Okay, so with alt.War dead I don't think anyone browses through its folder, so writing there is kinda pointless by now.
Thus, I take the liberty of starting up a thread for you to throw rotten tomatoes at my ideas for the write-up of Russo-Yakutian war I'm writing. Also, for me to track my progress as I slog through the project.
Please be my guests :3

2011
May
June
July
August
September
December

You should point the links for your docs. Although I already have them, just, you know, the rest of the people may read them.
But don't worry, any tomatoes we throw won't be rotten

And the first question would be this. See, German Arsenal has all those neat melee weapons - a swordcane and an injection dagger, which uses pressurized air to deliver poison into the wounds it deals.
I've translated both, and have thrown them into the UGB armoury subchapter.

Now, it occurred to me - why only rapiers for swordcanes, when the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Real Life has Barton Arms Gun Cane, which is basically a pistol hidden in a cane? Why only canes, and not umbrellas, only steel rapiers and not composite ones? Then, why should the injection mechanism only be reserved for daggers?
Naturally following from that line of reasoning is the idea to add a section on modifying melee weapons beyond the couple upgrades listed in Arsenal.
The most obvious choices would be adding a mono edge, using composites, chameleon coating, using hidden compartments in innocently-looking items to mask the weapons, something akin to Custom Look and maybe Extreme Environment Modification, Tracker or even a Propulsion system.
What do you think?

PS: Thank you, Brazilian_Shinobi, done.

Chameleon Coating is already one of the few mods that a melee weapon benefits from.
Now, since I don't have neither of the books you mentioned, I don't know how the mechanics of it works.
Perhaps you could create a new modifier that masks its look like something else, costing 4-5 mod slots, so the weapon can't receive tons of modifications on it.

Noted for the coating, thank you.
Yeah, that's basically my idea - make it a complex mod. Maybe only allow it for handouts and light pistols, and reduce their clip to 1 - that's pretty much how it works in tNAGtRL.

Lol, it took me sometime to realize you were refering to a book instead of having a seizure while writing.

I would do it like something you can do it with a shop. Don't know the cost yet, but using 5 slots (maximum is 6, right?).
You can use it with any one-handed melee weapons and light, heavy and holdout pistols.

Okay, I've been reading Corporate Guide, and I can see the reason for the negative reviews it got. I never read it overly carefully, since when it was out, I was in the middle of reading Corporate Download, - and let's face it, that second one makes for a much better setting book.

So anyway, I'm trying to fish some info on corp presence in Russia, and that's what I get.
Sauder-Krupp "managed to snatch the contracts for the Russian Matrix infrastructure—leaving both NeoNET and Evo in the dust".
On the other hand, in Evo "Yuri also oversaw the implementation of the Wireless Matrix Initiative, and to this day most of the wireless Matrix infrastructure in Russia is handled by the corp".

Sauder-Krupp:
(sic!).
Meanwhile, in Evo:

What the hell?! Who runs what? Who's in charge of what? Did that book have an editor?!

But the wonders of Corp Guide don't stop here. It goes on about how important Evo is for Russian economy:
Evo NT is a major player, obviously. But to think of it, there's a bunch of Russian military companies mentioned in the fluff (like MiG, Ilyushin, Zil, Krasnoe Sormovo or Nizhnii Tagil Inc.) which are neither listed as Evo subsidiaries, nor can be found in the subsidiary lists of other megacorps (unlike, say, Mostrans or Gaz-Niki).
What the hell do they even mean in the piece quoted? Nobody buys anything from Evo's competitors? Why are then all Russian tanks anywhere in the books produced by Nizhnii Tagil Inc, and all the subs - by Krasnoe Sormovo?

Now, to topple it all off:
I... I mean... uh... what?!

Frankly, now I just don't know what to make out of it. A lot of corp interests have been mentioned in the books, but then suddenly Evo, Evo everywhere...

Yeah, welcome to CGL's darkest times, along with War! Corp Guide is one of the worst books released so far when taken into account the setting and editing.

The problem here is that I'm trying to be as close to canon as possible. But CGL is really leaving me no choice.

Actually, they are. Create your own setting or leave it be. Considering how nit-picking you are being about the setting, I hope you create your own.

