alt.War: Turning Anger into productiveness

[Antumbra]

A) How mechanised with drones is warfare? If the answer is 'not very' you better have a good answer for that

The SR progression of Land Warrior is an almost fully mechanised force with very few humans.

The answer has to be 'not very' because this is a game where people expect to play the non-mechanised warriors. As sensible as it is to have Drones do almost everything - at that point, why don't they do all of CorpSec as well? And policing could easily get near-ubiquitous surveillance through clever drone use, but that negates the whole damn Shadowrun part and it becomes Global Rebellion: This Can't End Well.

So Drones have to be relegated to support, important game changing support, because if they supplant the human element then they supplant the players who don't want to be riggers hiding in a fortified bunker 50km from the warzone while the Soldierboys do the fighting.

Tradition: Humans aren't nearly as think as they smart they are. It's reasonable that the sheer inertia of the military has kept humans as the decisive link in the chain.
Corruption: Body Armour sells better than Drone Armour. Cheap drones packing big guns is so much more cost-efficient than outfitting an infantryman that it will never happen.
Hackable: Ends covers this. Your entire force could be taken over by one hacker. Yah, even if it's a million to one odds, just try persuading someone it aint gonna happen. Even if it means the infantry man is more of a Programmer At Arms, he needs to be there. Might make Cyborgs more common.
Deus: Guess how many people have seen Terminator. Guess how many of those would be willing to trust Drone Armies when the world was a hairs breadth from it actually happening.
Edicts: There're few outcomes to complete military mechanisation and not many of them are good for the stability of the world. Widescale bans on the "inhumane" usage of drones in military theatres are probable. Imagine many speeches with quotes like: "Let us not retreat from the cost of war and forget its weight, by taking the man from the battle and the heart from the soldier"

Remember, nobody really cares about people dying if they feel morally good about it.

[cthulhu]

A) How mechanised with drones is warfare? If the answer is 'not very' you better have a good answer for that

The SR progression of Land Warrior is an almost fully mechanised force with very few humans.

The answer has to be 'not very' because this is a game where people expect to play the non-mechanised warriors. As sensible as it is to have Drones do almost everything - at that point, why don't they do all of CorpSec as well? And policing could easily get near-ubiquitous surveillance through clever drone use, but that negates the whole damn Shadowrun part and it becomes Global Rebellion: This Can't End Well.

I know, but you need an answer to why this is the case.

[Surgo]

I am intensely dissatisfied with any of Antumbra's proposed "solutions". Every single one of them allows for an upstart to raise a cheap drone army and roll over everything and everyone. There needs to be an actual reason that nobody does that.

[Antumbra]

I am intensely dissatisfied with any of Antumbra's proposed "solutions". Every single one of them allows for an upstart to raise a cheap drone army and roll over everything and everyone. There needs to be an actual reason that nobody does that.

Because it takes far, far more than a drone army (even assuming you magically acquire the industrial base without anyone noticing) to take control of the orbitals?

Climbing the gravity well is almost impossible if someone did it first - if the Corporate Court bans Drone Armies then there are no Drone Armies.

And I never said that the Rigger Corps didn't exist - just that it would be relegated to the same status as Artillery or Air Support. It can win a war, but it can't hold land in any profitable way. And being that conventional drone usage would be heavily focused on ECM and ECCM it wouldn't be a simple or easy task for a pure-steel force to win.

No, wait, maybe I did say that and maybe I'm talking bullshit.

Hm.

Well, I'd be happy to hear a better idea.

[Username17]

But overall, you're right. I'm not sure what lasers give you that the Phalanx doesn't though. (YouTube "CIWS")

Time of Flight: .0001 seconds at near-space targets at 30 kilometers. If a laser can reach the elevation that enemy plains are flying at, then you essentially don't have to deal with big sky theory at all. If the phalanx system was shot at a target that high, time of flight would be the better part of minute. The difference between a muzzle velocity of 1.1 km/s and a muzzle velocity of 300,000 km/s is virtually total.

Remember that in SR there are seriously weapons that planes (piloted or drone) can be shooting at you that essentially don't care if there is a phalanx system in operation. If you have a powerful kinetic weapon, then interception by flak is meaningless. If you have a plasma torch or a laser? Same deal. There is no warhead to disable on those things. You pretty much need to target the plane over head or it will rain death upon your ship that you can't do anything about.

By the way, this applies to orbital platforms as well. But you no what? Lasers stop losing power when they leave the atmosphere and time of flight to an orbital platform is only .0004 seconds. Nuclear powered lasers can likely cut orbital weapon platforms in half. Which means that arcologies and capital ships actually can fight against Thor platforms. They are pretty much the only things that can. So if you are concerned with your enemies dropping tungsten rods on you from space, you pretty much need to already have an arcology in the area or bring a capital ship for space cover. Remember that the other "line of sight" weapons are magical and those can't reach orbital platforms because of intervening mana voids.

