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Daddy's Little Ninja
Is there whaling in the 2070's?

I do not know about Iceland or Norway but modern whaling in Japan is just because of influencial power blocks. There is no market for the meat they take. Despite claims it is a part of Japanese culture, the bulk of the meat rots in warehouses. The only scentific research seems to be does mink whale go best with red wine or white?

The only time it was a big part of the diet for a large part of Japanese culture was in the 1940's when the war meant any protein was hard to come by. The fact it is not truly a part of the culture is shown in that it is an economic failure today and eaten as an exotic oddity than a staple.

BUT in 2070 would this still be the same? Japan in the 6th World is a super power but would the high cost of 'real' food mean that whaling is active again? And would that be the 'deadliest catch' considering what might happen with a meta-whale. Have any of you read Moby Dick?

What about the indians in SS? Isn't one of those tribes claiming whaling as a right?
Ancient History
In the 2070s there is a bit of whale-farming, but I can't remember if there is much actual whaling after meistersingers, torpedo sharks, and leviathans came into play.
Daddy's Little Ninja
Well yeah, that was kind of what I meant. It is meat. Real meat. But very dangerous. Can anyone offer insight to the culture in the European nations' whaling cultures?
Kerenshara
Real life, or 6th World

I'm told (1st hand) that whale meat is absolutely delectible. I was told to think of the finest well aged steak I ever had, make it twice as tender and three times as flavorful. Now tripple that.
Ravor
Damn, now you've got my mouth watering... Damn import laws...
Link
Considering the polluted 6th world and awakened predators such as megalodon, torpedo sharks, sea drakes and kraken, unless the Japanese hegemony have renounced their cetacean culinary cravings I'd think there'd be few mundane whales remaining.

I found this in PCoE, it seemed apt.
QUOTE
The full ramifications of this politically contentious subject receives a fair, learned discussion in Professor Landauer's volume, Homocidal Cetaceans.
Earlydawn
You know, a really cool theme campaign could revolve around a Deadliest Catch-styled fishing operation, that fishes awakened creatures like kraken and leviathan instead of crab or whales. There's plenty of room for every archetype, too..

Riggers manage their vessels like taskmasters, diverting their consciousness into the machine, carefully supervising every hatch, rudder, and valve. Meanwhile, the crew's hacker lays inert in his VR cocoon, rocking his SeaNet satellite account. BootyBB may not have any updates on their fishing board worth checking out, but there's more then one way to gut a devilfish. It'll probably take a few days to inject a spoofed account into Ares' krill observatory in LEO, but when you're out at sea, time is abundant.

Time is abundant at sea, but life is cheap. On the rain soaked deck, chaos prevails. Gone are the days of nets and crab pots; the contemporary fisherman's tool comes in a calibre. The kraken trying to pull the ship to the bottom started getting serious after the Dolphin Shaman hit it with lightning. She's still trying to get herself to her feet. The chromed troll you hired at the port dive bar is trying to get his assault cannon braced, but it doesn't seem like sea legs come in 'ware grades. In fact, he's far more likely to hit the rotodrone hovering over the deck, searchlights blazing in the typhoon. The done's electromagnetically-propelled harpoon could certainly pierce the kraken's rough hide - better hope it doesn't miss.
Tachi
"Call me Ishmael."
Yeah, I read it about 20 years ago. Don't ask about it, I don't remember anything but the opening line.
Given the somewhat "extra-sporty" nature of deep-sea fishing in the sixth world, I'd figure whale meat is available but prohibitively expensive. So, yeah, pretty much like now only with a higher body count among the fishermen, and the Green Peace whackos probably have shaman among their harassment crews, and the "Whale Wars" have probably gotten a lot rougher (i.e. mounted crew served weapons at the very least, probably using anti-ship missiles and torpedos by that point since the Japanese are using water cannons and microwave crowd-control weapons even now to force the GPers to stand off).

I keep watching that show hoping to see some treehuggers die, no joy yet, unfortunately.

toturi
You know, I keep thinking: If only we could get the whales to breed off the coast of Somalia and the whalers go there to hunt them. Whalers vs pirates. Problems solved.
Grinder
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 6 2009, 08:40 AM) *
"Call me Ishmael."
Yeah, I read it about 20 years ago. Don't ask about it, I don't remember anything but the opening line.
Given the somewhat "extra-sporty" nature of deep-sea fishing in the sixth world, I'd figure whale meat is available but prohibitively expensive. So, yeah, pretty much like now only with a higher body count among the fishermen, and the Green Peace whackos probably have shaman among their harassment crews, and the "Whale Wars" have probably gotten a lot rougher (i.e. mounted crew served weapons at the very least, probably using anti-ship missiles and torpedos by that point since the Japanese are using water cannons and microwave crowd-control weapons even now to force the GPers to stand off).

