If you had a small budget and needed to arm a lot of people, What would you do? (IE, what my players likely to do?) Options

[Yerameyahu]

I still say that's because they know LS and KE are huge organizations, kzt. If it was just a solitary station, that'd be different.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I should point out that the Plastic Jungles have existed for longer than the Sixth World. The original fences have long been reinforced with scrap-metal Pandora-style (Borderlands Pandora, not James Cameron's Pandora) walls and guard towers and stuff. The gangs are just clever enough to stage diversions while sending in raiders to exploit gaps or holes or vulnerabilities.

[bobbaganoosh]

And here I was thinking I'd have to bring up Pillars of the Earth. A bunch of mud farmers and an architect built a 10 foot high stone wall in 2 days. Held off a contingent of cavalry.

Or how Odin and the other Aesir tricked some random dude into building a wall for them, and then getting Loki to sleep with the horse and produce Sleipnir. Except that the Norse Gods aren't quite as strong in the sixth world as they are in Asgard.

[Irion]

Barrier Foam. 30 nuyen makes a 2 meter tall, five meter long wall a meter thick. And it deploys in minutes.

Where is this mentioned?

[Irion]

Or how Odin and the other Aesir tricked some random dude into building a wall for them, and then getting Loki to sleep with the horse and produce Sleipnir. Except that the Norse Gods aren't quite as strong in the sixth world as they are in Asgard.

Ähm, they do not have gods at their disposal. If they would have some force 20 free spirit I guess there would not be any question to be asked...

[Draco18s]

Skilled masons plus assistants can build walls faster then you might think, if the materials are at hand. Multiple km of walls that are over 8 feet tall are not going to be built in 2 days, or two weeks. You are talking about something akin to the walls around major cities, which took large teams years.

It was a wall around a small village. It wasn't meant to be strong, lasting, or well built. It was just supposed to prevent about two dozen guys on horses from murdering the living fuck out of everyone in the town.

Here's the bit after it's built:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBSm3FPbozM

Can't find the bit where they were building it. "We have to go faster, and shittier!"

[Modular Man]

"Shape Concrete"-spell. Combine with random debris which you are certain to find in the Barrens and fortificate the damn thing harder than ever before.
This whole thing about diversions... It may help much if a safe communication network was established, as mentioned before. Some basic tactics in case of an attack...

[Irion]

@Draco18s
Well, and on every attacker there were around 10 defenders....

Not saying it won't work in Shadowrun. Espacially against go gangs a wall is quite helpful. Stripping those guys of their major advantage.
Everybody gets partial cover and people dropping down will be in full cover and retrivable without risking beeing shot.

[Draco18s]

@Draco18s
Well, and on every attacker there were around 10 defenders....

Mostly it was the fact that two days prior (when the duke's son (one of the guys on horses) was at the town last time) there hadn't been a wall.

Point is: an unexpected wall is more of a deterrent than the wall itself. Had the attacking force known that there was going to be a wall manned by a bunch of farmers, they'd have over-run the town despite the wall.

Instead, one idiot jumped off his horse and tried to climb up and quite rightly got a pitchfork through his chest.

[kigmatzomat]

175-200 people to tend seven and a half square kilometers of foliage is definitely unbelievable, however. I think the lowest reasonable number is twenty-five hundred people, each tending a three thousand-square meter plot; and even that assumes widespread mechanical assistance or heavy use of draft animals. If all work is done by hand, however, you're looking at ten thousand (750m^2 per person) to fifteen thousand (500m^2 per person) farmhands. The Plastic Jungles can be anywhere from a very small to a middling town, but a community of 200 adults it ain't.

fyi, current 2012 technology has 2,000 workers supporting 2,310,844 sq.m. of greenhouses in British Columbia . That comes out to 1,155 sq.m.per worker. There an additional 600 working in warehouses and packing.

Using the same distribution, 200 staff would be 150 greenhouse workers in 17 hectares (6 acres) with another 50 packers.

[Yerameyahu]

Is that civilized people, or z-zone neo-primitives?

[kzt]

Is that civilized people, or z-zone neo-primitives?

I've heard that BC has electricity and stuff like that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tias]

We seem to have bogged the question down a bit in DIY semantics. While I totally support going John Rambo meets a Ghost Cartel levels of booby traps and b-movie, perhaps we should look at the numbers in the book itself.

As you asked, what would I do, here's a quick design thrown together:

To be a bit cheeky, first option would be to turn down the job. 15,000 to outfit any kind of fighting force capable of effectively repulsing armed street gangs AND my own fee, well, that's just not profitable consulting (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Assuming I'd be happy to get away with 2,000 a head (I don't know how big your team is, assuming 4), I'd have 7,000 for munitions. On the (reasonable, IMHO) assumption that people from a dangerous urban hellscape provide their own armor jackets and commlinks, I'd settle for:
4 AK-97 assault rifles
2 Remington 750 sport rifles W/ Imaging Scope: Thermographic, Image Magnification
2 Browning Ultra-Power heavy pistols
100 explosive rounds
400 regular ammo
2 handheld sensors: Directional Mike, Motion Sensor, Radio Signal Scanner R2
Either 3 Colt Americas and more regular bullets or a R2 Infiltration Tutorsoft.

