I'm just curious.
I play 3rd, but I took out Tsimshian and Ute to make 4thers happy. Besides, they wouldn't win anyway.

You forgot a "Defense Contractors" option.

UCAS nukes the rest, their technological advantage allowing them to beat the CAS at that game. As far as having most of your own cities turned into radiactive craters but having a few left can be considered winning.

Saeder Krupp!

there are too many variables- like the outbreak and who sides with who'm.
You'rer not getting a free forall. I think Quebec would be the first destroyed. too small a base too close to other powers. CAS and Aztlan have the best chances to survive having limited numbers of neighbors and large areas to absorb invaders. CFS virtually doesn't exist now.

Even sub-nuclear, the UCAS still has the industrial and population base to win a war if everyone is at everyone's throat. But the place is so big, they couldn't hold any ground for very long and the best they could do is decapitate the other states, surrounding themselves in a sea of Anarchy which wouldn't be good for business.

I think it'd be a 3-way tie between CAS, UCAS, and PCC. And since its a tie, everyone is hosed because it'll probably devolve into a WMD throwing competition.

-paws

Ares and Aztechnology would be the major winners, selling arms to all sides.

After that, I could see Aztlan sweeping up from the North, taking huge swathes of property.

But not Texas, for some strange reason.

Aztlan was drien out of Sd by the PPC so they are all ready limited.

denvr can't attack but no one in their right mind would attack that and bring out a great dragon

We're talking total war according to the OP, so WMDs are in from the start - which means Aztlan will be a glowing wasteland a few minutes afterwards, no one is as stupid as to let those bastards live after their invasions of the CAS and CFS in the past.

Megas were not an option to vote for, but even so - I'd say Ares and SK would take out Aztechnology at the same time Aztlan gets blown up, then turn on each other.

Denver probably gets nuked as well, just to take out the GD. A military that was ready to send 67 nukes, one after another, at a russian communication center in case the cold war lit up just to take it out with a 95% chance of success won't let Denver stand, IMHO.

no one would win, but a lot of people would lose.

Who exactly has the "turn Aztlan into glowing wasteland" switch? Or did you forget to add the words in my campaign once again?
Remember that magic ignores laws of physics and Aztlan are batshit crazy and use magic that makes immortals uneasy.

If nukes did not works versus insect spirits and don't seem to work at all anymore, chances shift to awakend nations in a North America Cluster Fuck, I'd say.

Yeah Fuchs. You seem to have forgotten that something screwy happened to the nukes.

My money is on the Azzies. Unfortunatly they'll do something that 'man is not meant to do' in the process and open a bridge to the horrors. Then the horrors will win.

I do not recall any changes to physics in SR that would render nuclear weapons inoperable, but left nuclear reactors working. Some "this nuke did not go off" incidents from past conflicts, that's all. And if we take novels then Verner and his crew had to target each nuke they were rendering inoperable with a runner team for their spell to work, and no arsenals from the UCAS or CAS were mentioned there, so I assume those are still operational.

True enough that Nukes aren't perhaps the danger that they used to be, but is it really useful to draw a distinction between the Awakened nations and others? Once, UCAS/CAS were way behind places like the NAN polities, but they've been playing catch-up for long enough now, I think, that their mojo will be of similar quality, if differently flavoured. I'm sure there are nations that have stuck their heads in the sand about Magic, but I don't think the NA states will be among them.

Oh, they did go off, all right. Just not like a nuclear bomb is supposed to. That is also not the kind of info that will be announced on trid.

System Failure was a fun book.

Also, a nuclear powerplant does not work exactly the same way as a nuclear bomb, most of the time


Awakened nations with all their wacky shamans can utilize spirits more easily then, let's say a hermetic NA magicain, who enslaves spirits because he can.

Seriously though, the moment Aztlan is trown into the equation all bets are off. Those guys are plain sick.

...exactly, just like in the TCG (wonderful card)


...and Lofie would still win.

I'm so tired of the "nukes don't work like they should" trope. But even if that was the case, you don't need fancy fusing or critical mass reactons to get the same effect by dropping shit on people from space, which is the 2070 equivalent of having some ICBMs. Shit will still be a glowing wasteland if no holds are barred, it just won't be glowing from radiation. It'll be from the heat.

I'm tired of the "Ghouls are a disease" trope, but it does not change much. Though luck, in every game there are parts you won't like. Deal with it.

"Ghouls are caused by a disease" is a statement supported by game rules and is specifically mentioned as an in-game scientific fact. Therefore, it is not a trope, but a fact of the shadowrun rules in the majority of editions.

"Nukes don't work right" is an opinion of yours (and several others) that is in NO WAY supported by rules or in-game science other than what people have inferred from a small group of cases. Hence, it is a trope, because it's based on inference and circumstantial evidence. It's like me saying "AIs secretly are plotting to take over the world" because of the actions of Deus and his banded. While it might be true in case X, it is not true for ALL cases.

