Yes, I know. So do I. But if I am going to say "I agree with you" I don't want to appear to agree with your personal "testiness". And I DO try to be polite and civil when somebody says something personally offensive... thought I have been known to get pissy a time or two when somebody REALLY pulled my tail.



You mean, what I basically said here?

Aye basically, although I'm personally not so sure that a cluture or magical tradition that refused cyber could have survived in the Sixth World given the shear amount of "ease of use" for lack of a better term that alittle cyber/bio gives someone, so in my view, even NAN Shamans probably have gone under the knife a time or two.

If I remember correctly, Street Magic continues the trend by telling us that Mages like their cyber, at least amongst corp circles.

OMG! All of our wage slaves have been bent over and pressed into the ground in these large, intricate circles! What happened here?!?

*chuckles* Either a very large steam roller or it's a sign of the oncoming Horrors.

Um, a tradition of hermetics with access to plant spirits? Get the spirits to trample your reallly big-ass hermetic circle into the crops in the middle of the night?

Nah, tis got to be the Horrors, they are comming people! THE END IS NIGH!

We are already here.

Corps, not crops.

Yeah, I know. I like mine better. *grin*

*nirglive*

Fine then blow everyone's head off with a gauss rifle at 5,000 meters. Its not a question about being smart, its a question of being selectively smart. The cost effective smart tactics by the corps would leave every runner dead with no chance of success. So I don't pretend I'm doing what a smart corp is doing, I am honest about it and say the corp is going to do what would make a fun game for the group. If you want to vision mod things to death and that makes it fun for you, totally go for it. But don't pretend its a role playing decision based on sound tactics. Because if you were just role playing it with sound tactics the runners would lose every time. Most GMs selectively determine what is the right amount of "smarts" for the corp based upon what kind of challenge they want to provide for the group in that encounter with at best a marginal nod toward realism.

Still blowing smoke I see. The reason that the corps don't design their buildings to be impervious Fortresses of DOOM is at least two-fold.

( 1 ) Costs, there is a bit of hyperbole that claims we could make cars as safe as tanks if people were willing to pay millions for the family sedan and the principle holds true, with the exception of the truly Earth shattering hardest of the hardcore shit the corps aren't going to simply throw money away, they are instead going to settle for "secure enough" and take their loses when necessarily.

( 2 ) Outside of pointless thought experiments, Fortresses of DOOM simply can't exist because it has to be possible for people to actually work in the facility, and people aren't perfect. There has to be a backup plan that allows the VIPs access even if they forgot or lost their passcard, have a cold, ect, or if a necessary piece of equipment breaks just before an important deadline.


So perhaps YOU think that Runners should be able to make runs at zero zones because it can make a good story and result in a fun game, I on the other hand prefer more than a "marginal nod" towards realism when playing my NPCs. Tinted through heavy shades of the Pink Mohawk subgenre of Cyberpunk of course.

Um no its not blowing smoke. You can make things unassailable to runners for fairly cheap. It doesn't have to be an impenetrable fortress since what they are protecting against are small teams and not armies. Astral support on a scale the runners can't cope with can be there in moments from any large corp. And each astral mage can bring a spirit to drop in on the party. Why doesn't each and every corp guard throw a grenade or fire a missile into the party as there basic weapons instead of a SMG, fixing the place back us is fairly cheap its not like there getting raided every day. 10 grenades coming your way in the first pass of a fight will wreck your day big time even if you have the almighty cover. If a spell is cast why aren't they tracked, hunted down and killed. Face it for cheap you can make running a death sentence for each of the players. You choose what to use and what not to use based on what is fun for your group.

Ok, tell me why such tactics aren't generally SOP in the closest examples we have of Runners and the Megas in the real world. Black Ops/Spys and Militaries.

I see so the basic security for every building in the world is 10 cops with grenade launchers? And in each of these buildings they have astral security on call 24 - 7? Then at each of these sites they have corp spiders ready to drop barriers with thermo smoke to make vision impossible for any mages in those hallways, and those same corp spiders have armed drones at their beck and call?

Nevermind what happens when these 24-7 security armed with missiles and grenades screw up and kill innocent people, how much does it cost to equip, train, and maintain this sort of security? Ok, what happens when the runner's hacker takes control of the security system and drops the thermo smoke and drones on those security and gets them to kill each other? It is impossible to come up with foolproof security. The thermo smoke barrier thing will impair corporate and shadowrunner equally. If it becomes prevalent, it will be easy to discover on a data search prior to a run.

