Do SR characters PAY for things?, Why do these criminal mastermind groups use money? Options

[Thorguild]

Character generation gets you a character decked out in the equipment you purchased. But once you've done that and formed a group, why do characters pay for things afterwards? (BTW I only own the SR4 book and Street Magic. This may be dealt with in other books.)

Let's say that you don't mess where you sleep: you pay for your Lifestyle with the cleanest nuyen you have access to. Nobody wants a midnight raid. Beyond that, you need gear. Comlinks, weapons, software, vehicles, clothing, etc.

The team Face and Hacker sit down one night over beer and Thai food and start making notes. They decide that once every 4 months they will make a "shopping trip" Run for the team. The goals are: #1 - Minimum risk. #2 - No, really - MINIMUM RISK! #3 Not paying for much.

Almost everything can be delivered to your door in 2070. Amazon.com has been replaced by the billion other Amazon.com's.

The Face goes to an office building and negotiates with the owner to rent an unused space near the docking bay for a week. He's disguised, of course, with a disposable ID, and has a good story about being an out-of-town salesperson who needs a meeting room and will set up some props delivered from his home office. When he's in he has a professional cleaning service come in and give the entry way to the office a thorough sprucing up. IKEA instant reception area and some generic TAGs with logos on the walls. Total cost: 1000 nuyen. (GM says "Ha! 3000!" Players grumble.) Total cost: 3000 nuyen.

Meanwhile the Hacker does some research. A Fulfillment Center is a giant warehouse that has an amazing system of robotics inside. The purpose of this marvel is to rapidly put boxes full of stuff onto waiting trucks. These trucks then take all the boxes and deliver them to ADHD customers who want everything delivered before they ordered it. It's a moderately tough hack, but not more difficult than a hardened research facility. It takes a little doing, and includes having the face bribing an OSHA official to "borrow" his ID while he takes a look inside. The Hacker pours over the data gathered on the "safety inspection", and gets a nice overview of the model of robot he needs to hack.

A tech has been hired, or conscripted from within the team. He builds a Faraday cage in the back room of the office and gets a TAG eraser handy.

On the second day the Face shows up at the office and prepares the entry way with danishes and fresh flowers, and name TAGS for a bunch of people who will never actually arrive. This is the most dangerous assignment of the Run.

The Hacker hacks. 86,000 nuyen of equipment is boxed and labeled for immediate delivery. It's going to the team's office. The Hacker makes the system think it's a load of fancy paper totaling 250 nuyen.

In 2070 "immediate delivery" means immediate. A truck is ID'd as going near this location and the boxes are automatically loaded by robot onto it. The delivery truck courteously and constantly informs the "customer" of its location as it nears the building, and the Face is ready when it arrives. He waves his ID and invoice number at the delivery bot/guy and authorizes the 250 payment, and a nice tip. "Just set it over there", he says, waving a hand at an empty corner. He's busy, after all. The delivery guy/bot leaves; he's busy too.

The Face hand-trucks the stuff into the Faraday cage and TAG erases everything. The off-site Hacker has been using some surveillance drones to case the area. Are there cops? If yes, a disposable comlink outside the Faraday cage beeps "Way Down Upon The Swanee River" and the Face books it. If no, the comlink plays elevator muzik.

When he's done making the TAG's safe he hand-trucks the stuff to a waiting delivery van he rented ("RENT me by the HOUR!") the night before. The Hacker tells the van to drive, slow and steady, and sends one of his drones after it. The Face gets some industrial Lysol/solvent spray and hoses down everything in the small office. It takes 10 minutes and the smell doesn't have time to escape the doors out into the rest of the building. He consults his comlink checklist to get everything he was supposed to bring, and drops the disposable comlink into a small glass of acid. It'll be gone by the time he's a block away.

The Face leaves and walks or drives away while the Hacker's other drone scans for tails. After ensuring that the Face is safe, it leaves and follows the rented delivery van.

The delivery van goes to an industrial park and drives around for a few minutes to let the second drone catch up, and both drones take a last look for anyone tailing the van. When safe, the van stops and the rest of the team transfers the stuff to their own vehicles. Lastly, they clean the van.

