psychophipps

Best rule that I have found is, "What you bring to the table, I can have too." Once they realize that grenades are way more fun when they're the only ones using them, it tends to tone itself down pretty quick.

As for bulletproof clothing, don't forget to apply the Armor stacking rules and modified encumbrance on pg. 101 of v2.

Mental agility and ability to resist freezing up is far more important than raw physical speed when it comes to initiative, IMO. Skill at the toolset being used is also a huge factor in my experience. I would use COOL + Skill + d10.

Nah, MarkC is good people. He spent several hours with me surrounded by firearms and didn't pop some caps in my punk ass. He did eventually ask me how long I had been friends with my buddy Dan though. When I asked why, he and his wife laughed and said, "You both have loaded guns and havn't shot each other yet." Come to think of it, we're always busting each others balls pretty bad.

By the way, Mark, he would have helped you hide the body. No worries.

Joe Q Public is in the Portland area and he's a good chap, for a Gypo Pollock. Beware his ability to make you his fast food slave, though.

Rockwolf is in the southern side of the state, IIRC. Never met him, and I'm probably biased by the fact that I have a really bad track record with every Californian I have ever met but one. Could be a real prince. You never know.

The important thing about the suit from the father of the deceased is that he was on a "Capture or Kill" list. Please note the "Capture" first as the emphasis of a list is typically the most important item at the time of its creation. al Awlaki would have made an incredible asset if we'd captured him. That wasn't feasible at the moment, or any time soon for that matter, and we had actionable intel with a precise location and a chance to act right fucking now (ask anyone how often that happens when the chain of command gets involved).

It's not an easy to call to make, certainly. You want justice, by the law, of the people, and within the Constitutional guarantees of due process by the, albeit illegally enacted, 14th Amendment, but you need to make a decision now. One life for thousands down the road? A traitor vs all of those innocents around the globe, including the United States? Not an easy call, but you have to go the hard road from time to time.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist; (and the commies in this example didn't actively and knowingly help kill thousands of innocent people)

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist; (and the socialists in this example didn't actively and knowingly help kill thousands of innocent people)

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist; (and the trade unionists in this example didn't actively and knowingly help kill thousands of innocent people)

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew; (and the Jews in this example didn't actively and knowingly help kill thousands of innocent people)

Then they came for al Awlaki - and there was no one left to speak out for al Awlaki. (because he was a complete bastard that actively and knowingly helped kill thousands of innocent people)

Veni Markovski

Great quote, but again, it's not in the same context. We didn't scoop up this guy's entire family and drag them out to be shot. We had one guy, who blatantly committed treason, that was actively part of the planning process to kill more innocent people besides the thousands he'd already had a part in, and we took care of business.

You can holler "slippery slope!" all you want, but I can't bring myself to begrudge the people involved in doing the deed. You see a chance like that once in a million and you'll spend the rest of your life kicking yourself for not doing it when you had a chance to save all of those innocent people that died later because you waffled.

The question is one of scale. If you combine "non-extradition country" with "actively plotting with other parties that have means, motive, and opportunity against the US and her worldwide allies", add a dash of "recruiting sleepers worldwide", and a couple of dollops of "our one chance to nail this chump" to the mix that we had, I would have gone for it as well. Taking what is likely the most extreme possible case and trying to extend the circumstances to a case where there is far easier access to the parties in question, far less potential collateral damage to US citizens or their allies interests, no sleeper cells because they typically hang out with other losers just like them, and all the time in the world as they build a case is a fairly weak argument.

As for "that morally relativistic BS", think on human history for a bit. Not even 75 years ago, this wouldn't have even raised an eyebrow anywhere. I'm all for due process. I'm all for a trial by your peers. Sometimes that simply ain't going to happen in a timeline that is reasonable against an extraordinary set of circumstances.

If Obama, or whoever, had said "Mother, may I?" he's have gotten a "Not just no. HELL NO!" from a pack of diplo-dinks and lawyers more worried about some terrorist scumbag's rights than the hundreds, or thousands, of people that would die if this guy didn't taste some of the treats those Reaper drones like to sprinkle around the naughty boys and girls. I'm just glad he had the balls to make the call. You think that Blowjob Bill would have had the stones to do what was right regardless of the potential political cost?

It's pretty sad that we've gone from "We'll grease the treads of our tanks with their guts!" in a menacing growl to "But what about his civil rights?!?" in a whiny voice in such a short period of time, don't you think?

I love this stuff. These chumps are all discussing the death of Anwar al-Awlaki as if he was chillin' in front of his XBox at his crib after knocking over the corner stop 'n rob. This guy was surrounded by hundreds of loyal supporters, had spotters on all of his land routes, had escape plans and contingent escape plans, and now we have a bunch of panty wastes whining about us taking the shot that we had at the time because, well...killing people that need killing just isn't nice, especially if that person just so happens to be a US citizen.