---

Going back to the Rigger Blackbook, the description of the Wandjina talked about them being used to do a largely drone offensive against the people of New Guinea on behalf of the Australian military. That seems like a good reference point. Against any real foe (like a A ranked corporation or government force), jamming could be turned on to full power at any time. Your drone force can be disabled at will. Which means that at any time your drones in any area need to be a small enough proportion of your force that it is not worth it to your opponent to shut off all the drones and cell phone reception with an EMP.

But against wog forces, it doesn't matter. They can't do shit about your drone force because they don't have jamming technology more sophisticated than setting fire to copper mesh. And that just won't cut it. So if you're opposed by a bunch of C-rankers, the basic equation of how a Wandjina costs less than the pay, room, and board of a grunt on the ground really comes back front and center.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

Jamming doesn't actually disable the drones though, it cuts radio communications with either other. They can still use a more powerful signal generator, their own brains, or alternative comms methods (such as lasers).

Taking out radio is pretty hard on human troops as well.

Using an EMP weapon might, but that's going full nuclear - or the bombs just are not that big, and EMP hardening is an upgrade right there in the book.

[hermit]

But overall, you're right. I'm not sure what lasers give you that the Phalanx doesn't though. (YouTube "CIWS")

Instant hit. Long-distance instant stopping power. Air combat these days happens at ranges where the travel time of bulets becomes significant. Phalanx basically follows the wall of lead approach, peppering immense amounts of ammo in the attacker's general direction, hoping one of them will hit in a more or less accidental fashion.

Hypothetical laser missile defense would be more precise and on target, and since it seems to work in SR, the laser is strong enough to almost instantly burn through the missile frontally to either reliably disable the warhead or find something that explodes when suddenly superheated. Same applies to enemy fighters and drones.

The USS Enterprise (cvn-65) has 8 reactors (one for each boiler they replaced, 2 per driveshaft). Turns out that's overkill, but there's clearly no barrier to it if you needed the power.

Holy fuck. What does it DO with all these reactors? Or are these backups for the backup of a backup? If you take a reactor hit, having a backup reactor just may not be the most important thing, because something just managed to burn itself through half the ship and destroy the reactor, surely punching an impressive hull into it in the process ...

Ultimately I'm not sure if naval warfare needs anything other than an overview because it's not relevant to players.

That depends. Firstly, a lot of space in War is taken up by rules and stats for warships, up to a Nimitz-equivalent supercarrier. If you provide toys and rules as a gaming supplement, it is good matters to also provide a sample scenario. So if we keep these (and they're surely a good illustration on why we need staged vehicle combat rules) we ought to probvide the players with a sandbox where they could play with them.

Also, yes, normal shadowrunners will never have a use for a supercarrier. But if you run a campaign around one, or a campaign around the submarine, where the players take the roles of officers rather than grunts (more like Rogue Trader in a nautical shadowrun environment), you sure can use naval warfare in Shadowrun. It's an alternative campaign concept, but is runnning your own mercenary campaign what War! is all about?

As for your three questions, here are my answers:

A) It entirely depends on the army in question. The Land Warrior Plus concept is where I see most conventional armies - Israel, UCAS, Met2K, CAS, PCC, Aztlan, France - all with some flavor differences in regards to magic, cyber and the precise degree of reliance on Drone warfare and how much they care about their individual soldiers, but they all basically follow that road. Because more than half the point of the heavy reliance of modern militaries in the US, Europe and Israel following that road is that own casualities are to be minimised. If the army in question could care less about their own casualities, they could well be effective without copious amounts of tech. Other armies may follow another concept, be it cybered up suicide attackers (implant bombs ftw) - I could see that with special martyrs' brigades in the Arab and Iranian armies, for instance; stealth oriented armed forces with lots of magic and ruthenium polymer gear who entirely rely on guerilla tactics and hit-and-run (20K daggers have been established as such forces, the Tirs probably work that way too), or just going the Imperial Guard way of overwhelming numbers with poor equipment (that would be Russia, the Chinese states, or many smaller African armies).

B) Frank made a stab at it above, my Idea was that they keep their armies profitable by renting them out as long as they don't need them. AresArms would be SR's Blackwater. This has grated me for some time (ever since Corp Shadowfiles confirmed their existence as standing armies, not as mercs hired impromptu), but I admit I haven't found an answer yet that fully satisfies me.

