Oh lord no, when I screw up, I *want* to be called on it. Only way to get better is to find your mistakes. I think only ... hrm. 1, 2, 3 ... three things I've done, plus two April Fools, are out thusfar. There's a PDF one that I just got back for a new pass on which, hopefully, will open a few campaigns up for people, and there's an adventure on the way as well. Hopefully, people will enjoy them, but my big goal is always to give campaigns more angles. I want every page to have at least one hook of some kind that can be turned into something by a GM... a suggestion here, a name dropped there, SOMEthing. I know how much people care up products, taking chunks they want and leaving the bones behind and that's fine. I just want to make sure that you always walk away with something on your plate.

Canon's tricky, since I'm sort of a research addict. Nothing should ever go against Canon, but that doesn't mean that a game should be calcified, either. Take old stuff and grow it, rather than *change* it. If mutiple sources contradict, figure out which one should trump, clean it up, and move forward. Mind you, my big issue of late has been scale ... I like the focus on a much smaller scale than SR4 did, while other people like going Epic. Critias and I have really hit it off, despite having wildly different ideas of power levels. He's just *awesome* and he puts up with me being the #2 elf fan, so.

If there was any one thing I'd want, however, it's to have a "FASA offices" type thing, where we could have a crew of writers, editors, and artists, that all lived in the sme city and shared a common office. Communication is the lifeblood of any sort of moving=parts venture like a comic book company or Shadowrun's backstory and not touching base with one another can be problematic. We've had to do some re-writing in teh wake of some calls here or there, but it also gave us new opportunities.

For instance, I originally had Sirrurg flying into Puerto Rico under the cover of hurricanes to try and dodge the "Thor Strike, everything dies" issue, but Jet Set came out while I was writing that and, in there, the Corporate COuncil takes all the orbital weapons offline. That tidbit had slipped past many writers, and once it got out there, it opened quite a few doors for other actions to be undertaken while the "I Win" button was down. To be perfectly honest, I'd have been fine with them staying offline forever, but, it's pretty obvious why the corps would want otherwise, and they win these discussions.

Why bother? It would just be some old drafts of the new rules, probably wouldn't have limits, or matrix bonuses...

I'll help you look.

That refers to the Free Marine Corps (FMC, see?) and their terrible writeup in 10 Mercs. For the record, I liked the FMC's idea until 10 Mercs and stormfront. There are two other descendants of the US Marine Corps, the UCAS Marine Coprs and the CAS Marines (in some sources called Ferrets, specifically so in Just Compensation).

It does go further than paladins or Wildcats (which might be annoying but not personally insulting to anyone) because it's dragging real-world nationalism into the setting. There's paladins and there's Tom Clancy. While not going the full way, it is approaching the type and level of offensiveness of War!.


There you go.. That's pretty much the standard definition. See also here (careful, TVtropes will take an hour of your life as payment, and here as well as here for semi-fun tests to run characters through.


Huh. Which would those things be? Well, 'The Ghost Decade' from stormfront obviously. What else?


You're writing the Battle of New York? Or has that been cancelled entirely?


Well, in general terms, and with your particular work too, this is something that has been managed. Even with books I have no love lost for, there usually is something useful.


I can see how this can get very frustrating for a writer. And while a FASA offices situation seems out of the question, maybe mandatory online conferences are not? But I know neither CGL's strategies there, nor their internal workings or if such a conference skype/chat/whatever is even feasible schedule-wise. But communication is key in collaborative writing, and it seems to me this doesn't really always happen with CGL's products.

Other than that, the orbital weapons are, I think, a necessary counterbalance to magical forces like dragons.


I'm kinda torn there actually. As a player, I prefer not-too-epic runs; I love the way Missions season 4 dealt with that. As a reader of sourcebooks, though, I want to see the big picture, the epic stuff, the politics and machinations of power, Alachia and Brane Deigh throwing cakes at each other, that sort of thing. Ever since Land of Promise (and probably a bit before), I like where SR is taking the elf lands again, after being very, very, very disappointed with their handling in early SR4.

My first work is the appendix in the Twilight Horizon, introducing a whole lot of Simsense tech. It was something that'd been lying fallow for years and there was a huge opening. It probably would have been better as a PDF, but, A) the chapter needed doing and B) it would have been in the place of CanRay's Sim Dreams, so, glad it didn't go that way.

