Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Nuking Boston
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Pages: 1, 2, 3
Loch
So what, hypothetically, might happen if 6th world Boston got hit with a ballistic missile? I ask because an, erm, friend of mine might have had this come up in a game session the other day and he's not quite sure what the global fallout (no pun intended biggrin.gif) should be.
Epicedion
I.. suppose that would depend a lot on why.
Loch
Long story short, an AI got its mitts on a Saeder-Krupp ballistic missile submarine prototype in the Arctic Ocean and fired off several missiles. Runners managed to stop all of them except the one bound for Boston. They reasoned at the time that since nukes have a bad rep for not detonating in SR that it was a paper tiger. Turns out not so much.

The submarine got taken out by Thor shot almost immediately after launching the missiles, but the AI escaped. The only things I can think of so far are a bunch of pissed-off MiTT alums and probably a stern message from Pulsar. The runners should feel affected by all this, but not too much, since they're all a bunch of paranoid sociopath Russians.

The dwarf gunbunny was from Boston though. frown.gif
KCKitsune
Well I hope that AI can find a hole to jump in and pull the hole in behind itself, because the world is going to go apeshit.

Saeder-Krupp is going to have the Corp Court asking why they allowed something like this to happen. They will also have to pay UCAS a whole boat load of money.

The 'Runners... well, if they were hired by Saeder-Krupp to stop the sub, then they better not go to UCAS for while ever again. People may not be happy that they allowed a nuke to hit UCAS.
kzt
SK just committed an act of war against the UCAS AND against every AA or better that had a facility in Boston. So SK has just gone to war with (at the very least) the UCAS, Ares, Lone Star, DocWagon, Aztechnology, Renraku, Shiawase, Mitsuhama, and whatever Yamatesu is called these days.

Committing an act of war against several of the major military powers (Ares and Aztechnology) AND getting a super-majority of the CC angry at you is going to be VERY expensive.
Pepsi Jedi
It wouldn't do anything good for Boston either.

Donn't forget that Boston is a MAJOR Surface shipping port on the east coast and maybe one of if not the biggest one in the UCAS. I think they moved the stockmarket there too didn't they? Or am I connfusing my sci-fi's?

But yes. Kzt has it right. They just declared nuclear war on a number of superpowers. They'd be in deep trouble.

Thing is the golden dragon wouldn't let it happen. He's smarter than that. He'd have a redundant abort code in the missle so deep that it couldn't be dug out and would have blown it before it hit boston.

The money he'd have to spend in the resulting wars would nnot be good.

If you want this to happenn you gotta use acorp that doesn't have possibly the smartest and most devious great dragon alive at the helm.

if nothing else, SK would have launched a FLEET of drones to get in the way and ram the missile taking it out or off course. Millions and millions of Yen in Drones if not manned craft would get in the way before it got to Boston. Destroying the missle is alot easier, and wouldn't set off the nuke. Arctic ocean to Boston is a long flight. SK would know instantly what happened and that thing would have 1000s of miles through a shooting gallery before it could even get there.
kzt
You have a lot of orbital platforms armed with very large lasers up there. Ares, Japan, and a few others would have assets in place.

But if it hit it would be exceedingly bad. You'd kill several million people, do trillions in damage and end up at war with essentially the entire world. And nobody is buying "but it wasn't our fault, it was a rouge AI!" And even if some did, it doesn't matter. It was an SK weapon, launched from an SK ship. Obviously SK didn't prevent it from being used and who else is going to pay?
Epicedion
It's 2070. Doesn't the UCAS have some sort of SDI-esque missile shield yet?
tagz
Wow. This is straight out of my first story arc. I nuked Boston. Well, sub-nuked. Done by an AI.

The AI was a drone pilot that gained self awareness and became an AI, as it was a pilot that was designed on learning and improving it's performance from mistakes. The runners were hired to fight it in a potentially lethal prototype testing, to test the self learning ability. They beat it and left the drone a slag heap. The pilot program was of course secure in a "black box". The whole thing was on the up and up, no double crosses or anything.

