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Old 08-08-2022, 02:32 PM   #21
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
Well, maybe not MURDERS the hacker, but certainly works to make life difficult for them. :)
Almost certainly murders the hacker. A hacker who is spoofing TT's credentials to get the level of access TT is reliant upon having to satisfy their contractual requirements is a direct threat to TT's bottom line (in no small part because not coming down hard on the hacker will encourage others, which will ultimately result in TT losing such access), and Corps will readily murder people for much less than that. They more likely fry the hacker's brain remotely - just as happens to plenty of 'runners in the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, undoubtedly inspired by the "Black ICE*" seen in many of William Gibson's stories - rather than sending in a team to put a bullet in their head, but dead is dead. A team may well go in later - either physically or digitally - to see how the hacker managed to accomplish such a thing, to prevent it in the future.

Unless you were referring to the fact that a hacker who is good enough to pull something like this off may well be extremely difficult to track down, but then the lack of murder is due to being unable to catch the target rather than any sort of lack of intent.

*Personally, were I to run a cyberpunk campaign with netrunning being a thing, I'd want my equivalent of Black ICE to work a bit differently, trapping the 'runner's psyche rather than frying their brain. I'd probably eschew realism in favor of drama - rather than a 'runner being able to escape by being disconnected (as happened to McCoy Pauley prior to Neuromancer - he got caught in some Black ICE and his apprentice saved him via a disconnect once he smelled the meat cooking), they'd be outright trapped unless freed, and a physical disconnect would basically sever the body from the mind; the body would be a sort of soulless meat-machine that would eventually become like one of Cyberpunk 2077's cyberpsychos, while the disembodied mind would degrade and go mad, becoming a dangerous "ghost in the machine" if it ever broke free. Or maybe most netrunners simply die, body and mind, if disconnected while in such a state, but occasionally you have one who produces a cyberzombie (the term for the surviving body), a wraith (the term for the surviving mind), or both. Once purpose here would be so that a 'runner that gets caught doesn't immediately die, but rather is trapped and the meatspace crew need to free them... but don't have the easy workaround of "I have an Ally who monitors my vitals and disconnects me if I get disconnected." But that's a digression unrelated to the topic at hand...
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Old 08-08-2022, 03:08 PM   #22
johndallman
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Almost certainly murders the hacker.
"Murder is such an ugly term. He volunteered for a highly paid position in our transplant organ sourcing division. Do you have contact details for his next-of-kin?"
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Old 08-08-2022, 04:59 PM   #23
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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"Murder is such an ugly term. He volunteered for a highly paid position in our transplant organ sourcing division. Do you have contact details for his next-of-kin?"
More seriously, I believe "murder" tends to have a legal definition, and what Corps do to people who attack their bottom line probably falls under something akin to Self Defense in a typical cyberdystopia. The idea TT would treat such attacks as volunteering for organ donation makes a certain degree of dark sense, although I believe the fact netrunners tend to get fried remotely and their bodies left to rot (you certainly find quite a few deceased 'runners scattered all over Night City in Cyberpunk 2077) would mean that's not much of an option (although it absolutely would be with my suggestion of Black ICE trapping rather than killing the 'runner; just have to track down the body before the mind/body disconnect either kills it or turns it into a cyberzombie, then harvest the organs and hope you don't make a wraith... or figure out a way to transfer the wraith into non-critical systems, remove their physical media, and toss it in the incinerator). I'm also not certain how much of an organ business there is in a place like Night City, where chrome is generally preferred and those weirdoes who insist on meat and can afford TT would probably just opt for cloned (or bioengineered, with biomarkers to convince their body the new organ is "self" and avoid a chance of rejection) organs, rather than ones harvested from some rando. Indeed, the closest thing I recall from the game to an organ-harvesting scheme are the Scavengers, who harvest people's implants rather than their organs.
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Old 08-08-2022, 05:19 PM   #24
hal
 
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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Again, the idea that Trauma Team is neutral to all corporations and can be trusted to use their privileges only for their intended purposes is essential to Trauma Team's business plans. If Smartz thinks that Trauma Team is allowing netrunners to use TT's access to attack Smartz systems, then Smartz cancels TT's access. When DMA execs have heart attacks on Smartz's property, TT doesn't get the signal and has to pay for the dead execs, plus is loses DMA's business and access to DMA's property. It doesn't take many corps pulling contracts from TT before TT can't perform its own premium service. Then it stops making the big money and goes back to be a run-of-the-mill contract ambulance service.

