Don't forget the chem light batteries

This is contradicted by the barrier rules. I remember having a long discussion where I argued the ability of a magic 1 punk to destroy a city. I lost.

That was pretty much my point, in the end superior numbers win, the amount of training and hardware only helps define what the numeric advantage has to be. I figured in the 30 v. 1 scenario the Sammy would probably flatline somewhere between 2 and 4 before they ever got a shot off but that leave 28-26 to to return fire before the Sammy's next pass, if he makes it that far, and as your math points out he better be built to soak if he plans on getting there.

The last time I looked up the data for the US military the overrepresented groups in combat arms were lower-middle and middle class whites. Blacks and the poor in general were over-represented in support branches and under-represented in CA units.

The typical explanation I've seen is that most of the guys who signed up for combat arms were not planning on making it a career, it was something they wanted to do for a while, then would go onto something non-military for a career. Poor people who join the military were often planning on a career and being a supply clerk in San Diego is both a lot less risky and lot more comfortable than being an infantryman in Kandahar.

Conversely, your GM could spare you the absurdity of 30 dodge rolls and instead point out that 30 grunts firing SA is the equivalent of highly skilled mini-gun supressive fire. The sammy makes a test vs. some sort of collective goon dice pool and you resolve the situation in a few rolls, and nobody has to die of absurd shenanigans.

What exactly is "absurd" about not being able to dodge all of 30 people shooting at you? You know how much lead that is?

Assuming a twinked sammy, I would expect his dodge pool to be reduced to 0 by grunt #16 (cumulative -1 dice pool penalty for each previous dodge), so for grunts #16-30 he would just be soaking damage with armor, body, and augments. Assuming drug addled gangers though.... I'd expect most of the damage the sammy is taking to be reduced to stun rather than physical, but I would expect a soak pool of about 15-18 at minimum in order to avoid taking any damage (assuming 5P guns). Death by a thousand cuts.

My point was it's absurd to have to fight 30 goons who are all just lined up shooting at you. If I ever found a member of my group in that situation, I would try to find a humane way to spare them. As such, I'd just crib from your average action movie, and have some dude running haplessly through a cloud of bullets as they bust up the walls, windows, ground, etc. He'd probably have to soak one or two but he's not mercilessly whittled down to nothing.

Well, it's an abnormal situation, yes, but I think the point is made.

While I would agree that there are some units with MP Laser systems, gauss rifles etc, I think that 1 you are over stating how available they will be for a unit.

First of all, a shadowrun team better have better than standard issue gear. Not at least to mention cyberware. When we are talking about armies we are talking about reg forces not death squads and spy/assassin rings. They will have higher encryption, and better gear than all troops except the highest level of spies would be using.

The shadowrunners' firepower will be lacking tank mounted MP lasers, and gauss rifles, but with small unit tactics, they aren't going to be directly facing that kind of opposition. They are going to sneak in, sabotage with plans of opportunity. In a direct fire fight, yes, the military will throw a few missles, satellite laser bombardments, etc, which is why they would not fight that kind of fight. Think of an elite seal team behind enemy lines. Are they going to take on a battalion of tanks? no. They are going to sabotage, and destroy selective targets and remain hidden.

If shadowrunners don't have sufficient resources, (either from backing or from accruing them over time) they don't belong in the biz. The will exceed what regular forces have.

I would put a team of Canada's Elite commandos against a squad of 50 regular soldiers.

If you're Sammy with enough initiative boosters to be assured of going first and you find yourself on the business end of 30 drug addled Orc Gangers with pistols, the correct procedure is to run. Against more skilled the opposition the correct procedure is to run faster.

Now it is unlikely that the players would actually find themselves in this situation where I'm running a game, mostly for the afore mentioned 30+ rolls.
However if they are by some chance in this situation, if they run they will probably get the action movie treatment with only a handful of dodges for dramatic effect. If they decide to stand and fight then things will go less pleasantly.

