Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 03:13:08 -0800 (PST)
*picks up gauntlet*

What I've been starting to see this solution as is a
massively redundant drone network consisting of
egg-sized (if not smaller) transmitters that are
spread throughout an area.

Any attempts at physically taking this network out
would simply be too time consuming. A counter-network
could admittedly be spread around the area, but I am
assuming that only industrially advanced nations would
have the capacity to sufficiently suffuse an area with
many "radio-eggs" (be they of a radio or a jamming
variety), which is besides the fact that any attempt
at communication is going to have a "counter" in the
form of "exactly the same thing, but with jamming
capabilities", thereby trivializing such objections.

Any jamming attempts will therefore be assumed as
coming from a single location. Now, under the SR rules
I would be inclined to give the radio-egg network
being jammed an aggregate signal rating depending upon
its density, due to the fact that while a single
signal might get jammed, there will be 10 other eggs
also receiving that signal and passing it on to the
eggs near to them, who in turn... etc. Thus, any
signal on this network is likely to eventually reach
its intended target. Admittedly, a network like this
wouldn't be used for anything other than voice comms
and other non-time-critical data (a 1-second delay in
guiding a drone is too much a lag, as any Quake player
will attest), but I'd consider it highly useful in
allowing a continuous free flow of communications to
take place without the enemy being able to triangulate
on anything (all they see is a big, buzzing heap of
radio traffic).

Of course any deployment of radio eggs will have to
take place on a massive scale, as otherwise its
presence would be a very good indication of where an
army is intending to cross a border :).

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 2
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 14:22:48 +0100
According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November 2004 12:13 the
word on the street was...

> Any attempts at physically taking this network out
> would simply be too time consuming.

Oh, I don't know... Are these drones? If so, they'd have a Body of 0; even
if they don't, they'll have a pretty low Barrier Rating. So, drop a few
large explosives in the area (an artillery barrage or airstrike will do
the trick, or a few fuel-air explosives for example), and your network
will be pretty much gone.

> A counter-network
> could admittedly be spread around the area, but I am
> assuming that only industrially advanced nations would
> have the capacity to sufficiently suffuse an area with
> many "radio-eggs"

But if you're a technologically-advanced force fighting poorly-equipped
insurgent natives, you can just use regular radio transmitters because
they won't have the tech to make a serious strike against your comms. In
Iraqi, US convoys get blown up every day, but I haven't heard of many ECM
attacks against American radio traffic. That would mean your scattered
network will probably only be needed against a roughly equal opponent,
capable of deploying a counter-network.

> a 1-second delay in
> guiding a drone is too much a lag, as any Quake player
> will attest

If the drone is involved in a straight shoot-out dogfight type of
situation, then yes, every second delay is one too many. But a drone
hovering behind a tree 5 km from its target waiting to launch a missile om
command won't suffer from an extra second.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Ik ben het beu
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 3
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 05:48:37 -0800 (PST)
> Oh, I don't know... Are these drones? If so, they'd
> have a Body of 0; even
> if they don't, they'll have a pretty low Barrier
> Rating. So, drop a few
> large explosives in the area (an artillery barrage
> or airstrike will do
> the trick, or a few fuel-air explosives for
> example), and your network
> will be pretty much gone.

They could conceivably be made small, light, yet rigid
enough to be carried along with the blast wave of an
explosion; they'd be too small to reliably harm using
non specifically targeted means. In addition, ordering
an artillery barrage/airstrike to cover, say, a square
kilometer would also be a hugely inefficient way to
get at a mere part of the opponent's communications.

>That would
> mean your scattered
> network will probably only be needed against a
> roughly equal opponent,
> capable of deploying a counter-network.

Or against any opponent in possession of sufficient
technology to pinpoint the source of a radio
transmission. Given the ready availability of radio
tech in SR, I imagine such devices to be relatively
easy to acquire for any organisation from
mercenaries/guerillas onwards.

I'm touting these radio eggs as having an advantage
over powerful & localised transmitters in that a force
utilising this tech. could have all out radio traffic
(potentially including drone signals) while masking
their actual position, be it in their own, or enemy
territory.

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 4
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 14:52:33 +0100
According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November 2004 14:48 the
word on the street was...

> They could conceivably be made small, light, yet rigid
> enough to be carried along with the blast wave of an
> explosion

Note that I'm thinking game rules here, not RL: if you have a thing with a
Barrier Rating within the blast radius of an explosion, you get to work
out how big the hole in it is. Any scattering from the explosion is
entirely up to the GM.

> they'd be too small to reliably harm using
> non specifically targeted means. In addition, ordering
> an artillery barrage/airstrike to cover, say, a square
> kilometer would also be a hugely inefficient way to
> get at a mere part of the opponent's communications.

Which is why I mentioned fuel-air explosives, as these deliver a blast over
a wide area with fairly limited means.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Ik ben het beu
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 5
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 05:58:44 -0800 (PST)
<snip blowing up tiny things under SR rules>

Perhaps the density of egg coverage could provide an
aggregate body which the explosion has to damage. I'd
say that it'd be pretty difficult to destroy a lot of
reinforced ping-pong balls distributed over a given
area (especially in any kind of arboreal or urban
terrain) with either conventional or fuel-air
explosives.

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 6
From: graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:21:24 -0700
On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 03:13:08 -0800 (PST), Jan Jaap van Poelgeest
<jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:
> *picks up gauntlet*
>
> What I've been starting to see this solution as is a
> massively redundant drone network consisting of
> egg-sized (if not smaller) transmitters that are
> spread throughout an area.

And the enemy gets an egg (there are a lot of them in their territory
after all) and opens it up and analyzes it and now they know your
frequencies. Even if they can't decrypt the transmissions, they can
target their ECM against your frequencies, instead of wasting energy
trying to jam the entire spectrum. And now the HARM missiles can't be
used against their jammers, because hey, that "jammer" might be one of
your main transmitters.

Add to the fact that you've just given the enemy technology for free.

The simple solution is to train your forces to use their
communications gear effectively. Only use it if you need to. If you
need to use your radio then you are probably in combat and the enemy
knows where you are so it doesn't matter if they can triangulate your
position. If you are not in combat and you have to use the radio,
then it's safe to assume you are truely screwed and things might
actually get better if the enemy finds you first.

Other than that you go about your mission until you finish it, or
until you are assigned a new mission.

--
-Graht
Message no. 7
From: marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 11:20:14 -0500
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jjvanp@*****.com [mailto:jjvanp@*****.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 6:13 AM
>
> What I've been starting to see this solution as is a
> massively redundant drone network consisting of egg-sized (if
> not smaller) transmitters that are spread throughout an area.

[SNIP]

> Any jamming attempts will therefore be assumed as coming from
> a single location. Now, under the SR rules I would be
> inclined to give the radio-egg network being jammed an
> aggregate signal rating depending upon its density, due to
> the fact that while a single signal might get jammed, there
> will be 10 other eggs also receiving that signal and passing
> it on to the eggs near to them, who in turn... etc. Thus, any
> signal on this network is likely to eventually reach its
> intended target.

