said, however. What you said was that SINless people can't eat, specifically that in order to eat, you needed to have a SIN. That's the point of yours that I've been contradicting, and which you're now contradicting yourself; SINless can work, either in criminal trades or by providing services for barter, or in micro-industries, you're saying now. And I agree wholeheartedly; that's the point I've been trying to make to you.

And, yeah, I've, um, seen a slum. Or two.

As for why employers don't check? They make many of the drugs!

So your position is that the corps make the drugs, sell them to drug cartels who sell them to SINless people who sell them to corporate citizens. Really? That seems like a roundabout way of doing things.

Plus there is no equipment in the book that enables the detection of drugs, so I presume it's quite hard to do.

Oh, well if there's no equipment in the book, it must be difficult to do. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) Except, of course, that it's done today, and Shadowrun's chemical analysis technology - the stuff that's, you know, in the book - is vastly more advanced than today's.

[Cthulhudreams]

Well, that's a wonderful attitude. I think if you don't care, maybe it'd be useful if instead of presenting your opinions-based-on-nothing as facts - to quote you again, "Okay, large scale argiculture is really difficult in the 6th world, because if you try and herd some cattle, you'll eventually have calves that breath fire and/or turn people to stone, which is an issue for you the farmer.Which is why everything is made from soy." - you might consider mentioning first that you don't care if there's any actual basis for these statements. Yeah?

Okay, this isn't going to work.

You asked me for how do I run things. I gave you that. You then critised the statements I made about how I run things, for those being my opinion and how I run things.

When I give you the answer you asked for, critising me for giving you the answer you asked for is not at all productive.

When I run things:

I do not use the conventional matrix rules.
I do make a number of changes to the setting to accommodate those rules, including enabling electron teleportation and remote power transmission.
I also make a number of other changes to the rules - e.g. removing FFBA as pointless dice pool inflation.
I do have cows including meta-animals at the same rate as humans
I do use the 'big brother is always watching but has ADHD' principle for deciding how corporations notice & respond.

Are we talking about how I run things, or how the setting is described in the books? I was talking about the setting, but then you asked me how I run things, so I changed topics. Do you want to go back to the first?

PS: It says in the book that psyche is a designer drug produced by a corporation, but it is also illegal to have in corporate areas. It is swings and roundabouts! As these two statements are mutally contradictory, we are forced to arrive at a game specific resolution.

If you want to talk about the setting, I have no idea how the SINless survive as all the services jobs have been replaced by robots or mind controlled slaves managed by Yakuza crime syndicates. Unlike in my conception, the sacrifice zones do not have electricity, making it very hard to engage in any industry or use the matrix - locking out any way to engage with mainstream society. You lose that last comparison with the slums in Brazil or India (any sort of government services at all) and become far worse than Mogadishu. There is also no way for the locals in the massively urbanised slums to grow food. It's quite curious.

So yeah, please, are we talking about the problem, or how I resolve it? Asking me for my resolutions, then attacking on the basis of making stuff in my resolution isn't helpful.

[3278]

Are we talking about how I run things, or how the setting is described in the books? I was talking about the setting, but then you asked me how I run things, so I changed topics. Do you want to go back to the first?

Well, as long as you're asking, what I'd like is if you'd make it clear which of the two you're doing, when you're doing it. You have - apparently - been switching between the two, apparently switching to "how my game runs" only when something you've previously said is shown to contradict canon or logic. If you'd perhaps be a little more clear when you're talking about canon, and when you're talking about your own game, you could avoid the appearance that you're only making the transition between the two to avoid being shown to be wrong in some way, something which appears to deeply trouble you.

[Cthulhudreams]

The specific time I changed was when you posted this:

How do the SINless survive in your game?

Then, I quoted that, and wrote text below it.

I considered it was logical to change to talking about 'my game' when you asked me about my game. I thought that was natural progression of the discussion. If it is not, what did you intend for me to answer?

I am sorry that you took what I thought was a pretty clear Q&A format as deception, I did consider that your question, my clear quoting of that question and then putting text below it made it clear that the text was an answer related to the question posed.

[3278]

Yes, absolutely.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Circles Within Circles Within Circles...

Nothing is actually being resolved here...

Keep the Faith

[toturi]

Circles Within Circles Within Circles...

Nothing is actually being resolved here...

Keep the Faith

THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

So Very Very True Toturi...

Keep the Faith

[Tachi]

THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

That's not quite as dramatic unless you kick someone into the 'pit of death' first... I'm not volunteering to be kicked into the 'pit of death' or anything, I'm just saying... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Ravor]

Wait, you mean that Dumpshock doesn't count as a burning pit of hell all by itself? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[toturi]

Wait, you mean that Dumpshock doesn't count as a burning pit of hell all by itself? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

Well to be fair, that burning pit of hell you are refering to is only a small part of Dumpshock. The rest of the place's pretty cool, I believe it is refered to as Black Ice.

[Ravor]

That's the Dumpshock that I know and love, a chaotic cauldron of swirling extremes.

[Tachi]

That's the Dumpshock that I know and love, a chaotic cauldron of swirling extremes.

Yup, reminds me of a convenience store burrito, 'molten lava on the outside, frozen popsicle in the middle.' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Or was it icicle?

Good afternoon boys and girls, let's play 'Name That Movie Reference'.^^

Here's a hint: one of the staring actors has a name that is synonymous with 'beach' and looks kinda like this: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif) even during the brief moments when he's sober.

[Warlordtheft]

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(IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wavey.gif)