Lots of paranoia for wireless...

I still have yet to find a reason (as a GM) to hack any player's comm during or around a firefight. The amount of damage done by bullets greatly outweighs the temporary annoyances a hacker can have on your PAN. I mean, I could screw the sammy at the beginning of IP 1 by turning his wired reflexes off and when he turns them back on with a free action, he has to wait until the next combat turn to get his extra IPs, but that would be pretty dickish and metagaming.

Gaining access to comms during a firefight is most beneficial for being able to see where everyone is at and intercept their communication. But again, the 2-4 dice I'd be taking away from players by hacking them is not as constructive as just shooting them...IMO, of course.

I'd definitely get into hacking their 'links before the fire-fight breaks out.

Telematics Infra-structure detects the un-authorized hardware, security spider tracks them down and starts discretely penetrating the weaker nodes whilst building up security forces discretely in a good ambush point, call in your HTR backup and then drop the hammer on them.

Lockup their weapons and crash all the crucial nodes simultaneously. Runners tend to cluster weak stuff and hide it behind a single 'link. Take down that 'link and the cluster and they are shafted until the whole lot can re-boot. Meanwhile they are eating Flashbangs and Stick'n'Shock.

So true. I'm actually amazed people didn't think of using a mage mask on the girl before they though of turning off her eyes. I may be an old fashioned person but the blindfold has been used since the beginning of time to temporary blind someone. It works, it's cheap, and it doesn't require you to fight with the target to maintain it. For a more modern touch there are stun batons and traq patches that also work. Hacking cyberware should only be a viable option if your doing a sneak attack and you want to make sure the targets will be surprised.

In my experience, its a lot more common that the runner team is doing the ambushing, but on the off chance it is the other way around, I do agree, a coordinated hack-attack right before the fight starts could create some added obstacles...

You can't stop someone from hacking your stuff unless you turn wireless off on everything. In that case your completely isolating yourself from the rest of your team and putting yourself at a disadvantage. The best you can do is Slave everything to your Commlink, then get a good Firewall and Encrypt your Commlink. If you can swing it, Slave all your stuff to your Commlink, then have each member of your team Slave their Commlinks to your group's Hacker or TM. You'll need to stay within Signal range of your Hacker/TM, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. That setup forces any intruder to have to hack into your Hacker or TM's Commlink to get at the rest of you. Basically: force them to take out your best Matrix person on their own turf... it's equivalent of somehow forcing your opponents to have to shoot your group's Street Sam or Troll Tank before anyone else. Effective enough, IMO.

Malachi has it right there. You can't stop hacking unless you want to really put yourself and team at a disadvantage.

On a side note, I'd feel really bad for the table where the GM starts a scenario hacking the teams comms. There will be like one person (at most tables) that will be able to participate while the rest of the players sit around and wait. It just doesn't make for a fun session if the GM plans to ostracize all the non-hackers just to set up an encounter...

It is kinda the reverse situation of what happened to the Deckers in past SR editions. He was the guy always left out because all his work was tiresome, repetitive, and slowed down game play. I always get a little ticked when people complain about the current matrix rules, you kids got it easy these days! (in my best Old man voice). All kidding aside there are downsides to running in a wired world but as Malachi pointed out if you take the appropriate steps you can minimize the impact it has on your team, and it sure as heck beats how it use to be.

Sometimes the hacker needs to shine though, as he can often be shafted from the spotlight in other situations. This "time hog" effect can happen in any RPG though. In shadowrun, it isn't just limited to the hacker though. The face can sometimes run the game clock, as can the rigger or the mage (for astral).

Their are some major mechanical tools that can help keep things moving. Device ratings, buying hits, and GM weighting of what is important and what can be handwaved with one or two rolls all help reduce the watch me play for a bit scenario.

Also if you google "dice roller", WOTC put up a nice dnd dice roller where it will allow you to specify the number of the dice, and includes the result of each dice in a text box so you can still count hits.

Most of my players prefer hand shaking their hard dice, but as a GM, its nice to mash the roll button three or four times for tests rather quickly.

Last, as an observation, slaving nodes actually helps the GM, since instead of having to hack everyone's everything individually, they just have to hack the one master node to potentially have access to anything they need to do what they were attempting.