Okay, so I gather (from skimming several threads) that many people here feel that the average security guard or Lone Star officer should probably not have any cyberware, or at least not any supplied by the parent corp. The rationale is that it's too great of an investment for the corporation. I'd like to offer an opposing view and see what people think.

Consider Lone Star and the smartlink system. Now, smartlinks retail for 2,500 . If Lone Star, inc. were to purchase 1,000 units for its employees, the cost would probably drop significantly. I'm thinking of a 10-15% discount, maybe more. To be reasonable, let's say that Lone Star purchases 1,000 smartlink systems at a grand total of 2,150,000 . This is peanuts for a company like Lone Star.

Now consider the effect of having every officer smartlinked:

1) The amount of aAmmunition lost to missed shots plummets dramatically;
2) Accidental civilian death and injury rates likewise drop like a stone;
3) Employee health and safety improves;
4) Firearm maintenance becomes significantly easier and faster;

Points (1) and (4) will immediately contribute to offsetting the direct (monetary) cost of the cyberware. By saving money on bullets and maintenance, the smartlinks will--eventually--pay for themselves.

Points (2) and (3) provide less tangible--but no less significant--benefits: employee morale and public confidence increase. The PR campaign practically writes itself...

The only major hitch I see is the surgery time for every cop and the various sundry medical expenses associated with major invasive surgery. However, given that Lone Star inc. MUST have some kind of plan for addressing employee injuries (either its own medical facilities or some kind of long-term contract with DocWagon, Universal Omnitech, CrashCart or whomever), I don't foresee the surgeries to be a major issue.

Thoughts? Additions or objections?

Why not just give them Smartgoggles or Smartshades? Sure, they're slightly more expensive, but if you lose a cop in the line of duty or someone gets promoted to a desk job, you can recover the equipment.

Those are slightly more expensive, and singnificantly less effective. -1 vs a -2 to a TN is pretty significant.

Only by 500 nuyen, which is more than made up for the fact that you don't have to pay for surgery costs, hospital bills and salaries for downtime, nor buy a new one each time a cop goes down or gets promoted.

I totally agree with you. In my campaign all Lone Star beat cops and professional armed security guards would be equipped with smartlinks. The cost really isn't that much especially when you consider the economy of scale. If it wasn't standard issue, I'm sure the companies would offer a purchasing program; possible accepting some of the costs and offering low interest loans to encourage employees to get them.
I think the costs involved with expended ammo would pale in comparison to the liability for accidental deaths. When I was in the Marines I was an Embassy Guard. We used an incredible amount of ammunition on a quarterly bases for familiarization firing, just to keep our skill level up. I'm sure security agencies in Shadowrun do the same.

Surgical costs run approximately 15,000 for a smartlink installation. The surgery itself deals 4 boxes of physical damage.

Even given the amount of a discount you could count on from having your own doctors on staff, the real cost of the surgery isn't likely to drop below half of that.

Even with that big price tag, though, it is quite possibly worth it from an insurance standpoint to have the officers outfitted with the smartlink. The surgical version is superior in many ways (not having a cable attached is a huge benefit, and it's vastly more presentable in a non-combat zone environment).

The simple fact is that in the kind of circumstances where police officers most need their weapons, you'd likely be increasing the chance of hitting by 20%+ (I'd expect most situations to be poor lighting and medium range, so the difference between TN 5 and TN 7).

For Lone Star and other major security companies, I go with the fact that smartlinked weapons and smart-goggles were standard issue with purchasing programs (and probably some pressure from the top) for internal smartlinks - Lone Star, especially, would definately have their own docs and hospitals (or contracts with the big boys). That's how my last character got his smartlink II - he worked for a major security company before becoming a runner and he bought the thing on an employee purchasing program.

I was thinking about something like this a while back. I came to the conclusion that it would either be smartlinks or laser sights. The smart goggles look better but don't any of the real benefits that the cyber version does.

Lets throw out the whole -1 vs. -2 TN mod or now. I always liked the other things the SL does for you. For instance: eject clip=free action and change mode of fire=free action. Perfect for the Shadowrunner on the, well, run...Or for the corp sec goon chasing said Shadowrunner.

From a cost point of view, I give SLs to KE (and HardCorps) and other "higher end" sec forces that don't provide coverage for entire Sprawl. For LoneStar, I say veteran beat cops and plain clothes cops would have 'em, probably w/some other cyber thrown in too. (bone lacing after getting roughed up by trolls, some dermal work, maybe a radio or headphone, etc. Depends on the cop and if I need this cop to have this stuff) Call it 1 in 5 or 1 in 6. (note: I don't know if those numbers are RL accurate but screw it, I'm the GM so they're dead on balls accurate in my SR world). Plus, my players are newbs and thier characters haven't tackled anything too tough yet.

