Maybe you should tell them that. Heck, even emailing them the following paragraph [perhaps a bit edited for diplomacy] might open their eyes.

Sometimes it is okay to metagame, particularly when the PCs should know better than players.

Seriously? They're going to smuggle explosives onto a shuttle and blow the station up?

Wow.

I totally no longer feel sorry for these guys.

My suggestion is to kill 1 before they even get off the ground (or onto the space station) so that everyone else has a chance of getting out alive if they back out. If they still persist just have them not find a way back off the station before it goes boom.

Edge or no, they're not surviving (burn: one edge for the explosion, the second for the vacuum of space, a third for the reentry, and finally a fourth for the impact...)

Have S-K prime learn of their "terrorist plot" and divert the shuttle into deep space before arming its self destruct sequence. Then they at least have time to think "Maybe this was a dumb idea... and how do we turn off that self-destruct sequence..."

Alternately have Lofwyr learn of their plan and divert their shuttle-bomb to an Ares platform. It would be fitting for them to become the dragon's pawns somehow.

Aside from EcD not quite working like that - that's Edge 4 left for Mr. Lucky. He even could do it again!

Odds that a party who's been trying to take down S-K and has 1 guy already at no edge points left still having 5+ edge? Low. And even if one guy does, you can always engineer more "deaths" for him.

From Target Wastelands\Up the gravity well\Security and Defenses:

Space Station represent a very expensive investment in material, expertise and capital so corps will guard them more zealously than their earthbound facilities....the most effective way the corps have found to maintain security of their space assets is to do it at the source: ground-based launch facilities...

so I'd think that means they would go through the hardest search ever. so if thier id's arent perfect they wont be able to sneak on board. if they dont have some special explosives that are completely undetectable they would be caught. you get the idea.

I'm saying that trying to do it with magic is foolishness. The special dangers of space for magicians would be well-known to any wizard with Magic 7, so he should be told OOC that he's better off coming up with a technological solution.

Setting up a character to die without escape is mean. But that doesn't mean you should reward stubbornness or idiocy; he should use the proper tools to deal with his situation. Not magic, in this case.




Of course, if I get a prophecy that I'll be pushed out of an airlock, I'll just make sure someone does that as soon as possible under controlled circumstances, and avoid space dangers from then on. The prophecy is technically satisfied without putting me in too much danger.

What about when the character is fixing to set themselves up to die without escape?

To be honest this is the perfect time to screw with their heads/slap them down/introduce the rock and roll space leviathans that you secretly wrote up and haven't told anyone about yet but have been dying to use because even if they're a little out of character for the setting damn if they aren't a hundred types of awesome/do something drastic. Maybe point the characters in a different direction as far as hurting S-K, maybe one that ends up getting them a sit down with the Big L and he tries to talk them over to his side/manipulates them through his Xanatos-y ways into doing something for him.

Well once the OP added in the last bit, I no longer have any issues.sounds like time for a whole new party .

As many have stated before me, if you want to approach the problem from a magical standpoint, you have to consider the Background Count problem. Ruleswise, conventional methods of countering the Background Count is merely difficult at best.

I'd say... bring a friend.

Of course! Stab them in the back and use it for extra drain dice! Of course!

This is a particularly surreal image.

Innit?

I'm pretty sure if you look up "stubborn" or "idiocy" in a SR dictionary there is something there about starting a personal war against SK.

Perhaps I missed something but I'll bite... WHY are the characters in space but more importantly, WHY is this character going to be thrown out an airlock?

- J.

Missed this post sorry.

Remember Lofwyr always plans several steps ahead. There's no way Lofwyr wouldn't be keeping tabs on these characters. Either an S-K Prime strike team is already on the station or he has plans to destroy the space station already (for multiple reasons). Sounds like a perfect scenario for Lofwyr to test a new weapon from a killer satellite and then try and pin the blame on a rival megacorp and claim the loss on insurance.

If your player insists on using magic to solve this problem then it really cements in my mind that said player is an utter clown for a) trying to do what is intended to be mechanically impossible and b) attempting to take on S-K and 'win'. Really, they deserve whatever comes their way. You don't need any justification from this board for dropping cows on them.

- J.

Epic hand-to-hand struggle in the airlock for the control panel over a magically-facilitated EVA, in my opinion. There's still plenty of ways to enable a epic space station escape without going outside. Example - as a last, desperate option, allow the player to lightning bolt the control panel and fry it, defaulting the software to the secured state. As a consequence, have the station start suffering from widespread electrical damage. Get the hell out before the atmosphere is toxic!

Fixed for you. Because he won't be casting spells in space.

See, this is why I prefer little or no magic in my games; you'll always have some mage wiseass trying to break the laws of physics instead of doing something simple like wearing a friggin' space suit.

