Link - http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7479/sr...xteriorfdk5.jpg

(Can't paste the image directly in to the thread due to recent changes on the boards. )

Here is what each building is and any details we currently have of it.

1. Renjiya Ramen
2. Shidax Karaoke
3. MushiSushi (5 Stories Tall)
4. Starbucks (8 Stories Tall)
5. Virtuoutlet Media (6 Stories Tall)
6. Tully's Coffee (7 Stories Tall)
7. McHughs
8. Yoshinoya Beef Bowl
9. Stuffer Shack
10. Starbucks
11. Parking Garage (5 Stories Above Ground)
12. Walgreen's Drugstore (1 Story Tall)
13. Mortimer of London
14. Vashon Island
15. Zoe

Additional Details
The area is very clean and upscale. The McHugh's is a special format used in these areas - offers salads and espresso, etc. in addition to usual menu items. Other chains are similar. Even the alleys are kept as clean as possible.

It is hard to go anywhere without spotting a Lone Star drone or camera - and those are the ones that are plainly marked....
Response to anyone not sporting a SIN in their PAN is swift. And people with "bare bones" PANs (eg - ONLY SIN) are viewed with great suspicion.

There are enough service personnel around that clothing and metatype are not too big a deal.
Vehicle and pedestrian traffic are brisk by day, but not too heavy - the main building here is currently unoccupied (assuming it is still the first weekend...), but the surrounding businesses are all in operation.


The Hirotomo Building itself is 30 stories, with a helipad on top. The exterior is shiny glass, opaque above the first floor, but transparent at ground level. Except at the rear - the north end of the grounds are surrounded by a two-meter ornate brick wall, and the building's ground floor exterior within those confines at ground level is marble, not glass.

Otherwise, through the glass on the ground floor anyone can see that there are a number of small shops and services lined up beyond a glassed-in corridor that stretches along the west and south faces of the building - a travel agency, a coffee place, a convenience store, etc.

On the east side of the building is a circular drive. There is a roof that extends out from the building above the lobby doors, so that no one getting out of their cars get wet. The entrance and exit of the circular drive are gated. The rectangle to the east of the building is a jumble of raw steel - a "sculpture" that someone probably paid a lot of money for and no one wants to admit is totally ugly and stupid looking.

The large circle to the south of the building is a big fountain. Everything is covered with lawn where there is not sidewalk/path.

The gated drive at the rear (north) of the building slopes down to a basement loading dock - you can see my horrible rendering of the drive cutting down through the earth - naturally the sides of the drive are cement.

To the NORTH is a parking structure. Entrance and exit booths manned with a live metahuman.

To the EAST is an upscale shopping center. Open from ten to ten. It is shaped like a pile of domes, ascending pyramid-like for three levels. There are plenty of public entrances, either through shops, or into common areas between them. Each dome is an upscale shop, with the fronting ground floor boutiques labeled.

To the SOUTH of the Hirotomo Building is a public park. Aggressive policing keeps undesirables out - plus entering beyond three meters from the street automatically deducts Y5 from the commlink, or flags it with an ARO as a non-payer. Notice the central area has a quaint, open-faced flower shop (very expensive), and a public unisex.

To the WEST is a line of businesses catering to the office workers. There is nondescript office and residential space above those shops, all accessed from the alley side. All the shops are fronted with windows making it easy to see both in and out. All of those businesses are open 24-7. The exception is the five-storey building in the northwest corner - it is festooned with gaudy, wannabe-elegant signs for hostess bars - two to an upper floor for a total of eight. Only open at night - names like Lipstick Happiness, Boudoir Coffee, and Ecstatic. In the evening, very attractive girls in expensive-looking dresses stand around inviting men in for drinks.

BTW - I want to make it clear this was a collaboration between Adamu & I. He provided the outline and great ideas for making this look like a real part of a city.

Also any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

JD

Wow, and the two of you did a really good job. All that detail about the surrounding area gives me a few ideas, too - also provides some problem, but very colorful.

