[Cheesedapplications]

It seems that one of the biggest advantages of a well trained and standing organization, the ability to coordinate large groups effectively, is often missed or minimized when dealing with the runner's opponents. Sure, the aftermath may be nasty, and the resources arrayed against a team may be impressive, but how much actual thought goes into making all that size count?

All the books and fiction mention how bleeding-edge their gear is, how much chrome their sporting, how much bofo mojo they can chuck around, and the impressive array of individual skills, but as far as tactics go? Too often the opposing mooks pull some cool hacker/mage tricks and then you have to fight either "the big bad", the "their just that damn sneaky good. Yes. they are everywhere" or "the red horde-WITH IMPLANTS!".

Now, granted, this needs to check out with an organizations professionalism, but it seems that high ends are often treated as little more than fanatical and extremely individually capable shooters/hackers/mages.

So, to keep life interesting, what are some of your favorite ways of massing effects against the runners while staying fair?
For example, instead of having the corp reaction force blindly run a gunship after the runners:

Fire Force QRF (borrowed from the Rhodesian Brush War, professionalism 4+, commits for high value defense)

Consists of 5 LAVs: One K-Car (configured as a pure gunship),3 G-Cars carrying fire teams (5x shooters: 1x heavy or sniper, 1x leader, 3x line troops...add hackers or mages as you see fit for the organization, or up the team size), and 1 S-Car rigged out for electronic warfare and anti-mage support as well as C2 node. (hackers on board definitely, sec mages at GM discretion).

All of this, including 3 "shifts", mechanics, and a bird kept as a crank spare, comes in at only `30M Nuyen including combat and maintenance personnel (buying mid life styles for them), fuel, etc. Very reasonable seeing as how this force could effectively respond to anywhere in a sprawl within 5 minutes of take off (600kph) and the stuff they're saving can be worth tens of millions or much, much, more at a pop. Of course, you probably won't find more than one in a locale.

Upon the Macguffin being hit, the security manager decides whether or not to commit the QRF. In the mean time, the "on call" shift is jumping aboard the LAVs, receiveing the details, and making a plan. details to be issued via TACNET while en route. This is the longest portion of the response time for anything within 100 miles of the launch point. Corp sec finally decides to commit (or there is a pre-set commit criteria, i.e if facility x is breached, or anyone exec list y sends danger call, commit), and the LAVs pull off.

Approaching the target, information from the hit facility/security forces is synched with the QRF. S-Car launches recon micro-drones to identify and tag hostiles (the players). Drones continue to monitor. Commander makes any last minute adjustments, and distributes final plan.

K-car and S-car suppress the players with EW, anti-mage, and firepower. If the players are doing something extraordinarily dumb like standing on a rooftop, the casualties will be horrendous. Otherwise its mostly just to take out any big ticket items the players might have (fleeing vehicles, drones that are exposed...that sort of thing) and to keep them pinned down and busy in cyber and astral combat while the G-cars deploy.

The fire teams are dropped simultaneously to isolate the players and keep them penned in. The commander may decide to drop all three to maximize his local coverage, or leave one team airborne to catch any squirters. Based on the situation, the commander either decides to

1. Assault through the target area, using other elements to keep the runners from escaping. Done if the commander thinks he can win here and now, or time is running out.

2. Hammer the runners down with heavy fires/EW/mage, not leaving the blocking positions. Works great if they're in the open or somewhere collateral doesn't matter, probably not so much an option when the players are in a cutting edge lab.

3. Stay in blocking positions. Kill the players if they try to leave their pen. Wait for overwhelming ground forces. 

[Wayfinder]

I totally agree with your assessment of the security procedures including troop amounts, time constraints, and procedures. I would definitely use this type of strike team on any players accessing a high security location that hang around 5 MINUTES after an alarm is sounded.

5 minutes is after all 100 combat turns. If a team is  competent enough to last through that much combat with on site security measures, yet unable to extricate themselves than I surely would send in an elite high threat response.

 

[Krypter]

All good points. What about negotiators? Most corporations in real life prefer to spend a little bit of money rather than blow everything to hell and face lawsuits from every direction (cf. Somali pirates), but then again this is Shadowrun and extraterritoriality gives one a different perspective.

