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

[Spike]

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).

True that, but again, the main arguement I've been adressing is that the HIB negates the need for a dedicated codeslinger... or not.

First: the bar to entry on 'hacking' is low enough that just about everyone can be fair to middling competent without really hurting their character, so there isn't much need for a dedicated hacker for most runner teams. If one or more players chose to HIB it all the way, that's their call. As a GM I, or anyone else really, should be flexible enough to handle the fact that none of my players really wants to be a specialist codeslinger.

Second: If someone DOES chose to be a specialist Codeslinger, there are benefits to 'doing it right', rather than being a 100% scriptkiddie firing off agents left and rigth (which, however, does remain an option...). A dedicated Hacker can get his dice pool significantly higher than 12, can spend Edge, and generally has a lot more control over what happens in the matrix than a guy with 'a lot of agents'.

More importantly, I've pointed out that anyone who is regularly sacrificing their actions to order around their agents/drones when that isn't their primary job is actually wasting time. Sure, not all of a run will happen in IP, but anything important (where you really DO worry about success or failure) probably should. And unless you are running naked through the woods, most stressful threats should be multipronged anyway. good security will have its own matrix support, magic support and gropos with guns. If your mage can tell his Agent to 'hack that drone' over there, the Samurai should be able to smack the living shit out of him for not doing his job. At which point the Hacker smacks the Samurai around for not doign HIS job...

In other words, why isn't the Mage busy with manifesting spirits and counterspelling incoming death and attempting to overcome enemy counterspelling? And if none of that shit is happening, who cares WHO kills the drone, as long as it dies before the MMG goes off and whacks half the party?

[Cthulhudreams]

so there isn't much need for a dedicated hacker for most runner teams.

er.. yeah. Thats my point. Agent smith makes actual skills of minimal use in many areas, and matrix management entirely a possibility without the character having any actual skills. But as 'hacker' is an archetype right in the book, I'd like to seem them powerful and useful.

I wrote this diatribe about how the rest of your argument is wrong to, because due to factors like 'drain' a specialist action may not be available to the specialist, so they need fall back positions, and the utility gained by the party of jettisoning the specialist hacker and replacing him with someone with real skills outweighs the occasional wasted action, but the main thrust of my point is that.

[hobgoblin]

spoof command, anyone?

a agent can be spoofed, just like a drone. a hacker can not...

btw, whats the idea for coming around the subscription limit again? subscribing to a node at admin level and then order the agents/ice running on it around?

[Cthulhudreams]

I'm going to rechristen the problem I hate 'The Borg'

'The Borg' is the replacement of actual character skills with plug n play stuff like autosofts, skillsofts, and agents. So instead of a hacker your street sammie buys an agent and some skillsofts - merging with the borg - and is now a l33+ hacker.

'The Borg' cannot be spoofed, as anyone with skillwires is three skillsofts away from a base 'hacking' DP of 10.

[Spike]

I'm going to rechristen the problem I hate 'The Borg'

'The Borg' is the replacement of actual character skills with plug n play stuff like autosofts, skillsofts, and agents. So instead of a hacker your street sammie buys an agent and some skillsofts - merging with the borg - and is now a l33+ hacker.

'The Borg' cannot be spoofed, as anyone with skillwires is three skillsofts away from a base 'hacking' DP of 10.

I agree with you that skill wires are a problem. And sure, it seems a bit wonky (but its the same problem as the skillwires, and unless you want to houserule out stuff, you have to stick with both...) but if you let you of your anger, let go of your hate, the dark side won't consume you.

First, a HIB can't replace a dedicated hacker on a team anyway. Someone has to have all those other technical skills that Agents don't get to use (hardware maybe...). A hacker can get better dice totals, which has yet to be refuted, a hacker gets Edge.

And he can still use agents to run other tasks for him.

You keep bringing up 'edge cases' to defend why the Mage is gonna be stomping on the Hacker, thus eliminating the hacker. What if there is no target but matrix... what if the mage is wounded and stunned from drain so he doesn't want to cast anymore.

Great. That means the player isn't bored and tuning out at the table while their character is 'useless'.


Like I keep saying, this is a GM situation. Any player can simply buy every.single.motherpucking.skill as a skillsoft and buy up their skillwires at the start of the game. I have NO IDEA what they plan to do with their Karma at that point.

Its their decision. Its my decision to put them into situations where their skillwires are less useful to them, like they get shook down by Lonestar and several of their key chips are confisticated, like that hooker they hired the night before was a klepto... like some Johnson hired another runner team to take down the team and act one was to utterly negate the usefullnes of the idiot-cyber-savant.

