FIX

It also depends on which section of the building one is in.  For instance the wireing closets will be relitively well secured ans will the server rooms.  Areas like open cubicules will need pretty minimal security.  A netowrk opperations center will be well gaurded but not the janitorial closet.  I would guess that most defences are passive, cameras, card-readers and biometrics.  Then add guards at the access points (1-25 depending on the nature of the risks associated with it) and have one-half (cubicules) to 3 (top secret lab or area with important stuff going on) aditional gaurds for each floor gives a good idea of building security.  So for an average building with 3 ground level  entrances thats 29 gaurds plus 10 for the parking garage and an aditioanl 1.6 per floor for the 140 floors is 224.  This works out to about 270 corpcops.  The average edgerunner team could assuming that their net-support is intact and on the job could chew up most of them with boobytraps, well executed ambushes and the insertion of video footage into the security system.  

I mean 10 or 20 corp cops charging up a fliht of stairs and getting gernaded from above realy makes for a bad day, expecialy when someone below them streches a trip wire for a claymore acorss their retreat route.  Or taking over the secuirty system and randomly reporting intrusions in areas where th echaracters aren't.  The goons will get tired out chasing down random threats that don't exist.  Of cource they may be reinforced by others called in or brought from another facility.  

Its dooable, it jyst requires being smart.  Very smart.  And a little lucky.

Damien joins the group and tries to look casual but ready to shoot if negoations go baddly.  Hopefully, they don't want to get dead any more than he does.

I would have no problems with the death penality if it were fairly applied, proper representation was provided for the defendant at state expense (equal to the buget devoted to it by the DA) and that DNA testing would be done properly.  However, the evidence at this point is that the death penality is biased towards the poor and ethnic minorities.  As a result unless its fixed.  Even the conservative Chicago Tribune sugests that the death penality is arbitary.  

I have said before that probably the person behind the shootings would be more likley than not qualifiable as legaly insane.  

Oh, and Harry, could you please take off the tinfoil hat because Hanlon's razor sugests that it would be exceedingly unlikely that the SAS men would be involved.  Your point on useing milityry service to instill dicipline is problamatic because if its done wrong there is a severe problem with soldiers who follow illegal orders or former soldiers back in civilian life more likely to fail to report/stop illegal activity from above (see Enron, Worldcom, Arthor Anderson, etc).  And althought I have never fired or handled a firearm, I have read enough about them on the internet (in the context of becoming a better cyberpunk player and to learn more about the accuracy of media reports) to know that Neglegent Discharges happen and one must be carefull.  Even carefull people can mess up and hurt themsleves or others accadently.  I am not saying that people should not have access to weapons, I am saying that if people own/use them the must accept responsibility for their action.

Assuming that Ebin mentions the Jeep:  "Fawcett, what's the plan? I hope they don't make us shoot them."

I have been living with the nutcase deranging everyone around me (I live in the Washington DC area).  I still have a greater chance of dying in a car accadent, so it doesn't wory me too much.  All I can say is I think we have a canidate for the padded room with strait jacet.  I think we have someone too crazy to stand trial.  

As for gun controll doing somthing about someone else doing it, I seriously doubt that gun laws deter the crazy.  Instead of being shot with a rifle, one would get a crossbow quarel in the back.  Dead is Dead.  

As to gun controll reducing crime, it sounds good, but firstly it may be constutionaly problamatic.  I do not know enough about constutional history, but when prominent constutional scolars like Laurence Tribe (a liberal) believe it may be an indidvidual right, I see plenty of reasions to be extreemely causious.  And when people like Bersellies write books that contain enough historical inacuracies to be concidered propaganda, I see no point to be hasty.

Finaly, I am not convinced that reducing the number of firearms in society will reduce levels of violence.  And any serious effort at baning firearms will assure that Democrats will not controll congress or the presidency for the next 20 years (a bad thing), and the Supreme Court's current bent towards radical conservativism, it probably will not withstand a chalenge.  

