Hello chummers, tonight I'm sending my players into the Redmond Barrens, where Knight Errant does not patrol. Now in my current game the players are not runners but instead FBI agents, and tonight they must conduct a raid. Their target is a compound in the barrens, maybe a dozen guys, something they could normally handle in house, but because it's Redmond...

My question to the boards is this- What would Knight Errant bring along as support? I remember reading somewhere that they always took two Citymasters along filled with officers, or am I thinking of something else? How many boots would they put on the ground.

You arrive and leave via air, with enough spares and firepower to handle most anything that shows up. You'd have at least two birds carrying the assault team, 4 gunships, a command ship high up and at least two spare birds way of of danger carrying some very heavily armed rescue people but also with enough lift capacity that both of them can extricate the crew and tactical people on any of the other birds.

He said Redmond, not Bogota. That's overkill, even for Redmond Barrens.

However, you're probably looking at two CityMasters and one of those LAV-98 Devil Rat APCs that Knight errand was said to be purchasing for Redmond (From the Runner's Black Book,) at the least. One of those vehicles, at minimum, will have a ram plate, to get the convoy through roadblocks, and there WILL be air support, probably a chopper. The CityMasters will have at least LMGs in their turrets, probably HMGs, and the APC will have something like an assault cannon or gauss rifle with a coaxial HMG. There will be at least one wagemage with spirit backup in the convoy somewhere, too.

It depends on what flavor of Redmond Barrens you go with. To some folks, they're just a crappy neighborhood in a modern city. To others, they ARE Bogota; you'll see gangers fire RPGs at low-flying choppers and stuff just for fun, regular full-scale milspec assault rifle fights left and right, etc, etc. Like lots of other stuff, it just depends on exactly what part of the fiction/timeline/metaplot you've latched onto as "your" Redmond.

That would be my Touristville. Area with clubs and bars, where corpkiddies go slummin'.


That would be deeper inside.
Not necessarily RPGs (unless you're a low flying KE chopper ^^), or assault rifles (people can't afford those ^^), but most certainly violence if you don't know the area.
Plastic Jungles, the Glow, the Verge. Gangland and abandoned buildings, think Escape from New York.
(Incidentally, a troll named King Mungo rules the Crash Zone. He IS canon. )

KE wouldn't venture deep into these territories unless it's a highly necessary operation, but then with the full loadout, including T-Birds.
Raids in the outlying parts?
Two Mobmasters or Citymasters with MGs in the weapon mounts with full 10-man squads inside and one operator (read: combat hacker) each. One or two mages on the ground with 1-2 spirits each. Full SWAT armor with tacnet, automatic shotguns and assault rifles, maybe a light machine gun. 2 'eyes in the sky' Ford LEBD-1 drones, armed with light machine guns, but mostly for scouting duty. One combat helicopter (Yellowjacket, most likely) and one transport helicopter (Dragon) on standby if things go south and teams need to be extracted.

Something like this I would guess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cns_FOzAUGk

A few Citymasters sound like a good start, plus combat engineer tanks (for the omnipresent car husks, but maybe also intentional barriers), drones for overhead surveillance and if necessary fire support, and a lot of medevac on standby. This little convoy will take some time to get to the target and will hardly remain unnoticed, therefore it would make sense to infiltrate a small team beforehand which bags the baddies and holds the fort until the convoy arrives (think Black Hawk Down).

And when already taking such an effort, KE will certainly go down the list of other targets in the general area. If they cannot turn up enough suspects they might also make surprise visits to random buildings in the neighborhood. KE are a for-profit enterprise, and therefore will want to maximize the number of arrests and seizures during the operation, and we know that quotas make cops creative...

Well, I picture a Mob/Citymaster like the thing out of Aliens. Vehicles like that can easily move car wrecks and even smash through makeshift barriers of piled up wrecks, IMO

I don't think so. The longer you stay in the area after achieving your primary objective, the more opportunity the opposition has to regroup and counterattack.

If it needs to be a surprise raid I'd consider an aerial assault more viable.

Critias is correct.

