[Ryo]

So I know the big corps have the Corporate Court to settle disputes between them, and they're constantly throwing shadowrunners at each other to further their own goals, but I'm not entirely sure on how much of this corporate espionage is considered fair game and what is considered going too far. Sure, you can steal paydata or even extract researchers, but can you get away with wanton murder of corporate employees or blowing up entire buildings? Is there something of an unwritten (or even written) rule book about what the corps can and can't do to each other? Like a Geneva Convention for corporate espionage, as an example.

[Namikaze]

I don't think the laws of the Corporate Court are written down in any of the books.  Even the Corporate Guide in 4th edition didn't really cover this topic.  I would imagine that it all boils down to politics.  If the other corps think you're getting too big for your britches, they will smack you down (possibly even destroying you, Fuchi).

This is almost certainly a subjective subject simply because of how vague the shadows are.  Corporations have done some really abominable things and still survived (even thrived).  I suppose that's what makes the shadows run as deep as they do.  It seems like as deep as the shadows get, they always get deeper.

[RHat]

There is no "going too far".  There is simply "getting caught".

[Ryo]

So, hypothetical situation. A johnson from a AA corp hires a group of runners to extract a researcher from its primary competitor. He also encourages them to disrupt their research by damaging their property. The runners decide to outright level the research facility by filling the basement with explosives.

The rival corp realizes one of their researchers is about to get extracted and interrogate him to figure out who it is. They now have evidence that it was their primary competitor. They increase security, runners break in and kill them, take the guy anyway, and then level the building on their way out.

What does the rival corp do? I'm thinking taking out the entire building would fall into the 'not cool' territory, and what would follow would be rival corp basically doing a scorched earth response to the corp that hired the runners, and probably hunting down the runners and destroying their lives as well.

[Namikaze]

I think you'd find that both corps are after the runners in that scenario.  The runners were told to "disrupt" not "destroy."  Some of that research may be slated for later recovery operations if it pans out.  Better to let your competitor spend the money on R&D and then steal their research if it starts to look fruitful.  Never forget that runners are deniable assets.  If Corp A hires the runners to attack Corp B and the runners get caught, Corp A isn't ever going to see repercussions.  They'll chalk it up to an act of terrorism.  Corp B probably knows the score and will hire runners of their own for retaliation though.  And the shadows get longer and deeper.  Giggity.

[Tuoweit]

encourages them to disrupt their research by damaging their property
[...]
runners break in and kill them, take the guy anyway, and then level the building

I'm guessing the hiring corp is probably going to want to distance themselves from this clearly-unstable group of mass-murdering terrorists as quickly and violently as possible.  But hey, everyone's game is different

[Ryo]

encourages them to disrupt their research by damaging their property
[...]
runners break in and kill them, take the guy anyway, and then level the building

I'm guessing the hiring corp is probably going to want to distance themselves from this clearly-unstable group of mass-murdering terrorists as quickly and violently as possible.  But hey, everyone's game is different

Yeah, I'm thinking if they go through with their 'blow up the entire building' plan, everything is going to go to shit. The rival corp knows the name of the Johnson, since they interrogated the researcher that got extracted. His parent company claims the guy is rogue and they had nothing to do with it, they declare him persona non grata, and the rival corp hunts him down, tortures him for info on who he hired, and then kills him. And the shit keeps rolling downhill from there until they hit a dead end or the runner's safehouse gets bombed.

[Dakka]

The whole point of shadowrunners is plausible deniability.  The corporation didn't blow up that building, terrorists did.

[farothel]

If runners blow up an entire facility, both corps will go after them, not relenting until they are caught.  Corp B because they blew up a facility (which probably still had people in them) and corp A because the runners can tie them to that event and they don't want that.  Also corp A probably knows something about the runners.

If you have to do something like that, you just wipe out their research data and blow up their offline back-up storage.  Then only corp B will be after you because you cost them a lot of money, but since it's less then in scenario 1 they will take less effort.

[Longshot23]

Blow the building up how?

Explosives? Do the runners have the contacts to get that much C-12 (or whichever)? Do the runners have the know-how to handle explosives for a demolition job? Are they really going to have enough time on-site to place the charges? What's the detonation method? Other questions probably apply as well.

Magic? Yeah, right. Even if the runners could muster the magical punch, that's a hell of a signature. Tracing that back to the source would be dead easy for even Wolverine Security, let alone KE. At which point, the only thing that could save [some of] the runners is somebody deciding they're too effective to allow them to be imprisoned/killed.  So, let's make a deal . . .

I believe there are also demolition nanites, but I'm not cluey enough to make a call there - other than, again, could the runners get them?

[Namikaze]

How is irrelevant to the question at hand, which is how far corporations go before it's "too far."  For the purposes of argument, we're exploring a very far end of the spectrum and working backward.

[Dakka]

Buildings get blown up with commercial explosives, demolitions and knowledge of architecture.  Availability on that stuff is 8 cost is 100 meaning the face can find 100 kg in 2 days or less and 1,000 kg in a week.  Sure it might cost you 100,000¥ to blow it up, but it's well within the means of any running team.

[Ryo]

Blow the building up how?

Explosives? Do the runners have the contacts to get that much C-12 (or whichever)? Do the runners have the know-how to handle explosives for a demolition job? Are they really going to have enough time on-site to place the charges? What's the detonation method? Other questions probably apply as well.

Magic? Yeah, right. Even if the runners could muster the magical punch, that's a hell of a signature. Tracing that back to the source would be dead easy for even Wolverine Security, let alone KE. At which point, the only thing that could save [some of] the runners is somebody deciding they're too effective to allow them to be imprisoned/killed.  So, let's make a deal . . .

I believe there are also demolition nanites, but I'm not cluey enough to make a call there - other than, again, could the runners get them?

100 kilograms of commercial explosives with piles of net hits on the demolition tests set up around all the support structures in the basement level. That's how.