[Hobbes]

The real question on salvage and fencing is "is it worth the time". 

This.  If you're picking up 10k a run, do you really want to spend 1/2 an hour or so of RL time after each run to pick up a couple hundred Nuyen?  Probably not. 

Str is a common dump stat so most runners aren't going to be able to grab another 20 or 30 Kilos of gear.  Dealing with trackers requires some kind of investment/planning.  Stuff you can easily grab typically isn't worth much.

Things always worth looting.  Foci.  'bout it.  If you're set up for it, organ legging.  Guns, Armor, Low end Commlinks?  Really not worth the hassle for most runners.  Street level or Resources "E" runners might feel differently about some of the odds and ends laying around after the first couple shoot outs.  But how many Uzi's do you really need?  Occasionally you'll see some expensive stuff laying around.  Fancy Commlinks, Drones, expensive electronics or some of the higher end guns.  Those are probably worth grabbing if you're not being shot at.     

[All4BigGuns]

If that's all you're getting, then you're probably going to be grabbing everything not nailed down to try and get up to a decent payout that doesn't slow gear advancement to snail's pace.

[MijRai]

Some people like the whole 'catalog the loot, ship it off for nuyen' process, so saying 'it takes RL time' is completely irrelevant at some tables.  I've got a buddy at my table who loves to tally up the weapons and what is left of the armor after every fight and sell it along with whatever else he has the time to scrounge.  His penny-pinching when it came to loot has eventually gotten him a barony, which got him titled as a general, which has put him in the top ten most powerful people in two countries. 

Keep in mind if you take it straight to a Loyalty 4 contact who can deal with such goods (arms dealer, chop shop, jailbreaker, etc.) you automatically get 20% of the value and the problem is no longer on your hands.  20% of a 1,000 nuyen item is 200; that can purchase...
2 Lethal Grenades
2 Burner Commlinks
100 Rounds of Mundane Ammunition
1/10th of a Month of Low Lifestyle
An Acceptable Low-Level Bribe
A Good Number of Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance Items (think bug scanners, noise generators, jammers, etc.)

That's a lot of options for grabbing a single decent item (like an AK-97, an Armored Jacket, a Renraku Sensei Commlink, etc.).  Spending a few minutes when possible to pick up some kit can pretty much cover your expenses for going on the 'run, which in turn means you have more money for advancement. 

As BigGuns is saying, if all you're getting is 10K for a run, you're going to be light in the pockets.  You automatically cut out a fifth of that for Lifestyle if you're Low, half for Middle, ALL of it for High Lifestyle.  Getting new SINs will drain more over time, even if you're only going through a SIN every three jobs or so.  A DocWagon (or comparable business) cuts even deeper.  Medical expenses alone could break your bank.  Assuming a 'run a month, replace an acceptable SIN every three months, lets go with Low Lifestyle, with Medium after the line... 
120,000 Nuyen Earnings
-24,000 Low Lifestyle/60,000 Medium
-40,000 SINs
-5,000 Basic DocWagon
=51,000 Nuyen/25,000

Your profit before other expenses come into play is 42.5% if you're skimping on things, just over 20% for a moderate set-up.  Twelve 'runs to get a bit over 50k in your pocket, if you're lucky and a cheapskate.  That's not a whole lot, given you've put yourself in harm's way twelve times.  Each 'run can take anywhere from what, 2-10 sessions of play to get through?  24 to 120 days of play to get that much money is abysmally slow. 

[CitizenJoe]

Tags have a device rating of 2, maybe 3 on security tags.  If the noise exceeds the device rating, the device loses wireless.  That means the tags can't be used for tracking.  The Barrens, commercial zones and heavy rain are all going to render RFID tags useless in most situations.  Cheap antistatic shipping bags will take care of the rest.  And it is pretty easy to test.  Does your Smartlink work?  That's a DR 2 device.  If it goes down so are the tags.  Yes, in an ideal world, you would have to worry about RFID tags.  But Shadowrun is not an ideal world and you would need skill and determination to find a place where the tags would be trackable.