#2 is a PDF which is getting re-written currently. A few bits I later wrote drew from it, so it'll be a tad out of sequence, but still works.

#3 was April Fools of 2012, with Kunoichi, the lesbian Elf ninja stripper, because it needed to be done.

#4 was the Dirty South section of Dirty Trilcks.

#5 was the Ghost Decade in Stormfront.

#6 is this year's April Fools, with the hoverboard and humanoid drone.

I also chipped in with some Shadowtalk in the 2050 book and Stormfront (The lead of the Fastjack chapter was amazingly kind and asked if anyone wanted to step into some shoes to say their goodbyes. About everyone got a line in. Downright personal, that.)

I did about half of the Archtypes in SR5, which was a *huge* honor.

I have a Mission adventure on the way, and that's as far as my current Catalyst workload takes me. I've gotten to do some L5R stuff, and I have a bit down the road for Cartoon Action Hour as well. As noted, this isn't a huge body of work, but it's ongoing.



Not me, and not cancelled last I heard. The original writer had to bow out when the due date was approaching, causing a bit of a scramble to find a replacement. I was tempted, but it just didn't fit into my schedule while I was running for office. I'm not sure where that one's currently at.




Good! That part's tres important.



Yeah, there's talk, and everyone on a book has a line of communication with one another, but nothing beats being able to go down the hall and go, "Hey guys, I was thinking about using blank in a story. Are they still alive?" You can put up all manner of things on a billboard, interplay between creators can result in whole new things, you get a better feel for the big picture, etc etc etc. Online meetings also have to deal with real life schedules and so on. It's the way things are and I get that, but having an HQ to operate out of and core organization is unbelievably useful.

And yes, orbital can counterbalance dragons, but there's not much to counterbalance them. It's a sort of "I win" button, which has uses, but also gives you a default that obliterates discussions. "What happens if a rogue element Thor's the Aztechnology HQ?" and all that. I get jittery when anything's in the position of be-all end-all in power scales.



Critias is the king of all Elves. I like what he's doing better than what *I* planned. A few writers still have "Elves are uber awesome and the bestest at everything and you rock and they suck whee!" poisoning from the initial Immortal Elves and Tir writeups from waaaaay back in the day, but the society that the Tir brought in is *fascinating* and the rebellion and aftermath gave a ton of room for exploration ... but nobody ever did until Crit. I owe him huge for that.

That is one of the many things that bugged me about Storm Front. Aztechnology finally being the first to gear up and throw money at taking down a dragon in a SERIOUS way, and not being allowed to finish the job.

If you're going to have a massive gamechanger like that, at least follow through on it.

For all I know, there are bunches of antisat weapons, from lasers to kinetic penetrators, that can hardly be countered by the target. So it's not like the weapon platforms in space are invincible.

Fixed it for you.


For what it's worth, I just finished reading Sim Dreams and the Eurowars history and quite enjoyed both of them. I'm not sure who wrote them (as in I don't know which freelancer's real name matches up with which username) but I think they were well written. Are they high literature? Of course not, and the story about Bull at the end of Sim Dreams left me quite confused but the whole shadowtalk section in Sim Dreams was fantastic.

Oh, and I want to know what the heck is up with the sheep.

Orbits are pretty darn predictable. A mobile multi-megawatt anti-aircraft laser could certainly make a sat nice and toasty if it's got the right sensors and wavelength.

Check the names here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=30621

I'll take your word for it since I don't have it. Though nationalism is about the last thing I'd accuse Catalyst of. Maybe the writer was a marine or something, but from thier products nationalism does not seem to be high on their priority list.

To answer the OP question, War was a low point but I liked quite a few of the products after that.

I liked most of Storm Front, especially the political stuff (Tir and Seattle). I was titillated by the short bit about Fear of the Dark. Yes! The monsters are back in black! I was getting tired of the civil right angle. I loved the bit with Fastjack at the end. Yes, possession has been done before in SR, but this is the kind of slowburning possession you could possibly inflict on a player. I am eager to learn more.

I mostly liked also books like Jet Set, the Artefact serie etc.

Really, the thing that annoys me the most in all those books is the number of mistakes and weird sentences. It's jarring. Doesn't anyone proof read this stuff? I am not even a native speaker and yet they jump to my attention. Sheesh.

