I think there's a lot of potential in cutting deals. Shadowrunners have special skills, and there are enough people who'd want the use of them. A captured runner could have the choice of working for the Star on black ops, or be bought by Ares.

Cranial bombs and extensive brainwashing are quite possible, of course, or "an offer you can't refuse".

When they actually pass trial and all, they might meet people in prison interested in trading freedom for allegiance.



Also, consider this: what job opportunities are there for an ex-con with specialized criminal skills? Shadowrunning seems like the big one... It just doesn't get any easier with a criminal SIN, but what are you to do?

Even strato-9s fall to a sufficient number of anti-material guided missiles.

it's economics ultimately - sure you wipe out 20 gangers but then they've got 30 new recruits *tomorrow* and lay an ambush for you - and enough hi-explosives in the sky will eventually take a chopper or two down.

was it worth the pricetag to kill a few gangers?

meanwhile it's terrible PR. - you're in open urban warfare with a bunch of gangers - not very good for the 'boys in blue' image Lonestar is trying to cultivate.


*in the SR there's sufficient numbers of the SINless underclass to supply premier gangs with warm bodies.

[edit]guides->guided

Actually, Strato-9s are unusual insofar as they fall to just about anything if there isn't a Rigger jumped into them; they're low-Body and unarmored. Even with a Rigger your odds of taking it down are drastically better, as the Rigger actually has to spend Control Pool to dodge everything instead of just bouncing it.

~J

Phew... Just read through 9 pages of posts.

Anyways, I noticed no one brought up the what in my humble opinion is the best reason to not geek everybody you bump into on a run, seeing as pretty much all the other reasons have been covered:
- The Other Runners

Who are you more likely to be paranoid about being a part of your team? The runner who relatively values other's lives or the one who just sees them as a detriment to a short and/or long term goal?

I noticed Heat was brought up previously, sure, they went whole hog on the guards when the FNG did one for looking at his mask with that stunned expression on his face, but what did the rest of the group try to do to him later for bringing that heat down on them? Oh, and wouldn't you know it, that same asshole betrayed them to the "corp" later for his own continued serial killer existence. Sure, its just fiction, but so is SR.

So I guess you are asking yourself, does geeking people in your way on a run bring heat down? Didn't we cover that already? IMHO, it sure as hell does, even more so in dystopian sci-fi future even if life is cheap it still costs something more than the return on investment in that rent-a-cop. Its all about the karma, which kind does your GM got stored up for you?

And why does it always have to be about the ammo? Why not make the guard complicit in the act with a bribe and a favor since the corp treats him as expendable anyways? Potential contact, sleeping on the job, or corpse? *shrug*

There's a reason why they are called stratos. With their vision magnification, they can safely fire from 1.200m and have no reason to come closer. This puts them out of range of any weapon smaller than an MMG. Anything smaller than a rocket launcher can only get them at extreme range. Only missiles have an easy time with them.

I think the key here is what type of game are you playing. What I am seeing from a lot of people, they are playing the game where runners are criminals, generally socipathic killer types with little remorse or regret. They are the people you call when you need dirty deeds done, and they won't lose much sleep when the time comes.

These are the same games where you have anarchistic type gangs setting up shop throughot the city, and the cops only care if it is someone under their jurisdiction. "Oh, there's a crime happening at that address? Wait, that's Ares territory, they'll handle it, but we'll place a unit in the area to keep them from doing the same to our clients." These are likely the same cops who'll take a bribe to look the other way. "No sir, I didn't /see/ anything illegal going on."

You kill someone, you leave them unconcious or you sneak past them, either way the corps are still going to come after you in some way, shape or form in a world like that most likely. Because you cost them, and if you cost them enough, they'll want you to make your money back. And besides, let's just think about what these corps have: Magic, cameras, security guards, drones, DNA, fingerprints. Heck, what's to stop a corp from putting out a few feelers and saying "Yeah, we're looking for some skilled people to go after some targets, sort of like the guys who did that Mitsu job a month back." Wouldn't be surprised if your fixer phones you and says, "Hey, got a job you guys might be good for", since the fixer sees it as an easy payday for them.