So Trauma Team spends a fair bit of money on enforcing the neutrality of its brand and preventing the hijacking off its signals and symbols. It's Cyberpunk; murder seems like a completely warranted response.
In the news today, TTI otherwise known as Trauma Team International, issued a vehement denial that they sent a hit team against a suspected hacker (background showing a body in a body bag being wheeled out from the wreckage of a home.) In further clarification, CEO spokesperson for TTI added "We do not sanction such hits because we would feel terrible if any innocents were to perish in a false positive identification. What happened in South California today was a tragedy pure and simple. It must have been the result of a personal vendetta or a senseless act of crime. That is all...

;)

But seriously though. I agree that hackers who did penetrate the TTI regional office mainframes - would likely face stiff resistance from the computer security systems. Chances are, if their security were penetrated, the corporation may very well offer the hacker money to show how they did it, and then fix the issue. The only other alternative, would be for TTI to contract out their computer security to Arasaka, who in turn, take any penetration of the security personally, and hunt down the miscreants, making an example of them outright.

Everyone knows, TTI are the good guys!
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Old 08-08-2022, 05:39 PM   #25
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

OK, before I try to get some sleep for real this time - I'm thinking along these lines..

Let's say that Night City is patterned after Los Angeles. Los Angeles with its over 8 million population (9 million today) encompasses an area that has at its longest axis, 44 miles, and at its shortest axis, some 29 miles. A single AV-4 with a top speed of 350 mph, an operational region of 400 miles, could in theory, get a go signal atop one of their "pads", take about a minute to reach cruising height, spend some 4 minutes at top speed travelling some 23 miles, and then take a minute to land. That is operationally possible to do in this example.

If we have 1 percent of Night City's population covered by a TTI contract, the regional office of Night City's TTI would have a monthly budget of $900 x .01 x 8,000,000 or roughly 72 million per month.

I'm looking at 1,000 Eurodollars as being "Struggling income" in CP2020, and then looking at what 1/2 struggling income would be in GURPS 4e for TL 9. Net result is - 900 dollars.

So, can a few AV-4's operate within the Night City limits and handle any crisis that should arise? Probably. The question becomes one of - how many actual cases per day, is TTI supposed to handle in Night City alone?

Per statistics for 2016, California suffered an average of 14.6 emergency room visits per 1,000 people. WIth 8 Million people in Night City, that should work out to roughly 116,800 or an average of 320 people daily. As a reminder, that's ALL emergency room visits - so Trauma Team wouldn't be handling all THAT many. If we went with the idea of no more than about 32 people per day for TTI, we'd need a total of maybe 8 to 10 AV-4s to handle the load.

If these numbers seem reasonable, I'll see what the implications are from there...
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Old 08-08-2022, 06:38 PM   #26
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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If we have 1 percent of Night City's population covered by a TTI contract, the regional office of Night City's TTI would have a monthly budget of $900 x .01 x 8,000,000 or roughly 72 million per month.

I'm looking at 1,000 Eurodollars as being "Struggling income" in CP2020, and then looking at what 1/2 struggling income would be in GURPS 4e for TL 9. Net result is - 900 dollars.

So, can a few AV-4's operate within the Night City limits and handle any crisis that should arise? Probably. The question becomes one of - how many actual cases per day, is TTI supposed to handle in Night City alone?

Per statistics for 2016, California suffered an average of 14.6 emergency room visits per 1,000 people. WIth 8 Million people in Night City, that should work out to roughly 116,800 or an average of 320 people daily. As a reminder, that's ALL emergency room visits - so Trauma Team wouldn't be handling all THAT many. If we went with the idea of no more than about 32 people per day for TTI, we'd need a total of maybe 8 to 10 AV-4s to handle the load.

