Other threads expouseing the I-Win abilities got me thinking. How have tactics of military and security forces changed.

Obviously drones, superior sensors help win the day.

Magic every squad should have a watcher spirit on point and others ready to assist.

Counterspelling should be a must.

Team members should never be closer then 6 meters apart at all times. Avoid one shot one kill spell attacks. (Might need to be revised considering entry tactics.)

Battle Tac and competant hacker.


Other serious differences you'd expect to see in 6th world tactics?

Heavy centralisation of resources/high threat response teams and high signal biomonitors, due to the comparitive rarity of key response team members.

For extreme enough cases, reinforced death trap that runners can be funneled into.

Enough steel and concrete in the walls to make getting out dam near impossible in under an hour, with one way doors that cannot be opened again electronically cos they're really just big blocks of reinforced material dropped from above, that it will take a beefy forklift to lift out of the way later.

Flood the death trap with your lethal devices of choice.



-karma

What types of tactics are we talking about? Something like site defense/entry denial is going to be quite different from personnel protection (employee retention).

Lots of mantraps with credential verification, as well as automated surveillance and fiber optic visual coverage before allowing further entrance. RF/Faraday barriers everywhere, with only approved devices allowed to work. Continuous RF scanning with shutdown of wireless if unknown devices are spotted. Lots of fiber networks. Continuous video/IR/radar surveillance of the entire building linked to computer analysis and the the RF surveillance system. Many in-building combat drones run on armored fiber.

Use of things like sticky foam filled doors and walls.

All your security people get continually monitored biomontiers on duty and need to walk through a ward to reach the door security to report.

Like that door idea. Really fun.

Convenience, productivity and cost efficiency are what limits the security measures.

The high ranking guys do not want to be hassled with respect to security, they want to walk in through a door and not get stopped for a security check. They want their calls to be unmonitored.
Tight security will affect the productivity of your people actually doing the money-making work.
There will come a time where the cost of security is balanced by the cost of the item being protected and security is often a case of diminishing returns.

Drone with the cheapest Sensor 6 I can come up with and Clearsight 4
Buying a soldier a set of Goggles with Vision Enhancement 3, Flare Compensation, Imagelink, and Smartlink

Cost of Drone: 2 000 Base Cost + 600 Camera 6 + 2 000 Clearsight 4 = 4 600
Cost of Goggles: 200 Goggles 4 + 300 Vision Enhancement 3 + 50 Imagelink + 25 Flare Comp + 500 Smartlink = 1 075

DP of Drone: 6 Sensor + 4 Clearsight - 3 Gimp Drones = 7
DP of Goggled Metahuman (Trained): 3 Intuition + 1 Perception + 2 Visual Specialisation + 3 Visual Enhancement = 9

Efficiency of Drone: 4 600 / 7 = 657 nuyen/dice
Efficiency of Goggles: 1 075 / 9 = 119 nuyen/dice


Military and Mercenaries buy people Goggles. Can't beat that bottom line.


More importantly: SR4 rules for Sensor Perception means that Drones suck at frontline duty.

On site you need low-maintenance drones and security personel to deter gangs, impolite visitors, or to escort troublemakers out. Highly trained and cybered/magical personel is too expensive, as are heavy drones, so you have them centralized to react to any threat within the city.

I conclude: best thing to do, when it is discovered that trained professionals infiltrated the base you have to stall them. You do not "burn" your low security for that, also you don't want the runners to proceed to vital locations (data-rooms, security systems, science-stations or heavy and expensive machinery). Best option: Use architectural defenses to slow them down:

1. Hallways need cover. Pillars, reeinforced pots for plants, sheets of kevlar/plates in seatings and couches. Whatever as long as it's not that expensive.

2. Doors. Yeah... have them. Once in security mode they can only be operated from the security desk. (No wireless crap) Of course a good electronic specialist can still open them, but it needs time.