The corp has no clue what facility might be raided by a group of shadowrunners. They cannot possible secure them all. The cost of security measures should be commensurate with the value of the site, and in keeping with the perception that it is at risk of invasion. If the site is important, and attack by runners likely, then all of the measures listed above might be employed, but a normal office building with nothing of real value will have two retired cops with lumbago sitting in the lobby. Mages are expensive, and generally do not like working for restrictive corps. They are always in short supply, the idea that they are available on instant 24 hour notice is ludicrous. While it may be possible to create security countermeasures to deal effectively with any given situation, some of them are mutually exclusive.

Well said Orcus, although I'd like to disagree slightly and point out that the vision mods really only hinders people without enhancements, either through magic, implants, or simple googles.

Well, as to the grenades, it's quite simple, really. Human nature. Repairs require paperwork. There's probably paperwork about use of "excessive force" and getting retroactive permission to extensively damage company property. Some boss has to explain the expenses on his report. Etc, etc, etc ad nauseaum. I bet you didn't know that in many jurisdictions in real life, officers whose weapons clear their holsters have to fill out almost as much paperwork as if they had discharged them?

Nobody likes paperwork, and some pinhead up high is going to admonish the poor jerk at the sharp end for using a grenade when a couple frangible rounds from the company-issued (and probably manufactured) pistol or SMG should have been sufficient. Even in a firefight, the security guard is going to think thrice abut having to explain to a suit on the 37th floor why the same suit had to go in through another entrance the next morning, making him take an additional 92 steps and delaying his arrival at his office some 147 seconds. And while the guard is thinking, the 'runners just ended the firefight.

It sounds stupid as drek, because it is, but it's also EXACTLY the way big corporations work. Given the nature of the history of the 6^th World, I would expect it to be even worse.

And as has been said in other threads, remote mages with spirits aren't the be-all end-all. The spiit manifests with what instructions? Kill whom? The people not wearing the company uniform? That could get indvertantly sloppy. People with guns? Oops. And despite my argument months ago in another thread that corps will have good security on tap, I don't see it as one mage for fifteen buildings. If that kind of idiocy became commonplace, you just start launching simultaneous 'runs. You defend your most important targets with your best forces. You cover the outer layers and secondary areas with just enough forces to keep the 'runners honest and to slow them down enough maybe the reaction force can arrive and nab them before they finish what they came to do. That's the main function of the reaction forces: to keep the 'runners from taking their time. A central mage with spirits sounds nice, but if you get that predictable, then magic becomes a pre-requisite for any team of 'runners, and they go in with plans first to neutralize the response spirit. Predictability is the bane of any security, no matter how carefully considered.

Sure, I agree. Who can afford to ensure that everyone on their team is fully decked out, an elite team of runners picking their spot to attack, or a corporation with 5000 security guards all over the world. I believe that these sort of pervasive defenses are essentially useless.

If the corp has some sort of vision impairment in all of their facilities, the runners will wear the appropriate gear, and mages will carry the correct spell to deal with the situation they foresee.

True, but something to consider is that the corps in the Sixth World has a habit of making their "employees" pay for mandatory equipment so cost isn't quite as much of an issue as it would be in the real world, although I do happen to agree that the countermeasures won't be installed everywhere for the reasons you've given.

*EDIT*

I should correct myself and say that I don't think the extreme version of the countermeasures will be everywhere, turning out the lights, blaring loud sounds through the speakers, and perhaps the flashing lights should be pretty much SOP, which means that Runners should have their own counters in place.

If you are willing to outfit all of your security with eyes and ear enhancements out the wazoo, fill corridors with smoke drops, flashing lights, blaring sounds. Then yeah having the corps roll a few grenades down the corridor as SOP is probably cheaper and more effective. As for mages any corp with the money for the cyber, smoke etc they have maybe 50 security mages within 5 minutes of astral flight, having 10 show up with spirits doesn't seem that complex or costly.

On top of that a single mage with some forensics skill and asensing can track the party down and you can kill them at your leisure, and that is ignoring all the tech options to track and kill or roll in enough reinforcements that you ownt make it out the door.

Eh my view of SR corps is different. Corporations are little kingdoms ruled by an oligarchy, in any secure facility there would probably be more paperwork trying to explain why you didn't blow the crap out the intruders with extreme measures than if you kept it to guns. Especially if that means they got away with multi-million nuyen project info. Furniture, wage slaves there there just replaceable property why worry about the collateral damage if it means you increase the chance people make it out with important data.

