I just improvised my characters into taking another Run., What kind of security are the Vory likely to have on something mobile? Options

[The Wrestling Tr...]

You could also give them a moral choice when they try to steal the goods.
The vory also use the ship for human trafficking, selling children to rich people as prostitutes. And they have to choose either the goods (lots of money and angry vorys) or they save the children from experiencing hell (more Karma, less money, still angry vorys).

You could use that to get them into the next campaign also (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
(Rich Corporate Johnson made a "special order" and is waiting for his delivery of a young girl and is pissed off when the ship doesn't deliver it and sends a merc team to hunt down "his property" and who's responsible for it)

[Yerameyahu]

Careful, they're shadowrunners. They'll probably just blow up the ship after stealing the goods, to save those kids from their fate. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) … And destroy evidence.

[Kolinho]

You could also give them a moral choice when they try to steal the goods.
The vory also use the ship for human trafficking, selling children to rich people as prostitutes. And they have to choose either the goods (lots of money and angry vorys) or they save the children from experiencing hell (more Karma, less money, still angry vorys).

You could use that to get them into the next campaign also (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
(Rich Corporate Johnson made a "special order" and is waiting for his delivery of a young girl and is pissed off when the ship doesn't deliver it and sends a merc team to hunt down "his property" and who's responsible for it)

Dark, so I like it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

For the love of Dunkelzahn, it's not a "Vory ship". Why do people keep making suggestions as if it were? It's not a tramp freighter owned by shell companies owned by shell companies owned by the Vory, it's not a private yacht owned by the Vory, it's not even a garbage scow, fishing boat, or rowboat owned by the Vory!

It's a massive, modern, post-Crash-2.0 multi-billion-nuyen post-panamax high-seas container vessel. The Vory could, theoretically, own one if they could liquidate and monetize every single asset controlled by every single disparate Vory clan in the world. They just arranged for someone else, through the magic of crime, to put an ISO shipping container marked as something innocuous and containing an AK-147 nanofax and feedstock on the darn thing and to have it "delivered" to a submarine somewhere outside the national waters off the coast of North America.


Come on, they're already doing this as a side-job to another, real run. I don't need to keep layering on complexity and layering on plots until they've forgotten who their Johnson actually is when they're hip-deep in murdering Vory in Moscow to make sure they never traffic another girl or boy again.

[kzt]

It's a massive, modern, post-Crash-2.0 multi-billion-nuyen post-panamax high-seas container vessel. The Vory could, theoretically, own one if they could liquidate and monetize every single asset controlled by every single disparate Vory clan in the world. They just arranged for someone else, through the magic of crime, to put an ISO shipping container marked as something innocuous and containing an AK-147 nanofax and feedstock on the darn thing and to have it "delivered" to a submarine somewhere outside the national waters off the coast of North America.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just bribe the customs guys? Last I knew you need cranes that ships like that don't carry to unload the ship. And most subs don't have 45 by 15 foot hatches, much less hatches that large that they can open at deep sea without flooding.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just bribe the customs guys? Last I knew you need cranes that ships like that don't carry to unload the ship. And most subs don't have 45 by 15 foot hatches, much less hatches that large that they can open at deep sea without flooding.

Normally, yes, but with Knight Errant being all uncorruptible and proactive in the serve-and-protect-for-a-price thing recently, at the moment, not so much.


Besides, most subs don't, but this is Shadowrun. If anyone's even conceived of the need for a smuggling submarine which can bring an ISO container from the high seas into port clandestinely, someone's made it.


As for the crane, I figure that in the dark days of the post-Crash 2.0 period, the big shipping ports' equipment was all so much scrambled spaghetti. Since then, cargo vessels, even the big container ones, have been designed with rail-mounted crane-drones that tuck away neatly when not in use and can be used to offload (slowly, but offload) anywhere, even in a clandestine rendezvous out at sea.