C) I honestly don't know. Besides, it's not supposed to be. Warfare - real, actual high-intensity warfare - is continually flaring up in China, Africa, and Russia. There also was the Aztlan-Yucatan war, which had about the same intensity as the Afghan war of today. It's not WW2, but operations like Enduring Freedom aren't unheared of. There was Japan's war in the Phillipines, Saito in California, the PCC invasion of California, the Tshimshian war, Tshimshian/SSC (that was low intensity because neither nation has the numbers for more)

The reaons for no major wars happening? Well, out of play, the authors probably felt they would shake up the setting too much. The seeds for at least three have been laid in the pre-Hardy times though: Israel-Arabia, Russia-Yakut and Aztlan-Amazonia (PPG-Japan would be optional). One really large major war was the linked second and third EuroWar. In-game, it's probably a mix of megacorporate-enforced stability - war may be good for business, but entire markets going up in flames certainly is not - and weak, apathetic nation states. Hence, war in SR even more than today is a matter of assymetrical means, of ragtag rebels versus heavily armed and heavy-handed troops of the Powers That Be.

1. How are submarines invisible to satellite recon in the Shadowrun tech paradigm ?

As much as today. Penetrat-o-water beams haven't been invented, so they're using the same sensors we are using. The great advances in sensory have been to directly link them to people to the point of outfitting people with radar, which sure changes land warfare, but subs are still very hard to detect. Submarine warfare appears frozen in time because in 50 years superccavitation still barely works, though Rigger3 mentioned high-velocity torpedos that HAVE to use it to make sense, so maybe it does for torps. Anyway, there are no hyperspeed subs, and subs are generally as easy or hard to find as they are today.

I disagree this means megas not fielding capsips though - there are ample ways today to stop a sub from getting in torpedo range, not least by posting less expensive ship in a protective circle around your capship.

2. The next big question is how would the floating artillery piece that a battleship represents be meaningful in a context of orbital weapons platforms, personal ownership if ICBMs, stealth drones with automated aerial refueling, smart bombs, and multi-mile sniper shots ? What do big ships with big guns do that other vehicles and munitions don't ?

Have a range of anywhere between 200 and 400 miles, which is WAY beyond the horizon. It actually is beyond the range of many drones, too. Orbital platforms are expensive to maintain, parking space in orbit is limited, there is all kinds of regulations about them and probably the UCC won't let you have one anyway, you have to maintain and arm them and somehow rotate personnel, so you either have your own space program or need to piggyback on someone else's, making you totally dependent on their goodwill. ICBMs are useful if you want to nuke the other side of the world, using them in a regional conflict with conventional payloads kind of is like using a sniper rifle for bayonet charges.

3. Would megacorps even field actual dedicated navies or would they just use a mixture of repurposeable cargo ships (merchant marine), fast coastal patrol craft and deniable pirates?

The latter. They seem to have chosen showing presence over cost effectiveness, probably hoping a badass modern frigate will be a sound message to pirates, and trusting pirates with escort duty probably is not the best idea. Most merchant vessels have guards with small arms too, though, just in case.

I was thinking about a shadowrun progression for the Land Warrior concept and the new airburst grenade rifle and arrived at this:

Military Armour (obviously) with the strength, running, jumping and gyromount enhancements (to some degree Capacity makes little sense as a pool, having leg jacks shouldn't mean you cannot into strength) and then weapons along these lines:

Ballista Missile Launcher: 4+1 semiautonomous backpack rocket platform (Arsenal)
Microgrenade Backpack Launcher: Microgrenades are about the size of shotgun shells, so you either have a Microgrenade Rifle that isn't the MGL-12 (with big mags, canisters or a belt) or a backpack system that doubles as a light mortar. Or it works as both, and looks Jin Roh style, because Smartguns. Could easily be the main armament of an infantry force if you had good range on it.
Articulated Weapon Arm: Having a third arm is useful, having an arm that can shoot at the Blender Adept behind you is priceless.

Machine Guns/Assault Cannons as standard conventional arms for the gyromounted power armoured soldier. Given that they exist at all, there has to be a market and there must be capable users. That is obviously whatever Military has the funding, if Shadowrunners and CorpSec aren't supposed to carry them as standard.

Agree with most of this, but not every soldier needs to be effectively a Space Marine. there are other setups where other military armor comes into play (fuck you, SoftWeave). I agree with you that machine guns and assault cannons need to be standard weaponry, especially given you can also recruit trolls and orcs for soldiers, who have the strength to handle them (trolls and appropriatly-sized guns is another topic, but I see the game balance reasons for not creating a troll-only line of guns).

