One time pads have 'problems' in lossy environments (like wireless, or packet switched networks). You can protect the payload, but the underlying layers are still vulnerable to attack, and if you can interrupt the communication while inserting known plaintext, you can potentially steal enough bits of the pad from A that B doesn't know has been used to spoof. You can't pad the bottom layer as it needs a mechanism of getting the pads back in sync when packets are lost.

In theory, a drone is potentially hackable via it's sensors, but like one time pads, thats abstracted away.

The article seems to indicate that simply inserting random bits of information will invalidate your transmissions because the two pads won't line up. Is that right?

OTPs have lots of practical issues that make them kind of tough to use in a real system. The lack of encryption also means that you can spoof credit transactions trivially, can never trust anything on the matrix, can have your credentials for any electronic transaction stolen, etc. It's a huge mess caused by the fact that the writers don't have the foggiest idea how computers work. The easy solution is to ignore the "rules" someone spewed on the page in a drunken haze and assume that decent encryption works.

Encryption and decryption isn't much more broken that the rest of the entire chapter, but it's really annoying in lots of places. Isn't it odd how a Cyber Punk game can never get the Cyber rules to work? You'd think they would playtest this with people who had a clue and produce rules that at least vaguely worked. Instead we have multiple writers who have totally different ideas about how critical parts are supposed to work writing rules that just don't work using the assumptions that underlay other parts of the same chapter, and nobody noticed.

Always the same old song. Devs don't know squat about whatever the specialist chose to rant about. Funny. Ever thought about the fact that you know squat about game design? Realism goes so far before it makes no fun at all to bookkeep all the details.
What does that even mean? Encryption works even if you don't ignore the "rules".

Is it really necessary to depict the developers as drooling idiots? It's kinda getting old man, not all of us think they're retarded or their game is "...spewed on the page in a drunk haze". Is the encryption system broken from the perspective of modern encryption projected 60 years into a future with dragons and Japanese dominated society? Maybe? Is it a gameplay mechanic that totally ruins my gaming experience or has even come up in the last 10 games I've run. Not really.

Nobody noticed because encryption as written is a gameplay element that is... for gaming. Not everyone wants to manage a "realistic" matrix experience in the same way that not everyone wants a combat system that models coriolis effect.

And AFV is a very broad term, what vehicle exactly were you talking about? A bradley?

Generally, my Players don't get to see any gear their characters wouldn't be able to get their hands on - no reading the gearbooks or sourcebooks for them to choose specialist gear..
..If they want it, they need to be able to explain what they want - then I see if anything fits their criteria, in terms that fit the game I'm running [non-standard, multi-sourcebook SR].


So for my Players, MilSpec gear and Corp gear is the premier grade bangbang..
..They won't encounter it unless someone gives it to them as a pressie/bonus, they find or steal it [if they even realise what they have], or someone uses it against them.

I did like the power armor rules. I tried to run a Bubblegum Crisis-esque game with Maximum Metal. I gave everybody a fixed amount of cash and told the players (anime addicts) to think of BGC when they made their suits.

The first guy was a great energy weapon-based suit. Lasers, microwavers, EMP, signal jammers, and a 7.62 minigun as his "break stuff" weapon. He was fairly well protected but with a bigger emphasis on speed than armor.

The next guy had a tight concept that was suicidal. He was grenade-boy, with eight automatic launchers and a mortar. The ammo weighed a ton. Because he remembered the urban setting, he kept his weight down by sacrificing armor. I quickly realized that if he got caught in his own barrage he'd kill himself. God help him if his ammo compartment was breached.

Third player had a reasonable amount of armor but his main gun was the 30mm AT cannon from an A10 firing DUAPFDS. He couldn't fire it without taking out three buildings. Oh, and it's like 4 meters long so he couldn't go anywhere with it.

The last suit was a tank. Literally. It weighed about 2 tons. His weapons were reasonable but he spent his cash on all the armor he could buy. He could shrug off the other guy's anti-tank rounds but I figured that if he ventured away from the federal highways he'd sink knee deep in the ground.

Sigh.

Swoon!

I wanna play!

AH, the old call to jihad again.
Short version: properly implemented one time pads are unbreakable without either access to the plaintext or access to the pad.

Of course, perfectly implementing one time pads is somewhat tedious, but since it seems to be the only version of encryption in the SR would that is worth anything, everyone will have lots of practice in implementing them.

Of course, not only do the developers not understand encryption, they don't get what encryption can and can't protect you against...

traffic analysis and radio triangulation, for starters

M - I - L - S - P - E -C
Find out what it means to me.

his has been a fun read.

