[X] My Assistant

[WearzManySkins]

and then one day while he's hurrying to punch in the code he hits two numbers at once, gets it wrong, and blows up. i believe that's the point people are trying to make when they say you don't really want a lethal anti-theft system.

(that and the fact that leaving your keys/commlink in the car suddenly gets a lot more awkward and expensive when you have to hire a decker to crack the glacial IC in your car, after which you will probably be wanting to add in the expense of wiping your car's node and rebuilding it from scratch, for which you need to find a decker you can trust, and also add in that you just made a complete fool of yourself to the shadow community... or at least the decker community. or did you think that decker wasn't gonna tell everyone about the idiot sammy who locked himself out of his car and had to hire a shadowrunner just to get in...)

Like modern day secure handgun storage units, since the keys/buttons are separated by materials. ie metals. ceramics etc, even with Troll fingers not possible. As for lethal anti theft system, this is shadowrun home of the dark future, one note no the keys/buttons are in a location casually accessible like the secure handgun units you have to stick your fingers into it.

WMS

[Ryu]

imp invisibility, silence, jammer. Anything that doesn't cover?

Smell for non-electric drives and car accidents. Take a smart jammer to avoid alerting everyone in the general area.

[ornot]

Anti-theft devices...

The security issues that have been brought up pretty much cover it. The damned things are going to be squealing home about being stolen, unless you hack them, and stripping all the RFIDs out of a car could be a massive undertaking (a particularly mean GM might rule that you can't rewrite them without physical access to the things). However, I think the skills to boost cars are less of an obstacle than the contacts you need to move hot cars.

A car thief turned runner would make quite a good background story, but if the character is still boosting cars to make rent it could interfere with the game, as the GM either handwaves it and says "you make x nuyen jacking cars", or the other PCs sit about twiddling their thumbs while the car thief pursues his own extra special private run.

[WearzManySkins]

IIRC the Arsenal EMP effects take out RFID's. Yes the EMP grenade would affect more than the RFID's but the EMP Gun is more controlled and focused.

WMS

[Cthulhudreams]

Is it just me, or is trying to drive a car somewhere with improved invisibility on a recipe for disaster? Given the crappyness of car sensors actually, it would seem like a disaster to drive around without your beacon on.

[stormcrow]

My secondary character is a face-dancing vehicle thief. He studies his quarry, (Adept power-enhanced) disguises himself as them, sets up a dummy commlink to imitate theirs, and yoinks their ride, all the while looking exactly like them, just taking the old ride out, nothing to see here.

He uses: A cellular glove molder (and possibly some Forensics, for taking prints), keycard copier (if necessary), his adept Voice Control and Facial Sculpt powers, high Disguise skill (spec. Impersonation), high Hardware (spec. Vehicle Security Systems), and a chip that has makes/models/prices of most vehicles. He has a Grid Guide Spoofer and Morphing License Plate to quickly add to any vehicle he filches.

What better way to leave the facility than in their own delivery van? "Just making the usual rounds, George, see you on the way back in." Ditch the ride (or chop it) and split in your own (or someone else's) ride.

[gilorian]

Thanks for all the responses.
The whole thing sounds like a bit more skill investment than I'm prepared to make.
Makes me wonder how all these gangs don't starve to death.

[Fortune]

I think the key is that they don't try to do it all alone. They work in gangs for a reason.

You could do it with one character, but as you said, it requires a reasonable amount of BP/Karma to be good at it.

[DocTaotsu]

Because quantity has a quality all of it's own (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

By spreading out the skill sets (ie. bp/karma) it makes it reasonable for a gang to gank vehicles on a regular basis.

[TheOneRonin]

Stealing cars is MUCH more challenging in SR's 2070 than it is today. In any place with functioning grid-guide, a car jacker won't be able to make it more than 20 meters in a stolen car unless his kills the driver. And even then he had better do it before the driver hits his "Oh SHIT" button. The grid-guide system knows where your car is 24/7, and probably down to a meter or less accuracy. Forget fleeing the cops. They don't really even have to chase you. Just track your vehicle until it stops, then surround the location.