However, what you described, the heavy assault infantry, isn't what all grunts would look like in most armies, because it'd be too expensive to maintain. So no third arms, ACPA armor for everyone save for the assault troopers of the most developed militaries (Japan, UCAS, corp military). For holding ground, recon and supply guard, you'd probably have medium to light armor and no third arms (I imagine those perpetually getting in the way when in tight environments anyway). Standard Armament still should be machine guns (or, yuck, 'battle rifles'), assault cannons, and ballista missile launchers (and heat insulation on the armor so firing them in confined spaces will not cook your entire troop).

Every soldier has some form of artillery designator, lethal artillery has always existed - but in SR, ACCURATE artillery exists. There's no way that you aren't going to have pinpoint artillery/railgun strikes at the drop of a hat, because it's not nearly as expensive as losing ground. Railgun ammo is practically free compared to to conventional, though I could imagine being given a budget per mission to use on support.

Wholly agree. With long-range battleships and equal guns available as land-based artillery, and air surpremacy like the US has today gone, precise artillery is Shadowrun's air support. Target designators could even be integrated into standard military firearms so the soldier dioesn't have to put down his gun to designate targets. Also, all kinds of tacsoft and AR information can be accessed by any soldier, so moving on each other in urban theaters should have a distinct bomberman/videogame feel as the ennemy combatants can see each other rather well thanks to each side's recon drones. Of coruse, this is where stealth of all kinds - RuPo, spirit powers, adepts, disguise - comes into play.

Every ground combat is also an air combat, drones can fly all day and are invaluable to support infantry, so the air will be full of overwatch drones fighting amongst themselves. The winning side suddenly gains an immense groundside advantage and probably wins the fight - realtime aerial recon instead of satellite coverage, drone sniping, artillery backtrack (maybe even interception) and wireless.

I'm thinking that as everything is hackable, that forces may reintroduce the old "drag wires behind you everywhere" or advanced laser comms - like in Battle Angel Alita, where she has Laser Bugs that create a communication path behind her.

Actually, not everything is hackable. Slap a 24 hour encryption on any commlink and it is unhackable for the relevant time in a firefight. If you're holding ground, bring a military commlink and use bottlenecks and slaving. That's not 100% safe, but it should get the job done unless the enemy has decent mancers or superhackers.

However, a soldier certainly should be wireless reduced (but really, so should everybody). The whole "everything's wireless now! Wireless motor components! Wireless smartlink interfaces because skinlink IS SO 2060s!" fad is something I really dislike about SR4. Every serious combatant should be wireless reduced, use sattelite conenctions as much as possible (especially for drone control and comms) and have hardcore IC, boddleneck extra commlinks and whatnot. Those that won't will regret it the same way Taliban regret not having an air force.

Of course, that makes Matrix warfare a very important part of SR's wars. Hacking the enemy's sattelite is halfway to beating them. Defending your own sattelite is crucial. Encryption will not cut it, technomamcners and their I-hack-everywhere card resonance quests will be very valuable, and every army worth the name will have their own cyberwarfare regiments solely dedicated to battling it out in the virtual. You can take Unwired and go nuts with it. We definitly need a chapter on this, actually.

Also, a prelim announcement: I'll set up a Forum for this project somewhere. This thread, as well as the Dumpshock thread, will be maintained for ideas, but discussion will be moved there. It'S just easier to keep everything organised that way. I'll post when I have the forum ready and would be happy if anyone would have webspace for offer.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Somebody'll build a mass driver on the dark side of the moon and it'll just degrade into The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

[hermit]

No, the setting would become CP2020.

[Kot]

As for the supercavitation torpedoes, there already were invented IRL.

[Username17]

As much as today. Penetrat-o-water beams haven't been invented, so they're using the same sensors we are using.

I am not sure that is true.

Major players in Shadowrun very likely have penetrat-o-water beams on their satellites and getting around their notice probably requires expensive stealth submarines of some kind. This leads to a multiple tier situation again. If you're up against the Arabian Caliphate, they have to rely upon sonar to find conventional submarines. A 60 year old submarine that is "pretty quiet" can probably get by most of their detection systems is probably able to surface and launch within range of Mecca. On the other hand, if you are up against Aztlan or Russia, your archaic submarine that you bought at the United States going out of business sale can be tracked (and destroyed) from space. If you want to get past those defenses, you need a stealth submarine, and those are still proprietary technology for a few powerful factions like Imperial Nippon.

Frank made a stab at it above, my Idea was that they keep their armies profitable by renting them out as long as they don't need them. AresArms would be SR's Blackwater. This has grated me for some time (ever since Corp Shadowfiles confirmed their existence as standing armies, not as mercs hired impromptu), but I admit I haven't found an answer yet that fully satisfies me.

I don't understand what your problem is. If corporations cannot guaranty that a government has their back, they will have standing armies. Period.

