What would be standard issue when you expect to be facing someone in Heavy Mil spec Armor with Gel Packs and Orthoskin (or 22/20)? Whats the best weapon to use that doesn't cost 15K a copy (laser weapons).

I'm thinking an HK XM30 with APDS rounds for -5 AP. But even then it's 17 dice against 6P damage. Meaning an average of 1 point of stun damage per attack. I suppose you could go with a Narrow Full Burst for a DV of 15P, which would average 9 points of stun damage.

Lasers.

Actually aren't that great. The half AP is great but if you go with the max portable version its only 7P damage. Average damage is about 4s in the end. So 4 times as much damage as the HK for about 5 times the price, and the laser can fire fewer shots before reloading and is Semi Auto vs. the HK's ability to go full auto.

It really doesn't seem worth it.

HMGs are pretty good for stuff like that. Even with all the armor, your raw damage value on a long or full burst is going to be hard to shrug off reliably.

"Heavy Mil-Spec Armor" can, among other things, be powered (+Strength) and support gyromounts in the arms (which, along with a gas vent, mean that HMGs can be used as full-auto rifles). Going this route means fighting fire with fire, so to speak, but standard issue for fighting *anything* should be "at least what he's got, if not more."

Lasers are, actually, a good way to do this. Sure, your damage may average out to 4S or so, but it only takes a few 4S hits to drop someone. And they're a lot cheaper than the thing you're trying to kill.

The "cheap" solution to this is rockets, missiles, stolen cars (hit the guy with a garbage truck!), a skilled rifleman popping the guy in the head when he's not expecting it (and therefore unable to dodge), or just a buttload of TNT in the back of a (rigged) vehicle. Be creative! An inexpensive solution to a 100k+ threat should require some inventiveness.

And when you throw in Platelet Factories and Trauma Dampers that 4s becomes 2s. And if we add the soldiers body to the DR test it actually averages no damage at all.



I'm not looking for a particuarly cheap solution, just what would be a good solution for a military force. Laser weapons really don't seem worth the cost.

Fire Elemental.




-karma

Stunbolt/ball.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Freeze Foam

Failing that "Spray Glue+Things That Explode for Under 1000 Nuyen"

Is he wearing enviromental seals? I sure hope so.

I'll take a look at it.


Of course. What military force would be stupid enough to not make their soldiers immune to chemical attacks? I mean with chemical seals on all your troops you can use a lot of nasty stuff with impunity.

A throwing adept and ballistic babies.

What! Didn't we agree that it'd kill a cop car?


On a serious note. Wait until he has to leaves the suit. He's not sleeping in there is he?
Also, dropping something heavy from a great height.

A more complex solution might be using a sprayed acid (called shot chemical seals?) followed up by the ever popular Narcoject line of chemical interventions.

Heavy Machine Guns, Sniper Rifles, Energy-Based Weapons, Heavy Artillery, Mana Bolt.

I would see if I were allowed to deploy 50 nobodies with AK-97s. Those kinds of numerical imbalances trump equipment, thanks to Lanchester's laws. The armoured guy's equipment and training has to be 2500 times as effective as an AK in the hands of a nobody (mayhaps a Middle Eastern nobody, but a nobody nonetheless).

The economic system that put the armoured guy on the battlefield may inevitably defeat the nation that puts 50 nobodies on the field, but one-on-one I'd put my money on the AKs.

If you want to restrict it to less than 15k, then make it 20 nobodies. The guy has to be 400 times as effective.

Actually I was thinking of that from a game mechanic perspective.

Everytime you get engaged in combat within a given pass you get a -1 right? Is that cumilative? Will 50 people with slingshots eventually give you such a steep modifier to defense that your armor is meaningless?

I call this, the Ewok Defense, and it is never to be mentioned at my gaming table.

Shape Earth (or Concrete, or Whatever) and Trid Phantasm. Dig a hole, cover the hole, lure him into the hole, and fill the hole up. Mundane equivalents (a shovel, a tarp, and some leaves) also work fairly well, but it is difficult to fill a hole with a shovel when its occupant is shooting at you. Covering the hole with a thick piece of metal, locking the cover in place, and filling the hole with water can also work. Just make sure he can't get out before dying from hypoxia.

Or, actually, if you have a magician on board for the Shape Earth trick, don't bother getting fancy, just manabolt the sumbeach. Or stunbolt the sumbeach, remove his armor, urinate up his nose until he drowns, put his helmet back on, and prop him up beside the light pole at a crosswalk. That's classy.

