Not always true... sometimes we were transported by the Airforce too...

Keep the Faith

Navy Guide To Land Warfare: Send the Marines. Have lunch.

'Tis True...

Keep the Faith

-- They don't pay for seats (usually), but they still pay for the support and maintenance of the software, training, and upgrades. And all of that will tend to be higher than commercial software because it's often custom and task-specific. Plus the DoD still has to pay licensing fees if they use certain technologies and code.
-- Shadowrun is a bit of an odd duck here as a fairly small programmer team can whip up and maintain software pretty easily (a side effect of trying not to totally gimp the solo hacker).

-- Taking current US military policy and applying it to Shadowrun is almost certainly wrong. And that lifetime medical care usually amounts to NOTHING for most veterans as it only covers service-connected issues. I sincerely doubt even the UCAS is going to saddle themselves with lifetime medical costs over this.

-- Good luck using that as a selling point for military service.

-- Corporations have lots of fancy stuff on the market that never actually reach service.

-- The thing to consider is "what could I have that mage doing other then wasting a spirit service guarding some armored car?"

Watching the rift where Dunkie died, that's what.

-- All this talk of Marines has me wondering: are the UCAS/CAS Marines even mentioned recently? The last direct references I can recall were in Shadows of North America and only applied to the CAS:

** p. 55 talks about the CAS Marines 1st MRB "Ferrets"
** p. 67 says there are two CAS Marine expeditionary forces.

Nope. In fact, I've only ever heard mention of UCAS Marines twice, and both had to do with Ares. Ares Arms' Executive VP is Retired USMC General Guido Cantarelli, and Ares Seattle's Head is Karen King, also a retired Marine veteran.

Maybe the Marines of the UCAS and CAS are used in their traditional roles, that of Sea Soldiers, with the occasional Amphibious Assault (Which has probably been mostly replaced by T-Bird VTOL insertions.).

Would explain why they're not discussed much. After all, what Shadowteam is going to be insane enough to, oh, I don't know, sneak aboard the Supercarrier that's in Seattle's Harbour?

Oh, wait, we're talking about the PCs here, they might just be stupid enough to do that...

Nonono, CanRay. The proper statement is, "The GM just might dislike his runners enough set a run on board said supercarrier."

Isn't that supercarrier home to a dragon?
Or am i getting something mixed up again?

Getting your MD via the Bundeswehr means signing up for 17 years, and it does sell.

Tonight, on Runners of the Deep.

Momo and his crew have been hired to take control of a Gerald R. Ford class supercarrier. Will they take her in port or at sea? Will YaYa be able to smooth talk he way onto the bridge? Will Guano go bat-shit crazy and kill everyone on board? What will Wrench do with the wing of aircraft on board? Watch tonight at ten, nine central to find out!

Tbh I think most of our Runs woudkl make awesome TV especaily the more mohawkly bits.

They make for GREAT Trid. Which is why 'Runs are recorded and shown in LA.

Incorporating a car chase with Disney Security netted my group a bonus!

Fair point, but maintenance costs (thank Ghost we don't have SOTA to deal with anymore) are going to be trivial compared to the costs of unsecured comms. Considering the resources the NSA currently puts into such things, I can't imagine that a 2072 armed force wouldn't spend a fair amount of resources to securing them. And when we consider that cyberwarfare in 2072 is not only a potential threat, but a constant battlefield reality, I suspect that a lot of resources would go to that. While standard grunts may not be carrying uber-hardened stuff with rating 6 firewalls, certainly the officers and squad leaders would.

On augmentation and health care costs.

If using current policy and trends isn't a valid basis for projecting forward/sideways to Shadowrun...what is? And I believe you are wrong on the medical care issue - at least, according to the VA's website (http://www4.va.gov/healtheligibility/). While they do have to pay insurance premiums, they are quite well subsidized. Service-related injuries are taken care at no cost (in theory) to the soldier. And considering the politics of veteran's benefits, I don't really think that in 2070 you'd just be able to throw veterans to the wolves.

