Not to cut you off, but this has been noted in a 43 pages monster of a thread
It wasn't pretty

This. Makes. No. Sense.

It has all been said and done in the Stormfront review thread. However, you are, of course, fully right.

Here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...p;#entry1216094

And here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...p;#entry1212850

It goes on for a while from there.

Like the fact that the entire firearms industry in the US is really small potatoes compared to most any other industrial sector in the US that Ares is supposed to be involved in. Like automobiles. Or commercial aircraft.

It's another product showing the same careful writing and research that went into Bogota!

Okay, so was the consensus: 'The bugs got Damien' or 'The Writers don't understand squat about business!'?

So then this is going to be be a kind of boring but yet stupid plot? In keeping with the Bogota! theme, I therefore suggest the next big plot to undermine Ares involve sabotaging the Ares Pipeline International Surfing Competition run in Detroit every July.

My thought was someone here has an issue with Ares. They don't like Tony Stark, they don't like the gun image, they don't like its associated with America image or whatever but it really seems like a writer there has a mad on against Ares. I'd be down with them getting nuked from orbit or something but all the plot lines seem to revolve around Ares being run by the dumbest people on earth.

So then this is going to be be a kind of boring but yet stupid plot? In keeping with the Bogota! theme, I therefore suggest the next big plot to undermine Ares involve sabotaging the Ares Pipeline International Surfing Competition run in Detroit every July.

SR5 is around the corner, so I'm back again, as I have been for every new editions!

I completed my collection (350$ in the past few weeks, it's good to no longer be a student!)

Did you get Montreal 2074? You know you want to.

My thought was someone here has an issue with Ares. They don't like Tony Stark, they don't like the gun image, they don't like its associated with America image or whatever but it really seems like a writer there has a mad on against Ares. I'd be down with them getting nuked from orbit or something but all the plot lines seem to revolve around Ares being run by the dumbest people on earth.

My thought was (after someone notified me of the similarities to iPhone problems) someone has a problem with Apple Computers and vented his revenge fantasies on Ares.

You'd almost think that internal turmoil was causing the corporation to under-perform as players jockied for position, causing stock imbalances that would allow for consolidation of control or the like.

But that'd be silly.

You'd almost think that internal turmoil was causing the corporation to under-perform as players jockied for position, causing stock imbalances that would allow for consolidation of control or the like.

But that'd be silly.

And I am still hoping that Damien has lost it (preferably insects), somehow, and will be ousted as a result. I mean, he has to be. Otherwise, his incomptence will start to taint Aurelius, Vogel and Daviar. Because once you start believing that Damien Knight is a boob for letting that Excalibur debacle happens on his watch, you then have to Wonder how incompetent his enemies have to be to fail to oust him! It's not like he own 51% of the corp.

And I am still hoping that Damien has lost it (preferably insects), somehow, and will be ousted as a result. I mean, he has to be. Otherwise, his incomptence will start to taint Aurelius, Vogel and Daviar. Because once you start believing that Damien Knight is a boob for letting that Excalibur debacle happens on his watch, you then have to Wonder how incompetent his enemies have to be to fail to oust him! It's not like he own 51% of the corp.

Okay, so was the consensus: 'The bugs got Damien' or 'The Writers don't understand squat about business!'?

What if the whole issue with the Excalibur a feint intentionally done and authorized by Knight?

Little bit of both.

Have you read War! yet? If you don't have it, for the love of little green Nerps don't pay money for it.

What if the whole issue with the Excalibur a feint intentionally done and authorized by Knight?

Ahem. Too late. Have it, haven't really read it, though. In fact, I bought it toward the end of my 4th edition run, not in my recent mad dash to buy what has been published since in preparation for the 5th.

So what is so bad about it?

Why should he burn down his own house?

Literally everything, although I think the current record-holders for worst things in the book are the suggestions of a submarine extraction from the docks of Bogota, which is 8,612 feet above sea level on a plateau in the middle of the Andes

And loot a Scalpel of Jew Mauling +2. I am not making this up.

Page number, please!

WORK BRINGS FREEDOM

Oswiecim was under a spiritual barrier for a number of years. Oswiecim was home to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most well known of the Nazi party’s concentration camps. During the Holocaust, 1.1 million people died within its walls. This led it to become one of the most haunted places on the planet. Ghosts of all shapes and sizes dwelled within, frightening out or murdering all residents of Oswiecim. Because of the sheer magnitude of the haunting, a great number of other things found home there.

For the inclined occult investigator, Auschwitz-Birkenau is a treasure trove. It’s also a remarkably dangerous trap. Earlier this year, an entrepreneur named Tetsuo Shuumatsu hired a cabal of sorcerers, charging them with the removal of the barrier. He’s an arms dealer, one who specializes in the weapons necessary to take down ghosts. With such an infestation of ghosts, only a silly buyer would hesitate to pay top dollar for his wares. His greed opened this treasure trove to the public, allowing those without a sense of self-preservation to have a unique opportunity to drudge for necromantic artifacts.

The town proper is effectively still a town, albeit a town inhabited by the angry and hungry dead. They don’t take kindly to the living, but aren’t necessarily hostile unless provoked. Many are simply living out echoes of their past existences as harmless villagers. The real problem comes from the concentration camps proper. The three main campuses are surrounded by about fifty smaller camps. Each of the smaller camps is a hotbed of supernatural activity, but nothing compared to the magnitude of the central collective.

In particular, Auschwitz II is remarkable. It was the source of the vast majority of deaths—it’s what most people think of when referencing Auschwitz. It’s nightmare made flesh, almost a living organism unto itself. The halls audibly scream and cry, the ghosts beg for release so much that most people couldn’t even hear themselves speak. For your average runner, Auschwitz II is suicide. Only the most enterprising groups will survive the trip. But such a trip can result in great rewards (see The Fleshfinder, below).