Pah, I believe we've been over it already. Keeping fan materials as close to canon is essential for making them possible to adopt into actual games without changing the setting much.

Yeah, but when official source A says one thing in page X and the same source A says the opposite in page Y, well, you are in for a migraine.

Yeah, and that's precisely what I have.

Also, SOTA2064 is weird, as well, in that it describes Romanov's support base just as being the largest of all, but for his competitors, names the specific Departments.
Gonna have to make a couple ones not mentioned to balance those out...

Even though what the authors' meant was contradictory, you can still manage to be faithful to the wording. It works as long as no new sourcebook comes to shed a new light on the topic.


Saeder-Krupp bought several Russian launch sites, at some point. As far as Year of the Comet goes, the only former Russian launch sites S-K use is Tyuratam/Baikonour in Khazakstan. S-K bought several sites (maybe because the Russian authorities put a package including several sites on sale), but only had use for Tyuratam, and they sold the other back to Yamatetsu or other corporations later.
According to Year of the Comet and Corporate Download, Yamatetsu uses Svobodniy, a former Russian site in Russia. IRL, there are at least three other spaceports in Russia proper, Plesetsk (mentionned in YotC), Dombarovsky and Kasputin Yar. Just add one and you're done.

Evo would have "Space Division" written on a door somewhere, with only administrative offices behind. The Russian five spaceports administrative work would be subcontracted to that division, and the technical work, supplies, component manufacturing would be subcontracted to other Evo subsidiaries and Shibata Construction & Engineering.

That sentence can be true if every Russian tank, fighter jet and warship just include one chipset manufactured by Yamatetsu Naval Technologies. Something like, when you're looking at your computer, you're also looking at an Intel or AMD product, though it's not visible. Nowadays, electronic components represent the most important part of military equipment cost.

Tough one here. I'd go with Evo running the wireless part of the Russian Matrix infrastructure, strictly speaking : frequencies, relays and augmented reality, while Saeder-Krupp managed to snatch contracts for to renovate the ground Matrix infrastructure, that is, fiber optics and things that actually connect Russian cities and Evo-run relays. "Snatch" would really be appropriate then.

That may mean a very long time indeed :3

But why would it sell to its bitter competitor it was in a middle of corp war on the theater of said corp war?

Dombarovsky is the name of the region; the spaceport itself is named Yasniy ("Clear", "Transparent"); and it's an ICBM positioning region, with old ICBMs used for the launches :3
Also, Kapustin Yar ("kapusta" - cabbage, "yar" - ravine).
Actually, the question would be - why would Evo need all these. But oh well, at least that way we dodge most of the questions...

Actually, is there anything hinting the tech work is not done by Roskosmos itself, with Evo Space Division only handling task assignment and order placement for Evo? Cause that's how I read that piece from Corp Guide...

Haha, brilliant; that's a truly elegant way to deal with the situation, especially minding that Russian hardware is traditionally weak.

I got the impression the wireless matrix only needs the backbone lines to be run (and that's what MSP do), with commlinks forming a mesh network and automatically providing the last mile line. Does it even need relays?
While it's obvious what S&K would be doing in that setup, what would Evo be making money on once the whole thing is implemented? Something like AR sculpting for the cities, hmmm?

The previous sentence refers to the "the decades that followed". So Saeder-Krupp may have bought the Russian launch sites at some point between Lofwyr's arrival in late 2036 or early 2037 and 2072. And so may have sold them at any point in the same time frame. Yamatetsu only becomes the smallest of the AAA in 2042, and started to expand its influence in Russia when it moved its headquarters to Vladivostok in 2059 (that is, also the point when we actually started learning things about Russia in Shadowrun).

Saeder-Krupp could buy the Russian launch sites not so long after the regime changes of 2035 and 2037, or around the time Russia would have to sign the Business Recognition Accords in 2042. And they could sell them in the late 2040ies or early 2050ies, before any sourcebook went around to tell us about it. That would be almost a decade before Yamatetsu becomes a threat in Russia. Besides, maybe S-K first sold them to a third party.