3. All work-related comlinks use a uncommen frequency, have three point in your zone which continuously scan for different frequencies and triangulate their point of origin. (Works best with wireless-negating paint in the outer walls... and other techniques)

4. Easy heat sensors which trigger sleeping gas without question. On/Off only from security desk.

5. Instruct your on site security to defend key locations, and the exit. Nothing else. No trying to end the intruders when the first action wasn't succesful. No hunting them down. Wait for the specialists (which will get delivered to the roof or helipad at around 5-10 minutes- in a sprawl). Only open for them after they have identified themselves without fail: ID, tacnet-login AND face recognition by senior officer of the on-site-security.

The specialists: depending on worth of corporate interest; on high threats or confirmed magical activity one combat or sensor mage, maybe one or two Ki-Adepts. Prefered MO: Going in, clearing rooms, while the on-site-security follows and hold cleared rooms. Weapons: Best is Stick-N-Shock, Gas, Flashpaks. Gel-Rounds, Flashbangs ok too. Everything which isn't destroying the money (equipment, architecture) too bad. Against high-threat targets everyone has one clip APDS.

When they enter a small location they deploy a Radar and Sensordrone. The Team is spearheaded by a small sensordrone (flying). One or two large combatdrones may get deployed outside to deny escape.

Ah yes: if there is any sign of tacnet-disruption or tapping: Complete restart with a different frequency and encryption. No advancements in the time it takes.

Your math is biased: you count the price of the drone in, but the human works for free. As the salary is a monthly fee, it cannot be compared directly to a drone price that is paid only once. The longer the drone is kept in duty, the cheaper it becomes compared to the human.

Misinformation. An example :
Lets say the runners are hired to hit an armored van transporting a top secret shipment. Their Mr. Johnson gave them timetables and specs.
When the run goes down, and they take down the van, they find it was empty.
Now it's up to them to track down the real shipment. Of course, they can take it to Mr. Johnson, but he doesn't know anything. So they can
drop the run, and maybe suffer rep loss, or dig in and find out more for themselves, but maybe it will be too late by then.

Of course, using this too much isn't going to be much fun for teams without some strong information gathering skills. It seems to me, though,
that in the world of 2070, information is the most powerful method of combat, and the people who actually shoot and zap are more pawns than players.

Except drones require upkeep, parts, and the mechanics to do it. More people are mechanics than security guards, but mechanics on average make more than security guards do. (You don't get hazard pay for sitting around not being attacked.)

The facility I work at IRL uses drones to replace about 30 workers. They are cargo movers that transport supplies from floor to floor within the hospital. During the employee orientation tour they note that despite the high start-up cost, the 'bots broke even within four years of use and they are still going strong almost twenty years later. That's with early 1990s tech. By 2070, such 'bots can be thrown together from parts out of an online catalog and assembled within hours after they are delivered to your door. Good luck showing that creating (when a man and a woman ...), recruiting, and training are going to come up nearly as fast in that time.

Great post Summerstorm!
I'd just add that the specialists should be able to fall back on a non tac-net mode in case of an important hacker/TM threat.

Original intention was to look for small unit tactics, Swat and Corporate security used against runners and other 6th world threats.

A lot more use of one-way mirrors (one-way mirrors block astral attacks and add a +8 blind fire penalty to any attacks). I imagine one-way, armored mirrors are EVERYWHERE around points of entry and egress (as well as, as mentioned, in vehicles and exterior windows).

Also, keep in mind that the Geneva convention apparently no longer applies (or just not to corps, i suppose). This means you can use a lot of mean stuff normally you'd have to withhold. And with extraterritoriality, that's doubly true. Things like mantraps with gases, darts with deadly diseases, caltrops, so on and so forth make it pretty easy to disable an intruder, while not making it so you can't heal/cure/save him once he surrenders (or turns out not to be who you thought it was).

The drones vs. grunts debate I can't see a clear solution to. Police forces (like Lone Star) get paid barely more than Low lifestyle, so something like $30k a year, with limited, if any benefits. And this is one of the better companies out there. I'm sure you can hire thugs for less (Wolverine, anyone?) $20k a year, plus the cost of a doc to keep them going and install used ware, and which costs nothing to replace but time when the replacement is under the knife, versus the cost of $20k up-front for a drone that, if banged up, needs to be completely replaced.

Clearly the solution is 'how long do you expect this guard to survive before seriously wounded/destroyed'. If you expect it to last 6 months before it's destroyed, hire a person. If you expect it to last ten years without any trouble, buy a drone.