The van drives back to the rental place. The team and the Face drive back to base. Everyone enjoys their radically-discounted items.

This was fun to write! Certainly things could go wrong on this Run, but is there anything structurally wrong about the plan? What keeps teams from doing this all the time? Maybe they need to spoof records for the licenses afterwards, and file off serial numbers.

I suppose the GM could handwave and say that all Fulfillment Centers are hardened better than anything else the players will ever encounter, but that seems a bit mean.

Thorguild

[Yerameyahu]

I assume it's the same reason they do anything: they're medium fish, not big fish. They can't afford to annoy people constantly, and if the rules appear to allow various 'zero-risk' options (super-facing, traceless hacking, whatever), that's just a shortcoming of the rules to describe the game world.

[almost normal]

Shadowrun is about being a deniable asset. You're a tool. If you're good, no one knows about you. If you're *really* good, the rich and powerful types know about you and want to use your services. It's stated in several places that if a corp gets hit by runners, they're not as concerned with the runners as they are the hiring agent. Part of what keeps you safe is not acting on your own accord.

When you start pulling things like the above, you're acting on your own interests. There is no other agent to go after. When you become enough of a pain in the ass, you're eliminated in the most nuyen efficient manner possible.

[Speed Wraith]

You could do a lot of spoofing and get a lot for free, especially spoofing a lifestyle. But large-scale fraud is going to be noticed, and probably pretty quickly once just one daily inventory notices a funny discrepancy in the weights of products on the shelves and counts of units. You could pull a trick like this to get a single shipment of something and then head for the hills, but it wouldn't go unnoticed long-term.

Besides, anything worth buying isn't going to be found at Amazon. You're going to need to call up your guy on the docks and find out when he can smuggle you that case of APDS (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Pendaric]

In a word, convenience. One, who wants to work all the time? Two, "50% of the human race are middle men and don't take kindly to being cut out."

[Fatum]

The most obvious issue with the plan is this: most stuff runners want is F, and they're not sending F-rated stuff over mail delivery. Even R-rated stuff may require the actual buyer showing up and providing the license, if you're buying it legally.
Otherwise, Unwired has the rules for "hacking a lifestyle" - that is, hacking enough delivery vehicles, orders etc to get yourself a nice cozy lifestyle; which is essentially what you can do with the setup described.

[ShadowDragon8685]

It's not a bad idea, just don't drek where you eat. You probably want to do this only rarely (try once quarterly,) preferably not in the same city you live in.


As for getting the attention of big boys: If there's no evidence, there's no evidence. Can't hunt down people you can't find and don't even know the identities of. But if you screw the pooch, this kind of shenanigan will get someone after you.


As regards being able to buy only unrestricted items freely: This is true. However, you can always barter; find high-value, portable stuff that you don't need a license for that's going to sell well in the Shadows. For instance: Rating 6 Response modules for commlinks cost 8,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and are Availability 16... And just 16. Not R, not F. Signal units are 3,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) an the same Availability.

So spoof your way into taking possession of a shitload of Fairlight Calibans with Rating 6 Response and Signal unit upgrades; while you're at it, get Common Use, System, and Firewall upgrades at Rating 6 as well.

Each one of them, without any Restricted or Forbidden gear (IE, completely and totally legal) will be worth 29,200 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) if you were paying for it legit. Each will be Response, System, Signal, and Firewall 6, and have Analyze, Browse, Command, Edit, Encrypt, and Reality Filter pre-loaded at Rating 6.

And they're all also going to be small and portable, and you can easily spoof the warehouse into giving you the stuff. You'll be able to easily hock those in the Shadows for 8,760 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) each (more if you're willing to take more time, emphasizing the fact that they are all clean,) money with which you can buy new stuff - or trade straight across. For instance, I imagine that the Ancients would probably be very willing to make trade in kind if you're offering boxes of Rating 6 commlinks that just need some IC for them to equip the troops.

[Thorguild]

In a word, convenience. One, who wants to work all the time? Two, "50% of the human race are middle men and don't take kindly to being cut out."

