Razorwing wrote:Sorry Artist... I have to disagree with your assessment of Fabricators Inc.
First, Fabricators tries to keep a very low profile. They do this by keeping out of the limelight as much as possible. The tech the develop and sell is virtually untraceable and that is the way they want it. While there may be rumors of Fabricators Inc. making their rounds through the criminal underworld, very few people actually know anything about it and those that do keep it a secret (and virtually none know anyone else that uses this company).
Heroes and Vigilantes that occasionally get their equipment from Fabricators Inc. have usually done so through their more legitimate holdings and not through a Fabricator's Liaison Officer. Same for the few Law Enforcement agencies that have similar tech. Virtually none realize that they are dealing with a criminal organization. While it is possible that the FBI or even the CIA and similar organizations have heard the rumors of Fabricators Inc. it is unlikely they have any hard evidence that the organization is anything other than an urban legend. Yes, a number of criminals have some untraceable tech that seems similar to that possessed by other criminals, but since most of these criminals have little in common otherwise, no one has managed to connect the dots yet.
As for eliminating the "competition"... well that is bad for two reasons.
1) it brings a lot of attention to the activities of Fabricators Inc. When a business is attacked, most people look to see which competitor benefits the most from such an action... something that could expose Fabricators Inc. as more than just a urban legend.
2) Competition breeds innovation... with someone providing tech to heroes, there will be an increasing need with villains for newer and better tech; something Fabricators will sell to those villains, which prompts the Hero version to develop better tech and so on. Additionally, it gives Fabricators Inc. a prime target for industrial espionage (but not outright sabotage). It is even possible that this new organization is almost as secretive as Fabricators Inc. which means it will more likely target heroes with these advanced toys than the organization itself. I see their relationship as one more likely fought in the shadows between their respective "champions" than one fought by their own agents in more overt methods.
Yes, it was an area where a lot of Players could have tried to fill, but to be honest... running such a business isn't as much fun as it is using such tech to trounce bad guys. I've had a few players try to track down where a lot of the villains they faced got their remarkable tech... and some have managed to cause Fabricators Inc. a slight inconvenience when such tech was traced to one of their more legitimate operations, but even then it didn't do much damage to either Fabricators Inc. or the company it was traced to (usually such items were part of a "stolen" shipment or a scapegoat was set up to take the fall for the items being sold to criminals. Regardless, none of my players have ever been able to prove "in game" that Fabricators Inc. is anything more than rumor... let a lone a criminal organization.
As for licensing and serial numbers for hero equipment... I don't recall any of Batman's equipment... or anything used by the Justice League actually being traceable back to Wayne Tech or any of the other companies that supplies materials to them. Sure, there was that one incident in The Dark Knight movie where a Wayne tech employee recognized the Batmobile as an experimental vehicle the company once worked on that was never produced... but that is closest anyone has come to tracing any hero tech. The Penguin once traced various tech to the mechanic that worked on the Batmobile in the animated series... but not to Wayne Tech or came close to identifying who Batman is. Add to this is the fact that many heroes are technically operating outside of the Law (vigilantism is a crime in most places), so it is unlikely that they will want tech that can be traced back to the organization providing it. Is this illegal... yes, but often seen as a necessary evil in the fight against crime. Just because one is fighting crime doesn't mean one is working within the law.
Now if a company is publicly associated with a group of heroes... like Stark Industries with the Avengers... and more recently with Wayne Industries with their Batmen project (not up to date with how that has been going), then yes, they have to play more within the rules. Even so, a lot of the tech used is of such cutting edge design that it may not actually be currently regulated under most laws.
In the end, having a Heroic version of Fabricators Inc. is something that has been a long time coming. To be honest, I would have thought this would have been presented much sooner... even before Fabricators Inc.
Call me Taf or Taffy, saves typing.
And you don't have to say you're sorry for having a different opinion.
Too low a profile and they can't gain clients. Go through VU, tons of guys in there have Fab Inc gear (hehe, we should just call it fabulous gear). VU hints that some of the Alphabet agencies know something, just not what, exactly, and if Elite knows Fab Inc, then it's a safe bet that SECTOR does too. Also makes me wonder if that's the source of Heartbreaker's swing line gear. That someone is out there isn't important, not knowing where is. And as Fab inc has teleporters and cell system for information control and for recruitment/assignment of operatives. They have contingency plans for what if someone get's captured and a pay system to keep people loyal. That's functional.
There is no branding on Fabulous gear, so a hero group's contact might be the inventor, just helping out, so long as the PCs can front him the cash to afford such things. They don't know one way or the other. From the client's perspective (for the most part, there are some rather odd exceptions of the rule) there is no multi-national mega-corp of evil out there, just this one guy they know, who knows another guy who can get this stuff for enough bottle caps.
Fab Inc doesn't send Voltaic or Bellicose out to smash up the competition, they send known super villain(s) who wants something, like the Masters of Speed, to smash up the competition. And the Masters of Speed are smashing and stealing stuff all the time. It's what they do, they are villains after all.
Competition in such a small market place is very bad. The innovation that fab inc needs is found in the military/industrial complex. At the end of Batman begins, Jim Gordon laments "We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics, we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds..." speaking about an arms race between the cops and the crooks. But that's not the case. Bad guys carry better guns to deal with each other, not cops. Consider the number of characters in the VU who were stealing from other criminals. If you want a big stack of cash, you going to rob a bank with all of that money that's already had it's serial numbers recorded, and might have dye packs, instantly putting you on the FBI's radar, if not SECTOR and SCRET (or more likely, all three, they all would have a stake in such an action). ORRRR you could steal from organized crime like a drug cartel. Which has none of that.
Heh. Now we have an interesting view difference on the same point of comparison. So, if you need special clothing for your powers to work over on the Marvel side of things, you need unstable molecules. Something invented and basically put forward by a player character (Mr. Fantastic). So you have to go to the FF to get it done. And it's been stolen by AIM for sale to villains, and I think SHIELD has also appropriated the tech for their use, like it or not Dr. Richards (that was mentioned in the Heroes Reborn arc that they lifted it from him, IIRC, and he was cranky about it). Same with Stark Tech, you need his gear, you either get it from him (a player character) or you buy it stolen, and wait for him to come hunt you down (armor wars). These are what I would call small setting fixes. Parker can get Fantastic Tech because they know him. Avengers have Stark Tech because they are effectively a sub-arm of Stark Industries/Enterprises/Solutions... whatever. He usually finances them through the Maria Stark Foundation, so these items aren't be sold, they are being moved from one part of the company to another.
Going to your example of Wayne Tech, Wayne Ent put a bid for the Justice League stuff, as did Kord Enterprises, Queen Consolidated, and all that noise. I'm sure Lex Corp did too, but oddly enough didn't get the job... As for the Bat himself and his toys, or any of the variations on that idea, they build for themselves. Lucius Fox builds for the Bat. And both Stark (insert name here) and Wayne Ent are under pressure to build super tech for world governments with varying degrees of success. To recap, these genius inventors, Richards, Stark and Wayne Ent, have to build for the world governments to keep them off their backs. And none of them sell weapons. All of them have their stuff stolen by the bad guys. Who often try and kill them. About once a month or so.
And they are all what we'd consider player characters, think about the NPC companies that AIM chews through.
Most importantly, what we're talking about is buying super powers. That can't be just order click use to gain. The PCs need to sweat for this. And having to make deals with bad guys, that's just icing on the cake.
When I look in the dictionary and see the word Cool...I see Taffy's picture...-Shady Slug
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abraham Lincoln
I'll take a pass on seeing anything I've done in exchange for that book.
