Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nightmaster on <02-21-17/1216:04>
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So the group with I am playing decided to stablish a "underground base", I.E a base build beneath the streets.
The group have accumulated some vehicles so far, 2 Blitzen 2050, 1 eurocar westwind 3000, 1 small truck, 1 medium truck, 1 americar e several drones and thus the base must be large enough to accomodate all these vehicles and allow for then to enter and leave with easy and discretly...
The problem is that I and the players dont have a clue on where to build such place and the costs involved.
So I am coming here to look on advices and hints on good places in the metroplex where we could build our "Runner Cave" :P
Any input is appreciated
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Abandoned train tunnels sound like the cheapest option.
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Abandoned train tunnels sound like the cheapest option.
Large storm drains can also be used, although you have to be really sure they're abandoned or you can be in for a big and wet surprise. :)
what city are you playing in? Some cities have more options than others.
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Seattle of course :)
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Is neighborhood important? You could set up base in the Ork Underground. That saves some of the construction costs. You'll have to pay a protection fee to the Skraacha. Price it out like a separate Lifestyle.
Alternatively, you might be able to use some of the lava tubes in Puyallup / Carbonado. Protection fees go to the Chulos in that case. Again, you could price it out like a Lifestyle instead of scratching your head over construction costs. Note that you'll be out on the very edge of the city limits, for better or worse. Very discrete, but takes forever to get anywhere else.
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Is neighborhood important? You could set up base in the Ork Underground. That saves some of the construction costs. You'll have to pay a protection fee to the Skraacha. Price it out like a separate Lifestyle.
Alternatively, you might be able to use some of the lava tubes in Puyallup / Carbonado. Protection fees go to the Chulos in that case. Again, you could price it out like a Lifestyle instead of scratching your head over construction costs. Note that you'll be out on the very edge of the city limits, for better or worse. Very discrete, but takes forever to get anywhere else.
Yes neighborhood is important. As you said yourself Puyallup / Carbonado is way too distant to be of any use for the group. Infact I was hoping for some place more "central" in the reggard of the city's geography.
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Find an abandoned underground parking garage and retrofit it with heat and sound dampening? Maybe add a secondary entrance for the bikes. But you would have to be exceedingly careful when entering or exiting the base to avoid attracting attention. The further away you are from high security districts, the easier it will be to maintain the base's cover.
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I would look for a map of old mines in the Renton district, or an abandoned storm drain in the civilized edge of Redmond. Taking over an abandoned coal or iron mine would probably be best. You want one that was an open pit, that now has trees around it. You put a roof over the pit, camo netting or that stuff they use to conceal cell phone towers or both over the roof, and then set up a sump pump. The mine is already designed to allow trucks to carry the ore out, so you have a spiral road leading downward, You just need to build platforms for parking, and maybe hollow out spots to put pre-fab construction for living quarters.
Toxic rain is a concern. Drainage is a big concern. You will want to make sure that you aren't building in a toxic site, check the background count. Make sure it is truly abandoned, having Mitsuhama Ore Extraction Solutions (MOES) show up at your secret hideout with a new mining crew would be awkward. Having the city maintenance crews come around to check drainage in your supposedly abandoned storm drain tunnel would be equally bad.
Hire the mob to do the work. You want the same people who build escape tunnels and safe houses for the Don. It costs a bit more, but the Mob can ensure silence. Or do the work yourself, but it will take a while, especially if you have no construction experience. Everything is much harder than you think it is. The workers make it look easy because they are pros and have been doing the work since they first apprenticed at 15-16 years old. Your runner is probably not a professional contractor.
Good luck, have fun!
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So, sounds like you need about a half football field of space to park the vehicles and have a way to actually move them around and out in there. That is going to be cramped ish. And you need the width as much as the length - driving 5 vehicles into a subway station means that the vehicles need to come back out in reverse order because there isn't enough maneuver space. Which means for this to be an all purpose "base" you probably need a garage/parking lot/loading area/whatever of a structure rather than just a tunnel somewhere. Not going to to be cheap, not going to be cheap at...all..you are either buying real estate, or excavating a decent foundation that would probably fit a small apartment building. Or you are hanging out in the carbonado.