Not sure I follow you there on point one. You are doing 3 days of work and getting gear to last you for several months. That's the real reason most people get into crime: they are lazy. They think it'll be easier than working for the money.

As to point two: Sure, no one likes being stolen from. I'm just not sure how they CAN prevent a scam like this. In fact, it's happened in real life. During the real estate bust of the early 90's office rental business was bad. Owners were giving five year leases with the first six months free. They also gave bonuses to the renters so that they could make improvements to the offices. And not small bonuses either. Sometimes they showed up on the 7th month to collect rent to find empty offices.

Oops.

Most real crime and criminals get busted because they get stupid or lazy.

Thorguild

[almost normal]

As for getting the attention of big boys: If there's no evidence, there's no evidence. Can't hunt down people you can't find and don't even know the identities of.

There's always evidence. It's whether or not the cost of a technomancer's resonance search plus the cost of the hit squad will equal the amount of money the company expects to lose again.

[Mäx]

As for getting the attention of big boys: If there's no evidence, there's no evidence. Can't hunt down people you can't find and don't even know the identities of.

The problem is that the matrix never ever forgets anything.

[Speed Wraith]

The problem is that the matrix never ever forgets anything.

Even when it does, a Resonance Realm search can help it remember...

[TeknoDragon]

Nice idea... up until someone glitches a roll.

[Fatum]

Only dead men glitch.

[Warlordtheft]

Sometimes a glitch just happens. That being said, the problem here is that you run into someone figuring out who you are and tracing it back to you. Would they care to spend resources on 2K nuyen's worth of merchandise. Probably not. But you start getting into the 10K+ range there will be an investigation--which may lead to a bad end.

[Fatum]

Mathematically speaking, glitching on a pool of six dice is rather improbable, glitching on a pool of eight or more is all but impossible in its unlikeness.

Oh, and sure if you get non-subtle about it, you're getting caught. That's why I think it's better to represent the benefits available to an enterprising runner with Hacking the Lifestyle, instead of devoting separate runs to it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Sometimes a glitch just happens. That being said, the problem here is that you run into someone figuring out who you are and tracing it back to you. Would they care to spend resources on 2,000K nuyen's worth of merchandise. Probably not. But you start getting into the 10K+ range there will be an investigation--which may lead to a bad end.

Investigation, yes.

Spending a hundred grand to hire a technomancer to bullshit whatever data might possibly link those runners out of the digital aether?

Only if you make a habit of ripping off one particular company.

[_Pax._]

The Face goes to an office building and negotiates with the owner to rent an unused space near the docking bay for a week. He's disguised, of course, with a disposable ID, and has a good story about being an out-of-town salesperson who needs a meeting room and will set up some props delivered from his home office. When he's in he has a professional cleaning service come in and give the entry way to the office a thorough sprucing up. IKEA instant reception area and some generic TAGs with logos on the walls. Total cost: 1000 nuyen. (GM says "Ha! 3000!" Players grumble.) Total cost: 3000 nuyen.

Something to keep in mind: assuming this is an office building that even dos such short-term rentals, you can also be absolutely sure that there are cameras watching the loading bay, and the corridors - because as sure as the sun rises in the east, the building owner provides general security.

Further, even 3K nuyen is lowballing the price of this. I wouldn't dare try that with less than an R2 or R3 Fake SIN, and that's 2K to 3K right there. And a fake ID is not something you're going to be stealing ... nor is it at all easy to make one yourself. Not impossible, but not easy either.

Meanwhile the Hacker does some research. A Fulfillment Center is a giant warehouse that has an amazing system of robotics inside. The purpose of this marvel is to rapidly put boxes full of stuff onto waiting trucks. These trucks then take all the boxes and deliver them to ADHD customers who want everything delivered before they ordered it. It's a moderately tough hack, but not more difficult than a hardened research facility. It takes a little doing, and includes having the face bribing an OSHA official to "borrow" his ID while he takes a look inside. The Hacker pours over the data gathered on the "safety inspection", and gets a nice overview of the model of robot he needs to hack.

It's a hack that is going to leave evidence it was done. That's absolutely unavoidable; until the delivery is complete, you can't erase the access logs that make the delivery even be attempted. And by the time the delivery has happened, those access logs have certainly been backed up to at least a dozen places.