I keep watching that show hoping to see some treehuggers die, no joy yet, unfortunately.


Don't forget that there are the more radical eco-groups like Green War and Terra First, who'll prbably take more direct action than Greenpeace does today.
Tachi
Ah, yes, good point there Grinder.
Hmm... Terra First attack subs... Green War fast attack boats...
At which point the whalers will really get nasty... hehe... hope it's televised.


You know Earlydawn, after rereading your post up above I got a really strange mental picture of Sig and Edgar Hansen, Sig as a fishing-rigger and Edgar on the deck as a cyber-fisherman.

Sig strapped into his rigger cocoon, with a nicotine and caffeine I.V. drip. Cyber Edgar magnetically attached to the deck by his cyberlegs' magnetic systems, shooting a hook out of his cyberarm and biting the heads off of various "goodluck" sacrifices with his cyberfangs. Hehe, the funny part though, is that the mental picture has them still fishing off of the same old rust encrusted Northwestern, albeit with a few upgrades.
Mortified Penguin
Warform Biodrone competitive whaling. That is all. biggrin.gif
Earlydawn
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 6 2009, 05:23 AM) *
You know Earlydawn, after rereading your post up above I got a really strange mental picture of Sig and Edgar Hansen, Sig as a fishing-rigger and Edgar on the deck as a cyber-fisherman.

Sig strapped into his rigger cocoon, with a nicotine and caffeine I.V. drip. Cyber Edgar magnetically attached to the deck by his cyberlegs' magnetic systems, shooting a hook out of his cyberarm and biting the heads off of various "goodluck" sacrifices with his cyberfangs. Hehe, the funny part though, is that the mental picture has them still fishing off of the same old rust encrusted Northwestern, albeit with a few upgrades.
Exactly. But who will keep the peace when Jonathan launches an anti-shipping missile off of the deck of the Time Bandit and sinks the Wizard? grinbig.gif
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 6 2009, 11:23 AM) *
Ah, yes, good point there Grinder.
Hmm... Terra First attack subs... Green War fast attack boats...
At which point the whalers will really get nasty... hehe... hope it's televised.

probably right next to the latest desert wars episodes, alongside urban brawl and similar.

at times, it seems that SR entertainment borders on the colosseum of rome...

or maybe its a scale up of the current fighting stuff on pay-pr-view?

ok, now i am starting to digress on what the rise of violent entertainment indicates about the society that finds it entertaining, given the historical context...
Kerenshara
The thing I think might have been missed to this point is that if the anti-whaling forces are willing to abandon non-lethal methods, shoals of small, fast vessels could swarm whalers easily and anti-ship missiles - even the heavier models - are surprisingly compact and light-weight.
Ravor
Sure, but I imagine that the whalers would have access to bigger guns if push ever came to shove. cyber.gif
Tachi
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 6 2009, 09:26 PM) *
The thing I think might have been missed to this point is that if the anti-whaling forces are willing to abandon non-lethal methods, shoals of small, fast vessels could swarm whalers easily and anti-ship missiles - even the heavier models - are surprisingly compact and light-weight.


Personally, if I was a whaler and I saw (on radar) an unidentified ship (or identified hostile ship) off-load a bunch of small boats that headed for me, I'd automatically launch anti-ships of my own towards the tender-ship. Small boats don't usually don't have the range or supplies to survive on their own without support, especially that close to the antarctic circle. But hey, that's just me and I'm an asshole. That is why I would figure them to usually use subs when they go out hunting whalers in deep water, they'd probably only use small boats when near land by the time things have escalated that far. But yeah, subs make good anti-ship platforms also.
Daddy's Little Ninja
Personally I wonder what would happen if some RL protestors did flip their wheels and got their hands on an old Long Lance torpedo.

The problem is that if the whalers load more combat ships, it makes them more expensive. And it takes up room that could be used for cargo-ie the corpses of dead whales. More likely you might get escourt ships around the whaling ship.Sink the main whling ship and you end the hunt. Repalcing them gets expensive.

Though some corp might want to make a few donations to the anti-whalers- to test out EW masking and anti-ship weapons while the Japan-o-corps loan out similarly to the whaler escourts. Would it still be too controversial for a Renraku frigate to openly support the whalers? Mabe SK also if the Scandanavians still whale.
Kerenshara
The Long Lance torpedo was a nifty device in it's day, but it's not a guaranteed kill against a 6th World whaling vessel, which is probably dual-hulled, heavily compartmentalized (at least in the outer spaces) and armored over the vital spaces at least lightly to deal with seriously horked off Awakened and possibly intelligent cetations deciding to take up the issue with your ships personally. The point about armament taking up space is partly useful, but truthfully, most modern anti-ship weapons are mounted on the deck in light-weight launchers. The old PHM-1 Pegasus class hydrofoils of the US Navy actually packed in a rapid-fire 76mm deck gun and up to eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles. They were less than 150 ft / 42 meters long and had a crew of barely 20.