I want to point out that, outside of wetwork, the most common job is theft, either items or personnel.   In either case, if you're prepared for the mission, you're prepared for looting. 

[Jack_Spade]

Not exactly. Noise compensation doesn't care at which end the noise is.

Luckily, you can just do a matrix search for the tags and data spike them away.

[Mirikon]

Re: professional.  Looting being unprofessional is entirely BS.  If I have kill someone, I want to know who it is so I know who is coming after me.  I want their comms so I can listen in.  I want to deny any weapons to my enemy. Cybereyes? Gotta take those due to photo evidence. Sure, I could burn the body to ash with thermite, but taking stuff is a lot easier.

Cutting out cybereyes is NOT professional. That dives deeply into 'psycho' territory. There are much, much easier ways to deal with photo evidence. Namely: masks. Or, have a hacker brick the device or edit to remove any incriminating images. But if you're going to try and steal every camera that catches you doing something illegal, you're in for a long night, as there are cameras EVERYWHERE.

In general, looting is a bad idea for anything that doesn't easily fit in a pocket or your bag. Anything that requires surgery to get out or dismantling a drone on site definitely falls in unprofessional. The exception I'll make to this is when you're in a need to dispose of bodies, and you take them to the street doc to 'part out'. Still ghoulish, but not unprofessional, especially if they attacked you. Digging out the eyes of every corpsec you come across? That's just going to put you at the top of someone's 'to do' list.

[CitizenJoe]

Then why is noise even a thing?  If you can just put a high end compensator on the grid, then all the noise in the area is moot.  You can't say that it isn't worth it for the Grid because they are losing out on business for every commlink that doesn't work in the area.

Dammit, it would have been nice if the developers took 10 minutes out of their day to read up on how radio signals work.

[Mirikon]

You're assuming that there are nice, paying customers with SINs in those areas. Corps don't care about the SINless or those who can't afford what they have to offer. Noise is a big factor mainly in poorer areas (where there's not enough money to justify the cost), wilderness areas (where there aren't many people to begin with), industrial areas (where machinery and other things interfere), secure areas (where you don't WANT easy signals), and jammed areas (where you're actively denying easy signals).

[CitizenJoe]

You can plan for cameras, hack them and delete the records.  That's pretty standard and just takes the one hack into the system.  They may or may not have caught you doing something illegal.

In the case of cybereyes,  they are free roaming with independent storage.  Same goes for glasses, goggles, etc.  Given the notion that the guy is dead, he most certainly DID witness something illegal, i.e. his murder.

Now, if I had access to something that could reliably brick everything in a guy's head quickly, maybe even wreck short term memory, I'd use that in a heartbeat.  As it stands, gear on witnesses is also a witness, which you are claiming is unprofessional to take. 

If I were to go hyper professional,  I'd bring a couple of wifi blocking body bags with trauma patches and biomonitors.  In the unfortunate situation where I had to kill someone, I'd slap on the trauma patch and bag them.  Drag them out and diagnose their warez and gear for evidence,  then return the victim and gear (sans-evidence) a couple days later. I am not that professional.   And like I said, you can only ding my notoriety once for looting.

[CitizenJoe]

Yes, I'm assuming there are nice paying customers that want service when it rains.  Or when they go shopping in the commercial district.  Or when they are themselves doing an advertising blitz.  Or on that ski vacation, or even just wanting their GPS to work in the mountains.

[Stoneglobe]

Sorry Joe but digging cybereyes out of skulls is most definitely not professional, however you choose to spin it, and the notoriety gained for that would have nothing to do with looting. You'd very quickly gain yourself a cool serial killer nickname in the press. Probably something like the "Soul Stealer", eyes being the windows to the soul and all, which would shoot your notoriety up massively.