It's also a much harder hack, I think, than you are expecting. I mean, seriously, you think those fulfillment centers have never been hacked before? You think they haven't decided to raise the bar significantly, on future hackers?

Oh, and that OSHA bribe? You're asking someone to be left swinging in the wind for your theft, and possibly face revocation of his SIN. That bribe, therefor, is not going to be cheap.

Faraday cage

Faraday cage: 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per cubic meter. Let's assume this "back room" is, oh, 4m by 5m by 3m. Sixty cubic meters, or, 6,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

The Hacker hacks. 86,000 nuyen of equipment is boxed and labeled for immediate delivery. It's going to the team's office. The Hacker makes the system think it's a load of fancy paper totaling 250 nuyen.

Full stop. If the system "thinks it's fancy paper", and you make that happen before the order is boxed and trucked? Then what you get will BE fancy paper. And even when it's on teh truck, even when the truck is en route ... internal error-checking routines may say "oops we boxed the wrong stuff, don't deliver those boxes ... and promptly box up some fancy paper, and put it on a truck all by it's lonesome to get it delivered within the promised window.

Which would rather be a problem for you, wouldn't it?

In 2070 "immediate delivery" means immediate. A truck is ID'd as going near this location and the boxes are automatically loaded by robot onto it. The delivery truck courteously and constantly informs the "customer" of its location as it nears the building, and the Face is ready when it arrives. He waves his ID and invoice number at the delivery bot/guy and authorizes the 250 payment, and a nice tip. "Just set it over there", he says, waving a hand at an empty corner. He's busy, after all. The delivery guy/bot leaves; he's busy too.

This is part of why the Fake SIN needs to be R3 or R4. The delivery drone is going to want a bimetric signature - a thumbprint, say - and is going to check against the fake SIN. It may only be an R2 or R3 scanner, but even so, if you try to cheap out with an R1 SIN, you stand too great a chance of being caught.

And if you get caught, it WILL still make the delivery - while sending out a Panic Button alert to local law enforcement.

The Face hand-trucks the stuff into the Faraday cage and TAG erases everything. When he's done making the TAG's safe he hand-trucks the stuff to a waiting delivery van he rented ("RENT me by the HOUR!") the night before.

Except the security RFIDs embedded under the mailing labels, and/or inside ten or fifteen of every box's 200+ styrofoam packing peanuts, are flat out immune to Tag Erasers.

The rental truck means another check against that fake SIN he's using - probably with a higher rating than the delivery drone, too. Not to mention, a hefty deposit (probably 10% the cost of the vehicle, maybe more), and of course, the rental fee. Oh, and more data trail toworry about. Meanwhile, this loading is on the cameras int eh hallway, and in the docking bay. Someone from teh building's security contractor might wonder why the same boxes are going right back OUT, within minutes of having been delivered - and they remember the delivery because they had to clear the drone to enter the site in the first place.

There may also be physical eyes on all of this, in the form of workers in or around the loading dock. Who might also wonder who gets X delivered, then immediately loads it onto a cheap by-the-hour rental truck.

The van drives back to the rental place. The team and the Face drive back to base. Everyone enjoys their radically-discounted items.

... and noone shows up to collect the deposit? OOPS.

And here's the fun part: you forgot to wipe the rental truck's node. It has an exact GPS record of everywhere it went - and it's whole route, and who ordered it to follow that route.

The rental van's AccessID was recorded by the loading dock security node(s) at the office building. You never spoofed it, changed it, or otherwise gimmicked it. So when the delivery company tracks down that a very expensive order was delivered to that building - and that is never a question of "if", it's only a question of "when" - they will know that the peson who signed for it (with a now determined to be forged SIN) loaded it onto that truck. They go to the rental agency, and get the truck's route records for that hour. Now they know where you made the transfer to the team's own vehicle.

Worse: they have camera records of the entire team, most of whom you did not specify were disguised. And the team's vehicle(s), with their AccessIDs (hope you paid to install spoof chips and morphing license plates!!). They can then go to the city, and possibly track your team's subsequent movements, at least some of them, via the city's traffic-monitoring network.