Minor point though. I think we're arguing around relative prevalence. I don't think everybody would be augmented, but I think more of them would be than you do.

On long term services commitments for augmented soldiers:

Worked for the Romans! 16 year standard stint (extended to 20 after Octavian), with significant number re-enlisting, twice even. Works pretty darn well today too. 20%+ of USMC officers have over 20 years service, even more when you include reservists. Enlisted look to be around 25% with over 10 years. (according to the USMC fact book...uh 2006 version is all I have on hand). US Army's minimum stint is 8 years.

On military suites in the sourcebooks...

True. Any evidence to support that conclusion here?

On use of spirits to guard valuable vehicles/assets:

Fair enough, but I'm not saying that every HMMWV would be guarded. But multi-million nuyen attack helicopter, fighter aircraft or personnel transports? Vehicles that can be easily destroyed with by a single mage with a "Wreck Vehicle" spell? Never mind that a The Guardian spirit service is cheap, and doesn't tie the mage down from doing their other tasks. (Which, by some other discussions here, means warding every piece of real-estate the corp owns.) Plus, powers like Concealment (or even Guard) could be very handy...that whole stealth thing.

Aside: Now that I think about it, just about every rocket launch would probably have a spirit with Guard escorting it up as far as the spirit could go. Being able to cut the accident rate by even a little bit would pay for itself in reduced insurance costs alone! Ditto with airports.

Anyway, I think this is a difference of degree, not absolutes. And we have very little in-game information to work with. Just a few off-handed comments in some of the novels (e.g. Findley saying that the average runner team would get smoked by the average group of soldiers), and the implications of some of the weapons described in the books. We'll see if War! addresses these things in any detail.

Those insurance deductions wouldn't pay for the Mage.

They require *HIGH* wages. And why not? They provide a very specialized service, and are in a massive minority.

Supply and demand strike again.

The only reason you can sometimes hire Birthday Party Magicians is that they're so low-powered that that's all they can do.

Here's a sick little question for armed forces in 2070: Do you suppose smaller and poorer military groups would supplement their combat drugs with HMHVV infections? I'm thinking Ghouls in particular, as they mostly just need cybereyes to clean up their disadvantages for combat. They end up with a huge body, strength, and reaction, and lose out on charisma and logic. While you generally don't want really powerful, idiotic, contagious monsters running around, they would make fantastic shock troops.

Even sicker would be the groups that currently just drug up children before sending them into combat doing the same with Infection qualities.

I feel like a bad person for even being able to think of this stuff.

Well, the child-soldier, drug-soldier countries *might* try that, but none of them really matter to begin with.

But those armed forces are far more likely to have Shadowrunner teams going toe-to-toe with them than a well-equipped first world countries military.

Probably not - You've just described Asamundo, which every country in Africa hates.

Asamundo? Please educate me.

Then land of ghouls in africa.

^

It has quite the blurb in 6WA. It's literally a nation of ghouls. Unrecognized by the UN or whatever the hell the current 'league of nations' body is in the 70's, it has an astoundingly high literacy rate, better than decent wireless Matrix coverage, and some kickin' astral nightclubs since most everyone in the country is dual-aspect.

The setback? Well, they eat people. They're the ultimate beneficiaries of Dunk's bequeathing of cash monies to anyone who can synthesize metahuman flesh for ghoul consumption, as well as techniques and technology to recover/maintain cognitive quality in fresh ghouls - since many go mindless with the change.

Do you have any idea what the premiums are for a rocket launch? What the costs are for a crashed passenger airliner?

Yes, mages are freaking expensive. But they don't cost ¥100M. And once you have them on your staff, which pretty much every corp does, having them throw out spirit services is actually dirt cheap - ¥500 per force point to bind in ritual material costs, and one hour of labor per force point. So, let's say our wage-mage has a salary of ¥10M, just to be generous, and including insane benefits. Say he works 200 days a year, 8 hours a day (lots of vacation time, etc.)...works out to ¥6,250 an hour, fully burdened. So, the labor and binding costs for a force 5 spirit is...¥33,750. Say he gets on average of 1 service per binding. So...it costs the company something like ¥34k per service.

