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How *Big* Is Firewall?

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Wed, 2012-12-26 09:57
#1
bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture
How *Big* Is Firewall?
Just something I'm wondering on people's various conceptions of the game setting, how big is Firewall's membership? Or, in other words, how many sentinels, proxies and specialized proxies (crows, Erasure Squads, Routers, Scanners, Social Engineers, Vectors) are there? According to the setting material, there are roughly 500,000,000 surviving transhumans in 10 AF, spread out over the entire solar system, with roughly 40% on Mars and half of the remainder inside Martian orbit. So for my game, I'd go with the following ranges, depending on the type of game I'm running: On the low end for games where I want Firewall to be struggling, with a feel that there's never enough assets and that they're an entire faction of frantic plate-spinners, desperately rushing from crisis to crisis and praying that they don't let any of the plates fall and shatter, I'd set the numbers at roughly 5,000-10,000 sentinels, and between 500 and 1,000 proxies systemwide, with a majority or strong minority of them concentrated towards the outer portions of the system. I feel that this is close to the absolutely minimum membership numbers that Firewall could have and still be functional on a system-wide scale, if not below those limits. On the higher end, where Firewall is much stronger, and has significantly more assets and is much more capable of keeping abreast of the latest developments and developing disasters and nipping those in the bud at an earlier (albeit no less deadly) stage that requires the fine knife of a sentinel team rather than the blunt hammer of an erasure squad, I'd peg the numbers at 250,000-600,000 sentinels and between 10,000 and 25,000 proxies, concentrated fairly evenly following population trends. Firewall is powerful at this level, yes, but they're still a very small faction, with a total membership smaller than many habitats and thus secrecy is still important; any larger and they'd have enough clout and influence that they could possibly go public/legit, perhaps with a still secretive covert actions branch. But these are just my thoughts on where I'd peg the numbers, depending on what kind of game I wanted to run. I'm curious as to where others would put their own estimates, and thoughts on my estimates. So, thoughts? Ideas? Discussions? (Massive Thread Derails?)
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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

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Fri, 2013-01-04 09:48
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Short answer: as big as you
Short answer: as big as you need it to be. Real answer: as big as they need. Remember: forking exists! And I doubt that Firewall won't alpha-fork their needed sentinels. What you don't know won't harm you, and all (game seed: you get news of you being somewhere when you were not! Or even you run into yourself in an op behind the Pandora Gates!). There is a bottleneck, though, in the way of avaiable hardware. I wouldn't put past several sentinels or factions the scavenging of morphs to use them for extra manpower when needed. As for the real "unique" resources: Firewall is akin to a partisan movement, a guerrilla formed of volunteers (and sometimes conscripted personnel who got a very compelling reason/blackmail to join!), and as such it is always outnumbered by the enemy (be it powers that want to bring it down, exurgent threats, whatever). Personally, I think there is a really important book you should get a look at if you can: Delta Green (a sourcebook for the 90's era of The Call of Cthulhu, heavily based on the X-Files).
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Fri, 2013-01-04 11:39
Lilith Lilith's picture
I've long ascribed to the
I've long ascribed to the view that Firewall is basically just Delta Green ...[i]IN SPAAAAACE!![/i] Not that that's a bad thing, in my opinion.
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Fri, 2013-01-04 13:09
NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture
Keep in mind the current
Keep in mind the current ratio of cops to citizens is about 300 or so. So there's only about 1.7 million cops total for 500 million people. For men in black the entirety of the USA FBI is 36k (for about 312 million people). I'd definitely go with the lower number.
—
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto
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Fri, 2013-01-04 13:25
Prophet710 Prophet710's picture
I prefer,
I prefer, To think of Firewall more like a larger version of Echo Mirage.
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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
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Fri, 2013-01-04 14:08
Lilith Lilith's picture
I dunno, that didn't turn out
I dunno, that didn't turn out so well for those guys. At least DG eventually became legit. Or will, at any rate.
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Sat, 2013-01-05 07:27
King Shere King Shere's picture
Im leaning on to consider
Feel free to disregard, But here are some of my thoughts of a "larger" firewall conspiracy. - Firewall originally shared the same "mother" as the TITANS ( before the fall), and thus were its "sister" organization. Proto-Firewall's prefall task was to Internetwork Emergence Management, assisting in coordination and response. Firewall was using other organisations as telephone lines And the entire entity is a "near sentient" toplevel network withing those communications. Perhaps even part of the original prototype that the TITANS where built upon. Firewall are cells of formed of both aware and non-aware volunteering veterans, and was a packet loss resilient reputation network. Like the IRL Internet, Firewall have "members" that are part of the infrastructure that could also be regarded as not "members". Routers for example, These routers dont just relay the organization information, they assist in routing all emergency vital information, And their main flow of information was communication irrelevant for Firewall ( or Firewall intervention.) Firewall had thus quite good spread , clearance and resources over all branches of society. When the TITANS broke free, protoFirewall was taken by surprise (like most others) and meet significant resistance when they started mobilizating to manage the ongoing emergency. All others parties (including noncombatants) considered Firewalls intervention as the enemy forces. So Firewall failed in its core agenda. Post fall Firewall is still a packet loss resilient network and still formed of volunteering veterans (either aware and unaware), though situations can allow complete bystanders to be let in. Firewall is highly interested in TITAN cleanup even after the fact. Firewall still posses some "prefall" in-depth knowledge, "sane" AGI of prefall era & intergrated infiltration of all branches of society. + accumulated over the physical 10 PF years they additional battle experience & loot. They have lost many personel, and have a bad cred amongst others, but still true to their original functions help in emergency cordination. When operatives are given orders to use extreme methods its founded from veteran experience not emotional whim. Many of the organizations actions doesn't make sense; unless looked at from a bigger perspective or a diffrent angle. Firewall operatives are often (almost always) using other reputation networks for Firewall reputation tasks. Thus common markers of a firwall member would be individuals that maintains several reputation networks. In the public view , Caught members and glimpses of The network is still Branded as Terrorist cells. Also feared as remnant TITAN cohorts or singularity seekers.
—
[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch
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Sun, 2013-01-06 19:41
Rada Ion Rada Ion's picture
Same here. Although this
Same here. Although this game can be split off into so many other directions and styles, where Delta Green is kind of a one trick pony.
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Sun, 2013-01-06 19:46
Rada Ion Rada Ion's picture
I agree. Although this game
New delta Green coming soon, maybe some helpful hints in there on a different way to run a covert conspiracy. I suppose it could help with EP.
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Mon, 2013-01-07 00:42
Skelshy Skelshy's picture
I imagined FW to be on a much
I imagined FW to be on a much smaller scale. I see it less as an entity of its own though rather a secret society where people use their positions of power. There are FW agents in every hypercorp, every political body, you name it. there is no single building owned by firewall. They are a movement, a purpose. My take would be the number of cells is in the hundreds. I thought x-threats would require skills, not so much an army.
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