Because you started out behind it. You can circle around, but then you have to get closer (instead of behind as far as you want down the road, you have to be acros the road. And the road is much longer than it is wide.) You can do it, no issues, I just want to be sure you're aware of the situation.

My intention had actually been to pull in front of the van.  And I assumed I'd moved closer to the door when it opened.  So yes, I'm happy to move to the position shown in the diagram.  (I thought I'd already indicated that was my intention before I'd chambered the round to convince everyone I was serious.)

Toombs will approach the truck from St V's side so he can help the troll secure the captives when they submit. Drone's fine on its own.

Toombs, if you're *good* with stealth and want to try picking his keycard and dropping it by the elevator, that would be a nice touch, but not worth risking otherwise.  Having St. V look like he was going to knock a barrel over or something would likely give you a distraction bonus.  And the plus there is that if I lock the elevator and he doesn't have a key-card, you guys will all have to sit tight until someone comes to let you in - which gives Toombs a chance to sit down for a "rest" to do a quick astral sweep of the place and see who's hanging out where - something we probably should have done on the drive in, but oh well.

St. V, I'm assuming stealth isn't your strong point, but if it is, feel free to pipe up.

St. V isn't completely helpless with stealth, although it definitely isn't his strongest asset.  He probably wouldn't think to swipe the guy's card on the fly like that on his own though, so right now he is just loading up the barrels and observing.  However, if the guy's keycard is on a string or something, St. V does have a woodcarving knife conveniently located in his thumb...

Toombs is not experienced enough in Stealth to nick things. That's why I was so pleased to be on the distraction team - I actually invested social skills :)

Once we hear from the J, I figure the next step is to figure out where the team came from - so we can get a sense of how they're probably going to leave.  I can use my drone to scout for nearby warm vehicles that weren't around on previous sweeps.  If Noruas is up to it, he can deck in again and check the history of some of the camera feeds to see how they entered the facility.

If the J confirms that the second team is grabbing the same thing we were after, then I just make my way as quick as I can to the director's office to plant the boxes and get back.  Noruas can watch the camera feeds and make sure I don't run into the janitor or anyone else.  (And if Toombs can do an astral sweep once he's locked in the elevator, so much the better.)

Noruas can unloop the feeds (if they're not set to do that automatically) and, if he wants, wipe/corrupt any images that shows us and I release the elevator.  We keep tabs on the other team.  When they make it to their vehicle, my drone can fill them full of gel rounds before they get in, we drive by & pick them up with the paydata and get our cash.

Of course, it won't go as smoothly as that, but it's the most low-risk plan I can come up with.  Other ideas?

BTW: Does Noruas have a respirator?  Or is there any spare respiratory gear in the van?

Maybe the new car in the lot was theirs and one or more of the guards is in on it.  Could have let them in the back door and is keeping watch for them out of sight of the cameras.  They didn't fly in at the mini helicopter pad, did they?


St. V has a respirator with his trunk full of gear, which he was looking over in Copperhead's van right before they talked to Blake.  He may or may not have taken it out since then.  He would have taken it out if they really needed the room, but would have otherwise kept it handy if possible.  Along with his datajack, flare compression, sound dampening, and finger-knife, the things St. V has on him right now are stated here:

Nope, no respirator.  I was planning on bringing one, but I couldn't get a hold of that much weed in such a short time, so I gave up on bringing the related equipment with me.

Which reminds me...I think I'll post what I need to say in the other thread to make it official.

New care in the lot is certainly one possibility, though it's a nicer car than I'd expect for most runners.  Paying off a guard would certainly explain how they weren't too concerned about being caught on camera.  I'll certainly be looking for residual heat there first.  If they have enough funding to fly in on a chopper and not get noticed, we're in *deep* trouble :>

I'd like the respirator up here because that way if a guard shows up upstairs to help fix the elevator and isn't willing to leave in a timely manner, Noruas can detonate one of my "barf grenades", making it look like it's coming from the van or something.  He can obviously sit in the van while it goes off, but it'd be best if he could leave the van again once the guard decides that hanging out in a room where a toxic waste van is spewing a cloud that makes him want to puke is a bad idea.  I could lend Noruas mine, but that would be a difficult thing for me to do IC - respirator & goggles hide my rather identifiable face.