Witness that Winternight set of dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons and they all worked perfectly fine. Also witness that the militaries of the 6th World keep nuclear weapons around and have been surprised when, in the past, they did not work as expected. This includes militaries with access to strange and unusual magic.

Ah, the crash '64 was a group of small cases. I see. Yes, a trope it is.

Also, 'NO WAY supported' is not the same as 'it was actually mentioned in a campaign/plot book that is essential for the current timeline of SR and was handled very suspiciously'. You're free to call it a trope, I'm free to call it a weird rumor. Does it change the fact that no one actually applies any rules of warfare in this thread, other than what they learned in RTS games? Not really.

Seriously, the first reaction here seems basicaly "War? Well, the Holy Nation of the United States of America (and some canadians) will drop a gazillion nuclear weapons on anyone (even other americans, huh), simultaniously and instantly, hence will win". That is way more silly then the "nukes don't work" angle.


Oh boy, this thread will be so rich with fun, I'm getting all warm and fuzzy.

Not in the 2070s, they can't. The Hermetics have learned to summon spontaneous spirits, and the Shaman have learned to bind 'em... The SotA of Magic has moved on... Or at least that's my explanation of why SR4 is different from SR[previous]

In what book and on what page was it mentioned that nuclear weapons are unreliable and unpredictable? I can think of the Cermak blast, where it didn't go off as normal and everyone was surprised, but not anything in any book where it states that this is anything other than a freak event.

well... there's also p.24 of the SR4 Core Book. "Launched a Lone Eagle ICBM towards the Russian Republic. Everyone thought for sure this was the beginning of the end, but amazingly the warheads never hit. To this day, no one knows how that happened."

P. 22 SR 3 Core Book. "Someone sent a single Lone Eagle ICBM on a collision course with the Russian Republic. World War III was staring us in the face - and then the impossible happened. The warheads never hit.

P. 24, SR 3 Core Book. "North Korea launched nukes at Japan in a desparate effort to force them out of the conflict. The Missiles didn't detonate, however..."

I can keep going back through editions if you want.

Honestly you can even look at all the nuclear plant meltdowns as being indicative that something weird happened to micro level physics at a fundamental level when magic came back. 60+ years of using nuclear power with a grand total of 2 incidents (chernoble and 3 mile island) and all of a sudden just looking at the Disasters R Us bit in SR3 we have a total of 4 meltdowns in Europe alone between 2004 and 2011.

You're mixing fluff and crunch here. Shamans ask spirits to help them, hermetics force spirits to do so.


Nowhere I'm aware of. You seem to misinterpret what I said. I was not talking about unreliable and unpredictable. I said they simply don't seem to work anymore. One incident is a freak event. But Winternight detonated severel nukes, and all of them were to busy to explode properly.

Btw, you might want to reread System Failure, the part where the CC Sysop mentions the nukes went of, but not quite as they should, not even nearly as much as they should, and everyone on the board just goes 'shut up, foo' on him. Just. Plain. Weird.

Israel nuked Lybanon, didn't it? Counter-case of nuclear attacks that did work in the Shadowrun-world. Which means that in the end, you don't really know if they'll work or not, but in the case they do, they'll seriously hurt.

Also, in a total war, every nation on the american continent will lose. Aztlan, UCAS, CAS, the NAN... They all have nukes, killer satellites, magic superkillerrituals and biological weapons. The UCAS would be slagged as much as every other nation. All the successor nations to the former countries called Mexico, USA and Canada are atomic powers in the shadowrun-world.

We, however - as players - would win. Shadowrun: Fallout Edition? Hell yes.

...ahh I'd just dust of my old copy of GammaWorld.

PCC has no chance of winning because they are straddled between Aztlan and CAS. The Sioux would be having way too much fun running their live action drills that they have been practicing for years when the UCAS invades, which would bog down both countries. The AMC invades Quebec to retake land they consider theirs, Quebec wins to everyone's dismay. The CFS and Tir Tairngire have been in a militaristic state of either invading or being invaded for years, so both take small gains when nobody is looking. Aztlan rushes north to find an implacable wall of angry CAS and PCC residents, and if they make any gains at all, the remainder of the military forces under anyone sane in North America push back.

Total War in North America? Ofc SK will win together with those other megas mainly invested in the rest of the world.

Unless and until the SR devs state, as a rule/mechanic, not as some ic shadowtalk gossip, that nukes do not work anymore, I'll assume they do work - like gravity, microwaves, electricity, and so on.