My reasoning:
Scummers like the ones you employ and are up against are raised to respect force and intimidation. Having your best prospects either be lieutenants or snipers. Your Lts can then impress the riflemen by messily killing your quarry (ex for their Ultra-powers), or messily killing deserters and mutineers, and your snipers will be able to kill targets from afar and/or in hiding (again, load Ex in their Remingtons), further stripping the other gangers of their bravado. Riflemen will provide the customary storm of AK fire both in in-town shootouts or when you have to defend your facility. Sensors are given to Lts or tech-savvy troops so you can get the drop on the bad guys.

My reasoning on the last expenditure is that, seeing as you cannot arm a great deal of people, you should either get some scouts with Colts for protection who can snoop out potential ambushes and assaults, comming back to base so you can prepare fortifications or load the riflemen into your flatbed and haul ass to intercept - OR, use software to improve the infiltration abilities of the men you have so you can pursue a (probably ineffectual, but there's that cash gap again - just make sure it's the poor saps in your employ and not yourselves that get smoked!) campaign of guerilla harassment against the surrounding gangs.

As long as they cannot ID or follow you, there's a reasonable chance they'll start killing each other and stay out of your hair, or (if you're really good and/or fortunate) stay too weak to mount an offense on your facility. Also, I am here assuming that, as you said labor/manpower is not an issue, that it is possible to generate enough revenue somehow to stay in bullets - Even better if you have a black market pipeline and/or a good face to get a reasonable deal on looted weaponry and electronics that you can't find a use for when arming your militia.

E: You may want to swap some of the ordnance for Cram, Jazz or Kamikaze, I forgot we were dealing with urban gangs who are usually smashed to the gills on combat drugs themselves.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I actually decided to raise the budget to 20K instead of 15K, but my players heard the job and then skipped over the "negotiating your fee" part to go straight to "we'll do this for the food and to help out."

I reckon that kind of reckless altruism is worth Karma, so I'm giving them pretty much +1 per session on top of anything else. Though also in fairness, the Jungles would probably cut their Necessities payments in half for like, forever (for everyone except the AI, anyway,) and I imagine they're also hoping to get a lot of free plant Telesma out of it. And it helps to have people who like you. Some things are worth more than nuyen.

[Neraph]

The AI may be able to get some of his monthly costs cut as well - all that biomatter creates certain warm gasses, and you can convert that heat into electricity fairly easily. You should look into Aquaponics.

[Tias]

Oh, allright. If they're genuinely hooding and care about the people they work with, go all in (and ignore the thing about shooting people who disobey (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ).

I'd expand the concept, maybe add a LMG/MMG, get explosives/traps/mines and grenades, or just expand the number of troops, then.

[Hida Tsuzua]

I actually decided to raise the budget to 20K instead of 15K, but my players heard the job and then skipped over the "negotiating your fee" part to go straight to "we'll do this for the food and to help out."

I reckon that kind of reckless altruism is worth Karma, so I'm giving them pretty much +1 per session on top of anything else. Though also in fairness, the Jungles would probably cut their Necessities payments in half for like, forever (for everyone except the AI, anyway,) and I imagine they're also hoping to get a lot of free plant Telesma out of it. And it helps to have people who like you. Some things are worth more than nuyen.

I would actually suggest giving them the Homegrown Farming advantage free to their lifestlye, That's suppose to represent having access to "real" food.

If the PCs do move in, here's my guess as to the lifestyle:
The Jungle Life

[ Spoiler ]

Total LP: 5 Cost Per Month: 500Y (you should be able to get this waved)
Comforts: Squatter 1 - You live in a jungle.
Entertainment: Street 0 - See Above
Necessities: Squatter 1 - You live in a shack.
Neighborhood: Street 0 Z-Zone - No law out here but the law of the jungle
Security: Street 0 - No, John. You are the security.

Qualities:
Friendly Neighbors +1
Homegrown Farming +1
Inconspicuous Housing +2 (to represent living out in the middle of nowhere)
Workspace +1 (You have lots of spare room)
Green Plan -1
Pest Magnet -1 (Jungle life)

You could mix it up with aspected domain or Running Wild qualities like Rural Home and Animal Friendly Landlord.

[ShadowDragon8685]

They already have the Homegrown Farming quality, since the character who owns the group squat likes to grow his own stuff.

I think this goes a bit beyond "You can consider your food to be two ratings higher than the actual value," especially since you pay for that quality, so you're not really getting much out of it.

[KarmaInferno]

Barrier Foam. 30 nuyen makes a 2 meter tall, five meter long wall a meter thick. And it deploys in minutes.

