Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Redman on <03-06-16/1211:11>
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So I own Market Panic but can't find anything about the new AAA that had been rumored?
And it does not seem as if anything of the existing ones have killed off?
What the what? Have I been chaught in a hypestorm?
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That trigger's not been pulled yet. At least one is in the process of going down, but you might not see it until it happens.
As for who moves up? Keep watching the skies.
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Hate the disappointment, but you throw good bait.
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I say Spin will be the new Triple A...though Zeta-ImpChem or Maersk would be more fun to see..
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Hate the disappointment, but you throw good bait.
Sorry amigo. I like the job too much to break an NDA. But when I *can* say more, I will!
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Hate the disappointment, but you throw good bait.
Sorry amigo. I like the job too much to break an NDA. But when I *can* say more, I will!
Well..if that's the case....will we be seeing some breakdowns on the AA corps? Like those that appeared in the *Corporate Guide*....
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They were scheduled to be in Market Panic, but it ran long, so the content was moved.
"To where?"
That, I can't tell you. *points to NDA*
But that stuff exists. And you should be seeing it in a Future Product. When I can say more, I will!
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Good enough for me. Thanks.
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After reading through Market Panic, my money would be on NeoNet dropping from the Court. Evo is certainly taking a lashing, but the way they're written makes it sound like the devs have rough times planned for them in the same vein as Renraku after the SCIRE incident. More than that though, I think it would make sense from a world-building standpoint. I think they really bring something to the table (from an out-of-character standpoint) that other corps don't with their transhumanist angle, and it wouldn't make sense for Catalyst to scrap that as a prominent element in the the world.
NeoNet, on the other hand, is looking at indications that both Celedyr AND Richard Villiers may be jumping ship, though? If those both pan out, it seems like NeoNet would be hard pressed to recover. I'd imagine them breaking up into their old parts with Spinrad Industries scoring Villier's golden ticket and making that jump up to AAA. Similarly, even though each of the AAAs is fairly diverse, it makes sense for them to have one or two really identifiable niches to make understanding them approachable to players new to the settings. It's simplifying things, sure, but as far as a lot of people are concerned, Ares is the gun corp, Evo is the augmentation corp and meta-friendly corp, Horizon is the PR corp, Aztechnology has consumer products and blood magic, and Mitsuhama are the dudes with the Yakuza thing. NeoNet doesn't really stand out in the way that most other AAAs do in that regard. Is there really a need, from a world-building perspective, for a matrix corp when we also have a software corp (Renraku) and a computer corp (MCT)? It would make more sense to me to drop them and put a major medical or chemical player into the top ranks.
Alternatively, would it be possible for Spinrad to remain an AA but gain a seat on the court, while one of these massive new conglomerates from Bloody Business becoming an unrepresented AAA? Or maybe seeing the number of AAAs changing once again? It was once simply the Big Eight, remember, and there are thirteen seats on the Corporate Court.
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Well, Fuchi/Novatech/NEoNet has one thing going for it, which is never last more than a decade before getting chummed on. Makes me feel kind of sad for Villiers really.
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Fuchi was born in 2017, and gained AAA status in 2024 - after which it lasted considerably more than a decade, imploding only in 2060. However, Fuchi, Novatech, and NeoNET all had the same thing going for them: possession of that wonderful can't-be-disenfranchised portion of the Corporate Court, JRJ International - the NeoNET section calls JRJ a 'Golden Ticket', which is fair enough, and that several people might be wanting to get their hands on it - which, again, is fair enough.
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I really am not buying NeoNET going down..sure they are hurting badly but something about how they are going about things says they will stick around. I mean, the fact they are building their new HQ in St Louis screams future development of St Louis as a Free City, plys Malmstein is running around increasing the amount of exposure Erika has in Africa. I really think that what's going to happen is Celeydr will be kicked to the curb and Spinrad comes in to save the place. Course I could very well be wrong.
As for who I really would love to see fall....EVO! They've already screwed up royally with the fake CC judge program plus it's looking more and more like they are the true culprits behind CFD. There's a huge bullseye on them that is just waiting to be struck.
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I really am not buying NeoNET going down..sure they are hurting badly but something about how they are going about things says they will stick around. I mean, the fact they are building their new HQ in St Louis screams future development of St Louis as a Free City, plys Malmstein is running around increasing the amount of exposure Erika has in Africa. I really think that what's going to happen is Celeydr will be kicked to the curb and Spinrad comes in to save the place. Course I could very well be wrong.
As for who I really would love to see fall....EVO! They've already screwed up royally with the fake CC judge program plus it's looking more and more like they are the true culprits behind CFD. There's a huge bullseye on them that is just waiting to be struck.
The way I see things with NeoNet is sort of a three or four-player version of prisoner’s dilemma. If the principles all stick with the company, it is probably the best result for them overall as the company should survive. However if the company is going to go down, there is huge advantage to being the first to jump – you are negotiating from a position of relative strength, compared to where you’d be after things start to fall apart.
So, do they trust each other enough to all stick it out? Or will one of them decide to lower their downside by making a pre-emptive move, in which case the whole thing is screwed.
Hmmm, and if any of their competition sees things the same way, they may well be sponsoring runs to breed distrust, to increase the chances of things falling apart.
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Beta is correct. Especially since NeoNET is far from united at the best of times. The different factions actively work against eachother as much as they do rival corps. While not to the level of cold war Fuchi was, or the outright assassination attempts in Ares, they are still quite the fractious bunch. Counting on them to hold the line together, especially if someone else makes a better offer individually, makes a split more likely. That said, of the three candidates for getting blasted (NeoNET, EVO, and Aztechnology), EVO is in the worst position, since they don't have an 'original seat' like the other two, they are positively infested with head cases, and their recent shenanigans with the Corporate Court have likely tainted most of the justices against them. NeoNET is clearly the one most responsible for the mess, but whether they'll actually take the blame is another story entirely.
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It's going to be weird to have another AAA fall. Hell, part of me still has a hard time believing Fuchi is gone considering how ingrained they were in the plot line, and a bit to running gags at our table.
Mirikon has a good point though, EVO is still relatively new compared to the other two (I count NeoNET as a simple rename/restructure of Novatech/Fuchi) and in the overall weakest position. NeoNET may be shaky, both inside and out, but there's a lot of power backing it up that can prop it up till it gets back to business as normal. Aztech I simply can't see falling. With their size, power base, and the extent they'll go to maintain power, I just can't see it (even if I'd like too). Though if they did, that would make for one hell of an interesting time in middle and south America, and may let loose some of darker things that groups in the corp keep playing with.
I wonder who'd get Stuffer Shack though. *ponders*
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It could be MCT given the focus of the initial campaign chapter of SRC.
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MCT has just overtaken S-K as the world's largest megacorporation. It's painted a target on their back, but I really doubt that they would taking such a lashing so soon after that as to lose their mega status entirely, especially not with NeoNet and Evo being so much easier to go after right now.
For my own part, I would hate to see Evo drop out. They are so deliciously creepy in a way that is so distinct from the other AAAs, and I hope the stick around so we can see what other sort of marvelous fuck-ups they produce.
While we're talking about this, do we know yet who was ultimately responsible for the initial outbreak of CFD? I mean the whole Boston fiasco is squarely on NeoNet (and Pax, I guess), but what about all the stuff before that?
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CFD in general is laid squarely on NeoNET's doorstep, I'm afraid. The reason EVO is so infested is because of their transhuman vibe. Augmentations help spread it, so before people knew about CFD, a corp that actively encourages augmentation in their citizens is going to get hit hard. But CFD is still NeoNET's bag. Thank Celedyr for that one, locking up e-ghosts and other AIs in a private server for happy fun torture times/live dissections to see how they work. Eliohan's status as Cerberus is what likely prompted this route, trying to get the dragon's e-ghost back in his body. The AIs escaping their prison and going bodysnatcher showed Celedyr the way to make it work, with help from Pax and Aztechnology. Yeah, you can already see why this blew up in NeoNET's face, right?
Anyways, CFD is NeoNET's bag, but good luck pinning it on them without damn good proof.
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CFD in general is laid squarely on NeoNET's doorstep, I'm afraid. The reason EVO is so infested is because of their transhuman vibe. Augmentations help spread it, so before people knew about CFD, a corp that actively encourages augmentation in their citizens is going to get hit hard. But CFD is still NeoNET's bag. Thank Celedyr for that one, locking up e-ghosts and other AIs in a private server for happy fun torture times/live dissections to see how they work. Eliohan's status as Cerberus is what likely prompted this route, trying to get the dragon's e-ghost back in his body. The AIs escaping their prison and going bodysnatcher showed Celedyr the way to make it work, with help from Pax and Aztechnology. Yeah, you can already see why this blew up in NeoNET's face, right?
Anyways, CFD is NeoNET's bag, but good luck pinning it on them without damn good proof.
I don't exactly agree with you Mirikon about NeoNET being the one that CFD is laid squarely on. Boston's lockdown, that's for sure on NeoNET and part of CFD is on NeoNET but Evo is also at fault. In fact, it's spelled out in Lockdown pg 198 that they are both at fault:
Evo and NeoNET’s programs will be the primary focus of the canon universe, but any megacorporation could have some similar, if smaller, program.
So that gamemasters are aware, forces within Evo and NeoNET are at the root of the problem, but as a whole, the bulk of the either corporation does not know what’s been going on. Members of Evo’s Dickens Program and the management that oversees it are becoming more and more aware of what is happening but are not about to share that information with anyone else. The same goes for Project Imago staff and its overseers, including Cerberus and Celedyr.
As one of the progenitors of the original CFD virus, Evo is in a dangerous position following the incident in Boston.
[/spoiler]
Also, remember that the Mars thing with Evo - where the folks there were affected by CFD and went dark for a time - started before NeoNET's problems in Albuquerque.
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Wait, Gagarin happened before Albuquerque? That's confirmed? I could have sworn it was the other way around.
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A new AAA will be intriguing but for the love of the matrix, please have it make sense. No more out of nowhere no one heard of Ala Horizon......
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Gagarin first went silent in Hazard Pay. The time stamp on the intro to the book reads March 8, 2074. Supposedly Fastjack's run was 2072 in December but it's questionable if those nanites were the first CFD nanites as Lanier posts articles that seems to possibly predate that run in Storm Front...unsure though.
Also in Storm Front, when Black Mamba sends in her last post, she mentions that the stuff used to stop Siggurg was a blue gel type stuff. Supposedly it's what caused everyone exposed to it to rage uncontrollably (pg 31) much like a rage headcase. So it seems the Azzies are a bit at fault too...
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Blue-227.
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A new AAA will be intriguing but for the love of the matrix, please have it make sense. No more out of nowhere no one heard of Ala Horizon......
If it has to make sense as an established name in the setting, I'm not sure there will be much about it though would be "intriguing". There's only a small number of non-AAA corporations that can claim some recognition: Zeta-Impchem, Monobe, Lone Star, Universal Omnitech...