Edit: I forgot your spirit part. The trick is you don't have the spirits kill anyone, though you could easily have them just kill everyone with a gun since the guards lives aren't worth the worry. All you have to do is use the disgustingly effective spirit powers that slow and contain the party. Delaying them until a kill squad shows up is all you really need.

So you are saying that in your world, the corps are all knowing, all powerful, with unlimited manpower of the highest possible skill and integrity. The corps have an unlimited budget, are answerable to noone, and can do anything they wish. My only question then is what your runners do for a living, deliver pizzas I suppose? It would be pointless to oppose the all powerful corps in anyway, so I assume that they just sit at home knitting when they are not obeying the mandates of the corps.

hi hi

To be fair, the megacorps answer to no one but themselves. But I think even the little corps would be able to afford both googles and glasses for their defense needs.

Runners without flare comp and dampeners (at the very minimum) are just wannabes &/or targets.

Neither of which require cyber - which is where this conversation wandered to for a bit. Add in natural low-light/thermographic and a hands-free low-light/thermographic flashlight built into the frame of your goggles/glasses and your magician is going to be fine.

Where is the non-cyber/non-adept Dampener?

I looked in the SR4A uber-index and there was nothing in there about it.

They are. The US response to a runner team blowing up two planes and a building was invading multiple countries with whole armies. Or did you spend the last decade under a rock?

On the more piddly end of the scale, if you try and break into the NSA headquaters, their are multiple armed guards who have serious police units on hand to respond by shooting you in the face. If you tried to break into USSR military headquaters for a region or say the Kremlin they had an entire regiment/division of troops living on site with the tanks and heavy artillery a few minutes away - but I think the small arms from a couple of thousand soldiers might have been enough to ruin your day.

That is what I call overwhelming force.

avoiding the thread locking comments above

in RL Runner teams would not be tolerated,

I mean look what happens to hackers that get caught,

You're not talking about chinese governmental hackers spying western industries, are you?

Ear plugs are your friend. Then run an audio pick-up from R/L microphones (place on the arms of your glasses for best effect) through your sim module after setting it to dampen excessive noise levels. This is nothing that the technology can't handle.

Extrateritoriality means that once they reach a certain size, they DON'T have to answer to anybody... except the board of directors. I agree with the general sentiment of the rest of your statement, however.


Because that's not how it's listed. You take a standard pair of music-type earbuds and add the damper functonality, and standard glasses with flare compensation, basically very advanced Oakley^TM's. That's essentially what the OP was about, pages ago: whether to put the mods ingo glasses with a limit of 4 spaces, or goggles with up to 6. Earbuds, IIRC, are limited to 3 in SR4A.


This is devolving into a long discussion from another thread. If you decide that corps treat every bit of data as mission critical, that they always own the entire building, and that at the least provocation they are willing to blow up equipment and personnel with reckless abandon, it's your game table, and it's up to you. But in none of the books, in any edition, have I seen anything approaching the sort of omnipotence and carnage you describe.

In 2nd Ed, there was an entire book detailing Corporate Security, and it went by just that name. In there, it discussed the nature of the defenses corporations use to secure their various facilities. If your response, like several others before, is "that was ten years ago", then just save yourself some time and stop reading right here. I'm not trying to be a bitch, I'm just not interesting in having an argument because anything that hapened before 2070 isn't relevant in your opinion.

The corps DO take serious precautions with their data and prototypes. That protection includes guards, ICE, magical wards, magicians, spirits, autonomous drone, on-site riggers for monitoring of the security systems and direct control of drones, elaborate and multi-tiered networks of sensors and "traps", and buildings designed and built with security in mind. Having said that, all of those things are used in greater or lesser degree based on the perceived level of threat. But there are a couple things you're either choosing to ignore or haven't considered. Let me lay them out as I see them.

