My party has just signed on with S-K after shaking hands with the dragon himself. After re-reading the blurb in the SR4A and seeing that S-K is big in space, how does I make a shadowrun in space without dropping them on the Mars colony and recreating Waters of Mars? I know almost nothing about this aspect of the history, no idea who's after what and can't even remember who owns the colony right now. What could Lofwyr need an armed team to do in space?

Wake of the Comet has some good stuff.

how does I make a shadowrun in space without dropping them on the Mars colony and recreating Waters of Mars?
Orbital Stations !
They're also building a Space Lift .Estimated completion 2074 (Almanach ! )

with a silent Dance in Space
Medicineman

Target : Wastelands had some bits on orbital stations.
S-K is operating two major habitats right now : a factory called Himmelsschmiede ("sky forge") in lower orbit and a lunar mining outpost called Fernsicht ("farsight"), which is located near the polar ice caps (yes, the text uses the plural, but i guess they mean the south pole).
These would be likely starting points for S-K-conducted runs in space.
These are only the major ones, of course. They have a big presence on the moon, lots of mining sites connected by drone convois travelling to and from Fernsicht.
It's a safe bet that they also operate a vast number of satelites, including orbital weapons platforms.

Ares and whatever Fuchi is called in this edition also have a presence on the moon if you're looking for antagonists.

If you want to cull some ideas from other game lines, i'd suggest taking a look at Eclipse Phase. Tech level is higher than in SR, but you'd still get lots of inspiration for a campaign set in space habitats across the solar system, and you can get the pdf for free online as it is distributed under the creative commons license.

Doesn't Ares have one Deep Space Habitat on one of the Lagrange Points?

Yes, they are among the AAAs with the biggest space presence. Hardly surprising for a corp that bought NASA.
But if going to Mars isn't an option for the group, going to L5 may not be an option either, so i stuck with designations closer to Earth, and specifically the S-K run habitats.

No warning on this thread, so I guess I'm allowed to read it. I'm pretty much out of interesting powergaming ideas until I read up on mages.

Satellites are in space. The strongest weapons in the books are satellite launched. Maybe someone stole a THOR missile?

It's not that it's not an option, it's just that my only idea was to rip off an episode of Dr. Who. I'
ll poke around a bit in those other books, see what I can come up with. What is the tech level Space-wise? I know that magic's not too functional because that relies on lfe to support a manasphere, What else is going on out there?

One problem with running in space is that it's an extremely tightly controled environment : both the price tags and the hazards that are part and parcel of operating up there means tight security. There's also the slight issue that if things go down the tubes, there's a distinct lack of ways out. Whithout a spacecraft of one sort or another (or a rover on mars or luna) you're stuck.

And of course most spacecrafts are flimsy contraption without any sort of furtivity or jamming, making them sitting ducks for any spaceborne weapon platform. Not exactly what you'd want as your only way out.

Also keep in mind that guns and space installation don't get along that well. An armed party on a space stations is more likely to get killed in a depressurization accident than to achieve it's objectives (unles it's random mayhem and destruction).

Thor does not use missles, but Tungsten Telephone Poles.

Don't worry. He goes easy on us.

Is this a Norse mythology joke?
You say THOR like it's a weapons system, but IIRC, a THOR is an item that you can buy for the low low cost of converting all of several dozen characters' build points into NuYen.
Pretty sure the THOR is a missile to, but I only actually remember the stats.

YOU DON'T HAVE ARMOR!? What were you rolling to soak with at the truck fight?

MY HUGE BODY.
But seriously, I meant that I bought the chameleon armor when I'm not a stealthy character at all. I could definitely increase my armor by a ton if I just invest a bit in it.
I mean, if I'm going to be a sammie, I might as well give up on my ideals and do it right.

ok, well, good luck?

although it's the worst of all Bond movies, maybe you wanna watch Moonraker? Or Austin Powers 2, which is the parody version of the same topic.
Villain in a space station.
Let's get creative. An evil mastermind Technomancer (Is there anything about Resonance in space?) successfully disguised as a S-K space employee and then took over one of the mining colonies. He has lots of Free Sprites assistants and all the drones on the moon are now under his control. The team has to guard two S-K scientists and take down the uber villain.

It's about on the same level as in Neuromancer.
There's tons of orbitals, regular shuttle flights, established lunar habitats, but little travel beyond the moon. Most orbitals are cramped, relatively primitive constructions, but they at least provide artifical gravity and in a very few cases even an artificial manasphere (still a mana ebb, but with less negative BGC than the usual -8).
Of course, there's also space resorts and the Zürich-Orbital up there, so some places offer a little more luxury.

If runs involve matrix operations on the moon or beyond, signal lag becomes a significant factor. A hacker operating from Earth would have to live with a 1-second delay.
Resonance should work normally, but wifi coverage may be a problem.
Adepts and mages are obviously screwed in most places, while the combat types would have to deal with the hazard of hull breaches if they use certain types of ammunition, coupled with the problem of getting weapons up there in the first place, so unarmed combat specialists would be at an advantage.

Both actually.
No, it's not a missle. Not as far as i remember at least.
The THOR Projectile is a solid Tungsten(carbide?) Rod that gets hurtled down towards earth and uses only kinetic energy to do damage.
It's a Mass Driver weapon. Basically, an orbital Gauss-Cannon that accellerates the pole into the earths gravity and then lets gravity do the rest of the work.

