Unwired Questions, Now with Merge-y Goodness Options

[Stahlseele]

well, with unwired technomancers can have more than 4 ini passes, so there's a precedent again, useable by at least magicians . . and they get real world ini/reaction enhancement that suspiciously looks like what boosted reflexes would have been in my eyes, if the cyber had not been scrapped . .

[RunnerPaul]

well, with unwired technomancers can have more than 4 ini passes

And non-technomancers can have more than 4 ini passes too, if they get a Simsense Accelerator.

[Ryu]

Can someone please look up the wording of the Support Operation service for me? Nothing to do with biowire...

[crizh]

Can someone please look up the wording of the Support Operation service for me? Nothing to do with biowire...

If I recall adds the rating of the Sprite to one of your CF's for Sprite's Rating in combat turns.

Can't be more specific without knowing what you need.

[Cheops]

If I recall adds the rating of the Sprite to one of your CF's for Sprite's Rating in combat turns.

Can't be more specific without knowing what you need.

He's wondering if you can use it to boost the Activesofts with Biowire.

[hobgoblin]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

[Ryu]

If I recall adds the rating of the Sprite to one of your CF's for Sprite's Rating in combat turns.

Can't be more specific without knowing what you need.

I think I failed my English skill test.

Biowire creates CFs, Support Operation increases the rating of any CF (German wording), sprites of rating 5 are easy to come by. (And Biowire is fine IMO, it´s Support Operation that needs work.)

[FrankTrollman]

Does Intuitive Hacking do anything at all?

It's really clearly not worth five points, that's for damn sure. But seriously folks, does it do anything?

The FAQ says straight up that if you need a program and don't have it that you "must default." This means among other things that you can default on such tests when you don't have the appropriate program. So why is there a quality that "allows" me to make a test with a bullshit tiny dice pool when that is explicitly listed in the FAQ as something that absolutely everyone can do for free?

-Frank

[Nightwalker450]

Does Intuitive Hacking do anything at all?

It's really clearly not worth five points, that's for damn sure. But seriously folks, does it do anything?

The FAQ says straight up that if you need a program and don't have it that you "must default." This means among other things that you can default on such tests when you don't have the appropriate program. So why is there a quality that "allows" me to make a test with a bullshit tiny dice pool when that is explicitly listed in the FAQ as something that absolutely everyone can do for free?

-Frank

I think you're right frank, only thing you get from this is that its no longer considered defaulting. And it doesn't actually replace a program, just replaces it for an action. So 5 BP for a partial program (where 1.2 BP is all it takes for a rating 6 program). This is for when you loose your program/commlink, and want to at least loose the default?

[deek]

The maths make it advantageous once you forego purchasing 5 Rating 6 Programs, right? I agree, it seems awfully low return for a 5BP investment...

Now in my game, we have skill caps, so this quality would be worth a little more, as defaulting caps at one success on a test...using this quality I would allow a higher cap, but again, that is only going to make this more attractive at my table.

[Jaid]

it looks like the quality allows you to default without taking the defaulting penalty. not much, but it's something i guess.

i'll ask a couple of questions again though:

1) what kind of programs can i emulate as a TM? if i emulate an agent (*can* i emulate an agent?) is it limited to the matrix attributes of the node it is on, or is it now resonance based and can now ignore that? can i run it from my living persona? do i have to run it from my living persona (because it is resonance based, and so requires a resonance node to run off of). can i emulate a hacking or common use program? if not, can my agent run my personal CFs? if so, can i run those emulated hacking and common use programs? can i emulate autosofts and drone pilot programs? can drone pilots emulated by a TM run emulated autosofts? normal autosofts? can they run normal drones, or do i need to somehow invent a resonance-based node for drones? there's a whole lot of questions that need answering that all come from this one rule. some clarifications on what it can or can't do would be nice.

2) the transfer sprite power. it's listed right there in the sprite chapter. but no sprites actually *get* the transfer power. is it intended as a free sprite power? because technically, those are the only sprites who can take it. or was it supposed to be removed but got left in?

3) page 111, under the nuke program. last paragraph, it includes sprites as being limited by node ratings. is this intended as an errata? i am unaware of any other text that indicates this might be the case.

[FrankTrollman]

it looks like the quality allows you to default without taking the defaulting penalty.

It explicitly gives you a defaulting dice pool of Skill + Zero Dice. Unfortunately, despite us asking this exact question for over a year of real time we still don't have a straight answer as to what the normal dice pool for Defaulting on a program is. Things in the running are still:

Skill - 1
Skill + Logic - 1
Logic - 1
Skill + 0

Of those, the dice pool set by the Intuitive Hacking is superior to only one of them. And considering that it's only 1 die better than that, and the Intuitive Hacking Quality is purchased not even per program, but per use of a single program, it's definitely laughable even in the best possible reading. I mean seriously, you get a larger bonus that applies more of the time to a greater number of Matrix tests by just taking one of your Cracking skills and specializing it.