There are other points as well, of course. A drone can't sit at the front desk and tell people nicely that they have the wrong building and such. A guard (generally) can't cling to the ceiling and run on rails, or hover at 1,000 feet with a rifle.

As you scale up on your available cash, in SR3 at least, drones outpace humans (since they benefit from vehicle armor and high object resistance - I doubt a pair of even experienced Lone Star officers could take out a doberman), then humans outpace drones again, as you get to the upper-tier groups with lots of skills, tactics, intelligence, and big guns.

My job is done. I expect to get paid. The fact that he gave me the wrong info is HIS problem, not mine.

Depends on the exact contract between you two, and Mr. Johnson might not choose to see it like you.
If Mr. Johnson was a corporate mid-level exec, he would probably back off. If he were a powerful mobster, you might not even want to call him before final delivery.

Well, that was just an example. I think misinformation is the greatest tool against runners, but
it should be used sparingly for maximum effect. Otherwise the players won't find it very fun.

Another kind of information warfare against runners is rumor spreading. Trying to flush the runners out of their hiding by spreading rumors about their
weakness, lack of skills, penchant for failure, and so on. This might force the runners to track the rumors to their source, and that might lead to ambushes or
other interesting events. Of course, in the world of the 2070's, this takes a lot of effort, creating fake (or cleverly edited) data trails, trideo files, and real-life evidence such as wrecked buildings.

In the old security sourcebook they go into some simple yet effective ways to counter SR activity. The biggest one I remember was extensive plant life covering the outside of the building. It looks pretty and it stops astrally projected mages from entering your complex. As with real life security, layered levels of security are the key to keeping people away from the "crown jewels", Start with biometric locked doors on the outside, have every door and window covered with at least 1 type of sensor (thermal, camera, sound, etc). The next layer would be a mixture of access control (via a combination of RFID tags and biometric security) with each security point (and choke point) under heavy surveillance. The final layer would be armed guards in front of a reinforced vault with multiple authentication methods needed to enter (example two people at the same time offer RFID, multiple biometric, and passkey passwords).

Each layer of security covers only what it needs to do. You try to make less secure areas more convenient to work in, while more secure areas, you shut down as tight as you can (make it more trouble then it is worth to break in).

This can work against you too. If you have cover, so too can the armed gunmen raiding your base, and the assumption is that these guys have better small unit tactics than the on-site security guys. If you plan on caging the gunmen in and having specialists sent in to clear them out - a good idea - then go without the cover in your layout. Your entry specialists can wear silly amounts of armor that the gunmen probably won't have and they can pack more firepower too. The cover is then of greater benefit to the gunmen, so get rid of it. You've already said you're not going to try to defend the majority of the site, so don't make it easy for the gunmen to do it!

You have the groundpounders anyway (no machine is as resilient as a human). We're dealing with the cost of enhancements to the groundpounders. I'm biasing towards the Drone because I'm not including the cost of the extra manpower in the supply chain keeping the Drones in working order. The goggles will already have their supply chain because they provide Flare Comp and Smartlink.

So, basically, I stacked the deck both ways.

You can buy armored glass that is only bullet resistant from one-side, so you can shoot back at the guy without your bullets being significantly slowed down. For an example see this. I'd presume you could do something similar with other armor systems.

Oh my god. You just gave me an insane idea.

Based on an episode of Gargoyles (yeah, that cartoon from the 90s) where Goliath ends up trapped in the Death Trap Hotel. It had a room full of sharks for gods sake!

And an elevator that crushed itself at the top....

And stairs that turn into a slide....

Doors that open onto brick walls...

Acid pits...

Doors that open onto rooms full of water (or other liquid)...with sharks....

Is that an office or is that a fun house?

A deadly fun house.

Curiously I can't figure out which episode that was based on the one-line descriptions on Wikipedia.

Edit: Hooray Google. Revelations, ep 2x16.

I was once told by a cop how they rigged up a house to catch a group of armed robbers who hit stash houses. The rigged up stun grenades, tear gas and strobes in the building, then "spread the word" about how this was a stash house for a drug gang. The robbers showed up and kicked in the door as was their standard MO and charged in. Only to stagger out a minute later to find a butt load of cops aiming rifles at them.