Ditto the Hacker in a Box. A real hacker gets his commlink fried or stolen? He picks up a new one and moves on, maybe busting out some quick and dirty hacker warez to keep him going. Sure, it sucks, but it doesn't mean he's helpless.

Not so true of the guy relying utterly on his Agent and suite of sweet warez.


Don't you watch TV? Read Comic books? This is like the standard cliche of anyone who is dependent upon a single peice of equipment to function. Take it away for a while. If a player's only combat skill is a specialized pistol (auto), put them in a situation where rifles rule the day. Have their automatic taken away and the first gun they scrounge up/steal is a revolver. Even for one fight. There is a reason they get extra dice for specializing that way: its a limiter. And limiters are useless unless they come up once in a while.

[FrankTrollman]

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.

Yeah but it's still a complex action for you to do anything meaningful in the Matrix and a Simple Action for you to tell an Agent to start doing something in the Matrix. A shiny new non-identical Agent at rating 6 costs six thousand ¥. That's basically always going to be a better deal than purchasing actual Matrix Skills.

However many commlinks and Agents you happen to have, it is always a better deal to send in another Agent than it is to accept your number of Agents as sufficient and start hacking yourself.

---

And that's before we consider the possibilities of extended instructions as regards to attacking with Agents. I mean sure, it takes an action to tell an Agent to do something, but what if that something is "Start Hacking into the Aztechnology Camera system at 11:35" or "When I send the Black Spot Email, start hacking the Shiawase front door" ? Such orders can be given laboriously one simple action at a time, and then the actual experience of the corporation being hacked is that some arbitrarily large number of high rating Agents started hacking all their available nodes at once.

-Frank

[Rotbart van Dain...]

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.

Actually, tiered nodes are given as security increase example in the BBB.

[The Jopp]

A shiny new non-identical Agent at rating 6 costs six thousand ¥.
-Frank

Agents at rating 6 cost 12000Y (2500Y/Rating) and that’s not counting possible mark up due to availability and how easy it would be to obtain within the timeframe the character wants it – and if there is a seller available at all…

Personally I would only allow a simple action for commands if they are short or pre-scripted so one only sends them – a simple action is not a very long time to give a complex command.

[Fortune]

Agents at rating 6 cost 12000Y (2500Y/Rating) ...

Wouldn't that be 15,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

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.

That very assumption goes only one kind of way - a very short way to the funny farm.

[The Jopp]

Wouldn't that be 15,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ?

DOH!

[Cthulhudreams]

First, a HIB can't replace a dedicated hacker on a team anyway. Someone has to have all those other technical skills that Agents don't get to use (hardware maybe...). A hacker can get better dice totals, which has yet to be refuted, a hacker gets Edge.

A rigger (ab)using skill(wire)s has that stuff any way, it's just a major shift in focus.

Anyway, if you think skillwires are a problem, agents are like that except cheaper and better, because for less money they deliver more skills at higher ratings.

You keep bringing up 'edge cases' to defend why the Mage is gonna be stomping on the Hacker, thus eliminating the hacker. What if there is no target but matrix... what if the mage is wounded and stunned from drain so he doesn't want to cast anymore.

Great. That means the player isn't bored and tuning out at the table while their character is 'useless'.

To be honest, as you point out a mage + agent is a very difficult comparison to make. But a rigger + skillwires + agent(s) is a much closer comparison, and the rigger is pretty much better than the specialist hacker, offering real ultimate firepower, significant physical spying capability, transport while running hot (though many transport powers are not particularly an advantage due to the fact is a group came), for a minor reduction in hacker effect.

Don't you watch TV? Read Comic books? This is like the standard cliche of anyone who is dependent upon a single peice of equipment to function. Take it away for a while. If a player's only combat skill is a specialized pistol (auto), put them in a situation where rifles rule the day. Have their automatic taken away and the first gun they scrounge up/steal is a revolver. Even for one fight. There is a reason they get extra dice for specializing that way: its a limiter. And limiters are useless unless they come up once in a while.

Yeah I do, but aside from the fact that skillsofts are really software, and you can store them on the toaster in your apartment or your gmail account, and 10 nanoseconds after lonestar makes you delete them you can get another set, behaviour like that honestly doesn't really address the situation you're trying to fix.

