Edit: this is from the Arcology Shutdown timeframe.

Due to a slight miscalculation, my most recent mission came to a screeching halt because I threw too many Spiders at the group. The runners dispatched the four (4) spiders in 1 Combat Turn...and due to their explosive nature when compromised, all 4 spiders detonated in the same area - inside a stairwell in one of the main support columns.

4 explosions simultaneously, each doing 12S against what I would determine to be Heavy Structural Materials (16, so 32 against blast damage).

Am I doing the math right? Is the stairwell walls (not to mention the chunky salsa up and down the stairwell) now blown out due to the 48S explosion? How has other people dealt with this sort of thing? At the time, and with much chagrin, I ruled that there was now a spherical hole from floor 34-36 stairwell (epicenter on 35) and many people died from a combination of the explosion and the wall fragments. (Nobody is dead-dead, but the mage took a deadly wound, and now has a Geas that he can't cast without having an open flame. Since he's a pyro at heart, I thought that would be fine...just gotta carry a zippo around)

Other aftereffects (the damage is done now, literally) is would this sort of explosion be detected on seismometers, draw attention to the Arcology (now in Hour 12 of Shutdown) and other effects?

Also, how many support columns would a building like the arcology have? I said more than 4 (since it is a WIDE building), but I ain't a structural engineer so I would have no idea how, where and why supports would be needed.

Help, opinions and general comments welcome. *braces for explosions*

Isn't the Raku Arco almost 1,000 meters high and more than 5 blocks by 5 blocks in base? That would call for a very stable construction, or the building would collapse from it's own weight (and more than 4 major support collumns). the building would propably require many more than four main elevator shafts to handle inner-building traffic! Also, it would require very strong materials. Possibly more than standard heavy structural.

I'd like to note on the unlikely hood of a stairwell in a support column. It wouldn't happen. Hallowing out something like that, for a stairwell would obviously not provide any support at that point, so a collapse of even a segement of the building shouldnt be possible.

He could house rule that the material is stronger than standard heavy structural. But I don't think that was the point.

Speaking as a has-been civil structural engineer, you could experience partial collapse depending on which level the explosion occured. But no, the whole building wouldn't collapse if only one main support column was destroyed. However, with an explosion of that scale, (again depending on where you put that explosion), you might end up with a compormised structural integrity and there are nuclear power plants in the arc right? I don't know about Deus but sitting on a nuke plant with compromised integrity isn't going to make me feel safe (shut the damned power plant down).

Aku, yes, IRL, you can put a stairwell in a structural column. I bet you ride in one every day. Just think liftshaft writ large.

Ah, thanks - didn't know that about the last, either. Makes my life slightly easier...

And yes, Deus is making some changes about now - and learning.

Does make me feel better that blowing out a support column wouldn't cause it to collapse - I know the Labyrinth floors basically were gutted during its creation.

Also, I had thought of that during descriptions of the stairwells...they aren't banister stairwells, they are spiral (err, square type) and solid tunnels.

*shrug* Thanks everyone, puts my mind more at ease.

Edit: on second thought - How has GMs out there done blast damage through walls in their games? I.E. the damage blew out the wall - the remainder force hits the people sheltering behind the wall, yes. But what about the fragments of the wall hitting the people at speed?

And here I thought you or the group had somehow caused the entire thing to collapse. That would've been hilarious.

nonono!

There is now a spherical hole in the middle of the arc, and two floors of rubble strewn about (mostly on top of comatose civilians, to be honest. ) The faces of everyone when I drew the sphere on the dry-erase grid was priceless, tho...tho probably not as priceless as my own as I contemplated the idiocy of sending 4 SPIDERS to take out a group of people which included a Troll with a cheap claymore.

The reason the spiders were all in the same place is that he killed 1 per inititive pass...and the last one chased him down the stairs so he used the claymore as a baseball bat and batted it on to the far wall (where the others were). The next 2 combat turns were spent running, because everyone KNEW there was a countdown to explosion. (Experience is a wise teacher)

I would say it's a miracle anyone survived having rubble land on them. A small chunk about the size of your fist falling from that height is enough to kill someone. Not to mention other rubble falling is steel, glass, and equipment.

