Arsenal Kills Agent Smith, Ding Dong the Exploit is Dead... Options

[mfb]

well, firing your gun with DNI is also a simple action. and that's a lot simpler than transmitting instructions to a drone. still, i can see how one might argue the point.

luckily, though, we don't actually have to argue about this. on page 220 of SR4, it states that issuing a command to an agent or a drone is a simple action. (see why some of us prefer hard rules? see? see?)

[Cthulhudreams]

Preventing infinite chains in no ways prevents the other problem of automation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Ah well, I'll conceed defeat on that point, but that in no way solves the problem of parallel action!

[Kremlin KOA]

As I mentioned, redundant agents don't help. They're not creative. They can't help each other with teamwork tests. If two identical agents try to do the same thing, they do the exact same thing, so only one roll is made. Post-crash, the Matrix was designed from the most fundamental level to prohibit self-replicating code. Maybe two copies of the agent can't exist in the same place, they effectively merge.
Yes, this is a lot of handwavy semi-BS ways to just say "no", but in my mind that makes all the difference between having a consistent, successful game world, and just being an asshat.

I have no problem with them cracking an Agent. They can put a copy onto every team members' commlink. They can send them off on more tasks. But none of that it is particularly problematic. As long as you don't let multiple copies of the same agent contribute to one task there really isn't a problem. (This isn't against the rules, it's one of those things that's never explicitly forbidden or allowed, so I'm choosing to interpret it in such a way that my game works) Now if the hacker wanted to buy/code multiple agents, then I'd assume they're different and could work together like any other matrix entity. Agents are still cheaper than hackers, and powerful people could get large groups of them. But now they're no different from drones, which are also cheaper than samurai and easier to get. If there's something else that makes agents different than drones, then that difference can be addressed, otherwise one isn't more broken than the other.

Now here comes the big question
If I am being attacked b y 2 pieces of IC, do they become redundant? They are identical rating agents after all
If not, then these two count as being non identcal. if so I will swipe the code for them and crack them at my convenience.
There now I have two agents helping me with all things, Hell there are 10 AAA corps, they will each have their own style of Agents so I will collect one of each.
So I can't have an infinite number of Smiths on a run. but I can have multiple teams of 10 Smiths on a run

[ixombie]

2 IC would both attack you, but they wouldn't actually benefit from that fact. There is no "friends in melee" bonus for matrix combat.

Agents are only goint to be perfectly redudnant if they're identical. If you copy an agent and tell both of them to do something, it will be just as good as doing it with one agent, since they'll both do the exact same thing, down to the nanosecond. But if you had two different agents, they would each follow different progamming and accomplish the task in a slightly different way. Corps are not going to use bootlegged, copied agents, they'll pay the yen and get a full suite of commercially available agent progs which are all different.

[Fortune]

I am confused. Are people trying to tell me I MUST allow Agent Smith botnets, even though they're broken?

Not at all! You can do what you like. I am saying that I don't think it's the best idea to arbitrarily cut out (or even nerf) a big part of the Matrix (linked devices and subscription) just to prevent it.

[Fortune]

the only real argument i'm partaking in, in this thread, is whether or not the RAW allows Agent Smith.

The only argument I am really involved in is whether commlinks can be subscribed to one another.

[mfb]

no, you're also arguing about what arguments you're involved in!

[Fortune]

No, I've finished that now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Cain]

It's not punishing the players unless they go ahead and spend their money on dozens of commlinks and the facilities to massively copy agents, and I don't stop them.

So, you wait until they've readied their Agent Smith army, have planned and developed their tactics around that, and then you "don't punish" them by suddenly telling them it won't work?

I am confused. Are people trying to tell me I MUST allow Agent Smith botnets, even though they're broken? Even though they would ruin the game? Or are you just trying to say that it was a failure on the part of the devs not to explicitly disallow them?

Yes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

Agents are only goint to be perfectly redudnant if they're identical. If you copy an agent and tell both of them to do something, it will be just as good as doing it with one agent, since they'll both do the exact same thing, down to the nanosecond. But if you had two different agents, they would each follow different progamming and accomplish the task in a slightly different way.

Someone check me on this, but in the Storm Botnet, aren't all the bots identical?