Have to remember not to post just be bed then work.

When talking Mil Spec, I wasn't thinking of the big guns and toys that the front line troops would have. I was thinking of the difference between Security and Military equipment and methods.

Like what the military (and the Spooks/CIA) would provide to special forces, and the like. What Comm gear, what cyberware, what gear would a combat hacker have?

Or military grade ECM and ECCM that the navy and air force would be using. And what a military grade Combat Drone would have in the way of security.

I mean if you are going to spend millions of dollars to train someone and get him half way around the world where he (or she) can do the most good, then you are not going to skimp on outfitting them with the best. And in the Sixth World there is a whole lot that you can outfit them with.

Heh, I think that's why he did mention the determined thief part and the guards. I am quite harmless and rather inept with mechanical devices, but that wouldn't stop the base personnel from being quite cross with me if they caught me wandering around the garage with a socket wrench and toolbox.

Those were M-113s, so I assume the "locks" were worse than a Bradley's . It was simply a padlock (and not even a very sturdy looking one) for the driver's hatch. Mainly served to annoy us when we had to search the parked tanks for that stupid form that was missing every second day, and had to open them one by one.

Speaking of BBC: We ran a BBC campaign using SR2 rules once. The players characters were not the ones in the cool hardsuits though, but "q-squad" from the ADP - a sort of disposal unit for screw-ups and oddballs, whose first job was to investigate the accidental deaths of their precedessors. Every character had lots of flaws, which caused all sorts of havoc. We got to use the K-11 suit once, sort of - when an emergency required it to be deployed, but the only team member available was not really certed for it...

On topic: How do you see power armor in SR? Viable for the military, or just something better left with Appleseed?

As much as I thump the 'keep it realistic' button, watch out for bringing in too many real world ideas into game.

In theory a rigger could have 10 rocket launchers on his van all tuned to one smartgun node and fire them all simultaneously (Not even that expensive, the 1,000 nuyen disposable model could be easily modified to fire multiple times at a moderate cost) on a single target.

Such things would, however, overbalance the precarious play of powers within the game. Thus no matter how perfected an outside idea may be, or how crafty a code you can think up, it all needs to be represented in game by a die roll.

Particularly clever ideas could be represented by a bonus to said die roll, but in spite of whoever GM's your games inability to logically shoot your masterfully crafted idea down, NPCs are often more capable and are also entitled to a like roll of dice.

Just remember that no matter how strong or smart or fast you may be, your GM is always at least one step better.

And sorry, just read the entire thread in one go and I thought it needed to be said.

As you were...

The problem with PA is that is fits too neatly into the category of things the runners would run into. If we assume that a suit of PA is comparable in cost to an IFV (maybe 250K Y for the budget version and maybe 2M Y for the advanced version) then it would be cheap enough to use to protect run targets or by the runners themselves.

Personally, I'd be against it since it would generally take the focus off the PCs themselves and focus more on the equipment they had.

The problem with PA is that is fits too neatly into the category of things the runners would run into. If we assume that a suit of PA is comparable in cost to an IFV (maybe 250K Y for the budget version and maybe 2M Y for the advanced version) then it would be cheap enough to use to protect run targets or by the runners themselves.

Personally, I'd be against it since it would generally take the focus off the PCs themselves and focus more on the equipment they had.

I believe it was said in another thread that encryption was kept simple (and easier to break then it is in the real world for that matter) intentionally.

As far as hacking milspec drones and what not... can't you load them up with firewalls, IC, and all that good shit?


To the comment on military grade vs. corp grade, I don't buy that. I realize corps don't have the need for a standing army so I'm sure they don't spend as much budget on such things but corporate black ops are a very real part of shadowrun, the game name itself is basically a slang term for corp black ops. You can bet that breaking into a super secure corp facility is going to be just as difficult if not more difficult then getting into a military secure compound. Just because they don't spend as much on military gear doesn't mean that military gear isn't just as cutting edge when they do use it. In other words a smaller budget for such things just means they don't spread themselves as thin and use it in the places they do need it.

On top of this, military in shadowrun gets most of it's gear through defense contracts, those defense contracts get filled by corps. So to say a corp like Ares isn't going to have access to the same milspec hardware the UCAS military uses I can't understand. The Megas run the SR world not countries. They let countries deal with all the bullshit so they don't have to. I'm still sure they defend what's their's with as much bleeding edge tech as they can muster when it's warranted.

That sounds about right since the corps you know... produce all that milspec gear for the military. The corps have a very strong vested interest to never allow normal governments to rise to power again. I'm not saying UCAS isn't get SOTA, I'm just saying that the corps are probably following the basic finance guideline of "Pay yourself first".