-Frank

[Jaid]

It explicitly gives you a defaulting dice pool of Skill + Zero Dice. Unfortunately, despite us asking this exact question for over a year of real time we still don't have a straight answer as to what the normal dice pool for Defaulting on a program is. Things in the running are still:

Skill - 1
Skill + Logic - 1
Logic - 1
Skill + 0

Of those, the dice pool set by the Intuitive Hacking is superior to only one of them. And considering that it's only 1 die better than that, and the Intuitive Hacking Quality is purchased not even per program, but per use of a single program, it's definitely laughable even in the best possible reading. I mean seriously, you get a larger bonus that applies more of the time to a greater number of Matrix tests by just taking one of your Cracking skills and specializing it.

-Frank

i didn't say it was doing something worth 5 BP, i only said that it appears to actually be doing something at all. you never asked if what it was doing was *worth it* (in fact, you pretty clearly indicated that you don't feel it is... a point i have not chosen to disagree with), your original question was "Does Intuitive Hacking do anything at all?". the answer to that question is yes; apparently it does. that particular something is pretty crappy (even for a 5 BP quality), but it does have an effect.

[Sombranox]

Does Intuitive Hacking do anything at all?

It's really clearly not worth five points, that's for damn sure. But seriously folks, does it do anything?

The FAQ says straight up that if you need a program and don't have it that you "must default." This means among other things that you can default on such tests when you don't have the appropriate program. So why is there a quality that "allows" me to make a test with a bullshit tiny dice pool when that is explicitly listed in the FAQ as something that absolutely everyone can do for free?

-Frank

The FAQ says you must default, but if you read further, it implies that the defaulting is only for using electronics or trying to make electronics do something outside of their parameters. I.E. you can maybe default on something odd like making a radio into a frequency scanner by mucking with its program. But at the bottom of that FAQ entry is "If he wanted to edit a holo media file, analyze the device's Firewall, or search its usage log, he would use a program (Edit, Analyze, and Browse, respectively)."

Which I've always interpreted as: If you don't have a program, you can't do tests at all that use that program.

Though I agree that Intuitive hacking is a complete freaking waste of 5 points overall, it _does_ allow the possibility for being able to do certain things if you are somehow completely stripped of programs and a commlink.

Of course, I can't for the life of me think right now of an example of how being able to default on a few programs would let you hack without a commlink. I was going to say intuitive Exploit might be interesting if you were imprisoned, stripped of your commlink, but they were stupid enough to let you get near a DNI device with some fiberoptic cable laying around, but then I realized that no exploit would be possible without a stealth program. Then I was going to say that an intuitive Spoof program might be able to spoof a command to something (the locks on their cell?), but that would require knowing an access ID to spoof.

So yeah, not a freaking clue. Useless thing.

[Nightwalker450]

I think I figured this out...

You're on a run, you get to the pay data room... And its the iMac 70, there are no drives, no ports, just a keyboard and a screen. How do you hack it you have no software. Whats on your commlink matters not at all.

If a GM threw this at you and you didn't have this quality, he's an ass...

[Nightwalker450]

Here's a remark regarding layouts...

I really liked Arsenal including page numbers at the back of the book. As to where this information came from. I was hoping the same would be done in future books. But we have all the tables for unwired in the back, and no page number references so we know where to go for details. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Ryu]

Well, one could buy edge 5, the codeslinger quality, and intuitive hacking, all for Spoof. Hacking gets specialised on spoof, too (not a bad idea anyway). If you ever have to rely on a comlink you found (if only to leave absolutely no trace back to you), you can spoof orders to most nodes without uploading any program, or changing any setting. Start - Spoof - Shutdown.

That actually sounds like a plan. If you can´t default anyway.

[Cheops]

it looks like the quality allows you to default without taking the defaulting penalty. not much, but it's something i guess.

i'll ask a couple of questions again though:

1) what kind of programs can i emulate as a TM? if i emulate an agent (*can* i emulate an agent?) is it limited to the matrix attributes of the node it is on, or is it now resonance based and can now ignore that? can i run it from my living persona? do i have to run it from my living persona (because it is resonance based, and so requires a resonance node to run off of). can i emulate a hacking or common use program? if not, can my agent run my personal CFs? if so, can i run those emulated hacking and common use programs? can i emulate autosofts and drone pilot programs? can drone pilots emulated by a TM run emulated autosofts? normal autosofts? can they run normal drones, or do i need to somehow invent a resonance-based node for drones? there's a whole lot of questions that need answering that all come from this one rule. some clarifications on what it can or can't do would be nice.