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Take a look at Hard Targets' talk about potential mergers. If you're a long-time runner, there are a LOT there that are easily recognized.
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Part of me really wants to see Telestrian somehow get the AAA seat, just for the joy of seeing what Lofwyr will do.
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They'd still only be part of a PacRim AAA - something workable, so to speak, but all things considered, I'd put my money on The Blob being the CEO.
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They'd still only be part of a PacRim AAA - something workable, so to speak, but all things considered, I'd put my money on The Blob being the CEO.
Id' think the Azzies would do anything possible to keep Roxy and his crew from gaining Triple A status. Though the fact he is being very...sneaky and quiet is disturbing.
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They'd still only be part of a PacRim AAA - something workable, so to speak, but all things considered, I'd put my money on The Blob being the CEO.
Id' think the Azzies would do anything possible to keep Roxy and his crew from gaining Triple A status. Though the fact he is being very...sneaky and quiet is disturbing.
Just because you haven't heard of anything doesn't mean that things aren't being done.
And I'll just be over here, quietly looking at "Blobs Quarterly" for a while. There's a new centerfold! Well. Parts of one. Scattered all over the magazine. Apparently it'll be spread over the next few issues as well. Huh.
Moving on!
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Wakshanii - you truly enjoy torturing people while hiding behind your NDA, don't you?
On that note I wonder how often writers are being inspired by the theories spun in forums like this compared to the forums simply figuring everything out before the information has been published.
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As mentioned above having NeoNET go down AGAIN would be old as it just pops back again with a new name but same game. The same could be said about the Japana Corps.
Aztechnology would be very interesting indeed, but so would Ares for that matter.
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The AA merger plans do certainly solve the issues of givng a new AAA a consistent backstory (as opposed to Horizon, Wuxing, Cross who were fast-tracked into the big league). I do see the point game-wise to downsize the megacorporate pool to 20-30 corporate actors that will all be able to get proper development and occasional spotlight, something which has been somewhat impossible with 10 AAA and about 50 AA.
Realism-wise, I'm not sure I like how seven major, multi-corporate mergers would conveniently take place within the span of two or three years. But maybe they will have different fate, one of them breaking into the AAA lineup, one or two other effectively merging as scheduled into super-AA, one ending with only two or three megacorporations actually merging, one ending into a rather informal alliance similar to the PPG, and the rest completely failing. Possibly they listed so many of them as candidates only to be able to pick one in the end as a replacement for the failing AAA.
Finally, setting-wise, I'll wait to see if and how those mergers manage to establish a distinct identity that will be more than just an addition of different megacorporations, or even one leading corporation subsuming the other.
The existing megacorporations (AAA or AA) often tended to be quite unidimensional - one country and one major business. That's a long way from what actual megacorporation ought to be. I'd stress out how such mergers should be first and foremost about geostrategical choice rather than trying to find what benefits there would be in marrying this product line with this service and so on. This may actually result in those merger being more credible as megacorporation than the existing AAA as they would have by design more diverse origins.
As far as I understand, the proposition appears to be
- an heavy industrial corporation with big factories, chemical tankers and ore trains
- an air and sea corporation pushing for offshore cities (without Proteus, as surprising as it may seems)
- an All-American security corp
- yet-another Japanese corporation
- a German corporation with Mid-Eastern assets
- Pacific Rim corporation A (Gaeatronics with media assets)
- Pacific Rim corporation B (Telestrian-Universal Omnitech)
- Spinrad Industries with extra assets
I remark most of those grouping bear some resemblances to existing AAA - heavy industry and German corp looks like S-K ; All-American could be a replacement for Ares ; the Japanese corporation for, well, any Japanese corporation ; Pacrim A and Spinrad may remind one of Horizon ; Pacrim B could double as an elven Evo.
Oh, and absolutely each and every of the proposed merger names are horrible. Hopefully, in real life, it's common for the name to be chosen very late in the process.
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Well, Fuchi/Novatech/NEoNet has one thing going for it, which is never last more than a decade before getting chummed on. Makes me feel kind of sad for Villiers really.
Well, this is also why I hope/expect NeoNET to make it. The history of the megacorp is already a mess ! Let's an other one, for once, take the fall ! :)
My money is on Ares, as this would make thing quite interesting for any american setttings...
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That'd be a poor bet on your part, belaran. Of the megas that are experiencing significant trouble (Ares, NeoNET, Aztechnology, and EVO) three of those have the 'golden ticket'. Only way Ares, NeoNET, or Aztechnology gets booted off the Court is if the company fractures and someone takes the piece that holds the ticket. With Ares and Aztechnology, that is all but impossible, since Ares was already Ares when it got the ticket, and Aztechnology is ORO with a new coat of paint. On the other hand, it was JRJ International that got the ticket in NeoNET's case, and that has been shuffled around a bit as part of Villiers's portfolio. Where he goes, it goes. Really, only way you'll see Ares or Aztechnology off the court is under two conditions: 1) the Court amends its charter to remove the golden ticket, or 2) the corp in question is destroyed so thoroughly that nothing remains. The first will NEVER happen. The second... well, lets say I'd put more faith in my ability to win several state lotteries in the same week.
Realistically, it is down to a race between NeoNET and EVO. NeoNET could easily implode, and have Villiers run to someone else with his ticket. EVO doesn't have the ticket, which puts them in a bad spot, especially with the Monad issues leaning their way. It comes down to whether it is the Monads or Boston that shakes things up more.
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So Villiers could potentially run to EVO. Not that it would do much.
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He could, but he won't. As they said in Market Panic, if he runs, he'll likely join up with Spinrad. Spinrad's been trying to get that third A for a while, but others (mostly Lofwyr) have been blocking him.
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I'd like to see more of/about/with SpIn; let's make it happen, writers! Giddyup!
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I'd like to see more of/about/with SpIn; let's make it happen, writers! Giddyup!
I wanna see what subsidiaries Spin has.....
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I'd like to see more of/about/with SpIn; let's make it happen, writers! Giddyup!
I wanna see what subsidiaries Spin has.....
You'll learn about one soon enough.
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I'd like to see more of/about/with SpIn; let's make it happen, writers! Giddyup!
I wanna see what subsidiaries Spin has.....
You'll learn about one soon enough.
But I no wanna wait..come one...gimme...gimme....
Oh well..just have to wait....
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I'd like to see more of/about/with SpIn; let's make it happen, writers! Giddyup!
I wanna see what subsidiaries Spin has.....
You'll learn about one soon enough.
Oh! Is this where we tell everyone about Spinrad stealing S-K out from under Lofwyr? Becaus ethat's gonna be ... say, what's that ticking noi-
*KERBOOM*
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Well there's a lot of talk in market panic about Neonets coming implosion, which makes me think that A) Either it will not be Neonet that falls, they will ride out their issues and one of the others will take the fall, most likely Ares or EVO. B) Neonet will indeed fall, but the fallout will create a new mega.
I sincerely hope that EVO isn't the one to fall. As others have alreday said, they make sense from a worldbuilding standpoint. Ares...well...meh, i don't think so, i mean they are the gun corp and the insect hunter corp, but they are not really essential, we can do without them and it would really shake the 6th World to it's core. Neonet is, well a re-hash of Fuchi, and i wouldn't mind seeing them gone tbh, but for the love of Guh, be creative with the new Mega then! Retire Richard Villiers, yeah i know about JRJ and the golden ticket, but there are ways.
There's a lot of talk in Market panic about corporate Development in Africa and the possibility of a new African mega, that could be new and fresh, Having some of the established AA's vaulted to AAA status could be good too, someone suggested TI earlier. That could be cool.
Well there's a lot of possible outcomes alluded to in Market panic, but please, do not make it another Richard Villiers corp, thats just... same old, same old
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So Villiers could potentially run to EVO. Not that it would do much.
Or he could run to Spinrad Industries and that would be fun and entertaining.....
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Might not be so big a jump since Spinrad and NeoNet may have done shared business before, depending on canon.
I recall from the German pages the following (http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.shadowhelix.de/Spinrad_Industries&prev=search)
His cyberware that even in the cyber sets from vendors such NeoNET or Chara Corp is integrated, marketed SpinIn under the brand name "spin-X». The "NeoNET / Spin-X rating protection ZK Set" for the police deployment was developed by Spinrad Industries together with NeoNET that thus a public tender for a tailor-made, integrated cyberware package for access commands of star protection gained that of the Frankfurter Bankverein used new CEO the Security service in the ADL had caused. His own, manufactured to customer cyber Sets sells SpinIn under the under the brand name "Soroyama" in his "Spin Shop» branch stores.
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I would LOVE if, in the attempt to get JRJ International, if Evo slipped in and snatched it out from their noses for the Golden Ticket, but still have NeoSpIn gain a Seat. It'd definitely be interesting to have Villiers and Spinrad needing to kick permanently into high gear in order to stay a AAA.
It'd also be interesting if the Court got expanded from its long-standing 13 Justices into something larger/more flexible - 21, perhaps?
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I like how everyone talks about "the one" corp dying. Singular.
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Nuke 'em all, let Arleesh sort 'em out.
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I would LOVE if, in the attempt to get JRJ International, if Evo slipped in and snatched it out from their noses for the Golden Ticket, but still have NeoSpIn gain a Seat. It'd definitely be interesting to have Villiers and Spinrad needing to kick permanently into high gear in order to stay a AAA.
So how might that work?
Daughter Caroline somehow wrangles control of JRJ and jumps ship to Evo becoming Buttercup's BFF.
Daddy Richard pulls something out of the hat to entice a merger with Spinrad to form NeoSpin (love that name btw).
Evo gets a much more secured place on the playing field.
NeoSpin is going to have a helluva time selling it to the CC that they still deserve their spot though.
Not impossible, but it will be a hard sell I think.
Especially as Lofwyr has no love for Spinrad and SK has two Justices sitting currently while Kenta Merushige for Renraku is the son of the man who was Head of Security during Miles little fake defection, so probably is not a fan of Villiers and Co.
Edit: Meanwhile Laniers is prowling around as the CFD bogeyman.
Samantha is still dead.... or is she?
[Plan-9 Mode Engage] Samantha was chummy with Nadja who has been known to use body doubles. Could Nadja have set up Sam with some of her own and it was actually a look alike that took the hit and she is laying low doing spirits know what in the background.
What's even scarier is what if Daddy Richard sent Caroline into Evo's arms using the only thing that could possibly buy her way in, while he gets NeoSpin running around with a target on it's back to draw fire because he does do his best work under pressure and Sam is playing around behind the scenes because who suspects or even plans for the dead lady?[/Plan-9 Mode disengage]
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I like how everyone talks about "the one" corp dying. Singular.
