Agent Smith Army problem, How to keep Shadowrun street level Options

[Buster]

This is the Agent Smith Army problem:

A hacker can write his own agents and programs with a few months downtime. He now has the source code and can create unlimited copies for free with no effort. At chargen, a hacker can buy 25 top of the line commlinks with top of the line OSs. If the criminal doesn't want to pay for the commlink, he can rob a whole store full of them. If he doesn't want to rob a store, he can do what hackers do today and hijack thousands of nodes throughout the matrix and install an agent on each of those. (It's called turning computers into zombies).

A hacker can only control system * 2 agents at the same time, but he can pre-program them with their instructions before stashing them. The hacker now has thousands of agents running all over the world ready to attack anyone he's programmed them to. Since they are each running on their own node with a decent system rating, none of them suffer degradation even if all one million of them attack one node.

Since defenders can do a similar strategy with their IC, Shadowrun goes from street level to Lord of the Rings level with armies of thousands of agents clashing in commlinks.

Solution: Agents always degrade whatever node they are on, they do not have a source node, and their icons do not project outside their source node.
Explanation: If you say that agents can not project their icons across the matrix as a hacker can project his persona and say that an agent always runs on the node their icon is in, then agents and IC cause degradation on whatever node they are in or are attempted to gain access to. An army is therefore self limiting because after a few agents with a few programs, they have their Response reduced so bad they can't even move.

Clarification: a hacker's persona still originates on his commlink and his persona never suffers degradation when on a low-system node or the presence of an Agent Smith Army on a node. His persona is only degraded by programs running on his originating source commlink. The hacker can dance through a node that has several high-program ICs bogged down by their own weight.

Question: Should a technomancer's sprite's complex forms also suffer this degradation? Do they get an unfair advantage over hackers if they don't? Is it ok that TMs have an unfair advantage over hackers in node hacking given a TM's other shortcomings?

Does this solution fix the Agent Smith Army problem? Does it cause other problems?

[kzt]

How many agents does it take to do an effectively complete denial of service attack? Particularity if you are abstracting to to be the NETWORK and not the NODE.

I suspect much fewer than what a small mediocre street gang could put together when they decide to stop dealing BLTs and decide to go into the matrix blackmail business.

[Cthulhudreams]

I think you are over complexifying the both the problem and the solution.

No other program has any association with the number of entities that are running. 'Browse' 'reality filter' 'black hammer' - it doesn't matter.

Even pilot don't matter - pilot is just the quality of the abstracted system managing a drone

The only programs in the game that do not operate in this totally abstracted service paradigram is *agents* and IC.

The fix is just to move agents and IC into the same paradigram. So multiple agents with the same/similar orders are just treated as one agent, and multiple IC on the same node are just treated as one IC program when defending.

So if you get 10312531513414 agents and task them to smack down renaku's regional office - you just made a rating 7 agent! Grats!

[Buster]

Solution #2: You could say that (for some reason) agents need a hacker's persona to function. Agents can only run from a hacker's source commlink, just like the hacker, and therefore are limited by the commlink's response degradation just as the hacker is. You can have as many agents as you want and the agents can go anywhere they want but they can only run from the hacker's commlink. This limits an Agent Smith Army because a commlink can only run a certain amount before all their programs start to degrade the hacker and all the other agent's responses. You could apply the same principle to IC by saying the IC have to spawn from a security hacker's server. You might even say that an agent/IC's rating itself counts as a program for the purposes of system degradation.

I have no idea why an agent/IC would need a hacker's persona, maybe it needs to use part of the human brain for background processing or something?

[Cthulhudreams]

[Buster]

We definitely need to say that you can only be jacked into one commlink at a time. A metahuman connects to one and only one commlink via datajack/skinlink/wirelesslink and views the matrix as AR or projects his persona out into the matrix via VR.

So far, I like solution #2 the best. It's the most elegant but the least plausible. :D

For plausibility, I'm thinking that we say that a Pilot can run on drones, vehicles, and gun platforms without human assistance without any problem, but hacking in 2070 is far more complex than flying a helicopter or firing a rocket launcher. We could say that the extreme complexity of future hacking requires the Agent/IC to tap into a metahuman's brain through the commlink interface so the Agent/IC can utilize the background processes of the metahuman brain for its advanced decision making and cognition tasks. That's plausible enough I think and I think it completely solves the Agent Smith Army problem for both the attacker and the defender.