First, and this one is huge. While corporations are essentially immune to the laws of the nations within which their facilities physically reside, they still have to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ever wonder why many corporate enclaves inside the city are surrounded by a three meter reinforced ferocrete wall instead of chain link? You can always SEE over from the building across the street, so why not just go with a cheaper option? You can throw a ladder up against a solid wall pretty easily, right? A part of the answer lies in a concern for consequences; Bullets that miss fleeing shadowrunners don't stop when hey hit chain link, but hey DO stop when they hit that ferocrete wall. That means your people are weapons free with anything lss than a rocket launcher while the 'runners are on your property and you have extrateritoriality. Neighbors of certain megacorps probably get used to the twice-monthly spate of gunfire from next door. Then there's the aspect of personnel, and I think you underestimate just how hard it would be for a corporation to recruit and retain personnel if people knew that not only are they replacable, which every wageslave knows, but they're DISPOSABLE. If the corp is potentially willing to simply blow up their own people every time a group of probable shadowrunners shinny on through the revolving door, nobody's going to work on their security squads willingly; It's also rough when the little financial analyst on the fifth floor knows the corp would be more annoyed at having to mop them up with a sponge than worried about losing an employee to a poorly thrown grenade. Wageslaves are slaves to their paychecks, and many have something similar to indentured servitude to the corp, but they aren't just anoter consumable resource. "You're goint to go work for MCT?! Jane, you can't! Don't you remember Mary? She was walking out late one night and some supposed shadowrunners were coming in and the security team just started throwing grenades! They tried to suppress the news, but I heard they refused to even pay for the burrial because it was during a case of 'terrorist attack!' I could never work for somebody like that! PLEASE tell me you're not going to take the job!"

Second, just because a building was designed and built with security in mind, doesn't mean it's a complete fortress. People need to work there, and corps know that the best and most productive workers are the ones that are actually happy. You can squeeze peons for low level work, but if you want creative productivity, you know, things like researchand development, you want them to enjoy what they're doing. If they feel like they're living in a prison, that's not going to happen. Not every hallway is a mantrap. Not every checkpoint is the entrance to hell. The building would be designed like an onion, with successive layers of security asw you get closer and closer to the things they REALLY don't want you to have. Then, in the outer layers, there's still plenty of space for your less critical work. The front door is just to keep out the average person who really doesn't belong, sort of like the locks on your car. Somebody who's serious about penetrating won't find your front door security that difficult. Plus, we're back to that prison thing; security guards with light to medium weaponry and badges on their neat police-style uniforms are there for YOUR protectin as an employee, while heavy military armor, grenades and heavy weapons send an entirely differet message. Even the most secure military facilities in the real world don't generally have heavy-warfare kitted soldirs at the main gates; They usually have somebody with light to medium smallarms and a radio. They're a tripwire, and their (inefficient) neutralization is the signal for the Heavy Weapon and Armor decked response team to come screaming. 'Runners always operate (if they're smart) on the assumption that they missed a hidden alarm somewhere and that the heavy units are on their way. That alone makes the 'runners have to act more circumspectly. Even at the final gate, you're more concerned with physical securty - like a massive vault one-person revolving door with a pressure plate to look for "tag-alongs" in addition to the usual cameras. You kill the guards and you don't know the security code to get in. That slows you down, and that's a Bad Thing. But once you're finally in, that's it, because your researchers have a job to do, and making them single-man between every office is just not workable.

Third, non lethal response. Corps want intelligence as much as simple security. Major coridors can have a rail track running overhead (this was an actual system) with a series of drones on patrol overhead and/or available for instant response at spider rigger command. The payloads given went from pistols and SMGs through assault rifles and automatic grenade launchers... but the GLs would be loaded with subudal agents, and the SMGs with DMSO/Narcojet rounds. There are several reasons to go that route: First, no damage to property; Second, no problems with friendly fire, say if somebody is being stupid and triggers a response (wrong password three times); Third, and this is the biggie, you can't interogate a corpse. Corps want to know who's running against them. Wise 'running teams ALWAYS try to figure out who Johnson's REALLY working for, so they might know what you want. If they don't corps have better resources and contacts, so they may be able to find out what the 'runners couldn't/wouldn't. Then another 'runner team gets a job.

Fourth, and for now final, is magic. If you respond with a spirit for tracking and so forth, or a mage who is projecting, then the 'runners are going to adapt and suddenly every team is going to have a full mage skilled in astral combat and with high levels in banishing. Spirits aren't omnipotent either. Most frequently, again according to the old book, spirits are set to patrol and engage threats - if they are disrupted the conjuring mage is immediately aware, so there's your tripwire agan.

That's based on the much more extensive literature that used to be available, and hopefully the folks at Catalyst will be giving us more of that type of thing in the next year or so.