[Mystic]

One of the best tactics I have used is Common Sense. 

It sounds obvious, but I am often suprised how often the bad guys often take stupid pills. Now, granted a good team that covers their angles is more likely to pull the wool over their target's eyes, but I have found having the opposition do small things can make the difference.

For example: a runner team decides to do some on site recon. They do something to do something in order to gain access to the site in some sort of mundane way, like put in an application for a job for example. They dont have any ID and end up causing a bit of a scene in order to cover their tracks. Now said guard takes down the image of said runner and lets the following shift know. And when low and behold, said runner shows up "after hours", it raises a lot of red flags.

Second, a runner decides to beat up some cops (never a good idea) and forgets about a little thing called Dash-cams. Now, he has no reason to complain when a crooked detective leans on him to make him his errand boy.

Another good way is for forensics to get those nice blood samples after a particularly bloody firefight.

Point is, players tend to think only in game terms, not real life AND game terms.

[Angelone]

Dash cams can get hacked.

Blood samples won't do much good if said person isn't in the system. I'm not recent on the ritual sorcery rules but don't you have to have a special metamagic to use blood as a link in 4ed? A sterilize spell or a spray bottle of ammonia will make the blood sample useless.

A runner who shows up to a corp facility for an interview without a disguse is just being stupid.

I agree the best anti-runner tactics is common sense stuff. Have the security move in groups with suppresive fire, coming at the runners one at a time like plucky little ninjas isn't a good tactic, even if what you are trying to do is make them run out of ammo. There are better ways.

Vision mods, stack em as many as possible. Cover use it. Grenades will absolutely wreck people in confined areas.

You don't have to get as exotic as LAVs raining fiery death from the sky to ruin a careless teams day.

[Cheesedapplications]

Which raises another question...just how fast are runners actually going? Sure, the actual boom boom, fireball, crash the O/S can go incredibly quickly...but if you intersperse things like staying under cover, and a desire on the OPFOR part not to die (does that lone star cop really stick his head out and send a few rounds down range every three seconds, or does he maybe just stay behind the dumpster for a short breather while his bud jabbers in the commlink.) Mexican stand offs can burn away precious time.

100 combat turns for 5 minutes sounds like a ton, but when you factor in the period where players are not sending long bursts of sabot down the corridors, 5 minutes can bleed out pretty quickly. Especially if you keep players on the clock for their own decision making (not at a one to one ratio mind, as they are not, after all, hardened covert ops types with computers linked into their brains conducting ARO augmented chat) but if players take 5 minutes between themselves trying to figure out how they are going to get out of the current SNAFU, its fair to say a 30 seconds have passed.

And for some facilities, mere travel takes time. How long does it take you sprinting full out to go up (or down) 4 flights of stairs? The rules have a sprinting runner doing 200m (50m equiv in a flight) in 8 turns (24 sec)...the point being, even in a full rehearsed, by the numbers, following the blueprint hyper aggressive run, lots of time gets bled out doing things unrelated to saboting a guy in the face. 

And do you stack every combat turn chock full o combat even when the shit has hit the fan?

Its very conceivable that after the alarm most of the security forces spend the first minute, 20 combat turns, just getting their acts together. Sure, the firewatch guys have already sent everythign to tacnet, analyzed it, made a plan, and are converging on the players as every system in the building begins cyberwar...but most lone star grunts take a little human processing time to get a hold of whats happening, and then synch in with what to do. Rent-a-cops may just say "Go to corridor three and stop troll? Oh helll no, my job is hit the alarm button and watch the showers with sec cam. I am staying right freakin here"

Here's Another one, for perimeter security.

Containment Doctrine (professionalism 3+)

Rather than try to hold the line every step of the way, the corp saves on time, personnel, and money by maintaining strong points at key transit areas and vital parts of the building, using the rest of territory as a giant delaying zone. Enough gadgetry to keep the thugs out and identify entrants, but for real serious defense, the corp relies on being able to call up additional forces. the intial on site gear uses a series of ambushes and simple barriers to keep intruders moving slowly or making them run away before they get to where they can do REAL cred damage. You don't need to splatter all of them in one chaingunned wash of fire when a handful of light pistol armed ferrets can make moving through a cubicle block deadly if you don't slow down...