And since i'm a little ignorant of this, isn't the military surrounding the Arcology? Or is that later? At the very least all civilians outside the place would've been evacuated. However, how many civilians INSIDE the arcology was killed by the blast?

This is literally 12 hours after the takeover started. According to RA:S the military doesn't get in until a month or so later - it's all police surrounding the building, but for at least 1-2 days nobody knows what's going on and not much is done other than screaming diplomatically at Renraku higher-ups.

I trapped the group in there literally in the Mall at Shutdown, so I had to create the timeline of how people and things are changed from the Shutdown to the result in the floor breakdown in the back of the book. I also had to figure out what outside response would be - and at what stage things change. Time consuming, to say the least. *exhausted grin*

Of course, now with the group creating 2-floor holes in the Arc the timeline is going to get shifted. A lot.

Edit: Casualties: none dead-dead (that the group knows of), but 9 unconscious and bleeding (including 5 civilians that had attached themselves to the group for protection, and the group's mage). The total death count, OOC, is 15 dead-dead, 20 unconscious.

You might have a problem there. 1/3 length/height/width/etc is often the magic number for the max stress envelope . I know that there is no real rules for this, but having an explosion at 1/3 of your height is very dangerous. You could a collapse of more than a couple of floors, the entire sector(that was supported by that column) might just come down. And 1000m worth of a single sector is no joke.

moral of the story is, never underestimate the effects of explosives in a confined space

well it was a 18m radius hole (floors are approximately 18m apart (at least that's the number I've been using, and I'm sticking to it in my universe) so I don't think the entire sector would collapse, I think... It's definately weakened and unstable in the area, however.

In any rate, the swarm of spider drones that the group shortly heard after they had limped into hiding would shore up the damage before it got too catastrophic.

How fast would that collapse, assuming it occurs, happen? Again - I'm an audio engineer and musician, structural engineering is NOT my strong point.

Edit: hobgoblin - you got that right...If I'm going to send drones at the party they are going to be fewer, and tougher...and supplemented with cannon fodder Blues. Deus has other problems to deal with, however...the runners ain't going anywhere.

Depending on just how close the explosion was to the outer edge of the arcology, I wouldn't think the sound of this explosion would carry to the outside, especially if they were near the center.

They were 34 floors up (roughly 100m) and who knows how far in. remember that the arcology would be over 1000m per side. The strength and amount of building material would seriously dampen sound, particularly the dense material of the main support columns.

Also something that size is going to have a heck of a lot of support columns for safety reasons. I could see the areas of floors immediately adjacent to this main support column being a bit unstable. Though, once you get several floors away from the actual blast, the stability should increase as other support columns take up the burden. The structure as a whole should be in no danger whatsoever.

A couple of days to a couple of minutes of subtle warning signs(small cracks on the walls) that a civil engineer will recognise, then I'd give about 1 combat turn for the place to come down. The thing is that once a building or part of it decides to come down, it comes down very fast.

Also....Seattle is rainy. Very rainy.

It's December, height of wet season.

If the acid rain is coming down, whaddya think happens to the internals of the Arc?

*nod* Opinions were split both ways. Considering it was in an enclosed space, (thick and chunky salsa rule) I figured the damage would amplify and merge since they did go off simultaenously. I know the stairwell is useless 48m up and down from 35 because of the blast effects that channeled through the path of least resistance.

I think if it were just 4 drones in a room, this wouldn't be an issue, but this was in a stairwell 3m wide and 6m at the landings. *shrug* Even if it were 12S x4, combine that with the rebound waves from all FOUR explosions...I have a feeling the damage actually may be worse that 48S.

Edit: that's why the hole was only 16m radius, not 48...for 16m the walls couldn't withstand the explosion. outside that, the walls are still intact.