[Manunancy]

The transfer method - out at sea and to a sub - will be a complete giveaway to the shipping company and the ship's crew that there's something fishy with the container. It will also create a disrepancy in the cargo logs between loading and unloading. If it's done anywhere close to legitimately, it will make the shipping company an accomplice, which can translate as an hefty fine and maybe up even to a ban from Seattle's port if the containers turns out to hold something nasty enough. And if someone's arranging a clandestine transfer of illicit goods, it means they might BS you about the container's real content to "T'was supposed to be some high grade dope man, how could I know t'was a frigging nuke".

In my opinion the safest way around that would be to arrange something with the ship's captain to have the container declared 'lost at sea' (it happens quite often IRL to lose a few containers in a storm). A Vory netrunner/rigger can both make the offload and tamper wit hthe loading crane's log to make sure they don't remember what happened.

But there will still be the problem of the ship's crew noticing the loading gear getting into action and dumping one container. Odds are they'll notice the submarine too.

PS : i think I have way figured out of that : generate a security alert for the container right under the one you want - something like it's going to catch fire and explode or something like that and need to be dumped overboard ASAP. So you pick the Vory container on top and drop it, then pick and drop the 'risky' one. If the Vory container's log says the top container is filled with cheap chinese fliflops, the insurance company won't bat an eye.

Then you have the submarine retrieve the first container, sink the second so nobody wil know the alert has been bogus and go on your merry way.

As sidenote, I don't thenk the Vory would control a cargo sub with container-capable hatches. Something smaller that can tow the container and a proper packaging for the nanofab seems more likely. Wrap the goods in an airtight pocket, then pump the container full of polyurethane foam or the like. It will protect the fab from both shock and water and make sure the container doesn't sink.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I figured it was an accepted business practice - on the high seas, you can offload anything you want to anyone you want. That said, yeah; the captain of the ship, the crew, and the shipping company itself do this sort of thing frequently.

On the other hand, I like your notion, too. But it would leave my players looking in the wrong direction - trying to subvert the automatic cargo handling system when this sort of thing is going down manually.



As for the submarine, the Vory don't control it, they just hired it.


My players' plans at the moment are to hack the manifest to offload someone else's random container to the smuggler and put the container with the nanofax on a truck. They'll need to do some crime aboard the ship - either fiddle with the RFID tags so they match the manifest, or fiddle with the crane so it doesn't give a damn whether or not the RFIDs match the manifest. Then they need to figure out some crime ashore; the hitch is that Knight Errant is watching the port the ship is going to because they've got word that the Vory are bringing something hot in. So they'll need to get lucky and sneak the very cargo the Vory paid six figures to steal through the Knight Errant security that the Vory themselves tipped off that something was going down (so they'd be looking in Tacoma, not Everett,) and past the Vory, then out into Redmond and to the Ancients.

[kzt]

As sidenote, I don't thenk the Vory would control a cargo sub with container-capable hatches. Something smaller that can tow the container and a proper packaging for the nanofab seems more likely. Wrap the goods in an airtight pocket, then pump the container full of polyurethane foam or the like. It will protect the fab from both shock and water and make sure the container doesn't sink.

A cargo sub that can accept a 40 foot shipping container at sea is going to be crazy expensive too. You'd be talking about something like the size of an Alpha class sub. The compartment on the top of the sub that accepts the container is going to fill with over 100 tons of water when you open the hatch in the open ocean, so the entire sub has to be a lot more massive than that.

The price tag of the sub would make the container ship look cheap.

[Manunancy]

In my opinion, a container-capable sub is going to be a major pîece of equipment - You need to haul enough cargo to pay for the expensive machinery. So basically a submersible version of the 'small' container haulers. Not something you'd hire for a casual, one-time stroll. I'd say a Typhoon classe or bigger - a Typhoon's 'dry' tonnage puts it about on par with a 2500 TEU boat (twenty-foot equivalent unit - 2500 20-foot containers). 2500 TEU is on the low end of today's container freighters.

And if yo'ure going for small, high value cargo (microchips, high purity drugs, diamonds, gold ingots - or sightly more bulky stuff like high end comlinks, expensive guns or the like), you save more money by foregoing a container-capable design than the extra handling will cost. Especially if it's a cargo you're going to drop in a place where there's no customs agents looking. Those places rarely have the capacity to handle containers.

