Sorry I didn’t follow up last night, by the time I got onto the computer I was falling asleep at the keyboard, and didn’t figure I’d be making a lot of sense if I posted in that state.
I hear what you are saying, Herr Brackhaus, and I had the same concerns -- but at the same time a game can stall out completely if nobody does anything, and our GM was waving us forward. When Bio ran mission 6-01 on this forums, of the six who started, only two were active by the end – taught me that sometime you just need to keep things moving when others seem to fade out. (for reference, we collectively decided in that case that the others went off after one lead, while Alf and the Rigger went after the other one. Essentially gave up a karma and some services-in-lieu-of-nuyen by not completing all objectives, but we got to the end of the mission)
And sorry about not using the OOC thread -- in Bio's previous mission there wasn't one, so just got used to posting all of that stuff under spoiler tags for Alf.
As there seems to be at least a few still active and desire for an OOC discussion of plans, let’s have at it.
The way I see it, we don’t have the social skills to successfully pull this whole thing off as a con, but with a mix of timing, stealth, and maybe some small con/disguise work, we can hopefully get ourselves into a good tactical position, where maybe we can complete things by intimidation (i.e. threatening to shoot anyone who tries to stop us, because we are past guard units and in to the workers), or in a pinch by force.
I would be all for tactical strikes to take out guards before we drive the truck up, but it would have to be pretty well coordinated timing. Either for the truck not being heard, or to hopefully conceal gunfire, Alf could put down a silence spell. I’m sure the guards have low-light or thermographic vision of some sort, so they will be able to see the truck coming up the road, if they are watching at all. Crops should give pretty good cover for infiltrators moving close to try and take out guards, if we want to go that route.
They do have spirits, which are kind of the wildcard. They are watching astrally, so sneaking through crops (living plants) should still work for hiding from them, but otherwise there is not much we can do to hide from them, and spells are just more likely to draw their attention. They might also notice if guards go down, but that would depend on their instructions I guess. Alf does not have the sort of firepower to drop those quickly on his own, and any move we make against them will alert their summoner(s). This is where I figure that driving a truck up the road like it is a normal thing could be good, as presumably they wouldn’t attack every incoming vehicle.
I thought Bio said that the water lines were coming out of the dome, in which case I’d assume they a pump station of some sort in there (we didn’t see big lines coming in, and they aren’t next to a stream or pond, so I’m assuming they must be using a well -- that would probably just be pipes going down into the ground, not an open thing we could dump the tank into). They may have an elevated water tank to give them a nice constant pressure, just using the pump when they need to fill it. Then again, this is SR and most writers are not very technical, so the actual arrangement may not make real-world sense.
Overall, I’d lean to 2-3 members of the team, with the right skills, sneak in under the cover of darkness and barley (or whatever they are growing) and try to take out any guards along the road or near the entrance to the dome, while the truck drives up nonchalantly. Then we improvise brilliantly from there
Next on my list would be to trust to all just driving up normally, possibly with an illusion to disguise the truck to make it seem even more unremarkable.
I’m entirely eager for better plans than either of those. I just haven’t heard much in the way of suggestions yet.