Your composition may vary on target size, terrain, and value, but here's the basic philosophy:

Perimeter: Enough to stop crimes of opportunity, with key entrance ways under checkpoint with heavy slow down measures. No sense in letting a carbomb in the front gate. patrolling is light (and may not be any depending on the target) and pre-dominantly unmanned. Hardwired sensors to security supplement the usually wireless sensor suite. Wired motion sensors are exceptionally useful as they either slow down intruders and leave them in the perimeter so long that SOMEONE will probably see them, or the alarm will start wailing. Security here has a simple rule: Don't take a fight you can't handle. Go to ground, raise the alarm, and stay alive. The information you send inward lets security position its disruption force. If they got past you before the alarm went up, close down the outside, and be prepared to coordinate with the relief forces when they arrive.

Disruption force (inner perimeter): Initial security role is backstopping the outer perimeter and is treated much the same way. And yes, its cheap. It has two roles: If intruders are coming through the perimeter, slow them down. Whether this is simply dropping rolls of c-wire down the stair case for an abandoned tenement, or hardlocking all the doors in a research lab and then dropping them off the network, the concept is simple. Make it a painstaking, slow, PHYSICAL, process to get through. Armed forces stage hit and run ambushes, but don't act decisive. They aren't trying to finish the fight here, just make sure the runners can't sprint through the cubicles without worrying that someone may smartlink around a corner or that they bypassed a ferret who's gonna shock down their hacker behind them.

 If intruders raise the alarm inside, then seal, and prepare all actions to prevent them from coming out. Be prepared to re-establish whatever strong point they burn through on the way in, closing the door behind them.

The orders are once agains simple: Stay alive, keep harassing the runners, don't let them get this free. its more important that you hold them up for a few than you all heroically die to bring down the troll gunner. You'll get your crack at them again on the way out, or the response forces will toast them.

Strongpoints: At key bottlenecks and around vital areas, use those outer perimeter savings on creating a handful of positions that can seriously hold the runners up. Whether thats rail drones and a fully gasable hallway, a basic scan checkpoint,  or something as easy a knocking some firing loops in the plaster overlooking the stairs, these are the points where metahuman on the scene judgment will always be available, and well fortified enough to take the runners a bit to crack. If they are dumb, this is the line where dirt naps become likely. Obviously, if the alarm was raised on the way in, the runners can expect to be hit hard when they get here. If the alarm is raised past them, the checkpoints lock down and orient inwards. Use of obstacles and fortified positions helps keep runners in the killzone long enough to seriously hurt them and slow them down. Hopefully long enough for

The internal reaction force (fixing force): This is the do or die line. The Execs body guards, or the local reserve in the building,the final guards on the biotoxin lab door...they do one of two things: Protect their principal, or reinforce whatever strong point is under attack. They aren't here to clean sweep the runners, they are here to make sure the runners don't get the MacGuffin. Whatever makes that more likely, they do, but this is do or die time. Cause really, given all the runners have gone through, if they can hold out just a little...bit...longer...help is on the way. Big help.

[The Cat]

As written, a GM playing "by the book" can pretty much slaughter a runner team with impunity very quickly.  The text on most corps make them out to be godlike entities with virtually unlimited resources and access to manpower, technology and magic that would squish even the best of the best runner teams like bugs within moments of stepping onto corp property.  A GM creating a high security facility could pretty much logically and legitimately stack the deck so against the players that the best tactics will get them just about as far as the door before the corp dropped the hammer of the gods on their little heads.

That being the case, I usually use some "common sense fun" GM rules to keep the players from instantaneously becoming red smears in a parking lot.

1. Everything not specifically Rules is pretty much propaganda.  Shadowtalk is situational opinion, corporate write-ups are loaded with either pro and anti-corp bias.  That being the case, security is never accurately portrayed and usually isn't as good as it is purported to be.

2. Security is made up of people who really do not want to kill anyone and really really do not want to die.  A live prisoner is far better than a dead body in all but the most extreme cases.  A live prisoner can be used for labor or information.  A live prisoner doesn't have family who sues for wrongful death.  Security personnel are not a dime a dozen.  They take time, effort and money to properly train.  They have families at home and lives to live.  They do not want to get blown away for a paycheck, not even a large one from a rather frightening, blood-magic using corp.  Even elite military security does not wish for you to put a bullet in their brains and will act accordingly if there is a good probability of you doing so.