I once drew up a very secure facility. Dunno if it's what you're asking, but it does represent one extreme.

One door in & out. High barrier rating walls / ceiling / floor with some form of astral block (fab / plants / whatever).

Main security is a set of doors in an airlock-style configuration (only one door can be open at a time). Doors are remotely controlled from an armored guard's desk. Upon entry of first door (requiring a keycard & passcode), you present retina and fingerprint biometrics, while being subjected to a millimeter wave scan (or something else that can detect & id cyberware). If the biometrics are legit, the guard opens the second door. The first door closes & locks as soon as you enter. If the biometrics fail, or something else seems shady, the guards can flood the chamber with knockout gas or set off flashbangs.

If you get past both doors via force you enter a shooting gallery (2 pillars with an armored guard desk, zero cover within 10m of the door). The pillars provide cover for 2 assault rifle (with attached grenade launcher) wielding guards, the desk features firing ports for 2 mounted LMG's, from concealed positions. Guard desk could arguably be concealed behind one-way armored glass, for more mageproofing. Glowands, FAB filled doors & walls around the guard post provide increased astral security, until a security mage shows up (they're expensive you know).

Any piping or air ducts into the secure area feature monitoring systems and grates they are also too small for any person or combat effective drones.


Main issue with this sort of setup is the amount of time it takes to get through, so it's not going to be used in a high population work area, and probably not going to be used in a highly visible area (unless the company likes having an ultra-secure image). I'd expect it to be used for a data store, high end research & development or material link storage, maybe a paranoid CEO's office.

And, if you really hate your runners, all the tech is controlled via in-wall fiber optic cables, the walls are coated in wireless blocking paint & the security servers are off the matrix. Also, the walls / floors / ceiling could contain a sensor mesh to detect breaches.

But then, this is all point control of a sensitive area, for overall, you can't really expect to go to such extreme measures.

For tactics this represents, containment with out-of-LoS control, off the matrix. If they brute force it, a forceful response with well concealed & covered defenders. I think ultimately, it boils down to doing your best to negate magic & hacking, and then outgunning them & superior defensive positions protecting the valuable stuff.

Hiroru, what you describe are man-traps and... I'm not sure what the word for the hall is, but I'm sure there is one. It's actually pretty standard in high-security places such as US Embassies, Mint buildings and, from what I understand, Google server farms.

The exception being, fire codes require multiple available evacuation points. These are normally provided by things like one-way doors with cameras and alarms, opening into a protected external yard, and (I presume) immediate lock-down of critical places when the alarm is sounded.

Figures someone else would think of it first. ><

Also, could you flood a building with a swarm of micro drones? Ideally something flying, but a (large) group of ant sized cameras, with just enough signal to transmit to the guys near him (and thus chain it all the way back). Or, better yet, have hidden wired connections that act as relays. I'll have to check the books, but camera coverage over an entire facility would be a significant advantage.

There aren't any drones or nanotech I've seen that are ant sized and travel like you describe. Some form of insect based biodrones might work (at that point your using actual cyber-ants). but they would be expensive custom jobs.

A cheaper option would be to use bug-drone with the ability to leave a trail of Mesh RFID tags. I think the crawler bug drone in BBB (which Arsenal says comes with Gecko tips) still has 1 slot availible to modify. An RFID tag deployer might count as a 1 slot "special machinry." Have it leave a trail of the RFID mesh tags as it crawls along and it would be able to maintain a signal out.

I also think there is a Micro taper-drone in Unwired that is deisgned to crawl through walls, holes, vents, etc and attach trailed length of optical cable, or act as a wifi transmiter or cable tap.

My players would likely just turn to the advanced demolitions rules and start planning how much explosives it would take to put in a few more doors... or to just knock all of the walls down. I'm not sure if it would matter to them if they destroyed whatever it was they were trying to get out of the place, they might just blow it up out of spite.

If you are in a small very heavily built-up room I'd recommend against using bulk explosives to blow open a wall.

Who said anything about being 'in'? They might just blow it from the outside, possibly with a plane bomb (like a car bomb that flies) or in some other grandiose manner.