Now, not everyone plays in that same world. Some people play a world more like Robocop, where the cops actually care and will provide support. There was even a scene in Robocop 3 where the cops took off their badges, tossed them on the ground (all the while the OCP rep was going on about how they're putting their pension in jeopardy), and saying that kicking people out of their homes ain't work for cops. "Think about your family," says the rep. "I am," replies the sargent, "I'm thinking I have to go home and face them."

It is possible for runners to be criminals and still be the "good guys". Amanda Hades is a web-based series about a decker, a face and a techie who are out to spread the 'truth' about the atrocities done. Sneakers, sure it was back in the 1980's, but it was a well-planned and high-performing shadowrun team who broke into people's places so other people couldn't break into their places. Boondock Saints is another group of runners who were doing 'good things', Hardwired is a recent movie about a shadowrunning team doing good. Push could be considered that way. Kung Fu: The Legend Continues is an example of how you can be a shadowrunner and not go directly on shadowruns. Kwai Chang Caine was a kung fu master, his son Peter, a cop. The two of them would go around and solve crimes, help people in need, take down the bad guys, etc. (It may be more work for a GM to craft a storyline this way as opposed to the 'corporate dungeoncrawl of the week' type shadowruns)

The body count doesn't make a team good or bad, but leaving people unconcious or sneaking past them is so much better for that rep. And good or bad is all an idea of perception, the corp views your actions as bad, but the people you're doing it for view your actions as good. The normal civilians would look at amanda Hades news hacks (much like Dark Angel's 'Eyes Only') likely as a hero, a champion of the masses giving them the real story (the ones who saw past the corporate bull coverstories, anyway). The people who Caine helped would be quite grateful, but the people who lost money and the like would be pissed.

You can also create runners who do the whole Robin Hood thing, but that's up to the GM as much as the players. I've had players that wanted to do that, set up a small community where people were welcome so long as they didn't cause trouble, and they would do runs for water, food, fuel, spare parts, clothing, etc.

I've been trying to hunt down the specific quote on the lieutenant of the spikes, but she's described as riding into 'battle' with those precise two weapons on either shoulder.

again though, I'm not really disputing that it's in Lonestar's capability to do something about it - what I'm disputing is that Lonestar doesn't care enough to deal with the problem on more than a cursory and situational basis. The fact that the major gangs in SR3 absolutely are paramilitary organizations more than capable of procuring, fielding, and successfully deploying military grade weaponry (up to and including guided warheads) just makes the calculus of not caring enough that much easier for the 'star.

It's always amused me that the 30-40 (Per New Seattle) spikes can ignore 5000? or lone star guys and lone star, noted for brutality, never figures out how they might prevent being constantly humiliated. Doublethink, it's not just for writers anymore...

because the 5000~ lone star guys have bigger fish to fry than the 30-40 spikes chilling out on I-5 at 3 in the morning. Policing is quite different when it's run for profit.

There are precious few cases of the 'star ever being humiliated by a gang other than the paramilitary ancients (who operate more as an arm of the Tir army than they do a gang in SR3 anyway) anyway - mostly the 'star just declines to tangle with them. When they *do* care, they're out in force and the gangs give them a pretty wide berth.

In my campaign gangs, Ancients and whatever, are not on the same levle as cops, corps, much less the army. The only reason they don't get wiped out is that they usually stick to areas the cops and corps don't care about.

I also don't get why the Ancients are supposed to be special - the one official Run I saw them in, forgot the name but had some elf murder their boss to rise in power I think, described them as just small fry gang scum.

In older editions they were rumored to be bankrolled (on the quiet) by the government of Tir Tairngire. I'm not sure if that's still the case. Given how quickly the gang went from incredibly small fry to biggest gang in the 'plex I think that rumor has been borne out by later events.

cops *are* corps by the way; and again, you're playing a game where 4-6 for-hire thugs routinely make fools out of the corps; is it really so hard to believe that a couple dozen guys on bikes with RPGs and Assault Rifles could do the same late at night in areas outside of the actual corporate enclaves, in a place where third shift is unlikely to care at all beyond maybe sending the occasional patrol out just to buzz by and shoot half-heartedly?