Anyway, overall I like most metaplots of the 73-75 period and haven't regretted my purchases.

Nah, orbital weaponry can be defeated in a number of ways using magic or technology or combinations of the two. Even comparatively low tech approaches work, like poisoning the drop orbits by bursting another orbital object. With Thor shots yeah there is a high vertical velocity, so I guess that amounts to powerful magic to counter the kinetic energy, but there is nearly zero horizontal velocity! Shouldn't a spirit of the air using domain type powers be able to push the shot to the side? Now, the time to ground is short and you have to take the distance from the earth at which a spirit cannot operate into consideration. So I don't know if something like aiming at a lone desert compound and hitting a bustling coastal metroplex instead is possible, but there should be potential for pretty hefty collateral damage.

Let me quote some highlights from their write-up:
"one of the most honorable, reliable, and capable units in the world, they still adhere to the traditions and ideas of the old United States Marine Corps. When they first formed, they had approximately 150 members. Today they have almost three thousand with armor, aviation, and naval units";

"-Semper Fi! -Oooh-rah.";

"Free Marines met heavy resistance during egress and suffered almost forty percent casualties [of 315] during a fighting withdraw with Aztlan forces. Aztlan casualties were estimated in the thousands";

their flagship is a 884m-long marine assault vessel, supplemented by two marine transport vessels, one of which was stolen from the UCAS (and the CIA failed at sinking it afterwards despite numerous attempts) and the other served as a museum ship before a few shadowrunners stole her and the FMC brought her back to combat readiness;

"much of their equipment is still second hand or obsolete. Outsiders see this as a detriment, but Free Marines have embraced this and make up for the lack of modern equipment with intense training.  is training has elevated the skills of the average Free Marine to near those of most Special Forces and created a very unique mindset. Individual Free Marines are highly motivated and tenacious (bordering on fanatical) individuals who take every advantage in combat. One Aztlan commander once wrote about a Free Marine: “When he ran out of ammunition, he used his knife. When he lost the arm holding the knife, he used his hand and feet. When we got close, he used his teeth. It took over fifty rounds to finally kill him and he still took sixteen more of my men with him to the hell where he was spawned.” Many insiders believe that if the Free Marie Corps continues at their current rate of expansion, they will become the newest top-tier mercenary unit in the world within a decade".

Yes, but apparently we're ignored much of the time. I do what I can, as do the other proofreaders, but the final decision is in the hands of the editors.

It is good but needs Mungo to be great.

I had no idea. That is pretty darn mary-sueish.

Okay, orbital weapons and Mary Sues aside, I actually wanted to say something about a reference wiki. In a sense the current English wiki has a different focus from what I believe is needed. It tries to reconcile sources and create a cohesive account on a Sixth World topic. Inevitably the article writers put their own interpretation into the text and take a lot of the original style and subtlety out. This is necessary since shadow dossiers and similar text forms are converted into encyclopedic articles. But if you write new Shadowrun pieces you want to be exposed to the original material instead. Especially so to understand the wiggling space the old material leaves, as opposed to the more definitive statements that go into a summary article.

So actually much less is needed from a reference wiki and that lowers the bar for achieving it considerably. For example have a look at this article from the English wiki: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/San_Francisco It should not look like this. It does because I added a bunch of references when a discussion about San Francisco came up in a different thread. But it has yet to be transformed into a real article. I would argue though it is exactly what you want for a reference wiki. You take single info bits, you structure them, give the reference and at most note possible contradictions. Forget the fancy footnotes used in the San Francisco article "osb.23" and "swa.121" will suffice. Writing an article on a topic from say three different sources takes a lot of time. Putting all info fragments from the three sources into an article skeleton, much faster. Now, there are a few more things I would add, short summaries focusing on mood and themes. Tables and lists of facts. Tropes would be fun. But the core is structured info bits plus reference, it should give a start into the original source material and that is all.

To the form: I would definitely do it as a public wiki but maybe with a closed user group for write access. It should be possible to make articles read-only for non-users but make discussion pages writable for everyone. So non-users can still contribute, but worries about the quality are allayed by having selected editors responsible for changing the articles based on public input. I would also make it public for a different reason. The reference articles can be used as a start for articles in the encyclopedic wiki. And of course you can take a well-referenced wiki article and dissolve it down to facts and references. Catalyst would not necessarily have to do this, really anybody with the willingness to invest in the infrastructure could set up such a wiki (or just use a wiki farm.) I assume since the articles are much less work than those for the standard wiki there is some chance it might take off. -- No guarantees of course. -- Once it does the writers for official Shadowrun will probably come because it can help them with their research.