A smuggling sub designed to haul one or a few waterproofed containers in a 'wet' area seems more likely. Or a relatively small smuggling boat - lower the container in, put a radar-absorbing tarp on it and yo'ure good to go. Either can be hired by the Vory without breaking a sweat. A container sub wouldn't.

[ZeroPoint]

The nano fax and feedstock shouldn't take up a whole shipping container. I'd say you should have whoever is doing the pickup, ditch the container. Have it modified so that its partially boyant, all the internals are protected as manuancy described, a transponder, and the top is designed to blow off. Cargo vessel keeps on going. Pickup vessel can then sweep in when they are on the horizon, wireless signal to pop the top and ejects the foam encased cargo, which floats to the surface. Have a small barge or something with the submersible that can pull it out of the water and dump it into a small cargo hold.

If the submersible wasn't set in stone, you could just have it picked up by a vory owned fishing vessel which would take it back to the Fishmonger as a bunch of <insert fish here> packed in ice. Ship it across town in a refrigerated tractor trailor. And if you the players want to have a cool action sequence, they can hit it at the fishmonger, a bunch of russian vory in fisherman garb with blocks of ice (some of which may also contain other smuggled items like guns, dope, chips, etc) and crates of fish everywhere.

If you don't use this I am.

[Raiki]

The nano fax and feedstock shouldn't take up a whole shipping container. I'd say you should have whoever is doing the pickup, ditch the container. Have it modified so that its partially boyant, all the internals are protected as manuancy described, a transponder, and the top is designed to blow off. Cargo vessel keeps on going. Pickup vessel can then sweep in when they are on the horizon, wireless signal to pop the top and ejects the foam encased cargo, which floats to the surface. Have a small barge or something with the submersible that can pull it out of the water and dump it into a small cargo hold.

If the submersible wasn't set in stone, you could just have it picked up by a vory owned fishing vessel which would take it back to the Fishmonger as a bunch of <insert fish here> packed in ice. Ship it across town in a refrigerated tractor trailor. And if you the players want to have a cool action sequence, they can hit it at the fishmonger, a bunch of russian vory in fisherman garb with blocks of ice (some of which may also contain other smuggled items like guns, dope, chips, etc) and crates of fish everywhere.

If you don't use this I am.

I wish DS ran a jackpoint-style rating system, so I could upvote you for this post.

As it stands, I will just leave you with an arbitrary ninja to represent your awesomeness. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ninja.gif)


~R~

[kzt]

Yup.

The trick with a large scale smuggling sub is that it needs a deepwater channel and heavy material handling to unload. How many places have 100 feet of water all the way up to a 300 foot long building on the water? And nobody who will notice the 500 semi-loads of dirt being removed? And if anyone notices the 60 foot wide underwater doors it's going to be pretty obvious what is going on.

[Kolinho]

The nano fax and feedstock shouldn't take up a whole shipping container. I'd say you should have whoever is doing the pickup, ditch the container. Have it modified so that its partially boyant, all the internals are protected as manuancy described, a transponder, and the top is designed to blow off. Cargo vessel keeps on going. Pickup vessel can then sweep in when they are on the horizon, wireless signal to pop the top and ejects the foam encased cargo, which floats to the surface. Have a small barge or something with the submersible that can pull it out of the water and dump it into a small cargo hold.

If the submersible wasn't set in stone, you could just have it picked up by a vory owned fishing vessel which would take it back to the Fishmonger as a bunch of <insert fish here> packed in ice. Ship it across town in a refrigerated tractor trailor. And if you the players want to have a cool action sequence, they can hit it at the fishmonger, a bunch of russian vory in fisherman garb with blocks of ice (some of which may also contain other smuggled items like guns, dope, chips, etc) and crates of fish everywhere.

If you don't use this I am.

This is classic stuff. Getting stolen, with your permission of course?

[Warlordtheft]

A cargo sub that can accept a 40 foot shipping container at sea is going to be crazy expensive too. You'd be talking about something like the size of an Alpha class sub. The compartment on the top of the sub that accepts the container is going to fill with over 100 tons of water when you open the hatch in the open ocean, so the entire sub has to be a lot more massive than that.