That's okay in theory, but this assumption doesn't wash with how
jamming actually works. Broad-band (or even frequency specific) RF jamming
is generally non-directional in nature. You're blanketing a roughly
spherical area with RF energy. ANY receiver in that area is going to have
problems. And when you combine with with the natures of digital signal
processing, it gets even worse. It's not that egg A picks up the first part
of a transmission, egg B picks up the middle, egg C picks up the end and the
total can be reconstructed. It's that eggs A, B, and C all miss the
beginning and end of the transmission concurrently. And when they try to
tell egg D (who is out of the area of the worst jamming) that they need the
transmission to be re-sent, their transmission may also be blocked. And
since all of the eggs can work as relays, they will all be transmitting in
an attempt to re-reach the eggs that didn't get the transmission (provided
the jammed egg can even get its "resend" transmission out). That means that
if a single egg is in an area of jamming, the entire network is constantly
retransmitting. Which drags your data bandwidth WAY down.
I'm sure that a smart algorithm designer could come up with a way to
preserve data bandwidth by cutting out constant retransmission of data by
healthy eggs to eggs that are in areas of heavy jamming - nut that entirely
defeats the purpose of the whole distributed, low-power network in the first
place.
As an aside, distributed low-power networks aren't used to avoid
jamming - they're used to avoid detection. Once detected, the drawbacks
become clear as soon as someone fires up a jammer.

Marc
Message no. 8
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:23:49 -0800 (PST)
> And the enemy gets an egg (there are a lot of them
> in their territory
> after all) and opens it up and analyzes it and now

Eggs could be rigged to cease functioning when being
tampered with (or opened), though this would make them
somewhat more vulnerable to physical destruction.

> they know your
> frequencies. Even if they can't decrypt the
> transmissions, they can
> target their ECM against your frequencies, instead
> of wasting energy
> trying to jam the entire spectrum. And now the HARM
> missiles can't be
> used against their jammers, because hey, that
> "jammer" might be one of
> your main transmitters.

The point is that there are no "main transmitters".
Every egg essentially does nothing more than pass on
the signals it receives (as well as possibly generate
false signals) and the aggregate of this function
results in a non-localisable communications network.
One could add particular tags to signals (beyond the
ones that identify the target of a communication) to
make the egg do specific things with the signal (i.e.:
send it on a different frequency), as well as make
this frequency-hopping response reprogrammable on the
fly. In such a case the frequency at which the network
functions can become an additional part of the
encryption, thence necessitating broad-spectrum
jammers once again (whose effectiveness I've already
questioned).

What I'm saying here is that these eggs would of
course be designed to be as useless as possible in the
hands of an opponent. Very little information should
be gleanable from the functionings of an egg, given
the fact that it only receives input and passes on
said input (i.e.: the actual content of the
information has very little to do with the component
contents of an egg). The frequency-hopping response
could conceivably be deduced from capturing an egg and
submitting its hardware to extensive analysis, but
this can be made very difficult indeed, more so than
capturing a soldier and getting their decryption
hardware/key.

> Add to the fact that you've just given the enemy
> technology for free.

Essentially worthless technology. Though perhaps one
could make a living scavenging these things after the
presence of an armed force and selling them on (much
like there is a market for second-hand golf-balls)

> position. If you are not in combat and you have to
> use the radio,
> then it's safe to assume you are truely screwed and
> things might
> actually get better if the enemy finds you first.

I'm trying to conjure up the implementation of a type
of warfare where troops can be made continuously aware
of everything that's vaguely relevant to themselves on
the battlefield, this type of communications solution
might make that possible, but you are of course free
to stick with current solutions.

In the end I just figure PCs running around in China,
or wherever, getting pelleted with these ping-pong
balls and not having a clue what it all means could
make for an amusing plot device. Making it plausible
is of course part of the whole shebang.

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 9
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:34:01 -0800 (PST)
[snip jamming explanation]

Am I correct in saying that if the range of the
original signal transmitted falls outside of the area
being jammed (or at least, ends up being stronger in
the jammed area's periphery)? I'd say the egg network
still has a good chance of recovering the
transmission, but this is based on a simplistic model.
Admittedly, if there is a very, very strong jammer in
your vicinity then, well, communications will break
down. But this will happen no matter what.

[snip egg implementation issues]

I'm *trying* to stay away from these types of issues,
as you demonstrated a possible solution yourself. It's
mainly the principle of cluster-bomb-type things
exploding and raining down lots of little camo golf
balls over an area, prior/simultaneously to the
insertion of a strike force of some kind, that appeals
to me.

> As an aside, distributed low-power networks aren't
> used to avoid
> jamming - they're used to avoid detection. Once
> detected, the drawbacks
> become clear as soon as someone fires up a jammer.

This is lack of detection is what I cite as being its
primary advantage, yes. I also think, however, that
there are compelling reasons to consider such a
network capable of being resistent to jamming. That
being said, I haven't got a clue how these things work
IRL, so consider this an attempt at adding some colour
and variety to the military in SR.

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 10
From: msde_shadowrn@*****.com (Mark S)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 09:16:00 -0800 (PST)
--- Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:
> [snip egg implementation issues]
>
> I'm *trying* to stay away from these types of issues,
> as you demonstrated a possible solution yourself. It's
> mainly the principle of cluster-bomb-type things
> exploding and raining down lots of little camo golf
> balls over an area, prior/simultaneously to the
> insertion of a strike force of some kind, that appeals
> to me.

Just ignore the techy types telling you it won't work. Your campaign your laws of
physics. Hollywood ignores physics all the time too!
Read up on wireless mesh networks, as what you're describing sounds a
little bit like them. (A bunch of discrete wireless access points that
automatically route and bridge to each other, effectively creating one
large adaptive wireless network)

I have to agree that radio eggs don't sound realistic to me either.
They're easily destroyed, easily jammed, easily subverted, and in
general just don't seem reliable enough for military use. It's a neat
concept, but you're basically just laying down fiber for your units to
use for communications. You may as well stay with higher power
wireless signals.

The radio eggs do sound like a decent way of hiding a computer's
physical location from the grid. The goal of a mesh now is to try to
reduce the need for isp providers. Shadowland BBS, for example, could
be based off of a wireless mesh. Hook one radio egg up to a matrix
connection, throw a bunch of eggs around between the matrix connection
and Shadowland's hardware, and you're online.

Some random thoughts:

Wouldn't EMP work well against these?

If you stick up a jammer in the vicinity of the enemy, those units
won't be able to use the egg network.

If you are able to analyze an egg, you can tap into the network. Any
benefit vs. a traditional radio signal seems to go away at this point.

Mark




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 11
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 19:41:28 +0100
According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November 2004 17:23 the
word on the street was...

> I'm trying to conjure up the implementation of a type
> of warfare where troops can be made continuously aware
> of everything that's vaguely relevant to themselves on
> the battlefield

That's going to get the troops killed as well :) If you'd implement this,
they'd be so swamped with information that they have to spend lots of time
and manpower sifting through all the "vaguely relevant" data to find the
stuff that really matters. In that time, an enemy who knows far from
everything, but does know enough, will find them and kill them...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Ik ben het beu
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 12
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 11:17:49 -0800 (PST)
--- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November 2004
> 17:23 the
> word on the street was...
>
> > I'm trying to conjure up the implementation of a type
> > of warfare where troops can be made continuously aware
> > of everything that's vaguely relevant to themselves on
> > the battlefield
>
> That's going to get the troops killed as well :) If you'd implement
> this,
> they'd be so swamped with information that they have to spend lots
> of time
> and manpower sifting through all the "vaguely relevant" data to
> find the
> stuff that really matters. In that time, an enemy who knows far
> from
> everything, but does know enough, will find them and kill them...

Okay... so... BattleTac anyone????