Parked cars are a different story, but you have do a ton of prep-work, and have your shit together to be able to do it effectively. By-passing a car-alarm is nothing compared to the RFID sweeping you'll have to perform, not to mention you'll have to change the beacon and all the broadcasting tags just so you can drive it on the street without being pulled over.

Now, as you move to less urbanized and more rural areas (or places like the barrens), car theft becomes much easier. If there is no grid-guide out on that country road, its a lot easier to jack a car, jam any transmissions, and get it someplace hidden where you can blast the tags/beacon.

I firmly believe that carjackings and car theft, at least in the more urbanized sprawls of 2070, will be much more rare, and much harder to pull off than it is to do now. And most likely, only the big ticket/tricked-out vehicles will be at risk.

[stormcrow]

Couple notes:
1) RFID chips are not teh win. They have a range (in game) of 3 meters. IRL, ranchers use larger ones with batteries with a range of 30 yards, but that's RL and has no bearing here. ;-P Also, RFID coding is neither open source, nor coordinated--so a 3rd party will not be able to really get much usable data from someone else's RFID tags.

2) While surveillance is ubiquitous, it is not openly shared. Sure, you may be recorded by 30 cameras, but they don't talk to each other, play well with each other or even have clear lines of comm. LS doesn't really give a shit about a stolen car. They don't want to fill out the paperwork to requisition the surveillance footage from the Stuffer Shack, Saeder Krupp's Natural Gas facility, the four private webcams and a Weapons World (owned by Ares) just to get a grainy pic of some car thief.

3) We have crazy good anti-theft stuff today, but most people don't use it, just like we have air gaps, etc. today and people don't use them.

[Ryu]

RFID chips are the win once the car knows someone is breaking in. They just have to wait until an infrastructure node is within 3m. Then they alert the security provider (be it corporate or criminal) they are tied to. If the car does not notice that it is hacked you are good to go.

Now you still have to make sure that noone misses the car. Start hacking in the evening, take your time, drive away while everyone is sleeping. Dismantle car somewhere in Redmond or Puyallup.

[JoelHalpern]

RFID chips are the win once the car knows someone is breaking in. They just have to wait until an infrastructure node is within 3m. Then they alert the security provider (be it corporate or criminal) they are tied to. If the car does not notice that it is hacked you are good to go.

Now you still have to make sure that noone misses the car. Start hacking in the evening, take your time, drive away while everyone is sleeping. Dismantle car somewhere in Redmond or Puyallup.

Actually, if a decent hacker is doing his job, why would the car ever "know" that anyone has broken in. The car ought to think that everything is just fine.
If I read the book correctly, a car is likely to have an effective system of 3 and an effective firewall of 3. Lets pretend it would have an Analyze 3 program running. (The book doesn't say that, but its cheap, so assume the factory put it in anyway.)
Now assume a decent starting hacker (Exploit 5, Stealth 5.) He can probably get in in 1 IP, and the carr rolls 6 dice for 5 successes to detect him. He is now a legitimate user. Drive the car somewhere out of the way (so far, the car doesn't know it is stolen. Do this at a time when the owner is not likely to be back for several hours, so the owner doesn't know either.)
Then take your time to get full admin rights (target 9, so probably 3 hours.) The car gets another shot of rolling 6 dice for 5 successes. No way. Then you can tell the car anything you want. You are the Admin.
Presuming crime works at all, the hacker can then drive somewhere else, obscuring whatever tracking the auto network is doing. If that can't be done then all sorts of other things runners have to do every day are effectively impossible.

Maybe I am missing something, but getting a car sufficiently clean to either use as a temporary for a run (quickly) or more likely to sell to a chop shop, ought not be hard.

Yours,
Joel

[CanRay]

A car with a Rating 3 would probably be a average luxury car. If you're jacking General Sedan Americars, it's more likely to be 2. If you're jacking Jackrabbits (Which are actually now all knockoffs), then it's probably 1.

Carjacking gangs would have to be gangs, and would have to plan things out more than just "Break Window, Hotwire Car".

Remember, security is designed to keep people honest, and to catch amatures. Professionals know the security better than the people who made the system in the first place.