It's like, Blade didn't need to roundhouse kick a dart of anti-vampire serum into Deacon Frost -- he just did it to be a dick. Same thing with mages, always making things more flashy and complicated than they need to be.

See, the problem here isn't that the mage is trying to more complicated, it is that he is likely going to be tossed into space sans spacesuit. Hence the complication.

While Blade didn't need to roundhouse kick that dart, Wesley Snipes needed him to do it.

Dude, flashy and complicated is what shadowrun's good at

I prefer smart and direct, but that's just me. You *could* engage in a costly ground battle with blue cat people that claims the lives of hundreds of troops and ultimately gets the survivors exiled from the planet, or you could simply drop an orbital nuke on their god-tree and be done with it.

My players learned a long time ago that flash will more often than not simply get you killed. Makes for far better runners, I think.

A few things that would be beneficial in spaceruns.

Synaptic Booster III (15 seconds becomes 5 turns and 15 complex actions)
Glue Spell (Sticking to the hull in zero G)
Gecko Pads on feet (also sticking on hull)

Why use nukes? Just drop rocks on them... rocks from orbit!

Using rocks from orbit means that you don't have to wait for the radiation to die down.

In shadowrun, power comes with flash. Often more power comes with more flash and no power gets you dead much faster than flash does.

Shadowrun is the only game I am aware of that four people, two rocket launchers and an LAV are needed to get a chocolate from a vending machine.

It's also the only game where you'll regularly find Gandalf and the Terminator involved in a shootout, with the winner going to pick up some trollish hookers.

If they choose to make themselves targets for SK they deserve to die. Considering how sensitive an item a space station is, the ID checks on the ground will be on the thorough side. One fake might slip through (well, maybe not even that if their contacts are scared enough of the troubles their vendetta might bring), but a whole party....

If he knows what they're up to, whoever is making the IDs might even discretely spill the bean to SK to save his hide from reprisal by both the PCs and SK ('I've those bozos who want to blast your station and asked me for IDs to do it. They're too though for me to say no, but here's their IDs. Please make sure you don't miss them')

Another option could be to let them aboard a shuttle and then slip something funny in the air suplly or simply vent it to space. As effective and way cheaper than destroying it. Or maybe put the shuttle on remote and politely ask them to surrender (with the vent out/gas backup plan). Even if they can hack the shuttle's systems, I'd be surprised if they could do much with it. Theses crafts aren't easy to pilot.

With the proper skill, I am not sure they are really that hard to pilot, unless you want the pilot to be someone that can roll buckets of dice to pilot the craft.

Ookay…

So they want to get even with a Megacorp…

Lets ASSUME they have the right skills
Lets ASSUME they have the co-ordinates for the spacestation
Lets ASSUME they have the knowledge of space/zero-g to survive
Lets ASSUME they have the money to get UP THERE.

Step One – Getting There.

Right, first they need a vessel able to hit atmosphere and beyond, and get them back out – without being spotted.

Let’s also assume they want to get INSIDE the station and steal something – and that they know where to find it..(they watched the news about the new *thingy* scientist invented up there…)

At best they would be able to hire a Space Smuggler with his own space vessel. Since I’ve mostly worked with the Cascade Skraacha I’ll rebuild one of those.

We now have space smuggler Daniel “Dan Dare” Darren.

His Industries Orbiter [old flying rustbucket] can get them there and back again.

Cascade Skraacha Hull
Additional Fueltank X2 [Launch Fuel]
Chameleon Coating [Invisible]
Improved Sensor Array
Life Support II
Extra Entrypoint [Airlock]
Amenities [Middle]
Special Armor Mod V6 [Heat Shield]
Engine Customization +20% [Base Speed 1008 KM/H]
Extreme Enviroment Mod [Outer Space]
Nitrous Injection [Booster Rockets]
Signature Masking III [Enemy Sensor Rating -3]

This ship MIGHT get them there and MIGHT survive the docking attempt and have 3 slots left for a hidden regular weapon mount.

Getting down to earth might be harder unless they stop and hide ins pace for a few days.

Now you've gone and mixed two threads!

Nuke the Smurfs from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

they come out at night mostly.

According to the filmmaker's the company did not have nukes with them at the Smurf's planet. Either becasue they were not allowed, or because it never occurred to the company that they would need them against simple savages. And for all we know the Smurf planet magic would fizzle the nuke's electronics preventing detonation.

Regardless, as someone else pointed out a simple Thor strike would do the job just as well, and even if they didn't have a dedicated Thor strike system, one could have been jury rigged.

According to RAW anybody can casually pilot anything. Flying a shuttle is no more absurd than the average guy jumping in a helicopter and taking it for a spin. You would only need that skill check for difficult maneuvers like docking with an airlock or landing the thing... or you know avoiding the missiles SK is launching at you from their space station...