With a rigger or two acting as brokers for your information network,
running signal-amp and escort drones, you have a highly mobile,
high-density, tactical network constantly updated by all subscribers.
Your big guns out on the battleships are even talking on the
network, along with the missiles on your arial gunships... infantry
target desginates, complete with smartlink/rangefinder data...
triangulation available as needed (thank you FFDM)... etc etc.

SR battlefields will be even more insane than those of today. Even
with technology being developed today, a good command post will
theoretically know the approximate location of every friendly troop
in the field (with good solid guesses as to enemy location). GPS
location and radio triangulation play a role in this, along with
satellite thermal images and image capture from
airplane/helicopter/UAV.

The distributed network approach of the scattered ping-pong balls in
this thread is actually, IMO, a step backwards in terms of technology
available to 2060 militaries.

Of course, there is a whole seperate take on all this:

How many nations field armies in 2060? Most wars are border
skirmishes and the like. Mercs are the ideal approach for this kind
of thing. Government backed armies are going to be primarily for
domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.

======Korishinzo
--evil GM








__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 13
From: pentaj2@********.edu (John C. Penta)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 14:53:34 -0500
----- Original Message -----
From: Ice Heart <korishinzo@*****.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 2, 2004 2:17 pm
Subject: Re: Radio eggs (was: tracking)


> How many nations field armies in 2060? Most wars are border
> skirmishes and the like. Mercs are the ideal approach for this kind
> of thing. Government backed armies are going to be primarily for
> domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
> equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.

Most, I imagine.

Reasons:

1. Mercs are untrustworthy.

2. The definition of sovereignty includes being able to secure your own borders.

3. Guerrila wars are less expensive.

John
Message no. 14
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 20:24:52 +0000
In article <200411021941.28461.gurth@******.nl>, Gurth <gurth@******.nl>
writes
>According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November 2004 17:23 the
>word on the street was...
>
>> I'm trying to conjure up the implementation of a type
>> of warfare where troops can be made continuously aware
>> of everything that's vaguely relevant to themselves on
>> the battlefield
>
>That's going to get the troops killed as well :) If you'd implement this,
>they'd be so swamped with information that they have to spend lots of time
>and manpower sifting through all the "vaguely relevant" data to find the
>stuff that really matters. In that time, an enemy who knows far from
>everything, but does know enough, will find them and kill them...

Robert A. Heinlein phrased it nicely...

"This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and
notice what is going on around you... which is *supremely* important to
an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mudfoot down with
a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, someone a lot more simply
equipped - say with a stone ax - will sneak up and bash his head in
while he is trying to read a vernier."

On the one hand, this is an argument for some types of cyberware:
smartgun links rather than manual sights, datalinks rather than
wrist-mounted screens, and so forth.


But too much information can be worse than too little (Andrew Gordon's
"The Rules of the Game" goes into considerable detail on this)

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 15
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 20:44:34 +0000
In article <20041102191749.5300.qmail@********.mail.yahoo.com>, Ice
Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> writes
>Okay... so... BattleTac anyone????

Useful, but brings serious problems of its own.

>With a rigger or two acting as brokers for your information network,
>running signal-amp and escort drones, you have a highly mobile,
>high-density, tactical network constantly updated by all subscribers.

Which can be a problem if that four-man Observation Post has its
terminals captured before they can be wiped or destroyed, and the enemy
is then not only reading your traffic but inserting false data... :)

> Your big guns out on the battleships are even talking on the
>network, along with the missiles on your arial gunships...

The fire-support concept's called "Ring of Fire" and dates back ten
years or more: the airborne version is called "Fighter Command" and was
operational in the 1930s :)

>infantry
>target desginates, complete with smartlink/rangefinder data...
>triangulation available as needed (thank you FFDM)... etc etc.

It can work fairly well. Unfortunately, if you get the co-ordinates
wrong, the results can be nasty: one fratricide incident in Afghanistan
resulted from a forward air controller sending co-ordinates for a JDAM
strike. Due to a minor hardware glitch, he sent his own co-ordinates and
had two thousand pounds of GPS-guided goodwill package dropped in his
lap, with fatal results.

The other problem is also visible today. Yes, the rifleman at the front
line calls for fire on enemy armour closing his position. His platoon
commander authorises the request. Company HQ puts it on hold until the
Major arrives to clear it, because of concerns about collateral damage
and a potential "danger close" situation. Meanwhile, nearby air units
have to be cleared out of the flight path (deconfliction is a persistent
problem). Meanwhile, Company HQ has passed the strike request on marked
"recommend approve". However, a sharp-eyed staff officer at Battalion
notes that CENTCOM wants eyes-on of all strikes that pose a fratricide
risk, and so the soldier's video feed and targeting request is relayed
back to the Pentagon...


Improved communication technology tends to result in information
overload going forward, and the "long screwdriver" effect of rear-area
commands taking an unhealthy interest in micromanaging units at the
front. (Cf. the tales that the CIA had bin-Laden in view of an armed
Predator at one point, but weren't authorised to fire without
permission: by the time permission was obtained, the target was gone.
With fewer communications, you have to delegate authority; networks deny
that)


So, BattleTac will be an advantage, but perhaps less decisive than the
sales brochures would suggest. It can be tracked, it can be spoofed, it
can be jammed: a winning strategy is to use it, and to have good solid
training to take over when it fails.

>Of course, there is a whole seperate take on all this:
>
>How many nations field armies in 2060? Most wars are border
>skirmishes and the like. Mercs are the ideal approach for this kind
>of thing. Government backed armies are going to be primarily for
>domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
>equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.

There's a historic reason why mercenaries are used for overseas
conflicts or to *augment* your troops: which is that if they form the
bulk of your fighting force, they have a habit of wondering why *they*
are taking orders from *you*, particularly when you come to terminate
their employment. This has been a problem for at least five hundred
years: for instance, the mercenary captain Francesco Sforza took
control of Milan when they attempted to dispose of his services.


--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 16
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:54:22 -0800 (PST)
> > How many nations field armies in 2060? Most wars are border
> > skirmishes and the like. Mercs are the ideal approach for this
> kind
> > of thing. Government backed armies are going to be primarily for
> > domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
> > equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.
>
> Most, I imagine.

By "field", I meant "send to other countries for purposes of waging
war".

> Reasons:
>
> 1. Mercs are untrustworthy.

Mercs who can't be trusted to fulfill a contract are also called
unemployed. Much like runners.

> 2. The definition of sovereignty includes being able to secure your
> own borders.

What else is "domestic defense" if not "securing your own borders"?

> 3. Guerrila wars are less expensive.

PETA hates when people use gorillas to fight their battles. :p

Let me restate:

How often do you think, circa 2060, a nation takes its standing army
and drops the bulk of it into a campaign on foreign soil? It seems
that your point #3 backs mine up. It is expensive and inefficient to
move 60% of your armed forces outside your own borders and into
someone else's. Why do it, when for a fraction of the cost you can
pay some mercs to airdrop in and raise hell for three months each
year? Perhaps also pay some runners to work at destabilizing things
from the top? I think, in the highly mobile and computer/electronics
dependant world of the 2060s, "wars" as we know them will be
virtually non-existent. Clashes and skirmishes involving a few
thousand people and machines will be the largest scale of conflict
the world sees. Anything larger would draw the megacorps into
things.

