Nuke the Site from Orbit, it's the only way to be sure? O.o

Not overkill, that's just the only way to be sure.

~J

So, if an orbital nuking isen't overkill, what about an orbital nuking, following by an orbital bombardment with energy beams, followed by a couple of Thor shots, and another nuke for good measure?

That's just stupid. You send the Thor shots before the energy beams, so any bunkers present would be penetrated already. Simple common-sense strategy for any important task.

~J

I don't follow, explain your reasoning, please.

Would not the energy lances also bust the bunkers?

Don't see why they would—they'd ablate the surface material, possibly generating a local explosion but probably not penetrating very deep.

~J

You're all idiots. Just pray really hard and you'll get whatever you want.

Kagetenshi no you realy want to make sure the bumker is busted you hit it with a one mile across chunk of space rock followed by the Thor shots then the Nukes then the Energy lances then another one mile hunk of rock then more thor shots then a finle nuke. is it overkill na for it to be overkill would have to have more then 40 as a kill count.

Screw it, just use the trih xeem. If it releases a w'rkncacnter, so much the better.

~J

to stay within shadowrun context:
bound free great form spirit of earth of force 10 with earth quake power . . an actual attainable city-killer for player characters *g*

Screw free spirits, provided you're willing to take the hit from the drain you can nail a 1.2-kilometer diameter with a 6S attack once per combat turn with a Force 6 Great Form with the Storm power. Provided you have a Trauma Damper to cap max damage received at once at 9 Physical, 1 Stun, you can deal out as much damage as you can summon spirit to dish out.

~J

Yes, that would be why I know about the technique

It's hard to remember, but I think some of your opposition was still alive for up to a minute after the strikes (to the extent that "bleeding out with no one to help" is still alive, that is to say technically but not in any useful sense). The only real way to survive chained Storm Strikes that I've been able to find is to be a giant Troll with decent luck. Of course, even that stops working if you're willing to pump up Force past 4…

~J

Hehe, i had forgotten to mention in the same campaign that the squirrel met its end, our combat mage met a baby gryphon who flew into his face and squeaked at him as he was stealing some gryphon eggs(he needed them for a ransom to save his sister from kidnappers.)

He shot said squeaking baby gryphon with two bursts of exploding ammo. (then he managed to pull the most spectacular series of unfortunate events which lived on in our jokes for the past five years, nicknamed the 'high five dive'. Thats a story for another thread.)

In addition, as our resident gun expert was dodging, thanks to a burned point of karma, an AVM fired from a car in the middle of a field, said AVM ended up hitting a sheep.

That campaign became extremely deadly for cute, furry, feathery or wooly things. Luckily, no more things met their untimely end due to bad rolls, mistakes or brutal combat mages. (in my trolls defense, he didnt KNOW it was a squirrel when he fired at it. )

Doing Ivy and Chrome, a long time ago, we took out one of the attack 'copters and it's flaming mass crashed into the main building of the elven commune. Yup it caught fire too, propate tanks went up. flames and smoke and secondary explosions added to the joy of the fight.

and in the morning light, standing by the smoking ruins, our team leader still had the chutspa to ask for payment.

I'm wondering if anyone's ever overkilled during Food Fight?

Like, say, to the extent that a Lone Star HTR Team was called?

Two overkills here. Ask and ye shall receive ShadowDragon.

I was GMing for a group and we ran Food Fight, when the bad guys came into the Stuffer Shack the mage Mob Minded all the enemies as well as anyone else in the store packing a weapon or acting weird(so basically everyone he could get in his overcast Force 11 Mob Mind which was almost everyone in the store.) He made them line up in a circle and simultaneously shoot each other in the head (guns were provided from back ups and hold outs and such.) The guy in the group with rating 5 in engineering and chemistry took a lot of ingredients from around the store and set several firebombs interspersed for maximum dispersal and burned the whole fucking store down.