When I last had KE hit an abandoned apartment complex in the barrens, expecting low to moderate resistance (i.e., 1-4 people with guns), I sent in two helicopters. Each had six grunts and one drone. First chopper would provide overwatch. The second would drop one guy off on a neighboring building as sniper/overwatch, then drop the remaining grunts and the drones on the roof of the target building. Then the choppers would swap and chopper 1 would do the same.

My general rule of thumb when playing police is to bring at least three times as many cops as the expected number of opponents (resources permitting), or throw disposable assets like cheap drones. If you can come in from the air to an abandoned part of the barrens, this rule still stands. However, if you're coming in from the ground, it depends on the route you're taking. If you can take a route through quieter turf, or turf where the gangs are relatively friendly, you can break it up into a two vehicles, ideally with a drone scouting ahead for roadblocks. If it's unfriendly, you'll want more vehicles, only armored ones, plus a network of drones to provide overwatch, and at least one chopper to rain hellfire. But they're only doing that if there's a lot of money on the line.

My view of the barrens is something like the movie Elite Squad, except heavier ordinance and more armor (on both sides). The gangs are doing business, so they won't necessarily shoot on cops ... but they won't necessarily leave them alone either.

As was pointed out the barrens are seen differently by different people, and there are different parts even then. If what you are after is a group that is just hiding out in the barrens and has nobody who is going to rally supporters, then that's one thing. If it's the leadership of a major gang who can summon up a few thousand armed supporters in minutes, then that's another.

It also depends on roads. I can easily see an area like that having very few roads that are passable for large vehicles, and those would have roadblocks/extortion collection places run by the larger and more powerful gangs. While there isn't a lot of profit in messing with KE, that doesn't mean they won't do it under the right circumstances.

And just because it looks like you can crash through an obstacle doesn't mean it's a good idea. A few hundred pounds of explosives planted in the road will ruin pretty much any armored vehicles entire week.

In order to regroup they would have to be a unified group in the first place

The whole point of rolling in with such an amount of force is to encourage everybody to keep their heads down and wait for the storm to pass. If it looks like the storm will not pass the locals will certainly become slightly unfriendly, but for a few hours at least everybody will be busy looking innocent. Gangs are also for-profit organizations, and needlessly butting heads with KE would be bad for the bottom line.

The most important part, as stated, is the objectives. Any smart organization will try to respond with the right level of force: bullets, gas, and bodies aren't free after all.

The real question is what kind of raid is planned, and on who. I prefer to use real world examples when I plan military operations in RPGs, and more so in shadrowrun. So, are u planning a routine clearing out of the edges of the barrens? Look st the regular raids into the farfellas in Brazil. A extraction of a high priority target with massive gang connections? Look at black hawk down. Though this is light in shadow run, do consider that the use of massive force can have long term implications that KE would avoid at all costs: smashing in with tanks and high power might cause the barrens to boil over.

It should be mentioned that in reality, police response to serious threats tends to involve overwhelming force - not 'the right level of force'. Or, rather, you could say that the right level of force is defined as completely overwhelming force.

For them to regroup and organize, sure, but it doesn't totally undermine his point -- the longer you're there, the better the chances of something going wrong. The Watts Riots in the 60s were sparked by cops arresting a drunk driver, and the suspect's mother coming out and arguing with them; sometimes the weirdest things will set off a neighborhood. Folks don't have to be a unified group to be dangerous.

I think the cops would still very strongly be of a "fast in, fast out" mindset.


Which is still to say, yeah, I'm in agreement generally with your point. They've probably got a window of time where they're probably safe, but an awful lot of it -- still/again -- comes down to wait neighborhood they roll into, who they're after, how things go down, how bloody/nasty things appear to be, who else is in the neighborhood, what the cops did last week or the week before...all comes down to the story the GM wants to tell.

Their best bet is still probably to "shock and awe" the locals, but intimidation only works on rational actors. There's still plenty that can go wrong (if a GM wants it to). With as many simmering tensions are in the Barrens, with as many weapons as are lying around, with as many violent gangers there are, with as many 'runners as populate those places, with as many syndicates as there are trying to protect who-knows-what secrets, and with as many drugs and BTL chips are floating around? If the GM wants it to, shit can go sideways a bunch of different ways.

