My team in SR4 decided to mix things up by not massacring a dozen armed guards to get what we want. Instead we shall be quietly tunneling through ten meters of loose rock and soil to a passageway leading to an underground vault. I'm thinking monofilament edged hand tools with some strong acid as encouragement for the stubborn. Does anybody have an informed guess about how long this might take or how to test for it?

My current thinking:
- Industrial Mechanic + Logic (2) test to draft the plan (net hits determines integrity)
- Strength + Agility (14, 1 day) to actually do the digging
- Infiltration test per day to see how quiet we do it

Thoughts?

What if they summon up an Earth Spirit to do the digging? Does it dig faster? How about the Shape Earth spell?

Our mage is unreliable, but if he's around an earth spirit is an option. I don't think he has Shape Earth. It seems like it should be able to dig faster than the troll, but I don't know how to work that in. Reduced threshold? Lower interval?

Sounds reasonable. Not sure the acid makes sense unless you have a LOT of it and somewhere to neutralize the runnoff. And you have a LOT of spoil from the excavation to dispose of too, as it will occupy at least 50% more space after you dig it out.

I'd bring thermal lances and just tunnel right up to the vault, then cut your way into the vault itself (assuming no fancy internal alarms). When they open it on Monday they just see a 6ftx4ft hole in the wall.

I still say Elemental Spirits should get Shape/Control (their Element) as a free power.
And yes, Shape Earth would be king for things like this. i have a dwarven shaman that has the spell at force 8.
With his size of 100cm when standing up straight, he can make an 8m long tunnel for himself with one good try.

The vault is a private collection under an occupied villa (with on-site security) which necessitates the quiet tunneling. Acid can be used to expand cracks in rocks quickly to make the digging easier. Thermal lances could work to help things get started if they're quiet enough, but we won't use them towards the end. Cutting directly into the vault was discussed, but a forced breaching will put the objective (antique books) at risk from sparks or blast forces. It's the backup plan of desperation.

We're going to the passageway first as a) we have solid hackers who can crack the vault once we're within a few meters, and b) we can exploit the paneling along the walls of the passageway to conceal our point of entry and exit (cut a panel or two loose on the way in, and then put them back up on the way out). If we leave no evidence of a breach in the passageway and replace the stolen goods with forgeries, the crime may not be discovered for years. The owner of the vault is a rich tool who collects for bragging purposes, not an appreciation of the books.

sounds like the perfect time for that monofilament chainsaw

Why not buy some of those nanite demolishers? The ones which are programmed to only break down specific materials.

You spray it on the rock and go have a few beers while it eats the entire thing for you.

Nah, that's stupid. sounds as if it could work.

The first phrase sounds like a really smart thing to do.

The second one though has that indelible voice of one of the decrees of Emperor Mong.

I enjoy a combination of two and three. Rolling extended tests can be anti-climatic, the interval of a day is good. The base threshold should be increased by a few increments with the max being twenty. The addition of tools, etc should add to the dice pool.

Infiltration tests each day works as well. Be prepared to come back one day to find your hole plugged up, or a stream of kerosene flowing down the tunnel one day.

Oh, come on! What could possibly go wrong?

I hadn't thought of nanites, but reading the rules indicates that they are too slow and too expensive. Each dose of demolisher nanites costs ¥5000 and takes twelve hours to dissolve a half metric ton of material before it burns out. That's good for about 25 cm of a 1 m by 1 m tunnel, so it would take 40 doses to make a 10 m tunnel. At a cost of ¥200,000 and 20 days, we're better off moving it all by cybernetic hand.

You go out for a pint and Emperor Mong tells you "go on have another." You wake up next to instead of porn star, elephanorhinocogirl. Escaping with your pants is an achievement without hurling.

The good news is the nanites have bored their way into the vault, bad news it has spread out into the books and has alerted security.

As you are being dragged off in chains, you can almost hear Emperor Mong's girlish laugh.

Good old nanites and a bottle of beer.

Want real fun?
Crack a nanoforge, have the destroyer nanites feed the forge with materials to produce more destroyer nanites.

grey goo anyone?

While I do appreciate the lust for mayhem, there are a few knocks on this approach:

1) Acquiring a nanoforge may likely be a more complex run than cracking this vault. This is how matryoshka runs begin.

2) If we want to reduce all the rocks under this villa to dust it would be much more fun to just pack the sewer with ANFO. It would also do more the hide the evidence of the robbery. (I hope none of my fellow players are reading this. A few them might begin planning to hijack a fertilizer shipment...)