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Do you have a mage in your group? If so the spells shape steel and shap concrete make making and hiding a base so much more do able. The knowledge skills of engineering and architecture are equally usefull. Find you tunnel and dig out a place for 1 or some of your stuff, then put up a wall of concrete to hide it and repeat.
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Magic can indeed make this whole thing a lot cheaper: Binding a bunch of F2 Earth Elementals gives you an untiring workforce with STR 6 - ideally suited to excavate.
Likewise, Homunculi can clear a lot of space as long as you give them precise directions.
Shape Earth doesn't specify how large the volume is that you can move, so by RAW you'd only need a minute or so to excavate a whole mountain.
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Magic can indeed make this whole thing a lot cheaper: Binding a bunch of F2 Earth Elementals gives you an untiring workforce with STR 6 - ideally suited to excavate.
Likewise, Homunculi can clear a lot of space as long as you give them precise directions.
Shape Earth doesn't specify how large the volume is that you can move, so by RAW you'd only need a minute or so to excavate a whole mountain.
Well, Shape Earth is an Area spell, so has a Radius of effect equal to Force - so Mountains would still take a while - it's also
1 - Generally connected to other bits of Mountain, so you would need to force it apart
2 - Generally made of different materials, you might be able to get most of it with lots of castings of Shape Earth, Shape Stone and Shape Metal and then whats left can be handled by mechanical, biological or spirit brute force
3 - Moving mountains would probably annoy local spirits - even if no meta human notices
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I would do it with the advanced lifestyle rules. I'm now going to give an example from 4th edition, as I don't have those rules in 5th.
take your categories as usual, depending on what you want exactly. I might force the players to take security at High, since it's a quite secure location.
positive qualities as GM I would make you take:
-Inconspicuous Housing +2 (physical, as it's difficult to find)
-Workplace +1 (the garage needs room, and workplace explicitly specifies it can be used for a garage)
-Escape Tunnel +3 (how else would you get out)
and one I made up: -underground +3 (I've put there a +3 to put it in line with other qualities, but feel free to modify it).
negative qualities I would maybe not enforce, but strongly advice.
-Network Bottleneck –1 (you're underground, so almost no wireless due to the rebar on top of your head)
-Unsound –2 (if you take over an abandoned parking garage or something like that, it's probably abandoned for a reason)
-Pest Magnet –1 (as above, try to keep vermin out of an abandoned parking garage)
-maybe: Green Plan –1 (where does your electricity comes from when you're in an abandoned underground structure).
As you can see, it's not going to be cheap (a +5 to your LP cost is quite a lot).
Other qualities can also be taken if you want of course and if they don't interfere with the compulsory ones.
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@maxcarrion
Yeah, that was a bit of hyperbole, but not much:
A typical Magic 6 mage can create a sphere of 6³m*4/3 pie=904m³
A few reagents and/or edge to boost the successes to a guaranteed 6 or more successes ensures that you only need to combat turns to reduce typical Structural or Heavy Structural Material to 0 Structure.
A combat Turn takes 3 seconds.
In a minute you are now able to excavate 9043 m³ of natural stone
So maybe not a mountain, but certainly a hill and most definitely an underground base ;)
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Not strictly related, but just a consideration when you pick a location. Make sure you check the surrounding area/get Intel from locals, as things like ghouls(especially the feral variety) tend to make their lairs underground. Probably not an issue when you guys are in your base with all your hardware, but a hungry pack of ghouls waiting in your new base would be a pretty nasty surprise to come home to.
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I expect "secret underground facility" is a fairly standard construction contract since the Awakening, considering the inherent astral security benefits. Saeder-Krupp probably has a dozen prefab models ready to go, just waiting for a big hole to bury them in.
