I've heard references made to an Omega Order. All I've managed to gather is that it's a sanction that gets handed down from the Corporate Court to a corporation. I went through Corporate Download, and found another mention of the Order, but nothing more.

So... What exactly is an Omega Order?

I think this was first detailed in the Corporate Shadowfiles sourcebook for 2nd ed. which has to be one of the best written RPG supplements I've ever read. I don't recall seeing the Omega order actually detailed anywhere since, though I might have missed it. As I recall, it involves a complete freezing of the corp's assets and a prevention of trading. It was the nuclear weapon of the corporate court - the only authority that could issue one. Placing the order for even just a few hours would wreak havoc on even the AAA's.

If I recall correctly, and I'm sure some trivia-savvy Dumpshocker will correct and/or clarify here, it's when the Corporate Court authorizes an 'attack', physical or financial, on a Megacorps assets (or part of them, at least) without fear of reprisal from the Corporate Court. Declaring open season, if you will.

Its the Corporate Court's version of Orbital Bovine Bombardment.

Essentially, the CC seizes all of your assets and divies them up between the Big 10 (or Big 9 if you happen to be a AAA). To accomplish this seizure the members of the Corpoate Court are all allowed and possibly required to use their full military might. This usually involves the officers of the targeted corporation having Thor Shots shot droped on them among other demonstrations of excessive force. Nuclear detonations are quite possible.

Of course, I could be wrong. Did they issue an Omega Order agaisnt Dankwalther?

At any rate, it is bad.

Edit:knasser may be right.

Y'all basically have it nailed... Omega Orders are when the CC lets everyone in the business world know that it's fine if they want to play a little slap-and-tickle with the corporation on the recieving end, because the CC isn't going to take action against them. Anything they walk away with is theirs.

There's pure profit in this. *EVERYONE* wants in on it.

I always understood an Omega Order as "Open Season". It's something the Corporate Court issues when it wants to school a Mega or AA. To put it in today's terms, it would be like the U.N. unanimously declaring that none of it's members would initiate any reprisal on anyone who wants to go school North Korea, for example.


Essentially, it's legitimizing a corporate war, saying "They're marked men. Go get 'em, you keep what you kill." For those of you who play Btech, it's like authorizing a War of Absorbtion on another Clan, only the authorization applies to every other Clan. Essentially it's "They're dead dogs, take whatever you want from them."

No, everyone is turning around the ball....

An Omega Order is "Open Season". As you know, the corps are always hitting each other. But it's not "personnal", just business, and the corps shrug when something blows up. Sometimes, however, things do get personal and out of hand: a corp war.

Corp wars are no good. It's not just business. It's revenge and dirty and violent, and BAD FOR BUSINESS for everyone else. The Corporate Court will thus always step in, smack some sense into both corps and things will cool down.

However, when a corp does something very very bad, such as arrogantly refusing to listen to the CC, the CC can call an Omega Order. This is both a duty and an opportunity. It means all other corps can and should innitiate acts of aggression towards the corp, possibly even in unison. The result is that the victim will quickly start taking such massive losses, that in order to survive, it will have to surrender to the CC's will.

It is worth noting that NO OMEGA ORDER HAS EVER BEEN GIVEN OUT. The only thing that came close to it is the Veracruz Incident, in which Ares, Mitsuhama and Fuchi (I think) banded together to run a joint military strike against an Aztechnology military base, with the CC's consent. It stopped at that, however, as Aztechnology got the message and backed down.

There is no real definition as to what an Omega Order entails precisely. Maybe the CC will seize assets, maybe it won't. Maybe shit will explode, maybe it won't. All it means, basically, is that the CC will no longer protect you in anyway.

Backgammon....


Ever hear the name 'Fuchi Industrial Electronics?' Ring any bells? If you didn't start playing until 2055/2060, it might not.