Sounds like the Marine Corps to me... Semper Fi and Ooooh-Rah!.

Q: How does one steal an amphibious assault vessel?
A: In a Hollywood action movie (so pink mohawk?)

It sound what marines think of the marine corps.

Though honestly wildcats and paladins have bigger legends than that.

That's the polite way of putting it.


Paladins maybe, Wildcats? Hardly. For one, they're an actual special forces unit, not Lv 2 goons. Also, nowhere had they ever such a description. And neither Paladins nor Wildcats develop from a tiny footnote into the wold's biggest mercenry unit in one PDF and one splatbopok writeup.

Heh... True... We do have some interesting "legends" in the Corps.

Without a doubt. Those Native Americans and Elves are.... well, never mind.

Maybe I am missing it but the PDF was 10 mercs. It was probably about the top 10 merc units in the world, a world where merc untis play on the same field as special forces and standard military units. If the book was Special Forces I am sure each of the special forces untis would have write ups just as awesome or more awesome. Were te other merc untis descriptions like Met 10,000 yeah there are 10,000 of them but they suck. And yeah the Wildcats may not have had a write up their legend is spread out through the fiction and setting of the world and they are made out to be unstoppable in combat, the best fighters on the planet vs the more ninja style elf forces. I am kind of tempted to buy this PDF now to see how bad it is, it sounds Awsul if it is getting people this riled up.

All I see from the parts quoted is kind of the standard feel for a Marine, tough, highly trained, a bit insane and poorly equipped with a few cool stories for exploits which I think every military unit in history probably has. Without seeing the write ups for the othe merc units it is hard to say how over the top it is compared to the others though. As people seem to have an issue with it I assume the disaprity is large.

10 Mercs is, in fact, about a whole cross-section of merc units. None of them are top tier like MET2000, 10.000 Daggers or Tsunami, which are described in more depth in other supplements.
In general, the PDF was worth its price, and the write-ups were interesting, but the FMC is a full-on Mary Sue, even there.

For the record: MET2000 is not 10.000, nor do they suck. They consist of 200.000 soldiers, most of which are upgraded with cyber- and bioware. They have their own secret service, they have various troop types and heavy hardware. They are a corporation and they are good, just as the other three I mentioned. They are so big in fact, that they have several special units, as well as a navy and an airforce and also the logistics to ship their troops across the world.
I don't have hard numbers about Tsunami and 10kD, but they are in direct competition with MET2k, so it is probably safe to assume that they are rather good as well.

The FMC on the other hand came from a throwaway comment about Kane freeing his ladylove from Aztlan claws, where they had a troop strength of 300 and lost a few guys. They earned a few million, generous how Kane is, and got an America-Class assault carrier for their small fleet of all in all 3 vessels.

This is where they stopped being cool.
The FMC writeup suddenly boosts their numbers to 3000 because "haha, we're good at keeping our numbers secret". They win all their fights and get all the money.
Then suddenly, Storm Front.
MET2000 and Tsunami cease to exist in the war about nothing, because of zombie dust. Completely. Despite the fact, that MET2000 has 40% of their numbers in permanent posting with the AGS Bundeswehr.
Who waltzes in and pacifies the area under the authority of the UN? That's right. The FMC. Who is now, suddenly, one of the supreme merc units of the world? Yes, you guessed correctly. The FMC! 10.000 Daggers have apparently no problem with that and quietly step aside letting the oo-rah boys in blond and blue be the heroes.

So yes. This right there comes across as one writer's fanboy-ish attempt to bring back American exceptionalism, despite the fact that the UCAS don't matter anymore as a nation, and neatly killing two elite merc units just because. Good thing that a few rejects from the actual Marines academy at Parris Island are able to let the star-spangled banner fly so very high.
Oooh-rah, indeed.


So, despite how caustic the initial post is (and I find it very offensive, especially because the OP just went back to lurking after his vomiting of words), there are some works that are not the result of editorial issues.
Some writers do write garbage, and the FMC is one of those instances.