Or, you know, *any* number of automated weapons that we have in use today (and certainly 140 years from now). And how did it not occur to the smurf people that kicking the humans off their planet would only provoke a much larger invasion in ten years? *facepalm*

strangely enough I recently did some math too see what would be needed to have effective rock throws from orbit.

Assume dropping stuff from an orbit out as far as the moon, why because the orbital velocity out there is only about 1000m/s so it dosent take much reaction mass to drop stuff and its nice and high up so there is plenty of potential energy. spheres of concrete or rock 30ft in diameter would do nicely for releasing energy on the order of magitude of a fat man physics package.

so overall not too difficult if you can travel between stars.

What are the odds that they have the skill ? Pretty slim I'd say. Skillware for piloting a shuttle is probably about as common as the shuttles themselves.

Considering the rather extreme diffrences between piloting somethin in an atmosphere and manoeuvering in space, it's probably a nondefault skill. Especially for the re-entry phase.

Which brings to me a very nasty trap : tamper with the shuttle's thermal shield. It can be fixed in orbit with the proper spare parts. But ntil it's fixed, any reentry attempts means burning. Even trying to play with a barrier spell wouldn't be of much help as it would completely ruin the aerodynamics - and involves a complete loss of control.

Again, look at the RAW. Anyone can casually pilot anything because no tests are required for mundane tasks (SR4A page 168).

getting the semiballistics pilot skill would help alot... it covers reentry, light orbital mechanics, and landing/takeoff as a normalish plane.

Except that you can't default on Pilot Aerospace which means you can't casually pilot it.

Is that specifically stated anywhere? Not having to roll is not defaulting.

hence why all piloting skills should be covered by someone in the party or don't mess with the dragon...

This is 100% true. But what idiot GM is going to say that attempting to pilot a helicopter or space shuttle without the skill is a "mundane task"? Not to mention that for aircraft, take off and landing are the least 'mundane' things you do, and that's generally the ONLY place that shit goes wrong. And under no circumstances would I ever consider atmospheric re-entry to be mundane. For anyone. Ever.

You have to apply some common sense to the rules, sometimes, man. Such as when something is mundane and requires no roll, and when it isn't. Being untrained, in an unfamiliar craft you have never seen the interior of before will require rolls, because that is the very definition of not an ordinary situation.

And I totally agree. I am not arguing that it isn't absurd or even that I would allow it. But for better or (in this case) worse, it is RAW.

And if you re-read my previous posts, I have already stated that you would need to roll for landing, docking and (most importantly) dodging incoming missiles from SK's space station.

Here's what I would do. I would employ soap opera techniques in order to work this out.

Here's the basic plan.

Let them do it. Let them do the whole glorious thing but pick one or two characters (technomancer/mage'd be a great choice, then go with someone likely to actually explore things) and have those characters encounter anomalies. They go to the bathroom on their shuttle and someone is in their and tries to warn them about something before the lights fail and the person disappears, or more subtle stuff like bizarre perceptions warping/stereotypical glitching. After everyone else starts to die/get captured lead that character to realize that they're in a sim and someone's sent a sprite/agent/AI to get them out. They wake up and discover they're in an S-K holding facility attached to this sim modules, all of them abducted somehow and slipped into the virtuality. Now they have more reasons to hate S-K but you can leave a heavyhanded message along the lines of, "We could kill you at any time, so why not choose to work for us instead?" It's railroad-y but still, better than all of them actually being killed. Unless, you know, that's what they're going for.

So could a mage on standing on Earth start knocking rocks out of orbit with a 2070's high powered optical telescope? Add in a Math SPU and Tacnet for exact trajectories?

Fun to think about, but I guess this wouldn't help avoid mana void problems though. Much like casting into a mana static cloud...

This is a false 'truth'. The meaning of "mundane task" are totally up to the GM, and as such, it's like saying "By raw, characters can use a toxin gland to produce natural compounds, so they can produce gold, because gold occurs naturally." It requires applying a modicum of common sense. That's the entire purpose of the rule itself: apply common sense so as not to bog your game down. I mean, shit, just turning ON a space shuttle would be a pain in the ass.

"Mr. Lofwyr's seers warned him there might be a threat to his space station this lunar cycle. We abducted the entire list of potential aggressors, put all of them in UV sim, to see who'd actually go through with it. All the innocents had their memories wiped and have been put back into the wild. You are going to get the special treatment however."

"In Essen."

(*Jaws theme music plays*)

Hahahaha, that's fucking awesome.

This. I highly recommend that the Dumpshock community checks out the book Apache. It's a recount of the British and their Apache Longbows in Afghanistan. One chapter covers the start-up process for the vehicle, which takes a half-hour - and that's with the vehicle fueled, armed, and essentially ready to go. I'm honestly curious how you gentlemen interpret the avionics and instrumentation for a sub-orbital vehicle.