[mfb]

no, actually. that's what makes it so badass... er, bad. there are different types of bots for different purposes, and they all mutate constantly. it's a really, really slick operation. and it's also really scary, because it's apparently for sale.

regardless, the redundancy thing is just a houserule intended to keep Agent Smith from being too powerful. it's no worse a sci-fi explanation than anything else in SR, so if it accomlishes what a given gaming group wants it to accomplish, huzzah.

[Spike]

Point regarding telling agents/drones what to do: Pg 222, under 'Issuing Commands' I'll sum up: It's a simple action to issue a command, Different commands require different actions (though, yes, issuing teh same command to 180 agents would only be one simple action).

As for the universality of Pilot, please give me a reference to where you can remove a pilot program from your car and put it into anything. According to the description of pilots on 213-214 they act as the system rating of the drone, which would imply that they are hardwired into the specific item they are 'piloting'. Checking the targeting Autosoft, I can see it is keyed to a specific catagory of weapons, which means your Pilot Program will not, regardless, be able to suddenly control a Tank Main Gun, even if it COMES from a Tank. That's the Autosoft, and its specific to that type of gun.

So, It wouldn't be houseruling to penalize a hacker for taking a Car pilot and using it to control a tank, in fact it appears to be Houseruling to let him do it at all, though I am willing to entertain a debate to the contrary.

[Cthulhudreams]

However, you're actually right about the non transportableness of pilots (I hate being wrong, but teach me to have an interweb fight without my books, I shaven;t read arsenal yet.)

While I can certainly port pilot programs in the BBB, because they are described as a special type of OS, and those are freely transportable in arsenal, you've got this instead.

Pilot programs are designed to encompass the range of motions
and actions a particular vehicle is capable of, as well as any
sensor operations and situations that vehicle is likely to encounter.
Th is means, however, that a particular Pilot program only functions
for a particular type of vehicle.

So I'm now wrong, and you're now right. Damn rules, the last critical and all important sentence isn't established or referenced in the BBB anywhere at all.

As for agent's abilities to understand 'hack that drone' however.

They are capable of piloting themselves to a degree and
can comprehend complex orders.

I'm not sure you need the auto soft to fire a gun. While the pargraph about using autosofts implies that you do, none of the drones that can move or have senors have them. It's quite weird.

[hobgoblin]

it seems it all hinges on subscription, a part of the rules that are short, vague, and even "contradicted" in faq, got to love this.

btw, did anyone read the small note on p214 about issuing commands? if the gm think its to convulted, or for whatever other reason, he can set a treshold and roll pilot+response to see how well its interpreted...

[FrankTrollman]

The examples of "type" of vehicle for Pilots are "groundcraft" and "aircraft" not "Alpha Juliette" and "MiG 41 Interceptor"

-Frank

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Damn rules, the last critical and all important sentence isn't established or referenced in the BBB anywhere at all.

That's because it's a retcon masked as 'clarification' - changing the way things worked in the BBB.

A thing that wasn't supposed to happen.
Same goes for Sensors and Weapon mods.

Seems it's too hard to simply state that they did not produce the desired result in the BBB and commit an errata.

[Cthulhudreams]

The examples of "type" of vehicle for Pilots are "groundcraft" and "aircraft" not "Alpha Juliette" and "MiG 41 Interceptor"

-Frank

UNfortunately not

In game terms, this means that each Pilot program only
functions for the particular type of vehicle it is designed for.
At the gamemaster’s discretion, a Pilot program could possibly
function for a similar type of vehicle (a Eurocar Westwind Pilot
could possibly operate a Honda Spirit subcompact, as they’re
both cars), but it should suffer dice pool modifiers ranging from
–1 to –4, depending on how different the vehicles are in make,
model, and function

Pilot is extremely vehicle dependant now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Rotbart van Dain...]

And suddenly, the setup from the BB makes no sense at all anymore:

General Pilot, specific Maneuver Autosoft.
Now it's Ultraspecific Pilot with specific Maneuver autosoft... that teaches the Pilot to better understand the vehicle... uh, wait.

Both the rules for Pilot and Sensor, the most importat ratings for vehicles/drones were made worse in Arsenal, adding GM fiat as balancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)
The fact that a crappy 100 Nuyen Emotitoy has Pilot 3 Sensor 3 while most comercial vehicles only have Pilot 1 Sensor 1 adds in 'nicely'.