In all fairness to that particular writer though: I enjoyed most of the rest of 10 Mercs, especially the THUNDER CORPS!
Credit where credit is due, and sometimes everyone makes a mistake.

Having read that part of storm fornt and having no idea what the FMC was I did not see it that way at all. It was a merc unit going in after the shit already went down and pacified a area that was more mobish than organized resistance. I more eye rolled at the idea of the UN having any say in anything in a Shadowrun setting. And as for their sudden increase in numbers millions and Kane talking about you could do that. I leave the nationaism crap alone since I have no idea if that was behind it It is about as fun as calling someone a racist.

Please don't lay words into my mouth. I said American Exceptionalism. This is a thing, just as patriotism is. Both get tiring for people outside of America very quickly.
I never implied nationalism, nor racism.

American exceprtionalism is nationalism repackaged. And hate of America gets very tiring for people in America very quickly.

From where do you even get that I'd hate America?
If you want to say that exceptionalism is a form of nationalism and discuss it further, this is not the place for it. Highly political topic and such.

What I personally do not like (and even there, hate would be a too strong word) is getting the stuff shoved into my face accompanied by bad writing.

Still, I bought the PDF, because in general I like mercenary info. Besides the FMC the only other disappointment were New Assets (because Ryan Mercury is - also - a boring mary sue). The rest were decent to cool. Which I also stated.
I can really excuse 2 bad things (and to be honest, the Assets article wasn't even as bad as the FMC one) when the 8 other things are at least tolerable. And they were more than tolerable.

Actually, it sounds like they stole the Battle of Chosin Reservoir and moved it into Shadowrun. That battle was real, and the Marines really did end up in a fighting withdrawal where they inflicted ridiculous casualties on the Chinese forces pursuing them.

http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/battle...0s/p/chosin.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir


I haven't read the whole writeup, but that part doesn't sound like Mary Sues. It actually just sounds like lazy writing, lol. That's not somebody writing an inflated history of the Marine Corps, lol. That's somebody taking actual history and hoping nobody will notice.

Last I checked, "semper fi" was short for "Semper Fidelis", that is, "Always Loyal". To whom is a bunch of deserters, thieves and mercenaries loyal?
Just saying.

That glorious bit of delusional hypocrisy is the inside joke at the core of the FMC. They, in their very existence, have taken a giant, steaming dump on the legacy of the old USMC.

No doubt every army unit has its own legendary exploits. I just can't really see the need to bring setting elements based on vastly exaggerating those into an established universe.


Nope, it was about representing the spectrum of mercs on the market.

Military units - yes. Special Forces - not really, minding that even the supposedly highly trained for mercs Free Marines are Professional Rating 3.

Yeah, you see, there's a certain difference here. Governments pay for the toys of the special forces, and they pick the creme de la creme of hundreds of thousands of recruits to get the very best, so it's small wonder that they're capable of wielding handfuls of elite fighters with the best equipment. On the other hand, merc units make do with what recruits they can find (that is, they don't get to choose or don't have recruit numbers as large to choose from), and pay for their toys out of their pay. Now, minding that only a handful of developed nations in the world can afford even a single carrier, please explain how a group of 150 to 3000 fighters can afford a fleet of three (their vessels are 884, 208 and 208 meters long, a real-life Nimitz class supercarrier is 332.8 meters long)?

{citation needed}
Especially minding the role MET played in the Euro Wars.


Yeah, the UN apparently decides stuff now, despite all the previously established fluff stating that it's firmly in the pocket of the Corporate Court and more or less impotent.

Oh no. They're known as one of the most honorable, reliable, and capable units in the world, and they still adhere to the traditions and ideas of the old United States Marine Corps. It's just that many marines were loyal to the corps’ ideals and their brother marines instead of the so-called leaders. Scores of
marines didn’t like the idea of a possible second civil war and fighting their marine brothers. To remain true to their principles, they decided to save their beloved corps by breaking away.

Fatum: The 884m is a metric conversion issue. The America class is 800-ish feet long. The writer or editor 'just' used a wrong unit.

The FMC: like Matt Ward's Grey Knights, only a lot less cool.