======Korishinzo
--just a few ¥



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 17
From: loneeagle@********.co.uk (Lone Eagle)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 21:00:31 +0000
At 07:17 PM 11/2/2004, Korishinzo wrote:
>With a rigger or two acting as brokers for your information network,

I'd want to replace one of those Riggers with a Decker running an
emulator... That way you also have access to the superior computing power
of his deck, an uplink to the wealth of information that is the Matrix
(including, with a minor pattern recognition system, intelligence on your
opposite number...etc.) It would also allow you to run tactical simulations
when you do run into a problem; no substitute for a human tactician but a
good supplement to one.

><Snip> domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
>equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.

Except for one problem, Mercs have to pay for their own stuff, and often
have to buy weapons and ammo at short notice and/or on the black market.
Investing in complete Battletac systems, cutting edge guns and accessories
and the ultimate in personal body armour (including simrigs to maximise
intelligence gathering potential) only to have the lot confiscated when you
enter your employer's country isn't exactly moneysmart...
Better to pick up some cyber it's easy to get permits for, get familiar
with as many different weapons as you can and learn to live with the fact
that you have to make do with a czech copy of an AK74 which is older than
your parents and a couple of hundred rounds instead of your Stoner Ares
fifty cal with its smartlink, gas vents, gyro rig... You get the point.


--
Lone Eagle
"Hold up lads, I got an idea."

www.wyrmtalk.co.uk - Please be patient, this site is under construction

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GE d++(---) s++: a->? C++(+) US++ P! L E? W++ N o? K? w+ O! M- V? PS+ PE-()
Y PGP? t+@ 5++ X- R+>+++$>* tv b+++ DI++++ D+ G++ e+ h r* y+>+++++
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

GCC0.2: y75>?.uk[NN] G87 S@:@@[SR] B+++ f+ RM(RR) rm++ rr++ l++(--) m- w
s+(+++) GM+++(-) A GS+(-) h++ LA+++ CG--- F c+
Message no. 18
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 13:04:52 -0800 (PST)
> >Okay... so... BattleTac anyone????
>
> Useful, but brings serious problems of its own.

"There is no perfect solution to the problem of how to kill more of
them than us. Only a never ending race with no winners."

:)

> > Your big guns out on the battleships are even talking on the
> >network, along with the missiles on your arial gunships...
>
> The fire-support concept's called "Ring of Fire" and dates back ten
> years or more: the airborne version is called "Fighter Command" and
> was operational in the 1930s :)

*grin* Yes, there is really nothing new under the sun. There are,
however, a lot of new nifty gadgets to do what has been done since
the dawn of war.


> So, BattleTac will be an advantage, but perhaps less decisive than
> the sales brochures would suggest. It can be tracked, it can be
> spoofed, it can be jammed: a winning strategy is to use it, and to
> have good solid training to take over when it fails.

Of course. Back to my initial statement, much much earlier in the
thread. To wit:

"The soldiers will use their radios, and will be trained to cope when
the radio does not work/cannot be used."


> >Of course, there is a whole seperate take on all this:
> >
> >How many nations field armies in 2060? Most wars are border
> >skirmishes and the like. Mercs are the ideal approach for this
> kind
> >of thing. Government backed armies are going to be primarily for
> >domestic defense. And mercs are going to be pretty thoroughly
> >equipped with the latest and greatest. Something to think about.
>
> There's a historic reason why mercenaries are used for overseas
> conflicts or to *augment* your troops: which is that if they form
> the
> bulk of your fighting force, they have a habit of wondering why
> *they*
> are taking orders from *you*, particularly when you come to
> terminate
> their employment. This has been a problem for at least five hundred
>
> years: for instance, the mercenary captain Francesco Sforza took
> control of Milan when they attempted to dispose of his services.

Natch. Hence, a standing army for holding your own borders, and
mercs for fighting abroad. Somehow, not seeing where our PsOV
contradict. :)

======Korishinzo
--arm chair strategists unite



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 19
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 22:26:09 +0000
In article <20041102210452.55813.qmail@********.mail.yahoo.com>, Ice
Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> writes
>Natch. Hence, a standing army for holding your own borders, and
>mercs for fighting abroad. Somehow, not seeing where our PsOV
>contradict. :)

I differ only on thinking that mercenaries aren't going to have the
money to tool up that well, unless they're semi-official forces like the
French Foreign Legion. They'll resemble current troops, perhaps with
some cyberware, but will be lacking the more expensive kit.


Doesn't indicate that mercenaries won't be significantly used, just as
today, to provide distance, deniability and expendability: but
mercenaries will be very wary of going head-on against national or
corporate forces, may even have contract clauses about that. (Of course,
to invoke those your adversary has to overtly put troops on the ground,
which likely is upping the ante more than they like...)

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 20
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 22:41:18 +0000
In article <20041102205422.55750.qmail@********.mail.yahoo.com>, Ice
Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> writes
>How often do you think, circa 2060, a nation takes its standing army
>and drops the bulk of it into a campaign on foreign soil?

About once a decade for a Medium or Large contingency, if British
experience is any guide, with more frequent minor issues.

Korea, Malaya, Suez, Kenya, Borneo, Aden, Oman, the Falklands, Gulf '91,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Gulf '03 for a sampler -
fourteen conflicts in fifty years.


Some of those, or at least some *parts* of those, could have been farmed
out to mercenary units, but others were not amenable to a mercenary
solution.


>It seems
>that your point #3 backs mine up. It is expensive and inefficient to
>move 60% of your armed forces outside your own borders and into
>someone else's. Why do it, when for a fraction of the cost you can
>pay some mercs to airdrop in and raise hell for three months each
>year?

Depends if your aim is to raise hell, kill people, break stuff, et
cetera... or to stabilise an area where that's going on, in which you
have an interest.

Mercenaries are good at disruption, poorer at peacekeeping.

>Perhaps also pay some runners to work at destabilizing things
>from the top?

Again, assumes that the goal of the armed forces is always to cause
chaos. Quite often, the aim is to turf the Bad Guys off the land they're
occupying and take it over in good working order, or to prevent them
from causing chaos.

When the problem is an insurgent group conducting a terror campaign
against civilians and law enforcers, paying mercenaries to go out and
kill more people isn't necessarily going to help.

>I think, in the highly mobile and computer/electronics
>dependant world of the 2060s, "wars" as we know them will be
>virtually non-existent. Clashes and skirmishes involving a few
>thousand people and machines will be the largest scale of conflict
>the world sees.

Isn't that pretty much the case today? The Falklands only involved a few
thousand people, but it was a full-up national commitment on both sides.

>Anything larger would draw the megacorps into
>things.

Why? Unless their facilities are being damaged, their staff killed or
their access to resources unduly constrained (another reason why you'd
want troops on a tight leash... the megacorps are the ones with the most
lootable goods, in most likely warzones) the corporations are
indifferent.

And even if they're annoyed... with uniformed national troops, they can
drop a quiet word to the government involved that there will be
advantages to some courses of action and significant penalties to
others. But how would a megacorp cope with something like the coup and
genocide in Rwanda, where there's no "command authority" to negotiate
with?

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 21
From: me@******.net (Hexren)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:48:46 +0100
P

PJA> And even if they're annoyed... with uniformed national troops, they can
PJA> drop a quiet word to the government involved that there will be
PJA> advantages to some courses of action and significant penalties to
PJA> others. But how would a megacorp cope with something like the coup and
PJA> genocide in Rwanda, where there's no "command authority" to negotiate
PJA> with?