Platinum: It goes without saying that this depends on the runner team, of course. For comparison, I guess we're assuming a *special-ops* runner team, which really isn't the typical squad.

I assumed we were basically discussing a very specific circumstance: runners in normal combat against military. Obviously, the runners never want to be in that situation in the first place, because it's stupid.

I guess I missed something somewhere. thanks for clearing things up.

Apart form Aztech and Ares and some more. At least 4 for the 10 have standing millitary/paramilliatary forces. Aztech is offering a get a Ork embro or two implanted for cash scheme for more than a few time their countries national average yearly wage. These Orks tend to enter the military. Ares has Knight Erant witch is more than a police force.

The CAS has an army as they are still at WAR with Aztech. UCAS has a milliatatry force thats is likely to still have sepc ops/black ops parts. UK has an army and the SAS as of the last source book also acts as secrate police. Though I'm of the opinion that the SRR would hold that role. I think that SR millitary willhave gone from large armys to samller well trained and equipped units. In a more for less sense.

Both. I wouldn´t call them regular military. An example for a well-equipped merc force is MET2000. High-tech armies exist.

The question is how nation-states will build their forces. The high-tech army will deploy less soldiers, as an augmented fireteam can easily replace two unaugmented ones. Employment is a political issue, and small warrior castes have their own agendas. The runners can cope with numbers if allowed to fight dirty, but can´t reliably cope with an equal opponent.

I would keep the common unaugmented grunt for style reasons. There is a sufficient number of high-tech corp armies for the high-end games, and the army is closer to the level of the street for low-end games.

If you paid attention to the post I quoted, you'd realize that both he and I were talking about special forces exclusively.

Oops, Platinum, I meant "you're assuming", not "we're". Well, it amounts to the same thing.

Indeed, unless someone is at least a Sgt or higher the ware given to them in a standard army should be limited to street legal gear.

After all why drop all that nuyen on a grunt that isn't at least going to see the military as a career?

You want to consider the fact they have to reintegrate into society as well.

With the corporate armies, they can go from army right to security forces. And vice versa for cross training.

I cna see many grunts maybe starting out as gangers with second hand ware joining and getting integrated as career soldiers in time too.

But the problem with most ware is going to be "what happens when PFC Beetle leaves the army? What happens to that investment in cyberware?"

Hence it is still going to be mostly non-cybered grunts, with gear to handle what ware does (maybe a bit more reliance on combat drugs)

The reason I asked you, is because I thought you were implying that 2072's military had no special forces.

And quality is not everything. You also need numbers. You can't just dump everything you have into the best equipped units on the planet. It's not a video game, after all. You need quality AND quantity.

Also, it seems that some people thin nations in SR are broke. They are not. Their economy is in tatters and their governments corrupt, but your average nation STILL rakes in more cash than the Big 10. Their armies are larger than the corp armies, mostly because they have to actually defend a country, not just economic interests.

Several countries also enforce service requirements for all their citizens, such as the Sioux. Most of them will be unaugmented, but the ones who are lifers are more liable to get the serious body mods.

Outfitting them with an assault rifle and a set of light/medium military armor isn't going to break any national bank.

Lets look at it like this:

What benefit is there to implanting every soldier with smartlinks and cyber eyes when it is more cost effective to just mount the links and vision enhancements into helmets/goggles?

What happens when a soldier leaves the military (hint: it's not always a lifetime contract) with combat implants? How do you reintegrate a combat enhanced soldier into the general population?

There are drawback to cyberware implantations other than money you know. Especially for governments

YOu could always just recycle the ware as second hand you leave say bye bye to the wires.

Got somethink to backup that claim.

I completely agree that your regular Grunt won't field much cyber, especially, when it can easily be replaced with cheaper solutions and equal performance, so what are we arguing about?

Uhh, no. Most of us are assuming the Runners would be up against just plain dog-faced infantry grunts. We're using a vaguely United States method of organization for them when it comes to what constitutes a fire team, a squad, a platoon, etc, but I know I, at least, was doing so for simplicity of naming convention. I don't think there are any massive differences in the organization between the U.S. military and most other first-world nations with standing armies -- Lieutenant vs. Leftenant notwithstanding.