That's the point - if they make fools of the cops they cross the line. If they don't the cops don't care. There is no "the cops don't care, yet are made fools" in my campaign.

That shadowrunners are mercenaries, tools of corps, is another important distinction. Corps can expect to employ runners as assets when needed. Gangs are different, acting for themselves, not for a Johnson, so a corp will come down much harder on a gang than on a team of runners in my campaigns.

And of course having a few ARs and RPGs doesn't mean a thing - the gangs in my campaign are thugs, and even average corp forces have much better training with their gear.

Everything of value is.


You mean the Robin Hood described by Walter Bower in 1440 as "the famous murderer"?

Fuchs: the gangs in your campaign may be thugs, but that means your campaign isn't following canon and is thus of marginal value to the discussion:


Lord Togo is described as a highly skilled tactician, which jibes well with the fact that the Spikes have open animosities with the Ancients and yet haven't been wiped out. Wolfram is more subtle, but nevertheless his gang contains Shoot-to-Kill and Hammerhead and is still described as not having screwed up.

Anyway, it's clearly time for another read-through of the Lone Star Sourcebook, so I'll post my findings as they come.

~J

Lord Togo's in jail afaik. And SR4 corrected some of the excesses. I hope they'll cut down the elven hype as well.

Not as of any edition this thread is about.

~J

But one can still use SR canon - the Spikes will still be around even without Togo leading their battles.

Don't forget, the Spikes also used to regularly ambush Tir Border Patrol units with impunity. It wasn't just every cop and elf in Seattle that they were able to flip the bird to because their leader read Sun Tzu, it was the Tir Uber Alles types down South a few miles, too, that flailed helplessly instead of ever figuring out a way to hurt the Spikes back.

It's always been my position that SR1-3 and SR4 cannot be meaningfully discussed as the same game world, not even to the degree that SR1-3 can be relative to each other; I would view some of the issues that have come up in this thread since its resurrection as firmly supporting that view.

(If you're now wondering why on earth I posted a link to it in an SR4 thread, I'd forgotten how extensive the changes were and foolishly thought they wouldn't apply here)

~J

How would the changes from SR3 to SR4 influence the situation between gangs and cops/corps?

Seattle will be a very bad place to be a ganger for some months after KE gets the contract in 2072.

Because the underworld turmoil caused by Tempo was the reason LS lost it.

I meant the rules changes. Setting changes are clear, but how do the rules changes affect the gang/corp balance?

Another reason Gangs would get it worse than Runners is that Runners are individuals, while gangs are groups. Groups have the potential to grow and become more and more dangerous, since they are people uniting under symbols and ideologies which say it is a good idea to mess with corp Z. Whereas, an Individual has a limited, defined growth potential. So, a few gangers with access to milspec toys acting in open defiance to an organization with thousands of soldiers, all also armed with milspec hardware would be seen as a potential source of disruption and snuffed routinely. This would naturally leave the survivors of such purges to resort to extreme acts of guerrilla retaliation... thereby providing a good backdrop to a run.

My point is mostly that the setting changes are so extreme that it simply isn't the same world anymore, and thus while I don't know that the practical arguments for lethal force in this thread don't work in SR4 (except for the fact that you can get longer Physical tracks than Stun tracks in SR4, which gives Stun a practical advantage), the arguments that I can present often turn out to simply not apply in the SR4 world.

That said, the rules changes do shift some things; for example, the fact that advancement for standard-rule-adhering metahumans is capped very near what is attainable at chargen limits the degree an individual from either side can outclass typical opposition.

Flight's boarding, more later.

~J

The short answer is they didn't.

that said SR4 is as close to a reboot of canon you are likely to get; what many refer to as "Excesses" are things that alot of players loved about the setting.

some of us massively prefer "Mad Max" to "Minority Report".