---------------------------------------------

With force I think. A Megacorp may not have the standing Army to bully
the UCAS around millitary but ill equiped and trained millitias will
in my eyes take a beating from MegaCorp Security Brigades.
Message no. 22
From: graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:03:55 -0700
On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:48:46 +0100, Hexren <me@******.net> wrote:
> P
>
> PJA> And even if they're annoyed... with uniformed national troops, they can
> PJA> drop a quiet word to the government involved that there will be
> PJA> advantages to some courses of action and significant penalties to
> PJA> others. But how would a megacorp cope with something like the coup and
> PJA> genocide in Rwanda, where there's no "command authority" to
negotiate
> PJA> with?
>
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> With force I think. A Megacorp may not have the standing Army to bully
> the UCAS around millitary but ill equiped and trained millitias will
> in my eyes take a beating from MegaCorp Security Brigades.

Except for those instances when they don't: like when the US put
forces into Somalia in an effort to get food to starving people.
Training and technology does not guarantee a win.

--
-Graht
Message no. 23
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:02:41 +0000
In article <5426184110.20041102234846@******.net>, Hexren
<me@******.net> writes
>PJA> And even if they're annoyed... with uniformed national troops, they can
>PJA> drop a quiet word to the government involved that there will be
>PJA> advantages to some courses of action and significant penalties to
>PJA> others. But how would a megacorp cope with something like the coup and
>PJA> genocide in Rwanda, where there's no "command authority" to
negotiate
>PJA> with?
>---------------------------------------------
>
>With force I think. A Megacorp may not have the standing Army to bully
>the UCAS around millitary but ill equiped and trained millitias will
>in my eyes take a beating from MegaCorp Security Brigades.

Mogadishu 1993. If a company-strength Ranger unit with heavy air support
and Delta support finds itself in enough trouble that it needs a
battalion-level force to come in with armoured vehicles to extract it,
taking 70% casualties in the process, then I'd suggest that "local
militias" pose a significant threat to corporate forces if only in terms
of financial damage (five of six MH-60s written off, two lost: eighteen
troops killed and nearly a hundred wounded: and add up the ammunition
cost! That's expensive even for a megacorp, the sort of incident that
has Head Office closing the relevant branch...)

Yes, the US forces were inflicting ten casualties for every one they
took, but the problem with ill-equipped militias is that they tend to be
extremely numerous, while corporate forces are not.

Bear in mind that "security" forces don't have artillery, armour or air
support: and very few AAA megacorporations field militaries that *total*
brigade strength (depends how you define 'light regiment' and excludes
Aztlan/Aztechnology)


Expect rather to see... mercenary forces being hired in some strength to
do the job :) Or national governments being offered generous incentives
to "offer vital humanitarian assistance and stabilisation forces to the
desperate situation in Uttbay-Uckfay". Large standing military forces,
like highways, port security and garbage collection, are one of those
expenses that corporations prefer someone else to handle.

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 24
From: jcotton1@*********.net (Joseph Cotton)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:24:44 -0500
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gurth
>
> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Tuesday 02 November
> 2004 17:23 the word on the street was...
>
> > I'm trying to conjure up the implementation of a type
> > of warfare where troops can be made continuously aware
> > of everything that's vaguely relevant to themselves on
> > the battlefield
>
> That's going to get the troops killed as well :) If you'd
> implement this, they'd be so swamped with information that
> they have to spend lots of time and manpower sifting through
> all the "vaguely relevant" data to find the stuff that really
> matters. In that time, an enemy who knows far from
> everything, but does know enough, will find them and kill them...

"This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and
notice what is going on around you... which is *supremely* important
to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mud foot
down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more
simply equipped -- say with a stone ax -- will sneak up and bash his
head in while he's trying to read a vernier."

Robert A. Heinlein, _Starship Troopers_
Message no. 25
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:30:00 +0000
In article <000e01c4c133$2326e160$6101a8c0@********>, Joseph Cotton
<jcotton1@*********.net> writes
>"This leaves you with your whole mind free to handle your weapons and
>notice what is going on around you... which is *supremely* important
>to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you load a mud foot
>down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more
>simply equipped -- say with a stone ax -- will sneak up and bash his
>head in while he's trying to read a vernier."
>
>Robert A. Heinlein, _Starship Troopers_

Hey, great minds think alike :)

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 26
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:27:46 -0800 (PST)
> In article
> <000e01c4c133$2326e160$6101a8c0@********>, Joseph
> Cotton
> <jcotton1@*********.net> writes
> >"This leaves you with your whole mind free to
> handle your weapons and
> >notice what is going on around you... which is
> *supremely* important
> >to an infantryman who wants to die in bed. If you
> load a mud foot
> >down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch,
> somebody a lot more
> >simply equipped -- say with a stone ax -- will
> sneak up and bash his
> >head in while he's trying to read a vernier."

How about a gadget that selects and prioritises data
according to threat level? *cough* BattleTac *cough*.
Yes, it'd break and be susceptible to the usual bunch
of arguments against equipping humans with things
other than stone axes, but more information, when
sorted appropriately, is a good thing on the
battlefield, IMO.

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 27
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:30:16 -0800 (PST)
> The distributed network approach of the scattered
> ping-pong balls in
> this thread is actually, IMO, a step backwards in
> terms of technology
> available to 2060 militaries.

Very well, what *new&novel* approaches do SR
militaries take in that day and age?

Cheers,

Jan Jaap



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 28
From: jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:39:47 -0800 (PST)
> Wouldn't EMP work well against these?

This is, IMO, the first plausible counter for this
technology that has been suggested. EMP pulses,
thankfully, still are very rare in SR.

> If you stick up a jammer in the vicinity of the
> enemy, those units
> won't be able to use the egg network.

If the original signal's border can reach outside of
the maximum reach of the jamming, the egg network can
still be utilised.

> If you are able to analyze an egg, you can tap into
> the network. Any
> benefit vs. a traditional radio signal seems to go
> away at this point.

Analysation might be very time consuming; the hardware
does not necessarily tell an immediately apparent
story about what exactly happens to the signal. Read
the bit I wrote on signal-hopping as being part of the
encryption for some ideas on anti-egg-incursion
techniques (*chuckles at own inanity*).

Cheers,

Jan Jaap




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 29
From: msde_shadowrn@*****.com (Mark S)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:53:44 -0800 (PST)
--- Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:
> > If you stick up a jammer in the vicinity of the
> > enemy, those units
> > won't be able to use the egg network.
>
> If the original signal's border can reach outside of
> the maximum reach of the jamming, the egg network can
> still be utilised.

If the original signal's border can reach outside of the maximum reach
of the jamming, it is more powerful than the jammer. If it is more
powerful than the jammer, then the jammer has no business being
effective in the first place.

> > If you are able to analyze an egg, you can tap into
> > the network. Any
> > benefit vs. a traditional radio signal seems to go
> > away at this point.
>
> Analysation might be very time consuming; the hardware
> does not necessarily tell an immediately apparent
> story about what exactly happens to the signal. Read
> the bit I wrote on signal-hopping as being part of the
> encryption for some ideas on anti-egg-incursion
> techniques (*chuckles at own inanity*).

Earlier, you described these as being fairly simple devices, that
mostly just pass the signal along. I also understood the point of
these devices wasn't to avoid analysis and decryption of the signal,
but to avoid detection. Any countermeasures such as signal-hopping are
IMHO not relevant because they can be applied to traditional radio
signals.

Once you can tap into the egg network, the anti-detection methods don't
seem like they will work any more. And yes, it's quite possible you
need both an egg and a comm device before you can tap into the network.