Is there any major weapon system that is produced by a national government (that's not named Aztlan?). If I understand correctly the UCAS and the CAS pretty much buy all their stuff of Ares who now owns to the rights to everything from the M22 assault rifle to your average main battle tank.

To clarify, I'm not saying that the Corps don't have Mil Spec. They are the ones that research and develop it. And the elite Mega Corp Strike forces are certainly far better equipped than the Line National Military. Having access to Mil Spec gear is what makes the Corp Black Sites and black teams so fragging nasty.

The ones where any runner caught will be stripped, interrogated, shoot, and buried in the 2070 equivalent of a couple of sacks of lime.

I'm talking about the stuff that is so black that on the Mega Corp side only a elite strike force or black op team would have it. The Mega Corp has these forces for when the stakes are so high they don't care about local laws and public opinion. On the government side, they usually write the laws so they don't apply to themselves.

Also the Corps have mostly Strike Forces and a bunch of security assets rather then a full blown military. They also have problems moving their hard core assets in to non third world nations. It is far easier to move a "security" unit in to a nation to "protect" a site with extraterritoriality. Don't want terrorists blowing up nuclear power plant or Bio Research facility do we? If a Corp strike force causes too much collateral damage to bystanders and the surrounding countryside then the local government and other Corporations are going to sue their asses off. Not to mention what other "Actions" might be taken.

A good point is that the Mega Corps use Shadowrunners because they can't get caught using Mil Spec gear (and all the collateral damage) in most situations or public opinion will turn against them. And the National Governments would be all over them. Can we say Nationalization? And the other Mega Corps would likely let it happened because it would remove one Cowboy who was rocking the boat and leave that much of the pie for everyone else (after all the government has to contract the new nationalized properties to someone to run don't they). Just like they have to pay at least lip service to environmental regulations.

What makes Aztechnology so bad is that is is a Megacorp AND a large country. The best half of Aztechnology security is made up of Aztlan former (or not so former) military veterans.

The other thing to remember in the balancing act between the Mega Corps and national governments is that while the Mega Corps have the upper hand, the Mega Corps don't want to become the government because there is no profit in it.

Sorry Doc, thought we'd covered that.

For line troops there isn't really a 'Milspec' difference in gear, with the possible (and non-rules governed) exception that it will be generally far more durable. If there is a difference its that you won't see compromise solutions. Troops will have assault rifles, every fourth or fifth (or possibly Every...)soldier will have a GL. There will be machine guns all over the place (light ones with every batch of troops, medium and heavy emplaced), full sniper teams (two man teams, with a dozen or more teams covering important areas... that's a lot of snipers), and every vehicle will be armored. Most of them will make the citymaster look like a joke, the rest will be 'quick transport' rather than fighting vehicles.

Assuming that soldiers are armored, you're probably looking at heavy security armor with chemical protection as a minimum (or milspec armor if that's in arsenal... I forget) for everyone.

The difference isn't that the military has different equipment available to it, its how they employ it. They don't worry as much about cost, and not at all about scaring people with the heavy hardware. That's their job.

Its all stuff the corps can have, and can use. Its stuff the Runners might get their hands on. Only: lots and lots of it.

That would pretty much be a ex-country if it tried to nationalizai a triple A global mega corporations local assets.

That is purely an assumption. Now: Support it.

You consider 250K or 2M to be "cheap" for 'Runners ??
I think you've left the land of SR and headed off somewhere else !!

If you want rules for powered armor, I suggest you invest in Arsenal and look on page 51: Military Grade Armor Enhancements. It's all there.

I think that was just a bit of hyperbole, Spike. Tir Tairngire has come the closest to be openly hostile to megacorporate interests and look where that got them: an economic collapse, complete with the corporations quietly waiting them out and putting in shell corporations (and probably funding political radicals) so they could be in position to pick up the pieces once the inevitable regime change happened. I don't think the Corporate Court would really ever allow a megacorporation's holdings to be seized and nationalized unless they found that the corporation in question was also in violation of Corporate Court law, in which case they may give the move their blessing and would be the first ones there working with the government to determine the best way to divvy up the corpse. That'd be tantamount to an Omega Order, however, and I can't imagine it really happening. So aside from truly exceptional situations, I'd think any country that undermines megacorporate extranational status would eventually suffer death or at least regime change by economic devestation. The Corporate Court is patient, not merciful.

What, you think that AAA-corporation would just turn it's assets over to some puny little goverment that only exist becouse thay don't want to rule the country

Well the first point I want to make is that if the people of a country of any size are all howling for the blood of a corporation, they are not going to be doing too much business in that country any way.