2) the transfer sprite power. it's listed right there in the sprite chapter. but no sprites actually *get* the transfer power. is it intended as a free sprite power? because technically, those are the only sprites who can take it. or was it supposed to be removed but got left in?

3) page 111, under the nuke program. last paragraph, it includes sprites as being limited by node ratings. is this intended as an errata? i am unaware of any other text that indicates this might be the case.

1) Only Skillsofts. You cannot emulate an Agent. You cannot emulate Autosofts or Drone pilot programs although I might house rule to allow Drone Autosofts. The only problem with the rule is that they used program to interchangeably mean Skillsoft. Replace all instances of program in that paragraph with Skillsoft and no problem.

2) I think it was meant to be a Free Sprite only that got orphaned.

3) It does not say that they are limited by the resources of the node but that they rely on the resources of the node. Think of it this way. A magical spirit is not limited by the ambient mana level in the world. But they rely on that level being above a certain level for them to manifest. When the mana level gets out of whack (a background count of >1) the spirit has problems. Nuke basically creates a localized background count for that target.

[Jaid]

1) Only Skillsofts. You cannot emulate an Agent. You cannot emulate Autosofts or Drone pilot programs although I might house rule to allow Drone Autosofts. The only problem with the rule is that they used program to interchangeably mean Skillsoft. Replace all instances of program in that paragraph with Skillsoft and no problem.

except that you can emulate a smartlink program, or a simrig. or an ARE program. if you can choose to emulate these other types of programs as complex forms, why not an agent? or a pilot? presumably, this is how dissonant technomancers can emulate malware.

so, why couldn't you emulate an agent?

you are correct as to me remembering wrong, mind you... the section on emulating skillsofts would not necessarily apply to anything else. so you would have to pay normal complex form costs for these things (which really needs reworking for the karma costs, imo, but that's neither here nor there). it still remains: if i emulate an agent (and it seems to be implied that i can) how does that work?

[Dashifen]

I think you're talking about two different things, Jaid. Emulation (on page 149) refers to skillsofts for use with the Biowire echo. The rules for TMs making smartlink and simrig complex forms are on page 136 and are not an Emulation at all.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Actually, AIs can emulate those and spawn them.

BTW - does a Tacsoft count against the processor limit? It's not a Common Use or Hacking program.

In order to detect a virus in a program, a number of hits equal to half the virus’s rating must be scored (see Viruses, p. 120).

That doesn't really match up to p. 120.

[Jaid]

I think you're talking about two different things, Jaid. Emulation (on page 149) refers to skillsofts for use with the Biowire echo. The rules for TMs making smartlink and simrig complex forms are on page 136 and are not an Emulation at all.

like i said: if i can emulate (not Emulate, just emulate) a simrig or a smartlink, why not an agent?

[crizh]

I'll stick this in here as well.

Has anybody noticed that Sprites don't have Edge and can't become Free due to not being able to make an Edge(3) test?

[JoelHalpern]

Can someone clarify a comment SYnner made in another thread?

He indicated that Persona (the UI?) can not run any programs. From the way he phrased things, this would seem to mean that if your commlink is going to respond in any way to outside activity, then it needs an agent.
Is that the intended meaning? I note that BBB states that the node can take an analyze test to detect an intruder, so it seems that nodes can do some things. And p 226 does indicate that a node can run a program, using its system rating instead of the skill.
So, can a node run attack without having an Agent?

Thank you,
Joel

[Cheops]

Can someone clarify a comment SYnner made in another thread?

He indicated that Persona (the UI?) can not run any programs. From the way he phrased things, this would seem to mean that if your commlink is going to respond in any way to outside activity, then it needs an agent.
Is that the intended meaning? I note that BBB states that the node can take an analyze test to detect an intruder, so it seems that nodes can do some things. And p 226 does indicate that a node can run a program, using its system rating instead of the skill.
So, can a node run attack without having an Agent?

Thank you,
Joel

The persona does not run any programs. It is a user interface. Your commlink (or whatever generates the Persona) is what is really running the program.

Whatever it is that runs your Persona cannot interact with outside activity except for things within its parameters. A commlink receives commands and information from outside sources. Your pilot detects and responds to traffic.

Node /= Agent. There are certain programs it is allowed to run (Analyze being one, Encrypt another). It cannot attack without an Agent or IC.

Note also that Agents cannot attack anymore either unless they are unrestricted (costing x1.2).