According to RA:S the self-destruct is 12S (in this case...different drones have different powers), -1/m (the power plant detonates...it's not a demo charge)

Location was against the wall, on the floor on one of the landings where the exit to 35 was. Assume 3m (troll didn't have to crouch to run the stairs)from floor to ceiling. What's the math then?

Anyways, my point was why wouldn't the four blast waves combine with the reflections in a chunky salsa effect? If the reflections combine, one would think multiple blast fronts would combine as well.

And yes - at this point you gotta go with what your gut tells you. I can see your point, and I can see this one.

Eitherway, it's a hellacious explosion that severed a support column.

Dunno...one of my runners took my map and figured out just how many columns there are in my version of the arc - 16 total, in a 4x4 arrangement. So...how many do they need to sever to cause catastrophic failure? (yes, they are actually asking this...plus what effects luring 40+ spiders to their doom would be. GAH!)

How about a safety factor that dictates "flame units only" when the things are in a critical area? That's what I'dve done, either that or not even worried about blowing out the strut. The way I look at the structual aspects, designing the arco presses the limits of current science, much less what I personally know about architecture, and why invite them to worry about it?

Either that or start running a little 'instability tally' based on how much damage they've done to the structure they're running in vs its size.

You could also rule that there was some wave cancellation in the explosion, lessening it 'just enough'

I doubt the blast would register abover noise on the seismographs in the area, but Seattle is considered a "high seismic area" currently and has a very large amount of research currently occurring. I see no reason the research would not continue into the 2060s.

The blast would very likely cause localized failure and damage to non-structural (i.e. not holding the floors up) components (stair treads and handrails, etc.). The funny (and good) thing about reinforced concrete is that is gets about 25% stronger at very high load rates (like a blast) when compared to normal load rates (like wind and people walking/driving) and the 25% increase is to the material's ultimate strength, not its design strength. It is important to note that reinforced concrete columns typically don't get big holes in them from impact damage. They rubblize and deform, but the rubble is generally contained in the steel reinforcement cages.

The fact that the building is in one of the more highly seismic regions of the UCAS, and that the Japanese are masters at seismic engineering, leads me to believe that the steel reinforcement levels of the massive concrete tube columns are going to be very high.

On another note, the tech level of SR is very different than today's (obviously) and the "toughness" of construction materials may have significantly increased in the passing decades. Odds are that is has not decreased.

Engineers also tend to be conservative and use things like safety factors on top of safety factors (especially when there is a high degree of scatter in the data we are basing our designs off of, like earthquakes and bombs).

I doubt the walls got blown out. Doors were probably blown off, maybe even a few levels of stairs collapsed. The building itself is so redundant that I would find it very hard to believe if the whole thing collapsed.

Oh, and I am a structural engineer and have done research on blast effects and even designed some stuff for blast.

I agree that engineers would like to be conservative, Jrayroker. But the bosses want max profit or lowest cost. I have many friends in the construction industry and even when bidding for government projects (read: military), the first thing the boss or the client would ask,"Does it really require so much steel?"

As a theorectical exercise, one of my professors did this experiment: He got us(his students) to design a foundation of a building. He then compared our designs to that of designs submited by professional engineers. Guess what? Our design was more conservative and we were using midpoint values. The other engineers were using data with more scatter and the lowest possible values.

And yeah, I know that under dynamic loading (hign strain rate) the strength of the RC improves dramatically. I spent a year with a SPHB.

Yeah, all the book learnin' does is teach you how not to kill people until you actually understand what is going on and can justify the less conservative design.

One other thing to keep in mind in the future (though I imagine it's too late for this scene! ). Deus' drones don't automatically explode whenever they are defeated. Deus doesn't really want to go around blowing up his own Arcology until he's done with it. The drones are designed to self-destruct if they face capture or if they leave the Arcology (which they never do under their own or Deus' control). The self-destruct is a method to prevent his technology from being stolen; a destroyed drone isn't likely to explode unless Deus can somehow still send a signal to it or the system is still online enough to register when the drone-carcass passes outside the Arcology.

Heh. Thanks, DE!

I just hope their *parts* don't explode too. That'd damage a lot of equpment I just sold 19 Karma to repair.