I could see getting a smartlink as part of the corporate ladder for a security corp. They obviously wouldn't put the investment into a rookie who may or may not last the year, but maybe at their second year aniversary they would spring for the gear.

Currently people change jobs a lot, but it is implied that corporate loyalty is encouraged highly in SR and that the days of the 30 and out pension are back in full force in the absence of a strong government to stabalize an economy. So paying the 20k to do the whole smartlink system doesn't seem unreasonable for someone like knight errant.

From my recollections of the Lone Star book, corporate policy requires every employee, from janitor and secretary on up to CEO, to qualify with a handgun. The standards vary (clerks and cafeteria workers only have to be able to shoot to standard X, while officers have to meet standard Y) but every Lone Star empoyee is required to be familiar with handguns.

With this corporate mentality, I'd imagine that not only would Smartlinks be standard, they'd be encouraged for just about everyone.

In general, I agree with the original poster, but a couple of random thoughts . . .

1) If you want cost effective, add a laser sight to each Ruger Thunderbolt. If you want your cops to be better than that, add a gas vent. This is likely the route taken by the little companies that can't afford better. Also, many cops would pay to upgrade their own weapons. They do nowadays . . .

2) Notwithstanding the above, I would have all LS cops have a smartlink-I installed. (The smartlink-II benefits really don't apply much to pistols.) The corp would likely do it right as they were hired. But wait, you say, why would the corp invest then? Two reasons - first, the beginning weeks of most police academies (including the one I attended) are spent in the classroom, which allows for healing. Given the prevalence of simsense technology, those classes could be "attended" by recruits in hospital beds with ease. Second, the corp ensures each new recruit's loyalty by making them sign an obligatory document that mandates two years of employment before they move on (like many modern police departments do nowadays). Two years is enough time to recoup a 2,500Y investment. The only flaw in this is the expense of the small percentage of recruits who fail out of the academy, but them's the breaks.

(On a side note, recruits who fail the academy or fail to complete the two-year contract would have the smartlink disabled by LS. Perhaps an Electronics B/R (6) test to repair with a base time of four hours, and a Biotech (Cybersurgery) (4) test to avoid medical complications. The Rule of One for the Biotech test would be brain damage, and for the Electronics test would be functional destruction of the processor. Any cop would effectively have a permit for the smartlink by virtue of their employment record in their credstick; employees who completed the two-year contract would effectively have a lifetime permit.)

3) Smartlink surgery is highly invasive. The eye must be opened and an image projector (eye display) must be installed with a wire run to the rear of the cranium. The palm must be opened, an induction pad installed, and a wire run to the cranium. The cranium must be opened and a limited simsense rig and smartlink processor installed and connected to the aforementioned wires. It's not like popping in a dampener. It's much more complex and time-consuming.

All in all, I like the idea. I think every cop would want one. In fact, I think many cops would agree to pay for it themselves through a company loan, which is what my ex-Lone Star character did. (He did that for boosted reflexes 1, too.)

Good thread!

I also think that lonestar et all would preferentially hire ex military or security personel who already have a smartlink. Think of all the stuff people do before getting into the police department today. Maybe having a smartlink is yet another plus on your application. When it comes down to it an organization that cares how well its personel can shoot has two choices. They can spend all thier money on training, or they can spend some on training and some on cyberware. Quite possible the cyberware ends up being pretty cheap in this analysis. The smartlink can do some other cool stuff for cops, like that gun lock system so nobody else (or nobody but cops) can pick up the gun and use it.

You can do that by adding a biometric safety as well. I did that with a custom shotgun I made. Biometric reader, removed external safety, security weapon (spikes in handle), and then just deactivated the safety via Smartlink. Made people think twice before grabbing my shotgun. (edit) Oh, and removed trigger so I just had to think to shoot. (Does that make it a semi-Free Action? o.O)

Although, I have yet to use that character... Maybe because I broke the rules quite a bit and got some stuff over Avail 8... Shh...

<ontopic>I think that most security forces wouldn't add Smartlinks to their officers. They could get them themselves, but I doubt the corp would shell out for it unless they were very beneficial to them and they never would be promoted.

Special Forces, on the other hand, probably have all kinds of wiz stuff.</ontopic>

I know, I know, I was kidding.

OK, I wasn't. It was worth a shot!

No pun intended...