Something to bear in mind when conducting warfare at sea: the radar horizon is only 7-12 miles / 11-19 km away, even from the top of a very tall radar mast. Modern anti-ship weapons in the first decade of the 2000's are well over 60 miles / 96 km. That means if the anti-whalers find you, they can launch a off-axis attack with missiles from beyond your own radar horizon and you'll never be able to localize them for return fire. In other words, they fire missiles in a direction well away from you initially and then at a designated point, the missiles turn and come back at you, so if you were to fire a seeking missile back down the arrival vector of the incoming vampire (A BOL or Bearing Only Launch) your missiles will never find their tartets. In fact, with enough launch platforms and missiles, it is entirely possible to set up a multi-axis time-on-target missile salvo certain to confuse even the best anti-missile defenses. Or you could go for a good old roll-back-attack where you salvo enough weapons to "roll-back" the defenses of the ship along any one axis.

The big issue is going to be finding your opponent in all that open ocean. Drones, an ideal sollution to the problem, are going to be a real problem because of the arctic conditions; Most aircraft don't like that much cold and wet (read: freezing) and a drone is going to be even more succeptible because a quarter inch of ice is going to be proportionally much more devastating than the same amount of ice on a conventional wing, for example. Once you get to the radar horizon, it's the equivalent of knife fighting distance.

On mature consideration, one sollution would be an LTA (Lighter Than Air) drone at high enough altitude to be above the weather able to utilize look-down mapping radar, but with all the ice, it would still be a tough search. It just becomes one huge battle of measure and counter-measure.

Submarines would have a distinct edge in finding their prey (from the anti-whaler's perspective), and the best weapon to kill subs is other subs. But operating a submarine in close to where you're actively hunting whales is kind of counter-indicated, so that would go slightly to the anti-whalers. They could also listen with sonar for the discress calls of whales under attack. Finally they have the option to use either torpedos or anti-ship missiles. The expense necessary to successfully defend a big, slow target like a whaling mother-ship from a modern submarine would be prohibitive, especially if you had to include point-defense costs on the mother-ship herself. And those kinds of things are going to eat into space as well. The second best means to hunt subs is a dipping sonar helo', but we're right back to that whole "icing" issue; Choppers are a nightmare in those conditions, and the minimum size of vessel needed to maintain, launch and recover a VTOL large enough to carry effective anti-submarine torpedos and a dipping sonar plus a brace of sonar bouys and probably a MAD system is going to be pretty substantial, certainly double or more the size of the escorting vessels I have seen on the show. Then there's the specially trained personnel needed to prosecute an ASW attack, especially if you're trying to find and kill the sub before she's launched her weapons at your vulnerable mother-ship.

OK, since I'm thinking submarines, your main concerns are cost, size, submerged endurance, range and payload. Most GreenPeacers don't like nukes, so I wonder how small you can engineer a fusion plant? What are the detectable emissions of same? Or with the Super-Conducting Super-Capacitors in the 2070s, DE (Diesel Electric) subs become very very viable. Or advanced fuel cells. OK, so power and propulsion are set, and you've got enough speed and range to work. How many crew would you need? Well, is your weapons are in single-launch tubes outside the pressure-hull (vertical tubes for missiles and horizontal ones for torpedos), you don't need the crews for them. Computers can handle a lot of the basic monitoring functions. If the power plant is reliable enough, you can dispense with most of the engine watch. Drek, you can replace the whole bridge watch with a spider Rigger. OK, so that's going to be a small crew. That also simplifies logistics (read: food). You could use nearly any kind of mid-sized cargo vessel as a tender to make things even more effective. The tender could also be a base for LTA search-drones. So call it a pair of subs working in concert. As long as the mother-ship hung back enough, she'd be essentially proof to reprisal.

And with two subs, you can have one execute a surface attack with missiles from one vector once the other sub has stealthed into position where they can launch sub-surface attacks with torpedos against the whaling mother-ship. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think the whalers would be screwed unless they were willing to take extrordinary pains (read: money) to protect themselves, especially compared to the outlay costs of a single pair of subs, half a dozen LTA drones and the mother-ship to tend them. It would probably put the price of the whales at market beyond the point of marketablity.
Tachi
I see your point. However, radar horizon for a tall mast is slightly further than that. A 20meter mast can see a 10meter target at 19.5miles.