The CC handed out an OO, and that's why you'll occasionally hear an old timer going "Hey, remember that Run we did on the Fuchi place in Seattle", and all the new guys around him are going "Fuchi? Wtf is that? Some japanese restraunt?

The biggest problem is, Fuchi used to be one of my most regularly appearing corporations, partially due to the fact that if it was vaguely technical, it was probably Fuchi.

Here I am, gearing back into SR, and my fallback corporation is gone

Uh, Shadowdragon, Backgammon has been on the forums since '02 and who knows how long before the forums got restarted. I think he's played shadowrun for a while including the storylines before 2055/2060.

edit: not to imply anything, but I'm pretty sure Back knows what Fuchi was in the game.

Fuchi didn't die from an OO. They died because of the machinations of Richard Villiers. He basically "stole" 1/3 of Fuchi to start Novatech. Fuchi was dying because of the internal conflict between the 3 major shareholders. After Villiers took his third the other corps saw Fuchi as ripe for the picking so that's when Fuchi Asia merged with Renraku when Nakatomi bought the 300,000 shares of Renraku (and the board seat) that Miles Lanier had been gifted in Big D's will. Fuchi Europe merged with Shiawase when Yamana married into the corporate family, bringing what remaind of Fuchi with him. (Go find the Blood in the Boardroom campaign for all of this)

The only OO ever issued (or closest thing, to my knowledge) was when Aztechnology (I think it was called ORO back then) used their puppet Aztlan and tried to nationalize (take) all corporate assets. The CC dropped the hammer on them and they backed off.

According to Aztlan Sourcebook, p.42

Huh...

I'll take salt with my dose of crow. I thought they died because the CC called an OO on them.

Since it's a second-hand reference, I can't begin to give a page number on it, but according to the Timeline Explorer hosted here on Dumpshock, there was what appears to have been an Omega Order issued in 2041 against a corporation called Lanrie. According to the entry, they'd engaged in viral warfare with an unnamed competitor in Miami. In retaliation, their corporate assets and infrastructure were destroyed, and the board of executives were rounded up and executed. Though it doesn't explicitly say it was an Omega Order, that seems most likely as they're enacted by the CC in response to viral attacks and declare open season on the offender.

Though whether all of the events listed in the Explorer are official-canon, or from the creator's own campaign-canon, I can't say. Perhaps someone more familiar with either could shed some light on things?

The incident with Lanrie is canon. It's from page 177 of the Nigel Findley's novel Shadowplay.

Kinda spooky, really. Since Lanrie wasen't actually a megacorp with it's own extraterritorial jurisdiction, that means that the CC basically put out a hit on CAS citizens and property that lay on CAS land - and went unopposed in doing so.


Can't say I like anything corporate having that kind of authority.

Welcome to the Shadows kid, thats the way the world is.

I have always had the impression that most of the aggrssive interactions between corps were non-physical anyway. While I don't dispute that an Omega Order would permit the other corps to send in strike teams to steal protoypes, researchers, data and so on (the sort of things corps normally hire Shadowrunners for due to deniability), I also think that it permits all manner of dirty tricks to acquire in one way or another shares, investments and even control of installations, which would normally be frowned upon.

From the name, "Omega Order", I also get the impression that the CC is only meant to have to issue one such to any company, Omega being linked with the final end of things in quite a big way.

In short the Omega Order is a free ticket for every corporation in the world to do whatever they want (legal and illegal [usually the latter]) against the targeted corporation. This includes sanctions, backroom stock manipulation, mass extraction (of major and minor personnel), mass extermination (of major and minor personnel), open assult against extraterretrial facilities (ie blow up their coprorate enclaves), and various other shadowrun activites. Only one Corporation has had the Omega Order and that was Aztechnology. It survived the assult but the result was it went from being number one corp in the world to barely AAA status. Aztechnology was forced to pull back most of their resources back to Azland to survive. They are only now comming back from that hit.