A little googling shows that insurance rates for satellites are something like 20% of the value of the satellite, which is generally at ¥100M-¥1B. Assuming that by 2070 things are lot safer and cheaper, so the rates have dropped to 5%, on a satellite worth, say ¥10M. So the insurance cost is ¥500k. Being able to use Guard to prevent accidents at launch (highest risk part of the operation) might cut the rate of accidents by only 10%, with a corresponding reduction in insurance costs. That means they could save ¥50k just in the insurance alone. That means that using the mage saves the company ¥16k per launch.

Therefore, company uses mages to guard launches. I've given really generous assumptions here to try and weight the numbers against using the mage (excessive salary, minimal insurance costs, single service per binding, no foci). And I haven't even considered failure costs beyond insurance (such as bad publicity, lost time, lost equipment, lost personnel). Oh, and that we only use bound spirits, which radically drives up the cost as well. And it still makes sense to use the spirit.

So, I'm thinking...yeah. Corps would use spirits to Guard their rockets. Protection of commercial aircraft possibly as well, though that gets a bit closer to the cost/benefit edge, and depends a lot on how the GM interprets services. I'm thinking Guardian, Guidance and Plant spirits with Magical Guard would be especially valuable to protect against hostile spellcasters.

Man, I do too many trade studies for a living...

You could link this into the discussion with the space ladder thread.

Wow, that's worse terms than the US military, and US med school is a lot more bucks.

"Upon receiving the doctor of medicine degree, officer graduates are required by law to serve on active duty in the Army, Navy, Air Force or United States Public Health Service for seven years. Time spent in graduate medical education (internship or residency) does not count toward the payback."

That's about the same as 17 years. Medical education until you actually get your MD takes about 10 years over here.

I think by 2070 there will be no grunts in any modern army - grunts would be directly replaced by drones the same way that pilots are going to be replaced by pilotless drones in the near future.

Human army members would all be specialists - riggers/magical backup/tacticians/command/mechanics/logistics.

Shadowrunners would probably never meet anyone other than special ops on missions as drone/spirit perimeter defences would chase them off before they ever reached the core of human personnel.

You might still find some 3rd world countries using human troops but these would be ill equipped.

Eh, not so much. You're always going to need the (meta)human touch to react to combat situations on the fly. Having a huge crew of slaved drones is going to delay your response tactics. You're always going to have grunts.

Isnt the reverse more likely to be true? Drones controlled by a bunch of riggers in a hardened bunker with direct access to the latest situation data would exhibit an ability to co-ordinate and react to new situations thats just not possible in human troops in real combat situations.

You now have a grunt that can be easily fixed or replaced, knows no fear, is immune to biological/chemical weapons and cant be captured or killed for any morale gain by the other side.

You honestly think they would have human troops in Afghanistan if they had access to SR style drones? It would sure make battling in far flung places a lot easier to sell politically.

Yes, I do.

A drone isn't going to be able to communicate with the Afghan tribal leaders.

A drone isn't going to be able to control and interrogate prisoners.

A drone isn't going to be able to be much more than a paperweight if the radio frequency is discovered and jammed.

Most of all, a drone isn't going to be able to act on gut instinct that something about the situation is wrong. Just because we've been dropping ordinance in Pakistan via a group of A1C's in an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada doesn't mean they're the end-all of future combat. The advantage of combined arms was learned over ninety years ago, and it's a lesson not liable to be forgotten.

Whoa whoa WHOA. A drone can TOTALLY control and interrogate prisoners. And they're AI drones, what radio frequency?

Worst case, you'd have field-riggers instead of bunker-riggers.

FYI modern day drone pilots are officer rated pilots not A1C's. There was a big stink about that a while back.

If I understand the EW rules correctly, Jamming lowers the effective signal strength (hardware dependant) while ECCM lowers the jammer strength (software dependant). It seems like the security solution to keeping your drone network up is to install low signal strength communications in them with high rating ECCM programs. The enemy would need to be very close to the drone to spoof/hack and your troops (who are already close by) can issue command still.