[FriendoftheDork]

This is how I did it in my game:

Cars works like Nodes, and can be hacked. Also, a car door can be opened by a spoof command, but in order to unlock the controls you need to hack it anyway.

Security levels I kept at admin, both to make it a bit harder and because I didn't think users would want their cars overridden by someone with admin access. Despite this connection to the Grid, car ID and security tags are all hardwired and can only be overridden at the factory or a chop shop for stolen cars.

The best way to steal cars would then be to jam the signal, hack the car (if you have good enough signal otherwise hack first), and then take it to a chop shop that preferably is in a dead area.

In my game the hacker often stole cars but not for profit, thus I let him steal cheap wrecks automatically rather than he spend too much game time trying to hack expensive cars and deal with the problem of why you would go SHadowrunning when stealing cars is easier, safer and more lucrative.

[ornot]

Actually, if a decent hacker is doing his job, why would the car ever "know" that anyone has broken in. The car ought to think that everything is just fine.
If I read the book correctly, a car is likely to have an effective system of 3 and an effective firewall of 3. Lets pretend it would have an Analyze 3 program running. (The book doesn't say that, but its cheap, so assume the factory put it in anyway.)
Now assume a decent starting hacker (Exploit 5, Stealth 5.) He can probably get in in 1 IP, and the carr rolls 6 dice for 5 successes to detect him. He is now a legitimate user. Drive the car somewhere out of the way (so far, the car doesn't know it is stolen. Do this at a time when the owner is not likely to be back for several hours, so the owner doesn't know either.)
Then take your time to get full admin rights (target 9, so probably 3 hours.) The car gets another shot of rolling 6 dice for 5 successes. No way. Then you can tell the car anything you want. You are the Admin.
Presuming crime works at all, the hacker can then drive somewhere else, obscuring whatever tracking the auto network is doing. If that can't be done then all sorts of other things runners have to do every day are effectively impossible.

Maybe I am missing something, but getting a car sufficiently clean to either use as a temporary for a run (quickly) or more likely to sell to a chop shop, ought not be hard.

Yours,
Joel

A character with level 5 in hacking is actually pretty damn shit hot at hacking, and a poxy car shouldn't provide any great difficulty. The fact that a PC that is going to make matrix use a specialisation can easily start with that rating does not make that rating the rule. Similarly, to run a rating 5 stealth program you need a rating 5 commlink, which is not an common thing to come across in the normal population, certainly not in the hands of some bottom feeder car thief.

Anyway, assuming the hacker bypasses the cars owner recognition system, and the owner doesn't notice that it's been stolen for a while, it does give the thief time to strip the car of identifying RFIDs. Best carried out in a Matrix dead zone. So if you want to steal a car, be an OK hacker with a base in a wireless dead zone, and be sure to get it from the site of the theft to the base before the heft is noticed.

[Cthulhudreams]

REally it could be anywhere in a Z zone as well. The cops are not going to send in the ninjas for some dudes car itno an urban war zone in the future, when they are unlikely to do anything except issue an alert today.

[CanRay]

Here's a few more options for anti-theft devices.

[Bashfull]

What about a hypodermic syringe, signal jammer and a brutal attitude: "Drive me to there or I'll fill your bloodstream with bubbles." When the vehicle is parked somewhere that signals don't reach, erase the driver's wetware. Seems to work in Johannesburg.

[WeaverMount]

Similarly, to run a rating 5 stealth program you need a rating 5 commlink, which is not an common thing to come across in the normal population, certainly not in the hands of some bottom feeder car thief.

This is beautifully circular logic. You think of car thieves as bottom feeders so you assume they don't have good equipment. So stealing cars is hard. So they are bottom feeders. Under RAW you can make bank stealing cars. The profit from selling your first car pays for the rating 5 response upgrade. A car thieving gang will likely be able to comp you the software, even if it comes with some kind of "contract".

[WeaverMount]

Smell for non-electric drives and car accidents. Take a smart jammer to avoid alerting everyone in the general area.

Conceal will work for everything but really high grade sniffers. I have no doubt that they exist, but I do doubt that they are common, and linked to networks that would care about the car. And yes I have actually seen players punished for make a car undetectable. It is handleable.