Thinking about "tripwires", wouldn't the cheapest way for corps to have those be a biomonitor, a way to transmit that info, and someone (an AI maybe?) to monitor the feed, so they know if they are killed, stressed, or fall asleep?

After reading this thread, I think my newbie character would go with goggles, attached to his helmet, occupying the space between the front of the helmet and the gas mask, modified to look something like a motocross/bmx helmet. Depending on how much contacts have space for, they would be back up if the helmet had to come off. Hmm, I wonder if earbuds or headphones would work better with the helmet, but if earbuds allow 3 spaces, that's all the audio mods I see in SR4 taken care of, right?

Also, considering the price again, other than biomonitor, I wonder if skinlink would be standard too...

Top bit. Yeah, in my game most Guards are fitted out with a Biomonitor, connected to the systems TacNet set to alarm the system if anything goes down. Makes getting into places difficult as hell, and the Hacker (Me!) needs to be in the system supressing those alarms or we are screwed.

If I remember right you are not able to fit all the audio enhancements into a single device, atleast at character creation. Comes out at 16 availability or something.

OK, but keep in mind the complications. The guard who gets worked up watching the VP's new trophy wife walk by, or how about watching his favorite Urban Brawl team in a playoff game, or drifts to sleep at 03:42, wireless signal cuts out so he looks dead. And that's just off the top of my head. The only criteria I would scan for would be recorded death: as in still broadcasting but no life signs. Anything else will give way too many false positives. Same reason pressure plates at the top of embasy walls (Funny story about the old Soviet embasy in D.C. there) being set so you need at least a certain - relatively high - weight or you get nothing but false alarms so the guards stop paying attention to the thing after a while. And if you know you're up against it, Magic Fingers to exert pressure 'till it goes off. After the third scramble that night, they will call a technician and disconnect the thing. Your weakest link is always your user.


Simple sollution to the first part: Narcojet. Otherwise you get alarms when the guard falls asleep... again.

Where are you getting those availability numbers?

Might be that I am not doing availability for items like this right, but I believe it goes:

Earbuds - Availability = 0, then
Adding Audio Enhancement adds 2 Availability to that, so its now Av. 2.
Select Sound Filter adds 8 to that, so it is now Av. 10.
And then Spatial Recognizer adds 6, so it is now Av. 16.
(Per SR4A Pg. 333)

Or is that not how it works and instead you just use the highest Av.?

Now you have me trying to load the PDF... again. I thought it was the highest.

HappyDaze nope, we are still at the point where just one alternate vision mode isn't enough as even if you don't have automative smoke vents, the gernade form is still cheap and reasonable for sec guards to have.

Cthulhudreams although Runners can be Terrorists, Terrorists are not automatically Runners. If we were to put 911 into Shadowrun Terms than what better fits is the opening salvos of a corp war as opposed to a "normal" run. And if you noticed I've never had a problem with overwhelming force in Zero Zones, BUT rocket launchers are not given to the "security guards" as SOP against intruders in real life. Hmm, I wonder why that could be???

Shinobi Killfist I think you are forgetting that the DM has unlimited resources, but the corps and NPCs don't, they still ahve to answer to budgets, resource scarcities, rules of engaugment, ect, ect, ect...

Low-light vision + a low-light flashlight and you never go below -2 no matter the conditions.
That why i always get Low-light vision + Eye-light system for cyber-eyes.

There's also the Clean Air spell from Street Magic. My team's asthmatic magician has that spell to clear away smoke, pollen, gasses and what have you from a pretty big area. It's an often overlooked utility spell.

Hehe, that's awesome! Still seems like the biomonitor would be worth it but a shadow team worth their salt would have no problem breaking it down. Sounds like it would be a lot of fun for the Shadows, what with it making the Runners have to consider things beyond just geeking/slotting the whole on-site sec force. Like trip the system with false positives by scarring the guards a few times or find out which guards have a habit of falling asleep protecting this boring ass warehouse/whatever - if death is what trigged the alarm, then maybe using Stun Damage types of ammunition only would work wonders or sending out a false signal showing signs of life where there were none ... what is that called? Spoofing or something?

All I am suggesting however is that when I look in the SR4 book and if I think the corps are trying to be "efficient" aka cheap, then items under what value might be on a guard so as to provide the various trip wires and delay till the equivalent of the SWAT team arrives?

Are the guards wearing glasses or goggles?