Yes they would have to send real people, try talking to local village elders in hellmand with a Steel Lynx and see how much local support and cooperation you get. If I'm your GM the Steel Lynx Pilot program does not come with auto softs for either Pashtu or Local Social Customs

Well strictly speaking you could - you arent just restricted to using combat drones - you could have some human form drones running a software form of that emoticon stuff that gives big social role bonuses?

The main thing drones cant do easily is stuff requiring fine motor control - if you were clever designing your drones in a modular fashion you could probably fix drones using other drones...

How far back? I knew a SRA who got fast-tracked to SSGT for his Predator piloting, that would've been back in '02-'03.

The emotitoys you're thinking about augment social rolls - they do not replace them. Trying to get a human form drone to do your facework for you is going to end badly due to the Uncanny Valley - they're going to put people off and torpedo your mission before you truly get to start it.




As fun as the WALL-E universe was, you did notice that of the tens of thousands of units they left on-planet only one survived, yes? He also cannibalized a lot of units over that 800 years to keep running.

It boils down to this: You're advocating the wonders of technology to replace everything, as others have advocated the wonders of magic to do the same. It's putting all your eggs in one basket, and once an effective countermeasure is developed then your one-trick pony has lost the race.

Yeah, no one said 'drones' meant 'Steel Lynxes only'.

Drones lacking fine motor control my ass. Modern robotics is out performaning human dexterity now. They can move so much faster and so exactly I'd say its gross motor skills where robotics is lacking and not heavy.

That's actually another point in favor of real people, versatility. A well trained soldier can be one part local ambassador, one part but kicker, and one part builder.

You need a whole lot of drones, all different, to do all of those things.

Not really - as I said in the original post you would still use humans but in specialised roles like magical support and special ops.

I just dont see the need for fragile human grunts in such a scenario when you have access to drones/spirits as cannon fodder.

I see nimrods being used over lynxes. Easy to deploy where needed can carry a hugely versatile payload, two weapons or one HEAVY weapon before modification, and are faster. Plus they could quite often have surprise on their side. As lynxs are on the ground with the troops and nimrod could hit form another angle entirely.

Keep on truckin', then. It's clear you aren't going to listen to what I have to say.

Also, this is 2070. Screw 'negotiating with tribals', unless they have Great Ghost magic.

In modern frontless wars the whole concept of cannon fodder is almost elminated, every unit may need to be a combat unit at some point (often dictated by enemy behavior) and they all need to be credibly trained. The use of low skill conscripts to bolster numbers is becoming an increasingly uncommon practice, usually used by lower tech armies.

The problem is that they do.

Technology can be beaten by Anti-Technology. This was proven in Vietnam, and is the reason there's still issues in Afganistan and Iraq, despite primitive drones being available there. (UAVs anyone?).

Secondly, there's the emotional issue to deal with. How is a local populous going to feel about troops of "Robots" marching/rolling/flying through the streets as opposed to soldiers that they can relate to, throw chocolates at, bribe, and so on. A "Hearts-and-Minds" portion of warfare that can never be ignored.

Finally, the important thing is that, well, drones are expensive and complex, people are cheap and simple. People are also self-programming and don't need to be patched in the middle of combat. When your drone gets a BSoD in the middle of a firefight, it's not like you can just pull out a back-up, or pick up a dropped rifle that's in the cold, dead hands of a former ally/enemy like a person can. You just hit "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" and hope it reboots fast enough before it gets taken out. ("Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder." - from Murphy's Laws of Combat.).

I am listening I just dont agree but your posts have been useful in developing the idea of a drone army.

I think your probably right that in the early stages drones would have very limited roles but that these would quickly expand displacing most of the normal troopers roles.

I think the key issue that would push this is not military but political - no politician wants to see casualties on the news every night.

Using drones the politicians can fight wherever they can afford the drones...

The thing is, drones get cheaper, and people get fewer. As with *all* things, the answer is certainly in the middle: a mixture. But, it's not because humans are terribly special, it's just economics.