Yup, that's one of the two things that always jump to my mind when this question comes up.

The other is that in Shadowrun, the GM will always "win" a war of escalation.

But hey, you gotta admit, sometimes it's fun to play the game where it's balls to the wall security measures for your runners to blast and hack through.

If you are trying to get out, as your example was "if they destroyed whatever it was they were trying to get out of the place", it's unlikely that they have a car bomb handy.

I laugh at all the tripe about drones being more expensive than people for guarding secure facilities.

Obviously we don't have any automation in factories today because machines are more expensive than.. wait what?

Security drones cost less than half the monthly salary of a security professional - what you don't think security professionals get middle lifestyle? Well man, I hope they don't have any kids, but that aside if someone is paying people willing to operate illegally and use lethal force (and have leathal force used agains them, especially if they get caught) to get whatever that guy is guarding.

If he gets paid nothing, he could just steal it and sell it instead. Would be easier for Johnsons haha!


It's also cheaper to pay drones to do the maintence - there is a drone in Aresenal that is as good at drone maintenance as a professional mechanic of Decent but not great quality. What else do you want?

Plan A would be to sneak in and then try to get out by stealth or force with whatever you were looking for. Plan B involves lots of explosives eliminating the need to sneak in and then just sifting through the rubble for whatever it was you were looking for. I was suggesting that they seem to favor Plan B approaches.

Automation in factories, like drones, are good for a very limited set of behaviors. This is precisely why drones become more expensive - to make them as adaptable as necessary for jobs other than 'identify object, report, shoot' is expensive. Also, with drones you pay the entire cost up front. If you expect the drone to last 10 years, that's fine. Most of the money spent on guards is spent over time, based on use. That's preferable if, for whatever reason, it's unlikely that drone/guard will last years and years.

So in short, you're ignoring external variables.



Look at the Lone Star source book - canon says they get paid a little over Low lifestyle. Don't argue with us, argue with canon.



Beyond the fact that a drone mechanic drone is a bit silly (drones aren't good at critical thinking, adaptability, learning new skills, etc.), this device isn't available to a good number of people here. It doesn't appear in SR3 or any prior version. So this statement only really applies to a subset of all games.

I would say no real difference than today other than magical security. You have two basic types of security one prevents an entrance and the other one traps you inside. Remember people have to be able to work in these place so lockdowns are only in extreme cases. With RFID so common chances are they track you through the building and someone is watching the data looking for abnormalities. You also have cleaning crews, contractors etc moving through the building. High security means they will be escorted and their badge wont open the doors. Its all a security vs usability issue. You can only make something so secure and still have it usable. That is why they do background checks and it could take year or more to just get approved to clean the toilets in a building.

I once applied for a job at the defense mapping agency and the interview mentioned that one of the best things about their training facility was that you could go outside for lunch. In the actual real job it took over 30 minutes to get in or out of the building due to the security checkpoints....

Lemee guess. A 1 hour lunch?

Don't know. Never got the job.

Heh.

Sounds like most of my job interviews. Places out in the middle of nowhere (that is, it'd be a 45 minute commute or more)--get lost on the way--and never get the job.

One was an interesting building, they didn't blame me for being late. It was the central switching station for the tri-state power grid (PA, NJ, DE). Plain, unassuming, unlabled brick building with draw bridges.

The address I'd been given got me to an intersection. The name of the place was on a sign on the right side (far side) of the intersection (based on my direction of travel). I drove around that complex three times, plus down the side streets a block, before phoning them. "Oh, you're that building. The drawbridges shoulda tipped me off, but then I wasn't expecting a fortified building. I didn't see the numbers though." After driving up to the entrance the sun glinted off the brass numbers (3 feet high) on one wall, which I mentioned when I got inside and they explained why they had so much security (take out that building and the power to (most of*) three states shuts off).

*That is, only a quarter of PA is covered by them I think. The "tri-state area" is the four or so counties around Philadelphia, Philly, New Jersey, and Delaware. Harrisburg and west I think has their own grid.

I've been to places like that. Not quite 30 minutes, closer to 20. Have to pull off your shoes and go through a metal detector fine enough to detect a nickel in your pocket, both to get in and out. People still went out to lunch, though.