Please, no spoilers on the story, though. Still at Thin Man's.

Heh...since I had my runners enter the Shutdown at the very point of the shutdown, I have Deus learning as well...the massive explosion that weakened the support column and the causes thereof have showed to Deus the following:

A) exploding drones in groups is a bad thing.
B) weakening support beams is a bad thing.
C) throwing drones at hardened fighters in a bad thing.

He/she/it's learning subtlety now... Of course the runners won't discover the changes until it's too late. And I ain't saying the changes here because Lina's watching.

Bumblebees? Bumblebees. Your poor runners!

Shh!

So far the known drones seen are Spiders, Medusas and Dervishes...they haven't seen the subtle ones yet. And no, the leeches haven't been seen either. We're currently in hour 12 of the takeover...it takes a while for them to be in position, methinks.

Edit: Oh, and if anyone is curious about what's going on, run descriptions are posted on line at the Ghosts of Dallas website. Just click on Tales of Infamy and you can see descripts from pretty much the beginning - go to page 5 to see the beginning of the Shutdown situation.

Oi. Dervishes ... nasty enough. One of the few who have a chance to live even through AV fire ... >_<

But that's nothing compared to bumblebees. Nothing's as hideous as those.

actually medusas have a better chance than dervishes - more armor. But I do agree, bumblebees are nasty. I also have a few new bots of my own creation which I'll be springing on them at some point...

Thanks to SR3 vehicle combat rules, it's either the Medusa ripping the chars apart - or the Medusa being downed by one elf with an Ares P and AV ammo. I had that happen, this is no joke. Stupid rules, really, if you ask me, but meh. But that ups my hopes of being able to kill Dervishes. Thanks. :

I'm not sure I find that plausible, what with the Medusa's high accel, high-for-character-combat top speed, and TN 2 for dodging.

And on that note: if you're putting spiders at 1 and medusae at 10, bumblebees would have to be around 40 or 50. That makes for a distinctly odd scale.

~J

Got two new 'bots, one of which would probably rank at around a 30, one of which will probably rank at 5.

Of course, I'd rate the Brainscan Bumblebee at around a 20, the ORIGINAL Bumblebee around a 50. They really nerfed the nastiness when going from the original RA:S to Brainscan. At least in Brainscan they're somewhat survivable, in the original RA:S they were an instant death sentence.

And no, I plan on using the Brainscan variant rather than the RA:S version. My world is deadly enough as it is.

What makes the Dervish nastier than the Medusa isn't the armor, it's those gammascopaline spikes when the group isn't wearing their normal armor...

That reminds me - when you have ablative layered over normal vehicle armor, which one do you take into effect first when determining if a shot will penetrate? The outside ablative, or the inside vehicle armor? And yes the armor rules are pretty wierd in the first place. But it does matter because nobody has AV ammo (which makes that armor pretty much impossible to get around without doing called shots to bypass armor)

Edit: Oops - I forgot there's a third one in there, and it's power rank would definately be 50+ - but there's only one and there is a really good chance the groups will never see it. And no, it ain't the Labyrinth Beastie.

For those not familiar with shutdown - please do NOT read the spoiler.

~J

That's what I meant about being moderately survivable. The first one ain't survivable, however.

Also, I thought it was a rookie deal that the new BB doesn't have a sting damage code, whereas the old one did... That way the BB could actually do an annoyance thing and keep stinging even after it's empty, whereas the new one is useless after two stings.

Brainscan definately changed a few things - you might want to read it more carefully. For the most part I'm using the Brainscan stats for my campaign, they seem more balanced and have more tweaks than RA:S did.

Long ago, before even the days of Brainscan, Dave Hyatt (one of the two writers of RA:S) wrote an online article for Shadowland that includes new Deus drones.

one of my players came up with a rather ingenious way to take out Dervish's.

A spalsh grenade of slip spray in a narrow hall, with no room to maneuver
Two of em went down into each other

CAn these things even get back up if they go down?

With Handling 1/1, I doubt they'd go down in the first place.

~J