[belaran]

OK, my last session ended up with my PCs, a troll hacker and a rigger driving a VTOL (but without any RCC) fleeing NeoNET forces after breaking in the top secret project Vulcan... As they sold some serious paydata, I want to start my next session, before their VTOL lands, by having 2 to 3 missiles belong launch at them.

The idea is that one NeoNET satelite has managed to hold a lock on them and is guiding the missiles to them. They will have only a handful of rounds to get ride of the threat. Oh, and on top of that, NeoNET will send a powerful Air elemental to mess with their ride - while the runner's mage, an NPC, is still suffering for a particularly nasty drain loss.

Pretty cool, neh ?

Now, here comes the questions - what are my PCs options ? Here what I assume :

1) missile are connected and guided,thus they can be hacked, but noise due to the distance (at least for the first round) will have an impact, plus the grid difference (public for the hacker and NeoNET for the missile).

2) Hacker can try figure out (Matrix Perception) that the missile are getting their telemetry from a satellite and thus mark it to send Spoof command to the missile.

3) Rigger has no RCC but the VTOL has some jamming capabilities - but how to use them exactly against the missile ?

4) Unless Rigger 5 has something about that (still have to read it), I'm planinng to run that like a chase - except that if the missile catch up to the VTOl, "boum". I also going to allow the rigger to try to get ride of the missile "the old fashion way" (ie flying low and try to lure the missile into crashing into a hill or something else, when the VTOL will do a fast manoeuver)... Any remarks on the game mechanism at play here ?

[farfromnice]

Rigger 5.0 have some action listed for breaking out of ennemies sensors and the like

I'm presuming that the missile are working on some kind of heat sensor + their satellite link, so the mage could throw low-force fireball to run interference

an air spirit could mess up the flight paterns of the missile and a man spirit could use is Accident power on the missile.

Evasive Manoeuvre Vs. the pilot+flight program of the missile could be made in attempt to give time at the players

they could shoot at them, brick the telemetry

the hacker could use a wrapper program on the VTOL and make it look like something legitimate like a meterology baloon

that's pretty much all my ideas

[farothel]

I would be very careful here.  While I agree that players shouldn't have it too easy, in this case a few bad dice rolls from one or two players and it becomes a TPK.  Also since you mention the mage is almost out, they will have almost no defense against the spirit, which can make things turn ugly really fast.  I can't offer any technical advice as I don't know 5th edition all that well, but I would suggest caution in this case.

A fun thing might be that they get away and you can let them think they got off easy, but then corporate security tracks them down and starts coming after them.  You can actually only let that happen in a few runs (they need time to do their research) and maybe up their paranoia by having them make perception checks from time to time during the next two runs and if they succeed well, have them spot a car following them, or a drone.

[belaran]

I certainly intend to cheat and not let them being damaged (or at least not too much). I do want to give the rigger a nice scene because the previous session ended too late to give him his 5" in the spot light.

I'm just looking for mechansim to make that fun. I'm not rule fetichist, I'll cheat my way of anything "bad"...

[belaran]

OK, after some reading, here is how I would, in terms of rules, implements this scenre:

I found some "drone missile" stats in Rigger 5, so I would used that and simply consider the 3 missiles launched are part of the rigger (pilot of the airplane shooting) them "drone set". Which means he can use his RCC and some autosoft with them (still need to check this out, I'm quite NOT on top of the all drone stuff).

The missiles will be "chasing" the VTOL. If they get to a "nearby" range, the rigger - if getting desperate, would have the option to detonate them and do half dommage. If it can get closer "boum" (full dommage - with the right amounts of cheat on my part for them, NOT to die).

The impact of the Air Spirit in the battle will be reduced to a malus to the manoeuver - at least until the badly hurt Mage deals with it (if he can). As a simplification, I'll use the Spirit level for the malus on the dice pool. It can be a lot in term of malus, but my PC bought an atmospheric sensor [that I've ported from a SR4 book, Arsenal I think], so this sensor will mitigate the effect).

Regarding hacking the missile, here is my understanding on how the rules would apply here. Given the speed and the distance, I don't think the missile can effectively be in a PAN (noise will either make the PAN useless or the missile too sluggish to operate).

However, missile does need to be "on" as they are getting command from the rigger. So if they are online, they can be hack. No PAN would mean device rating as FW, most likley a device rating of ~6 for such military grade objects. The decker will be able to either attack the missile (brute force, bricks'em or add marks up to be able to reboot) or follow the connection trail (i think there is an action for that in Data Trail) up to the Rigger's plane, mark it and Spoof Command from there.

(Sidenote about that, if the decker can mark the RCC, he would be able to send, in one action, a Spoof command to all of the missile, right ? That is again my understanding, maybe faulty, of the rules)

An other aspect of this scene, is that the rigger driving the missile can only do it if he keeps a lock (cf target lock rules in Rigger 5) on the PC's chopper. But does it means that if the PCs managed to break the target lock, the scene ends here ? Is the source of the target lock the rigger aircraft or the missile (or all ?) ? Would the PCs have to break one by one the target lock, before truly "escape" ?

[belaran]

oh, and for the missile dommage, according to the corebook:

DV 24P, AP -4  (dommage is reduced by -4 / m)