Neither. They're guards. If it's a high security area, the corp got them implants. Otherwise, probably glasses. Goggles are less comfortable for long periods of time for a number of reasons, to begin with, and glasses look less obvious. Everybody has a pair of AR Glasses unless they've got 'eyes. But if somebody's wearing goggles, they're out "to start somethin'" to quote Will Smith's character after shooting little Susie with her armload of high level physics and mathematics texts in Men In Black... "or do I owe her an apology?" Ideally, you don't want your every-day security to make your workers feel like they're slaving in a prison. Reality is irrelevant, it's their percepton that affects their work. Does that make sense?

Look, terrorists provide the best and only examples of what the Authorities will do in response to this sort of thing, because the IRA and Al'Queda are the closest M.O. to runner teams. Organised crime gangs and lone agents have wildly different M.O.s to the tactics used by runners (not always, but mostly), and special forces troops have extremely different targets from runner teams so the response of the targets isn't particularly instructive.

So yeah, the IRA and the UK government response in particular is a great example of how the authorities are going to respond to people that shoot up government installations and rob banks.

As for your next point - that totally depends on what you expect the threat to be, and you're ability to get ontop of it.

In general, if you give people pistols what they shoot most often is themselves. Which is why you generally don't issue pistols in countries like Australia even to guard military bases as was seen on the news yesterday. Conversely, in England where there was a real material threat against all bases from the IRA - but a low rent material threat - installations were guarded by trained professionals with assault rifes who would blow you away if you presented a threat.

However, both england and Australia do have something in common. They will have some sort of Response Team at a high readiness level ready to respond to incidents dialed in by Barney the Fat Rentacop, or John the lean Paratrooper.

If they regularly have high level threat incidents (and make no mistake, runner teams are a VERY high level threat, a runner team is about 70 times more dangerous than any islamic extremist cell ever), you're going to have paratroopers on the door, and if the runners start a fight you are going to escalate very quickly into overwhelming force.

And I am very serious about the runners being a high threat vector. Consider that your average runner team has a demolitions expert, several crack marksmen, physical and electronic security experts, B&E skills, extensive black market connections so they can quickly muster high levels of resources. They speak the languages, they have extensive links into the local areas, they are trained professions with safehouses, resources and networks.

Runner groups are typically very difficult to get moles into. Runners will regularly be sweeping their gear for bugs and have access to very high quality fake IDs. They have access to and a demonstrated willingness to use military quality weapons, body armour and exposlives. If you runners wanted to put together a carbomb, they'd easily be able to do it, and whats more the explosive expert would make sure it worked first time.

The comparison to the IRA is very apt - these guys have the community and criminal links of the IRA, but take it to the next level by typically have military levels of skills and trainings. A starting runner will have skills that wouldn't be astray on a member of elite light infantry units like the US Army Rangers. Runners are tougher and more dangerous than the IRA. They are less predictable as the only motivation is money, and they are harder to break and inflitrate as their really are hundreds of totally independent cells.

Runners are way tougher and much more dangerous than the clowns from Al Queda, even the products of the training camps. They are a seriously hard core threat.

If you took the skillsets possessed by a runner team and gave them to a cell of terrorists, the destruction would be immense. IRA bombings in the UK could cost as much as 2 billion dollars a hit. Those were war winners. You think Ares would stop at anything to remove 2 billion from Horizons bank account?

Shadowrunners are very, very dangerous, and very very expensive to you. The corps repeatedly get attacked by these people. They are going to be extensively prepared, and if they do come under attack, they are not going to mess about. They are going to frag your ass any way they can.

Sure, and I don't really totally disagree Cthulhudreams, Runners that make a huge splash are very likely going to be crushed like the bugs they are, however that doesn't mean that the corps can afford to have "overwhelming force" stationed everywhere anymore than the American government can, OR that they are going to equip their security with SOTA Rocket Launchers or even assualt rifles.

However I think you are forgetting that the corps can't afford to enter actual warfare amongst themselves because that would result in a roasted planet and a bunch of confused Horrors sometime in the future, instead they have to keep the mutual warfare that they are all engauged in contained to the semi-cold proxie war that has lasted the better part of the generation ala the Cold War between America and the USSR. Even if Corp A knows that Corp B is the one that hired Runners to hit one of their sites they aren't going to bomb Corp B's site in return, to do so is to invite death via Omega Order.

Ahh, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. So, going by perception trumping reality, throw in "cost effective", glasses make more sense. So which mods might they have that stay within cost effective? Hmm...