None of us have been comparing them to "U.S. Special Forces," by a long shot. There are stats already there for those sort of high speed, low drag, specops guys -- Tir Ghosts, Sioux Wildcats, that sort of thing -- and this would be an entirely different conversation.

For the record, though, there are still sizable standing armies in both the UCAS and CAS, built off existing military doctrine and bases, populated by, logic dictates, men and women that were trained by existing UCAS and CAS military, trained by, logic dictates, current "real world" soldier-types in those armies. Every time the CAS and UCAS have been presented to us in nation-describing books -- perhaps with the exception of T6W Almanac which I don't have yet -- their militaries have been described along predictable, real world, US military lines.

What gave you the impression that they don't exist?

If anyone in your group puts himself in a situation where he's fighting, solo, against a whole infantry platoon...uhh...isn't that more his fault than yours? Run your game how you want to, sure, but I can tell you right now that in my game, I'd be making thirty attack rolls and someone would be left bleeding out after doing the action movie machine-gun-dance (those fun slow-mo ten seconds where nothing but incoming fire is holding the guy up).

Depending on how on Earth the group sammie found himself in that position, it could even tell a fantastic story instead of seeming like the fist of an angry GM smacking him around. It seems like you'd have to work pretty hard to get thirty guys all shooting at you at once, maybe by offering yourself up to the enemy so the rest of your team could escape, or by serving as a distraction, or by finally deciding to end it all after your Essence dipped too low, and wanting to go out "clean" and to "warriors," or something...and isn't the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a powerful cinematic moment, even though it's not a happy ending?

Mhm. The Bolivian Army Ending.

Sorry, I caught your reply too late. My apologies.
What is "absurd" in m opinion is for him to get into that position in the first place. If a player is stupid enough to let his character piss off the Spikes, or the 162s, or the Crimson Crush badly enough for them to want to make an excemple out of him, he did not do so by accident. He had to do it on purpose. And it seems said player opted not to run. Bad choice. And as wel all know, Bad choices spell D-E-A-D.

I would not let him see the light of the day, if he was one of my player's characters.

First off, Semper Fi, brother. I was in the Corps 10 years ago myself, though I was a spook rather than a grunt.

Second, lots of good info here. The reason I'm using a "squad" or even a "fire team" size, is that the runners are going into the ACHE, which is patrolled by the UCAS Army on some floors and the 'Plex Guard on others. Because its a small, enclosed space, a whole Platoon will be covering a sector of a floor, but a Squad (or even 2 Fireteams, Reinforced) would be the number of grunts walking around.

Oooh. Paranoid grunts.

Well it wouldn't even take 30. Five gangers pinned down the PC's in my most recent game (400 BP + lots of karma) in a private room atthe Big Rhino. It wasn't even close. The gangers had heavy pistols with smartlinks (total of 8 dice rolled with skills+attribute). It was not pretty.....

Generally speaking, Grunts don't carry sidearms into the field. No need to carry 2 different types of ammo (or even if they are the same, 2 different types of clips/mags). No need to carry a second weapon either. If you are in an open field environment, the lack of range is a severely limiting factor. In an urban setting, most carbines or SMGs are small enough to allow good mobility and control, while still using more effective rifle rounds.

I´m much for making military armor common, and more available on the streets. There is something satisfying in power armor fights.

The camo suit is enough for units you don´t really expect to see battle anytime soon, like inland hometown garrisons.



And there is a Special Forces Trooper on pg. 88 of Cybertechnology.

Remember that a Fireteam is 4 or 5 people. AT support is handled by an entirely separate platoon altogether, who will attach themselves to a Grunt squad if they are expected to go up against armor.