The fact of the matter is, in SR1-3 [edit]some of[/edit] the gangs are military level organizations; if they aren't played that way then it's a deviation from canon (which, while perfectly allowable would be a case of personal reinterpretation and have little bearing on how things 'are' in the hypothetical SR game.)

Since it keeps coming up; SR4 leaves things a little more open to interpretation, for instance, the reference to the Ancients in Runner Haven's is:



obviously they're a powerful international organization (in a game where powerful criminal international organizations have spawned AAA megacorporations accidentally.) but it doesn't actually discuss organization, bankroll or tactics.

I don't know what 2072 says because I haven't been able to obtain a copy yet. All that said though, this is still an SR3 continuity thread, and as such the events from 2066-2072 aren't really applicable.

Yeah, that seems really powerful and so unlike modern times. Hundreds of members wow. I can't think of anything like in modern times, other then Hells Angels, Mongols, Banditos, Outlaws, Sons of Silence, Gangster Disciples, Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Asian Boyz, Nortenos, Black Stone Nation, MS13, Vice Lords, Tiny Rascals, 18th Street, Florencia 13, Fresno Bulldogs, Surenos, Nuestra Familia, Aryan Brotherhood, La Eme, Barrio Azteca, Mexikanemi, and Neta. Oh and the hundreds of gangs larger than every gang mentioned in SR. I can't imagine any police would even try to mess with any organization as powerful as the 50,000 members of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago, much less throw Larry Hoover and most of the rest of the leadership in prison for the rest of their lifes. So yeah, I can see how they would be all powerful in the future.

Don't take things out of context. The entire purpose for posting it was to illustrate how the language on the gang had changed from previous editions to today.

it will be especially illuminating if you read what Kage quoted from Underworlds (here) and compare that language, which paints a very different picture concerning the capabilities of the ancients, to the much different language here; so aptly illustrated by your sarcastic litany

[edit]and just in case you try to make this about the relative size of 'modern day' major criminal organizations to shadowrun orgs, the answer is still the same "Today's Police are centrally organized and generally speaking care about working together and scoring points with the general public. Tomorrow's "Police" are many and varied and almost universally care more about their own bottom lines, making the other outfits look foolish so they can snake their contracts, and scoring points only with the corporate elite in their well-kept corporate enclaves (I-5 is notoriously not an enclave, being a public highway)."[/edit]

I'm going to reinforce a point I'm sure has already been made in the ten pages.

The reason you don't want to kill guards is its to high profile. ITS NOT the guards family who comes gunning its the Corporation or Lone Star/Security Corporation.

If you steal some megacorps tech they won't spend all that much to find you. By the time they do whatever you have stolen is no longer in your possession and chances are you could never direct them to its location. They know this. But if you kill a six guards in the process then they have the families and friends and co-workers of those guards screaming for your head. They have the media asking about the investigation etc.
If something was stolen they can just cover it up and move on.

The other thing is criminal investigation and prosecution is expensive. It just isn't profitable for a megacorp to track down every runner who does a job against them. But killing people increases the loss. First any money that employee could have generated in his life time is lost. Second they have to be replaced even lowly drones who work through skill wires had to have that bit of cyber installed. Security Guards however require training, which of often quite expensive.

For the social costs of crime it only profitable to lock up murders, rapists, and people who perform serious aggravated assaults. (stun damage does not qualify as aggravated assault)
For robbery, auto-theft and most other crimes. It costs way more to lock them up for a couple years then their crime cost society.

I don't think killing a few guards is particularly "high profile" in this world.

~J

It is quite cost effective to simply shoot people who you catch commiting crimes, "pour l'encouragement d'les autres." If corp x summarily shot people who they caught stealing cars and corp y just told them to not do it again, which corp would you steal cars from?

Has corp x killed someone who was family, friend, or neighbor (who knows, maybe my character is "robin hood" type)? My character would so be stealing cars from them just to hit them where it hurts, in the wallet. Then any guard not turning a blind eye would get a projectile through it, probably.