People want to take their stuff all the time, which means that they need a Hobbesian Leviathan to protect their stuff all the time. In the early 21st century, that Leviathan is the United States and the Western Consensus. If Zimbabwe decides to confiscate a bunch of corporate territory, the UK will go to bat for those corporations and get other countries to declare Zimbabwe dollars to be worthless and non-convertible. The armies of the West are so powerful and so united in defending the rights of private property that Zimbabwe can be embargoed and brought to its knees without even firing a shot. But in the SR late 21st century, the governments of the world are weak, ineffectual, and fractious. If a corporation's possessions are seized by some country in Africa, they have to deal with the problem themselves.

It's cheaper to own than it is to rent if you need something all the time and for a long time. And in the Shadowrun world the corporations need to provide their own deterrent to people confiscating their stuff. Sure, if you're a small corp you can hide in S-K's shadow, hoping that their army will deter interest groups from seizing corporate property in general, and you probably have interests that are limited enough that you probably only need to actually use an army rarely enough that it makes sense to rent one from Ares. But the AAAs are all over the world. They actually need their interests defended all over the world. Which means that their army is actually doing something (even if it is merely "intimidating the Vietnamese government into accepting a contract) all the time.

So yes, any corporation that is AAA is going to have a standing army. Any corporation that wants to be AAA like Vedicorp or Ifrit Services is going to have a standing army too.

For comparison, Gazprom has a standing army. It has this because Gazprom operates in sketchy parts of the world like the Niger Delta where it cannot rely upon the Russian army to have their back in a reasonable amount of time. So it needs to intimidate locals and shoot up pirates with its own army if it wants to continue operating at a profit. So that's what it does.

In the 2070s, every part of the world is a sketchy place like the Niger Delta where you cannot rely upon armed forces from your home government to back you up. Because none of the countries are really that interested in backing you up in your battles and the whole world is incredibly sketchy and full of pirates. So if you want to operate at a profit pretty much anywhere, it behooves you to have your own standing army.

-Username17

[hermit]

Yeah, but Gazprom is to Russia what Aztech is to Aztlan - it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins. Gazprom routinely acts purely motivated by politics (ask Ukraine). I can see that megacorps want armed forces to secure their assets, but having supercarriers, lots of artillery, or tank bataillons isn't needed there. I'd assume the megas have limited power projection (like, a sea control ship or two, escort ships, some smaller subs, lots of goons and drones to guard their facilities, and an air force mainly consisting of helicopters and cargo craft with maybe one jet fighter wing made up of used EFA for escort duty) and lease or buy larger-scale power projection - supercarriers, masses of tanks and artillery - from one of the big merc corps who make a living off just that concept - MET2K, Tsunami, Combat. Gazprom doesn't have their own navy or even fighter jets either, because it'S not needed for what their armed forces are supposed to do.

If a nation and a corp go into symbiosis, like Ares and UCAS, Russia and Evo, SK and Germany, Japan and MCT, or Aztech/-lan, you could see a more diffuse split between corp forces. Most megas actually exist like that, integrating themselves tightly with a nation. The AA corps - basically aslo megas without a permanent seat in the UCC - not usually do. Regulus yes, Lusiada probably (if Portugal even has an Army), but Zeta-ImpChem, AG Chemie, Fankfurter Bankenverein, HKB, Universal Omnitech, Meridional, Spinrad, Seretech, Vedacorp, Citigoup, KITT, and some megas like NEOnet, Horizon, Wuxing and Shiawase? Probably, they only have what they need to secure themselves with, not much to project any notable amount of power.

And to clear up my point: in Shadowrun, there are no penetrat-o-water beams, unless we assume they have been discovered in the time since the crash. Of course, a worldwide dataloss of epic proportions isn't what I consider a research booster. A two-class submarine world is feasible, though. We'd just have to introduce those sensors. I wouldn't particularily mind, even. they just have never before made an appearance.

Let's please not forget that Shadowrun's and the Real World's timeline split around 1989 (actually around 1960, with Shiawase's founding). shadowrun is not the Real World in the future. It's just a fairly similar parallel universe.

[Fuchs]

I assume the megas own their own armies with all the bells and whistles. They'd be too vulnerable if they'd rely on mercenaries for their main defense.

Mercenaries are used by the lower tier corps, and maybe megas for missions they expect to lose people in, or need some way to evade getting held responsible for in case it goes wrong (not plausible deniability, just a scapegoat ready, "those evil/incompetent mercs are at fault").

[Username17]

Yeah, but Gazprom is to Russia what Aztech is to Aztlan - it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins. Gazprom routinely acts purely motivated by politics (ask Ukraine).

Ukraine is a great example. Russian companies reduced the subsidies on Ukrainian natural gas. Not "refused to sell to them", not "jacked up the prices beyond market rates", not even "asked them to pay market rates". No, Ukraine was still getting below-market rates for natural gas, they were just less below market rates than the previous contract was. But they hadn't budgeted for that, because Viktor Yushchenko is a fucking moron, so they decided to go bandit and start stealing gas without paying for it.