Omega is the end. An Omega Order is a Corp Court sanctioned termination, be it financial, individual, or mass destruction. If you are going that high up the ladder to get the OK to kill an individual or group it usually means you'll bring out the big guns. Whatever you are going to try pull off it is going to create a huge, messy splash that is going to be nigh impossible to cover up and not trace back to you, and you don't care because you are in the "right". It doesn't really get any bigger than orbital bombardment. Of course you also have to deal with whatever non-CC governed entity if you are acting in a jurisdiction outside of one of the CC members, but that's just another big bag or two of money or perhaps a deniable asset to do the job.

Think of it like a UN security counsel resolution granting you permission to go out and attack. It is really just someone making up permission, and a bunch of other people all agreeing (I believe that an OO vote must be unanimous, outside of the target if they hold a seat). But there can obviously be descenters outside the circle, and you'll have to deal with them separately using guns, stealth, deception, negotiation, intimadation, etc.

EDIT: Note that it is really just a type of edict. The specifics of the contents, who can attack, who if anyone gets to loot, duration, limits, etc. can vary from OO to OO.

I picture the CC and the omega order as the modern day Roman catholic Church of the middle ages. At that time you had to be very friendly with the pope, because if you did something to upset the church and the pope (the CC in this case) he could decree a crusade on you and your land (omega order). Excluding the crusades to free the holy land, this order was a way to punish someone who did not follow and obey the Roman catholic church. After such a decree, all the "good" nations (mega corps in our case) could go and were encouraged to go and wage war on the "bad" nation. This meant land and money for the ones doing the invading (if successful) and sorrow for the one on the receiving end. Example; take when England invaded the catholic nation of Ireland (not really middle ages, but stay with me here), the church declared one of these open seasons on England. Well Spain went after England with an armada and.. well.. failed, but that is besides the point. You can understand where i am coming from here.

Removal of all corporate rights. An invitation for other corporations to steal from and destroy the offending corporations threw whatever means they find desirable.

Bear in mind that there are very few offenses that result in an omega order and all of them make the other corporations angry. It isn’t pure profit, it is also revenge and discouragement of other potential offenders

It still may not be logical but it since when have people been logical, and OOG it is fun

Corporate war is when the corps ignore the corporate court and all go at each other.

“People don't avoid invading Saeder-Krupp territory because the Corporate Court will send the boys around. They avoid it because Saeder-Krupp will defend itself”

if an omega order was issued against SK then all the megacorps would attack SK at the same time. Even SK dose not have the might to defend itself against that, less counter attack.

Normally when a member of the corporate community dose something bad the court will issue a punishment order. One or more relatively uninvolved corps will be given permission to do a fixed nuyen value of damage to the offender. This usually involves blasting in and stealing research data, there is no rule against accepting a bribe equal to the value of damage required.

An omega order could only result from the most unacceptable of crimes, such as breaching the concords, suspected core wars activity or deliberately inciting corporate war. Every mega corporation is required to do whatever damage they can to the target. The intent is that they will be destroyed. Not crippled, not made to mend there ways. The only purpose they will serve is as an object lesson to others that would defy the powers of the corporate court in such a flagrant manner.



As an aside if you can get Corporate Shadowfiles do so. The rules are out of date and half the mega corps have changed but it is still one of the best books printed, it shows how the corps think and do buisnus. And is an amusing read.

Edward

You need a GD to fight a GD - and there are some (plent according to DotSW) of which some would gladly help against Lofwyr.

That I can definately agree with Knasser!

Omega Orders aren't about profit, they're about making a point. Lets look at this from am microeconomic POV instead of macroeconomic.

Lets say I'm a small time drug dealer. Jimmy the Tuna rips me off. So, I kill Jimmy the Tuna. I kill his wife. I kill his parents. I kill his children and his pets. I kill is brother, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. I kill his friends. I kill his college roommate who he hasn't seen in 20 years. I short, I wipe him off the face of the Earth.