If these numbers seem reasonable, I'll see what the implications are from there...
Night City has a much higher crime rate than 2016 California, which is going to result in a lot more Emergency Room equivalent visits - the cinematic when you boot up Cyberpunk 2077 notes that 30 people were slain the day before, and this isn't treated as anything out of the ordinary. For reference, California had 1,930 homicides (which I believe included justified homicides, which that "solid and sturdy 30" probably also included); considering 2016 was a leap year, that worked out to around 5.3 per day, or a bit over 1/6th what appears to be a typical day for Night City in 2077. And that's for the entire state - this was around 4.9 homicides per 100,000 people per year, while Night City, going off your value of a population of 8,000,000, saw 0.375 homicides per 100,000 people in one day - in 13 days, that would match the per capita homicide rate of California in a year, so about 28x the yearly rate.

Assuming you see a similar spike in incidents that would call for TT intervention, and going with your suggestion that at California's rate you'd have a peak of 32 calls per day, that would become somewhere around 900 calls per day, so if 32 calls means you need 8 teams, 900 would mean needing around 225. Of course, you have only 1% of Night City's population having Platinum membership, but that peak of 32 corresponds to around 10% of the typical emergency room visits. A peak probably doesn't represent 10x the rate, and the top 1% probably don't need medical attention as often as a typical citizen of Night City, so let's just say the peak is 1% of the typical - 3.2 at California's per capita rate, 90 at Night City's. That is probably doable with 20 to 30 teams.

But if you're still awake, get some gorram sleep. The thread will still be here when you wake up.
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Old 08-08-2022, 07:57 PM   #27
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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But seriously though. I agree that hackers who did penetrate the TTI regional office mainframes - would likely face stiff resistance from the computer security systems. Chances are, if their security were penetrated, the corporation may very well offer the hacker money to show how they did it, and then fix the issue. The only other alternative, would be for TTI to contract out their computer security to Arasaka, who in turn, take any penetration of the security personally, and hunt down the miscreants, making an example of them outright.
TTI can't contract their security out to Arasaka. TTI has medical scans of the executives of many major corporations, and the whole neutrality thing means that they have to make sure that information is closely held and not shared with other corporations.

And TTI might actually be gentle with netrunners who crack TTI's security. Turning a black hat into a security expert is a time honored technique. It's the netrunners who pretend to be TTI in order to get access on other mega-corps that TTI can't abide. TTI needs the guarantee that when a DMA executive gets injured on Smartz property, the biomonitor's signal goes out - and any TTI messages go in. That doesn't work if Smartz believes TTI messages need to be quarantined as potential netrunner exploits.
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Old 08-08-2022, 08:35 PM   #28
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

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Night City has a much higher crime rate than 2016 California, which is going to result in a lot more Emergency Room equivalent visits -.
Perhaps what you mean is incidents that probably "need" trips to an Emergency room? In the cyberpunk genre a lot of residents of sprawl-ish areas don't get the medical care they need.

Even relatvely cash-rich PCs probably need to restock on bandage spray frequently.

A useful detail ISTR is that some versions of UT bandagespray have built-in audio speakers. So sjut for fun,have the bandage speak up and announce "preliminary treatment finished." while the PC is trying to hide some time.
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Old 08-09-2022, 12:33 AM   #29
sir_pudding
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Night City is much smaller than Greater Los Angeles, the sourcebook map was for a small city. If anything its a California City that didn't completely fail (and is in Moro Bay, not the middle of a sodium borate flat in the middle of nowhere). It was founded in the ougties IIRC.
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Old 08-09-2022, 01:53 AM   #30
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Default Re: Building Trauma Team using GURPS ULTRATECH

Didn't they have a body count lottery in Night City at some point? And that was just for the combat zone. But the number of teams might work, considering the city is much smaller than LA.
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