[The Jopp]

Since we are aware that the "Smith" problem exists we decided to do the following:

-One agent per commlink
-One IC per commlink
-Only one version of a program can be loaded on a commlink - use highest value.
-Ignore the IC/Agent Errata regarding payload, they have Rating amount of programs.

Having multiple agent smiths would do nothing as the highest value would apply as would IC

An agent should be a virtual helper and not the "press-a-button-to-hack" solution and this would tone them down but still keep them useful.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Ignore the IC/Agent Errata regarding payload, they have Rating amount of programs.

There is no Errata of Program Payload - just a wrong FAQ.

Agents have their own System, so any Program they run is ruled by that, not the System the Agent runs on.

[Nightwalker450]

And suddenly, the setup from the BB makes no sense at all anymore:

General Pilot, specific Maneuver Autosoft.
Now it's Ultraspecific Pilot with specific Maneuver autosoft... that teaches the Pilot to better understand the vehicle... uh, wait.

Both the rules for Pilot and Sensor, the most importat ratings for vehicles/drones were made worse in Arsenal, adding GM fiat as balancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)
The fact that a crappy 100 Nuyen Emotitoy has Pilot 3 Sensor 3 while most comercial vehicles only have Pilot 1 Sensor 1 adds in 'nicely'.

The specific pilot I think is fine, because the pilot isn't just maneuver, it can do this without the autosoft, the autosoft just makes it better. So I see no problem with Pilot being specific. As to Sensor, once I read through it and puzzled over it for a day it all became clear and made a lot of sense.
See this topic: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=20548

Basically it came down to only cars at purchase have sensor ratings, once you modify those the sensor rating no longer applies. Which I feel is works quite well, since sensor is used for so many things. I will say they need to have more as to the rigger's use of sensor, specifically targetting. Since effectively it just takes a camera upgrade (100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per rating), so for 600 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) you've got a 6 Intuition effectively. Which is why I'm ruling that you also need the Vision Tracking software for it to work properly (Value now 3,600 for Rating 6.. still cheap but getting closer).

[Cthulhudreams]

It says it cannot do it without the autosoft though.

Want to disable a combat drone's targeting program? Crash its Gunnery autosoft.

Autosofts are specialized programs that assist Pilot programs in undertaking tasks that their basic Pilot programming does not cover. Just because you've added a machine gun to your standard rotodrone, for example, doesn't mean that the drone knows how to identify, acquire, and shoot at targets. Autosofts fill in the blanks and allow riggers greater leeway with what commands they can issue. In essence, autosofts provide drones with specific skills so that they may make the appropriate skill tests.

If an autosoft provides specific skills so you can make tests, that does imply that without the autosofts you cannot, and to back that up, you've got the crashing a gunnery autosoft *disables* a drone's ability to fire.

It is madness.

Oh and they directly contradict that specific example they quote on page 239 in arsenal too (I thought that wasn't going to happen) in that a standard delivery drone with a gun fitted - the Modified GMC Chariot (Disguised Combat Drone) on page 119 doesn't have a gunnery autosoft

Crap editing for the win.

Also, to prove that the specific pilot thing is bollocks

Maneuver autosofts are the equivalent of vehicle skills they assist a Pilot to maneuver itself better. They contain a comprehensive guide to a drones particular specs, allowing the Pilot to achieve optimal performance and control the vehicle to the limits of its capabilities.

Seriously, you're telling me that vehicle specific pilots don't include that?

[Spike]

So I'm now wrong, and you're now right. Damn rules, the last critical and all important sentence isn't established or referenced in the BBB anywhere at all.

As for agent's abilities to understand 'hack that drone' however.



I'm not sure you need the auto soft to fire a gun. While the pargraph about using autosofts implies that you do, none of the drones that can move or have senors have them. It's quite weird.

Well, if I hadn't found the bit where ordering an Agent was an action, regardless, I would still point out that 'hack that drone' is not terribly complex. However, it is also not terribly useful by itself. Given that it is an action, by RAW, I am willing to be more lienent on how the agent carries out INTENT.

And my point still stands: Do you want your mage ordering agents (inferior hackers compared to a dedicated specialist) or do you want them zapping shit?

I want mine, if I'm playing, zapping

[Moon-Hawk]

Most people who deal with Agent Smith in SR4 never realize that is what they are looking at.