Radar Horizon Calculator
CanRay
An NPC of mine went fishing once...

The group decided not to ask when they saw Depth Charges being loaded onto the boat.
Tachi
QUOTE (CanRay @ Sep 7 2009, 01:53 PM) *
An NPC of mine went fishing once...

The group decided not to ask when they saw Depth Charges being loaded onto the boat.


Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. (says the guy who has fished with dynamite in a 50 ft diameter pond, ahh, childhood memories)
Kerenshara
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 7 2009, 01:16 PM) *
I see your point. However, radar horizon for a tall mast is slightly further than that. A 20meter mast can see a 10meter target at 19.5miles.


Radar Horizon Calculator

Interesting find. I always had a lower number for a rule of thumb, and I wonder why that might be, if the calculator is correct. It's still the same problem though, even if the thing is completely acurate, considering an incoming missile is going to skim under 3 meters until the final pop-up maneuver. That means that you'd only have about an 80 second warning when it popped over the theoretical radar horizon. If it was one of the newer Russian Moskit's (SS-N-22 Sunburn family) you'd have under 27 seconds. While that's plenty of time for computerized defenses to respond, it's a VERY short engagement window, considering you need to stop it far enough out that the airframe and warhead don't go ballistic and hit your ship anyhow. There's a reason newer capital vessels in the USN are switching to the RIM-116 Roling Airframe Missile, because it's far more able to down one of these heavy monsters than a 20mm cannon shell. The RIM-116 is a lightweight installation, but it's still not without penalties, and it will have arc-of-fire constrictions on something shaped like a whaling mother-ship, so you're going to need probably at least three to guarantee full protection, if not four based on the whalers I have seen. The escorts can probably get away with two, but it's extrordinarily difficult to hit a skimming-to-pop-up target moving at 2.2 Mach. Short of deploying some kind of dedicated air-defense vessel for the flotilla, that's going to be rough.

And that 27-80 second warning window assumes you pick it up immediately as it crosses the horizon, and these things are pretty small radar targets, and they will get even smaller. Add to that the problem of scatter from floating ice, and it's nightmarish (even doppler isn't going be perfect at discriminating out all the ice). The other problem is that you have <80 seconds to set Condition 1 throughout your ship (damage control crews to ready, weapons to active and - most important - all watertight compartmentalization doors sealed). I guess you could put a lot of that under computer central control, but I don't see mariners handing that over to a computer, for a lot of reasons.

Either way, thanks for the link.
Tachi
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 7 2009, 02:07 PM) *
Either way, thanks for the link.


No problem, I ran a nautical arc awhile back and found it useful. Keep in mind that you could always put up a tethered blimp with radar capability to extend the horizon, or use a weatherized small plane/helicopter, of course the small plane/helicopter would increase costs quite a bit. Putting one up at 1000ft will give you 40-45miles depending on waves. If you go to 5000ft you get 100miles.

BTW, The page with the actual equation to find the horizon is on the previous page from that calculator, strangely, you can get there from there (lol), so, just in case anyone is curious...

The page where the equation is located, it also has the equation for finding the visual horizon.
Kerenshara
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 7 2009, 02:35 PM) *
No problem, I ran a nautical arc awhile back and found it useful. Keep in mind that you could always put up a tethered blimp with radar capability to extend the horizon, or use a weatherized small plane/helicopter, of course the small plane/helicopter would increase costs quite a bit.

Teathered blimp = LTA Drone, but the LTA Drone version is actually superior to tethering because the cable itself can become a liability in arctic conditions. With solar panels on the top, that blimp could probably out-last the stores on the mother-ship for the crew. But the problem there is going to be target discrimination amongst the ice floes. Some of them can move with relative motion that's going to slip past the gates on a doppler, and if you dial the gates up high enough, another vessel can just move ahead dead slow and you'd never see them. Mind you, that LTA is going to be useless for finding a pair of long-duration submersibles. Heck, even snorking they would just have to maintain steerage and they'd be below the gate of the doppler. Worse, the mast head would have a lower RCS than the ice around it. About the only place I can think of worse to try to look for a determined (and advanced) DE boat on electric would be the Persian Gulf, because it's shallow enough and has enough subsea geography to make DICAS bouys and actvie dipped/towed sonar nearly useless. Murder on a homing weapon's sonar too, if it just goes all stop and sits just off the bottom. Hull sonar won't work in the arctic, unless you mind losing the installation to a good-sized chunk of ice you didn't see to steer around. Now that I think about it, a towed installation from a surface ship's goint to be a problem too if it's maneuvering in tight ice. *shudders*