As for Snipers, again, that's an entirely separate unit that handles those duties, and farms their people out as needed. Usually, thought, they operate in support of higher HQs mission, rather than the Squads or even the Platoon. There are troops known as "Designated Marksmen", who generally use scoped semi-auto rifles at medium ranges, where rapid firepower at range is more important than single shots from way far out.

Heh. A couple A1C's in a trailer in the middle of the desert, waiting for your radio chatter.



If you're doing this in the ACHE though, I'm thinking you're not going to need a DM since it's all enclosed combat. Unless you're in one of the atriums...

Way Tangent but what's the bets that in 2070 Mages get O-1 or better pay just for being a mage?

Hmmm. I'd agree with that, figuring that mages would have to go through OCS to get the proper astral training.

One of my Staff Sergeants sent a PFC on a chase for a BA-1000 November form that took him half a day.

Over here, the newbies are sent to get the key to the assembly area.

That makes sense.

1/3 Lava Dogs myself.

I'm not familiar with how ACHE fits into the setting, but in RL I'd envision it being handled by MSF. That is federal police on the inside, Marine Security Forces platoons patrolling the perimeter. Thing is, except for embassies, Marines are real well suited for guarding building interiors. As a general rule, "Marines take ground. Soldiers hold ground."

Remember that the "Military Grade Armor" must be fitted to the wearer. I don't think every grunt would get this stuff. More than likely, they'll get a Camo Suit, or Full Body Armor. There is also the downside to wearing such highly rated armor, so I think that the Military Grade stuff would only be for specialized units.

In my scenario, there are significant portions of the ACHE (Archology Community Housing Enclave) that are still under the jurisdiction of the UCAS Army, because despite the propaganda, they STILL haven't been completely pacified and/or some of the floors have things that the Federal Government doesn't want to let fall into anyone elses' hands. There's also a ton of other nasty stuff too, like bugs, shedim, and Tamanous that keeps the Army there.

Also, as much as it pained me to do so, I made the decision that with the split of the CAS, and the joining with Canada (not to mention the loss of both MCRDs), factions of the Army and Air Force finally were able to succeed in getting rid of the USMC for good. The tradition is being kept alive by the CAS (with many Marines informally calling themselves the "USMC" in things like cadence), who are looking forward to celebrating the Corps' 300th birthday soon.

-- Former Marine here. 0511 Enlisted MAGTF Planner though, not a grunt, so keep in mind my perception is heavily influenced by logistics considerations. I post ome musings on this subject a long time ago that I've collected on my website. Note that most of those were written several years ago while I was active duty, and before I partipated in OEF/OIF and became very disillusioned with the current technofetish trend (e.g. Tom Clancy type bullshit).



-- First off, you need to start associating "Shadowrunners" with "special ops" because in all but the most gritty street level game they really are a special elite in stats, skills, equipment availability, and psychological prepation to commit violence. A shadowrunner group with mage and hacker support will RIP APART any plausible conventional military unit: jamming their comms, jacking their own drones, making headshots at a thousand paces, mind controlling their officers, etc.

-- Second, I can recommend that you skim through the Small Wars Journal site and read their forums. They have some exceptional resources on there that can be adapted. For example, I got a lot of use from the thread "Weight of Combat Gear is Taking Toll"

Armor
-- There is not a "no casualities at any price" attitude that I can discern in Shadowrun, so right off the bat you need to be very careful about taking modern US military trends and applying it to Shadowrun. It is extremely unlikely that miltiary grade armor (Arsenal, p. 50) is common at all -- the requirement that it be custom tailored pretty much kills it except in special ops units (and even there it's a problem).

-- Something akin to SWAT Armor (Arsenal, p. 49) strikes me as far more likely an analog to the current protective systems.

Communications
-- The ECM/ECCM environment in Shadowrun is SERIOUS BAD NEWS for modern conceptions of C4I. Troops probably have high-rated comm systems that are reasonably SOTA (in fact, that's probably the only thing they use that is!) but Tom Clancy micromanagement is a recipe for disaster with wireless hackers around. I suspect a military commlink will be something like an Renraku Airware (Signal is more important than Response, good price point) with a custom OS that strongly emphasizes Firewall Rating). Probably has skinlink and subvocal mic. All together this is a pretty inexpensive bit of kit, and is largely off-the-shelf. A simrig is asking for trouble in most cases.