Well, the last time more than one AAA went down at the same time, it was thanks to Crash 2.0 (Novatech and Cross). While Boston is bad, it isn't Crash 2.0 bad, not yet. The situation hasn't gotten bad enough that it will take down two AAAs. Sure, take one down, and seriously wound a couple others, but taking down more than one? I just don't see it. Especially since most of the parties involved have golden tickets. If it was a situation involving EVO and Horizon, then yeah, I could see it. But EVO, Aztechnology, and NeoNET? Two of them will gang up to push the blame on one, and while the two left standing will be bloody, they'll still be in the game. That's my read on the situation.
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I like how everyone talks about "the one" corp dying. Singular.
Well, the last time more than one AAA went down at the same time, it was thanks to Crash 2.0 (Novatech and Cross). While Boston is bad, it isn't Crash 2.0 bad, not yet. The situation hasn't gotten bad enough that it will take down two AAAs. Sure, take one down, and seriously wound a couple others, but taking down more than one? I just don't see it. Especially since most of the parties involved have golden tickets. If it was a situation involving EVO and Horizon, then yeah, I could see it. But EVO, Aztechnology, and NeoNET? Two of them will gang up to push the blame on one, and while the two left standing will be bloody, they'll still be in the game. That's my read on the situation.
Because your thinking linear. Only in terms of CFD as the downfall. Could be one of the ones you listed plus......Ares for example. Bugs infested, fighting against itself. Knight decides to leave, Vogel is trying to push Ares in another direction.
I'd think it suck, but its possible to have 2 fall down for 2 different reasons.
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I've already explained this.
The PCC corp Iris Firmworks develops prototype wireless matrix for the Athabascan Council.
Iris gets bought out by Renraku for their AI project in the SCIRE.
Dunk bites it and puts Lanier into Renraku.
Lanier steals the wireless tech and sabotages Renraku to cover his tracks. Deus goes into the wild, hiding in the Athabascan Council's wireless matrix to avoid the planned Crash.
Lanier takes the stolen tech to Villiers Novatech.
After the Crash, Novatech has the wireless solutions from the stolen tech. Celedyr signs on and shows up in Albuquerque.
CFD symptoms start showing up as a result of the poor cross over from the Otaku based matrix protocols originating from the stolen Iris/PCC architecture and designs. Technomancers appear in the wild as a biproduct and possible engineered design of the Iris architecture.
Boston blows up with the nanites and the PCC enacts its right to inspection on the Celedyr labs in Albuquerque. They discover proof of the stolen technology.
NeoNET, under assault from all sides for this public health hazard, is then slapped with a Corporate Court tribunal for stolen tech. Backed by their now chummy buddies of Aztlan and Aztechnology, PCC wins the lawsuit. Celedyr eats Villiers as part of a settlement package and delivers JRJ International into the hands of the PCC.
The PCC becomes the new AAA and then strives to regain control over the CFD virus becoming the savior of the world. Just for kicks, they take a day to reincarnate Dunkelzahn from his e-ghost.
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I sincerely hope that EVO isn't the one to fall. As others have alreday said, they make sense from a worldbuilding standpoint. Ares...well...meh, i don't think so, i mean they are the gun corp and the insect hunter corp, but they are not really essential, we can do without them
I don't think Ares is going anywhere, and frankly, I'd hate to see them drop out as well. I think that they're being set up to be more than just a gun manufacturer in the future. I find it hilarious that they're doing Apple-style branding in their new line of consumer products (the idea of an aLink or an aCar is adorable and ironic), and reading through Market Panic, I have some fresh interest in seeing them develop. Just like Aztechnology has fantastic public opinion, I would like to see Ares become a corp that is still known as "they guys who made my gun" to shadowrunners, but that has a radically different image and portfolio that they present to the common consumer. I'd like to see a world where the average Joe thinks "Yeah, I guess when I hear "gun" I think "Ares," but I like them because they made this cool commlink case, they have high-end cars, and, most importantly, they're American."
I think that they're angle as the big American corp (even if they're just one of many now) is underutilized, and I'm trying to play it up a little more in the game I'm running, making it a large source of brand loyalty in the UCAS and the CAS. The mafia don in my game is going to turn out to be one of Ares's largest local shareholders, because becoming a mid-level executive is a good exit strategy if he needs one, and he at least wants to work with an American corp.
Plus, Ares has got the whole bug thing, which could get fun. Just like they brought Deus back into the metaplot in this edition, maybe they could strike another nostalgic chord by doing something big with the bugs in SR6.
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If Ares goes down it is because of a bug infestation.
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I like how everyone talks about "the one" corp dying. Singular.
Well, the last time more than one AAA went down at the same time, it was thanks to Crash 2.0 (Novatech and Cross). While Boston is bad, it isn't Crash 2.0 bad, not yet. The situation hasn't gotten bad enough that it will take down two AAAs. Sure, take one down, and seriously wound a couple others, but taking down more than one? I just don't see it. Especially since most of the parties involved have golden tickets. If it was a situation involving EVO and Horizon, then yeah, I could see it. But EVO, Aztechnology, and NeoNET? Two of them will gang up to push the blame on one, and while the two left standing will be bloody, they'll still be in the game. That's my read on the situation.
Because your thinking linear. Only in terms of CFD as the downfall. Could be one of the ones you listed plus......Ares for example. Bugs infested, fighting against itself. Knight decides to leave, Vogel is trying to push Ares in another direction.
I'd think it suck, but its possible to have 2 fall down for 2 different reasons.
Honestly? It takes a helluvalot to bring down a AAA. Hell, the backlash from the whole SCIRE incident only rung Renraku's bell, globally speaking. It butchered their North American division, but they didn't lose AAA status. In Crash 2.0, both Novatech and Cross had been engaged in brutal corporate wars and were already weakened. Ares and Cross had been trading shots for years, going back and forth like two heavyweight boxers. The only reason there even was a Novatech IPO to jumpstart the Crash was because Arty-boy had been systematically butchering Novatech with a kind of single-minded hatred seen in true zealots.
What else is going on in the world?
Ares has bug problems. They've had bug problems for two decades now, and they haven't bit the dust yet. And Knight will NEVER jump ship. They've had troubles, but they're already starting to recover from them. They just haven't been punished enough to go down without something major happening.
Horizon got serious backlash from the Az-Am war and the TM massacre, and got a black eye for their trouble, but nothing big enough to shake their spot.
Saeder-Krupp got knocked around plenty during the Dragon Civil War, but that's done, and there isn't anything else on the board that looks to be causing major trouble for Lofwyr.
Wuxing is quietly shipping things all over the place, making steady money. There were a few ripples during the Artifact plot, but that's four years ago, in game.
Renraku is making money hand over fist, and is generally keeping away from things that are likely to blow up in their face.
Mitsuhama is still being brutal with their zero zones and butchering TMs, but that's nothing new, and there isn't any sign that things are going to change anytime soon.
Shiawase has family drama like you wouldn't believe, but that's been the case since the megacorp was FOUNDED.
Basically, there just isn't any groundwork for a big fall that we've seen, other than the CFD/Boston situation. The seven other AAAs all have their share of problems, more or less, but that's business as usual. Things have to be very much NOT usual for a AAA to fall. Without some groundwork, it would be similar to Horizon coming out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason for it.
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In this case, though, we probably wouldn't have a new AAA just "coming out of nowhere." In the 4th ed core books, you mostly saw the AAAs mentioned, with a AA popping in as a manufacturer of a new piece of gear now and again. Relative to that addition, I feel like Spinrad, Monobe, and Zeta-ImpChem have been getting named drops like crazy in the last several SR5 campaign books. And Hard Targets discusses mergers that seem to be setting one of these three up for an ascension. Personally, I hope that it's Zeta-ImpChem, because their name is fun to say and I think they could fill a commercial niche that isn't at the forefront of any of the current AAAs.
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With the audits, who's to say that something might come up to plunge a dagger in a corporate back or two?
Right now, my guess is that Ares will split up and their golden ticket taken by somebody in the larger AA pool while the AAAs and bugs gobble up the rest. Neo-net will split with SpIn getting that golden ticket. I think Evo is doing the right thing to keep itself safe. Horizon might also be on the chopping block as the bigger AAs get even bigger.
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If Ares was going to split up, it would have done so earlier, when their troubles were in full swing. Knight controls the golden ticket, and he's not going anywhere. Especially since Ares seems to be on the road to recovery from the Excalibur debacle. Really, barring some catastrophic event like System Failure that destabilizes the entire planet, there are only a couple scenarios that lead to Ares getting the ax: 1) Detroit becomes Bug City 2.0, or some similar mass outbreak of bugs that is directly linked to Ares, or 2) Knight is assassinated. Now, there's problems with both points. For the first, we already have one sprawl under siege, and they tend to keep major metaplot arcs like that to one at a time. For the second, assassinating a board member of an AAA is damn tough, taking out the CEO is near impossible. Not completely so, however. Really, Knight getting killed is the only realistic way Ares goes down, as things currently stand. Now, things could develop that pushes Ares into a corner, and allows people to jump ship, but Vogel is the only one with enough clout to even dent Ares if he jumped, and it isn't clear just how much of the company he could take with him, since this isn't like Fuchi, where three people pooled their companies to make a mega. It is a lot harder for someone to just walk off with a chunk of the company. Knight's death, however, would mean his controlling stake in the company would be up for grabs, and NO ONE knows how that would play out.
Seriously, we're talking about companies that make Disney, Ford, Coca-cola, Delta Airlines, and Colt all put together look like preschoolers in comparison. They don't just collapse out of nowhere. They have to be vulnerable first. And the only ones that are really vulnerable right now are the three responsible for CFD and the Boston Lockdown. Look through the entries in Market Panic. Really, other than NeoNET and Evo, the other megas aren't in a vulnerable enough position to be brought down, not yet. Aztechnology would need a bit more of a push, such as NeoNET and Evo putting the blame for Boston on them, while something else happens. The AAAs are like great dragons. They can take a whole lot of pummeling before they go down, and eight of ten still have most of their hit points.
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Yeah Ares won't fall, and it's true what Lorebane24 said, the Whole Apple style rebranding thing is sort of funny "Player:...Sigh....ok....i Draw my aPredator ::)...comeon do i really have to call it that!?!...GM: Well thats what they are called now ;D
No it will be Neonet...sigh...another Villiers corp bites the dust....which Villiers corp will we have NeXT i Wonder? Quite likely NeoSpin as some have suggested, i just wish they would retire Villiers tbh, it's starting to Wear a Little thin....or maybe...Off Richard, make Caroline disappear or off her too, have JRJ go to reclusive Darren Villiers and see what he does with it, that could be interesting.
On an unrelated note, how long do you Guys think Mitsuhama will stay at the top before Lofwyr claws the spot back? And do you think it will only happen behind the scenes or will we see some official adventures and stuff dealing with these Things?.
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I hope MCT stays top dog for at least one edition. They've always been my favorite "we are just fucking evil" mega, and having a ruthless zaibatsu as the big dog for a while tugs at some nostalgic heartstrings.