Yeah. Direct combat spells beat armor every time. If he's fast enough to get the drop on your magician and possess heavy firepower, just use a telescope and a blimp (or a tall building) to take him out from very far away.

Incorrect. The penalties are cumulative, but only apply to your defense test. Nothing short of de-armoring you (or Decrease Body) will affect your damage resistance tests.

Thats why the soldiers have chemical seals, they just hit you with some Seven-7 and thats that.

I was going on the improbability of making 50 damage resistance tests every turn, but that works as well. It's more a ZERG RUSH KEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKE!



I actually worked out the budgeting for the limited version involving 20 guys, adding up to 15k.

20 AK-97s: 10k
80 AK097 clips: 0.4k
1800 rounds of Regular ammunition: 3.6k
200 ration packs: 1k

Offer the ration packs as reward for successful completion of the mission. Very few barren residents would say no to a week of food for gunning down some poor slot with provided AKs and ammunition. Throw in the AKs and ammo as reward, because there's little you can do to stop 20 guys with AKs without calling in artillery and air support.


Aye, but before they manage to affect your swarm with some of the old double-seven you've got a round of suppression tests that need to be passed. It really comes down to the question of who gets the drop on whom, and one side has twenty chances to do anything.

Yeah but my dudes Initiative is 13 and he can always spend a point of edge to go first.

Really, you can put Rating 3 Synaptic Boosters in a guy for 240K. They make you more than 4 times as effective. There is no reason a nation shouldn't be putting them in at least their higher end soldiers (i.e. the guys in heavy armor that costs around 50K a copy).

Stuff thats very expensive for runners isn't that bad for the government. A regular marine grunt costs 1.25 million to train and equip. Training a Ranger adds on another million or so. Your already talking real money, you might as well put even more into it so that your investment has a better chance of recouping the cost.
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Well I came up with the gun I want, it just costs 21,300 a copy. If I cut the ammo in half it's only 15,300 though. Is a hundred rounds before reloading enough? Or should I stick with 200?

Hypervelocity HK XM30's are expensive.

Gauss Rifle with an underbarrel Laser. or grenade launcher.

Still, a magician with a pair of binoculars is going to kick his ass.

You mean the Gauss Rifle that with APDS rounds only has an AP of 9 and a DV of 9p. That leaves 13 dice from armor to soak, add in a body of 9 and you have 22 dice to soak, or an average of 2 damage. Which Platelet Factories and a Trauma Damper reduce to 1s damage total.

I really have come to the conclusion that your best off with a full auto weapon using a Narrow Full Burst for +9 DV. That gives 15p for damage and -5 AP, for 26 dice to soak. You average 7 points soaked and Trauma/Platelets knock off another 2 for 6S damage.

And awakened people make up 1% of the worlds population. Go with a third of that as magicians and your at .33%. With the way the corps recruit them I can't see there being that many mages in the military. Sure they exist and sure they are a threat. But a few million nuyen will give you another solider capable of taking anything except a mage. And when a mage is about they just call in the T-Birds and artillery strikes.

240k is, according to the numbers I've been running by, another 32 guys with AKs. Those guys make the unit, as a whole, roughly....



Okay, those 32 guys make the unit 135.2 times more effective. Further guys have more and more ridiculously returns (theoretically, of course). I'm not factoring in a variety of things, but investing in more people is often better than better tech. Now, there are other advantages to better tech but they are more strategic level advantages.


100 should be sufficient, if anyone is left standing after 5 double sized full bursts you've a lot more to worry about than reloading.

You use a team of 4 trained soldiers (rating 4), with pimped out assault rifles firing EX-EX. Then they all fire full narrow burst, taking called shot to avoid all 22 armor or whatever. Then each use one point of edge for a long shot and mr. supersoldier is DEAD!

Yes, quantity does have a quality all its own. But lets go with 30 guys (makes the maths easier), give them straight 3's to represent a professional level (I think I'm being generous here). All of them use suppressive fire on the area the solider is in. So 6 dice each.
Statically speaking, 10 guys will get 2 hits, 10 guys will get more than 2 hits, and 10 guys will get fewer than 2 hits. The odds of any of the 30 guys getting 6 hits is 4%.