North End is the Delivery area?

Very nice graphics and setting. Hope you don't mind that I hope we spend as little time there as possible and don't need the map.

Last time Sledge was there it was a big hole in the ground filled with rubble.

Yes, the North end is for deliveries.


Hey if we could come up with such a great plan that only one person had to go in for 5 minutes and be done, that would work for me.

The primary fun of the map was the process of making it and all the things I learned and was able to do. It's even better that I get to share it with people that will use it and appreciate it, even if its only for a short time.

Some small details to check out if people are bored....
The over hang on the main building is glass and you can see the driveway and some grass through it.

The details in the road (cracks & such) come through the paint of the lines.

Pool and deck chairs on roof of building #7. (someone at work that saw me working on this suggested it. )

Part of a soccer field in lower left corner.

Some of the detail was lost when I converted to a JPEG and dropped the resolution so it would display ok.

Now to go get started on the inside lobby/1st floor.

JD

Deck chairs are out of line, someone is not doing their job. And where are the sunbathers? Need to see some skin!

Eh its only slightly better than my maps =P. I wish we could use a chopper/zipline/glider for an escape plan but thats just to dumb and not needed. Hmmmm.......I guess it is "possable" that we could be closed in. The loading dock and ground floor entrances would be super easy to blockade. We could plan some ziplines. Im thinking we would not go for the roof which would be crawling with drones and or choppers. We would only go up 5-10 stories and demo a window and zippy from there over to the west side buildings. We could set up a decoy explosion on the east side either at the top or at ground level as a destraction for our extraction over on the west side.

*EDIT Heh it would probably be a whole hell of a lot smarter to set up our zippy's before any alarms go off. Just like with the main building I think we should set up the zippy's to go from inside one building to the inside of the another and never touch the rooftops... That could involve having somebody offsite breaking into one of the buildings and removing the glass window and anchoring the zippy's. I also think we should use dual ziplines of microwire. This would help transfer the corpses and to hold the trolls.

Again I would have to reiterate that we should rent a normal van for insertion, our van has armored wheel skirts and if we had to do a zippy extraction then we would have to leave it behind... If everything goes great we can use the crap van to get away and we wont need to worry about bullets, if things go wrong we will probably still be inside at the time and have to zippy out anyways..... The refridgerated truck could be parked over there on the east side aroudn a grocery store. The love machine should be waiting for us wherever we decide to stash the refridgerated truck. Ok I guess we should have the love machine hanging out over on the east side also in case we get spotted on our zippy escape and need the protection.

As far as our insertion I want clear on the guard, I didnt mean geek him. I think we have to subdue his ass and either keep him out cold the entire time or bind him up and use drugs/spells/threats to make him do what we want if somebody trys to contact him.

Yeah ok a powerful jammer would send up red flags. Cant we limit its range. I just wanted to jam the guard on our approach so he cant radio out. What about a directional jammer? The area jammer could still be used in an escape, but that wasnt my intent.

@Jdragon its not really important but I think the fountain to the south of the building should have pavement around it with benchs and walkways, It wouldnt just be on grass.(I guess in the future they could have grass that was immune to being trampled and not turn to a muddy crappy mess from heavy use). Thats the only thing I would bitch about hehehe. Havent looked but dont forget to slap it up on our wiki too!!

Yeah, if we're lucky, the majority of our missions will be against these companies. By the 5th or 6th one, we'll have the security for this block down pat.

Might as well start working on this.
We're going to need new fake SINs for this mission, I think.
Unfortunately, given our time frame, we'll have trouble getting any that will hold up under any scrutiny - so we'll have to be careful.
Fortunately, we don't need them to hold up for more than a day or two.
Unfortunately, that's not really how the rules work.

What I was wondering about, though, was that, should we manage to secure some rating 1 SINs (ignore the obvious problem with that for the moment) could we choose to have the identities behind them be registered as contract construction workers? Maybe if we got an additional fake license for each SIN. We'll need some information on which company we want ot be registered with, I would guess, but my idea is that this is the only way in the book to put together fake credentials... would the SIN be the credential? or would the license? or would both need to pass inspection?