What I know does cause societial violene is massive disparities in wealth, and political power between social groups. Also massive disparity between social classes tends to encourage it.  Social stability tends to discurage it.  

As far as I know MD and VA have the death penality, but DC does not.  MD tends to fry far fewer people than VA.  So if he is sane, I doubt that he will get the death penality.  There are some serious ethnic disparities in sentencing.  Also, there is a disturbing tendancy to imprission / murder people who didn't comit a specific crime because they didn't have adiquate representation in court.

As I understand it, striper clips (chargers) are used primarialy in bolt-action rifles (Lee-Enfield, Mauser, etc) where the are used to fill the internal magazine.  Detachable magazines tend to be used with semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

I would expect that Zombis have increadably high cool scores (can't fail roll) because they are mindless.  That is, they will keep taking rounds unill rendered hurs-de-combat by either by shock (zeroed blood presure) or CNS damage.  Body would not be increased as a wound resistance mechanism because they are not tougher, but for lifting pourpouses it may be higher.

Damien responds, "I am up for it.  Estabon, unless you want to make contact."  He seems to be hiding some nurviousness by adjusting his rifle's sling.  "I am just a little bit woried about not passing for a local and drawing the attention of a bootlicker."

I can't think of too many "sucessfull revolutions," but I will try.  

French revolution -- Liberty, Equality, Firtanity with a large side dish of severed noble's heads.  Downside:  There was a monaricharical restoration in 1815, republicans took another 85 years to "win".  

1848:  Uprising against the landed nobility, failed but planted the seeds of further revolt.  

1917 (Russian):  Put a regieme in place just as autocratic as the Czars they replaced, just clamed to (and occasionaly did) protect the intrests of the least fortunate members of society.  

1919 (German):  Failed, many leaders killed.  Don;t know much more.  

1968 (Checklosovaka?):  Failed, put down by Russians.  

1989: Fall of E. German Govermemt, Reunification with West.  End of Communist Misrule and Kleptocracy in E. Europe.  Generaly Sucessfull because USSR was too feble to interviene.  

Early 1990's:  End of Apartide South Africa, sucessfull revolution.  Took many years.

Damien says, "Ebin, that sounds good.  I don't know much about tatics, but I think us Americans will look out of place."

Psycho, I think that perticular diffrence has to do with several pan-european attempts at self enhiliation.  The first of which was the 30 years war, and the most recent was the Second World War.  

Aside from the Civil War, there have been no major conflicts on American Soil so the damages of war are rather abstract.  (At least untill one travels abroad)  I never realized how baddly smashed Berlin was untill I saw the buildings that survived the era when visiting.  There would be a section of old (pre war) buildings and then a modern (post war) building in their midst.  Its pretty implicit that there was somthing there and it got bombed.  Or seeing that every prewar building had signifigant damage (marks from gunfire and shelling).  There are no American Cities (other than Lower Manhatan) where there is any archetectural indication of the horors of war.  

I am not saying that we (US) should not invade Iraq, I am just sugesting that we should be aware of the potential for extreemely negative outcomes (like messy urban warfare).  Sadam is a regional menace, but its better to let the Iraqis have their revolution and kick him out than to have the Marines do it.    Popular uprisings against dictators are better for national pride than foreign invasions.

I just wory when a bunch of chickenhawks (Peale, Rummy, et all) favor it, and uniformed military officers who have seen action tend not to.

I was assuiming that most gangs would be useing the body armor that is so plentiful on  the streets to cover the vitals (several layers).  

But your are right sp 30 is probably a bit high for the crew compartment.  It was a bit late when I wrote it up.

Punknaughts, when properly built are truely impressive destruction machines.  As such they take a bit of work to get going.  The engines and controlls are probably from a mashed AV, the frame is eithe rcustom built or from a bus or light truck.  The entire thing is armored (scrap metal mostly) and armed.  Last step is to load some dorphed up gangers onto it and go smash everything up!