I don't mind at all if NeoNet bites the dust. I've said it before, but besides Villiers and Celedyr being attached, and now their CFD thing, they just seem to whiff a little thematically when compared to their other corps. With their current portfolios, Renraku, MCT, or Horizon could easily become the new "matrix corp," but I can't see anyone who could really step in and fill the transhumanist gap that Evo would leave, which would just be a shame. I, for one, hope they let Horizon really click into their role as the popular all-accepting guys and have Evo start pushing their old "let's see how far we can push the metahuman form" agenda. Maybe the could recover from this by getting a new CEO who favors this approach, obsessed with unlocking the full potential of metahumanity while starting to place less value in free spirits and AIs? Unlikely, but it sure would be fun!
As far as Knight goes, he is getting oooooold, and Leonization can only do so much. I feel like if he makes it through this edition, he'll have to bow out by the end of SR6 or he's just going to be some ruthless corporate Elminster.
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While taking out a CEO is darned hard to do with a bullet, it's something that can happen with a ballot.
What does Knight do if the board replaces him as CEO, having already lost the Chairman position? WIll he be content to "just" be a butt in a seat at the table? And if he doesn't have the protection of a CEO, it'd be easier to take him out...
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Knight would barricade himself so far inside KE and AresSpace that he would be even harder to get at than now. From the way Market Panic is written no one seems to be on the verge of dying. Instead it looks like CC might be expanding instead.
Personally I would love for Wuxing to get ousted by Spin/Maersk
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As far as Knight goes, he is getting oooooold, and Leonization can only do so much. I feel like if he makes it through this edition, he'll have to bow out by the end of SR6 or he's just going to be some ruthless corporate Elminster.
Knight is not the only one WHO is getting on in years, so is Richard Villiers and Nakatomi ( Renraku, formerly of Fuchi with Villiers ). Honestly it's time for some of these old geezers to bite the bullet.
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Ah but that is part of the dystopia isn't it?
The ultrarich and powerful can afford longer lifespans clutching desperately to what's theirs while the underlings/descendants look up with hungry eyes at the prize seemingly ever out of their reach because of the living mummy at the top.
Frankly I am surprised it isn't more prevalent than it is in canon, with the repercussions of it starting to creep in.
And to be fair, you are bitching about some 'geezers' who haven't broken the century mark yet to the best of our knowledge, Damien's exact age is unknown but probably pushing 80s-90s at most, what are you going to do with your elven & dragon overlords who will be stepping on you for far longer? ;)
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Honestly? It takes a helluvalot to bring down a AAA. Hell, the backlash from the whole SCIRE incident only rung Renraku's bell, globally speaking. It butchered their North American division, but they didn't lose AAA status. In Crash 2.0, both Novatech and Cross had been engaged in brutal corporate wars and were already weakened. Ares and Cross had been trading shots for years, going back and forth like two heavyweight boxers. The only reason there even was a Novatech IPO to jumpstart the Crash was because Arty-boy had been systematically butchering Novatech with a kind of single-minded hatred seen in true zealots.
To be fair, there's one and only one thing that can take down a AAA: the line developer's will.
In 2059, Renraku lost an arcology, major computer system, a number of its best and brightest engineers, along with the death of tens of thousand people. A majority block among the other corporations backed the UCAS government in suspending Renraku extraterritoriality, which was just another way of saying that Renraku was (locally) not up to the requirements of the corporate extraterritorial privileges.
And that came just month after Renraku avoided a guilty verdict for industrial espionage and sabotage on the Corporate Court only because Fuchi would have been found equally guilty and everyone favored a settlement. The case was so serious that the settlement actually included the expropriation of a shareholder. And the situation also led to the departure of Brightlight, who hacked into Renraku computers to entirely erase two years of work, forcing Renraku to spend months retro-engineering their own software and hardware products, their core business. And then the CEO took an "indefinite leave of absence" with the board unable or unwilling to chose a replacement for over a year. And Renraku was a publicly traded corporation with no shareholders over 10%.
Nothing happens.
In 2065, Cross Applied Technologies, which for some reasons decided to borrow money from companies its top-notch intelligence service was unable to figure out belonged to Ares-owned Bank of America (instead of borrowing from the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank like AAA are entitled to). Then its CEO died in an air crash, leaving his sixty-years old son, the respected Chairman of the board, as the owner of 60% of the stock, with 27% belonging to a seasoned corporate executive with an intimate knowledge (and just as intimate hatred) for Ares.
Cut to Ares taking over subsidiaries it wants, other megacorporations trying to do the same. Next turn, the Corporate Court vote out Cross to make room for Horizon as a AAA.
Maybe Horizon manipulated public opinion, governments and corporations on an epic level to force its way onto the Corporate Court as a necessity (something not told anywhere). Maybe Cross entire intelligence service vanished overnight (barely addressed). But try having your entire North America management vanish overnight instead.
The point is not that Cross could get voted out the court while Renraku couldn't. The point was that while Cross shareholding structure made it basically invulnerable to a takeover, which would have been unlikely when most megacorporations should have been in damage control mode, Renraku was a perfect target at a time all the other megacorporation were up and running.
The actual difference is that neither Mike Mulvihill nor Rob Boyle wanted Renraku to disappear in third edition, while Rob Boyle wanted Cross to before moving to the fourth edition. It will be basically the same thing for the next AAA to disappear. It doesn't have to make sense because the events will be set up so as to achieve the desired result - the reasons for Renraku survival are just as made-up as Wuxing, Cross and Horizon cases to become AAA, or Richard Villiers ability as Fuchi CEO to order the sale of JRJ International to himself without anyone reporting it to the board (in real life, such operation would account to a fraud - no mention yet of Yamana and Shiawase suing in Zurich-Orbital and Tokyo courts at least to make Novatech look bad).
It's not about nuyen and sense, it's only about which way the line is going.
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The actual difference is that neither Mike Mulvihill nor Rob Boyle wanted Renraku to disappear in third edition, while Rob Boyle wanted Cross to before moving to the fourth edition. It will be basically the same thing for the next AAA to disappear. It doesn't have to make sense because the events will be set up so as to achieve the desired result - the reasons for Renraku survival are just as made-up as Wuxing, Cross and Horizon cases to become AAA, or Richard Villiers ability as Fuchi CEO to order the sale of JRJ International to himself without anyone reporting it to the board (in real life, such operation would account to a fraud - no mention yet of Yamana and Shiawase suing in Zurich-Orbital and Tokyo courts at least to make Novatech look bad).
The demise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do.
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The demise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do.
The rise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do, too. "Oh, we had these guys spread through all the top 50 corporations throughout the world the entire time, and nobody could ever have found them, and they're just so great at what they do, and ..."
...
That CATCo was eliminated in such a cavalier fashion is very, very low on my 'how not to' list. :P
To be entirely honest, however, I don't think it likely that it'll be a disappearance - just a downgrade. Let's say Evo gets the axe. Evo isn't going to just disappear; it's still going to be a major player in all sorts of pies, and it's going to be scrambling and gunning to get a Corporate Court justice back, to make it into the AAA ranking again. If it loses its justice and its corresponding 10% of share in the ZOG, that's the only thing it'll have lost - not the financial resources to hold onto its companies, the naval muscle it has to keep its container ships protected, its space infrastructure; it'll lose an 'A'.
In short, it will still be a megacorporation. It just won't have as big of bragging rights, or as much influence, as it used to.
Which could make whatever corp that winds up getting the axe a very, very dangerous corporation indeed ...
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Ah but that is part of the dystopia isn't it?
The ultrarich and powerful can afford longer lifespans clutching desperately to what's theirs while the underlings/descendants look up with hungry eyes at the prize seemingly ever out of their reach because of the living mummy at the top.
Frankly I am surprised it isn't more prevalent than it is in canon, with the repercussions of it starting to creep in.
And to be fair, you are bitching about some 'geezers' who haven't broken the century mark yet to the best of our knowledge, Damien's exact age is unknown but probably pushing 80s-90s at most, what are you going to do with your elven & dragon overlords who will be stepping on you for far longer? ;)
Well everybody knows that Elves and Dragons are much better at the Whole running the Things show, so that won't be a problem.... ;D
No but seriously, you're right that it's part of the dystopian World of shadowrun and i don't really have a problem with it ( not a problem with Knight nor with Nakatomi nor with Korin Yamana ), i have a problem with the continued same old same old storyline with Villiers. In a World of cutthroat corporate sharks, i have a hard time accepting that noone has actually identified him as a major part of the reason why his corps end up going Down and simply removed him from the equation, because thats what's best for business.
And yeah i don't think anyone of us are in doubt as to the fact that it is the Devs thats decides these Things based on what they think is best for the games Development. That doesn't stop a lot of us from airing our pet peeves and wishes in a vain hope that the devs might be listening or just to banter sometimes, because Shadowrun is a cool universe and it's fun talking about it.
As to what The Wyrm Ouroboros said, a downgraded leaner, meaner more dangerous version of one of the AAA's could be interesting. In that case i would hope that they follow up on it with some adventures or something, otherwise it's practically the same as it being gone.
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No but seriously, you're right that it's part of the dystopian World of shadowrun and i don't really have a problem with it ( not a problem with Knight nor with Nakatomi nor with Korin Yamana ), i have a problem with the continued same old same old storyline with Villiers. In a World of cutthroat corporate sharks, i have a hard time accepting that noone has actually identified him as a major part of the reason why his corps end up going Down and simply removed him from the equation, because thats what's best for business.
And yeah i don't think anyone of us are in doubt as to the fact that it is the Devs thats decides these Things based on what they think is best for the games Development. That doesn't stop a lot of us from airing our pet peeves and wishes in a vain hope that the devs might be listening or just to banter sometimes, because Shadowrun is a cool universe and it's fun talking about it.
That is a very good point as with NeoNet taking a bashing again, my suggested scenario earlier of Caroline absconding with the Golden Ticket sounds good at first, but given that the Villiers have played Trojan Horse before with the Lanier/Renraku incident, any Corp taking that Ticket in has to be seriously looking for House Harkonnen level booby-traps/sleepers/legal shenanigans/etc of some sort so it doesn't blow up in their faces later.
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Just to be fair, Villiers only had a direct hand at killing Fuchi because he wanted his own Mega Corp. After he got it, that being Novatech, who'd have ever guessed that coincidentally running into a former Fuchi employee and slighting him because he's a tweaking beetle head would have pissed him off so bad that he'd try to kill your Mega Corp and almost succeed. Obviously, you don't want to NOT have a mega corp, so going public and losing absolute control just to keep your corp running makes sense. And who'd have guessed that an God level AI and a doomsday cult would all attack your IPO at once on the same day and destroy the entire Matrix. I mean, seriously, what are the odds?