With a little collusion from the GM, it might be more fun to find a likely place and take it over. Clean out a ghoul nest, security bunker, corporate research lab, fallout shelter, insect spirit hive, etc. Then do what you can to erase any record of its existence.
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One of my characters came into possession of Neuschwanstein Castle (Don't ask, long story). The location and construction of the castle makes an awesome base as-is, but she wanted to expand it down into the hill the castle sits on. After a bit of magic-assisted digging, she broke through to a large underground cavern.
She now has a literal Bat Cave. It's awesome. ;D
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Leaving aside places like old warehouses which you could acquire fairly easily modern cities have a LOT of abandoned infrastructure you could claim. Old storm/sewage maintenance facilities, old railway depots (for the workers not the trains), old platforms and train lines. Then there's the ones that are "in use" but get a monthly or less visit. I work with the railways and with the new consolidation there are depots (power, ac, phone lines) all working but no longer in use and not sold off because a working relay room is next to them. In the shadowrun world I can only imagine that's gotten more common.
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Not Shadowrun, but one of the characters I play in Mutants & Masterminds or Champions games took an old subway station in New York, one of the ones that had been shut down and sealed off when lines were redone, and made it into an awesome lair, complete with a security system that sprayed someone with liquid nitrogen if they didn't pass the palmprint scanner, retinal scanner, and voice analysis simultaneously within 30 seconds of typing in a 16 digit code. Was that paranoid? Hell yes. But he never once had to worry about someone kicking in his front door. Of course, he was also immune to cold damage, being an ice-type super, so the defense system didn't bother him.
Now, as far as Shadowrun, if we limit it to Seattle in particular (since that's the primary setting), there aren't any subway tunnels, since any that may have existed are now part of the Orc Underground (though if you're of the proper persuasion you could just live down there). However, there ARE almost certainly fallout shelters left over from the cold war, especially outside of the areas where they put up arcologies, say in the Tacoma area, or out in Puyallup or Redmond. Also out in the Barrens you have a whole bunch of abandoned facilities that could be picked up and secured into a base. If you want actual dirt to dig in, I'd suggest slipping just over the border into Salish lands, where there's more land to play with.
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Thanks for all the repplies guys. Lots of good ideas.
I didnt know that the renton area of seattle had abandoned mines and such... give lots of ideas.
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One of my characters came into possession of Neuschwanstein Castle (Don't ask, long story).
Oh, but I must.
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the most plausible/ least work would be some accommodations in a section of the Ork underground (it's near downtown) that is adjacent/ close to an underground parking lot.
Burrow/ dig a tunnel between your ork underground accomodations and the underground parking lot using some of the other ideas presented in this thread.
boom, cheap, quick place to park your cars and live underground.
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One of my characters came into possession of Neuschwanstein Castle (Don't ask, long story).
Oh, but I must.
Long story made very short: She helped uncover a plot by a particularly clever and powerful shadow spirit (*cough* Horror *cough*) that wound up saving a dragon's giant scaly backside.
So he gave her a castle.
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Not strictly related, but just a consideration when you pick a location. Make sure you check the surrounding area/get Intel from locals, as things like ghouls(especially the feral variety) tend to make their lairs underground. Probably not an issue when you guys are in your base with all your hardware, but a hungry pack of ghouls waiting in your new base would be a pretty nasty surprise to come home to.
Ehh, I say they might as well find a ghoul-infested place. The price should be lower due to the monsters, and clearing them out should make for a nice mindless combat session.
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Or, the pay the ghouls in bodies they need to have disposed in order to protect their place.
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You'll need to pay to sterilize the place though, unless you want to risk getting HMHVV just from living there.
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May I recommend an Aztechnology brand flamethrower for all your ghoul-removal needs? Fully guaranteed to remove 99.9%* of HMHVV virus!
*Aztechnology is not responsible for the remaining 0.1% remaining HMHVV virus and recommends that all ghoul-removal be followed up with through and judicious use of the Sterilize spell.