Like I was saying, if the anti-whalers can get even a bearing on the whalers, the whalers are in a world of hurt. The one thing that's going to kill them, fundamentally, is that the ability to defend against a sea-skimming missile is having to emit constantly. I suppose you could try to rely on some kind of IRST (InfaRed Search & Track) but that's too affected by precipitation and fog. No, radar is just your best bet in those conditions, and if you're using an advanced phased aray (or better, something with ISAR capability) you can localize and hand directly off to guidance on contact. Now that I think about it, the RAM is a miserable choice for those conditions, given the guidance method. Better something like the British VL SeaWolf... except that's got a minimum engagement range over a mile from the ship, which is going to narrow your engagement envelope from the INSIDE. The light-weight SeaWolf could be a winner, except for the limited number of rounds on-hand and increased vulnerability to icing (it's easier to blow a simple roof door than to pop open those clamshells on both ends and traverse the mount. Dear heavens, I am SO glad I'm not actually responsible for designing a defense in depth for the whaling fleet, because it's going to be a nightmare from the word go. IF the anti-whalers are willing to go with full lethality utilizing submersible platforms, the whalers are going to have to commit a frightening amount of resources and ship tonnage to (point) defense and detection systems... and the crews to run them properly. Computerization is only so good, and if things go multi-axis, you want extra eyes on the screens. More to the point, that requirement is going to be duplicated across every ship in the fleet (unless you tell their crews they're expendable) and since they're useless in their bunks when you only have 27-80 seconds to engage and STOP the incoming vampires, you're going to need rotating watches, all trained. It's not going to be a LOT of people, but these ships don't tend to operate with gargantuan crews to begin with, and adding a 2-person sensor-watch in addition to the spider and a group TACO spider, that's a lot of extra bodies... or another dedicated (and very expensive) ship. Like I said: Ick.
Tachi
And to add to that is defense from magical threats, though having a shaman (shark would be good) of your own could also help with detecting hostile ships, though not to much when dealing with that much space to cover. But, it's a thought.

As I said earlier in this thread, whale meat would be available, but prohibitively expensive.
kzt
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 6 2009, 08:26 PM) *
The thing I think might have been missed to this point is that if the anti-whaling forces are willing to abandon non-lethal methods, shoals of small, fast vessels could swarm whalers easily and anti-ship missiles - even the heavier models - are surprisingly compact and light-weight.

Unlike ShadowRun, they are also astonishingly expensive.
PBTHHHHT
Eventually you have to run a cost benefit analysis for the whole endeavor. If it becomes so cost prohibitive to have a such a defended ship for a whaling run, particularly against fanatical anti whaler groups. At a certain point, the companies may say forget it, it's not worth the cost/effort. Plus, the more defensive equipment you place on a ship, it may take away from the fishing and storage capacity of the ship. For a ship of a truly large size for both, the maintenance starts going up along with fuel costs. Great, whale meat... how much is it to have lab grown whale meat instead?
kzt
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 7 2009, 01:07 PM) *
[font="Lucida Console"]Interesting find. I always had a lower number for a rule of thumb, and I wonder why that might be, if the calculator is correct. It's still the same problem though, even if the thing is completely acurate, considering an incoming missile is going to skim under 3 meters until the final pop-up maneuver.

Actually, air breathing missiles don't go that low. 10-20 meters above the sea is typical, with the height depending on the sea state. Ramjets at mach 3 don't like catching seawater from spray etc. Oops, 20 meters for the 3M80. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit
Kerenshara
QUOTE (kzt @ Sep 7 2009, 03:31 PM) *
Actually, air breathing missiles don't go that low. 10-20 meters above the sea is typical, with the height depending on the sea state. Ramjets at mach 3 don't like catching seawater from spray etc. Oops, 20 meters for the 3M80. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit

Yeah, I perrused the article too, but the Moskit is moving so fast, it almost HAS to allow for some extra height, though I wouldn't trust that particular figure. The better subsonic sea skimmers routinely drop to 3 meters or thereabouts, because they can still dodge things like rogue waves. At 2.2 Mach, that gets a little harder. Even so, you've only managed to increase warning time back up to <50 seconds... again assuming you SEE it then. Frankly though, I've been singularly unimpressed with the info on Wiki in regards to ex-Soviet/Russian weapons systems if they enetered service after the early 80s. The Moskit is still in development, so it's "new". (The development IIRC is actually happening under license as a partnership with India of all people.)

Kzt: Not as expensive as you might think, especially if tertiary producers (DPRK, India, South Africa) are starting to get into the game.