Anyhow, once the test was completed the programmers feared that deleting the runners from the target list might create problems with the pilot, it could "forget" what it learned, have logic problems, etc. So instead they planned to edit the list later on, replacing the runners with stationary targets that it could destroy easily and therefor count as "eliminated". Well, this budding AI didn't like that, it detected the ruse. It played along but made a copy of the original target list. It then decided the best course of action to kill those runners would be to eliminate the researchers that held it in the facility. It started to branch out into the matrix and .... yeah. It didn't start with the nuke, it built up to that. It learned from failure, so everytime it failed a few rolls it got better. So after a few days it learned how to hack its way into a UCAS military node and tried to take out all the runners at once.

My players haven't been back to Boston since. It wasn't a nuke, per say, it was just a large missile strike putting the hurt on a portion of the city, destroying a couple districts, but the majority of the city was intact.


The main difference is that in my plot the launch was from the UCAS to the UCAS, not SK to the UCAS and the damage is far more severe. There is going to be some major conflict. Also, NeoNet's World HQ and Wuxing's North American HQ is on Boston I think, they'll likely go after SK as well.
Ascalaphus
Remember that this is Lofwyr we're talking about. He might have planned it all from the start. In System Failure, he seems to know in advance about the Crash, too.

He'll "do everything possible" and "cooperate fully" to save Boston, but "alas" it was impossible.
kzt
At which point the corporate court issues an omega order on SK. Then, after every military asset they have gets obliterated at most 15 seconds after the gavel falls, the Ares nail-driving operation against his HQ starts, Aztechnology kicks off their ritual assassination teams, and the Regional HQs get an ultimatum.

It's not required that they wait for the CC, being under a nuclear attack is a pretty damn good justification to immediately attack every SK asset world-wide to preempt the follow-up attacks.
Manunancy
One point that rubs me the wrong way : WTF sort of use could Saeder-Krupp have for a nuke-armed missile boat ? And it's odd for them to be stupid enough to have the missile launch controled by an hackable, rather than standalone, computer system, without even the rather obvious safety feature of a physical key...

I also wonder why a prototype would be field-tested with active nukes.

Oh and one last thing : the sub can only be hacked when it's close to the surface - when it's running deep, the ELF transmissions are painfully slow (as in a handful of characters by minute - one hour to transmit a tweet...), which makes hacking flat impossible.
Insomnia Bob
I'm guessing Red Sox fans are going to be VERY upset.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 20 2011, 01:58 AM) *
One point that rubs me the wrong way : WTF sort of use could Saeder-Krupp have for a nuke-armed missile boat ? And it's odd for them to be stupid enough to have the missile launch controled by an hackable, rather than standalone, compuiter system, without even the rather obvious safety feature of a physical key...

I also wonder why a prototype would be field-tested with active nukes.

Oh and one last thing : the sub can only be hacked when it's close to the surfaces - when it's running deep, the ELF transmissions are painfully slow (as in a handful fe characters by minute - one hour to transmit a tweet...), which makes hacking flat impossible.


Not to mention the Land based requirements of actually having an ELF transmitter. They are not a dime a dozen after all... Not too many of them even nowadays throughout the world.
Manunancy
QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Mar 20 2011, 03:57 PM) *
Not to mention the Land based requirements of actually having an ELF transmitter. They are not a dime a dozen after all... Not too many of them even nowadays throughout the world.


That last bit would be the easiest one to bypass : even if you can't hack the sub on the recieving end, you can at least hack the ELF station on ground. An can even see some AAA having such stations if they're using a lot of cargo subs to protect themselves against piracy.

But boomers aren't something I see a corporation investing in - if they really need to toss a nuke at someone, hiding it in a shipping container or using some sort of truck-carriable launcher makes far more sense. SSBMs are extremely pricey toys and no corp worth it's nuyen is going to pour that sort of cash without a pressing need.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 20 2011, 01:08 PM) *
That last bit would be the easiest one to bypass : even if you can't hack the sub on the recieving end, you can at least hack the ELF station on ground. An can even see some AAA having such stations if they're using a lot of cargo subs to protect themselves against piracy.

But boomers aren't something I see a corporation investing in - if they really need to toss a nuke at someone, hiding it in a shipping container or using some sort of truck-carriable launcher makes far more sense. SSBMs are extremely pricey toys and no corp worth it's nuyen is going to pour that sort of cash without a pressing need.


Possibly...