This was a giant kerfuffle, because Viktor Yushchenko was apparently convicned that NATO would go to war with Russia in support of their bid to steal fuel. As it happens, this was not true, Ukraine got their invitation to NATO rescinded, and Russian troops stared down Ukraine and they grudgingly agreed to start paying for natural gas again.

The Shadowrun situation is even more out there. There is no NATO. If some country decides to go bandit, it is not because they think for some reason that some distant empire will back them up in the ensuing war, it's because they know that there isn't any national army willing to back up the corporation that they are raising the black flag against. In that situation, Ukraine wouldn't be holding out for NATO support, but Gazprom wouldn't have the Red Army at their back either - it would just be a showdown between Gazprom's army and Ukraine's.

I can see that megacorps want armed forces to secure their assets, but having supercarriers, lots of artillery, or tank bataillons isn't needed there.

Why not? Look, sometimes a country, corporation, religious affiliation, political movement, or other group of people that decides to come and take your stuff is a bullshit F-Grade force like a Somalian Pirate Family or a Columbian Criminal Group. Sometimes it's a D-Grade force like the Nation of Zimbabwe or The Army of God. But you know what? Sometimes it's a B-Ranked force like the Nation of Ukraine. Seriously, that's the 36th largest military on Earth. And sometimes they just decide to go bandit. That's a thing that happens. That's a thing that happens even though the two biggest militaries on Earth (the US and Russia) are pledged to shoot pirates right in the face.

People do not pay their bills without a threat of reprisals if they don't. Modern society is set up to make those threats so automatic that people scarcely think about them, but they are there. In Shadowrun, corporations have to generate those threats on their own or in conjunction with the other members of the corporate court. If there are entities in the world that might require super carriers to seriously threaten who might choose to not pay their bills (and since Amazonia exists, the answer to that is a big Yes), then corporations need super carriers.

---

An important thing to remember about Shadowrun physics is that the magic system heavily favors using transports. You can use Movement to get one "thing" to another place in a small fraction of the time. This means that loading 80, or even just two "things" onto some sort of "thing transport" and then using movement on the transport and then disembarking your "things" at the destination is faster and more fuel efficient than having your "things" get there themselves. Concealment works the same way, where it is easier to hide one thing that carries five littler things than it is to hide six things.

So you'd expect the armies of the Sixth World to have a lot more carriers of various kinds. Boat carriers that launch little boats when they reach the scene of conflict (like the Somalian one from a few years back). Motorcycle transports, that seriously open up and launch a bunch of combat bikes down a ramp. Plane Carriers. Even Tank Transports, to transport your tanks around. I don't just mean trucks carrying drone racks and APCs and sea-based aircraft carriers (though of course, all those things would exist), I mean transports for your transports.

The modern warfare of Shadowrun should by rights be bringing in a lot of vehicles that are basically nesting dolls that look like transformers.

And to clear up my point: in Shadowrun, there are no penetrat-o-water beams, unless we assume they have been discovered in the time since the crash. Of course, a worldwide dataloss of epic proportions isn't what I consider a research booster. A two-class submarine world is feasible, though. We'd just have to introduce those sensors. I wouldn't particularily mind, even. they just have never before made an appearance.

Shadowrun has always been incredibly vague as to what all those satellites are doing. Since exactly how Russia is tracking subs from space is a big secret and all other sub tracking efforts are also a big secret, it's really hard to say what Shadowrun submarine sensors are or are not capable of. There has been a total lack of information. The only book that dealt with submarines in any real way was Shadowboxer, and we all pretend that book never happened.

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Anyway, one of the things that should really be done in a war sourcebook is to write new combat rules. That means that you probably want to do something like the damage system like the one in AWOD. That means among other things that you're gong to be ditching the (frankly insane) damage codes for the upper end weapons, but most likely you'll have to rewrite the damage codes for the basic weapons too. And you'll need new vehicle stats as well of course.

It's quite a job.

-Username17

[fectin]

The points on lasers make complete sense, with the caveat that you probably have different chasses for close in defense and for shooting satellites. One needs to be really fast, the other needs to be really, really well stablized (long lever arm).
G I'm not sure why brinksmanship doesn't apply between companies. Sure you need to keep Zimbabwe in line, but if you can't put up at least a credible threat, Aztech can just do an "extra-hostile" takeover, or a "force-leveraged" buyout of individual facilities. By fielding a carrier, a megacorp:a) gains an advantage on the world stage and b) MASSIVELY increases the entry costs to playing with the big boys. If you can't counter that carrier, you don't get to play "megacorp".