PBTHHHHT: that was part of my thinking, and the reason I kept pointing out that a dedicated defensive vessel (read: warship) would free a lot more tonnage for commerical operations but be prohibitively expensive, and point defense tends to work best if you deploy it off the target itself.

Tachi: Magical defenses I left entirely out, and a Shaman would help a bit, but not be fool-proof. Frankly, I think it would be easier to prosecute that kind of battle technologically, not magically. Line of sight remains a concern, and I'm not sure about you, but I don't think I'd be keen on astrally projecting from a vessel moving at 10-20 knots, would you? I like to know right where my meat-self is at any given moment.
LurkerOutThere
I'm not sure why theres an assumption that the fanatical enviro groups have limitless financial and personel resources and the companies presumably benefiting from supply and demand do not. Whale is delicious and I don't forsee it not continuing to be so, also the more difficult something is to obtain the higher profit margins people can turn if they can actually obtain it. Supply and demand all that.
Tachi
QUOTE (Kerenshara @ Sep 7 2009, 03:46 PM) *
Tachi: Magical defenses I left entirely out, and a Shaman would help a bit, but not be fool-proof. Frankly, I think it would be easier to prosecute that kind of battle technologically, not magically. Line of sight remains a concern, and I'm not sure about you, but I don't think I'd be keen on astrally projecting from a vessel moving at 10-20 knots, would you? I like to know right where my meat-self is at any given moment.


Gain some altitude and play "spot the wake". nyahnyah.gif

Wouldn't the fact that most anti-ship missiles are radar guided actually help? HARM type defenses, for example. Or, is that what they meant by "radar guided", HARM anti-ship missiles?
Tachi
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Sep 7 2009, 04:07 PM) *
I'm not sure why theres an assumption that the fanatical enviro groups have limitless financial and personel resources and the companies presumably benefiting from supply and demand do not. Whale is delicious and I don't forsee it not continuing to be so, also the more difficult something is to obtain the higher profit margins people can turn if they can actually obtain it. Supply and demand all that.


I never made that assumption, I was, if fact, assuming equal escalation on both sides. A company is not going to spend any more than it thinks it needs, so, they would only go as far as necessary to counter the whalehuggers.
CanadianWolverine
Hmm, just curious but why would SR4A 2072 fishermen/whalers even bother with a water buoyancy ship with all that cost and go for a sort of track by some sort of satelite/drone high rating sensor/program package and then swoop in with some sort of air attack/transport to extract their desired life form for consumption/research/whatever?

This idea comes to me from something I read in like National Geographic or Popular Science once on them accidentally tracking submarines through some sort of satellite survey data/imagery. Sorry about a source on that, so perhaps I dreamed that up. The article also had something about using satellites to find ancient cities and roads under the sands of the Sahara or Saudia Arabia or some place.
hobgoblin
hmm, now i got myself thinking about a preservation group backed by a vat-meat company, so as to push forward interest in vat grown meat...
Kerenshara
QUOTE (Tachi @ Sep 7 2009, 04:21 PM) *
Gain some altitude and play "spot the wake". nyahnyah.gif

Wouldn't the fact that most anti-ship missiles are radar guided actually help? HARM type defenses, for example. Or, is that what they meant by "radar guided", HARM anti-ship missiles?

Think spotting a wake amongst the ice floes when the ships are already moving pretty slowly is going to be much easier than using an LTA Drone with a look-down radar?

Anti-radar missiles ride the radar beam down to the target. It's a useful way to take out the transmitter itself, though it's less useful against a phased array, unless you include a big enough warhead to take out the entire array. Anti-radar guidance is less useful against an airborn target, because you can be a LOT more precise with your own on-board radar. Incidentally, HARM stands for High-speed Anti-Radar Missile, a speciffic weapon (AGM-88) in the US inventory, designed to replace the earlier Shrike and Standard ARM weapons of the Vietnam era. The special capabilities of the HARM relative to the predacessors was the ability to "memorize" the location of the transmitter, because once a smart crew notices an inbount ARM, they shut off the radar, and the Shrike would go ballistic at that point; The other ability is that it's notably faster than either of the two predecessors. The problem is complicated because modern ASMs (Anti-Ship Missiles) only activate their radars in short sweeps to verify their location or target then go back silent until in final attack mode, and ideally you'd like to have splashed the vampire by then. Many modern ASMs perform a "pop-up" maneuver as part of the final attack run, pulling up sharply then nosing over and diving down at the target. This makes it MUCH harder for last-ditch systems to knock the thing out of the sky, and increases the likelyhood that at least the warhead will make it to impact on a ballistic trajectory. Preferably you want to hit the thing between acquisition at the radar horizon and initiation of the pop-up maneuver so that even minor aerodynamic damage is likely to encourage the weapon to "depart from controled flight" and impact the water rather than your ship.