From Shadows of Asia

Nobody truly knows exactly what triggered events in
2030—many communications and official systems were still
down courtesy of the Virus—and it’s probably better that way.
The official story is that a rogue Pakistani general exceeded his
authority to aid Islamic insurgents in a running battle with
Indian forces near the border. The situation escalated beyond
control and the result was a brief nuclear exchange that left the
beautiful Kashmir valley a scorched and radioactive shadow of
its former self. Three tactical nuclear devices exploded and
though the Himalayan valley contained much of the heat and
shockwaves, the whole region is now irreparably irradiated and
unsuitable for life.

Going by this nukes can work as expected.

Kithran

Or more precisely, they will work as the Gamemaster wants them to work. If the GM wants the nukes to explode, they will, and he has canon Shadowrun-material that proves that they still do. And if he decides that they jinxed and were transformed into a harmless mass of white pidgeons on impact, they'll do, and he'll have canon SR-material for that too. That's Shadowrun. Craaaaaaaaazzzyyyyyyyy.

By the way, does the Shadowrun-world already have fusion bombs?

Seeing as we have had them for decades, why wouldn't the SR world have them?

Well, they had mobile phones still weighting 1 kilo back then in 2064.
You might never know how backwards the SR-world might be compared to our world.

Nukes at the very least are not dependable or predictable, two things you very much don't want to depend on in the military world. Only Ares and SK have Thor Shots (and Ares apparently only has . Bioweapons are a bad idea because the ones that are really effective are viral. And they won't take out any military units. Nanotech isn't self sustaining and is useful on a tactical level, not as a strategic weapon.

System Shock page 80
“The other matter should be obvious. The fault line nukes.
San Andreas was intercepted by an Ares Firewatch unit out of
Silicon Valley. Per protocols, Ares used nerve gas to soften the
target before insertion. Like the other recovered, this was a
conventional nuclear 5-megaton warhead. Despite several
anti-tampering systems, Firewatch successfully deactivated the
detonator. Saeder-Krupp was similarly successful in defusing
the Red Sea device. The reports are in the relevant annexes.
Nonetheless, three warheads were detonated.�
“Your point?� interrupted Anna Villalobos, the voice of
Aztechnology. “We’ve registered massive earthquakes and
aftershocks in Chile and Peru, similar events in India and
Pakistan and the eruption of São Miguel in the Azores … �
“Simply put, assuming the remaining devices were in the
same megaton range as the two intercepted, the effects are far
below any predictions. Not only were the quakes and after-
shocks mostly localized, barely making 8.5 on the Richter
scale, but the eruption in the Azores, massive as it was, was-
n’t followed by tectonic unrest—and no tidal waves!�
“What are you saying, Mr. Steiner?� queried Pirault.
“I’m simply stating facts. I don’t have hard answers, but
all projections for this explosive potential suggested activity at
least as destructive as Ring of Fire flare up in ’61. Instead, seis-
mographs in Antarctica and Moscow barely picked up the
aftershocks. The two devices recovered were conventional
nuclear warheads. We have no reason to believe the others
would be different. You pay me to analyze facts, and what I’m
telling you is the facts don’t add up. Something happened.
Winternight should have succeeded. And this is not the first
time since the Awakening that we’ve seen nuclear detonations
that were inexplicably ... limited. In fact, there seems to be
abundant evidence that large-scale nuclear detonations are
simply no longer possible. If there are forces in the world with
the capacity to—�
Thank you for your warning, Mr. Steiner,� Pirault
forcibly cut him off. “Rest assured it will be taken to heart and
the Court will look into this, at a later date. Our priority now
can only be damage control and recovery. Now, if you will
excuse us, we have urgent business to attend to. I believe,
Miss Osborne, that the next item on our agenda is Transys-
Erika’s proposal ... �
Steiner nodded, realizing he was dismissed. He shoved
his notes into his suitcase and proceeded to the airlock, fight-
ing the temptation to look back. He could feel Pirault’s eyes
still on him, and he wondered not for the first time what the
Frenchman knows that he isn’t telling ...

As for who actually wins, it depends on what Corps back what countries. And thats only if the Corps were stupid enough to not step in and end it before all out war enveloped a 7th of the world (also known as a huge customer base).

Kithra: Thanks for posting the quote.

Hence, I employed low yield Tac Nukes and Neutron Devices in the Balkans during my RiS campaign.

5kt is not exactly a big nuke. Hiroshima was 12-15 kt or so, for example. A single Trident II missile can cary 8 warheads, each with 475Kt yield.

My understanding of the politics of 2070 is somewhat limited, but as soon as someone mentioned that the UCAS had too much land to hold I realised that someone here needed to relearn their WW2. Russia has "too much land to hold" and they, uh, traded it for time. When you have strategic depth, you can swap it for time to play more stand off or low intensity warfare on your own turf. Having more land is better for the UCAS, even if they end up temporarily losing some.