See "The Raid: Redemption" (or its American remake: Dredd) as to what can go wrong exactly how quickly in such an area
(For best viewing pleasure: Use hilarious subtitles)

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I’m still going to go with the city masters over helicopters, but I will definitely have a helicopter gunship on support. Sengir, I definitely like the bit about KE going out on a quotoa hunt and getting the most bang for their buck; gonna show that in game.

You reminded me of the Gangland TV show episode about Cabrini Green. That is an interesting idea for the barrens as well. It's a poor and violent area in a relatively stable city. Sounds like Seattle to me.

On topic, twice as many police as they think they need, with backup waiting.

Yeah, the idiocy of the head cheese in that movie is pretty astonishing. Clear each floor completely, but without enough people to maintain security?

I avoided Cabrini Green. My guard unit was down by the Robert Taylor Homes. OMG. A two-mile strip along State, with twenty eight 16-story high rises. 27,000 residents at one point, completely controlled by the Gangster Disciples while the CPD station at the north end tried to keep things under some semblance of control. Not terribly safe in the daytime, I can't imagine living there.

What I meant to say was more along the lines of "the most overwhelming force that can actually be reasonably applied". Its the difference between say, a cop requesting backup on a traffic violation, and a cop requesting a SWAT team on a stop. Its a measure of a force versus logistics. As well, its important to note that there is a level of force that triggers "little guy syndrome", looking like the big bad bully shoving around a little guy, though that also is based partly on time stayed in the area.

Sum up the tactics: "wham bam thank you ma'am", or in some circles "give them the boot, don't stop to piss on them."

He was an REMF. And it shows.

You mean like, maybe, a gang?

Last time I read up on SR Seattle, the barrens weren't lacking in at least moderately organized groups. Of course not every gang in the barrens will be sufficiently organized and equipped for taking on a KE platoon, but some are. And even those who aren't really up to the challenge, but crazy enough to try, can still hurt.
Sure, they may keep their heads down at first as long as KE seems to be going only after the other guys over there. But if the KE troopers start randomly kicking in doors all over the area, as your earlier post seems to suggest, they will respond.
Even if they avoid a head-on confrontation, they can still make a fair bit of trouble, like setting up IEDs and such.


And that holds true in reverse, too. Needlessly butting heads is also bad for KE's bottom line. And not all gangs in Shadowrun are rational profit-first crime businesses.

Basically while I agree that there is a certain time window where the "shock and awe" works in KE's favor, I don't think they'd push their luck overly by going on random forays.

Old information, but probably still useful:
According to New Seattle (SR3, 2060s), Lone Star's minimum force for an E zone was two citymasters carrying twelve to fifteen officers in heavy armor plus one rigger per vehicle and at least two combat mages, all of it led by an "elite officer".
The mimimum force for a Z zone consisted of 3 citymasters with 25 officers (full armor), air support from helicopters (no number given), one rigger per vehicle plus one dedicated drone rigger, at least five combat mages and one combat decker and three "elite officers" coordinating all that.

On the other hand, KE might be willing to exchange common courtesy with the existing power structures in the area. Looking to pad your quota? Well, that gang over there knows a scumbag that's bad for everyone's business; leave the blatant gang activity on the street alone, and you can bust down a door, take down the perp who'd make you look REALLY good before he can even wake up, and drag his bloody corpse out. That's a mass-murderer or mad bomber tagged in exchange for not butting heads with some "common gangers."

Maybe if a large gang pulls all its resources together it might stand a chance on its own, but even that will take time.


I should hope so, a raid in the Barrens without KE/LS putting down some civil unrest with wanton brutality would be boring. Yes, it's a bit of "the means have to justify the end", a commando raid which grabs the suspects without any casualties and is gone two minutes later would be too clean for a dystopia

PS: And for an RL perspective, look at the video I posted initially. When the "undefeated army" got wind of what was coming, they packed their stuff and left, despite (at that time) being highly ideologically motivated and despite Bogside being viewed as sacred ground of the republican cause.

They might also go in quiet. Stealth chopper with a small elite covert ops team, in and out in 20 minutes, before anyone in the area knows what's going on.

Or, alternately, hire runners.


-k

Check out Ghost Cartels if you have a chance. There is an FBI assault team in there as I recall, which can serve as a baseline.