Especially if the local contracted security/police might be willing to be a little slow showing up for riot duty. And if things get really bad, the local company security might decide the paycheck isn't worth it. This is before the national army rolls.

Cutting lose already damage assets and selling off certain other assets might be the best option if it puts and end to the matter. There is always shell companies.

Also there are a lot of corporations out there that are not Mega Corps or are not directly associate with Mega Corps that don't have those options.


The second is that even mega corps can't totally stone wall a major national government if they have conclusive evidence of wrong doing.

Unless the national government is willing to go to war, yes it can.

The thing of it is, for all the economic power the corporations hold, a lot of that power is paper power. Economic devestation doesn't always work the way its planned (see the still ongoing embargo of Cuba....). If the government uses ostensibly legal means (even if it means rolling back the laws allowing extranationality a few decades) to go about nationalizing corporate assets, well the government can do it. Not because it's a great idea, or because the corporate court supports it at all, but because assets are physical things, resources used to enrich those corporate economies are physical things, and physical things can be controlled. One thing the government still has that most corporations can't even dream of matching is a true military.

Psychologically, many people will still side with their government over their corporation, particularly if siding with their corporation means extensive economic hardship (relocating to other corporate turf in other nations, probably loosing out on good paying jobs as you become 'dead weight' in your new location).

Its more complex an issue than simply handwaving and saying 'the corporate court won't allow it'. The French nobility said that of their king regarding peasants just before the French Revolution...

Couple of more points:


One)

Corporate Reputation is an asset too.

All the corporations cloak themselves in a mantle of Good Corporate Citizenship. We don't run stuff. We just make the stuff you gotta have. Join our Corp family and help to make the world a better place. Gets you right here. sniff.

The Azzies play the most fast and lose with this, but even they worry about Aztlan nationalism.

If a Corporation loses it's reputation then their stock price will goes down and they find it hard to do business.

Would the Corporations band together to protect their existing privileges. You bet. But for someone rocking the boat and giving them all a bad name....

Is the World Court going to risk lowering their standing by protect someone who is rocking the boat? Not likely. After all the Mega Corps have had turnover before. Maybe it is time.

Also you think that a corporation with a cloud hanging over it's head is going to have much pull with the politicians? Their lobbyist will be out the door before they could beam their electronic business cards over. The bribes will go through the roof. And they also go to the end of the line for the government trough.


Two)

Second there is always someone in side the corporation looking to grease the skids of the executive in charge of the fiasco. Either to move up or to find a scapegoat.

We can't have the actions of one rogue lowering the stock price and damaging our reputation. So a "We are Shocked! Shocked! I tell you." is just so much easier and less risky than a war.


Three)

Finally is if one Mega corporation is dragging itself through the mud someplace, then who is going to be to benefit most? Another Mega corporation.

They might even be willing to whisper in someone's ear, or give a little nudge there, or make a guarantee here.

I mean do Sharks band together when there is blood on the water?

If it's regularily used against the runners then they have a good chance to get it as loot.

I think most of the nations in SR would probably fold when a megacorp attacked them, not just economically, but also in a military confrontation. There are not many SR nations I can think of that can stand up to the military clout of a megacorp like Ares, Aztlan, or Saeder-Krupp. The UCAS, CAS, Aztlan, Japan, maybe Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the PCC. For most of the other countries' military it's light's out when struck by the high-tech, desert-wars trained army of a megacorp.

Although I'd not be sure any megacorp other than Aztlan has to stomach to deal with insurgents in the newly occupied country afterwards.

They needn't bother with dealing with the insurgents; most megacorps aren't bothered with holding lands, they care about the strategic benefits of the attack alone; they'll hit to destroy something or hold the ground just long enough to get what they need shipped out. They can then retreat, leaving no valuable assets on the field for insurgents to attack.

War is a weigthy gamble where the only winner between the two sides is the house - war.

I am specifically thinking of the situation where Venezuela nationalised its oil production effectively throwing out the large corporations. Fast forward to 2070, I do not see how a corp going to war with Venezuela would make an inflamed situation better. The situation dissolves to where a victorious corp has to be responsible for the financial maintenance of the country (which includes institutions, security, and infranstructure). A corp could have a literal mountain of gold and that would spend it within the month to maintain a portion of the financial maintenance of a locality of a country.

Furthermore financial maintenance change takes decades if not generations to improve. A corp which is responsible for making a profit has no incentive to sink large amounts of money for a possible return decades later.

The corp would "support more reasonable and progressive" factions in taking the country over and give them their facilites back, and then some compensation or new favorable contracts/rights. If I recall correctly, similar "politics" by corps (and support by the US army) in Central merica in the early 20th century are where the term "banana republic" comes from.