When that US soldier flipped out and started capping folks (which Anwar al-Awlaki has been linked to, btw), nobody bitched about the lack of due process when he got gunned down. Some will say, "Well, there's a difference..." and they are wrong. It's exactly the same thing. We had to kill one of our own to save more lives (many of them not even US citizens, btw. You're welcome). FULL STOP.

Why is it so hard for these people to understand that their morally relativistic BS is exactly what gutted our country in the first place?

One thing to keep in mind is that a kingdom raping dragon like Smaug got punked down by a single arrow fired from the right weapon. This applies to Hugh Jass mainframe systems as well. If they get the right info and/or the perfect weapon to tackle that mainframe, then they have that perfect weapon to bring it down and shouldn't have much of a problem doing so.

It's one thing to just roll up on it from the outside with zero intel with your modded Iphone 3GS and expecting it to fall like a stack of cards. It's another to have the original programmer giving you the back door into the system, the card key for the door to his office, setting up an appointment with the CFO due to recent massive stock purchases so you have a reason to be in the building, and giving the CFO's triple caramel mocha a squirt of the go-juice ala "Mission Impossible" so you can switch to the office of the programmer next door to initiate Operation: Militarised Corporate Mainframe Meltdown.

Well, I would think that it would pretty obvious that anything major won't be a quick n' dirty job without that aforementioned social engineering. The idea of crashing a truck through the wall of anything more secure than your local Walmart and giving the system a go without any setup should be immediately discounted by any but the top tier of hacking personnel. You start thinking Megacorp mainframes as a smash and grab and you're freakin' asking for some very unpleasant things to happen to yourself...full stop.

The best targets would be all of the portable media that everyone carries around themselves. Fully 80% of all cellular phones sold by Verizon Wireless are smartphones (with an estimate of 100% by 2015) with multiple Gigs of internal memory, let alone the microSD card in the Android units, mine has a flippin' HDMI port for running presentations straight from it, and some even have multi-processor computational capability. Move this forward to CP, the fact that people don't get any smarter or less lazy, and you have a ridiculously large base from which to hack the frickin' planet.

Why go after the mainframe when that exec is too lazy to go back and delete all of those files from yesterday's meeting? Any text files worth grabbing are easy pickings since I can fit around 3/4 of the Library of Congress on my smartphone in .rtf format. Texts between someone and their mistress or gigolo? Bump and grab the presentation and sales figures for the new chipset from Microtech at the airport? Clone the phone of that pop star for the extraction in two days? Need some quick cash? Hack that drunk guy at the bar for his credit or debit card info by spoofing the phone into thinking it's connecting to the media marketplace.

Forget the big stuff, the small stuff will have all of the real goodies...

DV10 is a much better scale for a non-firewall system as even an unskilled user has a decent chance of "accidentally" getting through. A skilled user? I wouldn't even need a roll as a PC with a stat + skill over 10 is a dime a dozen.

I might be wrong here, but I thought that the bulk of hacking was fooling the system you're after into letting you create a user account so you can access it. The bulk of a firewall crack, if I recall correctly, is fooling the firewall into recognizing you as an authorized source of input for the protected system in the same general concept. Am I incorrect in my thinking here? I don't think that it's very reasonable to treat CP firewalls as basic port scanners as they have evolved well beyond this level of use in today's security apparatus.

Kind of curious as to why you would want to use skill as the basis for the number of programs running versus the quality of the equipment. I think that the MU in use should be the factor for designating final stats as Hick's Law won't suddenly disappear for computers any time soon. This does a few very good things, in my opinion.

This means that hackers won't just combine their effeorts and make some mondo 60+ MU superfly "hit Arasaka's mainframe with the rape stick" program that will do everything worth doing, and it runs like a dream on everything from an Atari 2600 equivalent to a fully customized Mac Pro.

It also keeps the program selection based on the mission so they have to consciously decide to be good at some things and poor at others on this particular run.

This also keeps the emphasis on the skill of the user because running too many things at once, or even having them available to load up later as evidenced by the decreased speed you see when using a full hard drive, (trying to go my favorite JOAT route) quickly bogs down their system into being far less effective which affects their rolls and finally trickles down into being recognized as a bad thing.

Just a few thoughts from a random post by Comp from the page before about Interface determining how many programs can be running at once...

Firewall difficulties are easy to do as evidenced by this chart I thought up in well under 2 minutes:

No firewall- 10

Lousy firewall or outdated off-the-shelf firewall- 15

Decent off-the-shelf firewall or a non-updated good firewall- 20

Good firewall with consistent updates- 25 (expensive)

SOTA firewall with constant full-tilt boogie IT support- 30 (ridiculously expensive)

Stop making this stuff harder than it has to be, guys.