I'm hoping that there might be an extra respirator or suit in the van, given that it's a toxic waste transport van.

I'm assuming that your suits have both a respirator and a self-contained breathing supply, so that if you end up spilling something, you're relatively safe.

BTW - I'm aware that the plan I outlined is somewhat boring for some of the players and I'm not trying to hog the fun.  It's just what seems to make sense from my view of our situation.  I'm a B&E specialist, don't have a guard looking over my shoulder that we're supposed to leave unaware of our activities and now have a camera-clear path to where we need to go.  Alternate opinions welcome.  And of course, fun is likely to materialize when the plan goes to drek . . .

Just outta curiosity here, as long as the target doesn't know the file was accessed everything is game?  Does that include the meaning of US not accessing the file or anyone in general?  Otherwise we could frame the other team to take the fall.

And what exactly is maintaining secrecy?  In this case, another team has already blown that surprise away, so do we still get the extra 15,000¥ even if we didn't tell anyone?

I had clarified what secrecy meant and essentially it means that the next morning, the security team doesn't realize anything's gone down.  Essentially, the company shouldn't know the file was stolen, or even possibly stolen, at all.  (Presumably they could make changes, move up release dates or take other actions that reduce the value of the data if they know a competitor has their hands on it.  If the other team screws up, then we could argue for getting paid regardless, but it wouldn't be guaranteed.  But if we do anything to get the other team caught, we'd definitely kiss the bonus good-bye.

If St. V's respirator is along for the mission, it would be in Copperhead's vehicle and not the chemical vehicle.  Guess we'll have to hope the chemical vehicle came with some after all.

Also, I'm not too worried about you (Copperhead) hogging all the fun.  This is an interesting puzzle to try and figure out, even if St. V isn't making a lot of skill rolls. ;)  Besides, like you said, things are bound to go wrong eventually.

Not sure how exactly the payouts will be determined either, Noruas.  I'll leave that to Papa Bear.  Although for metagame reasons I will be surprised if we see any more money even if we do succeed.  I plan to find out though!  Edit: Copperhead's explanation was better.

So, what do we do if the people walked in from the surrounding wilds and didn't drive at all?  Might be hard to shoot them down and pick them up if they run for the trees.  They could have other team members elsewhere too.

One of the reasons the J's locked in the van is to improve the odds of a payout :>  (And reduce the odds of a double-cross...)

There's certainly a risk of losing them when they go in the forest, though my drone's sensors are decent and if I'm tracking them as they go, it'd be pretty hard for them to lose me - especially if they don't realize they're being tracked.  Biggest risk is if the shaman summons a spirit to conceal them once they're in the forest.  So if she tries to summon anything, I'll probably shoot her.  That's also one of the reasons I want to identify the vehicle they arrived in.  That might be hard to confirm, but if we get a couple of possibles and we see what direction they're heading in, we will hopefully get a pretty good sense.

I can drop quite a few people pretty quickly - generally 3 x 6-round MMG bursts per combat turn, with a -2 for aiming & smart link.  With scope, they'll look at short range, but I'll be past the maximum range of their weapons.  So the only real question is how much of a disturbance I make and whether we can keep track of the decker.

I'll certainly be on the lookout for people in camera blind-spots when I'm heading to and from the director's office.  A guy with a gun standing beside a near-by vehicle would be ideal - we'd know exactly where they're going :>

BB - are any of the cameras out of commission, and if so, can we figure out what areas of the complex they cover?

Toombs won't need a rebreather, he spent a shitload of time barfing his way through college.
This also has nothing to do with him being too poor to afford a rebreather.

