[X] My Assistant

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

One thing that people - including likely the people who wrote that article - forget is that the Marine Corps is able to get away with that because they've outsourced almost all of their logistics support to the Navy. The Marines are transported by Navy ships, healed by Navy doctors, and often enough fed by Navy cooks. Now, that's not to say that the Marines aren't effective - just that they're more expensive than they look. What percent of the Navy's operating costs can be laid at the feet of the Marine Corps?

Not always true... sometimes we were transported by the Airforce too... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Keep the Faith

[CanRay]

Navy Guide To Land Warfare: Send the Marines. Have lunch. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Navy Guide To Land Warfare: Send the Marines. Have lunch. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

'Tis True...

Keep the Faith

[Tzeentch]

IRL, anything that the DoD pays to develop they have an unlimited license to the technology, generally speaking. Contracting Regulations 101. So, if they pay Microsoft ¥50M to develop a Firewall app at whatever obscene rating they want, then they can copy it willy-nilly. Sure, they buy individual copies of Windows, but they didn't pay for that R&D.

-- They don't pay for seats (usually), but they still pay for the support and maintenance of the software, training, and upgrades. And all of that will tend to be higher than commercial software because it's often custom and task-specific. Plus the DoD still has to pay licensing fees if they use certain technologies and code.
-- Shadowrun is a bit of an odd duck here as a fairly small programmer team can whip up and maintain software pretty easily (a side effect of trying not to totally gimp the solo hacker).

Considering that we take on lifetime medical care for all of our soldiers currently, I don't think it's that unrealistic.

-- Taking current US military policy and applying it to Shadowrun is almost certainly wrong. And that lifetime medical care usually amounts to NOTHING for most veterans as it only covers service-connected issues. I sincerely doubt even the UCAS is going to saddle themselves with lifetime medical costs over this.

As in "if you get wired, your signing up for a 20 year stint."

-- Good luck using that as a selling point for military service.

And as another point, consider some of the military/security focused cybersuites in Augmentation. The SK Cyberlogician Deluxe Military Version argues strongly for significant modification - particularly of officers.

-- Corporations have lots of fancy stuff on the market that never actually reach service.

I think this is where how people play the game comes into play. In games I run, I pretty much assume that anything worth more than about ¥300k that could be under threat is going to have a spirit escorting it. And anything over a million is going to always have a spirit with it on protection. If companies have mages on staff, paying the costs to bind spirits is pretty trivial, and provide serious insurance. Particularly Guardian spirits.

-- The thing to consider is "what could I have that mage doing other then wasting a spirit service guarding some armored car?"

[CanRay]

-- The thing to consider is "what could I have that mage doing other then wasting a spirit service guarding some armored car?"

Watching the rift where Dunkie died, that's what. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tzeentch]

-- All this talk of Marines has me wondering: are the UCAS/CAS Marines even mentioned recently? The last direct references I can recall were in Shadows of North America and only applied to the CAS:

** p. 55 talks about the CAS Marines 1st MRB "Ferrets"
** p. 67 says there are two CAS Marine expeditionary forces.

[LivingOxymoron]

-- All this talk of Marines has me wondering: are the UCAS/CAS Marines even mentioned recently? The last direct references I can recall were in Shadows of North America and only applied to the CAS:

** p. 55 talks about the CAS Marines 1st MRB "Ferrets"
** p. 67 says there are two CAS Marine expeditionary forces.

Nope. In fact, I've only ever heard mention of UCAS Marines twice, and both had to do with Ares. Ares Arms' Executive VP is Retired USMC General Guido Cantarelli, and Ares Seattle's Head is Karen King, also a retired Marine veteran.

[CanRay]

Maybe the Marines of the UCAS and CAS are used in their traditional roles, that of Sea Soldiers, with the occasional Amphibious Assault (Which has probably been mostly replaced by T-Bird VTOL insertions.).

Would explain why they're not discussed much. After all, what Shadowteam is going to be insane enough to, oh, I don't know, sneak aboard the Supercarrier that's in Seattle's Harbour?

Oh, wait, we're talking about the PCs here, they might just be stupid enough to do that... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Red_Cap]

Nonono, CanRay. The proper statement is, "The GM just might dislike his runners enough set a run on board said supercarrier."

[Stahlseele]

Isn't that supercarrier home to a dragon?
Or am i getting something mixed up again?

[Sengir]

-- Good luck using that as a selling point for military service.

Getting your MD via the Bundeswehr means signing up for 17 years, and it does sell.

[StealthSigma]

Nonono, CanRay. The proper statement is, "The GM just might dislike his runners enough set a run on board said supercarrier."