I also like the Speed gap being at -3 to +3. As stated earlier, this can bring a roll up 1/2 of a difficulty level and this is a way to keep Gucci kit desirable, but not broken, while making outdated or poor quality kit something a PC will want to replace.

Still not sure about any other modifiers like +2, -1 and the like as I feel that the difficulty level system is there for a reason. I personally treat +1, -1 modifiers and the like with the "Gimme" system. The difficulty is set on the level system unless it's a contested roll, but the player offers me reasons as to why there is a positive situation modifier through good description of the character's actions.

Just tossing in another chart means that you're bogging things down again in that 1980s style when the effort needs to be focused on stripping everything down to the bare essentials so the narrative drives the story instead of three pages of charts.

There was a whole bunch of dumb things going on during the BHD situation. Bad HUMINT because the informer pussed out, attacking in broad daylight to remove all of the massive technological advantage the US military possessed, mamby-pamby feel-good ROE, and after everyone was, as Sizemore's character put so well, "whacked up on khat", attacking an enemy with an excellent communications net and a constant vigilance...yeah. Everything about it said, "This is a complete Goat Rope" and guess what happened?

Taking a hastily planned, ill-advised situation like that didn't make prime use of the available assets and using it as your prime example as to why the aircraft that revolutionized warfare (easily as much of a difference as the introduction of the repeating firearm or the machinegun) as we know it and has proven itself an excellent military tool for everything from med-evac to transport to anti-tank duties for over 60 years now as somehow "sub-par" is being a bit hasty, don't you think?

Of course helicopters are susceptible to RPG fire from the ground. Other items on the long list of "Susceptible to Anti-Tank Weapons Fire" include, but are certainly not limited to: cars, trucks, houses, buildings, ATVs, bunkers, checkpoints, APCs, tractors, other forms of aircraft, and...well...TANKS (hence the "Anti-Tank" designation?). You don't see airline pilots refusing to fly because "a single Phoenix missile can just take me out of the air".

To say that any motive system, including tanks, are somehow inferior because they can't "take Anti-Tank fire (for crying out loud) and keep on going" is like calling ballistic protection worthless because it can't save you from a direct hit from a 155mm Howitzer round. Helicopters are mostly vulnerable to ground fire when they are moving slow or hovering. DUH! You are more vulnerable in a gunfight if you just stand there in place or slowly mosey from one piece of cover to another as well.

With the attempted leaning of the military logistical structure, I don't see AVs as being particularly viable. If you think that turbines for helos and Osprey suck down some jet fuel, try turbofans shoving an armored brick through the air for a while. Cool concept, but completely economically unfeasible even for a money sink like the US military.

What i don't like about Red Dawn was the way that an RPG could hit a Hind and the Hind wasn't ripped in half. They have youtube video of what happens when a Hind is hit midship by a rocket or a missile and it's just ugly as it gets.

 

The problem that most Missile systems have is that unless you have lots or terrain without cover most helicopters are litterally flying around the trees so that you can't get a proper lock onto the aircraft. Thus you are stuck with Anti-aircraft guns on manual sighting or unguided rockets. Markc's missle is scary in theory but when one takes into account pysics of motion and the limited amount of fuel a missle can carry. It doesn't work so well unless you have those magical heavygear missiles that can turn 180 on a dime while at full speed.

I never saw the Hind blow in half, but I did see quite a few fuselages suddenly start tilting towards the ground while the rotor spun off in a random direction. Oops?

Fire and forget is very easy if you apply yourself to it. With systems like Longbow you don't even need to expose yourself to bring a missile onto target from behind cover. You could easily do the same thing with a designator or sensor and a vertical launcher from behind cover that soft-launches like a mortar before the missile motor fires up.

The real issue with this stuff is the cost. While there is a push for more OTS options for the military to reduce costs, it's still vastly more custom set-ups (with the associated costs) you're looking at in the deployment phase of things due to the hardening requirements and other factors. It's getting there, but there is still a long way to go.

On the other hand, an AV is going to cost a fortune in fuel, which isn't going to get cheaper. It'll require at least as much maintenance, and it's going to be expensive to buy. Helicopters will be cheaper, and as such more likely to be deployed by smaller corporations or security units - and ask any "star" from COPS or similar shows, finding out that the other side has air support when you don't, can ruin your whole day.

 

Stray

Cops? Just ask a Libyan rebel!

Welcome to the board!

One thing that I have noticed lately is the complete lack of any real interest by most players for high-level details. You don't watch your favorite CP movie and try to pick it apart with nitpicky details like the lack of a year-by-year, blow-by-blow timeline.

You need enough detail for immersion, everything else is fluff.