And I heartily agree...
kzt
The ROI on military hardware is pretty low, it's not the kind of thing that stockholders like. However, SK has no stockholders. Mostly due to mystical power of plot, but it says there are no stockholders.
CanRay
QUOTE (kzt @ Mar 20 2011, 05:11 PM) *
The ROI on military hardware is pretty low, it's not the kind of thing that stockholders like. However, SK has no stockholders. Mostly due to mystical power of plot, but it says there are no stockholders.

It has a StockholdER. And you can bet those stocks are safe under his scaly belly.
KarmaInferno
All this is assuming the nuke goes off properly at all.

Since the Awakening, nukes often have this odd habit of just not working as intended.




-k
kzt
I believe that it was stated in by the OP that it 1) hit Boston, and 2) detonated high-yield.
Critias
QUOTE (Insomnia Bob @ Mar 20 2011, 03:57 AM) *
I'm guessing Red Sox fans are going to be VERY upset.

Yeah, all three or four of 'em that weren't in the blast zone. grinbig.gif
Rasumichin
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 20 2011, 08:58 AM) *
WTF sort of use could Saeder-Krupp have for a nuke-armed missile boat ?


Why build up a small nuclear arsenal when you have no means to deliver your nukes to potential targets?
SK is probably the only corp besides Ares that has more than a token few nuclear weapons, if any mega has subs with nukes, it's them.
Pepsi Jedi
Bugs.... In case the bugs come back and take over a city or two. That's why the triple A's would have boomers. ESPECIALLY the Golden Dragon.

Also SK would be ready to move against other Great Dragons if old gold snout wants to. Much easier to nuke um if you have to than risk your life fighting them one on one.
Ascalaphus
Maybe he just has them because he bought up a company that happened to have nukes? Lofwyr owns so many companies, he's actually likely to own nukes by accident.
Pepsi Jedi
He doesn't really strike me as the sort to do things by Accident. Nor are Nukes the sorts of things that are often lost in the shuffle. They're sort of a big deal. Even in SR.
kzt
QUOTE (Rasumichin @ Mar 20 2011, 05:11 PM) *
Why build up a small nuclear arsenal when you have no means to deliver your nukes to potential targets?
SK is probably the only corp besides Ares that has more than a token few nuclear weapons, if any mega has subs with nukes, it's them.

Aztechnology.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (kzt @ Mar 20 2011, 06:57 PM) *
Aztechnology.


Probably them too...
CanRay
QUOTE (Pepsi Jedi @ Mar 20 2011, 08:25 PM) *
Nor are Nukes the sorts of things that are often lost in the shuffle.

*Cough*Russia*Cough*
Pepsi Jedi
Note I said "Often" I was thinking of Russia when I said that.. and even with Russia.. It's not like there's active warheads just floating around.. or one would have made it's way into NYC or LA by now. *G* but I said they're not OFTEN lost in the shuffle. *G*
CanRay
Fair enough. And, to be honest, they're most likely "Lost in the paperwork" floating around rather than the "Actually sold" floating around.

Hopefully.
Manunancy
QUOTE (Rasumichin @ Mar 21 2011, 01:11 AM) *
Why build up a small nuclear arsenal when you have no means to deliver your nukes to potential targets?
SK is probably the only corp besides Ares that has more than a token few nuclear weapons, if any mega has subs with nukes, it's them.


As I've mentioned, the delivery is actually the easy part : a mere van on autopilot can be an effective delivery system. Cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles can be packed into a semitrailer too. And nne of thos options are expensive by AAA standard.

ICBMs - wether they're land-based or packed on a submarine - are on a completely different scale - thoses things costs an awfull bundle and are baiscally designed ot let you atomize a target anywhere on the planet on a 30-minutes time window. Usually with either a single BIG warhead or a pattern of medium-sized ones, one the 'wipe out a 20 millions city in a single stroke weapon'.

I don't see what sor of use a corporation might have for that sort of mayhem - in most case they'll damage a lot of their own assests along with whatever trouble they're aiing at. Nukes aren't exactly great on mimizing collateral damage...
Rasumichin
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 21 2011, 08:14 AM) *
I don't see what sor of use a corporation might have for that sort of mayhem


We aren't talking about present-day corporations.
We are talking about a world where capitalism has taken a new evolutionary step beyond what present-day corporations are doing, and there already are corporations irl who will rent you an airforce or panzer division with heavy artillery support for the right price.
In SR, we have gone far beyond that.
We are talking about corporations who can theoretically declare omega orders on each other.
It's hardly surprising that they feel the need for both first strike and retalliation capacity.
As soon as your rivals have nukes and thor shots, an arms race between corps is almost inevitable.