The price tag of the sub would make the container ship look cheap.

I don't think it would be that big of a deal. The germans did this in both WWI in WWII. I would think that in 2072 for sensitive cargo it might even make economic sense. Certainly not for bulk deliveries though. I would think that the Vory probably don't own them directly and that the captains/crews of both vessels have been bribed/blackmailed to do the job.

Case in point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Deutschland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_XIV_submarine

[VykosDarkSoul]

I may have missed a few things as i havent had time to read the entire thread yet, but on one of my runs when my guys were trying to hijack a shipment, the smugglers had rented a large number of Uhals, all the same size, and sent them all out on different routes, with a small security detail following several of them. This gave them lots of leads to track down and made things a bit more fun. Plus, hell, NO one suspects a Uhaul to be holding 4 armed guards with cargo in the back.


---P.S. oh that poor poor troll when he opened the back door.....

[ZeroPoint]

This is classic stuff. Getting stolen, with your permission of course?

Absolutely. And thanks for the ninja Raiki.

If we look at all the points made so far, my thought on the sub is that even if its feasible, the overhead may just be too much.
It comes down to the fact that if they spend a whole lot of money to smuggle it into Seattle and then ship it, then they are cutting out all their profits.

Either the nanofax is something that the vory has no qualms with because they can get them easily or its a drop in the bucket to their income (like on the level of some corporations) in which case they're not gonna spend a whole lot of money on smuggling it in. Or its a big ticket item for them...which means they don't have a lot of cash flow.

If its the first, then they are gonna own the sub because its not cost effective to have to hire a sub every week when your shipping in some sensitive goods.

If its the second, then their gonna use a fishing vessel because they already own it as one of their business fronts.

If its the first, then they would save money using something like what I said so they don't have to be able to load a 60ft shipping container, instead just dropping a few pallets into a custom cargo bay on a smaller/cheaper submersible. It'll have a shallower draft and wouldn't require super heavy equipement to unload once you get it in to dock.


Another alternative for the shipping container could be to put a smaller container inside it (containerception) with bottom portion exposed with a coupling mechanism attached. The sub can be modded to attach to the container and when they drop it in the water, outer shell blows out away from it, sub floats up under it, attaches to it and just sails into port with container on top. Will be slow going and have a sonar cross-section the size of an underwater aircraft carrier, but could get beside the dock, unhook and drive off.
Then it just needs hauled out of the water.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I think this is probably overcomplicating and overthinking things, guys. Too much realism is just as bad as too much pink mohawk.


It's Shadowrun. Smugglers in Shadowrun routinely operate T-Birds, and evidently they do so profitably despite all indications that there should be no way in hell to operate a T-Bird profitably for very long without getting shot from the skies.


Is a small submarine that can surface at sea, take possession of an ISO shipping container, slip through a harbor undetected, surface at any two-bit wharf or dock you care to name, and winch that sucker out of their hold and onto your flatbed really that much more unbelievable?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

It's Shadowrun. Smugglers in Shadowrun routinely operate T-Birds, and evidently they do so profitably despite all indications that there should be no way in hell to operate a T-Bird profitably for very long without getting shot from the skies.

Is a small submarine that can surface at sea, take possession of an ISO shipping container, slip through a harbor undetected, surface at any two-bit wharf or dock you care to name, and winch that sucker out of their hold and onto your flatbed really that much more unbelievable?

Yes... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[kzt]

Is a small submarine that can surface at sea, take possession of an ISO shipping container, slip through a harbor undetected, surface at any two-bit wharf or dock you care to name, and winch that sucker out of their hold and onto your flatbed really that much more unbelievable?