It took Edmund Dantes and the old priest dug through solid rock for three years and didn't make it out from under a castle in that period. Yeah. . . . . that Earth elemental idea is probably your best bet.

That story would have turned out differently if the priest was a troll street sam...

Dantes was one Hell of a great Face, dontcha think?

It would be interesting to see if the:
Toyota MK-Centipede (Search and Rescue Walker Drone), Arsenal pp. 117
might be applied to this situation.

If you could figure out how long it would take them to dig they could also be used to snatch the booty.
(Heh. "snatch the booty" that's either going to be my new catch phrase or my new porn name.)

Does anyone know what the barier rating of loose rocks and dirt would be?

I think there are additional items to consider... getting rid of the rocks/earth is not a problem (well, a minor one at least), the real problem is how they are going to cope with 1) shoring the tunnel so it does not collapse 2) what happens if they hit a void underground and 3) what happens when they hit gas pockets. I work for a tunneling contractor, and these are issues we deal with on a regular basis.

Depending on where exactly the job is at, the earth can be very different. For instance, in Texas, it ranges from a very wet sand (gulf regions, Houston for instance, was built on a swamp) which requires ways fo getting the water out of the earth so it doesn't flow in on you (usually invloving a series of large pumps dropped into the ground by way of vertical shafts around the area to be tunneled), to solid granite in North Texas that requires specialized machinery (explosives are no longer allowed in Texas to break up rock).

Modern day shoring is accomplished through a pipe casing that is jacked into place, series of plates that are bolted together as you go, or with wood beam supports. I am sure something can be come up with that is easier and less bulky to work with, but even a rock tunnel is going to need some kind of shoring, otherwise lose rocks will become a hazard.

Gas pockets can be dealt with by use of gas masks, but you gotta have them with you to use.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

There are rules for jackhammers in Augmentation (Page 47). They usually come as modular cyberlimbs, but I would allow them to be plugged into weapon mounts on Drones as well.

Not exactly subtle, nope, but it'll certainly get those first few feet out of the way quickly - provided you don't have an Elemental on hand.

or just install a mechanical arm on the drone, then apply the limb mod on that

I would say the range for earth would be from Heavy Material (6/7) to Heavy Structural Material (16/13) depending on composition. Loose soil on the low end with solid hard rock at the top. For the loose rocks we'll have to dig through I'm thinking 10/9 would be appropriate. That puts it a bit under the barrier rating for brick. The rocks might be harder than bricks, but they won't be nearly as solidly mortared together.


Thanks for the info. I had already thought a little about shoring the tunnel and was going to go with wood beams or 2070 imitations as it seemed to be most easily acquired and most easily manipulated illicitly. Though now you've got me thinking about what would they use in 2070. Spray-on nanites to bind the material together into a solid plate? Something like Universal Sealant perhaps. Might be a bit pricey for the whole tunnel, but it could be a worthwhile investment.

Gas masks are always handy, so we'll have those. What does happen when you hit a void? Also, how long does tunneling usually take? Timing is something I'm having a hard time getting a sense of. I believe we'll be tunneling through very rocky soil.

Also how much shoring dose a 10m tunle need?

3. Every 10 feet.

Well, when digging by hand (believe it or not, that is still the primary method... those big boring machines you see on tv and in Oceans 13 cost millions... I believe the last time we rented one, it was for a cost of about $500k per month), figure for Rock you will get approximately 2-3 feet of progress per 10 hour shift. Looser soil conditions will go faster, but you will also have to spend more time putting up shoring, so about 12-14 foot per shift there. This is for an approximately 4' Diameter Tunnel. A 12 foot diameter tunnel would be about 3 foot per shift. Using drones, etc. I would double or triple those rates per shift.

I definitely think that nanite spray would be a way to go. Even today they have machines that spray concrete walls on the tunnel as the machine pushes forward. I don't think the cost would be too prohibitive as this would probably be the standard in many forms of industry (building construction, etc.).

As to how much shoring is needed, again, it would depend on soil composition. Rock does not require as much as loose soil (clay or sand). So you can probably put up beams every 10' or so as Draco18s suggests. For looser soil, we have to put up beams as well as boards between the beams, completely sealing the tunnel in. Otherwise, you start having the earth come in on you, sometimes with drastic results (many years ago, a former company I was with had an employee that took a single 2x6 board out of the wall to replace, without putting in anything to support the load. The entire face came in on him, he lived, but it was a miracle that he made it).

Hope that helps, and if you have any further questions, just fire away, if I can't answer them, I have engineers and estimators nearby I can ask.