IMO there is no guarantee that the second party is grabbing the file we need. If we can drop them with a drone, and still sneak Noruas in to grab the file we need, more's the better. Furthermore, I'm sure Noruas is skilled enough to pick up and destroy any datatrail the second decker might leave, which would give us a better chance of picking up that "no trace" bonus.

Also, when we catch the other party, I'm trying to figure out what we should do with them. Obviously we will want to check what file they were stealing, but I'm not sure what we should do with the runners. Running under the assumption they are after the same thing we are, way I see it we have 2 options:
we can wipe the deck and send them on their merry, getting another party very pissed at us
OR
we can tell the J they were after something else, send them on their merry and maybe get a favor or some street cred out of it.
Though it's pretty obvious to me that we would have to go through the trouble of recovering them after Copper drops them, and exfiltrate them safely. That would be somewhat challenging with the chem truck, but not impossible considering they are making their own way out of the facility proper.

Toombs should be wearing his suit, so he should be fine.

Either the J will know they're after the same file or she won't.  My guess is she'll know, but we'll see.

If she *doesn't* know, it'd be darn useful to have someone upstairs watching the monitor while Noruas and I go do our stuff.  So my thought is to get you guys into the elevator and stick a gas grenade in the shaft.  The two of you should be ok with your suits, but the guard should go nighty-night.  We can crack the garage door a bit to air things out once the elevator reaches the main floor.  After we're done our work, you can wake him up with a stim patch and explain that one of the seals on a canister must have been loose and that he should take it easy for the rest of the night.

That will free up all 4 of us to work.  Toombs can man the cameras and run quick astral scans of relevant places as time allows.  St. V can go pick up the bodies of the runners once the drone drops them and stick them in our truck.  It means we'll be on-site a little longer than I'd hoped.  We'll need to move relatively fast before the guards pick up on the fact that their buddy isn't responding.

Noruas and I can make our way to the director's office while we're waiting for the other team to leave.  Once they do leave, I can drop them and then get Noruas down to the computer room to do his thing.  St. V can head out and bring the bodies to the back of the truck.  Biggest risk is that the first rigger might have made enough of a mess that there'll be a bunch of ice waiting when Noruas decks in.

In terms of what we do with the other party, I'd say we check what file they've got.  If it's the same one, then presumably our J won't want'em to have it, so we wipe their deck.  If it's different, we leave it be.  In either case, we check 'em into a coffin motel and leave a note saying "sorry for the inconvenience".  They'll be a tad embarrassed over having been taken out, but it'll be hard for them to have hard feelings.  We could've killed them or stole their stuff.  Getting them out clean with nothing worse than a headache should boost our rep rather than hurt it.

Shouldn't be much of an issue getting them out in the truck if our guard is out cold.  We can just stick them in the back with barrels.  I doubt he'll feel up to taking inventory when we wake him up.

If their J doesn't get the data he was after, then presume he was in some sort of competition or something with our J.  She wins, he loses.  She had better taste in runners.  Shouldn't be much long-term fallout.

With my last post, I was hoping the guard would try to go up in the elevator alone, that way he would either get stuck by himself, and/or we wouldn't have to worry about gas masks to knock him out.  No guarantees the guard is cooperative though.

As for when we catch the other crew when our entire plan goes off without a hitch, then we could always negotiate with them.  Or J. is present.  If we steal their info, or copy it if it is a different file, maybe the J. would be willing to pay them.  A fraction of what they were going to be paid, of course.  But that is a much fairer deal than they should ever expect, which would leave them with no fewer hurt feelings, possibly give us some new contacts, and give or J a better reputation and some new potential employees, as well as maybe tip us off on who was working against us.  Even with all that, we may still want to leave them in a coffin motel at the end so that they don't warn anyone too soon.

Even if the elevator doesn't work, the guard can still take the stairs...I'm pretty sure Copperhead merely disabled the elevator, and not made it into a trap.