I can buy 3 hits which gives your guys a 53% chance that at least 1 of them hits me.
So 1 hit. With an AK-97 with normal ammo I get 21 armor dice to soak your 6 points of damage. Add in 9 body and I get 30 dice. That's enough that I can buy enough hits to totally soak it.

Now its my turn on the offense. 4 IP and I roll 14 dice before smart guns or anything else. Thats an average of 4 hits. With 3 reaction your guys can't possibly make the check. I can do 2 narrow, short bursts per initiative pass. Each one does 6P damage before soaking, your guys soak an average of 1 point each for 5P damage. I can hit 8 guys per round. Once they are shot the -2 wound penalty makes it effectively impossible for them to hit me, so they become irrelevant.


Yeah prolly. But with 2 clips I can have 1 of ExEx and 1 of APDS.

Buying hits is cheating.

Okay, so I forgot about buying hits, and somewhat disagree with using the rule in combat situations, but I admit defeat. Damn.

Actually no. On the long shot test you roll at most 8 dice (human with the positive quality that gives an extra edge point). I roll 11 dice. And can spend an edge point if needed. Let's go with 5 edge (4 base +1 human). You average 2 hits, I average 3+ hits and can still use edge if needed.

So sure, if you get lucky you could do it. I don't know anyone who could soak 17p damage without armor.

IR Smoke grenades and satchel charges. Building falls and IEDs. Cover.
LAWs/RPGs. General blast grenades to disorient and kick about.
Light armoured vehicles and 30mm cannon.
If you're in a power suit, as has been said, HMGs with APDS or even AV ammo.
Sniper rifles.
Suicide drones.
At the squad level, better hackers to disrupt the AR datanet they can build and use it against them.
Mad melee adepts.

A modded AR with APDS or Ex-Ex loaded. A good dice-pool plus one point of edges gives you the rule of six, and if your GM allows it, an armour circumventing called shot. Use surprise, flash-paks/flash grenades (despite their flare comp), Electronic warfare (a good jammer if you don't have a good hacker on hand or their PAN security is too good) and of course lot's of cover and you should be able to tip the scales.

Well of course this assumes that the anti-cyborg squad can surprise the tank! If he has that good defense without taking full dodge they can't take him on in a fair fight. Besides such a killing machine will probably has awesome suprise test rolls and perception skill and thus won't be suprised. So it is possible, but unlikely that you lose such a killing machine to a squad (or even platoon) of inferior soldiers without antitank weapons.

Of course put one combat mage in said squad well equipped with foci, and the battle is totally different. Suddenly mr. tank starts attacking his own people, before shooting himself in the head with his weapon. No amount of armor can help against a mage.

How about they don't use suppresive fire, but rather shoots at the actual soldier, first with single shots. You loose 1 die for each successive attack meaning that after the first 12 attacks or so you won't be able to dodge at all. Then going over to narrow burst. Assuming no recoil compensation and short burst you now have to soak perhaps 20-30 attacks in the 9-10 P range with 30 dice. I'm to lazy to do the math, but I figure the soldier will probably be knocked out, if not this round then on the second.

According to my math if the soldier rolls average hits all the time he takes no damage at all.

Since that is impossible, he will take some damage some times and have way too many hits on other. So yes, if enough people shoot at him in the same pass for 9-10 damage he will go down eventually on stun. The question is, how many will he take with him, and how long until this rabble flee for their lives?

As you say he will not in fact roll average all the time. I'd guess they'd take him out in just one round, which means that he will likely take out 1 or 2 of our rabble. Of cause I was working with the parameters given, if you gave them a bit of recoil compensation then you could use long burst and get 11-12 damage. Granted you wouldn't be able to afford as many men, but the extra damage would more than make up for that. You could even use Stick and shock rounds.

1 MR lucky doing a called shot to ignore your armor with a barret from over a mile away under ruthenium polymer armor, with a force 6+ spirit doing concealment, and having physical camouflage F3, and a F3 improved invisibility spell on him. Its a surprise attack (no dodge) he gets 8 dice to hit with and is doing 10+p cause he just avoided all your armor. Then you fall down, and he finishes you off with his second shot, likely straight into your groin. Or is smart and uses a hollow point round laced with a deadly neurotoxin or cutter nantites in the first shot.