I would guess that at least two sets of AV engines aught to be used for reliability (one should be enough to keep it aloft on a cussion of air).  

Armor would be theoriticaly maxed out at around 50-200SP and 1.5-8 times that in SPD, depending on the design.  Weapons will tend to be machineguns, assualt rifles, and other weapons that a booster is likely to scounge up.  

Probably the best way to do it is to have the characters make a seriies of tech rolls, the higher the rolls the better the subsystem functions.  You may want to roll in secret and record failures so that characters can be properly maimed by exploding engines.  

Figure the folowing:  1 roll per engine, 1 roll for controlls, 1 for structure, 1 for armor, 1 for each weapon system.  I would give bonuses for each day (8hrs) worked on it, but the dificulity numbers woudl be pretty high.  Like 50 for the engines, 20 for controlls, 200+ for structure, 450+ for armor, 25-250+ for each weapon system.  

Let your characters test it out at varous stages.  Small failures will result in undetected or minor problems, major failures will result in spectacular explosions.  

Can anyone think of a better way?  Or perhapse its best to let the GM come up with it and let the players get in the way of a booster rampage

There is a use for a "golf ball" gernade, urban room-to-room fighting.  Simply put, somthing small like that would be more than adiquate.  It would never replace the standard gernade for other tasks (like clearing the enemy out of bunkers).  

Would there be a niche for such a weapon?

Thats why marketing in 2020 is so effective.  That and losses of material due to the riots, civil disorder and general decay.  

I just assumed that most of everything from before the collapse was pretty worn out during it.

People are starting to do things with their "Boring Grey Box"  Also computers are getting smaller.  However, due to market pressure, it is unlikely that computers will do anything but become more standardized.  

I volenteered at a program where we rebuilt old computers for distribution to disadvantaged children.  I hated working on PCs from IBM, Compaq and other big brands because they were just diffrent enough to make any effort at repair difficult.  

As a result computers will go in two directions:  small very compact systems that at best word processors (1-2 expantion slots) + USB [for adding devices outside of the case] and many built in things like (low quality) sound and graphics.  The other section of the market will go for larger cases that use discrete add-in boards for sound, graphics, etc.    

One new technology to look out for in the next year is called 3GIO.  It will, amoung other way cooler things (like permiting faster network adapters and RAID arays [used to speed up disk access/transfer]) permit the seperation of the CPU/drives from a seperate box containing the DVD drive and audio ports.

Hanns,

I had previously encountered Lott's book.  His argument seemed pursasive, but I do not have the background in statistics to evaluate his claims.  In the same project for college, I also came across the JFPO website, which bases its claims on faulty assumptions.  In this article,David North, rebuts Goldhagen's assertion that the Holocaust was a unique event that could only take place in Gemrany.  I had read part of Goldhagen's book and concluded independantly that at best it was a politicaly motivated attack.  It was perticulary offensive because some of my grandparents are German Jews.  Combined with Kim Chernin 's analisys of some American Jewish attitudes towards Israel.  Which help explain the JFPO's ideological stance [i will get back to it latter].  

That said, making a reductionist argument that wide spread gun ownership amoung German Jews would have prevented the Holocaust is incorect.  It would have certnaly reduced the number of NS party members, marginaly.  

The Nazi party only could have come to power because the Winmar Goverment was perticulary weak, the Non-Communist left had been partialy pruged and had inefective leadership, the SDP [Dominant party during that era] had fractional infighting.  In the aftermath of the failed revolution of 1918, Rosa Luxenburg and Karl Liebknecht, both leaders of the KPD [German Communist Party] were murdered by military officers/on orders due to "revolutionary" (The Kiserreich was in the process of colapsing due to war pressures at that point) activities.  In 1922 Walter Rathenau [German Jewish Industuralist & progressive econominist who was instrumental in maintaining industural output during the 1st World War] was assinated by proto-NS elements who opposed his efforts to pay war repreations and signing the Treaty of Rappalo (Normalizing relations with the USSR and eliminating war repreations).  As a result of the instability (Assinating/murdering political opponents just isn't very democratic), recession and national humiliation created an oppertunitity for anti-modernists  [Nazis] to gain controll of the state.  