They are already producing this kind of hardware for sovereign nations.
Keeping some of it for themselves is on a whole new order of magnitude, but it's just a small step up without the political constraints corporations irl are faced with.

Particularly when you operate in areas of the world where you need an army of your own anyway to protect your assets.
A company like SK, Ares or Aztechnology is a full-grown political actor. They wage wars routinely, they own entire countries (Aztech) or whole world regions (the middle east in SR is practically SK property), they will want an arsenal that makes them fully capable of force projection, because force projection is part of what they need to do business.

Asking why SK needs ICBMs is like asking why any regional power irl needs them.
Manunancy
Even with extraterritoriality and the like, ICBM seems to me a very poor choice of power projection instrument for a corporation : about the only ennemies in their league are other Megas - and even if they have some strong regional influences, the widely dispersed nature of their holdings and assest makes ICBMs a very poor choice : to really hurt a rival AAA badly enough to prevent retaliation, you'll need to basicaly destroy the planet's top 100 cities. That's going to hurt you almost as bad as it hurts the ennemy. Probably even worse than the ennemy since whatever's left of your corporation will be fair game for takeover with extreme prejudice.

There' also a major difference between the Big Tens and states actors : they're far more focused on the money. Lobbing nukes, especially the kind you're puttting on an ICBM is about the biggest money-losing proposition known to man. Wagging a nuclear-tipped wang won't be of any help with sales, it's probably even the opposite. And saying 'do business with me or I'll nuke you' isn't a credible threat - radioactive cinders don't have disposable income.

Oh and one last point : no single corporation can issue an Omega order. That option is only open to the Corporate Court, who gives carte blanche to any action against the Omegaed target.
kzt
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 21 2011, 08:47 AM) *
Oh and one last point : no single corporation can issue an Omega order. That option is only open to the Corporate Cort, who gives carte blanche to any action against the Omegaed target.

When you have just committed an act of war against pretty much EVERY other member of the Corporate Court? Umm, yes, I think they will.

Time for Mr. Scaly to make them a compelling offer, or die.
sabs
Lofwyr can also go astral. Noone saw the missile coming? A couple of Spirits told to, "bring that missile down" would do the trick. Twist Fate (A Dragon power) also works, oh look a dud missile.

BUt, since it happened:

Lofwyr and SK are in serious shit, they need to make reperations and engage the CC right quick.
The Entire Eastern Seaboard is FUCKED. How big was the explosion, how wide is the Radiation fall out. Luckily most crap flows North in Eastern US, so Quebec is going to be taking it up the tail pipe.

The NASDEQ/NYSE was in Boston, but it moved back to NYC as of Rotten Apple.

This is a major blow to UCAS and they're going to want blood, this puts the Corporate Court in a bad position. But, Lofwyr is smart, he's going to spend vast sums of SK money to 'make things right'

Mages doing decontamination/Purification rituals. SK rebuilding shit. It's gonna cost a fortune, but luckily, SK has a fortune.

Ascalaphus
"If you declare an Omega Order on me, I launch all the other nukes I have. And the Thor Shots. And the Orbital Lasers. And I unleash all the biological weapons. And I destroy all those Matrix backbones I own. And rain down magical hell like only a GD can. And..."

Nukes aren't used to win a war, they're meant to make you the ultimate sore loser.

The rational reaction for the UCAS would still be to demand an explanation*, not start mutually assured destruction. You don't sacrifice the entire world for Boston.

*By which I mean truly humongous reparation moneys and other benefits.
Sixgun_Sage
I'm betting on SK finding evidence implicating a rival.... the Azzies are always a good target for that if you pin it on them through an intermediary.
kzt
QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ Mar 21 2011, 09:00 AM) *
"If you declare an Omega Order on me, I launch all the other nukes I have. And the Thor Shots. And the Orbital Lasers. And I unleash all the biological weapons. And I destroy all those Matrix backbones I own. And rain down magical hell like only a GD can. And..."