I still say that there's no need to debate realism for the egg network.
If it's a cool concept, write it into the plot. I like the concept
personally, but can't imagine it being used in a military context. To
me, it's more of a hacker and underground thing, with the focus on low
cost devices, redundancy, and avoiding detection.

Mark




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 30
From: westiex@********.net (Aramis)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:12:44 +1000
Jan Jaap van Poelgeest wrote:

>>Wouldn't EMP work well against these?
>>
>>
>
>This is, IMO, the first plausible counter for this
>technology that has been suggested. EMP pulses,
>thankfully, still are very rare in SR.
>
>
The US has been developing an 'E-Bomb', or microwave bomb - see
http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/EBOMB.html - I don't know how
well such a weapon would be against cybernetics, but from all
indications you'd certainly have problems with the weapon frying most of
your equipment - whether it uses optical chips or not, it still has a
lot of circutry.

Aramis
Message no. 31
From: jcotton1@*********.net (jcotton1@*********.net)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 0:01:54 -0500
> From: "Paul J. Adam" <ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk>
>
> In article <000e01c4c133$2326e160$6101a8c0@********>, Joseph Cotton
> <jcotton1@*********.net> writes
> >[Starship Troopers quote]
>
> Hey, great minds think alike :)
>
> --
> Paul J. Adam

Yeah, I should have known someone else on this list would have beat me to that quote. It
was the first thing that popped into my head after reading one of Gurth's replies.


Joseph M. Cotton
"There are only two stories in all of literature -- a man goes on a journey, and a
stranger comes to town." Leo Tolstoy
Message no. 32
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:19:48 +0100
According to Ice Heart, on Tuesday 02 November 2004 21:54 the word on the
street was...

> > 1. Mercs are untrustworthy.
>
> Mercs who can't be trusted to fulfill a contract are also called
> unemployed. Much like runners.

Mercs tend to be more dangerous to make enemies of than shadowrunners,
though.

> How often do you think, circa 2060, a nation takes its standing army
> and drops the bulk of it into a campaign on foreign soil? It seems
> that your point #3 backs mine up. It is expensive and inefficient to
> move 60% of your armed forces outside your own borders and into
> someone else's. Why do it, when for a fraction of the cost you can
> pay some mercs to airdrop in and raise hell for three months each
> year?

Would it really be that much cheaper? After all, the mercs need exactly the
same kind of logistics and equipment to do the job as your armed forces
need, but they are in this business to make a profit, and so would demand
higher payment than a regular army.

I imagine the cost savings come from not needing to keep the mercs on
retainer, whereas a standing army is a bottomless pit that you're trying
to fill with money, so for a short campaign, you are probably right; in a
long-term war, though, I don't think anyone would want to rely on mercs if
they didn't have to.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Ik ben het beu
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 33
From: crowley@*********.ch (Michael Schmidt)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:25:55 +0100
Aramis wrote:
> Jan Jaap van Poelgeest wrote:
>
>>> Wouldn't EMP work well against these?
>>>
>>
>>
>> This is, IMO, the first plausible counter for this
>> technology that has been suggested. EMP pulses,
>> thankfully, still are very rare in SR.
>>
>>
> The US has been developing an 'E-Bomb', or microwave bomb - see
> http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/EBOMB.html - I don't know how
> well such a weapon would be against cybernetics, but from all
> indications you'd certainly have problems with the weapon frying most of
> your equipment - whether it uses optical chips or not, it still has a
> lot of circutry.

But the central nervous system is also a chemical/electronic circuit. I
think fast neutron radiation would be a better weapon against soft
targets. Both are deadly but the latter one leaves you working cybergear
for salvage.

--
This is free space. Good ideas for a sig are welcome.
Contact:
aim: drawentasqad | icq: 196218950
!jabber: timothyryan@******.ccc.de!
Message no. 34
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:37:05 +0100
According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on Wednesday 03 November 2004 01:27
the word on the street was...

> How about a gadget that selects and prioritises data
> according to threat level? *cough* BattleTac *cough*.

You'd need pretty sophisticated data-analysis algorithms, though given
those, this might just work :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Ik ben het beu
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 35
From: crowley@*********.ch (Michael Schmidt)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 12:35:06 +0100
I think you all should take a minute to decide if you want an more RL or
a more rules-based approach. Most of you have mixed these two in this
case not well fitting approaches.

Jan Jaap van Poelgeest wrote:
>>Wouldn't EMP work well against these?
>
> This is, IMO, the first plausible counter for this
> technology that has been suggested. EMP pulses,
> thankfully, still are very rare in SR.

It is definitely a point, but not the only one in this argument.

>>If you stick up a jammer in the vicinity of the
>>enemy, those units
>>won't be able to use the egg network.
>
> If the original signal's border can reach outside of
> the maximum reach of the jamming, the egg network can
> still be utilised.

This is a RL argument and it is plain wrong, but it is based on the
wide-spread picture, people without knowledge about EM waves have. EM
waves simply have no range, just a field strength -short S- reducing
with 1/r^2 and a signal-to-noise ratio -short SNR.
And then you have the superposition principle of physics.

The receiver has a minimum SNR needed to properly decode the signal.
This minimum SNR depends on the sensitivity of the receiver circuit.
What is called range is the theoretical distance where the SNR is above
the minimum + value of thumb under normal conditions, as natural static
noise constantly changes, and there are other non-natural source of noise.
If you receive two signals, the S of your weaker signal adds the the S
of the noise, thus reducing your SNR. If the SNR drops below minimum
your stronger signal is jammed, meaning the receiver is unable to
demodulate the signal.

(Sorry, this has become a bit lengthy, but I was not able to shorten it
more and let it sound less harsh. For more lectures on physics of radio
technologies pse contact me on IM - see below. ;-) )

>>If you are able to analyze an egg, you can tap into
>>the network. Any
>>benefit vs. a traditional radio signal seems to go
>>away at this point.
>
> Analysation might be very time consuming; the hardware
> does not necessarily tell an immediately apparent
> story about what exactly happens to the signal. Read
> the bit I wrote on signal-hopping as being part of the
> encryption for some ideas on anti-egg-incursion
> techniques (*chuckles at own inanity*).

If the eggs are just relays in self-organizing mesh, the only
information you get from analyzing the eggs is the algorithm used for
routing and the first three or four layers of the transport protocol.
Not very helpful in decrypting the signal. So this should be no problem.

As we are with self-organizing meshes, they are subject to current
scientific developments. But they are not only interesting for the
underground and civilian use as Mark pointed out, but also for military
though I cannot find the DARPA article about this at the moment.

A mesh combined with spread-spectrum broadband technology like it is
utilized by the GPS system would be them system Jan is thinking of.
SSBB reduces minimum SNR drastically by widening the bandwidth. If you
take this to the extremes you can hide a some GHz wide signals within
static noise, still being able to demodulate them, if you know, they are
there. As already said, this is subject of research projects. Some
people think it will work, but, at least as far as I know, there are
still a lot of technical problems to solve.

It could work or not, but the idea is definitely good, or there would
not be spend so much money on R&D in this field.

So in the end it boils down to the question: Do I want this technology
in my campaign or not.
If I want it, then it works by some tech not yet know to us, and it
works somehow like... well it works.

(My apologies from the last section apply here, too.)