I thought the preferred space weapon was cows?

Here's an explanation of what a THOR weapon satellite is.
And no it's not really a missile, even thought the entry in WAR calls it a THOR-missile.

I like this plan, Dissonant Technomancer setting up a sprite haven on the moon? Bring it on!


I thought I'd already explained this to him. Huh, oh well.

Bovine Bombardment should only be used for Exterminatus Levels of Desctruction.

Not on this thread, can't really know what you have explained to him IRL

It's the only way to be sure.

Yes, I heard about these back when I used to watch tv. This was a bit of a mix up; you're right that its a non-nuclear weapon, but I was also confused as to what you meant by "THOR weapon satellite"/THOR system. The THOR is actually the rod itself, which is launched from an Aesir Satellite.

It's a precursor to a Colony Drop.


Mwa ha. Ha ha. HAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

How about ripping off some Mass Effect stuff? I am thinking particularly of Bring down the sky.

Seconded. The mage and I would love that. Our hacker hasn't finished Mass Effect 1 though.

This will give us more reason to mock him.

Says the GM who hasn't finished it either. . .

Precisely.
Rather, I was suggesting we mock him.

Well, if we get a chance to do another session, I'm doing the Moon techno one, just to let every body get to kill something.

Sounds great!

Runs in space require a more subtle touch, a single HMG could frag an entire space station -Explosive decompression anyone? It's work for hackers, and faces more than anything with fights limited to hand to hand and outside the structures

For ideas I'd look to the older Dr Who stuff- Jon Pertwee in particular, Sean Conneries "Outland" and two british sci fic shows in the 70's and 80's Star Cops and UFO.

It takes a special kind of ninja - someone who can put down enemies before they've had a chance to damage the area. In all kinds of gravity.

How about a bow troll who can't use his bow with hammerhead arrows because the arrow overflows both the stun and physical for his target, then goes on to blow up the wall behind his target?

One of these days, you're gonna come up against a quickened Deflection spell, and all your powergaming will be for naught

Can I just say that I love you people for bringing these things up? My GM knows very well that I don't like or read about magic, so I always worry that he'll pop one of these things on me when I least expect it.

On the other hand, are you talking about this one?
"Deflection protects the target by turning aside ranged
combat attacks. Every hit scored gives the target a +1 dice
pool modifier for defending against ranged physical attacks.
The effects of this spell are subtle enough to be discounted as
a missed shot or poor aim (at least at first)."

That doesn't seem very efficient, or effective.

That's a theoretically unlimited number of bonus dice on top of any other Dodge boosts the target has.
You could combine that with a quickened Combat Sense, Synthacardium, Satyr Legs, Balance Tail, Balance Enhancement and MBWIII.
Good luck bringing that defense dicepool down (this is actually the point where it's better to simply stunbolt the target, but a good spell defense can ruin that as well).

Deflection used to be better in SR2, though. Back then, Deflection actually sent a part of the damage back to the attacker as Stun damage.
At least the Deflection metamagic still does similar things to spells.

I guess, but mathematically, it's kind of like 1 die in your spellcasting check adds 1/9th of a hit to your reaction test against ranged weapons.
9 dice average 3 hits casting deflection, and 3 dice on your reaction test average 1 additional hit.
You'd need 150 dice to have the same success rate as a pornomancer*.

*That is, assuming your GM lets the pornomancer substitute reaction in favor of social skills to grovel and shout "please don't shoot me!"

On a different front, none of Synthacardium, Satyr Legs, or Balance Tail add to reaction or ranged defense tests in any way. I couldn't even find Balance enhancement.

You seriously need to read up on Gymnastic Dodge and the things that add to it.

Oh, I guess I should have realized you were talking about full defense, but what if the attacker has has more IPs than you? Or you can't get more hits than the attacker in a game of chance? You'll use up all your IP's defending, and a high damage sammie only needs to exceed your net hits once. It looks like his dice pool would exceed anything given by any sort of dodge anyway (well, 27 is as high as I can get the sammie's dice pool without edge or magic).

Yeah, that'd be bad.

Actually, trolls are bad in a space adventure period. They're oversized in an environment where space is very precious and cramped - that's asking for trouble. Dwarves on the other hand are at something of an advantage I guess.

Space weaponry is tricky. You can count on people wearing highly energy-resistant clothes, with all kinds of sealing. So needle-gun weapons aren't dependable. Tasers aren't dependable - people are likely to wear insulated clothing, and you might damage the ship/station with an accidental hit. Guns are extremely dangerous. Atmospheric control is likely tight, so gas attacks are difficult too. Grenades are a Bad Idea™.

Maybe space really is the place for melee combat to shine - bone augmentations, razor-fingers and such.

A Troll Samurai with Muscle-Stuff and Armor Fastball Specialing a Dwarf Adept with Spurs.

LASERS.

Well, lasers would have a much longer range outside the atmosphere. Inside a spaceship... bad idea...

There's no Minority Report style sonic guns, are there?




-k

Of course there are O.o
The Ares Screech rifle or however it's called.
Also, one of those Micro-Wave-Cannons i think.

Ahah, perfect. I'd forgotten about those.




-k

Pain inducers might be okayish....

Squirts.