To start:

1) Where on Mars are the alleged dragon bones?

2) Not necessarily sourced from Shadowrun, what are good places for a permanent base?

Nowhere, the pictures have been identified, in universe, as fakes.
On the Caps.
There is ice/water/oxygen there.

Alternatively Valles Marineris and Hellas Planitia both offer areas with decent distance below surface level and thus increased atmospheric pressure.

Still too low for an unsuited human, but above the triple point for water so it might be possible to maintain liquid water given proper circumstances of temperature, pressure and salt content which means simpler fungal/plant life could be done.

Parts of the equator can get up to a balmy 20C (68F) during summer; so that's an additional area people have considered as potential bases. I am not sure canon-wise where people have gone / already are.

-DrZ

They're not dragon bones, they're trolls bones. IIRC the EVO expedition discovered them.
It's probably an Earthdawn Kaer that warped to Mars to be safe from Horrors, only to discover that they were on the wrong planet when they opened the doors.

Missions calls it a "large, unidentifiable creature", and various in-universe posts about the photos in Dunkelzahn's will call it dragon skeletons.

So unless it got retconned, they're not troll bones and maybe are dragon bones

Thanks, guys. This is helpful. Keep it up!

I'd figure any place would be okay, seeing as megas have the kind of money to throw at problems that makes the signs useless and they've already established multiple orbital habitats. Local environmental conditions become pretty much insignificant. Olympus Mons comes to mind, since not only is it the highest point on Mars, but, it being a volcano almost the size of France, would also provide geothermal energy far in excess of what any sort of base may require. Plus, you'd have the prestige of being able to claim to be an Olympian, by virtue of you living there.

Excellent idea.

Pretty sure Olympus has long since gone cold, unfortunately. However, it may be good for mining. Because of its altitude and latitude, it's also ideal for space elevators (or space cannons, for that matter).

However, for a smaller scale, less industrial facility, I'd put it somewhere a little lower and further south. You benefit from nicer terrain, higher air pressure ... Definitely more ideal. Plus, easier access to water ice.

The poles would be killer (for the same reason it's not fun building on Earth's poles--long periods of night, and lower temperatures.) I imagine ice haulers would be a thing, at least for larger facilities with higher needs. But a permanent base would be a PITA.

Yeah, reading a bit about Olympus Mons, there appears to be a lot of dust blowing around, too. So... still figuring.

Equatorial regions probably are your best bet, since Mars is a really chilly place. The Valles Marineris have been proposed for colonies, because they are near the equator and on their floor air pressure is a bit higher than on the normal surface.

That's just another elf conspiracy to keep all the shinies for themselves.

i still maintain that settling near available water is more important than settling near where it's slightly more warmer, because you can create warmth by using energy, which you can get from solar panels and simply using good insulating materials to actually build your station, while creating water and oxygen is still mostly impossible, even in the world of sr.

I dug around a bit, and I couldn't find any details about the bones on Mars, but I did find some details on the bases:

Evo has Gagarin Base/New Japan on Mars. Corporate Guide says it's at the eastern end of Valles Marineris and has a crew of about 60. Of note, the 6th world Almanac (p123) notes "Evo’s Gagarin Mars base has been officially renamed New Japan," but later books seem to ignore this. The base has 6 above ground structures and most of the rest of it is underground, making it hard to observe from orbit. It's thought to have missile silos, and is confirmed to have 3 fusion reactors for power.

Ares had a small Charon space station in a Lagrange point between Mars and the moon Demos. Storm Front, however, says that Ares shut down the station and it's 4 crew are on a 9 month trip home, leaving Evo as the only corp with people on or near mars.

There is a dangling plot point about Saeder-Krupp launching a nanotech probe to begin growing a base on Mars, but it was never mentioned again.

4th Edition Storm Front and 5th Edition Stolen Souls indicates that the heavy use of genetics and nanotech at Gagarin may have resulted in a high rate of infection of the current metaplot nanotech Headcase virus thing, and that crew rotating back to Earth from Mars are often infected and are a possible source of infection. Also note that they doesn't use the "New Japan" name. It's basically implied that during the 130 blackout from mars, the head cases took control, killing a few people and getting a 100% infection rate in the surviviors before Evo's next crew shift came through, putting them at close to 75% infection rate.

The problem with the poles is that they are not just slightly colder, they are cold enough that the majority of the polar caps consists of dry ice. And when those regions experience summer, the situation actually gets less hospitable: The dry ice sublimates into gaseous CO2 with a far larger volume, resulting in storms you really don't want to sit through.

Water is extremely important, but it seems easier to assume there's enough to be found in the bedrock (not exactly a made-up assumption).


@BJ: Missions is the go-to book for everything related to the 2011 mission, and Agumentation had a tidbit about starting to green Mars.

Equatorial bases also make landing and taking off into space easier.