Secondly, can items with availability "-" typically be picked up with negligible search-time (as in, it won't take days or weeks to find a van for sale) so long as the buyer is using a "valid" SIN?

Lastly, it isn't really in our budget to buy a new refrigerated van (since it would cost something like 35,000), so is renting a vehicle an option? and would a rented vehicle be registered to a rental company (rather than to our construction company)? (I think Angel might be able to correct that last part, if need be - although it would probably require another fake license/registration for her to attach to it.)

Are there costs anywhere for rented vehicles? or would I have any clue what typical rental costs would be? If not, that's fine, I can talk to some rental companies and figure it out the right way, but I'd be happy to know if we're talking about hundreds or thousands of dollars for a weekend.

Figure - with a SIN you know will be scrutinized and which needs to have a decent credit line on it - figure 1% of vehicle cost per day.

new sins are a bit unnecessary dont you think?? For one why the hell would he check to verify we are actual employees of company X. Its company X's job to make sure they dont hire criminals and they dont know anything about us. All the guard would/should care about is that we are from Company X and that we are suppose to be there at time X. Second of all, we only need enough deception to get close to the guard, once we are in range and have suprise we subdue his ass in any of a billion different ways.

Hmmm i was thinking of some way to use comm interceptions into tricking the guard but that leaves to many variables and I dont know how to close them down.

We don't need a refrigerated truck, that's an unnecessary complication. Industrial waste bags should work. We aren't being paid for the condition of the bodies, mostly to have the bulk of the evidence of bodies removed from the site. And for the files.

We need at least one SIN to drive through Downtown to get to the building. It will need to be broadcast and we should expect it to be checked as we travel through. Ideally everyone has a SIN that can pass a surface check, but we can make do with less. Once we get onto the property the SIN checks are less likely.

Part of the cover ID should be as a Sub contractor that works with Yakashima Corporation, or a direct employee. That's the firm that finished the building.

We are not going in "hot" or shooting/jamming. As long as we don't do anything to the guard, all that is happening is a trespassing and a little property damage. The moment we do anything to the guard, the response from Lone Star is a response to a violent crime in a AAA area, versus a little trespassing. There is a huge difference in how the Star reacts to each type of reported crime. Note that the guard might easily have biomonitor or other unknown indicators that we don't know about and don't have time to figure out. Also realize we have to be onsite a minimum of two hours, and most likely 4 to 8 hours, and possibly over 24 hours. It's much better to do the work so the guard(s) and passive security system think we are authorized to be there. We should expect to deal with several guards on different shifts. But a later shift guard is likely to simply accept our presence based on trusting the previous guards work.

The details to establishing authorization I'll leave to our resident "Hacker", but the first level is simply having the local systems think we are authorized. One possibility is to "borrow" a legitimate SIN/Truck/Equipment over the weekend. There are no doubt many contractors who aren't working over the weekend and might not notice their truck gone for a day or two.

We need to get in through downtown.
Get into the building w/scanning equipment
Scan for the body location, if we can't find on scan we have decide if we dig anyway
If we find on scan, then we need to cut concrete and dig.

If we have to "getaway" at any point in the mission, I'd rather it be a case of the Lone Star thinking their chasing some vandals then violent criminals who have hurt a security guard.

Not that I don't find the idea of flying around downtown on wires or in helicoptors fun.

My last IC post was referring to force 4 beast spirit binding materials and force 4 air spirit binding materials.

Also, a rating 4 SIN.

I figure everyone going in needs at least token SINs, because our information says that Lone Star will find it suspicious, and question anyone NOT using a SIN. Some of us have fake SINs that we might be willing to burn, here, but those fake SINs have histories of their own, that won't match our cover story of Smith working for a construction company, and Sledge and the Trogs being under-the-table labor. Instead, Smith's SIN and credentials need to look good enough to pass typical inspection by the guard, because he's going to want to verify that Smith is who he says he is, and everyone else's SINs need to not have anything on them that would attract Star attention (like being wanted for questioning in some murders). We're also going to want to be able to ditch these fake IDs as soon as the job is over. It sounds like only the lead guy (the face) is going to need credentials that check out with the construction company in question, which is better than I thought.