Tonight, on Runners of the Deep.

Momo and his crew have been hired to take control of a Gerald R. Ford class supercarrier. Will they take her in port or at sea? Will YaYa be able to smooth talk he way onto the bridge? Will Guano go bat-shit crazy and kill everyone on board? What will Wrench do with the wing of aircraft on board? Watch tonight at ten, nine central to find out!

[Dumori]

Tbh I think most of our Runs woudkl make awesome TV especaily the more mohawkly bits.

[CanRay]

They make for GREAT Trid. Which is why 'Runs are recorded and shown in LA.

Incorporating a car chase with Disney Security netted my group a bonus!

[Runner Smurf]

-- They don't pay for seats (usually), but they still pay for the support and maintenance of the software, training, and upgrades. And all of that will tend to be higher than commercial software because it's often custom and task-specific. Plus the DoD still has to pay licensing fees if they use certain technologies and code.
-- Shadowrun is a bit of an odd duck here as a fairly small programmer team can whip up and maintain software pretty easily (a side effect of trying not to totally gimp the solo hacker).

Fair point, but maintenance costs (thank Ghost we don't have SOTA to deal with anymore) are going to be trivial compared to the costs of unsecured comms. Considering the resources the NSA currently puts into such things, I can't imagine that a 2072 armed force wouldn't spend a fair amount of resources to securing them. And when we consider that cyberwarfare in 2072 is not only a potential threat, but a constant battlefield reality, I suspect that a lot of resources would go to that. While standard grunts may not be carrying uber-hardened stuff with rating 6 firewalls, certainly the officers and squad leaders would.

On augmentation and health care costs.

- Taking current US military policy and applying it to Shadowrun is almost certainly wrong. And that lifetime medical care usually amounts to NOTHING for most veterans as it only covers service-connected issues. I sincerely doubt even the UCAS is going to saddle themselves with lifetime medical costs over this.

If using current policy and trends isn't a valid basis for projecting forward/sideways to Shadowrun...what is? And I believe you are wrong on the medical care issue - at least, according to the VA's website (http://www4.va.gov/healtheligibility/). While they do have to pay insurance premiums, they are quite well subsidized. Service-related injuries are taken care at no cost (in theory) to the soldier. And considering the politics of veteran's benefits, I don't really think that in 2070 you'd just be able to throw veterans to the wolves.

Minor point though. I think we're arguing around relative prevalence. I don't think everybody would be augmented, but I think more of them would be than you do.

On long term services commitments for augmented soldiers:

-- Good luck using that as a selling point for military service.

Worked for the Romans! 16 year standard stint (extended to 20 after Octavian), with significant number re-enlisting, twice even. Works pretty darn well today too. 20%+ of USMC officers have over 20 years service, even more when you include reservists. Enlisted look to be around 25% with over 10 years. (according to the USMC fact book...uh 2006 version is all I have on hand). US Army's minimum stint is 8 years.

On military suites in the sourcebooks...

-- Corporations have lots of fancy stuff on the market that never actually reach service.

True. Any evidence to support that conclusion here?

On use of spirits to guard valuable vehicles/assets:

-- The thing to consider is "what could I have that mage doing other then wasting a spirit service guarding some armored car?"

Fair enough, but I'm not saying that every HMMWV would be guarded. But multi-million nuyen attack helicopter, fighter aircraft or personnel transports? Vehicles that can be easily destroyed with by a single mage with a "Wreck Vehicle" spell? Never mind that a The Guardian spirit service is cheap, and doesn't tie the mage down from doing their other tasks. (Which, by some other discussions here, means warding every piece of real-estate the corp owns.) Plus, powers like Concealment (or even Guard) could be very handy...that whole stealth thing.

Aside: Now that I think about it, just about every rocket launch would probably have a spirit with Guard escorting it up as far as the spirit could go. Being able to cut the accident rate by even a little bit would pay for itself in reduced insurance costs alone! Ditto with airports.

Anyway, I think this is a difference of degree, not absolutes. And we have very little in-game information to work with. Just a few off-handed comments in some of the novels (e.g. Findley saying that the average runner team would get smoked by the average group of soldiers), and the implications of some of the weapons described in the books. We'll see if War! addresses these things in any detail.

[CanRay]

Those insurance deductions wouldn't pay for the Mage.

They require *HIGH* wages. And why not? They provide a very specialized service, and are in a massive minority.

Supply and demand strike again.

The only reason you can sometimes hire Birthday Party Magicians is that they're so low-powered that that's all they can do.