--
This is free space. Good ideas for a sig are welcome.
Contact:
aim: drawentasqad | icq: 196218950
!jabber: timothyryan@******.ccc.de!
Message no. 36
From: marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:24:15 -0500
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk
> [mailto:ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 6:03 PM
> >
> >With force I think. A Megacorp may not have the standing
> Army to bully
> >the UCAS around millitary but ill equiped and trained
> millitias will in
> >my eyes take a beating from MegaCorp Security Brigades.
>
> Mogadishu 1993. If a company-strength Ranger unit with heavy
> air support and Delta support finds itself in enough trouble
> that it needs a battalion-level force to come in with
> armoured vehicles to extract it, taking 70% casualties in the
> process, then I'd suggest that "local militias" pose a
> significant threat to corporate forces if only in terms of
> financial damage (five of six MH-60s written off, two lost:
> eighteen troops killed and nearly a hundred wounded: and add
> up the ammunition cost! That's expensive even for a megacorp,
> the sort of incident that has Head Office closing the
> relevant branch...)

The one obvious flaw in this analogy is that the Rangers were going
into enemy-held territory on a raid. Since MegaCorp security would
presumably be most concerned with protecting the corporate assets
(facilities, personnel, etc), they would in all likelihood be engaged in a
defensive posture, not an unsupported raid against superior numbers. Yes, a
static defense poses its own set of risks and difficulties, but if a heavily
tooled-up corporate security force was tasked with guarding a refinery,
mine, factory, or other facility, you can believe that they could make it
more than a 10-to-1 casualty ratio. As I'm sure you're aware, MOUT (FIBUA)
heavily favors the entrenched defender. Assaulting into a well-defended
urban or semi-urban location requires exceedingly good training and
logistics in order to avoid taking staggering casualties (which the Rangers
themselves proved in Mogadishu).
But most importantly, the corporations only need to guard their
facilities so heavily until the situation stabilizes. I'd imagine that most
major megacorps have at least one company-sized unit of heavy-duty
paramilitary security personnel that get the dubious honor of being
stationed in every brushfire shithole guarding corporate assets until
whatever trouble brought them there blows over.

Marc
Message no. 37
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 09:11:58 -0800 (PST)
> I imagine the cost savings come from not needing to keep the mercs
> on retainer, whereas a standing army is a bottomless pit that
you're
> trying to fill with money, so for a short campaign, you are
probably
> right; in a long-term war, though, I don't think anyone would want
> to rely on mercs if they didn't have to.

And my contention to begin with was that there aren't any long term
wars. All of the ongoing conflicts in SR (at least by cannon), are
on the level of small-time warlord versus small-time warlord (China),
or they an endless series of tiny border skirmishes (Aztlan versus
everyone they share a border with). No one is sending peace keeping
forces anywhere, they have too many problems at home. Save for
Aztlan, no one is making large scale land grab attempts. There is an
sort of uneasy global peace in the SR metaplot. Has been for some
time. So, mercenaries, small armies, corporation unto themselves,
are the preferred choice of soldier. Why? Because you don't want to
spend a large portion of your budget maintainging a fighting force on
standby just in case you suddenly decide you want a piece of land
halfway around the globe? Not in 2060. You have a large enough army
to hold your borders. No one can afford a whole lot more. Around
the world, governments will hire mercs to augment their own troops
temporarily. This year Merc group X is fighting against Merc group Y
on the border of Someplace and Otherplace, augmenting the local army.
Next year, Mercs X and Y are fighting side by side in Thisplace
against soldiers from Thatplace. Mercs are in the business of
conflict. Megacorp interests, and the nature of global politics
circa 2060, are such that the business of war stays small, if
constant. I think that for the most part, regular, standing armies
will be much smaller and much more defensive in nature than the
armies of today. Preparedness to fight multi-front wars in multiple
theaters will not be as emphasised. The logistics infrastructure for
these armies will be less portable, largely domestic. An even
greater emphasis will be placed on using machines in place of people,
especially in industrialized nations. The armies of nations will
become a domestic defense force, and the domestic defense force will
become a police force, and the police will become privatised security
companies... oh wait... that is already the case, by cannon. The
UCAS army is doing what the US National Guard once did (e.g.
protecting DeeCee against the Compensation Army). The National Guard
is turned into things like the Seattle Metroplex Guard. And the
cops? Lone Star, Knight Errant, etc.

======Korishinzo
--we are still debating a fictional future based on a frame of
reference explicitly described as no longer applying in the fictional
history of that fictional future :)



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 38
From: marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 13:25:04 -0500
Okay crowley has taken a pretty good stab at explaining RF jamming,
signal strength, and signal-to-noise ratio. I'm going to expand on that
post from a SR3 rules perspective.
The thing to keep in mind is a transmitter's Flux rating. The Flux
rating is basically a measure of how powerful a transmitter is. In game
terms, it determines the range. SR3 really simplifies things by essentially
assuming that a transmitter has the same Flux rating over its entire
effective range.
In actuality, transmit power drops off exponentially as crowley
explained in his last post. The effect that this would have in game terms
is to reduce the Flux rating of a sensor based on how far the receiver is
from the transmitter. And since the drop off is exponential, it drops off
quickly. So your maximum Flux is only going to be in your first band (which
I believe is only out to like 250 meters). Out to the edge of the next band
(which IIRC is maybe a kilometer, I don't have R3 in front of me), you'd
effectively be at Flux-1, and so on. So if your transmitter has a Flux
value of 1 or more, the receiver can receive the signal with no
difficulties. So the "effective range" of the transmitter is what's given
in the rules, but the signal gets weaker the farther you get from said
transmitter.
So how does jamming work? If the power (Flux rating) of jamming
(which also falls off exponentially) is greater than the Flux rating of the
signal, the signal is lost in the noise of jamming. This means that very
strong jammers can jam very weak signals even at great distances (because
the signals are weak to start with, so it doesn't take much Flux to swamp
them).
Now in the case of the "radio eggs," you have a distributed network
of low-power transceivers. If an individual egg is on the edge of a
jammer's effectiveness, it might have enough power to get its signal out to
another egg in the network that's outside of the jammer's effective radius.
The problem lies not in getting a transmission out, it's in getting a repeat
transmission *in.* So an egg just inside the edge of a jammed area can say
"What? What?!? What?!?" and make itself heard to eggs outside the jamming,
but it can't actually hear what the other eggs are saying - including eggs
deeper in the jammed area. So if it can never hear what's being
transmitted, how can it hear the "What? What?" of the eggs deeper in the
region of jamming? How can it ever know that it needs to retransmit? And
even if it did, it can't receive any useful information from any other eggs,
so what would it pass along?
This is why low-power distributed networks are bad in the presence
of active jamming.

On the flip side, signal detection is *also* based on Flux Rating.
The higher the Flux Rating, the easier it is to detect a signal. It is,
after all, a massive beacon of RF energy. By going with a low-power,
spatially distributed network, you accomplish two things: first, you make
detection harder, as there's no single high-power transmitter cranking out 3
million Watts of power or whatever. Second, you make localization more
difficult, because enemy units can be operating and communicating anywhere
within the low-power network.

The intrinsic problem, of course, is that there are other ways to
make signal detection/localization more difficult that require a heck of a
lot less time, effort, and money - radio silence being chief among them.
Yes, data-sharing can be a crucial component of a successful military
operation, but people have been doing it the old-fashioned way for a long
time now with considerable success. Reliance on data-sharing in the
presence of a technologically advanced enemy is a recipe for disaster. At
the very least, the enemy will render your data-sharing network ineffective.
At worst, they will compromise it and subvert it to their own ends.

