So, random question, I know... but, I've been wondering how other people handle what is supposed to be the end-all-be-all of security in their games. So, here's my question: which one could actually be accomplished easier (easier being a relative term) a physical intrusion on Zurich Orbital or physical intrusion into the Vatican City Vaults (assuming we all believe that they have secret vaults)?

Another side question: have you ever had a character actually plan an over the top heist of some kind? (a la Oceans 11 or The Italian Job) How did it turn out?

Not canon but simply a statement based on my reading of the fluff:

The Vaults are easier to crack physically since you needn't get to space to do so and space is its own defense against Magic. But the whereabouts of the Vaults themselves probably require more successes than God(pun intended) to get while the time and place of the next launch to ZO may be easier to obtain.

unless the Vaults simply don't exist, i'd say Z-O would be harder.

wait...do the two sites have to remain intact? do they have to be livable? does tip toeing through the ash and radio active reckage count?

The Vatican has formiddable magical defenses, Zurich Orbital simply exists in a mana void. ZO, therefore, can be gotten into with any of a number of social hacks. If you can convince a real live person that you are supposed to be there, everything else falls into place.

To get into the Vatican Vault, you have to get past powerful bound angels one way or another. Possibly with a drone? The Angels can't see it very well.

I would say ZO is the easiest of the two because it just has extremely brutal physical security. The number of characters and skills required to get in are very high, but limited in scope. You just need some very good disguises and background mimicry to infiltrate a transport up to the negotiation sector and then straight up steal yourself to a legal jackpoint and perform the espionage.

-Frank

Party of Toxic Shamans could take the Vatican I think.

Has everyone here forgoten Target: Wastelands?

Now, the vaults may be hidden deep, deep down in some place that no one will ever find them, but even then Id rather go chasing after some vatican vaults than take on Z-O any and every day of the week.

Z-O is the most protected area on or off the earth. Shadowrunners would have to go undercover for half their lives before ever getting a chance to board, and even then they would never be out of sight. If taking on a megacorp is like taking on a great dragon, taking on Zurich-Orbital is like taking on all the great dragons at once, in their lairs. Dont even think about it.

I'm thinking soemthing along the lines of a very good social adept along wit ha seriously scary team of deckers would have the best chance at the orbital. The Vatican, there's just so many bases to cover, I don't see if happeinng. I mean seriously, you have to know where to look first.

Yeah, I'd rather go Vatican than Zürich Orbital.

From what I understand of Zurich Orbital, your clever stories won't work, your fake SINS will collapse like a house of cards, you won't be allowed within forty meters of a jackpoint, and even if your decker makes it inside, it'd just be a quicker way of slitting your own throat. If I understand the level of defense this thing has, the ONLY way to successfully penetrate it is through the intervention of one (or several) plot devices. A la Neuromancer. If you're going to take the orbital, it'd have to be as part of an adventure that specifically makes allowances for it to be possible. But in a realistic sense of some guy or group of guys saying "I think I'll take down Zurich Orbital today", it's not going to happen. It also doesn't help that there is probably no higher level of IC in the world. I'm talking rating 8 or higher in SR4 terms.

Don't see it happening.

OSUMacbeth

Vartican City would definately be easier, speaking relatively, than Zurich Orbital I would have thought.

For ZO you don't create an ID that has access to the station. It doesn't matter what the veracity index you can come up with for an ID on the ground, the backups are actually on the ZO station and they'll spot the discrepency immediately.

No. You find someone who actually has authorization to go up the gravity well, you kill him, and you take his place. You pass blood scanners with Gataca vullshit, and you are just really good at faking mannerisms.

There are real people who physically are allowed to work up there. That's the weak link. The only one I know of.

-Frank

Well said, Trollman. You have pointed out the one weakness in ZO, I agree. Like most any structure a human designs, it has this one weakness: Humans have to be able to use it. This is, so far as I can see, the only "weakness" in ZO. As to whether it can realistically be exploited, see plot devices, above.

Maybe FastJack could manage it. But then, I love FastJack.

OSUMacbeth

Mystic Adept with Kinesics to mimic body language, Eiditic Memory sense and Mind probe to get a thorough understanding of the target. High social skills, High facial Scuplt, False Signature and Masking, and a lot of knowledge skills and active skills to mimic the person effectively. It would be very itneresting if nothing else.

there aren't people who are allowed into the Vaults?

Agreed, in a one-man infiltration, an adept would appear to have the best chance.

EDIT: Wait, didn't they change it so that in 4th ed adepts go all wonky in the presence of outer space? Don't their powers refuse to work or something? (Haven't read that much of Street Magic.) Wasn't outside the gaiasphere considered to be something like a level 14 background count in SR3?

With the Church, it's made pretty clear in Threats 2 and othe references that they aren't afraid to mindprobe people. There's a lot of things they do say that happens when you go up to the orbital, but that isn't one of them. Might be able to be bypassed with a personafix chip though. Now I want to do a campaign about one of these. Isn't Arleesh looking for one of the vaults?

I high enough initiate adept can work in a mana warp.

I too think ZO would be easier to do than the Vatican Vaults.

If you don't want to depend only on the adept, there is always surgery.

So, how intense would you make security for the Vatican Vaults?

Maybe Synner can give us some glimpses at his idea of their security. IIRC, the main thing protecting the various vaults around the world was the difficulty in finding them.