This might not be the case, as people might have spare SINs that I don't know about, but things will probably go smoother if we're not reusing the same SINs that we used to do other bad things. Also, if lone Star senses one SIN in the rented vehicle, and then 4 metahumans get out, that's going to attract some attention. If there are fake SINS, even shitty transparent fake SINs, it will at least look like the obviously illegal workers put up a token attempt at playing along. I guess that is one question that Sledge can answer better than I can in real life... would it make sense for illegal under-the-table workers to have shitty fake SINs? or do they usually arrive and work without SINs at all.

Adamu will have to answer that. Sledge has 4 dice pool for downtown, and 5 dice for corp security and can roll the dice/buy hits and tell us what Sledge will tell Sugar Lips if asked.

I think the sequence would be Vehicle Registration -- Driver SIN, then it might be the case that the passengers SIN might not be needed or could be hidden while driving through downtown, and only need to be checked when we get to the site, and there we are only concerned with the guard and building verification working.

I think some of this will rest with Angel checking what we can actually do, since we don't know precisely how much we can set up. Clearly we expect to need one good SIN + Registration, and might need more.

BTW, subduing the guard is a fall back plan, but let's hope we can get away without doing that. But if we fail to get by the guard, we will also have to deal with teh building passive systems. Once again, we need our "Hacker".

Hopefully Konsaki will have time to respond soon.

Cerb is already using a fresh R1 SIN so dont worry about him.

I took the liberty of rolling those dice for you - partly so save time, and partly cuz I didn't really want you to know how many successes this info was based on -

Your guess above feels pretty reasonable.
Regarding downtown, you basically just know that Lone Star does a pretty good job of rousting them what needs rousting without accidentally offending too many productive SINners.
For megacorporate security on that topic - you are aware that they all have elaboratedly detailed and decision-treed manuals. And that if they followed those manuals to the letter, they would probably check every single person in triplicate by two different guards, and on and on. And that if they ACTUALLY followed every procedure in the manual, no one would ever get anything done. So in the end, it comes down to how each individual or group of individuals interfaces with their training/SOP in real conditions, which is sorta unpredictable (which is maybe how the corps really want it).

It's sounding like Rocky is going to need one of the new "throw away" SIN's if I'm understanding that part of the conversation correctly.

Quick ?, can't the guy doing the ID's use the bio data from the last set of ID's he made for some of us jst a few days ago? Not sure just checking?

I'll post this in IC as well, just don't have time right now.

Thanks

JD

Feel free to post it IC, cause it is a legitimate question. I'm guessing he either doesn't know it is you guys, or that he wants to meet people he makes multiple IDs for.
He wanted to meet with Johnson, and talk about, whatever, because I suspect that's how he gets little quirky character traits that he uses for his fake IDs, to make them sound believable.

I dunno, feel free to punt on it, but since he asked for the people there, I'm gonna try to appease him.

I will not try to interpret Nym's intent for you.

But Smith knows enough about computers to know that the guy should be able to reuse old biometrics from the same people -

UNLESS they have changed their biometrics since last time
OR
UNLESS they are looking to upgrade to SINs that would require more advanced biometrics than in previous IDs
OR
UNLESS he throws all his old data out as a security measure.

Smith also knows that IF you have or can get the biometric info on your own, it is possible (again, not commenting on Nym's preference) to just send the info electronically.

@Jdragon. So Cerb's plan is get 400 nuyen from Rocky, drive Rocky to Dr Cline's Clinic and dump him. Drive on to get some motel rooms set up.

@Adamu Here are two test I think are applicable to my situation. I want to use Cerb's knowledge of the streets and his matrix skills to find some crappy motels where they might be persuaded not to require a SIN while registering a room.