Where is this mentioned?

War!, in the chemtech section.




-k

[kigmatzomat]

I would recommend first getting a sensor & comm net. By default all comms are mesh network, meaning a signal can jump from comm to comm to comm or device to device. That means a couple of drones can also act as the backbone for your comm net as well as your security net. I figure you stick the drones on top of the greenhouses/tarps.

My pick would be Bust-a-move drones, with whatever stuffed-animal skin you think will be least conspicuous. Give them gecko tape grips so they can climb and upgrade their stock camera with Thermo, Low Light, VMag, and maybe vision enhancement. A pair of R6 laser-links on each one lets you create a mesh network that is immune to standard jammers, but can be affected by smoke & weather hence the R6. Even with those mods, those BaMs should be about 1300Y each (my copy of Arsenal is loaned out so I'm looking at notes from old characters), coming in under 5kY for your simple network/security guards.

The BaMs have AI. Not particularly smart AI but still, there are 3 AI who don't need sleep who can notice things moving beyond the perimeter and get many actions per round for "Observe in Detail" actions. If you've got a hacker or illicit software source, you can look to get cracked ClearSight or even TacNet software to make up for the relatively stupid AI. Even still, anyone in the network with Edit can watch the video take.

The drones have a default Device Rating/Signal of 3, so three of them can act as the backbone for an area 1.6km long and about 0.8km wide, and the network will get even bigger when the farmer's comms are added in.

edit: remember that every 2070 vehicle with a Pilot rating is a drone that should be set to keep watch at night and beef up the comm net. IIRC from Arsenal, a standard vehicle has two cameras, ultrasonic motion/collision sensor, an atmosphere sensor and maybe a radar.

Then you want 4 watch towers inside the perimeter with at least one shooter each that are supposed to stay in place, not be pulled away by distractions. Having farm workers and farming equipment, it shouldn't be too hard to construct a bullet-proof structure using local cut heavy timbers and packed earth (excluding the windows, of course).

They could have some light office work, equipment repair, or other busy work but should be awake and able to move to a shooting position at any alarm. The watch towers should be assigned helmets with Thermo/FlareComp/Vmag/Image Link (475Y), Urban Explorer jump suits (500Y), and the weapons (~1050Y AK97 + gas vent3 + shockpad+lasersight) for ~2,000Y per watch-guard. Assuming you can get those 4 guards trained up to Automatics 1 (specialized:assault rifle), Agility 4, they get 8 dice for shooting and have enough recoil comp to fire one short burst completely recoil free and the second with only a small penalty.

4x guards + 3x drones would be about 12,000Y. That leaves 8,000Y to split between their fee and either adding more tower guards, arming some farm workers, adding more BaM watch-drones, or just WiFi cameras (maybe 350Y each, with the same sensors as the helmets).

[Tanegar]

fyi, current 2012 technology has 2,000 workers supporting 2,310,844 sq.m. of greenhouses in British Columbia . That comes out to 1,155 sq.m.per worker. There an additional 600 working in warehouses and packing.

Using the same distribution, 200 staff would be 150 greenhouse workers in 17 hectares (6 acres) with another 50 packers.

At 1155m^2 per worker, and assuming 150 greenhouse workers, we have 173,250m^2 under cultivation; or 2.31% of the seven-and-a-half million square meters taken up by the Plastic Jungles. Forgive me, but I'm afraid I'm not seeing your point.

[kzt]

War!, in the chemtech section.

How am I not surprised. ...

Do they include freeze-dried water too?

[KarmaInferno]

How am I not surprised. ...

Do they include freeze-dried water too?

No, but there's an armor de-bonder that can reduce ballistic armor in the splash area by one per hit on a success test, using it's rating as the dice pool. The rating goes up to 12. Somehow works on any armor with a Ballistic rating.

Also, the barrier foam has a variation that launches a dispenser into the air, and while spinning it sprays the foam to form an instant circular gun pit.

Hmmm...

If you had a large capacity dispenser mounted to the rear of a bike, could you leave a jetwall behind like the light cycles from Tron?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



-k

[kigmatzomat]

At 1155m^2 per worker, and assuming 150 greenhouse workers, we have 173,250m^2 under cultivation; or 2.31% of the seven-and-a-half million square meters taken up by the Plastic Jungles. Forgive me, but I'm afraid I'm not seeing your point.

my point is either the plastic jungle is really heavy on 2070s drone tech or maybe the size and/or population is off.

though I suppose the jungle could be holding row crops, like corn, soy, or potatoes instead of traditional greenhouse plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries ). One farmer with a dinky 30hp tractor can handle 50+ acres of row crops as a full time job. More if a full size combine is available. Possibly three or four times that under a mega-greenhouse that moderates weather conditions and controls precipitation.

[Yerameyahu]

I wasn't kidding before: I thought these people were supposed to be neo-primitives?