THE FLESHFINDER

Deep within the bowels of Auschwitz II during WWII, Dr. Eduard Wirths conducted and supervised thousands of odd experiments on the human body. He tested mustard gas on innocents. He mutilated twins. He held people in tanks of ice water for hours or until dead. He exposed prisoners to malaria. He forced them to drink seawater. One particular implement from his experiments, a rusted old scalpel, was left in the labs. Over many years, it was energized by the various ghosts passing by it, feeding off their death energies. At this point, it’s taken on a life of its own.

The rusty old scalpel craves death. It only finds itself at home when flush with warm blood. Although this makes it a remarkably effective weapon, anyone holding it is subject to the sounds of its past victims. As a function of this, when the weapon is in hand, the character is considered distracted and suffers a –4 dice pool modifier to all Perception Tests. If she attempts to Observe in Detail as a Simple Action, she only suffers a –2 dice pool modifier.
Reach: 0, Damage: (Str/2+4)P, AP: –2, Availability: N/A (unique item), Market Value: 10,000¥

Literally everything, although I think the current record-holders for worst things in the book are the suggestions of a submarine extraction from the docks of Bogota, which is 8,612 feet above sea level on a plateau in the middle of the Andes; and the mission hook that involves killing Jewish ghosts in Auschwitz concentration camp to steal Nazi gold at the behest of Catholic priests.

Literally everything, although I think the current record-holders for worst things in the book are the suggestions of a submarine extraction from the docks of Bogota, which is 8,612 feet above sea level on a plateau in the middle of the Andes; and the mission hook that involves killing Jewish ghosts in Auschwitz concentration camp to steal Nazi gold at the behest of Catholic priests.

Based on the lore about ghost I am aware of in SR, 'ghosts' are wild spirits that have been shaped/imprinted by the violence that occured in this location, not the actual souls of Jewish prisoners who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau and are somehow (incredibly unfairly!) still stuck in the domain of their executioners. That would be incredibly insensitive.

aping mega-damage (or classic SR's Naval damage scale) would have been better.

damn near every piece of gear is either broken, underpowered, or has no good reason to be in a typical Shadowrun campaign.

It is the only, though rather broken, way of dealing with this in a dice pool system.

Don't forget Slow, or "immunity to all kinds of kinetic/corporeal weapons" ... including thor shots and nukes. And that a bag of hand grenades wired to simultaneously explode is a poor man's nuke.

Not really. You could have simple scaled the damage, so one Naval die = maybe 10 regular dice, or something like that.

Not really. You could have simple scaled the damage, so one Naval die = maybe 10 regular dice, or something like that.

Rating 7 commlinks break the system in more ways than I want to think about

Literally everything, although I think the current record-holders for worst things in the book are the suggestions of a submarine extraction from the docks of Bogota, which is 8,612 feet above sea level on a plateau in the middle of the Andes; [...]

But it's not clear to me how such a fiasco is even possible. I can accept that whoever was in charge of developing the Excalibur is a moron who produced a complete dud. That happens all the time. But why didn't his superior scrap the project when he saw it was going nowhere during any of the dozens of progress reports he would have received? But, hey, let's assume that every single person in the chain of command of AresArms between Project Exaclibur and whoever is in charge of the division is a complete boob. Fine. But how the hell did they get AresMedia (or whatever the media division is called) to participate in a moronic and doomed coverup?

The F-35 is a much better example. 500 mil is still relatively moderate a loss for a large second-row state like Germany (the current floods in the Northeast will coust more than double the amount in reconstruction); 395 bn is a substantial sum even for the bloated monster that is the Pentagon.

The real problem is: the Excalibur can't possibly be even in the EuroHawk's league, cost-wise. Small arms are small fry, economically. Niche product, even.

To use a real life example, in Germany there is currently there is a huge scandal going on because 500 Million € were sunk into a drone project over half a decade which has now been scrapped because someone found out, after all this time, that those drones would not be allowed to fly in German (or European) airspace by law and that retrofitting them with the needed equipment to comply with regulations would be hugely expensive. n.

Also, the writer himself clearly thinks these are, in fact, trapped souls. Yes, in that wacko scenario, those are indeed the prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau stuck in the domain of their executiners. And the worst part is the almost pornographic tone of the - not in-game, but out-of-game - writeup. So yes. It is incredibly insensitive.

See, it has been scrapped. Ares Excalibur was not scrapped, it was sent in production and they are trying to sell it knowing full well it's an awful product that will earn them scorn.

What you describe is only a scandal because those 500M euros are public funds. If Ares waste 500M, it's their own damn money, it's not a scandal. But if they try selling a product they know to be abominable crap instead of scrapping it, that hurts their brand, which is very costly in the long term. Especially since Ares is a corp that brands pretty much everything it sales. If Maser Industrial Electronics produce a crappy drone, few people will realize that Saeder-Krupp owns it and it will not affect their perception of the quality of the products put out by Onotari Arms (also SK). But if an Ares gun is crap, it affects the perception of the entire Ares Brand which is most of what they produce. And they are doing this only to earn petty change in the short term!

The submarine route out of Bogotá was mentioned in Deadly Waves, not War!.

So, would you recommand I get Deadly Waves?

While not spot on as an example though we could go with the pinto. Though death trap your lawyers think wont amount to enough in lawsuite is a bit different. The pinto functioned as a car, it just blew up if hit in the wrong spot. As I understand it the excalibur did not function in its desinged role.