That make sense?
Kerenshara
QUOTE (CanadianWolverine @ Sep 7 2009, 05:48 PM) *
Hmm, just curious but why would SR4A 2072 fishermen/whalers even bother with a water buoyancy ship with all that cost and go for a sort of track by some sort of satelite/drone high rating sensor/program package and then swoop in with some sort of air attack/transport to extract their desired life form for consumption/research/whatever?

This idea comes to me from something I read in like National Geographic or Popular Science once on them accidentally tracking submarines through some sort of satellite survey data/imagery. Sorry about a source on that, so perhaps I dreamed that up. The article also had something about using satellites to find ancient cities and roads under the sands of the Sahara or Saudia Arabia or some place.

There is a theory that with advanced enough radar and computer software, you could find a submersible deep beneath the waves by a combination of telltale signs: the sub displaces a small but discrete amout of water on the surface; the other is that radar or thermal imaging might be able to pick out the traces of the sub's deep wake, but again, that's theory. If that became commonplace, however, given the number of orbital platforms in the descriptions of the later half of the first century of the 6th World, there would have been note about how submersibles were no longer particularly viable. The problem is this: even if you find a surface ship, in order to press home an attack, you must penetrate the umbrella of its defenses. A sub is never going to see you coming, and that's lethal. Even today, there are long-range missile weapons designed to attack submarines well over-the-horizon (SS-N-14 Silex), who have ranges up to 30 miles / 50 km. (The US has the much smaller and more modern RUM-139 VL-ASROC, whose range is in the 14 mile / 22 km region.) A surface ship has a chance to shoot down incoming missiles, or at least shoot back at whoever they are being engaged by. The first warning a sub has of an attack by a weapon like the Silex or VL-ASROC (Vertical Launched Anti-Submarine ROCket) is the splash of "water entry" followed by high-speed screws, and then an active search sonar. Then it's all a game of very-high-stakes dodge-ball. Even if they dodge, the firer will probably realize it was a miss when they don't hear the sub breaking up, so they can re-engage at will, and eventually the law of averages is going to catch up with the sub.
Kerenshara
In terms of escallation, the price of a mother-ship isn't significantly more than the current vessel featured on the show. The cost of the drones will be significantly less than maintaining the existing manned helicopter. The only real increases needed are going to be the (modest) cost of the submersibles, and the weapon systems themselves. I don't see that much financing being a problem, especially since SOMEBODY is going to pay for the filming, and after the Awakening, I can see all kinds of groups getting a big boost in funding now that the Earth showed us how She really feels about what we've been doing to Her. We're not talking about billion dollar nuclear attack subs, here; We're talking advance hybrid mini-submarines, maybe even not much more than a hundred feet long and maybe fifteen feed in beam - or significantly less than a sixth the displacement of the modern Virginia Class nuclear fast-attack submarines. No reactor, reduced crew accomadations, less need for deep submergence would make construction easier, no need to reload the weapons internally eliminates a lot, advanced miniturized computers will make the electronics significantly cheaper... no, those boats are going to be WELL within the budget of their sponsors. The biggest hurdle is going to be getting the ASMs and heavy torpedos; But if shadowrunners can get their hands on the (Arsenal), an organization like that would have an even easier time of it.
PBTHHHHT
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Sep 7 2009, 04:07 PM) *
I'm not sure why theres an assumption that the fanatical enviro groups have limitless financial and personel resources and the companies presumably benefiting from supply and demand do not. Whale is delicious and I don't forsee it not continuing to be so, also the more difficult something is to obtain the higher profit margins people can turn if they can actually obtain it. Supply and demand all that.


For the fanatical enviro groups... no, you don't need limitless financial resources. Maybe a good amount of personnel and some dedicated eco shamans. Also...

My view is something from the Dark Knight film:

The Joker: See, I'm a man of simple tastes. I like dynamite, and gunpowder...
[the Chechen watches, appalled, as Joker's thugs pour gasoline on his mountain of cash]
The Joker: And gasoline! Do you know what all of these things have in common? They're cheap!

Remember, ships need to berth eventually and sailors' families may be considered 'soft' targets for exploit.
LurkerOutThere
............ok so the fantaical echo shamans who go after "real citizens" families in the night are going to win because their AK's and gunpowder ar cheaper then say a corporation allowed to defend itself with mil spec weapons. YOur group kidnaps a few peoples families, your added to a terrorist wathc list, your headquarters is bombed with a Ztechnology 500 pounder, how is violence a winning escalation with military powers again?

