@CT
OK, in an effort to keep up the good flow for Circus Tricks without leaving anyone in the dust IC, maybe we can work out some of the planning here OOC and incorporate that into our posts when we eventually make them? I realize we have significant intelligence gaps WRT the charges we are protecting, but if we consider each of the trains as an entity to be protected (rather than all of the individuals inside), how do we want to layout our defenses?
- Harrier can set up something of a security perimeter between his eight drones (5 surveillance/3 combat), although remember that drones are pretty damn squishy in SR5 and aren't the best shots in the world. This can be supplemented to a degree with the Wasp, but I don't think I'm going to be allowed to maintain a 10-hour overwatch.
- If one of the Awakened can provide a spirit for astral surveillance/protection, that would be a big plus.
- Seems like we have matrix support, so sprites or agents to provide Matrix overwatch/support? It would assume the land trains probably have icons of some sort (at least the lead vehicles).
Thoughts, additions, other stuff?
We have a serious lack of intelligence, which Bittorent and I should be solving by contacting Oblique/Torrent respectively. Other than that, here are my thoughts.
We need to be able to identify threats and tell where they are. In terms of your drones, I see them more as recon rather than a fighting force. If we can tell where we have a security breach, we can swiftly move to cover it. Yes, it would be nice to have some awakened support, but he might be busy at the moment. Depending on what we are fighting, a spirit may be necessary just to hold stuff off.
In terms of how my character can best help, I'm with Luz here. I can't do anything matrix or astrally, but I can probably handle a small squad of goons. However, without knowing what we are facing, the sheer size of the train will prevent me from being able to pick a good spot to snipe/ambush from. I mean, if I have to run from the top of train 1 to the bottom of train 2, I'm assuming that's probably a good 2 combat turns worth of movement (even with my 44m run rate). Can't protect any circus people if enemies have that much time to attack.
I'm starting to gravitate towards keeping all of the VIPs + circus people in one section of the trains. Sure, it creates a huge target and god knows what kind of AoE our enemies are packing. However, it seems like the only feasible way to defend anything. If we spread everything out, we only have maybe 2 people that can cover each zone of the train, more likely one. If a zone gets swarmed with enemies, I don't know if the rest of the team can come help them in time. Any security threats we are going to need to hit with overpowering force, we need to pull out all the stops, in my opinion. Unless we can identify as a decoy, we have way too much area to cover, and (from the size and diversity of our team) probably way too many angles we need to defend. Why would we have Astral support, Matrix support, and Aerial support unless we were expecting something either large, expecting waves of enemies, or expecting that our enemies had a lot of diversity as well that we need to be able to defend against?
I say we use our quiet first couple of hours to set up Matrix, Astral, and physical defenses; move the people we need to protect into an easier to defend location, and then look sharp. We have what, 8 runners? We can probably cover a good 150 - 200 meters area of the train. I think this train is moving as fast as it can, after all, who wants to spend more time in the Puyallup Barrens then is necessary? If it is moving as fast as it can, it's still going to be a nightmare to prevent anyone getting on, but if we cover our area well then we can at least deal with it. Also, Lusis brought up a good point, let's see if the circus magicians can help if necessary. Not that we should rely on them, after all, we have no idea of their magical strength, but they might be helpful. Maybe find out if they have any healing magic among the circus, that would be useful for obvious reasons.
Of course, this is all dependent on if we can get everything up in time, if we can convince people to move, if we can make sure nobody we are protecting does anything stupid, and if we get a little more intel. This is also only a first draft of a strategy, if anyone has anything to add, feel free. My brain is apparently not working so great right now, so this may be a stupid plan that needs some revisions.
Edit:
As an aside, I'm very happy at how active everyone who is part of this group is. I've seen some games where nobody posts for like weeks. Makes me very glad that I actually can coordinate stuff like the above with you guys instead of waiting a week to move forward the tiniest bit.