Glasses 25 Avail -
+ Image Link 25 Avail -
+ Flare Comp 50 Avail +2
+ Vision Mag 100 Avail +2
+ Low Light 100 Avail +4
Total 300 Avail +8

Hope that looks about right, lowest cost, lowest avail, 4 vision mods (capacity?) - still trying to better understand the make up of equipment. I would also assume the Enhanced Glasses would be switched out with whoever comes on shift next. Of course, I am only trying for lowest cost here, there are obviously better enhancement set ups than this even to my newbie eyes. And the Image Link is the AR thing, right? And if they used a pistol with a smartgun system, obviously the glasses would need a smartlink.

So, if I guess that a corp wants to be cheap on its trip wire guards, so anything in the book 300 or lower? Based off my guesses that is - but then that doesn't make sense against how much armor costs, hmm... Do you think there would be a certain total in nuyen of equipment a trip wire guard would have on them? 5000, 2500, 1000 tops? And again I assuming they don't get to take the equipment home with them necissarily, unless the guards have to pay for the gear out of their paycheck ... in which case the wage slave might opt for an even lower amount coming out of their paycheck?

And Goggles are as much capacity as you can get before going cyber, right? 6 out of the 8 mods, it seems. Could you just use some contacts to get the last two mods?

First, there's just one problem with 'runners: they aren't really a "community". A large loose knit association, maybe business partners, but taken as a whole, they're a bunch of nihilistic anarchists. IF a threat were to come down bad enough on a "communigy" of 'runners, say in Seattle, then there might be some kind of cohesive push back. But guess who'd be HELPING the runners? Come on, I know you can guess. Seriously. It's easy. No?

EVERY OTHER CORP.

Remember, 'runners aren't (often) bully boys for any particular corp - then they'd be mercenaries. What keeps the corps from all-out conflice is the fact that they CAN use deniable (and disposable)assets. The 6th World needs 'runners the way an interal combustion engine needs oil, or a steam engine needs grease; They're what let the machine run smoothly. If one corp seriously goes after the 'runners, what are the other corps going to assume? That the other corp has something BIG in mind, and that of course bodes ill. I mean, they're removing the grease from the system, so that would imply they plan on making sure the other corps can't take retribution covertly any more... or at least that's how the logic would probably run. There have been plenty of times a team of 'runners had done a job against Corp X one week, but the very next Corp X hires them to do the dirty deed to another rival, maybe the people who hired the 'runners last week, and maybe not. So long as the 'runners keep the body count down and property destruction to a minimum, "it's just business", especially when they can cover up that they were had... again. It's all part of the game for the corps. Now, if your runners start walking in and immediately use medium machine guns to murder everybody in the lobby (every time), then blow up half a floor to get into a secure area (again), then not only steal the prototype and the research notes, but pour FizzyGlugUltra!!^TM into all the hardware (again) then use a flamethrower (again) to melt the parts that wouldn't be permanently ruined by FizzylugUltra!!^TM - now available in Aquamarine Man-o-War flavor! - being poured into the guts of the machines, and for giggles pull the fire handle to discharge the flame retardants and rain on everybody in the building (again) while giving the security cameras The Finger before blowing THEM away too (again), well then the corp in question is going to probably take exception to that, and might even cooperate *gasp!* with a rival that the 'runners did that to last week.

In the end, the dirty little secret of the 6^th World hasn't been that the runners really need the corps (which they do); The dirty little secret is that the corps need the 'runners to be able to run their businesses.

Lol, how can the corp tell when you shot the security guard at the front door whether you're planning to break in and steal some data from the mainframe, or if you're going to blow the mainframe and the entire building site? Maybe you're just going to put sarin gas into the AC system?

Really they have absolutely no idea. All they know is that here are some very dangerous people who literally have the capability to blow up the entire city block, and those extremely dangerous people want in and are willing and able to use lethal force. As you are extremely dangerous, they are going to use Really Extremely Dangerous people to try and kill you.

I'm also not suggesting that the corps will have overwhelming force stationed everywhere. Let us instead look at the british response. The british government didn't do that.

What the british did was station a few tough guys at vunerable location on guard. These tough guys ere military or police trained with military spec weapons. They keep an eye on things and look for stealth infiltrations. They are hardcases. However, there will only be a few tough men, and if the tough men get shot at or find some bad people, they will call in the Really Big And Scary Men.