Of course, you could answer that Lofwyr, being Lofwyr, should have known as early as 2032 that Yamatetsu was going in the future to strengthen its interets in Russia and take a break from the Japanocorps. But then maybe Lofwyr actually wants Yamatetsu to win points with the Russian government and expands in space (rathe at the expense of Ares and Fuchi/Novatech/NeoNET than S-K, indeed) for some reason, while already eyeing at the future, the Kilimandjaro mass driver and the Ecuador space elevator.

Maybe just to please the Russian government and people, who still desire to be the leading nation in space (there's a reason I proposed the name Valentina Tereshkova for the Yamatetsu mission to Mars, set to arrive in 2063). So, the more spaceports there are, the better it looks.

Rather think of Evo as Verizon and Saeder-Krupp as Alcatel-Lucent (and the construction company doing the actual work to bury the fiber optics). Except that there would be some Russian administration in between that did not let Evo the opportunity to pick an Evo affiliate instead of S-K.]

Uh, what would be any large players on the market who could be interested?

Well, Great Dragons make for great excuses for inconsistencies, right
Also, Ecuador space elevator? Where is that one from?

If I recall, the Evo Mars base is named after Gagarin, too; so here pieces fall in place.
It's just that I am not sure just how often can you launch spaceships from a single spaceport. Like, do you need massive amounts of work done between the launches? And if not, why don't everyone just launch their missions from a single spaceport per nation?

Uh, neither Verizon nor Alcatel operate in Russia, so your comparison really doesn't tell me much; googling tells me that Verizon signs contracts with end users and provides them with GSM signal, while Alcatel operates the network between the GSM towers. Do I get it right?

Mostly it's about weather and being closer to the equator line (the gravitational pool is weaker there). So, if you have three different locations with varying weather during a year for each site, say: from November to February site A is completely taken by snow, from March to June site B is under heavy rains and strong winds and site C has sand storms from August to November.

Each site is unusuable a few months each year so it would be interesting having more than one launch site to solve this problem. Right now, Brazil only has Alcântara launch site, but there are plans (20-30 years old plans, mind you), to create another launch site in Natal too.

Ares, Aztechnology, Fuchi, Proteus (before their Devil Island arkoblok became operational), Shibata, some any corp that disappeared or abandoned their space projects since... You chose. Saeder-Krupp could also simply deactivate and "return" them to the Russian authorities. If it happened in the early forties, it would be far enough from even the earliest sourcebooks to justify we don't know about it.

More exactly, the bulk of Alcatel-Lucent activities is the actual manufacturing of the network components.

My suggestion would be something like, large parts of the Russian telecom infrastructure are owned by some Russian administration, and leased to telecom operators. When Russia adopted the Wireless Matrix, Yamatetsu/Evo won the main operator license. But the wireless Matrix also required a large overaul of the Russian telecom infrastructure (to handle the higher bandwith and so on), and said-administration chose Saeder-Krupp to provide the equipment and install it.

Hmm, Fuchi makes for a good universal scapegoat...

Right, S&K and Evo having to collaborate is sure to give lots and lots of run opportunities...

Ha, with War! in the region, that one will take some time to complete, so S&K can be sure about their investments into the Baikonur being safe...

Uniting the Corporate Court behind that project also ensured none of the AAA could openly support Amazonia against Aztlan. So that Hualpa and Sirrurg stay pitted in the fight with the Smoking Mirror.

Hmm, that makes sense...

I'm not sure what Lofwyr's relationships with these two Greats are...

Also, I finally uploaded some recent changes into the online doc, and the stuff for the GRU is what I'm concerned about the most, here. Is it workable? Is some of it even feasable by SR standards? I'd appreciate your opinions.

Hmm, I wonder how to make the ship descriptions interesting. Also, perhaps I should describe their typical armament besides "this many heavy turrets, this many torpedo tubes"... It's not like runners are going to go around outfitting ships most likely anyway, so makes sense to describe what each class bears...

The more I write about the Awakened Yakut, the less I understand how to make them able to stand up to Russia. With ten times less population and a firm anti-technology stance, really, it's problematic.
Sure enough, they have the Awakened forces on their side; but their fleet isn't any better for that, and I was hoping they'd be able to land on Kamchatka at least...