Who knows, maybe my character is stealing cars from corp x for corp y chop shops.

A Lone Star contract depends almost solely on their keeping the elected officials who vote on the contract happy. What makes elected officials unhappy about police are angry voters and the threat of angry voters, the elected officials/family/friends interactions with the police, and the elected officials/family/friends interactions with criminals.

If you have rampant crime on a main street that tens of thousands of your voters use every day and that millions of voter tax dollars are used to maintain it's a pretty short leap to assume that the voters won't think the cops are doing a good job and will make their discontent known to the elected officials who have to renew the contract. Or not renew the contract. Hence it HUGELY in the interests of Lone Star to not let any of this crap occur.

Like I said, I have pretty much no tolerance for fluff that is blatantly stupid.

The vast majority of voters are safe inside their compounds by the time the gangs are on the street, and the gangs are gone before rush hour the next morning. [edit] And even then, the voters who aren't in corporate compounds are in residential districts (most of which are at least a B rating), whereas large stretches of I-5 are in D rating areas (low priority, industrial/commercial) which are only generally patrolled in the daytime actively and only at night in response to a report.

I don't see the Ancients reporting themselves, and anyone with three brain cells to rub together is avoiding the area after bar time anyway.[/edit]

SINless (the ones most likely to be near I-5 after compound curfews) are not voters. so why would would the elected officials (who in SR1-3 are pretty much corporate puppets anyway...) care again? and by extension, why would Lone Star care to clear them out generally when they can just send a patrol through before any VIPs decide to take a 'tour' at 3am?

It's pretty obvious you think that democratic principles and rule of law still matter in SR, which is fine - but isn't really accurate to the world as depicted in editions prior to 4th. (the UCAS is basically a failed state.)

More to the point, no matter how incompetent an organization is (Haliburton?) if they spend enough money on the re-election campaigns, press junkets in exotic locations, and lobbying fees, enough elected officials will be sufficiently compromised that their contract is secure despite their insufficiencies.

The Insurance Wars received massive media attention.
Maybe it would be more relevant to provide examples of happy white folk getting offed in number, but no one hearing or caring about it?

Universal Brotherhood, worldwide, 2050-2054? (ok, they heard about it *eventually*).

ethics are subjective and relative. Lets face it Bushido isn't exactly what we would call a Moral High Ground, in the western sense. But an ideal exist as long as you say it exists and are willing to take action Supporting that ideal. Hand in hand with that is Consequences. You ever seen what happens to Cop Killers? Assuming the Job is not wetwork Leaving an opponent alive is 10 time more professional then just killing them to remove a possible witness. You don't know who's son or daughter that is. You don't know if you will need that guy tomorrow to help you on your next Job. You get caught in the Shadow business you get to put up for trial, its gonna be a lot easier to make those rolls if they have no real bodies for the prosecution to show against you.

Ever Heard of Counting Coup?

Now I agree there are times and places where shoot the big bad HAS to happen. But the Little KE security guard or the random Go Ganger is not such a liability that she/he needs to be double tapped out. The Rep lose and notoriety gain for shooting folks should discourage runners from doing to many bad things.

Lets also keep in mind this is a game, some game are more gritty and some are more Cinematic. The more gritty you get the more likely you are to have to start wacking folks to keep things in order. But always use less lethal weapons, the Corps pay the bills but most, possibly all, are still the enemy. Problems with Corps (And Ideals) is that while they may have Tax ID numbers, and they may be able to Own property, they are notoriously hard to put a bullet in.

I will admit it has been a while since I've read Lone Star, and I only skimmed SSG a week or so ago for the police side of things, but there are a couple things I would like to toss out there.

A lot of the 'Cops don't care' comes from a lot of the flavor text, if I recall. Various shadowland posts and the like. My problem with taking that as gospel is the same as looking at today's 'Pro-Marijuana' and 'Anti-Marijuana' websites and discussions. Each group quotes facts and situations that make their side look better and the other side look worse. These are criminals who are posting so they would likely have the most negative image for the cops.