Obviously, you still want your Mega, so joining forces with a few Double A's that specialize in the Matrix makes sense to make NeoNET. But who'd have freaking guess that when one of your best and lead researchers, who just so happens to be a Great Dragon, goes and releases a highly infectious nano tech virus and that it gets out of hand and infects an entire sprawl, I mean, how could you possible predict that? He's suppose to be on your side. He's suppose to be looking out for your Mega's best interest because his finances are tied to yours.
Fuchi is kind of his fault. And Art Dankwalther to another degree, but honestly, who'd have seen that coming? But Boston? That's not his fault. Crash 2.0 is also not his fault.
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The demise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do.
The rise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do, too. "Oh, we had these guys spread through all the top 50 corporations throughout the world the entire time, and nobody could ever have found them, and they're just so great at what they do, and ..."
That sounds more like Proteus. The worst thing CATCo did was have badass spies.
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Yeah, Proteus having remote-operated clones active in, say, 2055? Kind of a problem.
But, you know ... it s what it is.
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But, you know ... it s what it is.
Indeed.
Anyway, you're all wrong. Maybe.
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The rise of CATCo is an excellent example of what not to do, too. "Oh, we had these guys spread through all the top 50 corporations throughout the world the entire time, and nobody could ever have found them, and they're just so great at what they do, and ..."
That particular assertion was made in Corporate Download ("[The Seraphim] have their feelers sunk in almost every AA and AAA corp in the world, no to mention most national governments."). That's way closer to Cross apex than to its rise, well into third edition era once Cross Applied Technologies had AAA rating. It actually doesn't say for how long they enjoyed such position (and at that point the Seraphim had taken over a part of Dunkelzahn shadow network).
The actual issue with CATCo (and Wuxing) rise was that it took place over the span of two books, Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets and Blood in the Boardroom. They were not even mentioned in Corporate Shadowfiles. Cross did not even appeared in the only available description of Québec - The Neo-anarchist Guide to North America (actually the only mention of Cross local presence I remember was a one-liner in Target: Smuggler Havens' New Orleans, and Wxuing had about as much). There was an established setting, which fleshed out all the existing AAA (and a few lesser corporations like Lone Star Security Services) and Cross and Wuxing weren't part of it.
Once they were admitted into the AAA gang, the fact they would be the best at something ain't the problem. The Seraphim were basically a corporate rip-off of the Mossad. The suggestion they would have moles in every megacorporation might be a bit too extreme (unless any number of low or even mid-level informants count, in which case it actually wouldn't be such an impressive feat). Meanwhile, Saeder-Krupp had unbeatable chessmaster Lofwyr, Renraku had created an AI, and Aztechnology had teflon-coated reputation with consumers, and that was considered acceptable because that was part of the established setting.
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Dunkelzahn saw it coming and even pushed things in that direction.
Earthdawn dragons had a power called manipulate fate (or something like that). In combat, they could turn your karma against you. In a more narrative sense, his will was sort of a ritual use of manipulate fate.
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In SR3e they had that ability as well.
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But, you know ... it s what it is.
Indeed.
Anyway, you're all wrong. Maybe.
I knew it! It's actually that secret eleventh AAA corp that's going down! Time to watch that McHughes clown fall!!!
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Am I really the only one rooting for Ares to disappear (maybe replaced "à la Novatech" by a new join venture between Damien Knight and Spinrad ?)
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Ares would have to take a lot more hits to be in danger of falling, belaran. The situation just isn't the same as when Fuchi broke up and Villiers created Novatech. Ares doesn't have a 'piece' that gives them a golden ticket, the main body of the corp is the golden ticket. For similar reasons, no matter what happens, Aztechnology (nee ORO) will be on the Court. Unless, of course, something catastrophic happens and the corp literally ceases to exist, or they change the bylaws of the Court itself, removing the golden tickets (and THAT will never happen). Indeed, NeoNET is the only one of the golden ticket holders that has that ticket as a 'piece' instead of the 'whole'.
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I don't think Ares could "disappear" but we have no idea to which extend the internal bug threat is. An interesting way of bringing back the bugs in front of the scene worldwide would be to discover that Ares has been infiltrated to a very high level but bugs. That, plus the fiasco on Excalibur, the retirement of Damien Knight (or him selling his stock to create something new with Spinrad), could really topple things over.
Also, the Devil Pact with Horizon might be interesting. A falling Ares may want to sell their consumer brand to Horizon or Horizon might be pushed to "rescue their partner" in exchange of some more political power at CC (for instance).
But honestly, I just hope NeoNET won't bite the bullet - this corp history is already too rich of merging and rebirth !
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First off, Damien Knight will NEVER retire. Only way he is no longer on the board of Ares is if he is either killed or forced out. Neither of which are easily done. And he has no reason to go to Spinrad. Again, the situation just isn't the same as with Fuchi. Damien Knight is in full control of Ares, unlike the wars involved with Villiers in Fuchi. He is already on top of a AAA megacorp. He has no reason to chop it up and share power with a new player (Spinrad). And while the situation with Horizon brings up interesting points, it isn't damning like you seem to believe.
As for the bugs, we'll have to see. But it would take Universal Brotherhood levels of infestation to bring down Ares, either from inside or from an Omega Order by the rest of the Court. From everything we've seen, it is nowhere near that point.
NeoNET and EVO are the two that are most vulnerable at this time, NeoNET most of all, since Boston is pretty much directly their fault, and they have been as fractious as Fuchi of old. Yes, they went through this before, but lets face it, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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You got Ares stock in your wallet, aren't you ? ;)
Yes, I agree Evo and NeoNET are far more likely candidate, but that is also why I expect a twist here. We are all expecting NeoNET, or at least, Evo to take the blame, but maybe the line will take this story somewhere else ?
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Well if Evo nor NeoNET fall, the one that has a potential to fall is Wuxing. Why? Well, no golden ticket, Maersk is making life hard for them, and they went to all-out corp war in Manhattan to gain a seat on the MDC. Believe me, the Corp Court is not going to look kindly on having their Earth-side "home turf" being home to corp war. But I still say Evo.....
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Wuxing is a stretch. Yes, Maersk is going after them, but only on the Wuxing Worldwide Shipping front. Honestly, IMHO, I see more Maersk being absorbed by a pissed off Wuxing, than the chinese megacorporate to fall down... Dito for Aztechnology, btw, they are having a hard time, but unless someone pin CFD on them somehow, I don't see them fall easily.
If not NeoNET or Evo, Horizon would be a candidate, but like Wuxing i don't see them fall, but more gaming purpose. Indeed, Horizon is the "media corpo" (as Wuxing is the chinese one). From this point of view, getting ride of one more japan megacorp (Renraku has become quite useless storyline point of view - but I have yet to read their update in Market Panic).
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Renraku, much like Shiawase, has decided to take the time honored track of stepping out of the limelight and letting everyone else go fight eachother while they sit back and just make tons of money. Sure, they haven't been bringing out flashy bleeding edge products lately, but they've quietly gained big market share in the service industry and data management. Meaning that they, literally, have their finger on the pulse of pretty much everyone's information. Like Shiawase providing power and trash services, it isn't glamorous, but they're working hard to make themselves indispensable.
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Damien Knight is in full control of Ares, unlike the wars involved with Villiers in Fuchi. He is already on top of a AAA megacorp. He has no reason to chop it up and share power with a new player (Spinrad).
Damien Knight owns "only" 23.7% of Ares Macrotechnology stock. He needs at least minimal backing from other shareholders just to block Arthur Vogel, and one third of the minor shareholders should Vogel and Daviar vote together. And he'd need as much as two-thirds of the minor shareholders to secure a 50% majority in a worst case scenario.
It has been said he enjoiy some level of loyalty from a number of Ares shareholders, along with proxy rights. But proxy rights can be revoked, and loyalty is no guarantee (especially if Knight management should fail to deliver). He controls, but he's far from full control.
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Yep, Damien Knight controls over Ares is certainly not a tight grip (as clearly explained in Market Panic). If Ares, as a whole, would be (maybe) difficult to dismantle, big changes in the structure could defintily arrived (but then it would not be the predicated "death of AAA").
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Well, we know the following aren't going down because they are their golden tickets: Ares, MCT, and Shiawase, and Aztechnology
Now the followings golden tickets are subsidiaries:
Renraku via Izom (formally Keruba) - could be swiped but no one has ever tried it before
S-K via BMW - Llowfyr owns most of the stock in BMW but some unknown party owns part of the shares too
NeoNET via JRJ - lately it's where ever Villiers goes, though someone else could try to make a grab for it
Then these three are worried because they have no ticket:
Evo
Horizon
Wuxing
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As Nightmare said, Ares, MCT, Shiawase, and Aztechnology are safe, unless the corp literally and completely ceases to exist, or they somehow get beat up so badly that an AA absorbs them to get their own ticket. All four have had problems, but none on THAT level. I don't think we'll see one of those four go down without another Crash or an Omega Order.
Renraku has been quiet, and isn't on any of the big player's hit lists right now, even though they're making lots of money. They're perfecting the art of being just out of sight/out of mind when people go looking for targets.
Lofwyr will eat anyone that tries to take BMW away. If they're lucky.
Which leaves the other four as possible candidates. Horizon and Wuxing don't have a ticket, but they're not in a whole lot of trouble right now. Something could shake loose, of course, but nothing we've seen so far suggests they'll get a downgrade unless some big moves get made during the Megacorporate Audit.
Evo and NeoNET are the corps on the ropes right now. Both are bloody from internal feuds and have had key board members 'removed'. Both have had a major hand in CFD, and Boston in particular. They are the ones that are vulnerable. At least one of them is going down.
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I'm not sure that the equation "AAA possess a Golden Ticket => Safe" is correct, the golden ticket ensure just a seat at the CC to however possess the company having it. It does help, but it's not a "+25 shield against eveything", to make a D&D comparaison.
Also, Ares brand is currently quite bad, and let's imagine, by some twist of the story that somehow CFD gets pin down on them (unlikely granted) or just an other very bad "bug scandal" breakthrough. We could have the board joining behind Aurelius (let's say) and jump board and merging/join or build a new megacorp.
Now, we all agree, NeoNET is the most likely candidate. I'm just saying it could be somebody else ....
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The AAAs with 'golden tickets' in the company itself, rather than a subsidiary (JRJ for NeoNET, Izom for Renraku, BMW for SK) are safely on the Court unless something happens that makes those corps cease to exist, globally, or the Court changes its rules to remove the tickets. Since the second will never happen, lets ignore that.
Ares's brand was in the crapper, but as of Market Panic, they've been rebuilding the brand and market share, and with Horizon's help on spin, they've been getting better. And the level of bug outbreak needed to bring them down would be Chicago level, at least. Remember, even the catastrophe that was the SCIRE shutdown didn't topple Renraku, and they spent the better part of a decade clawing their way back from that debacle. And what we're trying to tell you, belaran, is that Aurelius (or Knight, or Gavilan, or anyone else) can just slip off with the ticket like Villiers did with Fuchi. Ares as an entire megacorp would have to be grabbed by someone for the ticket to go somewhere. And as things stand (as of Market Panic), that just doesn't look to be in the cards.