And another welcome from the Lone Star State. We have a great group of folks here and they're always good for a discussion of twenty.

I'm pretty sure he meant, "Do a runner to the backwoods where there aren't a whole mess of people to get me and/or mine sick".

As for a conspiracy, who says there even is one? A medical nanotech experiment gets loose without anyone knowing (maybe it didn't work as they thought so the company folded or something) and spreads to damn near everywhere with nary a clue. We all know that the medical and political factions in the world are very reactionary in nature so nobody is looking for anything. It would take some pretty serious screening for the nanotech to show up, at least well beyond those used in routine blood samples for the most common diseases. This cuts down the chances of discovery significantly for well over 95-97% of the human population. After a few months/years of this stuff spreading around via religious and medical missions, air travel, the global shipping market, urbanization, etc. it's too bloody late to stop it even if they knew it was there before it suddenly goes off.

15% of the population is wiped out in a week, or two at the most, and suddenly everything goes quiet...

Another potential is for the nanites to be spread all over the world only to be triggered when it's too late to stop and almost everyone has been exposed without knowing it. Kind of a "12 Monkeys" sort of thing where it's already at full steam by the time (very well informed) people realize what's going on and everyone else is dying too fast (or watching it happen to everyone else) for the info to matter. Three people in 20 is a ridiculously high lethality and it would certainly cause some real issues but if it hits and disappears fast enough everyone will be too shell shocked to react with anything too nuts like widespread quarantines, political unrest, and other long-term shenanigans.

More than four years and less than 100 posts for a v3 section on probably the busiest CP board on the web. Not a whisper in over two years now.

Gawdamn you made a complete load of shit, Max Mike!

I see your point, Interrupt. You love the idea of full-immersion VR and hackers having to worry about programs jamming them up on the meat side. I see it as an interesting gimmick that really doesn't add anything other than the "coolness" factor for a few limited applications.

I think that AR shows a lot more promise for widespread use than VR is all.

Well fiber optics are great but there still has to be: 1) an input device that converts the original electrical impulses into light, 2) the media to transmit the signal, 3) an reception/output device that converts the signal back into electrical impulses that the brain can read, and 4) a power supply of some sort that powers the reception/output device. Then you need the same for sending your signals back via fiber optics.

Working on the brain I see like the Human Genome Project. Great stuff, very exciting for science. The problem lies in the fact that while we think we're getting somewhere, we're really just scratching the surface. Remember all of those "junk genes" that you heard about for years and years? Well, they aren't as junky as we thought. Then we found out that genes are a lot more interlinked and multi-purpose than we thought so tweaking something to fix what we thought was simple suddenly cascades into a landslide of genetic clusterfuck. Oops?

The full emersion and kickin' chicken is great for "lulz and lawsuits" until someone really gets hurt. That truck driver that was virtua-spudding and blew his fuel truck into a school bus full of Obama Elementary's kindergarten class? Probably not going to last long. That socially challenged geek that starved to death? It's kinda funny and sad the first time but once it starts happening regularly and group like "Mothers Against Virtual Reality" start weighing in then you'll see a lot less immersion due to governmental controls. Look at Fisher Price. They just recalled ten million toys because some kids might get hurt on a long shot. How many VR companies are going to stick around with that much liability just waiting to jump down their necks? "Microsoft and Blizzard sued for 10 million dollars each when man craps himself while on Skype due to VR glitch on WoW 5" news at 11...

Not so good.

One thing to keep in mind is that most folks are not going to want to be in the full-tilt boogey virtual experience. It's pretty disconcerting, for one thing, and dangerous for another. Everyone's brain is slightly different and while it's fun to think that doesn't make any difference, it really does. Also, setting yourself up so that a minor glitch or power spike can keep you from breathing without a machine for the rest of your, probably-short now, life just won't excite most people. Add that more research is showing that the brain is more of a "cloud" machine than was once thought and you open up a new can of worms.

Does this mean that some console cowboys with low morals and lower self-preservation instincts won't get some crazy custom work done for that extra "oomph"? Of course not. But it does mean that a full-immersion world wide network, or even one for a good-sized metropolitan area, just isn't going to happen.

Seizures and other goodies are also really iffy. It'll be so hit and miss, in fact, that it probably wouldn't be researched in any depth as it really doesn't do a lot. Look at it this way. The point of computer security is two-fold, right? 1) Keep unauthorized access as difficult as possible, and 2) track and intercept the people attempting unauthorized access. How does "give them the kickin' chicken for a bit" or "make them crap themselves" add to these endeavors? Where is the return for the millions and millions of dollars spent on the research and development of this stuff when compared to the comparatively low cost of tricking them to stay online long enough for a trace and sending in the big men in black with big black firearms?

I've been here that long?!? This news is simultaneously cool and sad.