Secondly, even if we put some stock into these flavor text entries, there are possibilities of good cops in the world as much as there are bad people. Some people go into security fields because they truly want to help people, and as such, I don't think the policies and practices of a 'We watch out for our bottom line' would stop them from that. But given how we are looking at a world from the eyes of people who see the advertisements of Lone Star securing the city as corporate propaganda, then we will focus on it that way.

In CP2020, for example, they had groups like E-Swat who come after cybernetic criminals who the normal cops can't handle. Then you've got other movies/TV shows/Anime who have different groups and weapons and approaches that are used against the special types that go out of control. For example: Robocop: Prime Directives miniseries had the Robo Hunters, a combat unit with speciality weapons to hunt down Robocop in case he went rogue.

As much as I remember SR's entries from what I've seen, usually, security templates aren't built to handle that sort of thing. Now, there's nothing stopping a GM from building something like that to cope with these issues, and in some versions of the world, the idea can matter. I mean, think about how much pirate trid there is out there, how much anti-corporate propaganda there is, how many people there are out there who may utilize the ability to assemble and protest against the corps, siting various examples of how they are abusing their power. The recording in Strange Days, as an example, would probably paint a negative image. Might, if I remember SSG, just get the rep transferred to another department, but then with the freedom of the trix, it could have whole sites popping up with face recognition systems to see if your LS officer had any civil suits or recordings against them or anything.

It's like I said earlier, good or bad and right and wrong are all based on your perception. Some people I talk to have bad memories of dealing with the police because of themselves or friends being busted for what they believe are minor charges while they ignore larger issues, while others have good memories of dealing with the cops for the help they did. Some people growing up in hard areas likely have worse memories because they see all the problems that the cops can't always deal with due to resources and the like, which would probably be considered C-D sectors. The question becomes are these people glad for the police doing what they can, in a 'It could always be worse' mentality, or are they more looking at a 'Why don't the cops ever do anything' mentality.

The thing that I've always wondered about (and which occasionally caused fights at our gaming table), was I-5: Fort Lewis. To my understanding, the south-west edge of Fort Lewis is the edge of UCAS territory. I-5 runs right through it. Today we know what the border looks like; in a hostile future the border is likely to be alot less friendly (at the very least with regards to "suprise" defenses. See: Disney & Federal buildings. Add: turrets and drones). A roving gang trying to run from NAN I-5 to UCAS I-5 (especially at night) seems like it would get eaten for lunch. You're basically running through what (could) be effectively a giant gunnery bunker. (And talk about the -litteral- troops not having to go far.)

Anyway, gangs and the police.

1. Who is complaining if all the witnesses are dead? "Where did mommy go?" "I don't know hunny, she went out driving last night, and didn't come up. The police are doing everything they can to find her." Maybe they find a car, probably not. Not just the SINless can disipear. (Which is easier: hiding a car and body when you're the police, or fighting people who can fight back?)

2. This is a for profit company. And they ain't exactly Black Water. On the one hand you have "trained" individuals (trained well enough to do their jobs, but the corp is trying to make money), and on the other hand you have individuals who have survived growing up in a hostile, 3rd world type combat zone. Sure, many or perhaps most live because they are in gangs (weak band together), but alot of them are probably pretty mean mofos, who know how to use a gun (and a Stinger).

3. What happens if you declare war on a violent group? Sure, you probably get most of them (informants and undercover agents rock). But what if they choose to retailate, instead of giving up? Days or weeks later, you have 6-12 independent (and perhaps simultaneous) attacks against cops, district precincts, perhaps civilians and/or the governer's building. HUGE bad PR. People get pissed, Lone Star (or whoever) gets massive funding. But what if they can't finish the job (Iraq, Afganistan) because of sympathetic populations, with huge access to weapons, many of them military (Vietnam). Public opinion will fall fast, when the "protectors of the innocent" can't protect them, and the violence continues, and probably escelates.

