Agent Questions Options

[Voran]

I had a few agent questions. I see by the fluff text that the use of alot of agents is considered 'low skill' 'noob' behavior, but what are the real downsides of it?

For example, whats the disadvantage of having an agent program running in the background when you're just cruising around, basically doing the 'catch wireless signal' or 'detect hidden node (general proximity)' actions as extended tests? The skill rating will be less than if you did it yourself, a factor of the agent pilot skill and whatever its program rating is, but where's the downside?

On an extended test, unless you glitch and raise the threshold basically your mid-level sniffer agent will eventually find all hidden nodes in your immediate area (signal range) within...what a few minutes? (Since its combat turn interval).

Or lets say you load up an agent into something like a Radio Signal scanner, which, dependent on size, could have a higher 'sniffer' rating based on its rating rather than 'sniffer program' per say. And you just leave that on, sniffing out radio traffic. The action description capturing the signal describes that no one can detect the capture unless they have access to your commlink, (or the device itself). So why wouldn't you want to just hide a radio signal scanner somewhere, where it just works 24-7 sniffing and capturing and recording? Then at a later date you just decrypt anything that seems worthwhile, or use another agent to do keyword/specialized checks of the raw data you have to see if any interesting conversations pop up.

Heck, you could park your car in a structure, and have it sit there for hours just sniffing and scanning the parking structure around it if it had a decent enough signal rating.


Am I missing something, or would it be a good idea to do this nearly all the time? Whats the downside?