Therefore gun controll had nothing to do with the rise of the Nazi Party.

As for the JFPO's ethnic nationalist/belief in being despised and hated (addressed in Cernin's article) its a fabrication to add ideological justification to the creation of a jewish state.  

As to the origin of this belief system one must look to the conditions existing in europe aproxamately 200 years ago.  The French Revolution sweapt away the old Gheto system and rabinical authority (the Rabinate had judical and legilative powers within Ghettos).  The last vestiges of the middle ages finaly ended -- but only in western and centeral Europe.  In Russia, confined to the Pale, the rabinic authority still intact watched in horor as the old order was sweapt away and the enlightenment project began to bear fruit in the Jewish communities.  People like Mendelson argued for a Judiasm that conformed to "the spirit of the age".  None of this change ever reached the Pale of Settlement (where most Eastern European Jews were confined) by Czarist Decree.  The rabinic authorities therefore opposed the invasion of the Grand Army and helped (marginaly) to prevent the spread of the Enlightenment eastward.  As a result the first major split occured in European Jewlery.  In Germanic countires and to the west the enlightenment had firmly taken hold, to the east it had not.  This meant that Jews living in the Pale did not see themselfs as polish or Russian or Ukranian, but Jewish (as a nationality).  Combined with a nasty persucation complex [see Chernin above] developed by some as a result of the first (and thankfully) only effort at industrual genocide produced the sort of thinking that the JPFO expauses.  

The JPFO (to a greather extent) and most American Jews see themselves as ethnicaly (culturaly) Jewish.  Opposed to this treand is a relitivley small number of Clasical Reform Jews who see themsleves as Americans, etc. who happen to be Jewish.  This is like say, Italian, Irish and Barvarian Catholics.  All are catholic, and of diffrent nationalities and traditions.  The same is true in any geographicaly dispersed religious group.  

If any board readers more frimilar with German and Centeral European History than myself wish to make corrections, please do.  

I am not saying that Lot is wrong, just that he seems persuasive, but I do not know enough about stastics to evaluate his research.  Regardless of the Beliefs of the JPFO, I do not like how they got them (ethnic nationalism).  And I am aware the fact that Michael Bersellies is a accademic fraud.  

Further Readings:

http://www.napoleon-series.org/ins/weider/c_jews.html

http://www.initaly.com/regions/ethnic/jewish.htm

http://www.sichosinenglish.org/cgi-bin/calendar?holiday=chanuka35

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.shtml

Just a thought on combat, but if actions are stat and skill related as Psychophips sugested, why not add up the stat+skill/4=actions?  (max 5 min 2) Superpimpsolo (ref 10 + combatsense 10 + handgun 10) will get 5 actions but at the oppertunity cost because the first point of handgun should be much cheaper than the 10th.  Superpimp solo's excessive skills don't do anything to get the 6th and 7th actions and its effectively wasted.  The only bonus is gong first in every combat round.  

Also, reflex boosting/holosights/etc should reduce the effects of the commulative -3 per action penality.  Of cource it will be never less than -1 and the rules need to be so that every point of improvement costs exponentaly more than the previous one.  For instance, a reflex sight costs 150 (-1 to first cumulative multiple action penality (penality after 5 shots -14), a holosight costs 500 (-1 to first two commulative action penalities, max penality -13), a smartgun link costs more than 1500eb (-1 to all cumulative action penaliies -10 at 5 rounds).