Which is why it's a rational response for Ares to immediately kill every military asset belonging to SK and prevent any know C&C systems from operating, while calling up the other AAA's and saying what they are doing.
Dahrken
A move like trying to nuke several UCAS cities is so blatantly and hideously stupid that no megacorp would try pull it off, so going for blood claiming "S-K did it" would IMHO require at least two potentially tricky points :
- know who owned the launching vessel and be able to prove it (if blown to bits by Thor shot and scattered under several thousands feets of water this can take a bit of time, or even be impossible)
- prove beyond reasonable doubt that the owner was in control of the launch platform, and that the launch was intentional and ordered by the owner.
Pepsi Jedi
And do so before you're turned into a glowing pile of ash yourself.

When Nukes start going off, 'rationality' largely degrades in rapid order. People don't wait around for months for explanations.

If any mega corp nuked a city they're toast. Not only would the Omega order go out from the CC but the country and it's allies would also go after them.
Manunancy
I don't think there will be insntant retaliation : intially all what will be know is that a missile boat from some unknow party lobbed some nukes around and got promptly blown to bits by an orbital strike platform belonging to Ares.

Afterall, that's the whole point of boomers : you never know where they are, which means you can't take them out before they launch. This also means you can't be sure of who the offending sub belonged to, even if the limited number of those beasts and the missile's target would give hints of the sender's identity.

Targetting several large UCAS cities is going to hurt each and every of the Big Ten, which mean's there's nothing to point fingers at SK : for all of them, doing that move is about as smart as shooting onself in the foot.

So you'll have to find the wreck and have a good look at the bits and parts to know whose sub it was, and only then would you be able to know who owned the boat. Another option might to to have a close look at everyone's sub pens to see who's missing one.

This would give some breathing space to SK to initiate some damage control and manage some sort of settlement with the corporate court.

But my first and foremost gripe with the whole concept is that in my opinion there's no reason for SK to bother with having a fleet of boomers, as they would be a waste of money. Even if there's some wriggle room for corporate ego and showmanship, a corporation won't bother with military force when there are cheaper ways to do the job. Modern, well equiped troops are damn expensive, and actively using them will turn them into voracious money pits.

Big business as a repute for war profiteering, but it won't work if the corp is waging the war for a very simple reason : in that case it's the corp, not the government, who's footing the bill out of it's shareholder's pockets. That's a very stong damper on military ambitions...
Pepsi Jedi
Corps do have military assets. And not small one's either. look at Aztechnology and the situation in the Amazon. They're in full out war with a country. The other mega corps have army's of varying size. Some bigger some smaller.

But military's to defend your corp territory and profit margin and to keep other corps from man handling you, are still a step away from a fleet of nuclear subs.

As for the who done it annd where. We (( the US)) have satellites now that can detect most subs. Add on 60 years, tech from that level (( they have working functional bio tech and nano's, that have not only hit the market but become so cheep you can go to the mall and get your eyes replaced with cybereyes and be back at work after lunch)) that detecting a nuclear missile launch would be pretty easy.

Add in honest to goodness orbital habitats and stuff up there to keep watch....

Boomer's aren't easy to maintain. Millions and millions and millions pour into them and sure,, you can hide them.. a bit when they're out to sea but they still have to come in and re-provision. And ANY government and Mega Corp is going to keep an eye on those sorts of things. They're going to know who has the capability. Just like the US military can tell you exactly how many subs in the world there are adn who owns them. Things take years to build. Millions of dollars to build. Even more to maintain. Their only real use is a nuclear deterrent and forward strike capability in nuclear war.
kzt
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 21 2011, 11:55 PM) *
I don't think there will be insntant retaliation : intially all what will be know is that a missile boat from some unknow party lobbed some nukes around and got promptly blown to bits by an orbital strike platform belonging to Ares.

Afterall, that's the whole point of boomers : you never know where they are, which means you can't take them out before they launch. This also means you can't be sure of who the offending sub belonged to, even if the limited number of those beasts and the missile's target would give hints of the sender's identity.

No, in fact you can often track them. Just because you are a sub don't mean you are undetectable, or can't be tracked easily. The SOSUS network did that against the Soviet boomers pretty effectively. State of the art subs would be harder, but maintaining state of the art boomers requires that you build and replace them frequently, which at $8 billion each is kind of painful.