The only explanation would be a stalemate because they have rituals or spells on Ghost Dance-level of spells of mass destruction or close, so any movement of troops really big might be too dangerous.

If the Yakut territory has any natural resources that are actually worth mining, then it could explain why Russia didn't nuke their asses yet...

Well, SoA says they don't have anything of the scale, but it's pretty speculative there. Anyway, Great Ghost Dance-level magic is much less fearsome in 2070ies than it was during the Great Ghost Dance War, since now at least they know what it is and what to do about it. So I imagine it works pretty much as modern-day nukes - scary, but nobody's using them until the very last moment. Plus, let's be fair, it's worse than nukes.

Oh, and of course, Awakened Yakut includes pretty much all of Siberia - that is, the vast majority of the modern day Russia's resources. Resource starvation looks to be the most obvious economic reason for Russia to want the Yakut lands back.

So there you have it.
The russians can't simply nuke them.
Yakut won't go Ghost Dance on them because this would mean the russians could go to mutual destruction.
That means they must deploy troops like any conventional war.
And in this case, I think Yakut would go a guerrilla aproach, perhaps?

Yeah, that's basically the problem - Russia has like ten times the troops (okay, less in the theater, plus some of the Yakut civilians will take up arms, too) and significantly better tech.
Sure, Yakut has slightly better mages (but that's still one in a hundred among the metahuman populace) and the Awakened like free spirits and shapeshifters on its side; I just don't see them in large-scale combat with SR SOTA military machines.
Right, of course if the standing army is crushed, the Yakut will be down to guerrilla tactics (and I've written up army training courses for that in the Awakened Militia); but fighting a guerrilla campaign hardly makes for an interesting book. There should be some serious action before that, I figure.

1- Yakut rebelled taking the russians by surprise.
2- Yakut got some allies and got itself recognized as an independent nation by UN.
3- Russia complained very loudly about this and was ignored.
4- Russia finally gets its war machine to work and prepares to invade.
5- Russia invades Yakut.
6- Yakut begins guerrilla warfare and its government is transfered to an allied country as government-in-exile.

Well, that's more or less how it went. The Yakut rebelled in 31, when Russia had its hands full with Border Wars and the First Eurowar. The books, however, claim that the forces moved against them lost not because of magic, but because of not being prepared to wage war in Siberia (ahem, right). Russia was expelled from UN after starting the Eurowar, so I believe it cared little for international recognition (I'm planning to use that in the draft, too, since leaving UN most likely means leaving a bunch of international treaties, for example, ones detailing proper warfare usage). So, if Sixth World Almanac is to be believed, there have been border skirmishes since then; and one of the complaints metahumans have about the current Yakut government is moving them towards the borders where they're a frequent target of Russian raids (ahem, right). Sure enough a sudden strike may be beneficial for Yakut situation, but I doubt still it'd lead to any kind of prolonged war.

So Russia is not prepared to wage war in Siberia?!?!?!
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HUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHAHUAHAHAHA
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Well, if all Yakut have is Magic and good will, it won't be enough to stop the russians unless they can assure mutual destruction. If they are not capable of that, guerrilla warfare is the way to go.

I know, right? The books wуку all like "oooh the forest is so scary! It doesn't want us there! Oh god, the horror that is snowstorms!"

I mean, unless they have spells that create hyper-intelligent sentient cold that is out to get you I believe all vehicles, weapons and gear would be designed to work in extreme low temperatures.
Anyway...

The Russian high command would sure be prepared, if that means having plans to deal with such situation somewhere. It's another thing to have the units in position, with the needed supplies, while alrady fighting a war against two-third of Europe. Also, they would probably consider the East a lot less threatened after China exploded into the Chinese states and the US closest military base moving from Alaska to Seattle.

Besides, I can't seem to find the original source for the "unprepared" argument.

Plans I doubt; although I guess after that whole NAN deal the General Staff had all the reasons to prepare plans for large-scale rebellions. However, the forces stationed in Siberia (yeah, there's a whole Far Eastern military district there) are about as prepared to fight in Siberia as the locals themselves; can't see why would that change by the 30ies, given the tech advanced which make it easier if anything.