Two, I was playing in this game so different characters, we were charged with safely escorting a convoy(8 18 wheelers full of drugs if I recall correctly) down I-95 and into various distrubition warehouses all across the city. The first place the convoy was supposed to turn off and deliver some drugs there was a roadblock. 36 gangers all armed with longarms of some kind, usually assault rifles. Myself(Combat Mage) and a friend(Inhuman .005 essence heavy weapons/gun specialist) were in the first truck as we expected the most resistance from this direction. We saw the roadblock and stopped outside of assault rifle range. One Force 12 Lightning Ball(with 10 successes out of 16 dice if I recall correctly) and one HE Rocket (also with alot of successes) later most of the 15 or so cars are on fire and we just kind of plowed through the rest of them. Some excellent first aiding later we are all feeling fine. Not long after that an Ares Dragon complete with HMG and dual rocket launchers comes flying up out of nowhere and begins warning us off the road (stupid rival drug importers) They are about a quarter of the way through the warning the Heavy Weapons specialist fires the only other rocket we have(Anti-vehicle) at the chopper. Rolling 18 dice + 5 edge and getting I believe it was... 18 successes. The GM critically glitched the soak roll from the helo and so we blew it out of the sky. Oh, also the week before this we had stopped a hostile takeover of one of our warehouses, interrogated a guy and found out when the driver to come get all the drugs we had there would be coming and set enough explosives to incinerate the 18 wheeler and collapse a couple of buildings it was near to make an object lesson. Needless to say.... we are well known and have paid out over 100k in bribes to get the authorities to look the other way.

Oh, I thought of a third one. Also in my game, different characters from the first one. They were hired to go into a Humans First rally building and find an offline computer and steal a specific file, find all copies of it and destroy them. What they didn't know is the computer the file was in was owned by an especially paranoid and rabid racist. It was connected to bombs layered in the floors all around and under the building(middle of the business district, mind) and if the connection was ever disrupted the computer would wirelessly warn him and the bombs would start a 45 second countdown. They waited till a huge rally when some famous speaker(Regional leader of the Humanis Policlub) came to speak at the building and used the massive amount of people to sneak in undetected. Stealthed upstairs and found his office went in and connected to the computer, copied the file and got leads on who else had a copy of it from that main drive. As he copied the file he was discovered and set off an alarm, which he sent an agent to distract. Scared the agent might not have completed the job, he rechecked that he had the file and pulped the computers guts. With a logic of 8 and a hardware skill of 4, I let him just destroy all functionality of the unit. Which broke the connection and armed the bomb, but the computer was destroyed and couldn't warn the guy. They managed to run down the stairs and casually stroll past the other observers while the politician was ranting in the auditorium. Of course they were then knocked on their asses about 20 feet from the building as the whole damn thing exploded. Luckily enough killing everyone who had seen the file besides them and destroying all stored copies. So... they killed some like 600 Humans First and Humanis Policlub members and leveled a building while severely damaging several others and all for I believe it was... 7k each.

Chris

hell, i want in on that o.o

Heh, what amused me is that all the PCs involved were human. They had a combat troll, and an elven mage as backup in a coffee shop a block or two away, but they never approached the building. So it was all "race-traitor" this and "trog-lover" that and it spurred a serious of human on human crimes that ended with a joint KE and LS strike force (metahuman integrated, of course) taking down a 30 man cell of Sword of God(humans first extremist splinter group in my game) extremists with an explosion very similar to the original building.

Also, I was proud of my combat troll, he picked up a racist slur from his waitress as she walked away with his order "Dammit... more fucking trogs and dandies. I can't get a single decent table today. They never tip worth a shit and I really need some money." So instead of confronting her, he deliberately left a 500 tip for her which he made the perception roll to see her manager steal. After an lengthy interrogation a couple days later they found out that the manager was a Humans First member and that using his executive access to the computer system he would wander around the tables as customers were leaving and transfer like 90% of the money left in tips by metahumans to a Humans First account. Simultaneously funding the organization and recruiting people for his cause. Ask any waitresses you know, they develop hatred the strength of which is unknown to the rest of us for genres of people that are statistically horrible tippers(or don't tip at all).


Chris

EDIT: Oh, in my games tips are generally handled by an imbedded credstick reader or wireless receptor in each specific table so you can leave a tip and still have the amount be unknown till after you have left the table. The waitress comes over and swipes her card or accesses it with her commlink(depending on how wired she is) and takes the tip in that way. So, the manager had programmed an override into the system that made his commlink accessing the table take 90% of the tipped amount.

The troll should have beaten the manager to a bloody pulp and revealed his scam to the waittresses.