There are really only 60 Big and Scary Men for all of LA. Maybe the corps all corps will outsource their Big and Scary Men response teams in Kentucky to Lone Star. But the Big and Scary Men will have helicopters and they will be on standby ready to go.

And then if we look at england, on a national basis they had some Extremely Big and Really Very Scary Men who were on standby to respond to incidents nationally, if the local Big And Scary Men proved incapable of dealing with the threat.

It's a very simple escalation tree - John the Military Man and a few of his friends on the ground, Tim from the SWAT team a few minutes away who will be called the SECOND john spots something, and <NAME CENSORED> from <UNIT DESCRIPTION UNAVAILABLE> will be summoned if Tim is unable to deal with the issue. It will just happen very quickly. SWAT will storm the building as soon as they get there. If a squad of them goes down, the guys who have their faces erased from photographs will be called up, and they will put you down.



Yeah look, the runners could be useful to you long term, but this discussion isn't long term. It's about what Ares is going to do when they spot 4 guys with assault rifles and plastic explosives climbing over the perimeter fence of their research installation. This isn't long term - this is about right now. What is Ares going to do about those 4 guys? Right now? It is going to liquidate them as fast as possible with Extreme Prejudice.

As you point out their are lots of runner teams running around. If you've caught one right now who might be trying to blow up your entire R&D facility, you kill them as quickly as possible to prevent any risk that they might actually blow up your R&D facility.

It's not like you cannot just go recruit some other group of runners if you need them for something else.

Heck, my terrorist analogy applies exactly - and fits into the cold war proxy thing. While the taliban was useful the US gave them guns and training. As soon as they stopped being useful, the US cut them off. When they turned around and bit them, the US blew them up.

As for your part about getting in and out undected.. yeah that is fine you know. It's not like you can call on the SAS because someone did something you never even knew about. That is the ideal shadowrun for the runners because the risk of getting killed is 0.

You're overthinking this. The point of the exercise is to keep the guard's "improvements" from becoming capital investments. Factory Smartlinked heavy pistol or SMG is as high as you'd probably see off a military base (or corp equivalent) where you'd probably see an assault rifle, but those guards would probably have the cyber, right?


Uh huh, and you're going to integrate their information HOW so you don't accidentally cover something vital with another visual que? Stick with one device or go cyber. And contacts are more expensive and fragile... and prone to being lost. If you are willing to go that far, get the guy some chrome eyes.

"Hey, Mr. Shadowrunner, look, I know it's asking a lot, but I think I've lost my smartlink contact somewhere here on the floor, and if you'd be so kind as to -"
*BLAM*
"Moron."

Except that in the Sixth World the corp has to worry about multiple attacks from multiple factions, while their "Big Scary Guys" are at Site A they aren't at Site B, Site C, ect, ect, so they are going to have to make a judgement call and reserve their scariest people for the truly hardcore drek, it's the same exact reason that the American Government does not post overwhelming force at every vulnable site even in the post 9-11 days.

The reason that Runners survive is that they do their damnest to be gone before the HRT shows up and the corps are not going to risk open warfare by opening fire on another corp's turf, you can't forget to factor that tidbit into the equation either.

Oh yeah, I agree. It's a two phase response - you're going to have the local swat team, and then the real nut jobs on a state/national scale. So the Big Scary Guys sit at the local police station until someone shoots at John the Paratrooper at Facility A, B or C. Plus remember that John the Paratrooper is no slouch. He's guarding a 2 billion dollar asset that is quite easy to blow up, so John will be smart and highly disciplined with good equipment.

While the US government hasn't placed overwhelming force at every site, you regularly see armed military guards, and the base or sensitive installation will have a hotline to the local SWAT team.

Remember, the SWAT team can get their pretty fast in SR. Like, really quickly. Astral travel is at the speed of sound, and a SWAT team can really bring the pain for a runner team.

Except that the corps have to answer to the bottom line, unlike today's governments, they don't get to simply print more money or raise taxes to pay for SOTA security and training, so judgement calls are going to be made about how secure is secure enough. Also remember that Mages are LESS than 1% of the population, and apperantly the Shadows collects far more than it's fair share of Awakened Assists, so you might not have an Astral Mage ready to jump at every Runner Incursion.


Remember that in the Sixth World, Lonestar doesn't pay their Beat Cops enough to even live on per Third Edition and you literaly have examples of corps kidnapping their own people and using threats against family members to ensure that they do their job. Life is Cheap and they really do care more about damage to the building and equipment then they do for the lost of life.