Borg enabled characters have more flexibility to deal with a variety of situations (like our rigger, who has significant combat, leg work, unique powers (transport) and hacking skills in one character), so they are going to be hit less with 'take stuff away' strategy than a conventional specialist hacker. Take the riggers commlink away and he can directly skinlink to his car, round up his agents via that, and get on with it with only a minor hit to his skills - he's lost hacking, but skill has massive firepower, surveillance and transport. Take his skill softs away, and he loses the ability to fly some of his vehicles, and he'll need to get to his backup copies before everything breaks because he doesn't have maintenance skills, but he's still not doing to badly.

Make the borg enabled mage stand in a rating 6 background count, and well, he's now a fairly average hacker. Take the borg enabled sammie's guns away, and well he can use/buy an exotic weapon (monowhip) soft and flip out, and hack a bit too.

Take the specialist hackers commlink away and he's weeping salty tears.

[Spike]

A rigger (ab)using skill(wire)s has that stuff any way, it's just a major shift in focus.

Anyway, if you think skillwires are a problem, agents are like that except cheaper and better, because for less money they deliver more skills at higher ratings.

Agreed. But that's the way the game is written. Its like playing a superhero game and complaining that flying characters ignore ground based obstacles.

To be honest, as you point out a mage + agent is a very difficult comparison to make. But a rigger + skillwires + agent(s) is a much closer comparison, and the rigger is pretty much better than the specialist hacker, offering real ultimate firepower, significant physical spying capability, transport while running hot (though many transport powers are not particularly an advantage due to the fact is a group came), for a minor reduction in hacker effect.

Your point was that the Mage is going to render the hacker useless. Now is that it is the Rigger who will render the hacker useless?

I think the point of SR4's system is that the Rigger IS the hacker, there isn't enough difference between them. its not 'vehicle/drone guy' and 'code cracker' guy any more, its' 'tech/electro-wiz guy'. One guy, two closely related jobs.

Yeah I do, but aside from the fact that skillsofts are really software, and you can store them on the toaster in your apartment or your gmail account, and 10 nanoseconds after lonestar makes you delete them you can get another set, behaviour like that honestly doesn't really address the situation you're trying to fix.

Borg enabled characters have more flexibility to deal with a variety of situations (like our rigger, who has significant combat, leg work, unique powers (transport) and hacking skills in one character), so they are going to be hit less with 'take stuff away' strategy than a conventional specialist hacker. Take the riggers commlink away and he can directly skinlink to his car, round up his agents via that, and get on with it with only a minor hit to his skills - he's lost hacking, but skill has massive firepower, surveillance and transport. Take his skill softs away, and he loses the ability to fly some of his vehicles, and he'll need to get to his backup copies before everything breaks because he doesn't have maintenance skills, but he's still not doing to badly.

Make the borg enabled mage stand in a rating 6 background count, and well, he's now a fairly average hacker. Take the borg enabled sammie's guns away, and well he can use/buy an exotic weapon (monowhip) soft and flip out, and hack a bit too.

Take the specialist hackers commlink away and he's weeping salty tears.

Take the rigger's vehicles and drones away and he's weeping salty tears. Take a gun specialist sammy's guns away, HE'S weeping salty tears.

You have to compare like to like. Taking the Mage's Gun away... yadda yadda.

If someone is that highly dependent upon skillwires, letting them just magically store backup copies on their toaster willy nilly is self defeating, much like letting someone with an HIB just direct their agents as if they were PC's, rather than making them go through the mild aggrivation of actually having to issue those orders. Then again, maybe they DO have it on their toaster. Too bad that enemy runner team is squatting at his Doss waiting to take him out, with their own, not HIB hacker watching the house nodes in case he sneaks back.

Frank has an example of how agent armies are broken up thread a few posts that deserves honorable mention. First he supposes that the hacker has infinite downtime to prepare his Agent Army. Then he supposes that nothing will go wrong with his ultimate plan. I love those sorts of suppositions. By the time I was 16 I had taken over the world at least three times using ideas like that.

Never mind that it makes sense that hacker will have semi-autonomous software doing shit for them in 60+ years. I can just picture a Kevin Smith looking mouthbreather squatting in his ma's basement running half a dozen (or more hacks) simultaniously while he's playing video games and eating a pizza. Oops! Somethings going wrong, someone spotted his agent and is runnign a trace, oops, that one is busy hacking a node, just like it was told to... but it appears there are netcop equivilents just happening by on a routine check of the security right now, oh, look that one that was super critical, just failed because the node was shut down for routine updates... which problem does he address first? Can he address them in time? Lets assume that he's smart enough to have told his agents to alert him to problems...


Of course, the Sammy took HIS last paycheck and used it to hire some street gang to do his part of the next run for him.

Even without cyberware, anyone can turn money into a run by proxy. Whoopty-doo. Why is this one such a thorn for people?