Anyone spot flaws?

[Cthulhudreams]

[Buster]

Falling asleep just now just gave me a great idea. We could say that an agent can tap into a metahuman's brain's neural net even when while the metahuman is asleep and can therefore keep running 24/7. That explains the "unmanned" systems that are only populated with IC and no security hackers. The security hackers are somewhere, just off duty, probably asleep, and aren't paid to pay attention or get involved, just act as a host for the system's IC. Anyway just a thought, back to bed.

[imperialus]

Or the player and GM come to a tacit understanding at the begining of the campaign that the player won't create armies of agents and the GM won't create armies of IC...

Simmilar solution for the Bloodzilla problem. After all remember, anything your PC can do the GM can do better.

[Cthulhudreams]

[hyzmarca]

The implicit assumption here is that armies of agents is somehow not "street level". In fact, it is. It is no less street level than a street punk who occasionally plays a Throalian courtier in Age of Atlantis is.
Agents exist solely in a computer. They aren't physically real. Thousands of something that isn't physically real is no less street level than one of something that isn't physically real is.

The problem with agent armies is that the size of a runner's agent army is totally arbitrary, thus matrix battles are decided solely on the GM's arbitrary choice for the size of his agent army.

The simple solution is actually the best solution. Agents cannot be copied. It is simple. More than that, it provides an IC explanation for why gigantic agent armies of arbitrary size don't exist. Every Agent must be coded separately and every Agent must be purchased separately.
Under this house rule, any agent army is limited in size by the number of man-hours its owner can dedicate to coding or the amount of money it can spend buying the fruit of other entities' man-hours and the total number of agents in the world is limited by the total number of man-hours that all coders in the world combined can work.

This is supplemented with the rule that Agents cannot code other agents.

[Jaid]

alternately, you could rule that agents actually require physical hardware (which, coincidentally, has a parts cost equal to half the cost of an agent, with the fully assembled thing costing as much as an agent) and that therefore you have to actually buy each agent. this also has the (very important imo) added benefit that a hacker cannot steal an agent through the matrix. of course, they can still (presumably) travel around like a persona, but it will be a lot more obvious to the owner that something is going on... so you could hack an agent/IC to do something for you once, but after that it will be pulled offline, and modified from beyond your reach (unless you physically enter the facility and steal the hardware, of course). they would still require something separate to operate on, of course.

truth be told, this rule (or something like it) should probably be used for pilot programs as well. at least this way the hacker has to actually spend *some* money to be able to copy/steal agents.

[Blade]

Actually the Matrix is abstract enough right now that you have tons of solutions. Some may be better than others, but in the end it depends on how you consider the Matrix.
My solution might use concepts that you don't want to see in your Matrix.

For example some people are perfectly fine with high rating agents being as capable as hackers ("hacker-in-a-box"), while others will think that agents shouldn't be able to replace characters.

[Blade]

Oops, double post.

[Sma]

Your proposed solution of having agents deteriorate the target node makes offense win. Drop a few agents on any system to lower response to one and then waltz in personally and own the system, due to still running all your programs at full rating.

Cthulhudreams is on the right track.

[cx2]

Alternative idea for multiple agents trying to hack their way in to a node -

Since they're all using the same code, and all going up against the same defences software is likely to make the same decisions on both sides thus you just roll as if it was one vs one.

Or whoever it is that runs the matrix links chases you down for spamming out the system.

I know there would probably be ways to randomise certain parts of it, but why let things get more complex than they need to be for the average game? Yes I hope there will be a rules clarification or errata but you don't need to work out *every* problem in rules terms, just come to an understanding that if someone tries the army method "bad things ™" will happen. Saves everyone headaches. Unless of course you're the rules lawyer type who enjoys this sort of thing.

[Da9iel]

I suggested this in another thread, but it seems to have largely gone unnoticed. To sum up (or try): Identical agents cannot be subscribed to nor present in a node at the same time. If you are concerned about power creep as your hacker codes one new agent after another, implement SOTA rules.