Not to mention the PR concerns -- nothing like nailing innocent bystanders to upset media outlets. Which in turn upsets voters which upsets the mayor and seriously endangers your contract.

You can also increase officer survivability by improving weapon accuracy and control. Which, in turn, more than makes up for costs in death benefits, medical bills and even employee morale.

All of which suggest that smartlink tech would be a major bennie all around, especially for patrol officers at any rate.

-Siege

so pros......

Accuracy (ammo savings, job effectiveness and not hitting civvies)
Safety (remove the triggers and all of a sudden, gutterpunks cant fire them, also lowers the chance of misfires)
Speed (clip ejection and such) ]
Reliability (cant be stolen... easily)

Cons

Costs (surgery and hardware)
Downtime (healing after surgery)
erm...... i cant think of anything else.

Pros- officer survivability.

Pro - employee morale
con - higher investment per employee

-Siege

If you have a fair number of magic types, you can have them toss around treats on your just cut-up officers, avoiding the messing up in training.

That sort of thing cheapens magic to the point where I'd rather not play. it's supposed to be special . . .

Personally, I like integrating the two.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the majority of people who routinely put their lives into the hands of their firearms (and skill with said weapons) would shell out for the system themselves. Typically, if the NPC cop is a veteran, or average Lone Star officer, he gets a SL in my games. Only officers with special stories (rookies, anti-cyberware activists) don't have them.

I view smartgoggles as standard issue due to ease of recovery. However smartlinks themselves would be heavily encourage for reasons above with some sort of low-rate loan program (sign up and get a smartlink for 50% off! or something). Boosted, bone lancing, radio and other useful pieces of cyberware also likely to be treated the same.

This exact same argument is probably played out in some board room somewhere every 6 months or so, opportunity cost v. viability -- smartlinks on all our employees.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while corporations do care about the bottom line, the actions they take may not make the most economic sense. For example, a large American corporation cut it's employee's pay by 3% across the board, the next month they went and spent 13 million on new computers. Also, that corporation has a policy that all of it's sites are surrounded by a fence, so when it acquired this new site, it spent $300,000 to put a fence up around the facility (including along the bank of a river that they were told wasn't stable to build on because it was continuously eroding), then closed that facility 6 months later.

If an accountant can justify on paper spending money to acquire equipment or other things to their superiors and get approval, then whether or not the purchase actually makes sense realistically is irrelevant. If an accountant can show that all of the costs associated with a smartlink's purchase and implantation can be offset in 1 or 2 years with cost savings in ammuntion expenditure, firing range training time and a reduction in death benefits due to an officer being shot with their own weapon, or shooting an innocent bystander, then it makes sense that all employees would be equipped with smartlinks. External attachments can be lost or damaged, while internal systems can't be lost, and if they are damaged then the officer is in much worse shape.

Corporations do care about the bottom line, but they can and do play a shell game with the actual numbers. If someone in a corporation can show on paper that by spending 10 million nuyen to put cyberware into their security employees they can prevent 20 million nuyen in losses to theft and sabotage, then they will spend the money.

The money saved in the 3% cut well exceeds the cost incurred by the new computers, futher offset by the increased productivity gained by the new computer system.

-Siege

Network 222 News Pulse

Lone Star Securities Company just announced that they are going foreward with a program that will equip any employee who chooses to with a SmartLink System. This is a computer aided targeting system that has been in use in the corporate and military security sectors for over ten years. A Lone Star represenative said that it is the civic responsibility of the company to ensure the safety of both its employees and the public at large. It is estimated that this will decrease the number of accidental shootings and property damage by Lone Star officers by as much as 40%.

This program was piloted in Atlanta and New York over the last two years. A recent deal with a major cyberware manufacturer makes it fisically possible for Lone Star to integrate the program over its entire structure on a three year timetable.

Network 222 Our fingers on the Pulse.

((ooc: Drop that on your players as a touch of warning, sigh.. the world just keeps on getting more and more dangerous. How is a criminal supposed to earn a living?"))

Wow, this hasn't been the response I expected at all. Thanks everyone for the opinions and ideas posted here, reading it has been really interesting for me.

Interesting spin: more cyberware, especially smartlinks, means more second-hand smartlinks showing up on the street.

-Siege

I still don't see Lone Star or any other police force requiring Smartlinks to be installed in all of their beat cops. Offering an incentive program to encourage it (such as giving a discount and paying them for the downtime and surgery costs)? Sure. But the increased insurance costs for each cop that has it (lower Essence means worsened health, means higher insurance especially if the corporation was forcing them to have it installed), not to mention the possibility for countless lawsuits from retired/fired cops with health problems (especially magicians), just doesn't make sense to me. I can't see every single Lone Star cop having it anymore than I can see them all having an implanted radio (and yes, I know it's mentioned in Lone Star).