If the FMC had slipped into the newly formed Sioux Nation or PCC and began insurgency building operations to start a guerrilla war to bring down the Ghost Dance terrorists and their fledgling governments to help restore the shattered US, I might buy the FMC as something other than lies told by three staff officers who knew they were too big a batch of screw ups to ever make flag. But they didn't. They stole from the people they'd sworn to protect to bankroll an business to make themselves wealthy.

I know Shadowrun embraces the concept of the Unreliable Narrator and I love it for that, but sometimes things do need to be put in perspective.

It's that patented CGL layers of expert editing in action.

Some of that might be my fault, or was at least exacerbated by me when I started in on the Infected in earnest a few years ago. As I was doing my research, I kept finding references to the UN doing this and the UN doing that, and having certain resolutions that mattered (or at least seemed germane) to Infected rights, and especially Asamando. So I kind of rolled with those, since they were already kind of established. Probably the most egregious thing I used with the UN resolution that let them trot into Asamando and get their inspiection team eaten in "Sleeping With the Enemy" in Storm Front.

I probably should have done something differently, but it seemed to work for me at the time. I'm sorry if I wound up making things worse in terms of suspension of disbelief.

I've got no dog in the FMC fight, but I'm something of a MET2K fan -- where are you getting that they completely cease to exist? The impression I got from Storm Front, and in fact rereading it right now to make sure I didn't miss something (and I may have!), was that Tsunami and MET2K tore the crap out of each other, but while both are decimated neither are destroyed. Black Star was the unit that seemed to have gotten totally fucked out of existence, but I felt like the others were just torn up and going to have to lick their wounds for a bit.

Is there something somewhere else I'm missing? It's been kind of a busy couple of months, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was overlooking something, but now I'm all curious.

The passage is:


Which removes all non-American mercenaries save for the daggers (designated villains?) from the picture.


Apparently, R.J. Thomas knew shit about what he was writing, because the MET, among other things, has substantial naval forces, as does Tzunami - where were they, fighting it out in Bogotá's high sea harbour? why are they not mentioned? Did they really sink all their ships just like that? But hey, we got the Fucking Mary-Sues instead, who have the longest warship ever built, because the author doesn't know how metric units work.

The actual appraisal :
EDIT - too slow

I read the "Good luck with that" as specifically to Combat, Inc, who not only got chewed up but are specifically listed as having bounties out on them.

But...anyways, whatever. *shrug* To me, it reads like Tsunami and MET2K are roughed up, but hardly destroyed. They're just not gonna be top-tier world-shaking merc units until they've had some time to recruit and retrain. If other folks read it like "zomg they're totally destroyed," I guess that's fair, but it's just not how it struck me, when I was reading over it. I just don't see where the "cease to exist, completely" came from.

Sorry. I overexaggerated that from my memory about this factoid. You're in fact mostly right, Critias. Let me eat some of my words

After actual research: here's the quote:


So, to put it in a better and more correct perspective: An army with 200k+ troops and several branches is not a world player anymore because they lost a war about nothing, where they lost an unspecified number of personnel. Going from the information on MET2000 in Fronteinsatz (German version of War!), they have five full battle groups. Two are for home protection, stationed with the Bundeswehr in the AGS. One is for Africa, another one for the Americas and another one for the rest of Europe, with Asia being under firm control of Tsunami (who aren't world players anymore as well) in regards to merc contracts.
Even assuming they'd send over a second battle group to Bogotá, this would pretty much mean a loss of about 80.000 personnel, plus heavy armaments and gear (further assuming an even split of personnel between the armies). I'm estimating conservatively here.

Furthermore, I totally forgot about Combat Inc., who are also out for the count because ... Aztlan put a bounty out? World wide? What?

Let's think about this for a moment. MET2000 is down to 120.000 troops. They need to lick their wounds, sure.
Then we get this gem:

Answer to that question: MET2000, for one thing. D'uh. Three of them, in fact.
Even going with the flow and allowing for the stupidly inflated numbers after the sudden windfalls and heightened recruitment drives, we have a unit at 3000+ troops competing with elite mercenaries like 10.000 Daggers (who managed to keep mostly intact) as well as the remains of the other big three.
The description in Storm Front further states that the FMC didn't even need to fight a lot. They just went in, and "quickly dispatched any hostilities encountered", and "[b]efore the FMC arrived, the fighting at Bogotá suddenly stopped". They then handily intercepted and took remaining fleeing Amazonian units into custody. Again, no mentioning of those units even trying to put up resistance.