3. Corps are lumbering, bureaucratic giants.  They are powerful enough to crush you like a bug, but they are slow to react to do so.  Even when the alarm is going off and local security is responding, the powers-that-be of the corp-proper have no idea what's happening.  It may be several minutes to several hours before the information filters up the chain to the right people and the orders filter back down, and the information is inaccurate by the time it gets there.  You rarely have to worry about the real "high-threat" response at the time of a run unless you get really unlucky or are hitting something extremely valuable.  After you've escaped might be when they show up, though.

4. Corps are, by their core natures, extremely risk-adverse.  Corporations as a general rule will stick to what is safe and profitable.  They will avoid risk in most cases.  That includes their security responses.  Sure, they could send in the LAVs with the mil-spec tech carrying, military trained, "won the last Desert Wars" troops, but that's risky.  They're risking some of their best people, some of their expensive gear, damage to their expensive building, death of their trained employees (who they'll either have to look after or get sued by) and collateral damage off corporate property they'll have to pay for through the nose.  Something extreme has to be going on to require such a high risk for the corp and their latest widget prototype or the loss of one wiz-bang scientist isn't it.

5. When it comes to detection technologies, corps will tend to favor less detection when weighed against difficulty of entry and frequency of false alarms in proportion to the necessary security of a facility.  While a corp could have dozens of layers of intrusion detection, such measures are expensive and each new layer is another chance for a false alarm.  Every false alarm is a waste of money and effort and eventually leads to smaller, inadequate, slower or non-existent responses by security.  Therefore, a given facility will have less detection capability than can logically and reasonably be placed and in many cases warranted by the importance of the facility.

6. Corps are far form omniscient.  They do not know what you are there for, they do know know what you plan to do, they do not know how far you have gotten with your plan.  If they do, you have a serious leak.  Even if they rightly should know what you're up to, the people you're facing usually won't because the information hasn't been disseminated in the few minutes since you did it.  The element of surprise (not the surprise rules version) is always on the runner's side.

7. If you escape, a corp will only put the resources into finding and eliminating you that is reasonable for whatever you stole or did against them and the likelihood you'll be a threat to them in the future.  If you made off with a 10 million yen prototype, they'll expend only a little effort in finding you, because by the time they do catch up with you, you no longer have it and they have better ways of finding out who has it now.  If a corp does expend a large amount of resources to find you you either got wrapped up in something way bigger than you ever imagined or you're about to get hired by them.

Operating with those rough rules in place has definitely made it more survivable in my games, but maintains a healthy fear and respect of corp security forces and after-run tracking.

[Cheesedapplications]

I'm playing with assigning a budget to any of my targeted runs, based on the target value. I figure 3-5% of a facility being spent on security. So, a relatively common office building might be a 20M nuyen structure, but thats only 1M nuyen in sec budget. You'll probably get a squad or two of rent a cops (1 year low lifestyle each), supplemented by a few key drones and maybe some hack types (1 year mid/high), combined with a sensor net and physical barriers. Really not that much for a good team to get past.

I just feel its doing the players and corps a disservice at higher ends to either custom tailor it for the team (after all, the crops wouldn't know who is smacking them) or make higher difficulty just mean more threshold needed.

[InvalidIntegrity]

@ The Cat
Great Post!  I definitely will have my GM take a look at your common sense guide lines.
@ Cheesedapplications
The budget seems relatively reasonable!

[voydangel]

@The Cat: Excellent write up. +1 street Cred.

[Nomad Zophiel]

@The Cat - Good stuff, similar to a lot of my own thoughts, especially when it comes to how much a corp will spend to stop/undo Runners relative to the cost of what Runners are after.

Also remember that for every secret Corporate project there are countless egos at play and they don't all necessarily have the same agenda. Let's take a hypothetical example of the runners being hired to steal the design and prototype for Mistubishi's subcompact for the 2073 model year.