For instance Bob the Average (ref 5 handgun 5) wants to be a little better marksman, so he goes to the local QCB range and pratices.  His first point of handgun was 10 ip, the second through 4th costed 15 (2nd), 30 (3rd), and 45 (4th) respectively.  The fith costed 75.  The next point of handgun will cost 100.  This is just an example, but combat skills at high levels need to be very expensive.  

The costs of improving ones combat ability need to be exponential and marginal at extreem levels.

An example of that would go somthing like this:  

Jane (ref 4) has a flashware speedbooster installed (+2 ref)

Andy (ref 6) has the same unit installed (+1 ref)

Superdeathsolo (ref 10) also installs it and gets a fractional boost of (+.5) and needs several other upgrades to reach ref 11.

It would go somthing like this:

Current Ref2-4  5-7  8-10  10+  

Frac.

Benifit.         2x   1x   .5x    .25x

It costs 4 times the cost to raise one's reff from 8 to 9 than from 4 to 5.  

As to dealing with multiple special abilityies, why not designate one as the primary and the other as teh secondary.  Any advancement in the primary is 2x normal cost and the secondary is 3x normal cost and must be no more than 1/2 of the primary (except for when streetdeal is secondary, then its limited to 1/4th due to time requirements).  When streetdeal is primary, the other one cannot be more than 1/4th of streetdeal.  Being a fixer is a full time job.  

Would any of this help to contain munchkinism?

One final thought, would deviding skills into catagories and giving them diffrent IP cost modifiers encourange characters to have  a diversificated skills base?  For instance low levels of cooking, literacy, mathamatics and gen. knowlege (etc) would be disturbingly cheap while combat sesnse and streetdeal would be expensive.  Skills like driving, Wardrobe and style, and similar would be between the two extreemes.

Depends on the type of game.  If the players are streetscum, on a good day, they can get their hands on holowpoints, or once in a blue moon, a single round of AP ammunition.  Make that every other blue moon.  On the other hand if the are Spec Opps or a Corporate Team, they can probably get any munition in existance, if they can show need for the exotic undetectable, instantonous acting round in .88 hardmagnum.

The downside to fletechets...

The problem with fletecets is that they do not have the corss section to do serousl damage to a human target.  They will not cut/crush/mutiliate enogh flesh to put someone down.  

My selecton of a recoilless rifle is to give a platoon (18 suits) with somthing with enough punch to put tanks ours de combat, shell positions and fire fletechet rounds (thosands of fletechets are sufficently effective to be ariea of effect weapons.  I assume that a laser guided round could be produced.  Downside is a very visiable fireing signature.

When thinking about guns and crime controll, I am of two minds:  On one hand, general ownership of firearms may have a mild effect of reducing crime:  dead criminals have a non-existant rate of recidivism.  Criminals that recieve positive feedback (sucess) will be far more likely recommit than those that have recieved negative feedback (being shot, stabed, having martial arts praticed on, etc.).  The presence of firearms also increaces recrecreational options and therefore marginaly improves quality of life.  Acording to Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jarred Diamond, the presence of an armed populace tends to decrease keplotractratic tendancies in goverments.  

On the other hand, (in the US) there are a large (althogh declining) number of accedents with firearms.  To the best of my knowlege most of these incidents are the result of user error.  The wide presence of firearms does increase the ability of criminals, psycopaths and others to commit murder.  Reducing the number of firearms in a society may marginaly reduce it.  

The other factors are that legaly (at least in the US) the poliece are not responsible for preventing crime, they are only responsible for catching the criminals after they comit the crime.  The final piece is that the world is so awash in weaponry and it is so easy to produce that it would be pointless to attempt to.  Evern attempting to keep a society completely free of firearms woudl be as futile as stoping drug smugling.  

Ovibously, I don't have any answeres.  I do perhapse know some  of the right questions.  I don't own a gun, but understand that there would be curmstances (like a job that involves carying large sums of cash, or working at a family planing clinic in a "red state" [state where Bush recieved a majority of the votes*]) where it would make sense.  