Cops rock at offense. But effectively the police are guardians. In 1st world countries they work because they can "go out" and get criminals. But in bad situations (for example, forward bases in Iraq) you are completely surrounded. You have no idea when the attack will come to you.
We have the Barrens. We have to work from the idea that the problem of the Barrens simply can't be solved (we know what happens when you take tanks, and even choppers, into built up, home ground areas with angry denizens. See: Warsaw Ghetto).

So the gangs have access to weapons, plenty of personnel (most of which is expendable, but plentiful), and a area to retreat to which is relatively safe. Honestly, Lone Star would probably resort to Shadowrunners to make an example out of head gang leaders. Just as corps probably hire Shadowrunner teams to target other teams who hurt them to bad (out of towners, probably, so they don't have conflicting loyalty).

*tosses his 2 in*

Good points!

Crime reduction is always a two-sides solution of making crime less attractive, and there being alternatives for crime. The latter is rather out of the question in SR (no-one wants to pay for it).

Weapons are fairly cheap, including things that can scare the cops. A police helicopter costs 106,000 , anti-vehicle rockets cost 1,000 .

In a violent environment, not having gang protection is close to suicide; it's a classical prisoner's dilemma. Either you ally with or join a gang (or pay protection), or you're a victim.

As for corporations: you can destroy a gang, but a new one will take it's place. Paying off a gang is cheaper than the collateral damage they do when they turn against you.

Not to mention that Ares probably doesn't want tight weapon control laws; that'd reduce their sales.

Warsaw showed twice (1943 and 1944) what happens when you take soldiers against an outgunned, but highly-motivated enemy holed up in a city and no one caring about collateral damage: The military wins.

Honestly, if we are going the "SINless do not count" route, then the Barrens offer no protection. There's also a lot of differences between a trained soldier, and a punk that grew up in the streets - see Somalia "Black Hawk Down", casualty rates were terrible for the Somalis.

It's all nice and dandy to be mean, and dangerous on the streets, but it doesn't matter much in war.

If you have the option to shell a area from the outside (say, if someone had decided to surround Kowloon walled city with tanks, and start firing) of course the area is going to loose. The comparison was that taking tanks into heavily built up areas is normally a bad idea. Fighting period in those circumstances is a bad idea. And the Redmond Barrens are not a small area, and they aren't surrounded (since they are back on 1 long side by the NAN).

If just burning the barrens to the ground was an option, it probably would have been done already. I believe Italy has an even worse area than the Redmond Barrens, and even there (small city states) no one has done it.

Highly trained American soldiers vs. mean civilians with AK's. Yeah, we "won." Same way we won Vietnam. Casualties were grossly in our favor. But we aren't talking soldiers, we're talking Lone Star cops. Which I believe are, overall, not as well trained as today's police. (Of course it depends on how you play Lone Star).

It's not about "mean," it's about survival versus training (and not extensive training). Would SWAT and FRT totally own the Barrens? For awhile, of course. But we know that Lone Star only goes in the Barrens occasionally, and when they do it's by suprise, with huge force, and they don't stay long. Tracking down a couple of hundred people in hiding is not quick. And those street punks have access to military equipment.

Having access to something, and being trained in its use is not the same. And if your goal is to flatten a "crime haven" without any regard for the people inside, then you can "win" easily.

If we're talking SR canon - Gunderson Corp in Miami showed that you can scare the slum population that badly that they'll protect tourists rather than see another "retributive strike" against gangs that prey on tourists, and the resulting collateral damage.

Then you have counter examples: AMerican Revolutionary War, Vietnahm, Afghanistan, the US operations in Somalia in the Early 90's. In those instances the the trained soldiers lost due to their powers that be realizing that they cannot win in the long term. And the costs would be too high. THe difference in the Warsaw uprising is that the Nazis didn't care (nor did the russians) about playing nice.

Keep in mind that for the Somali's, the withdrawal of the US troops from Somalia was the victory not the casualty ratio. If it costs you 100 nuyen to train and equip a trooper to a certain level of proficiency and he shwacks 10 punks before going down, is it cost effective?