Would this work?

[Ryu]

Likely not - people are searching for a hardcoded solution rather than a soft "to expensive". And there should be no need for differentiation between programs of the same type and rating.

One of the easier solutions is limiting agents to rating 3, maybe 4. Those dicepools amount to nothing against secure systems, and reduced load hampers most tasks that are considered a problem right now. Most "legitimate" tasks are still possible if the agent is custom-loaded for the problem at hand.

[Eleazar]

Or, you could just have agents work exactly the way they do now, and the GM says, "No, your not doing that." That solves the problem and you do not have to change any rules to do it.

[Buster]

I never liked the idea of the GM just saying "if you do that, Thor the god of Evil GMs will strike you down." It's better to have coherent and consistent rules, not GM fiat. I don't think this is a hard problem to solve, there are several good solutions out there.

I don't know if you can say that identical agents behave identically, because we see that they don't. I'm not sure how to justify how a million of them is no more effective than 1 of them. What is the cut off and how do you justify the cutoff?

Reducing their effectiveness to rating 3 or transforming them into teamwork enhancers or smartlinks is also a good solution.

I don't think you can say that the hacker can't just make copies of the agent because the agent is pure software. Software can always be copied.

I had once suggested in another thread that you could say that an agent requires some sort of hardware component as Jaid suggested here. For example, the famous arbitrarily-difficult-to-reproduce "neural matrices" of Star Trek: the Next Generation's androids and Voyager's holopersona. Star Fleet Directive #9, justify the plot. If you said the agent's hardware component costs a couple thousand nuyen that would put a stop to thousands of agents, but even a starter character could still have at least a hundred of them. You'd have to bring the price up to at least 10000 nuyen so runners could never have more than a dozen of them. Companies could still have armies of agents but it would be hard to justify because if they had that kind of cash laying around for security they could also hire armies of hackers.

This post has been edited by Buster: Aug 31 2007, 12:47 PM

[Prime Mover]

IC Operates on the Node it's in as per RAW so no army there, Sprites are pretty limited unless you bring an army of Techno's. So BIG problem is simply Agents. Why not a simple solution that clicks easily into existing rules, no waveing it off or creating whole new set of rules.

Simply limit number of Agents that can run independent on a Node equal to Nodes system rating. (This can simply be a matter of way Nodes hardware is set up and wouldnt effect *search functions.)

*Would still allow agents in AR to use basic common search functions on public Nodes without the penalty as described RAW

Example: Node with System of 5 would let five Agents running on there own Comms or the hackers comm be active in the Node. This would'nt effect agents running on Node in question which would degrade Response as normal.


Sound reasonable?

[Moon-Hawk]

I go with the explanation: You can't have multiple copies of an agent running in one node. The Matrix was built from the ground up with the prevention of self-replicating code in mind. It's impossible, the GM has waved his hands. If you want two agents in one place, they have to be two different agents; two completely different programming tasks to create. It doesn't have or need a justification in modern computers, because it uses SR computers that run on 80's concepts of awesome.

If you want to have multiple copies of an agent in multiple places, I really don't see it as much of a problem.

Otherwise, I allow agents to function just like hackers: They have a node on which they run and determines their response, and up to Ratingx2 nodes on which they have an active persona, just like a hacker. Sometimes, it'll be the same node.

So far I haven't had any problems, YMMV.

[Prime Mover]

Like idea of not allowing more then one "copy" of an agent in same node at same time.

[cx2]

I don't think having security hackers chase a PC hacker if they're utterly spamming out the system, or at least freezing their link as close to the course as possible, is striking down a player with GM fiat. Using an army of agents is about as subtle in the matrix as a squadron of Rotodrones with AK97s flying around a busy shopping centre is in the meat world, why wouldn't somebody intervene? If not the company that runs that link getting mad and trying to keep their system from being slowed and bringing a portion of the local matrix to a near stand still then maybe law enforcement intentionally trying to stop this type of attack.

I also like the anti-replicating code idea. Either, or even both, are plausible.

[kzt]