[SkepticInc]

Here's a sick little question for armed forces in 2070: Do you suppose smaller and poorer military groups would supplement their combat drugs with HMHVV infections? I'm thinking Ghouls in particular, as they mostly just need cybereyes to clean up their disadvantages for combat. They end up with a huge body, strength, and reaction, and lose out on charisma and logic. While you generally don't want really powerful, idiotic, contagious monsters running around, they would make fantastic shock troops.

Even sicker would be the groups that currently just drug up children before sending them into combat doing the same with Infection qualities.

I feel like a bad person for even being able to think of this stuff.

[Yerameyahu]

Well, the child-soldier, drug-soldier countries *might* try that, but none of them really matter to begin with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[SkepticInc]

Well, the child-soldier, drug-soldier countries *might* try that, but none of them really matter to begin with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

But those armed forces are far more likely to have Shadowrunner teams going toe-to-toe with them than a well-equipped first world countries military.

[Doc Chase]

Here's a sick little question for armed forces in 2070: Do you suppose smaller and poorer military groups would supplement their combat drugs with HMHVV infections? I'm thinking Ghouls in particular, as they mostly just need cybereyes to clean up their disadvantages for combat. They end up with a huge body, strength, and reaction, and lose out on charisma and logic. While you generally don't want really powerful, idiotic, contagious monsters running around, they would make fantastic shock troops.

Even sicker would be the groups that currently just drug up children before sending them into combat doing the same with Infection qualities.

I feel like a bad person for even being able to think of this stuff.

Probably not - You've just described Asamundo, which every country in Africa hates.

[SkepticInc]

Probably not - You've just described Asamundo, which every country in Africa hates.

Asamundo? Please educate me.

[Mäx]

Asamundo? Please educate me.

Then land of ghouls in africa.

[Doc Chase]

Then land of ghouls in africa.

^

It has quite the blurb in 6WA. It's literally a nation of ghouls. Unrecognized by the UN or whatever the hell the current 'league of nations' body is in the 70's, it has an astoundingly high literacy rate, better than decent wireless Matrix coverage, and some kickin' astral nightclubs since most everyone in the country is dual-aspect.

The setback? Well, they eat people. They're the ultimate beneficiaries of Dunk's bequeathing of cash monies to anyone who can synthesize metahuman flesh for ghoul consumption, as well as techniques and technology to recover/maintain cognitive quality in fresh ghouls - since many go mindless with the change.

[Runner Smurf]

Those insurance deductions wouldn't pay for the Mage.

They require *HIGH* wages. And why not? They provide a very specialized service, and are in a massive minority.

Supply and demand strike again.

The only reason you can sometimes hire Birthday Party Magicians is that they're so low-powered that that's all they can do.

Do you have any idea what the premiums are for a rocket launch? What the costs are for a crashed passenger airliner?

Yes, mages are freaking expensive. But they don't cost ¥100M. And once you have them on your staff, which pretty much every corp does, having them throw out spirit services is actually dirt cheap - ¥500 per force point to bind in ritual material costs, and one hour of labor per force point. So, let's say our wage-mage has a salary of ¥10M, just to be generous, and including insane benefits. Say he works 200 days a year, 8 hours a day (lots of vacation time, etc.)...works out to ¥6,250 an hour, fully burdened. So, the labor and binding costs for a force 5 spirit is...¥33,750. Say he gets on average of 1 service per binding. So...it costs the company something like ¥34k per service.

A little googling shows that insurance rates for satellites are something like 20% of the value of the satellite, which is generally at ¥100M-¥1B. Assuming that by 2070 things are lot safer and cheaper, so the rates have dropped to 5%, on a satellite worth, say ¥10M. So the insurance cost is ¥500k. Being able to use Guard to prevent accidents at launch (highest risk part of the operation) might cut the rate of accidents by only 10%, with a corresponding reduction in insurance costs. That means they could save ¥50k just in the insurance alone. That means that using the mage saves the company ¥16k per launch.

Therefore, company uses mages to guard launches. I've given really generous assumptions here to try and weight the numbers against using the mage (excessive salary, minimal insurance costs, single service per binding, no foci). And I haven't even considered failure costs beyond insurance (such as bad publicity, lost time, lost equipment, lost personnel). Oh, and that we only use bound spirits, which radically drives up the cost as well. And it still makes sense to use the spirit.

So, I'm thinking...yeah. Corps would use spirits to Guard their rockets. Protection of commercial aircraft possibly as well, though that gets a bit closer to the cost/benefit edge, and depends a lot on how the GM interprets services. I'm thinking Guardian, Guidance and Plant spirits with Magical Guard would be especially valuable to protect against hostile spellcasters.

Man, I do too many trade studies for a living...

[Doc Chase]

You could link this into the discussion with the space ladder thread.