*there was suficent election fraud in the 2000 Florida election to reasionably believe that Al Gore should have been president.

For discouraging munchkins from pluging every immaginable death dealing device into thier body...

What about spliting emp into an "emotional stability" and "gets along with others" stats.  There also needs to be some system so that a low-stability person can load up far more with death devices than a high stability person with less side effects?

What about somthign like this:  Roll a D100, as long as its higher than stability, the implantee thakes minimal physocological harm, modified by the curmcumstances of the implant (with/without concent, after accident/cosmetic, etc).  If the roll is sufficently under stability (25% or so) nasty things happen.  Like the new cyberarm experence grand-mal like seasures because its firmware conclicts with the reflex boost.  Or at worst, deciding that eating one's friends is a good idea.  

So an office worker who gets nasal filters after getting spaz gassed by some boosters would take relitively minimal harm.  The munchkin death machine would naturaly take maxium harm (up to and including violent psycosis and/or death).  

Stability would also come into play in emotionaly intense situations.  Faill badly enough and be a sobbing blob, attempt sucide or go on a voilent rampage.  

"Gets along with others" would be about having a silver toung, millions of friends and being convencing.  

Maybee to have excessive quantities of one makes it hard to have large quantities of the other?

As for skills, why not have IP costs structured so that characters can get skills like cooking or low-moderate levels of education very cheaply, but its very hard to push combat skills or stunt driving into the stratosphere.  For instance have cheap skills (1x cost), average skills (1.5x), difficult skills (2x) and munchkin skills (5-7x)?

To chime in on initive...

Why not have a rolling initive system.  A "round" is 3 seconds long and there are 20 in a minute.  A round is devided into actions, say 40.  At the begining of combat everyone makes the apperoperate roll (Dex+D10?) with lowest to highest going in that order.  As soon as someone completes thier action they roll again, say 1/2dex+1D8 and add it to their initial initive.  When the action count reaches their point of action they act again and roll for the next one.  Every 40 actions, "housekeeping" activities like keeping track of bleeding occur.  Would this work.  Admitadly, this would tend to push Dex type skills up, but that can be compensated for by making high dex scores expensive and making the improvements marginal.

Hadn't thought of it but for some equipment (like field radios, GPS gear and stuff of that nature) he would cary it, however for specialized items (like military decks, radar parts, etc) a used electronics store would make more sense.

I have always thought that full auto ETE weapons are possible, they just look like water cooled machineguns and weight 40+ killos.  

12 rounds a minute = 1 round every 5 seconds on average.

20 rounds a minute = 1 round ever three seconds on average.  Thats at best what an ETE weapon can do, 1 round ever action (as per the rules).  

I tend to think of ETE as some sort of eletrical boosting to a special type of powder, produces mroe pressrue faster but with a lower max pressure and the velocity of the gas is higher.  The projectile is accelerated more smothly and to a greater velocity.  Of cource, instead of doubling the velocity (as per the rules), I would be increasing it 20% for standard cartrege cases and 25% for specialy ETE cases (diffrent shaped cartrege).  

Does anyone think this is reasionable?  (espeicaly directed to those who know far more about firearms and chemistry)

I read somewhere that during the first world war German troops thought they were under Machinegun fire when they first encountered the British Expiditionary forces.  I did a little research on the internet.  A trained marksman can pump out (countiung reloading) between 12 and 20 rounds of aimed fire per minute from an SMLE.  So I did a little work and pluged the .303 into my Real Life >> Cypberpunk damages.  

The .303 Does 6D6-1, before counting its uncontrolled fragmentation so thats probably between 6D6+2 and 7D6+1.  ETE the beast and it works out to 8D6+2 (before amunition fragmentary effects).  So I guess an old World War 1 pattern rifle would be an ideal base for an ETE rifle from hell.

Of cource an AK 47's action might work better and might even permit autofire.