There are also techniques for finding and tracking subs using gravitational anomaly, FLIR, water penetrating blue-green lasers and high precision lidar imaging. Some of these work from orbit, other would require a chain of sensors, like the SOSUS chains, others depend on aircraft. Most would work from a shadow, like the SSNs that trailed Soviet boomers as they exited their harbor and later from the bastions. This incidentally is an excellent mission for a (relatively) small drone. ... Are you sure it was missile from space and not from a lot closer?

In addition the missile itself would tell you whose it is, the missile thrust profile, engine signature, length, diameter, warhead heat shield signature and the various penaids will make it obvious. If you still have doubts the radioactive component from the warhead itself can be traced back to the manufacture.
Manunancy
Maintaining the sort of surveillance assets required to track and identify submerged subs in real time over the wole planet would be an expensive proposition too - espcially since 2070 tech will certainly allow those subs to lurk even deeper and probably shed most of their magnetic siganture.

I'd say they can be detected and tracked, but unless you going overboard and sink billion upon billions into the sensor net, the accuracy won't be high enough to decide just as it is launched that it's sub XXX from party YYY - determining it for sure is going to take a bit of time, and I don't think a corp would want to go from regular standby to 'full on blowing the crap out of the launching party with all I've got' without being 100% sure.

Simply switching from regular operation to all out war will take some time. Days, if not weeks. Even if they pack military forces, corporations aren't armies, they're here to make money and military power is a tool in their box, not their raison d'être, pentagon-style.

Sure a corp has probably some instant reaction force, things like Thor satellites and specforce-style troops, but packing the power to destroy a planet-wide opposition at the drop of the hat is simply too expensive for it's very limited utility.
Ascalaphus
Suppose Ares is that trigger-happy. Then all that Aztechnology has to do is launch a nuke that looks like an S-K nuke.

Everyone here needs to go watch War Games again. Overreaction is very bad. Scary AIs in the Matrix. Can't just blindly trust your sensors.
CanRay
QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ Mar 23 2011, 08:16 AM) *
Everyone here needs to go watch War Games again. Overreaction is very bad. Scary AIs in the Matrix. Can't just blindly trust your sensors.

Everyone needs to remember their Cold War history again. Nukes were almost launched because of a malfunctioning some-odd cent fuse in the US War Room started lighting the board up with contacts all over the place. The launch commands were just coming through when the problem was found and resolved.

A week later, same issue happened, same fuse.

Thank Ghost I read about these things AFTER the Iron Curtain rusted away. I'd have never slept otherwise...
Pepsi Jedi
QUOTE (Manunancy @ Mar 23 2011, 02:31 AM) *
Maintaining the sort of surveillance assets required to track and identify submerged subs in real time over the wole planet would be an expensive proposition too - espcially since 2070 tech will certainly allow those subs to lurk even deeper and probably shed most of their magnetic siganture.

I'd say they can be detected and tracked, but unless you going overboard and sink billion upon billions into the sensor net, the accuracy won't be high enough to decide just as it is launched that it's sub XXX from party YYY - determining it for sure is going to take a bit of time, and I don't think a corp would want to go from regular standby to 'full on blowing the crap out of the launching party with all I've got' without being 100% sure.

Simply switching from regular operation to all out war will take some time. Days, if not weeks. Even if they pack military forces, corporations aren't armies, they're here to make money and military power is a tool in their box, not their raison d'être, pentagon-style.

Sure a corp has probably some instant reaction force, things like Thor satellites and specforce-style troops, but packing the power to destroy a planet-wide opposition at the drop of the hat is simply too expensive for it's very limited utility.


I had the same thought as Kzt did. When they're building or provisioning the multi billion dollar boomer, just put a few drones on it. Drones follow the boomer recording all that it's doing, staying silent unless the boomer does something that triggers one of the drones protocols

"Follow silent UNTIL:......

Boomer floods missile pods/ Launches missile
Heads into ______ Territory
Engages in underwater combat.

Otherwise. Your drone which cost a few grand just trails the multi billion dollar sub around, not saying a word or doing anything. I mean sure you could give it a few more trigger protocols. But you get the point. Even if the drone runs out of power, they'd have preset conditions to request drone 2 to be deployed to current location and drone 1 is recovered for refueling.