Furthermore, taking and holding land is not in the best interests of any powers in 2070. With a well armed population, and the laws of attrition being what they are, you can't expect troops to be able to fully pacify any taken areas of land unless their army is capable of really breaking civilian morale. The smart armies in the modern world are attacking to achieve limited, often political, objectives - so I doubt that an all-out war in North America in 2070, when the population is armed with magic as well as guns, is going to occur.

In short, the population of North America is just too dangerous and patriotic to support any significant exchanges of territory - occupation is basically impossible for ayone except for Aztlan who are scary, uncaring and devoted enough to make it work.

"conventional nuclear 5-megaton warhead."

Megaton=1000 kilotons

An artefact, ever repeated, of game designers being lousy futurologists and failing to extrapolate along the right lines... exhibit A: Traveller computers.... Exhibit B: "Megapulses" when we already have household storage in the Terabyte range Megabytes were *big* units in the early '90s. I could store our entire company's database from back then on something the size of a fingernail, a hundred times over.

Since fusion (aka H-bombs) have been a fact of life since 1954, and any warhead with a yield over about half a megatonne (i.e anything ever loaded on an ICBM) is an H-bomb, the Sixth World has plenty of Fusion bombs.

We're talking fusion bombs there then, not fission bombs... and that would be anything but conventional. The most powerful US warhead in active service reaches 1MT or so...

Quite frankly I think that nukes wouldn't be on the table. Just too dangerous, and obvious. Biological and Chemical weapons can be highly effective, and much less flashy. And at this point, probably tailored to kill certain metatypes.

A war would get ugly fast. Magic allowing for speed and protection would make battlefields much larger than ever before. Add to that the effects of things like...ghouls, conscripted and let loose in enemy cities. Cyberzombie death squads. Full cyborg conversion platoons. I think whatever nation was able to fund the production of such weapons by the Corps that have them, would end up on top. Although, more than likely there would be more blood than territory changing hands.

H-Bombs are conventional nuclear weapons. No one who can make H-Bombs makes pure fission weapons anymore. They are bigger, dirtier, and require more fissile material. Sure, nations that have them tend to keep them in their arsenal but they don't build new ones.

I think that the winner would be the country that has plans and counterplans for such a doomsday scenario. In my opinion only 2 nations would have that, Sioux and Aztlan. Aztlan is supported by a AAA megacorp with assets in many countries and can supply its forces indefinitely. Sioux does not. Aztlan would have basically one border to defend...northern. Sioux does not. Thus Aztlan wins. This, of course, assumes that the Corporate Council does not send Aztechnology an edict to not supply it's country/property with supplies and aid under threat of an omega order. If THAT happens (and considering how the megas all loathe Aztechnology, it's quite likely) then Sioux wins.

You forget an important variable: Population. the Sioux nation has less than 20% of the population of UCAS, 25 % of Atztlan or 33% of CAS. To suggest that they would win is like suggesting that the winner of an all out European war would be Romania. No amount of planning will make up for being outnumbered beyond all hope. Also Ares sees or at least markets itself as the UCAS megacorp. They would likely back UCAS. So IMO the most likely winners would be UCAS or Aztlan. Most likely UCAS since they have the edge in population, technology and not being (correctly) regarded as evil, bloodsucking, demon worshipping agents of darkness. Aztlan of cause have the edge of actually being evil, bloodsucking, demon worshipping agents of darkness, but still.

Aztlan also has space based weaponry. Any scenario which involves North America turning into a glowing field of glass is not a lose for Aztlan. They lead the world in chemical and biological weapons, have the same nuclear options as everyone else, can drop the same asteroid attacks as any of the other top contenders, and they have the unique ability to gain plot device level powers from large scale catastrophes. Indeed, an all-out nuclear war would involve about 200 million people dying in a very short time, distributed amongst every team. At that point the bunker dwellers in UCAS are left with limited options and the bunker dwellers in Aztlan have completed their Mighty Ritual of Vast Powerâ„¢ and ascended to godhood.


Aztlan isn't a bunch of highly magical blood priests with bones through their nose, it's a bunch of highly magical blood priests who own a frickin space station that uses ion jets to control the weather. This isn't a question of magic versus technology, it's a question of wealth, power, magic, and technology. And the Azzies have you matched or beaten on every one of those axises. The Aztech army is better than you are. The only reason the empire ever loses in the books is because they keep being faced with Luke Skywalkers over and over again who are protected from harm by the needs of the plot. Their actual stuff is just hands down the best.

-Frank

Do Aztechnology still hold the Tlaloc or similar stations? Because if they do noone else can win with against space-based biological weapons launched at North America.

Are you basing this on Bloodzilla or something else? Because I don't think you can base the discussion on a rules hole that clearly doesn't exist in the actual universe.