Smartgoggles/shades also make a lot more sense because you can include Low-Light Vision and Thermographic Vision mods without furthering ruining their health or magical ability.

Afterall, if no one uses smartgoggles as a few of you seem to suggest by eliminating most of the big profit generators of such technology, why do they exist at all?

There isn't any canon indication that low essence impacts health negatively. I'll grant you, it's implied in the game but there are no mechanics to date to reflect that.

As for why do smart goggles if smartgun links are so much better -- that's a good question.

That cable running from the goggles to the weapon would be a royal pain, in my opinion. The reduced performance is another irritation, especially if my life depends on my accuracy with a gun.

As to who would use goggles: low-rent guards from small security companies that can't afford standard-issue smartlinks. National Guardsmen who don't rate high enough to qualify for implants beyond the basics.

There's still a market for goggles, but all of the reasons listed for implanted links outweigh the cons, including possible health concerns. Especially for companies that have incentives -- like Lone Star's contract with Seattle.

-Siege

I've always ignored the "fiber-optic cable" descriptions of most gear and just assume wireless connections. They're getting more and more common today, so I don't see them reverting back to cables in the future... Crash of '29 or not. If curious, I treat them as a Flux 0 for purposes of jamming and range, which makes it all the much more fun in some situations.

The only character I had that used Smartgoggles, alway wore a pair of fingerless gloves with induction pad built into them and looped the wire under his clothes up his arms through rings in where he had the skin on them pierced. The end of the cable came out of his shirt collar and connected to his shades (compact sunglasses version of the goggles), and thus was mostly concealed.
He also had a fake wire running up the piercings of his left arm to make it look like a pair of matched body art/decorations.

So borrow a concept from the Roman army. They used to assign armor to each new soldier, and garnish 30% of their first year's wages.

So for Lone Star,you make the adoption of a smartlink voluntary, so new recruits don't have to shell out (have their wages garnished) for a smartlink if they don't want to, but you make promotions past a certain level require a smartlink.

So no cop is forced to have invasive surgery...unless you want to make detective. The cost to Lonestar? Apart from arranging the discounts and medical facilities...none.

Nova

Geez, how much shooting are the cops doing that they can make up a significant amount of money from 'missed shots'?

If a couple of million is peanuts, then the cops must be firing millions of 'misses' to have anything worth financial consideration. Ouch!

Just razzin' I see your point, really.

Heh.. if you equip your stars with 'links, remember to roll on the SOTA table once in a while

heh. moosegod's comment reminds me of the training in starship troopers (the flick). *snap* "maaaaage!"

i agree with luke. smartgoggles are probably issued, but most cops who plan to stay in (or, at least, stay in the field) will invest some of their pay in smartlinks and the like. SWAT types probably get free ware as a sign-on bonus.

That was such a bad movie. And the worst part was it made the book look stupid.

Anyways, I think the lengthy hiring minimum sounds like the best. Maybe charge the person the cost for surgery and gear if they quit before retirement/firing.

There's one thing I don't think has been mentioned here yet. Not everyone would go under the knife for cybernetics. I'd imagine it would be an insult to the skill of some of the officers, and some just might not like the thought of being wired.

I think that everyone worth hiring would realize it's an aid, not a shackle.

I mean, you ahve to be fairly good to begin with.

hah! the movie was great. it had nothing at all to do with the book, of course--but it was a great brainless sci-fi flick.

in reply to doc funk's post--i agree, wireless stuff is cool, but there's also the possibility that your gear could be hacked. it wouldn't be worth the effort, very often, but it would be possible--realistically speaking, if not by the rules.

That's a huge assumption. Honestly, you take a guy who's damn good at what he does. He aces the testing coming in, he's a marksmen already, and then when he graduates they tell him "ok son, you're not quite good enough, we booked you for surgery." You'd have a good number of guys telling them to frag right off. It's not something you can make mandatory, your recruitment levels would drop. Just like magic, there are plenty of people wary of cybernetics. Does this make them any less desirable? If you're going to think like that, then you cut out a good number of recruits.

you're looking at it backwards, DH. if smartlink surgery is offered at all, it would be as a benefit, that they tell prospective recruits about right up front, to get them more interested in the job.

It would be a benefit to some, but it would still drive others away if it was a requirement of the job to have one... which is implied with the title of the thread...

the number it attracted would probably be a lot larger than the number it repelled, though.