...

Once, yeah, I can see a team pulling this off. Twice, not so easily. Three or more times, and you're probably an"ongoing investigation" by some full detectives. Five or mroe times, and the local constabulary has probably convened a task force to catch you.

I suppose the GM could handwave and say that all Fulfillment Centers are hardened better than anything else the players will ever encounter, but that seems a bit mean.

Hardened at least as well as a local Bank office, for sure.

Honestly, if your hacker is able to pull this kind of stuff off, he might be better off just trying to forge certified credsticks, and using those to actually buy the desired gear.

[Yerameyahu]

Only if you make a habit of ripping off one particular company.

Isn't this exactly what they're talking about, though?

[StealthSigma]

Sometimes a glitch just happens. That being said, the problem here is that you run into someone figuring out who you are and tracing it back to you. Would they care to spend resources on 2,000K nuyen's worth of merchandise. Probably not. But you start getting into the 10K+ range there will be an investigation--which may lead to a bad end.

You have a dangling K at the end of your 2,000. As written you say they won't investigate 2,000,000 nuyen worth of merchandise but they will investigate 10,000 nuyen worth.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Something to keep in mind: assuming this is an office building that even dos such short-term rentals, you can also be absolutely sure that there are cameras watching the loading bay, and the corridors - because as sure as the sun rises in the east, the building owner provides general security.

This just adds another hack, to make sure the building security records nothing untoward. Not that big a deal.

Further, even 3K nuyen is lowballing the price of this. I wouldn't dare try that with less than an R2 or R3 Fake SIN, and that's 2K to 3K right there. And a fake ID is not something you're going to be stealing ... nor is it at all easy to make one yourself. Not impossible, but not easy either.

This is Shadowrun. Making outlay to pull off a heist for profit is the name of the game.

It's a hack that is going to leave evidence it was done. That's absolutely unavoidable; until the delivery is complete, you can't erase the access logs that make the delivery even be attempted. And by the time the delivery has happened, those access logs have certainly been backed up to at least a dozen places.

This is a simple fix. While you have all this access to the delivery facility, insert a command in its backup structure that tells it to leave the bits where it says what you're sending to yourself out of the backed-up logs.

It's also a much harder hack, I think, than you are expecting. I mean, seriously, you think those fulfillment centers have never been hacked before? You think they haven't decided to raise the bar significantly, on future hackers?

Hard, yes, but they're not going to be rocking the Heavy Metal in those things. Like he said: if you can crack open black research facilities, you can crack a goddamned on-demand delivery distribution center.

Oh, and that OSHA bribe? You're asking someone to be left swinging in the wind for your theft, and possibly face revocation of his SIN. That bribe, therefor, is not going to be cheap.

Then forge the damn badge. Or blackmail the OSHA inspector. Mind control him into taking you along and introducing you as a trainee.

Faraday cage: 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per cubic meter. Let's assume this "back room" is, oh, 4m by 5m by 3m. Sixty cubic meters, or, 6,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

That makes no sense, since a faraday cage is just any volume which is enclosed by the wire mesh. You may be thinking of the surface area of a prism, which is 2ab + 2bc + 2ac. Let's say that a = 4, b = 5, and c =3.

You only need one hundred square meters of mesh to turn this room into a faraday cage. So only 1,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Full stop. If the system "thinks it's fancy paper", and you make that happen before the order is boxed and trucked? Then what you get will BE fancy paper. And even when it's on the truck, even when the truck is en route ... internal error-checking routines may say "oops we boxed the wrong stuff, don't deliver those boxes ... and promptly box up some fancy paper, and put it on a truck all by it's lonesome to get it delivered within the promised window.

Dude, what are you not getting here? If they have this much hacked access, they can tell the computer that boxes A through Z contain fancy paper and any contradictory evidence is clearly a glitch in the system.

"Internal error-checking routines" can suck a hacker's e-peen every time. Drones have pissant brains, they're even easier to e-fuck than a facility will be.

Which would rather be a problem for you, wouldn't it?