Target: Smuggler Havens it was, I believe. When questioned about the role of magic in the whole deal (with a statement that Russia lost a bunch of territory to a Great Ghost Dance for the second time) a shadowtalker who was there goes on how it wasn't about the magic, but about unpreparedness and blah-blah-blah.

They had 40 years to be prepared and still did mostly nothing except border skirmishes.

Those forces would be prepared. The problem would rather, would they still be there ? In 2030, Russia invades Poland and Czechia, moving into German territory : the largest military operations ever since WW2. I think it could involve moving some forces and equipment away from the East. The government, the high command and the intelligence services would focus on waging war in Europe, and could underestimate the threat of Yakut rebels (or even imagine there is no actual rebellion, but only a small number of Western infiltrated agents). The best troops can't do much if they don't receive any order.

Well, the fact is, they fought and lost, for whatever of the multitude of more or less believable reasons; a shadowtalker just says the reason wasn't magic.
Which returns us to the initial point - how to make the Awakened Militia an interesting, solid force able to stand up to the Red Army in a direct fight at least for a while. I'm thinking of massive paranormal animal usage, but I'm not sure just how believable that would be - after all, a single dragon killing the general secretary alone on a military base really left at least the readers I know puzzled.

Unless Yakut has paracritters on the level of the species of Pandora, I don't see how they could win against the Red Army...

Okay, back from vacation, working on the Yakut part, again.
Found this, gonna see if I can make something cool of it...

Working on the project sporadically again...

College winter break?
Real life pretty much prevented me to play shadowrun for the last 7 months, my only contact with the game is here...

Nah, end-semester has lower-intensity study. The lecture courses are over and all that jazz.
I've started a shared campaign setting for Shadowrun, and now everyone GMs except for me

YAY! \o/

Hey

As I PM'ed, I've read it and would like to help out if I can.

On the subject of Ghost Dance or near GGD-level rituals ending the war in Yakut's favor, it would appear that such magic can be extremely costly for those invoking it. While Daniel and NAN didn't seem to just die in droves, something could well go wrong, considering that normal, uninitiated shamans and mages can faint dead from drain if they use too much power.

I do like the idea of making the winter cold sentient on magic steroids, however <3

Hey Fatum, did you receive my PM with thoughts on the Armoury?

Sorry for a long delay, Tias, I was afkish.
Yeah, you're right, AEK-1838 must have a typo in the stats.
Belt-fed weapons, if you look into Arsenal, don't get belt size descriptions, that's why I wrote it in the description of the weapon itself.
I tried to fit as many fun plot hooks as possible into the item descriptions as well as the text itself, yeah.
Well, the poisons are broken, but they are intended as such - those are super-secret alphabet agency weapons. After all, there's a sidebar on the lab making them a few dozes at a time, and they have high availabilities. Do you think there should be a direct GM warning?
As for the IBMEL Universum - well, yeah, the prices are for separate components, but then again, other modular weapon systems are pretty much as accessible, and you can make them MAD-undetectable at chargen, too - so I thought it'd be within reason...

A GM warning is only necessary if your reader is the kind of GM that allows everything out of the book without explanation and no idea on how to manage power levels - find your own depth, and all that jazz

I'd love to take another look at it once I'm done writing on my campaign.

Hey again. Did you drop this wholly? I just flipped through it again, appreciating what a great read it is. I got hold of Shadows of Asia and 6th World Almanac, but am a bit timid with regards to writing regional history. I'd try my hand at writing Yakut forces or something, but I really need to read up on the things I guess.

Not that I dropped it wholly, it's just that I've been rather busy with my grad project; and will be at least until January.

In fact, it's pretty obvious that making it a whole tome of alt.War: Russo-Yakutian War in one go is not working out, so I want to try and turn it into finished pdfs, each containing a few linked chapters. Like Tome I: Russia (Overview of Russia, Russian military, Russian gear); then Tome II: Yakut (Overview of Awakened Yakut, Yakut military, Sagan-Zaba rebels, Yakut gear and spells); finally Tome III: War (Overview of actual campaign, and how to make it useful for your group). When those are ready, combine them into a single large tome.

It's taking some time, of course, but it's not like we're in a hurry.