Is there any direct profit in this for me? No. Dead men can't pay. However, everyone who thinks about ripping me off in the future will have to look back at Jimmy the Tuna and wonder if the risk is worth the reward. I expect that most would decide that it is not. The amount of money I save by not being ripped off in the future far outweighs the amount spent on this little crusade.

The principal is the same with the Omega Order. It is issued for infractions that are bad for everyone's business.

But even if you do seize all of the assets you still have to kill all of the target corporation's executives in a spectaculary brutal and public manner. If the exectuvies can get away with their lives then other exectives might get uppity.
In Shadowrun, corporate exectuives are almost universally crazy. They put their lives on the line on a regular basis and they amass a great deal of power doing so. The only real deterance to these kinds of people is a guarenteed brutal and inescapable death.

I'm pretty sure that Saeder-Krupp keeps the majority of it's finances in Nuyen. Corp scrip is only issued internally, so corp employees can shop convienantly at corp shops, and only corp shops.


And remember, what happens when you corner a desperate animal? It fights back. What happens when said desperate animal consists of a dragon who is arguably the top dog amongst Greater Dragons (Ghostwalker might be more powerful, he might not, but Lofwyr can call in fire support in the form of Thor Shots if he and Ghostie mixed it up,) incredibly powerful military units, and orbital weapons?


That's right. You have yet another military force erupting from Germany in a dog-eat-dog fight for death or glory. If you call an Omega on Saeder-Krupp, you'd better be prepared for another World War. Because, while it is true that SK's enclaves may not be able to produce their own food, they have plenty of bullets. And as the old saw goes, when you have bullets, you can always get beans.


So yeah. Call in an Omega on Saeder-Krupp. Throw the world into another world war. By the time it's over, even if Lofwyr isen't the victor, the Megacorporate scheme will be crushed, and the nations that survive will rally and ensure that no profit-hungry corporation ever grows powerful again. There will be no more Corporate Court, there will be no more Megacorporations.

You'll have a hard time 'freezing' something that's defended by military units. The Corporate Court is not God. The only way they can execute any directives is by having the members do them. And they can be opposed. An Omega Order is all-out warfare, and the CC may not win.

I get what knasser is saying but it is somewhat oversimplified.

Knassers proposal is that you can't defend intangible things with military force. This isn't exactly true because intangible things are tied to tangible things by their very nature.

Nuyen, in reality, are worthless. It is just a bunch of numbers in a bank account. The plastic in a billion-nuyen certified credstick has more actual value than the funds stored inside. Only tangible things have real value. Fiat money serves as a placeholder for material goods, nothing more and nothing less. It helps facilitate trade. Once upon a time if I wanted your bearskin and you wanted a sharktooth that I did not have then I'd have to go around trading until I got a sharkstooth. This could take a very long time. With fiat money, I can buy for your bearskin and you can use the money to trade for a sharktooth. Still, it is the bearskin and the sharktooth that have the value. The money is just a means to an end.

Even if SK has a billion million fafillion shebolubalu million illion yillion nuyen in the bank this does no good if no one will accept their imaginary electronic numbers as payment for goods and services.


What knasser is missing, however, is that it is possible to force trade with military force or the threat of it. Consider Japan. For centuries Japan was a highly isolationist nation with little contact with the outside world. Then, one day, Mathew Perry shows up with a fleet of warships and suggests that Japan should open up trade with the west and Japan opened up trade with the west. Now, Japan was a tiny isolationist backwater country with practically no power or standing in world affairs at the time but if the guy from Friends can do it I would think an absurdly powerful and ancient dragon would have a decent chance at doing better.

Most of SK's assets will be hard. Very few corporations keep much of their assets liquid. Even with trading frozen they should have enough hard assets to successfully prosecute a major war of aggression. At that point they would be less like a corporation and more like a classical imperial power. But imperialism does work in the short term. Seizing material assets by force usually results in more profit then buying the same assets, too.

Of course, the chances of the CC issuing an Omega Order against SK lies somewhere between Slim and None; and just to the left of Self-Propelled Levitating Asses.