No, because they're not idiots with a GM who will pull any shit out of his ass to smack down on their plans because he wants his heist game where his players don't go off the rails at all costs.

This is part of why the Fake SIN needs to be R3 or R4. The delivery drone is going to want a biometric signature - a thumbprint, say - and is going to check against the fake SIN. It may only be an R2 or R3 scanner, but even so, if you try to cheap out with an R1 SIN, you stand too great a chance of being caught.

Cheaping out on a fake SIN is a bad idea, I agree.

Much easier to use someone else's real SIN and arrange for your biometrics to match theirs.

And if you get caught, it WILL still make the delivery - while sending out a Panic Button alert to local law enforcement.

Too bad for it that that hacker is in mutual signal range of it and intercepts and kills that call.

Except the security RFIDs embedded under the mailing labels, and/or inside ten or fifteen of every box's 200+ styrofoam packing peanuts, are flat out immune to Tag Erasers.

Security RFIDs cost 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) each. They're not packing them under goddamn mailing labels. Even if they are, this is still a relatively simple fix: Cart all this stuff into you your faraday room, wrap it all up in nice faraday wallpaper, repackage it all in innocuous containers, and haul it right back out again. Those little bastards can squeal their heads off all they want, they're shouting into the void. Then you take 'em home and crush the little bastards inside another faraday room.

The rental truck means another check against that fake SIN he's using - probably with a higher rating than the delivery drone, too. Not to mention, a hefty deposit (probably 10% the cost of the vehicle, maybe more), and of course, the rental fee. Oh, and more data trail to worry about. Meanwhile, this loading is on the cameras in the hallway, and in the docking bay. Someone from the building's security contractor might wonder why the same boxes are going right back OUT, within minutes of having been delivered - and they remember the delivery because they had to clear the drone to enter the site in the first place.

No they don't. It's not affecting them, it's not threatening the bottom line of their employer, it's not threatening the building's safety. You do not get proactive in shit like this unless one of those conditions is met. And that's assuming (big assumption) that this building has metahuman security staff, and enough to watch all of this.

Anyway, as I said above, it's easy enough to edit the feeds.

[ShadowDragon8685]

There may also be physical eyes on all of this, in the form of workers in or around the loading dock. Who might also wonder who gets X delivered, then immediately loads it onto a cheap by-the-hour rental truck.

Spreading around about 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a man will make sure they didn't see nuffink, honest.

... and noone shows up to collect the deposit? OOPS.

Generally speaking, after using a rented vehicle in criminal acts, you're going to want to skip the step where you go back to get your deposit.

And here's the fun part: you forgot to wipe the rental truck's node. It has an exact GPS record of everywhere it went - and it's whole route, and who ordered it to follow that route.

Presumably hackers remember to do that as par for the course. Even if not, though, the rental truck remembers driving around for a while and then parking in... An abandoned industrial park for a while. Big damn deal.

The rental van's AccessID was recorded by the loading dock security node(s) at the office building. You never spoofed it, changed it, or otherwise gimmicked it. So when the delivery company tracks down that a very expensive order was delivered to that building - and that is never a question of "if", it's only a question of "when" - they will know that the person who signed for it (with a now determined to be forged SIN) loaded it onto that truck. They go to the rental agency, and get the truck's route records for that hour. Now they know where you made the transfer to the team's own vehicle.

Worse: they have camera records of the entire team, most of whom you did not specify were disguised. And the team's vehicle(s), with their AccessIDs (hope you paid to install spoof chips and morphing license plates!!). They can then go to the city, and possibly track your team's subsequent movements, at least some of them, via the city's traffic-monitoring network.

You're grasping at straws, man. You're really, really grasping at straws. If you apply this level of protological scrutiny to your group's ordinary Runs, they've been busted by about the second run, haven't they?

But no, they haven't been. Because you don't. Because that's them following your Plot, not them going off the rails and deciding to make a quick buck for themselves. You Can't Have That; have to keep them starving for money so they'll be willing to do whatever Mr. Johnson tells them to do so they can grab at whatever scraps of nuyen he deigns to throw them. Because if they could do this, then you'd have to seriously up the financial reward for Mr. Johnson's runs to be remotely interesting to them.