BTW, 'only' 7K? Any character I make probably would have taken the job damn-nearly pro bono if they knew about the chance to kill 600+ Humanis types with their own bomb. (Provided any loot we sneak is ours, et cetera.) And funnily enough, my characters are all human... They just love the hell out of elves.

We've got a human supremacist terrorist in our group. We're all humans, but he still makes us nervous. My character's fairly apathetic about the race issue. Nothing against metahumans, but they're not really a crowd he runs with. But I think anyone can appreciate the virtues of not pissing off every troll you meet. Or those times you wanna take a field trip to Tarislar to set up some smuggling connections to get stuff through Sinsearach territory, and you have a guy in tow that has "elf skull" tattoos. Would an elf skull even be that identifiably different than a human skull? Anyway, I'm thinking some overkill might be in order here (except I know it isn't, because anything that's "in order" is, by definition, not overkill--I'm just trying to make my tangent related to the thread).

Sorry. I did forget to mention that part. I guess I assumed it was obvious. They beat the manager within an inch of his life, leaked incriminating evidence of what he had done to the authorities as well as all the local metahuman gangs(Spikes, Ancients, etc.), forced him to divide his worldly goods equally among the wait staff and then stripped him naked and left him smack dab in the middle of Dissasembler territory armed with nothing but a night and a glow pack strapped to his back with the word "Food" spray painted on his chest in red letters.


Although I would like to let my players take credit for that, they were all suggesting possible punishments and I suggested the ghoul territory, gang info leak, and worldly possession stuff. Needless to say they all eat for free at that cafe now.

Also, they didn't know about the bomb, it was just supposed to scare them and provide them with a way to escape. I assumed they would probably trigger it and alert everyone so they could evacuate during the panic. I never imagined they would accidently blow up some 600 odd people.

Chris

EDIT: Hadn't thought about it, but I guess the managers punishment was a good example of overkill too. Also, I run decently high cash high karma games. We are still getting a feel for the setting so I'm running from middle to high powerlevel relatively quickly to let everyone get a feel for where their preference falls. After this next campaign in which I am using Frank's Build Rules and expect to hit at least 200 BP before ending, I am going to run a very low power game and then we will have covered all the bases. So, 7k wasn't that much compared to the 15k they got before it, and the 28k they have gotten for the two missions since then.

I just thought of another one... man maybe my group needs to stop overkilling stuff. Then again, that is what we are known for so those are the directions our jobs tend to fall now.

Anyway, we were defending a warehouse we had recently liberated from an opposing gang. I(combat houngan) was downstairs in the middle of rewarding the lower floor of the warehouse(I like stacked wards) and the soulless heavy weapons expert(HWE) was hanging out on the roof keeping watch for where our enemies were going to be coming from(no rigger available) there were other party members but the melee adept and the stealth magician didn't really do anything this fight(or most others). HWE saw the convoy in the distance, about 3 heavy trucks packed full of people(It was.... 31 opposing gang members I think.) were approaching all on the same side. He, for some reason, waited till they were almost to us before warning us and when he did he warned us by shooting an HE rocket out into the middle of them and yelling "They're here!". I summon a Force 8 spirit and start running up the stairs, on my next turn I have the spirit possess the Plasteel Homunculous I had finished literally the day before and tell it to go outside and defend the warehouse. Meanwhile, the HWE has withstood a barrage(literally) of bullets and lobbed a grenade downstairs into the midst of some gangers he missed with the rocket. Our GM is evil so most of the guys downstairs were wearing armor with Fire Protection 6 on it and thus were injured but not down. For some reason the HWE didn't want to take cover and so just stood there being shot and rolling some completely insane soaking and taking almost no damage on a consistent basis. I get up the stairs, peak over the side of the building(like a sane person) get some help from a bound spirit and Force 12 Lightning Ball every ganger except for 4 of them. I also edged my test and ended up with 11 successes. I rolled well and only took like 5 physical for that stunt. I shut down all the vehicles, killed almost all the gangers and blew up the vehicles that had previously taken a rocket and a grenade. THEN my plasteel Homunculus with a Force 8 guardian spirit inside busts out the exit door on that side. One of the surviving 4 is standing right by the door and he pulps him with one blow(plasteel homunculi are STRONG) and moves towards another one. The other gangers start running and the HWE shoots one in the back with his Ares Alpha and knocks him down, I Force 12 Stunbolt the other one and the homunculi goes and stomps on both their heads. While the homunculi rampages around finishing off the incapacitated gangers that are left me and the HWE take pot shots at the one fleeing ganger just to freak him out even more, but we let him live so he can warn the other gangs to leave us the hell alone. He was the last surviving member of his gang, we had taken all their shipping routes and property and finally killed the rest of them.