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Oh yeah, I forgot about that spell. That would work then.
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Or you pick up some cleaning agents. I mean, the chances of getting Infected by living near ghouls is nil anyways; it's an Injection vector disease which has never been stated to have a viable lifespan outside of the body. The only threat is if they go feral or decide the deal is less appealing than you are.
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Didn't they say in 4e that HMHVV Strain 3 was like, the easiest to contract, and could be transferred by any of the ghouls' bodily fluids? I always got a clear impression that even being around a ghoul was bad. The kinda stuff where it's like "hey, they were kinda sweaty when you shook their hand, better not touch your face any time soon". I mean, IRL, HIV would be "Injection" vector, but that doesn't mean the only way to get it is to have someone cut you and then bleed in your wound. Granted, I'm not saying HIV and HMHVV are anywhere near eachother in terms of contagiousness, but it illustrates my point that Injection makes it sound safer than it is.
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Reminds me a little of the second resident evil novel. The team was checking out a facility and one of them handled some infected material with his gloves then without thinking rubbed his eyes. By the end of the novel he was a zombie.
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Not strictly related, but just a consideration when you pick a location. Make sure you check the surrounding area/get Intel from locals, as things like ghouls(especially the feral variety) tend to make their lairs underground. Probably not an issue when you guys are in your base with all your hardware, but a hungry pack of ghouls waiting in your new base would be a pretty nasty surprise to come home to.
Ehh, I say they might as well find a ghoul-infested place. The price should be lower due to the monsters, and clearing them out should make for a nice mindless combat session.
Oh absolutely, based on the gear/vehicles/etc the team has, clearing out a ghoul nest should be a walk in the park. My concern is more about securing the location after the fact. If it was just a cave underground, abandoned bunker, etc then it probably only has 1 or 2 ways in and out. But if it was an underground parking garage, subway tunnel, bug hive, or anything else, there's probably a bunch of ways into and out of it that are less than obvious. Remember that the Ork Underground is so well protected/situated because for every obvious, "official" entrance, there's probably a dozen smaller, hidden ones that only a handful of people know about.
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Remember, the more noise you make taking the underground base, the more chance that it will get flagged by a corp or government database and watch file.
In our NorCal game we ended up in possession of an abandoned underground facility and we spend a lot of time making sure that no one knows it is there or notices up going to or from. The problem with nice secure underground bases in they are potential deathtraps if your enemies find them. So, keep them hidden, do not attract attention and be careful. Oh, and watch out for devil rats, those suckers get in everywhere.
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Another concern with a ghoul nest comes to mind... Retaliation.
Similar to a gang, if you simply murder a bunch of ghouls, someone may notice. Even if they were all feral (and especially if they weren't), the local ghoul community definitely knows the location of the sprawl's ghoul nests. Some other, less civil (and better armed) ghouls may some day show up. It won't be like a gang trying to scare you and make themselves look tough-- And it won't be immediate either. And those ghouls will ambush you, and might settle for just trying to infect you as well over just killing you. It's one thing if it's seen as an act of vigilantism or something, but if it's "we just massacred these ghouls because we wanted their crib", and you stay where it occurred, there's no way the ghoul community won't react to it somehow.
Maybe it won't be a serious threat to your livelihood. After all, you're professional runners with the resources to revamp this old nest into a batcave. But the point is it'll escalate and may not stop after one failed retaliation...
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Hmm ghoul hired shadorunners or worse ones they couldn't afford as a favour to an old friend fallen on hard times "Hello this is Barney Stinson, oh Ted how's it going? I'm sorry to hear that but I owe you one, heck I probably owe you a couple of hundred don't worry I'll take care of it. Hey Hiroshi this is Barney Stinson at personal liquidations I need to authorise a 500,000 yen contract we have a pest problem."
Ironically I was just rewatching top gear adn the episode had them finding an abandoned submarine pen and missile silo.