Boomers can stay out for a long time but the people on board have to eat. And it's unhealthy for them to stay down for TOO long. So in theory when the boomer comes to port to re-provision, all the follow drones are replaced.
Dahrken
If submarines were so easy to locate/follow/engage with a few cheap drones, why would any government or corporation still bother to invest nuyens in them ?

Heck, quietly drop a few hunter/seeker drones of your own sitting passively in silent mode, then do a high speed run. A follower either loose you, or go high speed (and high noise)to keep track and so can be located and incapacited. Alternatively, use a swarm of cheap, disposable noisemakers to cover your accoustic tracks, or several drones imitating your signature.

There are a few tricks in the SR universe whith an impact that is hard to extrapolate from today's technologies, real or rumored.

Use a few water spirits to search and eliminate unwanted followers. They have higher speed, better handling and have abilities handy for that purpose, like Engulf or Accident...

Does Concealment work on technological sensors ? If yes, use long-term service to make the biggest, baddest spirit you can control hide your boomer for one year and remove an bigbunch of dices from any attempt made to locate it.

Put a few Quickened Hush spell around strategic areas like the propellers, reactor pumps or hull features likely to generate hydrodynamic noises and make your sub really silent. Even at top speed.

Expensive ? Definitively ! But when compared to the cost of the asset protected this way it makes sense.
Pepsi Jedi
QUOTE (Dahrken @ Mar 23 2011, 02:28 PM) *
If submarines were so easy to locate/follow/engage with a few cheap drones, why would any government or corporation still bother to invest nuyens in them ?

Heck, quietly drop a few hunter/seeker drones of your own sitting passively in silent mode, then do a high speed run. A follower either loose you, or go high speed (and high noise)to keep track and so can be located and incapacited. Alternatively, use a swarm of cheap, disposable noisemakers to cover your accoustic tracks, or several drones imitating your signature.

There are a few tricks in the SR universe whith an impact that is hard to extrapolate from today's technologies, real or rumored.

Use a few water spirits to search and eliminate unwanted followers. They have higher speed, better handling and have abilities handy for that purpose, like Engulf or Accident...

Does Concealment work on technological sensors ? If yes, use long-term service to make the biggest, baddest spirit you can control hide your boomer for one year and remove an bigbunch of dices from any attempt made to locate it.

Put a few Quickened Hush spell around strategic areas like the propellers, reactor pumps or hull features likely to generate hydrodynamic noises and make your sub really silent. Even at top speed.

Expensive ? Definitively ! But when compared to the cost of the asset protected this way it makes sense.


Well that's the point. lol both sides ((conceivably)) have access to the same stuff. So .. Much like TODAY.. for every "Sneak" you come up with, the other side comes up with a work around. The arms race is still on it's just ramped up a bit with SR tech and Magic.

Just like our boomers aren't exactly easy to hide now (( they're big and stuff. lol with out getting too technical)) they'll be so then too.

And when a boomer LAUNCHES a missile it's instantly clear it's done so. Missiles are kinda hard to hide.
Manunancy
I don't think a cheap drone would have the required endruance to follow a sub at 10-20 knots for a month or two - to match the endurance of a nuclear-powered boat, you'll need a nuclear-powered drone. And I don't think that would be cheap. Getting a fresh drone on spot would be a proble too : unless your drone is regularly reporting it's position (detectable), you might need to rush the replacement through a few thousand miles at high pseed to catch up with it's quary's last know positions. Which by now will be a few days old.

You might be able to pull it out with a conventional-fuled drone, but to match that sort of endurance and sustained speed, you'll need a really big load of fuel, which would definitvely put it out of the 'small and cheap' category. And probably make it just as detectable as the sub it's following. Maybe quieter but probably with poorer sensors, which would sort of balancee out.

Maybe you could have some sort of small drone playing barnacle on the hull, but that's likely to be spotted at some point. I'm also not sure such a drone would have enough transmitting power to make itself heard when it has something to report.

As I said, doable, but definitevely not easy and even less cheap. Megacorps have far more profitable or usefull ways to invest their cash than in a cold-war style 'doomsday weapon hide & seek'. Some tacknukes on a cruise missile or short raneg ballistic tucked in a container - definitevly yes, it's not chump change but for a AAA it's affordable. Three boomers (to be sure one is one station anytime) and all the assets nedded to protect them ? I don't think so.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012