I ignore the stuff in the setting that strikes me as pointless and/or stupid and/or seriously interferes with my suspension of disbelief.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Yes... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I really don't have much difficulty seeing such a submarine with 2070s technology; stationkeeping thrusters all around a vehicle which is built with the express purpose of opening its hold, taking an ISO container into it, and closing up before submerging. It would need to have a lot of buoyancy in the front and rear, and similarly effective balance tanks. Stationkeeping thrusters could keep it where it is while it's taking cargo at sea, and the "other equipment" modification seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to use for a big crane that can unfold out of it and lift the ISO container, especially with the presumption it'll extend legs down to the bottom of whatever it's surfaced at to brace itself, or else be lashed to the shore.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I really don't have much difficulty seeing such a submarine with 2070s technology; stationkeeping thrusters all around a vehicle which is built with the express purpose of opening its hold, taking an ISO container into it, and closing up before submerging. It would need to have a lot of buoyancy in the front and rear, and similarly effective balance tanks. Stationkeeping thrusters could keep it where it is while it's taking cargo at sea, and the "other equipment" modification seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to use for a big crane that can unfold out of it and lift the ISO container, especially with the presumption it'll extend legs down to the bottom of whatever it's surfaced at to brace itself, or else be lashed to the shore.

Except that it will be many times more expensive than what would normally be used, Would not be for rent, and would not likely have the capabilities that you were asking about up-thread. You would not use a submarine to move ISO Containers. Submarines are used for relatively small shipments (of which an ISO Container is not). There is a reason that Container ships and freighters exist.

So yes, I have a very hard time seeing such a vessel in the hands of the Vory (whether owned or rented) for something that is smaller than the size of a Desk. Just don't see it. You do not tend to pay more to ship something than the item is actually worth. That is usually considered a bad expenditure from the purchaser's POV.

My Question: Why does it have to be so complicated? The Nanoforge is relatively small... buoy it in the open ocean, have a fishing trawler retrieve it and bring it into port with the rest of the Fish... easy peasy and done. Simple, elegant, and the KE Snoops are never likely to catch on to that. After all, it is just a fishing Trawler. Bonus points if the Trawler has a full load of shrimp or fish to process with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Except that it will be many times more expensive than what would normally be used, Would not be for rent, and would not likely have the capabilities that you were asking about up-thread. You would not use a submarine to move ISO Containers. Submarines are used for relatively small shipments (of which an ISO Container is not). There is a reason that Container ships and freighters exist.

So yes, I have a very hard time seeing such a vessel in the hands of the Vory (whether owned or rented) for something that is smaller than the size of a Desk. Just don't see it. You do not tend to pay more to ship something than the item is actually worth. That is usually considered a bad expenditure from the purchaser's POV.

My Question: Why does it have to be so complicated? The Nanoforge is relatively small... buoy it in the open ocean, have a fishing trawler retrieve it and bring it into port with the rest of the Fish... easy peasy and done. Simple, elegant, and the KE Snoops are never likely to catch on to that. After all, it is just a fishing Trawler. Bonus points if the Trawler has a full load of shrimp or fish to process with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It's not just the nanoforge, it's the nanoforge and several shipping pallets of untagged feedstock. Somewhere in south America there's a battalion wondering where in the hell their rearmament supplies went.

[Froggie]

No mention of the cargo subs from Deadly Waves? Darn I was hoping there would be...

Well, it's got a sub called the "Aztech Profit Transport" - a stupidly cheap cargo sub that has a collapsible crane and conveyer system for loading/unloading, and a description that includes holding "ten container equivalents in its forward hold" and an aft to hold "non-containerized goods"

Of course it has zero frills besides the special Machinery(collapsible crane), but a good smuggler organization could tool that sucker up and still have it fit in with common cargo sub traffic.

[ShadowDragon8685]

No mention of the cargo subs from Deadly Waves? Darn I was hoping there would be...

Well, it's got a sub called the "Aztech Profit Transport" - a stupidly cheap cargo sub that has a collapsible crane and conveyer system for loading/unloading, and a description that includes holding "ten container equivalents in its forward hold" and an aft to hold "non-containerized goods"

Of course it has zero frills besides the special Machinery(collapsible crane), but a good smuggler organization could tool that sucker up and still have it fit in with common cargo sub traffic.

Wow. Even if you assume "Container" means "pallet" and not "ISO Shipping Container" (which would make the thing absofrigginloutely huge,) that's probably still enough space for one or two ISOs.