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So, taking your point of view on this, it basically means that, it's more/less a done deal, the AAA will be NeoNET, or maybe Evo (as there is no reason for Wuxing or Horizon to go away).
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That's my read on the situation. The way things stand, NeoNET and/or Evo are on the chopping block. But hey, just because you're down to the river and need to fill an inside straight doesn't mean it won't happen. There is a nonzero probability that it could be one of the other megas. Just like there is a nonzero probability that Lofwyr will give up all his worldly possessions to charity, and go off into the mountains to live as a hermit.
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So, taking your point of view on this, it basically means that, it's more/less a done deal, the AAA will be NeoNET, or maybe Evo (as there is no reason for Wuxing or Horizon to go away).
Unless the writers decide to throw in a curveball the likes of which the Sixth World has rarely seen; yes, that's exactly right.
There's very little known information that would support any other megacorps falling if you base your view on published material so far. It seems almost certain that either NeoNET or Evo will fall.
Of course, feel free to speculate at Plan 9 levels of conspiracy theories, but that's ultimately all we're doing; speculating.
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Of course, feel free to speculate at Plan 9 levels of conspiracy theories, but that's ultimately all we're doing; speculating.
Yes, but most of us are restricting our speculating to at least Snopes level. ;)
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Of course, feel free to speculate at Plan 9 levels of conspiracy theories, but that's ultimately all we're doing; speculating.
Yes, but most of us are restricting our speculating to at least Snopes level. ;)
Mostly anyway ;)
Samantha is still dead.... or is she?
[Plan-9 Mode Engage] Samantha was chummy with Nadja who has been known to use body doubles. Could Nadja have set up Sam with some of her own and it was actually a look alike that took the hit and she is laying low doing spirits know what in the background.
What's even scarier is what if Daddy Richard sent Caroline into Evo's arms using the only thing that could possibly buy her way in, while he gets NeoSpin running around with a target on it's back to draw fire because he does do his best work under pressure and Sam is playing around behind the scenes because who suspects or even plans for the dead lady?[/Plan-9 Mode disengage]
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Now the followings golden tickets are subsidiaries:
Renraku via Izom (formally Keruba) - could be swiped but no one has ever tried it before
S-K via BMW - Llowfyr owns most of the stock in BMW but some unknown party owns part of the shares too
NeoNET via JRJ - lately it's where ever Villiers goes, though someone else could try to make a grab for it
In real life, the very definition of a subsidiary requires to parent company to have full control - 50% of the vote plus one. Unless the parent company is willing to sell, to take over a subsdiary requires an inside job.
Richard Villiers could order the sale of JRJ International as the President/CEO of Fuchi Industrial Electronics (even though in real life such decision would be worthy of a lawsuit from other Fuchi shareholders with decent chances of winning). And it also required Fuchi only Corporate Court justice Lynn Osborne to side with Villiers to guarantee Fuchi effective removal from the Court.
Actually, it would be impossible for Richard Villiers to personnally own JRJ International. If Villiers owns a majority, then it cannot be a Novatech or Neonet subsidiary and cannot get the benefit of its AAA rating. A possible alternative would be Neonet/Novatech owning a majority in JRJ while Villiers owns an option for extra shares that would allow him to reclaim a majority ownership at will. But that's different from what has been described so far.
Market Panic now lists JRJ International as an "internal corporation" which is a made-up expression for which no definition has been given.
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Well, again, I don't think the golden ticket is so crucial here. But to be fair, my speculations were not based on the "what is the most logical" (Evo, NeoNET), but more on "what could be fun or different for the game line".
Remember that is a made universe, Catalyst writers can completly pull a "big unknown event that change everything" and made an other not suspected mega to fall. (Like Lowfyr being killed or forced by other dragon to sell his stocks, or Damien Knight calling it a quite, and so on...).
IMHO, I think it would be more fun if the writer go this way - but I won't blame them if we discover that the mega to fall is [NeoNET/Evo].
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Well, again, I don't think the golden ticket is so crucial here. But to be fair, my speculations were not based on the "what is the most logical" (Evo, NeoNET), but more on "what could be fun or different for the game line".
Remember that is a made universe, Catalyst writers can completly pull a "big unknown event that change everything" and made an other not suspected mega to fall. (Like Lowfyr being killed or forced by other dragon to sell his stocks, or Damien Knight calling it a quite, and so on...).
IMHO, I think it would be more fun if the writer go this way - but I won't blame them if we discover that the mega to fall is [NeoNET/Evo].
They absolutely could, but I honestly don't believe they won't. Not just out of left field, anyway; instead, I think they'd set it up like previous editions have. You know, kind of like what they've done with CFD ;)
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Having a seat on the court makes one a Triple A which is why the golden tickets are important. That ticket means that you always get at least one seat at the table even if the judge is killed. Only way an Ares is going to lose their seat is to implode or it turns out to be a giant hive.
While it might be cool for one of those "for sures" to fall, the rules Catalyst and FASA setup means that won't happen.
Now, those with two seats on the court could end up losing one of those seats if the judge dies/ect and the court puts a new corp in that chair.
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As they said. It may be a 'made universe', but that universe still has rules that govern it. And that means a golden ticket keeps that corp as AAA until such time as the corp doesn't exist, even as a subsidiary of another corp, or the court changes its charter in a completely nonsensical way. And Omega Orders against AAAs are very rare.
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Heck, Omega Orders are rare, period. How many have there been that we know about; one per decade? Less?
But yeah, what Nightmare and Mirikon said.
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Only ones I can remember are Aztechnology and Proteus AG.
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Don't forget Arty Boy. Don't care what you say, when you use orbital weapons platforms to take out one man, that's an Omega Order. ;)
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It depends on which source you refer to for a definition of what an Omega Order is. Originally, second edition sourcebook had the Omega Order as an hypothetical thing that had never happened. It casts some doubt over the status of Operation Reciprocity against Aztechnology, which would in turn mean that the definition of the Omega Order was also false.
What happened later is that authors wanted ot use a name that sounded cool and was well-established. So the Omega Order has been since redefined as something that actually happen. Even if the strikes against Aztechnology were limited and even if Art Dankwalther was not registered as a corporation. So much for that universe having rules that govern it.
Corporate Shadowfiles, pages 101-102
Infringement against pan-corporate laws falls into two basic categories: infringement by minor corps and infringement by megacorps. The first case is a no-brainer. If the Corporate Court decides that a minor corp (any corporation not classified as AAA) has broken a law and warrants punishment, it gives mandate to one or more of the major corps to a given degree. This mandate gives the megacorp official authorization from the Corporate Court to use its security assets against the guilty corporation, to the specified extent. A mandate can range from relatively minor destruction of selected black-ops assets to "open season," where the enforcing megacorp can destroy the target corp.
>>>>>[The dreaded "Omega Order" differs from this "total mandate" only in that an Omega Order lets every megacorp, and anyone else who wants to play, have open season on somebody.]<<<<<
-Hangfire (09:9:58/4-22-54)
Aztlan, pages 42-47
>>>>>[Here's another one that requires some explanation. If Espectro is to be believed, he (or the division running corporate security overwatch for Aztechnology) managed to liberate this from the datastores of Ares Macrotech. Its stated purpose is to provide a kind of follow-up on the Ensenada "incident" and its aftermath. As always, boys and girls, read this with the same skepticism filter through which you look at all corporate-speak.]<<<<<
-Captain Chaos (13:18:02/5-1-56)
File Header: Ares-1://html:/0202-Ensenada Operation Reciprocity
Security Link: Omega-335 10/10/48
>>>>>[I'll repeat my request from earlier in this file. Any Ares "refugees" out there who can give us a reality check on this file header structure? Is this the clean deal on "Operation Reciprocity"? And was this really an Omega Order?]<<<<<
-Jason (02:38:10/5-4-56)
>>>>>[Omega Order?]<<<<<
-Talbot (09:10:29/5-6-56)
>>>>>[In essence, an Omega Order constitutes the Corporate Court in Zurich-Orbital declaring open season on a corporation for any number of reasons. Check out a more complete explanation in the Corporate Shadowfiles post elsewhere on this board.]<<<<<
-Link (00:03:15/5-7-56)
[... The Seaborne strike force] had the capability for a land assault should damage assessment indicate i necessary. As it turned out, this was not necessary. [...] By operational measures, Operation RECIPROCITY was a sterling success. Losses among the strikes forces were well within acceptable limits, and damage assessments showed almost precisely the degree of damage that planners had expected. [...] The damage inflicted on the Ensenada complex was not severe in overall terms. The military capability of the site had been degraded by only approximately 10 percent. Still the destruction of the Ensenada complex as a capable fighting force had not been the purpose of Operation RECIPROCITY. The message had been sent as clearly as possible that the pan-corporate forces could have done much more. [...] Ares's willingness to activate Operation Big Gun against the Ensenada complex was laid out in no uncertain term with a deadline fo 72 hours.
Corporate Download, page 22
If the Court decides that a non-AAA corp broke the law and deserves a spanking, the Court issues a mandate to one of its member corps, giving full authority to use security/military assets to whup hoop on the perp. The mandated corp gets a set amount of funds from the z-OG Bank to finance its operations. Each mandate specifies the extent of damage the mandated corp can inflict, based on the severity of the violation. If the mandated corp steps over these boundaries (as such corps are often enticed to do), this corp becomes subject to corporate punishment.
If the Court decides that one of its own AAA members has violated the rules, it has several options. For minor infractions, the Court orders the Z-OG Bank to increase the bad corp's fees for various services - for example, charging higher interest rates for loans. For more severe rule-breaking, the Court will delegate two or more AAA megacorps to punish the violator using their security assets, just as migh happen to a lesser corp.
For extreme transgressions, the Court issues an Omega Order. This decree, essentially a mandate to all AAA corps to punish the offender, makes it open season on the condemned corp. It's the corporate equivalent of a death sentence, and it ain't pretty.
Corporate Guide, page 21
> One of the best ways to understand the Corporate Court’s difficulties is to look at what it takes for them to move boldly. One of the Court’s most aggressive moves was the Omega Order of 2044 against Aztechnology, clearing the way for all sorts of corporate aggression against the Big A. How did they arrive at the point of issuing that order? By watching Aztechnology make a nakedly aggressive move
that benefited them tremendously and hurt everyone else on the Court. Thinking they were a little more imposing than they actually were, Aztechnology pushed the puppet Aztlan government to nationalize every industry in the country, using the government to make a hostile takeover of every corporate asset in the land. So most of the then-eight members of the Court were united in common cause, and that was enough for the Big A to get slapped hard. That’s the kind of naked aggression it takes to get them to respond. For the most part the justices line up about as often as the planets.