Adarael
I don't know, although I suspect you could ask partisans, rebels & guerillas in Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Xinjiang, and other such locales. And if you went back further, you could ask them in France and Poland, Russia, all of Africa, and, eventually, the United States.

People fight dirty and fight for what they believe in, and there comes a point where the response costs more than the writedown on the insurance for claiming the loss.

Or to put it another way:
1) Why didn't the USSR just crush the Afghan mujahedeen like bugs, with their superior firepower and numbers?
2) Why do shipping giants put up with piracy in the south pacific, rather than putting armed guards on their ships? It's an issue of finances and what it costs to respond.
kzt
QUOTE (Adarael @ Sep 8 2009, 03:21 PM) *
I don't know, although I suspect you could ask partisans, rebels & guerillas in Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Xinjiang, and other such locales. And if you went back further, you could ask them in France and Poland, Russia, all of Africa, and, eventually, the United States.

Well, you could ask the ones in Sri Lanka, but you will need to use an Ouija board.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9051800308.html
LurkerOutThere
Are you really comparing greenpeace to the mujahadeem? Additionally actually most civilian carriers are forbidden by their national or international laws from placing armed guards on boards, extra-territorial corporations don't have that problem.
Mister Book
Captain Dan, the last word.
Adarael
QUOTE (kzt @ Sep 8 2009, 02:54 PM) *
Well, you could ask the ones in Sri Lanka, but you will need to use an Ouija board.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9051800308.html


Huh! I hadn't heard about that! My point still stands, though, given that they'd been fighting since... what, 1973?

QUOTE
Are you really comparing greenpeace to the mujahadeem? Additionally actually most civilian carriers are forbidden by their national or international laws from placing armed guards on boards, extra-territorial corporations don't have that problem.


No, I am comparing cybered, missile-toting ecoterrorists who blow up nuclear power plants in Shadowrun to Mujahedeen. TerraFirst! is to Greenpeace as the LAPD SWAT is to Wal-Mart Security Guards. I thought we were dicussing what COULD work in Shadowrun, not what does or does not happen IRL.

Secondarily, you are incorrect about international law on armed guards. International law is very clear about vessels being able to defend themselves: only the Flag State of the vessel may issue laws about their firearms, and if the vessel comes under attack, they are clear to defend themselves - and while England and Canada may forbid it, the United States, Italy, Israel, France, Russia... all of these countries and more are okay with it, legally speaking. In practice, companies' internal policies prevent them from placing armed guards on board, not international law. In May of this year, private security guards aboard an Italian cruise ship opened fire on Somali pirates while in international waters, killing several. The problem, legally speaking, is with graft-heavy ports who employ harbormasters looking for bribes rather than claim papers are out of order - most of which are in the same locales as the pirates, unsurprisingly.
Penta
It should also be noted that there's a not-insignificant concern of said weapons being used in a mutiny.
tweak
Some possible scenarios:

1) whales awaken and kill off their predators

2) anti-whaling groups add chrome to whales, who fight back

3) anti-whaling groups die off due to their bad vegan diet

4) folks discover whales can cure cancer and their hunted out of existence

5) whales mutate and grow limbs, walk on shore and scare the locals

6) whales are able to take human form and start their own fight club

Fleinhoy
From a simple food point of view I'd say whaling might exist in the 6th world, but it would cost an arm and a leg.

I've eaten quite a bit of whale meat in my time, mostly before it became common knowledge just how intelligent the animals are, but also when I was stationed in the air force in the north of Norway and the chef had bought in a ton of the stuff, literally. I can confirm that it tastes great, maybe not as exaggeratedly as someone here stated, but very nice nevertheless, and as such it will be in demand by the rich and the powerfully corrupt in the 6th world.

Facing the dangers of echo extremists, awakened critters and other fun things from the deep I'd say the price would prohibit most people from ever even consider buying it, and the people who go whaling would be some pretty extreme types themselves when you consider the dangers involved. But if they can get paid what they want for the meat, I can imagine quite a few people willing to face the danger.
CanRay
QUOTE (tweak @ Sep 8 2009, 11:26 PM) *
6) whales are able to take human form and start their own fight club

Whale Shapeshifters. Now that's a scary thought.

Whale Shamans would also be scary mothers, too!
PBTHHHHT
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Sep 8 2009, 04:39 PM) *
............ok so the fantaical echo shamans who go after "real citizens" families in the night are going to win because their AK's and gunpowder ar cheaper then say a corporation allowed to defend itself with mil spec weapons. YOur group kidnaps a few peoples families, your added to a terrorist wathc list, your headquarters is bombed with a Ztechnology 500 pounder, how is violence a winning escalation with military powers again?


You mean TerraFirst and other groups that aren't already on the list in the Shadowrun world?
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