Noruas is correct that the elevator isn't currently rigged as a trap.  However, I could do that pretty easily - if I had warning.  Bigger issue is that if he's jammed in the elevator, you guys are stuck unless Noruas opens doors for you, and I wouldn't count on that.  There's a limit to how long he can get away with being in the system.  (Unless you've got some other way of bypassing maglocks?).  Doors will all be locked and no way for me to get to you or you to get to me with a wide awake guard in an elevator with no barrels to act as an excuse for him getting knocked out.

Waking up the other team to grill or negotiate with is possible, though I'd be surprised if the J. would cough up cash for them.  Key thing for now is - we don't kill them and we take them with us.  We can then discuss with the J. what she wants to do.

I still think our best bet is to gas the guard while all three of you are in the elevator.  And that's an option whether decide to jam you in the elevator first or not.  You can do a quick inspection on your suit and Toombs to verify that you've got a respirator and the suit seems secure.  You can even have him breath at the elevator vent for "fresher" air when he starts to feel whoozy.  By the time the elevator gets up, he should be out and you guys should be fine.  We can even crack the garage door a bit to help the gas dissipate once you guys are

Ok, that makes sense.  Remember that St. V has his shock gloves too if we need to knock him out some other way in a hurry.  Probably harder to explain away than gas though.

A tad :>.  Plus presumably you'd have to unzip your suit to expose the gloves.

Might be good to follow up your comment with "unless there's some you want us to bring back up?".  If he says 'no', then I need to get the gas going quickly and keep the doors from closing so we can still use the 'canister leak' excuse.  If he says "yes", then of course you'll need him to point out which ones to move.

That is something he would have wanted to know before the guard goes anyway, so good call.  I edited my last post to include it and help streamline dialogue posts.

You can take the stairs if you wish, however:
- Right now neither Noruas nor myself can monitor the cameras to tell you who's in the hallway if the director or security guard start wandering or if the other team come out or even if the janitor moves to the basement.  And getting into a fire fight in the hallway isn't a good plan given the close proximity of the computer space to the security guy's offices.  If you can take the other team out totally quietly, that'd be great (maybe with a gas grenade?), but otherwise, not sure what you can do in the hall.
- I figure 4 turns for the cars to get to the top and the goons to get out.  2 turns for me dispatch them, 1-2 turns for clean-up and jack out, then another 3-4 turns to open the door and re-enable the elevator.  So 30 seconds or so.  I doubt you'd get through the airlock in that amount of time.
- I *really* need someone to phone the front desk and provide cover for the bodies I'm about to leave in front of the building.  They've already broken through the front gate, so it's not like I can knock them out and we drive both cars away and no-one notices.  (Though if they park somewhere where I can take them out quietly and we figure we can put the gate back together, then that'd be a nice couple of cars to have . . .)

Someone else will have to make that phone call.  I haven't found the phone connection yet.

@Noruas: No worries.  Hope you're having fun :>

The good news is if we can capture the other decker, you might not have to worry about the protected system - which is good because I expect a bunch of security measures will be going off soon.

My biggest fear is that the decker and shaman will be standing in the middle of the hall when the security chief and or director run out of their office because of the commotion outside.  So if you have the power to make that not happen, do that.  (Actually, Toombs, that might not be a bad last service for your spirit - or a good service for a new one - keep the two security guys downstairs stuck in their offices via accidents/confusion for the next several minutes.  You've seen both, so should be able to convey their signatures sufficiently.  We just don't want anything obviously magical.)

Toombs/St V, when you're on the phone, my recommendation is to call the front desk and indicate that you expect 4-8 subjects with heavy weapons headed for the reception area.  We want to provide lots of incentive for them to say "yes" to "shall our drone engage?" without feeling they ought to check things out with the director or something.  Then tell them to take immediate cover (so they don't think they have time to run anywhere) and to remain on the line.  That way you can give them the all clear before they go running off to the armory.

Once this team is taken out, you might also suggest that the front desk guards should tell their security director to expect an invoice :>  It'll make our "assistance" more believable and may get us some extra revenue if Noruas thinks he can pull off a realistic invoice and account link.