Now even if there's no new technology in the Mistubishi 2073, the design is still a trade secret. Its also one of many trade secrets that Mitsubishi has. So somewhere in Seattle is there's a garage where the prototype has been built. The plans, for the sake of simplicity, are stored on a server in the same building. A lot of things can happen to that building. In addition to Runners there's the danger of gang wars, trucks crashing into it. Fires, sewage backups etc. Chances are that Mitsubishi has insurance to protect aagainst financial losses from any of this, including theft. The insurers may require a certain amount of around the clock security but Mitsubishi will likely keep to this minimum and those security guards do not need to be especially well trained or equipped.

Now say your Runners dash in, stun the guards with chemicals or sonics rather than brute force, and make off with the prototype and the files. They're even careful enough to avoid being tracked and can decrypt the files.

Now the head of the design team feels personally wronged. He's going to have to work overtime for weeks, the project is going to have cost overruns that are not all covered by iunsurance (but are far less that 1 million nuyen). He wants payback and might hire another team out of his own budget to retrieve his prototypes. The insurance company and Knight Errant are going to investigate and (hopefully) find that all their forensic evidence amounts to nothing. The Insurance company wants to avoid paying out. If at all possible they will try to demonstrate that Mitsubishi didn't live up to their end of the policy through incompetent security, an inside man or anything else that gets them out of writing the check. The Director of marketing wants to put the best spin on things. There are two classic ways to do that: blame a rival or let someone inside take the fall. Marketing is going to be pressuring upper management to bring the hammer down on whoever was in charge of the project. Upper Management only cares about the bottom line. They want the check from the insurance company, a minimum of cost on redesign and the least impact on their reputation they can get. The big guys will run the numbers and see if its cheaper to start design over or to retrieve the stolen materials. They'll probably fire the head designer to placate marketing and the insurance company. Then unless Knight Errant turns something up they'll go back to business as usual. Hunting the runners is an inefficient cost. Security will only be increased to the maximum the cost/benefit analysis allows. There will never be multimillion nuyen security.

Net result: one pissed off, unemployed scientist has a grudge against some unknown Shadowrunners. The individual guards may be pissed but risk comes with their job.

Then its just a matter of tweaking the variables.

Did the Runners kill all of the guards? Now its personal and they can expect Mitsubishi security and Knight Errant to be actively looking for them with a lot of firepower. All those life insurance plans cost more money than the prototype, chummer. Now you're going to be an example to the next team that thinks killing is fun. Remember, for every Corp Security or Knight Errant contact you have, they have a Shadowrunner contact. Now it really comes down to how well the team covered its tracks. Did you drive your cool prototype car through the neighborhood?

Instead of a car design, did the Runners go after a one of a kind ancient mystic artifact? Now you've got upper management's attention. Whether they're willing to negotiate or just want you dead depends on the particular decision maker involved but money will NOT be an object.

[Wolfboy]

Another thing to remember is that getting around security, even the by the book level stuff, is doable. You just have to plan and think, as well as always have a go to hell plan

[Mystic]

One good way to mess with runners, at least in the long term if they have SINs...Sick the IRS, or their home naton's equivilent, on them. An IRS hacker with funding AND an axe to grind...truly frightening!

[Nomad Zophiel]

One good way to mess with runners, at least in the long term if they have SINs...Sick the IRS, or their home naton's equivilent, on them. An IRS hacker with funding AND an axe to grind...truly frightening!

Also a very good Runner tactic for getting people off your back.

[voydangel]

One way that I find to up the challenge without decimating a party outright is to play as though the bad guys have read Sun Tzu.

"Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."

"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak."

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. "


and my favorite for dealing with runner squads:

"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."

Give them an easy way out. You meet many goals this way. The runners don't die, and the corp they're running against loses less men and repels the attack. Something I think most corp security forces would have as their #1 and 2 goals. And it meets other goals as well, but I think you get the idea. I thoroughly enjoy offering my PCs ample opportunities to retreat in safety and failure. The feedback I've gotten from them often is that they enjoy it as well because it makes victory taste that much sweeter when they finally succeed - battered and bloody - because they knew they had a way out, but pushed on anyway. This is actually a recurring theme in many heroic tales as well - it works and feels good as a story aid for a reason.

Just make sure that if the characters succeed at the grab, the security instantly changes it's tactics - focusing then on retrieval of the stolen [whatever].