Sure maybe initially that notoriety might not be directly linked with you but it won't take long. After all your team mates will make the connection very quickly so best hope that they're really good friends and the reward on offer is too small for them to bother with, if you even run with a fixed team. Keep at it though and pretty soon that reward will climb.

No, your big problem is that your fixer knows the jobs you've been sent on and will be able to make the connection and all the Johnsons who've employed you will start to make that connection as well, after all they know who they sent on the job so it won't be difficult to work out. Is your fixer really that good a friend that they'll keep finding work for a psychopathic serial killer or do they value their own reputation too much. Is that Johnson going to offer you another job or report back that they've found a really good team it would be worth using again. Almost definitely not. Now what are you going to do for work so that you can pay the rent.

All actions have consequences, some of those consequences are greater than others.

[Sendaz]

Just on a side note, would corpsec cybereyes/goggles even be storing that data internally or just feeding everything live back to corpcentralcommand via Matrix with little to no actual storage within the unit itself?

If they need that data back they would just request a playback of the relevant bit. 

If so, yanking out the corpsec eyes seems to be along the same lines as yanking cameras off the wall after they videoed you popping the safe. 

Now it might be work against someone who isn't streaming everything back to base but I guess it all depends on how you run your security.

[Arkayne]

Alright, that gives me a lot of good ideas on how to handle it if/when it comes up. 

Thanks, everyone!

[Shadowjack]

What I would suggest is that you allow it and then have the game world react appropriately. If they try to salvage some of the parts from a dead gangers motorbike in a secluded a rea, let them do it. I'd even encourage you to let them get away with this a few times so they get the feeling that it's free nuyen. But after a little time elapses you should definitely introduce risk to the equation. Perhaps there is a chance the extra security or even police show up, or another group of shadowrunners or opportunists that see the runners licking their wounds while trying to make an extra nuyen. The majority of the time you want your players to feel like the world doesn't stand still and exiting the crime scene asap is a priority. The longer the team sticks around, the greater the chance something will go wrong. Don't forget too that rfid tags are inside of nearly every product, so the team could be tracked down, which means that they would be wise to fence the gear to a specialist quickly. 'Cleaning' your plunder for sale is a highly specialized and time consuming process unless you have the expensive equipment and access to locations that make it possible, such as particular places deep underground that have a high Noise rating, which means the signal will be harder to trace.

Another important thing to think about as the GM is that salvaging and extra looting can often eclipse the payment you receive for the run, which makes you wonder if it would be better to simply just be a thief instead of a shadowrunner. When possible I'd suggest that you manage your game in such a way that the payment is the top priority but occasionally the runners stumble across a gold mine while on the run.

[Hobbes]

Sorry Joe but digging cybereyes out of skulls is most definitely not professional, however you choose to spin it, and the notoriety gained for that would have nothing to do with looting. You'd very quickly gain yourself a cool serial killer nickname in the press. Probably something like the "Soul Stealer", eyes being the windows to the soul and all, which would shoot your notoriety up massively.

Sure maybe initially that notoriety might not be directly linked with you but it won't take long. After all your team mates will make the connection very quickly so best hope that they're really good friends and the reward on offer is too small for them to bother with, if you even run with a fixed team. Keep at it though and pretty soon that reward will climb.

No, your big problem is that your fixer knows the jobs you've been sent on and will be able to make the connection and all the Johnsons who've employed you will start to make that connection as well, after all they know who they sent on the job so it won't be difficult to work out. Is your fixer really that good a friend that they'll keep finding work for a psychopathic serial killer or do they value their own reputation too much. Is that Johnson going to offer you another job or report back that they've found a really good team it would be worth using again. Almost definitely not. Now what are you going to do for work so that you can pay the rent.

All actions have consequences, some of those consequences are greater than others.

What, you drag half a dozen bodies back to your Medical Workshop, harvest the 'ware and sell to a shaddy Streetdoc, move the organs via an organlegger network, and sell the scraps to ghouls and you get a reputation?  One time it was.  It was like free money lying there on the street.  sheesh.   ; )