To the OP, if you really want to know how the militairy deals with highly armored and cybered threats, it's probably the same way they deal with enemy strongpoints today: Call in an airstrike. No matter how tough a grunt you can make, he still will not be safe from heavy artillery, cruise missiles, or even armored fighting vehicles. I bet the 2070 equivalent of the 30mm autocannon firing API rounds has enough penetration to deal with mr. armor.

And if that sounds expensive, remember that war isn't about profit, and it's quite acceptable to US forces to spend millions in munitions to kill and "awe" a force that costs significantly less to train and equip.

Yeah, airstrikes would most likely work. I was just thinking about what a few of these guys could do in a city.

Get possessed by a Magic 5+ mage from the possession tradition, and all shoot themselves in the face.

Nah, thats when the agent with no outgoing connection to any other part of the suit activates the knockout injection in teh auto injector. It is also useful to handle mutiny, betrayal, and any other crazyness that goes on. Sure the guy's taken out of the fight, but thats better than having him go crazy.

Then the spirit possesses the armor, and has the guy shoot himself in the face
It should also be noted spirits can possess an animate dead people, doing it to your unconscious soldier would be a piece of cake.

Hmm, I really need to reread the magic chapter and street magic. But as I already said, yeah mages are a threat.

A good way to safeguard these killing machines would be to have them possessed from the get-go. That way they can't be possessed (I think), will have even better physical stats and killing capabilities, and can have a good defense and counterspelling vs magic. A force 6 guardian spirit can will have 12 dice in defense against all spells cast on the possessed fighter.

As for what these could do in an urban setting? Create havoc. Then they would be put down eventually. LS probably would hit them with mages and armored vehicles, and the 'Guard would be put in to stop them should LS fail.

Such a group would be as disruptive on 2070 seattle as a group of ex-special forces could do today. Makes me think of "the Rock"

Only problem with that is you lose out on any of the skills the dude has which aren't the spirit does not have in kind. Aswell as the ability to use DNI and any intregated gear with an on/off switch. But I was basicly planning on doing this with a mage with the channeling metamagic. Yep an extra 12 points of hardened armor..... Ye ha.

Guardian spirits have optional power combat skill so they would at least be able to use their weapons. Other than that they have Blades, Clubs, dodge, exotic ranged weapon, perception and unarmed combat. They only lack Stealth, but this may be defaulted and be effective in conjunction with the Concealment power.

As for not being able to use DNI, well that can be overcome by spezialized equipment using different control mechanisms. Smartlinks are probably out though, although the rules are a bit vague. Spirits CAN see through a camera when possessing, right?

I don't see the same drawback for inhabitation spirits, and inhabiting spirits (such as Insects) will retain the host's memories skills and whatnot. I see this as an option for Azzie spec ops as they have no qualms about destroying the spirits of their soldiers, and could be making deals with inhabitation spirits.

And of course hardened armor means your 30+ kalashnikov-wielding soldiers are totally unable to damage the killing machine!

Requiring the use of mages or Mr lucky just indicates how that modern militaries will equip anyone who has to go near the front line with this stuff. You need to use a very rare force component to hurt any of my dudes? Hell yeahs, sign me up for that!

Throw down some drones to go with them (huge firepower for very cheap to counter man spam) and go!

Thats actually what this arose from. I'm making what I think would be the standard solider as of 2070.

Run.

hmmm... is it time for another "standard soldier in 2070" discussion already? my, how the time flies...

Well standard is relative. I'm away from my books at the moment but I have one mostly done. Now I need to compare it to possible countermeasures and other possible weapons to find out if its worth the cost (yes we are talking 20 million a solider).

I've also been reading the old threads on here and looking at other peoples ideas as well.

No, you just need narrow burst.

More precisely you need a narrow, full burst using APDS or ExEx rounds and with enough recoil compensation to make it usable. With APDS you do 15p damage and have AP of -5, which is turned into 15s resisted by 26 dice. Average damage is 6.3 before the Trauma Dampers and Platelet Factories, 4.3 afterwards.

ExEx is 17p and AP of -3, which is turned into 17s resisted by 28 dice. Average damage is 7.66 before Trauma Dampers and Platelet Factories, 5.66 afterwards.

Note that the above assumes a hit, which isn't the most likely thing in the world.

If you go with Hyper velocity weapons, add 2 to each of the damage values.

You should also note that this is stun damage for at least the first 2 hits and that a simple first aid test can get rid of a lot of the damage as soon as the fight is over (mr. solider boy rolls 14 dice on the first aid test before you account for the medkit).