Electronics
-- Goggles with Flare Compensation, Image Link, Low-Light Vision, and Smartlnk. Drop the Smartlink for militia armies (that 500 nuyen adds up FAST in bulk purchases).
-- Earbuds with Select Sound Filter

Weapon System
-- Money to blow: XM30 type system.
-- More reasonable: AK-97 or FN-HAR (neither smartlinked). The M22A3 (Arsenal, p. 26) also isn't half bad.
-- Probable: As most operations are in urban areas I suspect that the carbine will continue to be popular, so more stuff like the Praetor (Arsenal, pp. 24-25).

Other Crap
-- Gas Mask is useful to have on you due to the effectiveness of various SR chemtech. But it's actually fairly expensive.
-- Slap Patches get much love.


-- Good communication to identify high-priority targets and hit them hard and fast before you get geeked. If they can, avoid direct contact and use supporting fires (drones, artillery, mortars, etc). Think of a mage like a small, fairly squishy tank. Something not encountered all the time, but extremely dangerous when it's around and requiring a lot of training and forethought to tackle.

Hasn't fluff had the M22A3 the main rifle of the UCAS since the Street Sam Catalog?

I've actually always imagined it similar to the Army's Aviation program. Those with demonstrable magical ability have a warrant officer program that they can apply for right out of high school. There would be a "Magic Pay" bonus similar to the current foreign language bonus, which pays more for certain specializations and/or grades of initiation. Warrant Officers form the bulk of the Thaum Corps who are providing magical support on the field, running Astral Overwatch, or summoning support spirits. Mages who possess a BA or BS in Thaumaturgy can go the Officer route and be put into leadership positions, over both magical and non-magical personnel alike. Adepts with no college degree can enlist and go through basic training, then undergo a Warrant Officer program for Magical Support Staff in whatever field they choose (I once made a retired Warrant Officer who was an adept and had powers focused on Intelligence, Tactical, and Logistical analysis).

-- It's not mentioned as such in Arsenal. Wouldn't really surprise me though, it's a good weapon and Shadowrun gun technology pretty much hasn't changed since First Edition anyways.

Thanks for the input. I think I've said it to you before here, but, Semper Fi brother. I was an 0231 who got out just prior to OIF.

I'm actually thinking of putting together a T/O from the ground up (starting with fire team and working upward) for equipment and roles, working with a friend of mine who's an 0351 and just got out... and a gamer.

You want in?

Another thing to keep in mind when equipping your military units in game is that the purchase of specific gear is often a Political Consideration. Just because one piece of gear is better than another doesn't mean the regulars will have it.

Say your regular army happens to be the Tsimshan Nation (gone by 2072, but they make a good example) who is mortgaged up to their eyeballs to Mitsuhama, do you think they will be sporting Renraku Comms? Heck No, nor are they likely to be carrying Ares Alphas. They are going to have a lot of gear from their patron corp. Same goes for Aztechnology / Aztlan. UCAS gets trickier as the procurement is done by the Pentagon with a lot of micromanaging by Congressmen who want to get money back to their districts to get re-elected. (note to GM's Corps & Politicos working together to sabotage ecahother's earmakrs make great runs)

-- Sure, but note that I'm more worried about stuff like "would this fit on a 463L pallet" (or the future Shadowrun equivalent) and "how many batteries per day would this require." (oh god the horror stories about the BA5590 batteries during OIF!)

These sorts of requirements often go in to procurement contracts to assure certain winners, it's quite likely that Ares supplies the UCAS with Pallets, the Trucks they load to, and the crates of Rifle ammo that go on them. An you better believe that those pallets don't fit Steyr Ammo crates neatly