And we've seen how well banana republics tend to work out even over just a few short decades, right?

Which does not really concern the profits of any corporation. In longterm you want a stable government, but if it is shortterm auctioneers meetings you have to satisfy the only thing that matters is what benefits you can gather right now.

Well, if it's SR3 and the land of the Million Nuyen Samurai, then, yeah. SR4 not so much.

I think corps have been around and dominate (and run by dragons in some cases) long enough that they are probably starting to take a longer view on things. Getting X amount of profit this quarter might work well for some drooling exec but the exec that shows up and says "We can be making X^3 in three years if we just kill these people tomorrow" is probably going to find himself in ascendancy. Now that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to benevolently stablize nations, they might decide that it's more profitable to leave them a war torn divided country than a stable happy one. Perhaps the fighting occurs sufficiently far away from their resource exploitation centers that they don't care. Perhaps they can double dip by playing one side against the other, harvesting resources, and selling guns to everyone.

I think the word I'm looking for here is "Cash Cow"

Actually the Assault canon was taken straight from Robocop

Go rewatch the first movie to see what the damn thing was supposed to be capable of

it was a rifle shaped future antitank weapon with cheap shells

oh and a fully accurate pricing system would allow the making of thermaite for a fraction of book cost, and the production of FCG-EMPs capable of taking out the entire wireless matrix for a measly 5000-10 000

Battle of Hawaii early 2020s

United States versus fledgling corporate court

The result? Hawaii was allowed to leave the US, and the US fleet retreated.

You will also note the Lack of a Surviving US in SR

so your players do not have a single hacker in the party?

Because any Hacker or Technomancer can go online and get the security weapons catalogues of the last 20 years. Most of those are on shadowland. The Milspec stuff is in there too

I think 10 APDS rounds in the head for suit one and 10 APDS rounds in the head for suit 2 and then fitting helmet 2 to suit 1 is pretty cheap

may need to use a port in of the old SR3 fashion spell to resize the armor tho

Hacker, schmacker..
..Reading a rulebook is not the same as trawling the internet or using your contacts to gather catalogue information.

When people look through sourcebooks and rulebooks, they tend to compare stats, damage, etc..
..Which is not really the same as the info available.

You could say that Characters with knowledge of specific areas would know about new technologies, new items, new development - and that's true..
..If they take the time to read up on it, or maintain relevant contacts, or actually understand the concepts involved.

For Characters not in that field, most of the relevant information won't mean much [or do your Doctors and Hackers really spend their time reading up on the latest developments in personal armour and personal protection ?? And if so, how much time do they also spend reading up on medical/hacker things ??].


And in truth, do you honestly believe the really premiergrade stuff is itemised anywhere that can be easily accessed, since that is the stuff the real blacker-than-black ops teams use ??

Nah..
..Anything seriously good should be codelocked, or set to self distrust when the user dies [inspired by a CyberPapacy cyborg in a TORG adventure].


Almost by definition, I assume anything MilSpec will not be common because the chances of encountering a premiergrade Ops team using premiergrade gear is low..
..So the chances of them getting their hands on anything is also not common.


But then, my sources include several Hi-Tech RPGs and more gear books than you can shake a stick at

Um, yes. In a movie. If we are using movie guns then why does ammo cost anything? It not like you ever have to change magazines in a movie. And where are the rules for the damage that you take from flying through the plate glass window that has to appear any time someone gets shot so they can get lifted bodily and thrown through it? And then again, why use damage rules at all, because NPCs and PCs should take exactly as much damage as the plot requires, right? I could go on, but comic books and movies tend to be really crappy sources for learning about anything other then comic books and movies. But that is what we have. I was pretty impressed that apparently not a single person in the development process of Arsenal read the "we have to add a special oxidizer to make things explode in space" bit and realized it was stupid.

It's a good thing I'm not playing cyberpunk fantasy RPGs for their educational value then. Honestly, I'd say movies and comic books are a better comparison for Shadowrun than real life any day of the week. I mean, the game is basically "Escape from New York: The RPG", except with the Matrix and dragons thrown in for shits and giggles. To me the stupid part wasn't that they have innaccurate explosve rules so much that they felt the need to expand the explosive rules in the first place. It's the one damn part of the book I haven't even read yet and probably never will. I'm pretty happy with Logic+Demolitions vs. threshold, thank you very much.

It was kind of cool that you could make every explosive in the game blow up by casting pulse.... "Well, you have 4 grenades and three 40 round magazines of EX-ex so take..."