Also, remember the difference between conquering an area and occupying that area. In the past that's often been done by the same people, but there's no reason it has to be that way. You could seriously have three very different specialized armies instead of one big one trying to fill three roles. Call it space marines, occupiers, and specialists. Space marines go through and smash things until the opposing force is unwilling to continue. "Nice" is not part of their job. Occupiers hold a captured territory and are much more sociable. "Nice" is a huge part of their job. Specialists basically means netrunners.

And drones can totally be part of the battlefield. Keep your swarms small, and require human in the loop for lethal decisions. Surveillance is everywhere, but lethal drones basically only show up as 1 for 1 or 2 for 1 replacements for human soldiers.

Can you even imagine the logistics requirements for providing one-tine encryption for hundreds of combatants? Not to mention, you could still break it by stealing the "pads," which is a lot easier when you've distributed copies of them to a bunch of guys who are about to go into a firefight.

[raben-aas]

I don't know if this has already been addressed, but I always wondered how astral projection and military reconnaissance would work together.

All in all, the military discussion here and elsewhere seems to be centered around the hardware side – which totally makes sense in our RL world or CP2020. In SR? I dunno.

Mages, spirits and watchers on the battlefield should change the entire way wars are fought, IMO...

[Fuchs]

I assume any military vehicle gets warded, and astral space is full with watchers as early warning system, with spirits in reserve or guarding locations and assets.

[Sir Neil]

[(or, yuck, 'battle rifles')

What don't you like about battle rifles? IMX they're pretty handy.

[Kot]

I assume any military vehicle gets warded, and astral space is full with watchers as early warning system, with spirits in reserve or guarding locations and assets.

Not enough resources for that. One average magician per platoon is a very good proportion, when you look at the Awakened to Mundane ratio. And Adepts of all kinds probably tend to take on specialists and support roles. Like a specialized in Empathy Mystic Adept, serving as a therapeutic consultant for soldiers.
Or special forces. Very special indeed. :)

[Antumbra]

I don't know if this has already been addressed, but I always wondered how astral projection and military reconnaissance would work together.

All in all, the military discussion here and elsewhere seems to be centered around the hardware side – which totally makes sense in our RL world or CP2020. In SR? I dunno.

Mages, spirits and watchers on the battlefield should change the entire way wars are fought, IMO...

Absolutely, luckily magic scarcity helps, but any mage who can pop a Control Thoughts just got himself TacNet access - there might be some manatech way of detecting aura manipulation that could shutdown gear, but it doesn't exist in the rules yet.

Here's a thing - should rules for using Movement on weaponry exist?

[Josh_Kablack]

Satellites which can detect most subs even while they were submerged, are predicted by enthusiasts to come online by the late 1990s. That may or may not have actually happened, and there's a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories about what classified secrets the US or the Russians are hiding.

But it's fairly certain that even with a magical apocalypse, in another 60 years, orbital recon for underwater targets will be better than it is today. It's also fairly certain that it still won't be perfect - and anything you have to say about naval warfare has to be predicated on how you set up those technological interactions.

If satelitte recon is only slightly better than today, then submarines are invisible only below a certain depth, leading to the primary use of large capital ships as coastal patrols/bombardment and being carefully guarded by flotillas and drone nets anytime they have to cross deep water. This sets things up so that the threat of a coastal bombardment reaching range is an adventure timer and the PCs can have adventures to lure ships into deeper water and/or disable parts of a drone net.

If satellite recon works by algorithmic matching of surface water turbulence to established weather patterns, then you get subs that ride currents and minimize their own propulsion and which want to strike only when it coincides with unusual weather patterns. This sets up PC slots for meddling in naval warfare through storm chasing / weather magic or by hacking meteorological data sets

If satellite recon is near-perfect, with penetrate-o-water beams, then the only way to have stealth submarines is to make them look fairly convincingly like whales, or go with unmanned drones that can look like smaller sea creatures. This actually makes a fairly tight fit with Frank's observations about Movement and carriers of carriers, and robot sea monsters are definitely cool, but the only adventure hook I'm seeing here is how difficult it would be to launch and maintain such things without ruining the deception. If you want Free Willy as a Shadowrun Adventue, this is the way to go.

[Username17]

I don't know if this has already been addressed, but I always wondered how astral projection and military reconnaissance would work together.

Magicians are amazing, but they are incredibly limited in a lot of ways. Astral recon is great for stuff like "Are there people over there in that camp?" but they aren't super great for intelligence gathering. Remote viewing can tell you where someone is, and even how they are feeling, but it can't give you precise coordinates or take a photo. It doesn't send any raw intelligence up the chain. Everything has to be given in a verbal report afterwards. And it's dangerous. You're risking an incredibly valuable asset (a magician) to go scout someplace where the enemy may very well have some spirits or hellhounds or nagas waiting in ambush and none of the rest of the team can do anything about it.