Once, yeah, I can see a team pulling this off. Twice, not so easily. Three or more times, and you're probably an"ongoing investigation" by some full detectives. Five or more times, and the local constabulary has probably convened a task force to catch you.

That's why you:
(a) Don't do it more than once a quarter (so go BIG when you do),
(b) Don't do it in one city more than once every two years if you can help it,
© Don't do it to the same company more than once every two years if you can help it,
(d) Don't do it in the same national/megacorporate jurisdiction if you can help it.

Or did you forget that Shadowrun is, in fact, a splintered dystopia where jurisdictions don't want to share information? You could do it in Portland and a week later in Seattle and they'd never know about it.

Hardened at least as well as a local Bank office, for sure.

At most, they're rocking a Rating 4 Nexus and Gray IC; Black maybe, but only if it's an extraterritorial site.

The off-hacker in my group could do it.

Honestly, if your hacker is able to pull this kind of stuff off, he might be better off just trying to forge certified credsticks, and using those to actually buy the desired gear.

Remember what I said about not fucking with the same company too often?
The Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaft Bank is one of those ones you really, really don't want to fuck with very often! They literally have an unlimited amount of money to track you down with, even if they have to print some.

[Warlordtheft]

You have a dangling K at the end of your 2,000. As written you say they won't investigate 2,000,000 nuyen worth of merchandise but they will investigate 10,000 nuyen worth.

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

[_Pax._]

This just adds another hack, to make sure the building security records nothing untoward. Not that big a deal.

This is Shadowrun. Making outlay to pull off a heist for profit is the name of the game.

This is a simple fix. While you have all this access to the delivery facility, insert a command in its backup structure that tells it to leave the bits where it says what you're sending to yourself out of the backed-up logs.

(a) More than one hack. Your neighbors might just have cameras watchign their own doors, too. And maybe the docks as well.

(b) My point was that the initially cited expense was too low. IOW, this particular heist entails a much higher outlay thanmerely 3K (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) .... by my estimates, probably loser to 15K or even 20K.

Hard, yes, but they're not going to be rocking the Heavy Metal in those things. Like he said: if you can crack open black research facilities, you can crack a goddamned on-demand delivery distribution center.

Then forge the damn badge. Or blackmail the OSHA inspector. Mind control him into taking you along and introducing you as a trainee.

That makes no sense, since a faraday cage is just any volume which is enclosed by the wire mesh. You may be thinking of the surface area of a prism, which is 2ab + 2bc + 2ac. Let's say that a = 4, b = 5, and c =3.

(a) Unlike "black research facilities", Fullfillment Centers are not averse to extensive record-keeping. In fact, if they err on the subject of logs, backups, and backups of the backups, they err on the side of more than needed. Which means it is much, much more likely that the access logs for a fullfillment center are backed-up off site, in an entirely separate computer network. And that the backups happen much more often - once or twice hourly, perhaps. Remember, that making a hack hard doesn't just entail driving the numbers upwards. It can also mean just making it so the hacker has to do more separate things, at all, to succeed (or have more specialised tools, like Corrupt to use on those access logs, so that backups aren't as big a problem).

(b) Forging a government ID? Riiiight, nwo you're talking a separate fake SIN, and if you dare go below R4 you're insane. Blackmailing an actual OSHA inspector, or mind-controllign him? Great, he's a loose end on two legs, now.

© Sense or not, that's ow the RAW treats it: it's priced per cubic meter.

Dude, what are you not getting here? If they have this much hacked access, they can tell the computer that boxes A through Z contain fancy paper and any contradictory evidence is clearly a glitch in the system.

"Internal error-checking routines" can suck a hacker's e-peen every time. Drones have pissant brains, they're even easier to e-fuck than a facility will be.

No, because they're not idiots with a GM who will pull any shit out of his ass to smack down on their plans because he wants his heist game where his players don't go off the rails at all costs.

(a) What you're not getting is that in order to fetch Item X from Shelf Y on Rack Z, the order has to specify that item, rack, and shelf. If the order says "fancy paper", then that's what you get. If the order says "fancy paper" in the text box, but has the right inventory control ID to get the items you REALLY want? Then "fancy paper" is a waste of an Edit roll, because the ICID is what matters.

