Agent Smith Army problem, How to keep Shadowrun street level Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[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?