Smaller corporations are less able to cope but it is the ultimate threat of irresistible military might that prevents the As and AAs from just ignoring the CCs rulings and doing their own things. The only difference between AAAs and AAs is the Corporate Court Seat and there are many more AAs than there are AAAs. A trust of AAs could easily rival the CC in economic and military power so it is rather important that they work to maintain their status as the governing body of all extraterritorial megacorps. Government is defined by a monopoly on the use of violence 'gainst the governed.

There is no way there will ever be an omega order issued on SK. Apart from being to smart to get in a position like this, Lofwyr can blackmail some of the less powerful corporations on the CC that he will take them down, if they issue such an order.
Even if SK would be put down, which is far from certain (*), Lofwyr can still make his threat real and take some of the AAA with him.

(*) I read about Lofwyr and SK influence and power over the past weeks (for a campaign).


Basically, an omega order is like an (today) UN resolution with more backup... unless issued against an AAA Corp (where it would be like an UN resolution ).

Consider an competitive environment where all that avoids a final battle is the consent of the participants not to go there (aka megacorp competition).

Now consider a group of the largest players declaring war on one corp.

The coordination of attacks alone is deadly. The CC has to do nothing. Every corp who wants something the target has will strike, as the target can´t retaliate against so many attacks at the same time.

An omega order just removes any constraint. Once freed, the sharks do their work. You don´t want to be target of the week.

Attacking SK, even in a coordinated wave, is suicidal. If I were on the board of directors of a corporation which was trying to do that and the measure passed over my head, I'd be jumping ship and selling all of my shares to Lofwyr for one nuyen. (Not apiece, one nuyen. Total.)

Simply put, it's suicide. Even in the event of the best-case scenario, you smash Saeder-Krupp's faccilities and properties. You incurr massive, distinctly unprofitable losses in doing so, and sieze roundabout nothing, because the German Dragon pursued a policy of Scorched Earth, much like the previous draconic German figure. Then he starts showing up at your board of director meetings and roasting everybody alive.

In short, you've succeeded in erasing yourselves. Don't fool yourselves into thinking it won't happen. He's a fucking Greater Dragon, he's Initiated more times than you can shake a stick at, and his Masking is off the charts. He literally gets to keep throwing dice until he succeeds, and any of your successes he make you re-roll. He could convince you he's you, and you're an imposter.

In short, you're phucked.

The real power of an Omega Order is in the threat. There's a lot of assumption here that an Omega Order needs to destroy a megacorporation wholly and that's not really necessary. As has been said here already, the megacorps exist to make money. Even a weakly-enforced Omega Order will cost the target megacorporation billions, or trillions, of nuyen.

Why do they have to destroy everything? Cut the megacorporation off from loans, the kind of big loans that only the ZOG Bank can fulfill (as mentioned in Corporate Shadowfiles). Increase the interest rate of their existing loans. Freeze what intangible assets you can. It doesn't matter much that you can't destroy everything, that megacorporation is going to be bleeding profusely. Their stock will fall through the floor, they will not have the capital or borrowing power to expand, and they will lose competitive edge. Lofwyr could circle the wagons and protect his physical assets with guns and tanks all he wants; as long as he is doing that, he's not making money. And a corporation can't survive without making money.

Demonseed, you're ignoring the simple fact that if you cut Lofwyr off from financial options to pursue his interests, he will pursue conventional options.

By "conventional options" to pursue his interets, I mean the same options that were pursued by Alexander, Ceaser Augustus, Commodore Perry, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Fuhrer Hitler.

You will turn Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries into the Fourth Reich!


Are you failing to comprehend this or something? An army, a Megacorporation, a Nation, and a Dragon march on two abstracted things. Bullets and beans. And if you tell them they can't buy beans, they will fall back on the old axiom that if you have bullets, you can always get your beans. And Saeder-Krupp and Lofwyr have a great deal of stock in bullets.