Washington had an army at Yorktown, not some punks holed up in a city.

And that's my entire point: If you don't care how many SINless you kill while dealing with gangs then you won't lose.

Now, do the corps and cops care about SINless, or not?

They actually don't have anywhere to retreat to that is relatively safe. There is a cost to going into the barrens, but the vast majority of the casualties won't be on the Lone Star side. Consider Black Hawk Down, with Mogadishu as the Barrens. After just about everything that could go wrong did, and without the heavy armor or CAS that should have been there the US had 19 killed and 84 wounded. The other side had 700 killed and 1000 wounded. And this was about the best possible conditions for the Somalis.

Given that the average SR gang (per the books) has a few hundred members and LS & the UCAS military are noted for being significantly less restrained in the use of violence than the modern US military I can't see a gang that decides to show LS "Our territory is sacred!" not getting their heads handed to them.

They don't care about their votes; the SINless themselves are very useful to the corps (and by extension, the 'cops') for a variety of other reasons that have to do with such ephemeral things as cautionary tales, cheap labor, consumers, etc. - Hell, from a certain cynical point of view I-5 is probably a tourist attraction (from a safe distance..) "look at the downtrodden masses honey; aren't you glad Daddy is a good corporate drone?"

The Barrens is *great* for business (especially for Ares Macrotech and Aztechnology.) there's a reason the ident verification systems in stuffer shacks are terrible after all...

[edit]I'd argue that lonestar and a metroplex home guard are significantly less trained than a typical US marine, ranger, seal and paratroop joint-strike force detachment. Now, in sr4 land KE absolutely could lean no firewatch to go do a run through the barrens for them; but as mentioned before, Ares probably likes the barrens for their propensity to increase sales of handguns...

[edit2] I also think most of the people arguing against lonestar aren't doing it because they think the gangers would win; just that they think lonestar wouldn't find it cost-effective. IF LS were to go in and seriously try to flatten the barrens, they could. It's not worth doing.

There is pretty much no real money in small arms. There is a reason why all the companies that are known for making handguns are at most medium sized companies. Even the entire holding company for Fabrique Nationale (which makes most of the riles and machineguns for the US military), The Herstal Group, employees a total of about 3000 people. And this includes a lot more than just guns. There really isn't a lot of money there.

Like I pointed out above, it costs about 100K to buy a police helicopter, and less than 5K in missiles to destroy it. (That would give you 4 shots with anti-vehicle missiles.)

Lone Star is unlikely risk those losses if it doesn't have to.



Also, it might be bad press to be spotted napalming fellow Americans.

"But they're the SINless criminals!", a Lone Star PR guy says.

Funny, how a Knight Errant sponsored media team took a wholly different view of that...

Yes, but Ares is so much more than just the guns themselves, after all, there are peripherals, ammo, their combat/ survival clothing lines, vehicles, entertainment stuff... (you cannot tell me there isn't an AR game focused around Firewatch that you or I would recognize as logical extension of the Rainbow Six games.). People in the barrens will buy the handguns for the good quality at fairly low prices, people living nearby for the same reason as well as the peripherals and various off-shoots because they start to identify with the product..... the plain old fact of the matter is that a place like the Redmond Barrens is good for Ares' bottom line.

Profit is still profit; and I'm pretty sure if you took a quick poll of which machineguns and rockets are being used in the barrens the answer there would *also* be Ares =P

Can we consider any of the real world's most notorious slums to be equivalent to the Redmond Barrens? Without even doing research I can think of a handful of cities that have slums that might qualify: Mumbai, Mexico City, Manila, Rio, Lagos. I cannot recall a major military incursion into any of these areas. The only recent police incursion into one of these areas that I can recall is the one in Rio that ended with a police helicopter being shot down.

The real world examples would seem to indicate that it is not worth it for present-day governments to "take out" the gangs and criminal syndicates in their slums. My question to the discussants here is: what is different about the situation in the shadowrun world that would change this equation to, as some posters have suggested, make it worthwhile for a security contractor to level a slum to take out the criminals?