A high level Initiate with the Flexible Signature Metamagic Technique should be able to fool the spirits that aren't bound to the person whose aura he's mimicking. With Extended Masking he could also hide active spells such as, physical Mask to fool both camera's and patrolling 'Angels'. (Assensing + Intuition VS Intuition + Magic + Initiate Grade to see through it)

But its totally not possible as a starting character. And neither is Z-O

Yeah, it shouldn't be. To bad Possession is no longer a metamagic. That along with False Signature could go a long way. Perhaps that's why.

One does not simply walk into ZO. (runs)

That said, I would suspect that it would be a lot easier than the Vatican. For starters, ZO is in plain sight. It's a fairly known quantity, protected by massive layers of security, most of them information-based. Most troublemakers are kept away by the big moat, while ZO proper probably has enough firepower to take down anybody who tries to boost directly for it. That means that unless you're there to nuke it (in which case you're almost certainly not a runner, and your government is willing to risk de facto all-out corp war), the only way you're dealing with it is to sleeze your way in, accomplish your mission without detection, and sleeze back out. Which, of course, means that most of ZO's real defenses will be aimed at stopping that.

However, ZO does have a weakness, in that people actually use it. People go up and down all the time, including third parties. That's the best hole (really the only one) to exploit. It'll take massive contacts--don't expect to succeed unless a corp or government is secretly backing you--but, it can sorta be done.

The Vatican... well, its big advantage is that nobody knows anything, and those who do, aren't going to talk. Just getting intel on the big secrets would be almost impossible, and would almost certainly require a cardinal-level Johnson in the first place. On top of that, you can expect massive layers of security with heavy, heavy magic, probably no matrix at all (wired independent security), and very fanatical guards. Just as importantly, there are likely to be far, far fewer people with permission to enter, and they will be Church members whose lives are extensively tracked. So, sleezing in would be far harder than even ZO, and shooting your way in would probably be about as impossible.

I'd call the Vatican harder.

It occurs to me upon further reflection, that there is a hack to get in to the Black Library. The place is a vault, not just metaphorically in that the security is extremely tight, but in actuality. It is literally there to protect and secure the contents of stuff that the Vatican does not want found.

If you got a warded object tagged as something that was a sealed source of Angels of Satan or some similar blasphemous artifact, the Vatican would take it - ward and all - into the Black Library vault. If that object happened to have someone on the inside who was being sustained indefinitely with Hybernate, then they wouldn't specifically have any way of knowing that.

Now the Guardian Angels never sleep, and neither do the cameras. But the camera system is strictly on-site. It is not allowed to send any information as to the contents of those vaults outside. Any illusion you cast inside the ward is invisible to the scutiny of the Angels and if powerful enough will fool the cameras. That'll give you enough breathing space to open up the container and let loose a drone. You can use that drone to relay over and hack the cameras to loop some feed, and then you can walk your drone around the inside of the vault for as long as you want. that can set up any of a number of things, so long as it doesn't touch any of the exhibits, doesn't move around ay living or enchanted thing, and carries no spell or sorcerous residue.

Not much room to get your stuff accomplished, is it? Well, the key here is that you can throw down some explosives, which are highly processed and unlikely to be noticed by the Angels.

So now you blow the entrance from the inside, and the Vatican is going to have to call in outside "technicians" to handle the demon attack. Well, now that you've got a transmitter on the inside (and by transmitter, I mean that you've got a hibernating magician connected to an ally spirit who is in communication with an outside rigger) you know where it is. And you have access to their wireless accounts.

So now you intercept the traffic requesting assistance and you answer that you're available to respond on their channels. You show up partially shaved and partially outfitted in Templar garments and apologize profusely for your rushed appearance and they'll tell you to blow your way in to keep the demonic forces from doing... whatever it is that they are doing in there. You rush in guns blazing, have some bound spirits appear and fight them off. Blow the fuck out of some stuff and march out with whatever you're after and your hibernated insurgents.

Evac and switch vehicles. Go to a ward and go to ground. Stay that way for weeks.

There is always a hack. You up for this one?

---

Courtesy: Ocean's Eleven, with obvious updates to allow for the Magical properties of the security system.

-Frank

guardian angels = various kinds of spirits conjured and bound (probably long term) by church magicians (of which there are a few orders, if my memory is correct).

So a smash and grab job then?

Sliiightly more complicated.

The Vaults could also be built on Domains which can be just as detrimental to Magic use. Remember a void screws with everyone and I do not see the CC allowing a certain tradition gaining a Domain where they launch their orbitals(eg. Wuxing will not want Aztech to mess with their juju and vice versa).

Also the difficulty of a physical intrusion increases the more open-ended the premise of the run is. For example, if your Johnson told you that the Corp Court/Vatican was in possession of an important "something" and he wants you to track it down and steal it back, now the most secure place available to the CC would be the ZO Orbital, a hit or 2 on the knowledge test should yield that, but for the Vatican it might take 4+ hits to know that the Vaults would be the most secure places. And then you need to find the Vaults and after that you need to find which Vault it is in and so on.

Some theory-running - Let's say that the Vaults require a minimum of 2 more tests to find out where the artifact is: to actually know that the Vaults exist(success test), to find out where the Vaults are/artifact actually is(extended test). And let's say that the difficulty of both sites are extreme with ZO requiring 1-2 more successes per test. You'd need at least 9 tests to balance the number of successes in favor of ZO.