> Kay St. Irregular
Corporate Guide, page 24
Omega Orders
Sometimes you just gotta cry “Havoc!” and let the dogs of war do their thing. An Omega Order is essentially the Court taking the shackles off the megas, throwing their hands in the air, and saying that whatever happens, the target of the order deserves.
It’s harsh, which is why it’s seldom used. How seldom? Well, depends on who you talk to. Most people agree that Operation Reciprocity, the strike against Aztechnology in 2044, came as the result of an Omega Order, but a few holdouts claim that if it truly was an Omega Order, the attacks would have come on a wider geographical scale and would have been more damaging.
> Look, it was an Omega Order. There’s this idea that Omega=immediate extinction, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Sometimes, if you inflict enough pain but let the victim survive, what you get is a better corporate citizen. Though I have to admit Aztechnology is probably not the best case to cite in support of this argument.
> Snopes
> It was not an Omega Order, no matter what your history books may say. All the other AAAs at the time, and plenty of AAs, were chomping at the bit to go after Aztechnology after Aztlan’s nationalization scam, and if they had been given the Omega go-ahead, enough hell would have rained down on Aztechnology that they wouldn’t have had even a lemonade stand left to their name. The Court was mad at them and wanted them hurt, but not enough to go Omega.
> Axis Mundi
> Just out of curiosity, and not that I believe your line, but if everyone was so pissed at the Azzies, why not go all the way?
> Frosty
> The ones making the decision were the peers of the heads of Aztechnology. Sometimes, the inclination of the powerful to look out for their own overwhelms all else.
> Axis Mundi
The other Omega Order that most people agree occurred was the Thor shot (and associated offensives) that killed Art Dankwalther and dismantled his empire in the aftermath Crash 2.0. Without going into details on the whole Dankwalther story (I hate thinking about Crash 2.0 anyway—always makes me think of Captain Chaos), the moral of the whole thing is simple: You can become pretty big in this world, but never bigger than the biggest gun. It helps, then, to have other people on your side, and in the end, Dankwalther didn’t.
The Court obviously takes Omega Orders very seriously and is reluctant to issue them, but the Court also very much enjoys holding the threat of an Omega over corporations’ heads. The justices are very careful to maintain the belief that an Omega Order could be issued at any time—they regularly update their Omega Protocols, which detail what steps should be taken once an Omega Order is issued.
> 99.9 percent of the people who claim to have seen a copy of the Omega Protocols have actually been taken in by one of the many fakes circulating around out there, so I’ll understand if people are skeptical about any claims as to their contents. I believe, however, I can safely say this: They don’t intend for the delay in organizing Operation Reciprocity to happen again. The protocols identify several military assets in various parts of the world that can be called upon for fast, devastating strikes.
> Mr. Bonds
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But you already proved that the rul s work, Nath. In 2E, as you mentioned, it was a hypothetical potential concerning the Omega Orders. There weren't any rules set forth for them. It wasn't until latter that the rules concerning the orders were established and expounded on in 3E, by FASA who first created the idea of the Omega Order, that everything afterwards was governed by what came before. The hit on the Azzies was an Omega Order that was rescinded by the Corporate Court after the Azzies gave in and made a deal.
The game universe and ideas have to have some rules to govern, or else it would end up beings mass of contradicting ideas from multiple writers. As long as those rules are hypothetical like the original idea of theOmega Orders there is room to play with them. Once they get defined, like the golden ticket and the Omega Order after3E, then you have to try hard to stay within those rules. Sure, Catalyst could come up with a way to bypass them but it would need to have a good explanation for it and some major game event/history/plot to make it work.
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For the record, there's one canonical Omega Order, but I've yet to see anyone mention it.
As for NeoNET (o Evo) being the obvious one to fall? Let me toss a scenario out there.
Corporate Court meeting is called, to rule on the Boston situation. Everyone expects pain to be put down. Evo, or NeoNET, present surprise evidence that Corporation X is responsible for it and demand restitution or, failing that, an Omega Order to value of assets that they have lost due to the Lockdown and PR fallout. Evidence is measured, found to be accurate, and the order goes down.
And suddenly the weak position of NeoNET or Evo is reversed as they get to sieze assets while the other corps inflict pain upon the patsy.
This would, of course, pivot on either Evo, NeoNET, or a third party who wants to see a corp other than those two pay being the corp that wound up with the incriminating data.
Now, the question there is this: WHich offer did Lockdown players take most often?
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Wait, Lockdown players got to make a choice that may impact canon? The videogame, or the tabletop? If the tabletop, how!?
ETA:
Also, that evidence would have to be pretty solid, no? How do you reliably spin doctor information on such a massive scale that it'll even fool the Corporate Court and all 9-10 megacorps?
Also also, what's the canonical Omega Order you're referring to?
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Hmm...could be Keruba and BMW battle but that created the Court. Crash 2.0's response on Winternight is more possible. Or the takeover of Global Financial Services.
As for the spin, you'd only have to get a majority of judges to accept it. So 7 judges is all which would be easy. Problem is, it would reguire an Omega Order to destroy the four that are definete chairs (Ares, MCT, Shiawase, and Azzies) or free game order on the other's with tickets. Could work though.
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Just remembered what the order Waz is talking about: Spinrad being knocked around!!
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Wait, Lockdown players got to make a choice that may impact canon? The videogame, or the tabletop? If the tabletop, how!?
ETA:
Also, that evidence would have to be pretty solid, no? How do you reliably spin doctor information on such a massive scale that it'll even fool the Corporate Court and all 9-10 megacorps?
Not connected with the Lockdown team, so, not much I can say here.
Also also, what's the canonical Omega Order you're referring to?
Gold star for the first one to find it!
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Just remembered what the order Waz is talking about: Spinrad being knocked around!!
Nope! Try again.
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It's not the attack on ORO. The only other time all corp milspec was given free rein was Winternight and Crash 2.0.
It could be the sound slapping they gave AG Chemie for taking out Proteus' board. But I doubt that.
Genom Corps been slapped to but that isn't it.
Go non-military, there's Chicago...but that was UCAS with Ares. Boston?!?
Cause removing Lanier from Renraku wasn't one if memory serves me right. Damn, me without my books...
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None of those, either. It's pretty obscure.
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GOT IT!!! QZE Corps destruction in 41 when they wouldn't back down!!! I love my books...
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GOT IT!!! QZE Corps destruction in 41 when they wouldn't back down!!! I love my books...
Taa daa! That's the one. :)
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I get me a gold star! Woohoo!
Interesting thing about that single Order is what helped kind of kick it off was the ascension of the corp now known as Evo from double A to triple A.
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But you already proved that the rul s work, Nath. In 2E, as you mentioned, it was a hypothetical potential concerning the Omega Orders. There weren't any rules set forth for them. It wasn't until latter that the rules concerning the orders were established and expounded on in 3E, by FASA who first created the idea of the Omega Order, that everything afterwards was governed by what came before. The hit on the Azzies was an Omega Order that was rescinded by the Corporate Court after the Azzies gave in and made a deal.
The game universe and ideas have to have some rules to govern, or else it would end up beings mass of contradicting ideas from multiple writers. As long as those rules are hypothetical like the original idea of theOmega Orders there is room to play with them. Once they get defined, like the golden ticket and the Omega Order after3E, then you have to try hard to stay within those rules. Sure, Catalyst could come up with a way to bypass them but it would need to have a good explanation for it and some major game event/history/plot to make it work.
It may worth reminding Operation Reciprocity was launched in 2048 - the QZE affair took place in 2042 IIRC. Corporate Shadowfiles got out in 2054, Corporate Download in 2061 and Corporate Guide in 2072. So those precedents happened well before the information were released on Shadowland and Jackpoint.
Omega Order has been repeatedly described with expression like "open season" or "whatever happens" which Operation Reciprocity clearly was not. It was a limited, focused operation carried out only by AAA megacorporations. Moreover, it was kept secret in a way that did not allow any other megacorporations to participate.
As far as I remember, there was no such "warning shot" with QZE. This suggests Reciprocity may have been an ad hoc response to the fact no one had seriously considered an Omega Order could be taken against a AAA prime megacorporation - Aztlan does describe how court members had to made up a so-called "pan-corporate security committee" from which Aztechnology would be excluded to convene measures.
I think it could be retconed with Operation Reciprocity actually be an "Omega Order Phase 1" while the "Omega Order" people talk about actually is an "Omega Order Phase 2" (or 3, or whatever) - with protocols that could possibly allow to jumpstart to phase 2 if the court decide to.
And yes, the game universe is ending up being mass of contradicting ideas from multiples writers. According to Corporate Shadowfiles and Corporate Download, the Corporate Court authority was supposed to apply only to corporations. In System Failure, it issued a killing order again a physical person: Art Dankwalther (that Richard Villiers considers an Omega Order according to a short story). "Don't overthrow a national government" and "don't go at war" are supposed to be golden rules of the court. In War! Saeder-Krupp was waging an open war against the Nepalese government. Also, the size of megacorporate military forces have been changing from company to division levels. The NAN may recognize or deny the Corporate Court authority depending on whom is writing. And the list could go on.
SR setting is undergoing constant changes, sometimes because authors are willing to change it through events crafted for that purpose, sometimes because they don't know or don't remember what was written in the old sourcebooks, and sometimes because they are sincerely convinced it had always been like that and don't check for the source or the proper definition of a term.
Evo, or NeoNET, present surprise evidence that Corporation X is responsible for it and demand restitution or, failing that, an Omega Order to value of assets that they have lost due to the Lockdown and PR fallout. Evidence is measured, found to be accurate, and the order goes down.
Corporate Shadowfiles and Corporate Download describe Omega Order as the case in which the court doesn't cap the extent of damage ("open season") - Corporate Guide doesn't, because it doesn't mention such cap for any level of sanction.
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True on the Omega "unlimited damage" bit.
Wonder what you call the order one step below that, like what Aztechnology suffered?
...
DUH!
Omicron Order.
Gives the two levels, links 'em thematicly, explains why people have misunderstood 'em for years (O Order vs o Order) and lets me use "Omicron", which is just fun to say.
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To be fair, if the Omega Protocols really are constantly being revised, the 2042 protocols likely were quite different from the 2054 and the 2072 ones.
I'd say it's entirely possible that whatever Omega Orders have been issued, or will be, are all going to be unique.
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Protocols are one thing - that's a matter of 'who gets to vote, and who gets told first'. The definition - open season, aka 'by Sunday afternoon I don't want to see a piece of BadCorp in existence' - is going to remain the same.
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But the protocols indicate items such as how much funding is allocated from the Corporate Court, no? So clearly there are levels of "open season", as opposed to an Omega Order always meaning total annihilation. If the existing Omega Orders (if they are indeed actually Omega Orders) is any indication, it's less black and white than the "open season" definition would imply.