Chris

Is there any chance your group plays online? I think I want in on some of this...

Heh, I'll let you know if that ever happens, but no we play my friends game Friday from like 11PM to 3AM and my game Saturday at the same time. With school and jobs it is the only time we can seem to get together. However, it is entirely possible I will be running a game around here at some point. No idea how good I would be at it, but I've always kind of wanted to give it a shot and there rarely seems to be a lack of players. Apparently I am fun to play under or something- either that or all the other GMs around here suck. We are the only SR group I know of around here but, largely thanks to us, DnD has become pretty big in our rural town lately and one time several years back I actually ran a DnD game for about 2 months that had 16 REGULAR players. I will never run that large a game without back-up again. We all had fun, and it progressed better than I thought it would, but uhg.... I wanted to firebomb the place and run away.

I'm a very on the fly type GM, I build an over-arcing plot in my mind, but I never stick to details, or very rarely. Usually when I do people die. My players minds just don't work the same way mine does so if I leave them an obvious(to me) opening they usually don't even see it. So, I do alot of winging it no matter how prepared I am and I've gotten good at catering to the moment. What would make this story the best it could be RIGHT NOW? Since we are Americans that often means blowing shit up. I pride myself on being ready for anything as a GM and as such I let players bring anything at all that they want to the table within the set parameters of a game. You think up something broken? Bring it in. I will find a way to challenge you without killing the hell out of everyone else or breaking the bounds of belief.

Anyway, I am tired, no idea where I was going with that. I guess just to say that no we don't play online though I might be able to be talked into starting a game after finals this december. Well... probably once school starts back, I'm sure the two weeks around X-Mas would be death for a new game. I dunno, depends on who was playing. Huh.... maybe I should work on the overarching plotline for a PbP game. I'm going to go start a new topic right now to that effect.

Chris

Hmmmm.....

The first one that comes to mind is when we were playing newbie characters in SR2 and the GM throws us up against an insect spirit hive. A little net access later and we find out how much bad mojo that is. (In character, as a player I went through Euphoria & UB in 1e)

So we steal a tanker truck of propane, strap about 100 gallons of concentrated insecticide to the outside, slot a decent demolitions & chemistry chip to oxygenate the propane tank to get a proper fuel-air-explosive, and drive the freaking thing through the front door. Total ka-boom.

Next best was a 1e job, possibly a variant Harelequin job, where we were supposed to nuke a joint (translated from the Johnson's "leave no evidence") after stealing some stuff. I was the mage on astral overwatch and found there was a hell hound in a basement armory. I told the gunbunny who was my overwatch to set up the medkit b/c I was about to bleed out the eyes.

Once the guys had the stuff and were out the window, I sank a Hellblast into the 'hound. (Back in 1e an astral mage could fire an elemental combat spell into a dual natured creature and the spell would affect the mundane world). I had to soak 8D4 (physical) drain (got it down to Serious, whee!) but the entire building went up like a rocket and then down like a house of cards. Apparently the foundation was old masonry, rather than plascrete, so the spell shattered the entire sub-floor.


Next closest was the Universal Brotherhood finale, in 1e. I went in with two crusader machine pistols (32 rounds each), four spare clips, an enfield AS-7 with 50-round drum, and a grenade launcher. Oh, and a streetline special because it was 1e and all street mages had one as a union card. Note: I'm the mage. The two sams went in heavier: vindicator minigun and a panther cannon. I'm not sure if the decker even bothered coming inside or if he just brought popcorn and bodybags as he waited outside.

By the time we were fighting our way out the other side of the hive, the two sams have burned through their ammo reserves as well as my crusaders and the spare ammunition. Even the streetline is empty, as we used it for a couple of coup de grace shots. I've managed to use up all but one grenade and 6 rounds in the Enfield while simultaneously casting enough spells to be at 9-boxes of stun.