Marc
Message no. 39
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:39:51 -0800 (PST)
--- Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:

> > The distributed network approach of the scattered
> > ping-pong balls in
> > this thread is actually, IMO, a step backwards in
> > terms of technology
> > available to 2060 militaries.
>
> Very well, what *new&novel* approaches do SR
> militaries take in that day and age?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jan Jaap

Sitting in a battleship or command bunker, you have a couple of
riggers. They have high rated RCDs, high rated BattleTac master
units, and probably a piggy-backed officer sporting a nice Tactical
Computer. Field units, vehicles, and drones all have BattleTac slave
units, or BattleTac compatability packages (like FFDM). The drones
are primarily signal boosters/interceptors like the Hedgehog. There
will be a couple of drones serving as escort/backup to the signal
handling drones. This Comm post handles the brokering of all
communication in a given tactical network. There may even be
redundant posts, for failover purposes (read: a missile landed in
post 1, swapping comm brokering to post 2). The riggers dynamically
monitor and maintain the integrity of your network, real time.
Encountering jamming? Tweak ECCM. Troops in sector 12 need the
benefit of radio stealth? Tweak Electronic Deception. Detecting
intercepts and false data? Kick intruders, tweak encryption. If all
this is possible for a shadowrunner rigger with a 10-drone network
going up against a corp sec rigger in downtown Seattle, it is also
possible for military riggers in battlefield conditions. The scale
changes, but the principles do not. By deploying signal amp drones,
you get a mobile comm network that is capable of both dynamic stealth
and dynamic electronic warfare.

Yes, things like device ratings and Flux make the whole process a bit
abstract, sort of hand-waving the physics of RF radiation, but
welcome to gaming in general. After all, do you really want to
figure out what kind of bandwidth emotive data tracks (full simsense)
requires? :)

======Korishinzo
--riggers: the ultimate CommSec insurence



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
Message no. 40
From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:40:39 +0000
In article <762E0C929F00E7468B64B6860BB7E77B0138E3B1@********>, "Renouf,
Marc A" <marc.renouf@******.com> writes
>> Mogadishu 1993.

> The one obvious flaw in this analogy is that the Rangers were going
>into enemy-held territory on a raid. Since MegaCorp security would
>presumably be most concerned with protecting the corporate assets
>(facilities, personnel, etc), they would in all likelihood be engaged in a
>defensive posture, not an unsupported raid against superior numbers.

How do materials and supplies flow in, and finished goods and waste
products flow out? If a local strongman starts hijacking your shipments,
sitting inside the wire won't deter or prevent him: at the least you're
into escort missions, at worst you're having to go out after him.

> But most importantly, the corporations only need to guard their
>facilities so heavily until the situation stabilizes. I'd imagine that most
>major megacorps have at least one company-sized unit of heavy-duty
>paramilitary security personnel that get the dubious honor of being
>stationed in every brushfire shithole guarding corporate assets until
>whatever trouble brought them there blows over.

Again, the trouble is less likely to be the local mob tearing down the
fence, than finished goods being ambushed on the way out (or food stolen
on the way in)

--
Paul J. Adam
Message no. 41
From: marc.renouf@******.com (Renouf, Marc A)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 16:27:33 -0500
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk
> [mailto:ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:41 PM
>
> > The one obvious flaw in this analogy is that the
> Rangers were going
> >into enemy-held territory on a raid.
>
> How do materials and supplies flow in, and finished goods and waste
> products flow out? If a local strongman starts hijacking your
> shipments,
> sitting inside the wire won't deter or prevent him: at the
> least you're
> into escort missions, at worst you're having to go out after him.

Okay, here's where we differ in strategic considerations. You're
assuming that said factory/refinery/facility is going to continue operating
at or near peak capacity throughout the "troubles." I'm not. If there's a
coup d'etat, massive civil unrest, or outright civil war in your neck of the
woods, you're not concerned with *making* money as much as you are with
*not*losing* money. You don't worry about going out of the wire to get the
strongman. At some level, you don't even care which strongman wins, because
you'll just buy the favor of whatever petty generalissimo is left standing
when the dust settles. But in the meantime, your job is to stop looters,
nationalizers, and overly frisky militia members from both sides from using
your facility as a piggy-bank/staging area/trophy.
Embassies are a good analogy. Even when a country descends into
more or less complete chaos, the militiamen don't go about storming the
British embassy. Why? Because there's a tooled-up unit of Royal Marines
there. And the local strongmen don't typically order said building stormed
because they know that doing so would invoke the ire of Her Majesty's
government. While corporations may not have the same military clout as
major nation-states, they have considerable economic clout, and as a
potential Presidente, you're likely to think about your pocketbook (at the
very least in terms of financing your inevitable ongoing fight with
"resistance movements" and "rebels").
Could your facility be overrun? Yes, absolutely. Is it likely?
That depends on the situation. Might having some rough men who are armed to
the teeth around to dissuade the average Joe Looter do you some good?
Almost certainly.
This does raise an interesting caveat, however: when multiple,
competing corporations become involved, things can get ugly. If (say) Ares
has an oil refinery in Bumfookistan, they can say to the head of the local
rebel militia, "look, if you seize our facility, you'll be out tens of
millions of nuyen you could be using to prosecute your claim to power." But
if Saeder-Krupp is saying, "Yes, but if you seize said Ares facility, we'll
not only buy it from you on the spot (in hard currency like weapons or
ammo), we'll also give you a better cut on the profits that this refinery
makes." This elevates petty warlords to a level where they are important on
the corporate stage, and allows for a mechanism whereby corporate
competition further destabilizes volatile regimes.
Which is perfectly in keeping with Shadowrun's future-history.

> > But most importantly, the corporations only need to
> guard their
> >facilities so heavily until the situation stabilizes. I'd
> imagine that most
> >major megacorps have at least one company-sized unit of heavy-duty
> >paramilitary security personnel that get the dubious honor of being
> >stationed in every brushfire shithole guarding corporate assets until
> >whatever trouble brought them there blows over.
>
> Again, the trouble is less likely to be the local mob tearing
> down the
> fence, than finished goods being ambushed on the way out (or
> food stolen
> on the way in)

I disagree. Again, don't assume full operation. Even if you lose a
million nuyen every day a facility is non-operational, this is a drop in the
bucket when you stand to lose a 30 billion nuyen facility entirely. It's
not a matter of "business as usual," it's a matter of "minimizing profit
loss." You drop a company of brutally efficient killers in the place and
make it clear to pretty much everyone involved that your facility is neutral
territory. Sure, you can eventually take sides in the conflict if you
choose to, but that's better left for mid-to-late-stage political/economic
wrangling than direct armed intervention.

Marc
Message no. 42
From: westiex@********.net (Aramis)
Subject: Radio eggs (was: tracking)
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 05:20:36 +1000
>>>
>>>
>> The US has been developing an 'E-Bomb', or microwave bomb - see
>> http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/EBOMB.html - I don't know how
>> well such a weapon would be against cybernetics, but from all
>> indications you'd certainly have problems with the weapon frying most
>> of your equipment - whether it uses optical chips or not, it still
>> has a lot of circutry.
>
>
> But the central nervous system is also a chemical/electronic circuit.
> I think fast neutron radiation would be a better weapon against soft
> targets. Both are deadly but the latter one leaves you working
> cybergear for salvage.
>
A neutron bomb would also happen to kill off all of the vegetation in
the area. Personally I'd think that'd be asking for some sort of really
bad background count where you hit.

ARamis.

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Radio eggs (was: tracking), you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!