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Errr, no. The protocols would indicate what level of response is appropriate for what level of infraction, which corporations are likely to be best used as 'infraction executors' against which other corporations, and the like. Understand that the Court doesn't need to allocate funding; many if not most corporations already have the stuff available, and with one level of 'hunting license' or another from the Court, they get to keep everything they carry away, up to the noted damages amount.
It's like this. One of the AA corporations - let's say Yakashima, just because they're a pain - screws the pooch by getting caught committing corporate espionage and excessive damage against, say, Horizon, so the Court rules against it. In the first part of their ruling, they first award compensatory damages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damages#Compensatory_or_expectation_damages) to Horizon - they first state that Yakashima has to pay Horizon ¥50,000,000,000 for the past six months of hunting and sinking their shipping, to pay for the ships, the lives of the slain Horizon employees, the value of the lost goods that Horizon was shipping, the loss of revenue due to the damage to their reputation and brand, all sorts of crap. In the second part of their ruling, however, they state that in declaring open season on Horizon shipping and provably sinking or causing the destruction of not just one or two but sixty Horizon-flag ships, Yakashima has gone too far, and so they issue punitive damages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damages#Punitive_damages_.28non-compensatory.29) (see also the main article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages)) against Yakashima.
But see, the Court doesn't generally 'pay out' punitive damages; instead, they allow a corporation to cut out the appropriate pound of flesh. So in this instance, they check their protocols, and decide that at current, Wuxing is best placed to enforce the will of the Court, to the tune of ¥25,000,000,000. Wuxing can now use corporate assets - even military forces!! - to go in and either a) cause a crapton of damage to Yakashima's stuff, like sinking their ships and blowing up their buildings and killing their people, or b) actually take Yakashima's stuff (if they can manage it), including but not limited to vehicles, gear, research information, extracting Yakashima scientists, all that kind of crap.
Typically, a Corporate Court observer will be nearby to take a look at the assault, to inspect the take, and/or to walk through the ruins, all in order to determine the value of the strike so that it can be tallied against the ¥25 billion of Yakashima's punitive damage assessment. If Wuxing goes over the assigned nuyen value, they have to pay Yakashima the balance - but usually the Court's observer is going to be somewhat lenient in this sort of case.
The target - Yakashima - is allowed to resist, but the CC observer is still going to go through after the action's up and estimate how much they had to spend to fight off the strike - bullets, killed security officers, etc. etc. Since everything spent fighting off the strike is a straight loss, it'd be the Court's view that it all goes towards the punitive damage tally, so Yakashima might still have to repair the building, but at least they won't lose everything there.
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"Don't overthrow a national government" and "don't go at war" are supposed to be golden rules of the court.
"Don't try to overthrow a national government unless you can get away with lt." Corp Shadowfiles, 100.
And the "Don't go to war" rule has never really been broken. The closest the megas ever came is still Renraku and Fuchi being at their equivalent of DEFCON 2 and hours away from killing each other during the Corp Court trial regarding Miles Lanier in Technobabel.
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And thirdly, the first one is more what you'd call a "guideline" than an actual rule; being a government costs money instead of making it, so it's simply easier and more cost-effective to work around or bribe officials instead of having to take over all the forms of government.
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And thirdly, the first one is more what you'd call a "guideline" than an actual rule; being a government costs money instead of making it, so it's simply easier and more cost-effective to work around or bribe officials instead of having to take over all the forms of government.
I guess it depends on "taking over." I mean. the U.S. took over numerous countries directly or indirectly and only a couple ended up costing real money because our government stupidly decided to foot the bill on losers. Is it also taking over if you have another country do it for you like United Fruit got the U.S. to send in the Marines to create their own banana republics?
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The Corporate Court's version is basically that it's a no-no if the corporation is either a) exposed as the reason behind the government's overthrow, or b) has to take over governing the country itself. The first exposes corporate power too blatantly (and people still do love their countries, let me tell ya), while the second is a loss-leader to the bottom line. If there is a puppet government in line, who'll take the taxes and pay the corporation to execute a service (e.g. Renraku handles Republica Bananica's grid, Shiawase handles the garbage collection, Ares is hired to train their military, etc., or else as happened in Tsimshian - MCT is hired to handle everything, and is given mining rights as payment, thus allowing it to loot the place until it's a slag heap), then item B doesn't enter into it. But if the corporation itself actually has to go around collecting taxes and handling voting and stuff, then it applies.
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Knight is not the only one WHO is getting on in years, so is Richard Villiers and Nakatomi ( Renraku, formerly of Fuchi with Villiers ). Honestly it's time for some of these old geezers to bite the bullet.
[/quote]
Well if the Kusanagi Protocol is canon...
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The Corporate Court's version is basically that it's a no-no if the corporation is either a) exposed as the reason behind the government's overthrow, or b) has to take over governing the country itself. The first exposes corporate power too blatantly (and people still do love their countries, let me tell ya), while the second is a loss-leader to the bottom line. If there is a puppet government in line, who'll take the taxes and pay the corporation to execute a service (e.g. Renraku handles Republica Bananica's grid, Shiawase handles the garbage collection, Ares is hired to train their military, etc., or else as happened in Tsimshian - MCT is hired to handle everything, and is given mining rights as payment, thus allowing it to loot the place until it's a slag heap), then item B doesn't enter into it. But if the corporation itself actually has to go around collecting taxes and handling voting and stuff, then it applies.
Sounds reasonable, but the lawyer in me wants to leave it for the Court to decide. ;-)
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Sounds reasonable, but the lawyer in me wants to leave it for the Court to decide. ;-)
Since they're judge, jury, and prosecution, they pretty much do so anyhow ...
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Considering there are a lot of mentions of AA-Corps getting together to create a new AAA-Corp on a level of one of the 3 Big Ones,
maybe NeoNet and Evo both will simply get a slap on the wrist, then the new AAA comes and Horizon gets kicked off for being to small.
...and then Horizon and Ares fuse and we got 4 Big Ones(or 5 if NeoNet doesn't get slapped hard enough) instead of 3, which would create a lot of work for runners :D
However if a Corp gets hit, it's gonna be NeoNet, the only ones gaining more from going after Evo instead of NeoNet would be Shiawase because of the Cyber/Bodyware competition and NeoNet.
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Heh. SOMEONE is going to have to pay for Boston, Xexanoth. This is the same as Chicago when it became Bug City. The only difference is that the blame can pretty easily be laid on someone's doorstep this time. (With bug city, the Universal Brotherhood had been destroyed as an entity, and the bugs didn't really have corporate holdings people could raid.)
There's the costs of the quarantine. The Billions (more likely TRILLIONS) of nuyen lost either in damages, insurance, lost revenue, and more. Hundreds of Thousands of people possibly being host to pieces of Deus, a dragon, or both. And the list goes on. No, someone will have to pay the piper, and it is going to be a lot worse than a slap on the wrist.
As for Horizon going down because it is too small? Horizon was smaller than some AAs when it GOT that AAA status. AAA doesn't go to the ten biggest megacorps in the world (although that tends to happen right quick, if they aren't), but to those who can convince the Court to give them a seat at the table. Horizon's not in a weak enough position to be forced out, especially since they've been cozying up with Ares lately, and have largely recovered from the Az-Am war.
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That and Horizon has recently been going on a takeover spree to make sure they aren't sitting on that precarious "too small to be a Triple A" ledge. Also, I'm pretty sure Cline has some type of dirty laundry on the Court or some of those on the court that he had either an AI or technomancer data mine from files considered lost during either the Crash of '29 or Crash 2.0. Would explain how Horizon and Cline went from being a single A to a Triple A with one closed door meeting of the Court.
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Whaaaaat? Horizon involved in some kind of shenannigans?! The devil you say!
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I know! It's so against who they are...
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I have no idea how the writers will select which megacorp falls, but in my humble opinion, for both setting plausibility and story potential it should be Evo.
Neonet would take the fall if there was any justice in the world, but that would be the same megacorp falling for the third time so too boring. Also Shadowrun is a dystopia so the just option probably won't happen.
Evo with their transhumanism and the Dickens project can be easily framed to be responsible for Boston. The Japanacorps would all support blaming them as this would eliminate a corp they still view as a traitor to their culture, and this plot would play well into the new unity of Japanacorps against external threats. With the most meta-friendly megacorp taken down by the Japanese corporations, racist organizations around the world would probably find it easier to operate. And seriously, what idiot sees a body snatching nano-virus and says "Here, come make a home in with us!"
Aztechnology falling would open up a LOT of story potential dealing with the chaos caused by the sudden power vacuum in North America. On the other hand, they're such a great villain I'd hate to see them go.
Horizon is one I'd LIKE to see gone, just because it never should have been created out of nothing in the first place for 4th ed. But I doubt they'll get the boot.
All the other corps make even less sense for getting destroyed/downgraded.
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Framing EVO wouldn't be that easy, the whole thing started at the NeoNet Headqaurters and people "know" it(you know, the whole Dragon thing).
Not to mention that both S-K and MTC have a big interest in seeing NeoNet fall, after all why have the big 3 when you can have the big 2,
and Mitsuhama certainly could need the lack of a third competitioner now that they are Lofwyrs prime target.
The Japanacorps would all support blaming them as this would eliminate a corp they still view as a traitor to their culture, and this plot would play well into the new unity of Japanacorps against external threats.
Going by Market Panic, Mitsuhama taking the Number 1 Corporation spot pretty much destroyed that unity.
As for the other corps, Ares and Horizon could gain a nice boost if they can gobble up former NeoNet holdings, if they spin it as "Saving the companies from foreign companies that went atfer NeoNet" it gets them positive publicity too, which would be especially good for Ares.
And Aztechnology always likes to increase it's power in NA.
Then theres also the much simpler PR standpoint, if they hit EVO it's bad PR with the "lesser" metahumans, why risk that when you have an easier target.
Simply going by a gain-loss for the corps, most have more to gain and less to loose from kicking NeoNet then EVO.
The exceptions would of course be NeoNet, Shiawase because of Bodyware and maybe Renraku.
Wuxing propably doesn't care either way.
Aztechnology falling would open up a LOT of story potential dealing with the chaos caused by the sudden power vacuum in North America. On the other hand, they're such a great villain I'd hate to see them go.
They survived one omega order and they have dam good PR, why bother when there are easier targets around.
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... they got chastised with one directive. As previously described, there have only ever been two true Omega Orders issued: one against a corporation, one against a person. Love ya, Art!!
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hmm i was pretty sure it's mentioned somewhere that Aztech got hit with an Omega Order, oh well.
I did however forget that they have a golden ticket, so they have nothing to fear anyways.
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Go back through the thread; see this post (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23626.msg442041#msg442041) and the ones that followed it, culminating in this post. (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23626.msg442267#msg442267) Also see my note about Corporate Court mandates in this thread here (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23626.msg442325#msg442325).