I mean sure, if you find yourself with a copy of your pet agent camping on a drone you are subscribed to handing out Medic actions to your main comlink every IP while you hackastack up in AR so that you can't take physical or stun and regenerate to full Matrix Health every round - you know you are doing wrong. But most of the time you start using Agent Smith you do so by slapping an Electronic Warfare autosoft on your drones. Or by detailing an agent to defend all of your devices. Or by having an Agent try to exploit you a space on a device. Or something else that sounds perfectly innocuous. Indeed, doing the things that Agents are supposedly actually for.

It is only after they start doing that that the player realizes that the technical skills that they spent 80 BP on are completely meaningless in the face of just loading a second agent. Indeed, meaningless in the face of the agent that they already have.

And then people cry.

-Frank

Hmmm, very interesting examples. I still think it would go a long way towards fixing this sort of thing to say that, at some fundamental level, the Matrix is designed to prevent self-replicating code, and as such two copies of the exact same thing cannot exist in one place. They merge, or something, I don't know, it's not really important. Now if you define "place" as your PAN (or any other cluster of inter-subscribed devices), instead of each device, then you can't have that same agent in every subscribed drone doing Medic actions, you can only have one of them. You could still buy more Agents, but that's not much more problematic than the possibility of buying more drones or buying more bound spirits. (Okay, bound spirits DO have a hard cap, but I don't see it hit all that often, it's too dang expensive) You could have lots of drone pilots doing Electronic Warfare, I suppose, but I don't really mind that someone with lots of drones can jam the hell out of local matrix communication and, in general, have a better wireless network. You can still use a single agent to defend all your subscribed devices, but if you want multiple copies of him on each device they have to be unsubscribed, completely separate, and that limitation strikes me as very re-balancing.
That would go a really, really long way towards solving Agent Smith problems.
I'm still not sure that any of this solves your other issue of simply buying a second agent and making your own skills useless. It really makes me think that Agents should be limited to rating 4. If, with your attribute, skill, tools, AR bonuses, etc you can't muster an 8 die pool, maybe getting an expert system to do the job for you is a good idea. Higher rated agents could still exist as government hammers and plot devices.

[martindv]

Now who's house ruling? There are no rules about daisy chaining commlinks together. I have as much basis in saying you can't do that as you have in saying that I can. I get the feeling that Uniwred will answer the question in the negative. After all, I don't see the devs acting to encourage something which definitely destroys the cyberpunk one-on-one netdive feeling of the Shadowrun matrix.

the words 'daisy chain' never appear in the book, no. but as i said earlier: if you provide a person with some logs and nails, you can't complain when they use those to build a house. the rules for subscribing devices to other devices make it possible to daisy-chain commlinks; daisy-chaining commlinks (and other devices) is a logical application of the rules that have been presented.

This is why I hate munchkins posing as rules lawyers. They scream and yell in the name of rules fairness, but end up just picking and choosing which ever most benefits them. Seeing whole arguments devolve into that is just dumbfounding.

There is only one reason to allow Agent Smith: so you can "prove" that the Matrix rules suck and justify rewriting them.

Or it could be that the Matrix rules do suck.

[Cthulhudreams]

Whatever else you think of the matrix rules, the AR hackastack + agent just using medic on you every IP is clearly busted and clearly legal. I'm decidedly under impressed with the drone rules now I closely read them too.

Well, if I hadn't found the bit where ordering an Agent was an action, regardless, I would still point out that 'hack that drone' is not terribly complex. However, it is also not terribly useful by itself. Given that it is an action, by RAW, I am willing to be more lienent on how the agent carries out INTENT.

And my point still stands: Do you want your mage ordering agents (inferior hackers compared to a dedicated specialist) or do you want them zapping shit?

In your game, the correct order is 'disable that drone via all means at your disposal as fast as possible.' in all probability rather than 'hack that drone' but I'll just use hack that drone as a quick proxy for now.

No reason you cannot do both really, as you pointed our your mage also shoots guns and stuff, so they can throw in 'order agents around' in addition to whatever else it is they do. You'll lose one simple action per however long it takes an agent to disable a drone.

However, not all of the run is physical combat where the mage has line of sight (and as such can cast spells), agents allow the mage to be a fairly solid hacker at those junctions (like legwork).