(b) An agent working inventory control checks the manifest of what's going out, compared to the manifest of what's been ordered. If you somehow manage to get something onto the truck, whose ICID does not match what the system thinks is supposed to be on the truck? It doesn't take brains to figure ou there's a problem. Hell, even now, without AIs and agents and such, fulfillment centers track their products that well within the warehouse.

© Drop the personal attacks.

Too bad for it that that hacker is in mutual signal range of it and intercepts and kills that call.

Security RFIDs cost 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) each. They're not packing them under goddamn mailing labels. Even if they are, this is still a relatively simple fix: Cart all this stuff into you your faraday room, wrap it all up in nice faraday wallpaper, repackage it all in innocuous containers, and haul it right back out again. Those little bastards can squeal their heads off all they want, they're shouting into the void. Then you take 'em home and crush the little bastards inside another faraday room.

No they don't. It's not affecting them, it's not threatening the bottom line of their employer, it's not threatening the building's safety. You do not get proactive in shit like this unless one of those conditions is met. And that's assuming (big assumption) that this building has metahuman security staff, and enough to watch all of this. Anyway, as I said above, it's easy enough to edit the feeds.

(a) The hacker has to actually, you know, hack into the drone for that; you can't just kill the call from outside. And unless you hack in before the SIN check, the first you'll know that there's a problem, is when the signal has already gone out. At which point, nice job closing the barn door after the horse has left.

(b) No, Security RFIDs do not cost 100 each. They cost 100 for a box of twenty - which means they cost only 5 nuyen each. For an order that's 86K (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) like the OP described, yes, they would happily use a double-handful of the things, and not even notice the expense.

© Putting a camera in the hall, to watch your own front door = part of your own in-office security system. Putting your own camera on the loading dock = making sure you get your deliveries with no "exploratory shrinkage". As for human staff - they don't have to be in the building, but even a "pure drone" security setup involves human oversight from SOMEwhere.

Spreading around about 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) a man will make sure they didn't see nuffink, honest.

Generally speaking, after using a rented vehicle in criminal acts, you're going to want to skip the step where you go back to get your deposit.

Presumably hackers remember to do that as par for the course. Even if not, though, the rental truck remembers driving around for a while and then parking in... An abandoned industrial park for a while. Big damn deal.

(a) Says you. Me, I wouldn't be so certain of that. Some people are just too principled to take a bribe, no matter HOW good you smooth-talk them. It's just not in their character. So, there's always a risk. (Improving the plan would, IMO, simply involve re-boxing the goods, with an appropriate faked corporate logo on the boxes. But the OPs plan didn't specify that, so ... those eyes, electronic and organic alike, remain a problem.)

(b) Yes and no. Not collecting it might throw up more red flags. And regardless? There's another chunk of cash laid out for the heist, that isn't coming back. (Personally, I'd rather see the team have a vehicle with Chameleon Coating, morphing license plates, and spoof chips do the docking-bay pickup; cuts out one more bit of data trail).

© Not all hackers deal with drones and vehicles on a regular basis. Also, what occurs to me is, the truck may have been backing up it's route plan the whole time, right to it's actual owners. After all, if you only paid the in-city rental rates, then hop on the highway and go four towns over? The agency wants to know that you should be up-charged to the "in-state" rates, or whatever.

You're grasping at straws, man. You're really, really grasping at straws. If you apply this level of protological scrutiny to your group's ordinary Runs, they've been busted by about the second run, haven't they?

The OP asked. I answered. Better to assume the authorities are omniscient, and try to plan accordingly - than to assume they're idiots, and not bother planning much at all. The former will never give you a bad surprise; the latter, not so much.

But no, they haven't been.[...]

I told you once - stop the personal attacks. This is the second time I'm compelled to type this (even if it's the same post in the end). There won't be a third - I'll just go back and report each bloodypost to the moderators and be done with it.

[Yerameyahu]

"protological"? That was a new one on me, but the definition doesn't fit your use of it anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)