Sending spirits to go scout is even sketchier, because the chain of command is getting intelligence filtered through a four dimensional space tree that can't read and doesn't know the difference between a rocket launcher and a vacuum cleaner. But at least you won't lose anything irreplaceable if there's an ambush in the scouted region.

Basically the long and the short of it is that magical surveillance can give you the answer to the question "is there someone over there?" and that's great. But that's it. It doesn't put red dots on the battletac maps or leave a record that analysts can sort through.

Mages, spirits and watchers on the battlefield should change the entire way wars are fought, IMO...

Well, yes and no. The way wars are fought are still going to mostly involve shooting the other man in the face and taking their stuff. There are things mages can do to spot suicide bombers, but spirits pretty much can't tell them apart from civilians. Watchers make sneaking into a camp more difficult, but they don't make disguising yourself any harder and they can't tell the difference between an apartment with a man making coffee and an apartment with a sniper in it. Urban warfare is almost completely unchanged by watchers.

Spirits can materialize inside a tank or apc and murderate everyone inside. That's pretty cool. But it only costs a few hundred nuyen a week to have a shinto priest ward all your tanks, so you'll only be able to pull that kind of trick on armies that lack resources or cut corners. Against troops in the open, it's about the same as sending a drone assault. Assault rifles chop up spirits fairly well actually (unless they get to very large Forces, at which point they'd be confronted with anti-armor weapons anyway), and it's wicked hard to mass them.

Honestly, the relevance of spirits in warfare is mostly in logistics. Movement, Concealment, and Guard are incredibly powerful when you are moving military equipment around.

Sorcery could have a huge impact. Move Earth? Detect Enemies? Mana Barrier? Those are spells that could have a huge impact on how warfare is conducted. Except... they really can't, because magicians are rare and their spell lists are short and deeply personal. If you are a military mage and you happen to know something badass useful like Repair or Catalog, you might seriously be one of six or seven people in the entire world who knows that spell. If your platoon has a sanctioned psyker in it, there is absolutely no telling what the fuck he can do. Like, maybe he can make all your bullets go through foliage as if it was air. Or maybe he can heal injuries with his mind. Spirit powers can be pretty standardized - a lot of magicians can affect the weather and all of them can accelerate a vehicle to warp speed. But Sorcery is batshit and your army can't base any of their strategies around things sorcery can do.

Here's a thing - should rules for using Movement on weaponry exist?

Movement is a huge deal. But it doesn't increase the damage of things, and never has. However, if you start getting into situations where Time of Flight starts to really matter, then using Movement on projectiles would also matter. Using a spirit's power to get a rocket to hit a target 5 kilometers away in 1 second instead of 5 could really be a game changer.

-Username17

[Antumbra]

Movement is a huge deal. But it doesn't increase the damage of things, and never has. However, if you start getting into situations where Time of Flight starts to really matter, then using Movement on projectiles would also matter. Using a spirit's power to get a rocket to hit a target 5 kilometers away in 1 second instead of 5 could really be a game changer.

-Username17

Hmm, so Movement is really more like some brand of Space Warp Thingy. Which is no less scary of course, because you can always shoot more bullets for Mega Damage. Mages are probably too valuable to have on the field, excepting the ones who are useless off of it.

Special Forces only? If they're so rare and unique, then each Battle Mage has a different strategy to apply and would drastically alter the teamwork and knowledge required of the squad - the anti-magic superstitions that seem very common would possibly interfere with their integration with larger units as well. But I'm not sure Utility Mages would benefit from that, they'd probably be a part of whatever mundane equivalent exists already, just with a much higher paycheck.

I can see Mages causing endless headaches for everybody.

[Kot]

Frank, you'd be surprised how much can one astrally projecting mage read from enemy soldier auras. Morale, mood, and such. Plus how much cyber/bioware they have. And when they get into the command post... Heh.

[raben-aas]

Magicians are hard to come by, but if you have one, I imagine he can pull some really nasty tricks. Admittedly, I don't know all too much about the magic aspect of SR, but I've seen magician PCs pull some pretty nasty recon stuff involving spirits or even mere watchers.

Now, when the warzone is urban, I imagine the use of spirits gets very limited very fast, as they can't discern between soldiers and civilians -- but give them a Desert War scenario or set them to watch certain villages and come to the magician when there is murderdeathkill happening all over the place, and you have a pretty decent recon ace up the sleeve.

Considering wards -- how effective are these? Comlink versus hacker protection like effective, or new vehicle armor rules versus former antitank gear like effective?