Think about just how many combat rounds it would take a mage to fire 44 shots (even with a reactive trigger), use 2 grenades, and several spells.

I really don't remember the fight itself. The game started at 8pm and ended at 4am so it's all a blur of dice, x's through my stun chart, and smudges as I kept decrementing my karma tally and ammo list. All I remember is stepping out of a hole in the wall (made with my next-to-last grenade), to a standing ovation by a LoneStar SWAT (pre-HRT) team.

Apparently our "in case something happens to us" letters got delivered early and the SWAT team showed up with bells, whistles and combat mages. Our arch nemesis in Lonestar (named Grissom all those years ago, which is much funnier now) wants us arrested but the SWAT guys refuse after having seen the carnage as well as the scoped out the things the bugs had been up to. They say he's welcome to try it himself but point out our weapons haven't (yet) locked open from lack of ammo.

The rigger pulls up in our modified RV and we drive off. We give Grissom the peace sign as we go.

Kigs?

Chris

Kigs = kigmatzomat, the guy who posted above me.

The biggest group I ever played with was a inexperienced but professional 3 man team of Raven, a covert ops specialist who specialised in dual brownings when it came to combat, Loki, a japanese obsessed norse ork street samurai with a katana, and a ex-CIA operative, skilled in disguise, and handy with an assault rifle.

We were pretty smooth when handling violence, we handled a particular B/E on a politicos house by Raven stealthing the perimeter and silencing the guards, while "Jack" and Loki lobbed a gas grenade into the sec-room and polished the guards who ran out the door with full-auto gel-round bursts from ingram smartguns. The best part of that particular run was when Loki and Raven came to physical blows during an argument, which caused an epic escape attempt by the politico, which climaxed by Loki headbutting the man out of a second story window and onto Raven who had ran outside to intercept.

But the most overkill we experienced was when Raven and Loki visited their local bar for a quick drink. A robbery attempt quickly escalated into a full bar-room brawl, where raven slid under a table with his unholstered Browning Max Power and proceeded to blow the kneecaps off various offending thugs and patrons alike, while the dual cyber-armed Loki attempted to brawl with various patrons, but unfortunately, while he had a high katana skill, he had absolutely no unarmed combat skill to speak of, and as such, kept soaking attacks with his high body. In the end he decided he tired of failed defaults, and decided to use his proficient cyber-implant combat, which went town much better, as he ran around the room disembowling drunk aggressive patrons. Raven was pretty handy with his fists for an elf, and slugged one of the robbers over the bar, vaulted over after him and proceeded to murder him with a glass bottle as well as unloading his browning for good measure.

Needless to say, they had to find a new drinking hole.

I once had a group who were hired to steal the weapons cargo off a maglev train heading through the Tir. The (pacifist) shaman suggested we use some C4 and blow part of the track so the train would have to stop.

Instead we used a massive overload of C12 and waited til the train was in sight before we set it off, giving it no time to stop and derailing it, killing everyone aboard.

That whole group is severely dysfunctional, though.

...ahh, the old Brainscan run.

Yeah we were "bulked" up for that one too using the high power level chargen from MrJ'sLBB.

That's where I had Gracie (#57) my Dwarven ex-MET2000 Merc who could stand her ground going full lead hose with an Ares Alpha (needed one of those "ammo dump" drones as well). She also was pretty bad ass in melee with full Ambedexterity and two dikoted Cougar Fineblades (the longer ones) went toe to toe with a Medusa & managed to take it out. She got lucky because she parried it's brain probe & in the process got enough successes to sever it. Her next action she planted both blades firmly into it's body with a 13S (staged up to D+) attack.

Actually I don't think any amount of force proceeded by the words "Hive" and "Arcology Run" actually counts. That isn't over kill that is simply just enough kill.
I think the most over kill I have ever seen was strapping a blood mage to a small nuclear device. After having shot him with several lightmachine guns, decapitated him, and then set him on fire. For those wondering the nuke was part of the run.

It is possible to overkill something involving the words "Hive" "Arcology Run", "Horror Incursion" or "Tainted Kaer". But it involves a weapon of mass destruction significant enough to scour a half a continent clean.

That's not overkill. That's just being properly cautious.