That's fanboyism right there, and it really rubs me the wrong way, considering that the author apparently didn't know enough about the background of those big units (they are A corps in their own right, too!) to spell 'MET200K' (sic) right.

This whole thing begs the question: Who is gonna be a world player if highly trained numbers and versatility aren't enough anymore, even after heavy losses?


And I was probably ninja'ed thrice while writing that diatribe

Since I'm not willing to buy War! even with Pegasus corrections, could you please briefly sum up the part on their European deployment beyond Germany? I'm mostly asking for alt.War, so Eastern Europe and especially Poland, Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Russia interest me the most.

This is actually not certain, since War! stated the Shibanokuji-class aircraft carrier built by Yamatetsu Naval Technologies "dwarfs even the largest cargo vessel". Considering the largest existing cargo vessel IRL nearly are 400 meters long, I wouldn't expect them to be dwarfed by anything under at least 600 or 700 meters minimum. And that would assume SR largest cargo ship are only as large as those who already exists nowadays. Because another author didn't know much about military or merchant vessels size.

Nath: Their ship is an old America-Class amphibious assault carrier (like the RL one, only overhauled). It is clearly an issue with metric units

Oh, and the Shibanokuji is 330m long.

NP. Like I said, I wasn't arguing, so much as going "Wait, what? Where was that?!" and making sure I was caught up. I'm not taking sides or bickering or anything, just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something.

No, it's alright, really.
After all, if I'm wrong somewhere, I like to be called out on it. No better way to improve. I also considered it a polite question and it certainly was a valid point, as I was clearly too lazy to look it up

In which book is there ore information on the Shibanokuji class? I don't remember seeing any.

EDIT - ah, found it, the table in War!.

In WAR!, table on p. 174, row 9, column 2

MET 2000's ground forces ("Abteilung Heer") is made up of six divisions. 1st Division is permanently tasked with guarding the SOX containment zone. 2nd and 5th Division deploy internationally as the market demands, usually in smaller task forces set up as is needed. 3rd division is reserve and contains soldiers in training, on leave or otherwise unavailable. 4th Division is permanently stationed on the Balkans as part of the European Crisis Group. MCOM in Hannover also has division strength, but is largely C&C, aside from forces tasked to defend the AGS capital. Other sources claim "significant deployment" in Austria's Carinthian badlands, probably by 2nd or 5th division.

MET2000 opeates two full battlefleets of naval forces, currently deployed in three task forces: One before South America (Task Fleet Manaus), one in the Mediterranean (Task Fleet Adria), and one in the North- and Baltic seas (Task Fleet Pitcairn).

MET2000's air forces have their headquarters at former US base Ramstein, which also coordinates aispace control over the SOXcontainment zone. Secondary bases of MET2000's air forces include Sarajevo, Hannover, and "Amazonia".

MET 2000 operates their own special forces command - MET2000 Special Operations Division MSOD. Headquartered in Hannover, it coordinates international deployment of MET2000's special forces, recruites new talent and organises tight cooperation between MET2000 grunts, MSOD and Argus, the MET2000 intelligence company. Units are:
- Recon Infiltration Commando RICO is a unit of elite cyberninjas, tasked with behind-enemy-lines scouting as well as long-term infiltration of "enemies". They also do assassinations and are generally rather mysterious and probably relevant to Pegasus' plans in SR5.
- Tactical Assault Group TAG are heavy hitters, classical Delta style toopers who are called when ordinary troops cannot handle something. TAG like to blow up stuff behind enemy lines and train SWATs of various corps and the German police on the side.
- CBRNe Ops are the MET's specialists for radiological, chemical and biological warfare - an NBC squad for hire, since terrorists armed with NBC weapons are so common in SR. They know how to contain those agents and, since half of Germany is toxic sludge, are excellently trained.

They also have several subsidiaries, including their own supply chain, in cooperation with other megas, and are an A-rated international corporation themselves. Abteilung Heer alone fields around 100.000 soldiers, and the other branches probably make up for another 100.000. Even if they lost an entire Task Fleet (somehow) and an two divisions (somehow), they'd still be far, far bigger than even the souped-up FMC.

MET 2000 isn't Blackwater. They're Belltower. Only a lot more competent (really, Belltower goons are awfully stupid).