Non-SOTA riggers, 3rd ed drivers in the 4th ed world Options

[Daddy's Litt...]

In 4th Ed they merged riggers and deckers into one class. I guess that makes sense. All the computers work the same whether it is an ATM or driving a lawn mower after the cat, but that is the new tech brought in when Matrtix 2.0 came along.

I can understand that most deckers were eaten alive when the old Matrix did a melt down, and survivors were glad to grab the new tech, but won't there still be the old riggers? Their stuff is hard wired into them and while drones can be easily redone, the cars/vans/tanks were still intact after the Matrix meld down because they were not involved in it and these gear heads probably would not want to adapt their vehicals to the new stuff. I mean why risk having your car grabbed by a new decker/hacker with the new tech, when the old tech requires the much more invasive VCR set up and actually plugging in to a car?

So how do you incorporate these old school Riggers in the new world?

[Starmage21]

In 4th Ed they merged riggers and deckers into one class. I guess that makes sense. All the computers work the same whether it is an ATM or driving a lawn mower after the cat, but that is the new tech brought in when Matrtix 2.0 came along.

I can understand that most deckers were eaten alive when the old Matrix did a melt down, and survivors were glad to grab the new tech, but won't there still be the old riggers? Their stuff is hard wired into them and while drones can be easily redone, the cars/vans/tanks were still intact after the Matrix meld down because they were not involved in it and these gear heads probably would not want to adapt their vehicals to the new stuff. I mean why risk having your car grabbed by a new decker/hacker with the new tech, when the old tech requires the much more invasive VCR set up and actually plugging in to a car?

So how do you incorporate these old school Riggers in the new world?

The only ones left are the ones who downright refused to upgrade.

Seriously, the tech is so cheap, there's no reason not to.

[Daddy's Litt...]

They are already fully capable and this will make their vehicals more vulnerable to hacking by others.

[Starmage21]

They are already fully capable and this will make their vehicals more vulnerable to hacking by others.

He could work exclusively through skinlinks and turn his wireless connection off when he doesnt need it.

the difference is he has a matrix and/or wireless connection if he needs it.

[NightmareX]

If I were making an old tech rigger in SR4 I'd simply use the old rules - let the VCR rating determine initiative passes (essentially work it like wired flexes) instead of the normal bonus for running in VR (hot or cold) even though they are running hot sim VR by default. Give em bonus dice to vehicle actions equal half (round down) the VCR rating. Use the same Essence costs, of course.

[Larsine]

In 4th Ed they merged riggers and deckers into one class.

There are no classes in SR. Haven't you heard that games with classes gives you cancer.

Lars

[The ubbergeek]

There are no classes in SR. Haven't you heard that games with classes gives you cancer.

Lars

If that was true, I'd be dead since long. >>; That meme is dumb.

[Karaden]

Really you bring up the question of why does anyone use wireless in SR4?

The answer is simple, the benefits outweigh the risks. By upgrading the rigger can now use a pilot program to drive his cars/drones. By upgrading he can use targeting autosofts. By upgrading he can access his drones from greater distances and with greater ease.

Also keep in mind that SR3 had wireless, it just wasn't as pervasive as it is in SR4. Riggers could jack into their drones remotely, thus there was wireless, thus they could be hacked into by an SR4 hacker. In fact it would be child's play because the systems are so outdated. The same very likely applies to vehicles. I didn't play a ton in SR3, but I believe Riggers where able to remote access their cars just like their drones, which once again indicates wireless technology.

So, the choice was fairly obvious, used dated equipment that any 5 year-old with a commlink could hack into, or upgrade their stuff. Now of course they could use their old stuff and manually disable the wireless, but they would still benefit from upgrading their stuff to SR4 grade stuff and simply turn off the wireless functions.

[Snow_Fox]

I think she's pointing out that while people just starting SR4 won't know any better, people carrying over from 3rd to 4th ed in theory would be using tech that isn't offered in the 4th ed rules.

It's easy to say a person will want to upgrade to the SOTA AR connections BUT in real life? Maybe not. Suppose a 20 year old in the CAS army in 2064 has just agreed to get a VCR installed. He's a military rigger and damn good at what he does. Matrix 1.0 crashes. His gear still works because it is seperate from the matrix. As chaos trampled the world in the panic following the collapse of the Matrix, he's able to do his job. His machines respond in just the same way. now it's 6 years later, he's out of the military and has a skill set that's needed, why change? He's seen the mess those 'deckers' made of the world and his stuff works just as well as it always did. Sure there's some hotshots with faster tech now, but he's got experience and a few tricks he's picked up over the eyars and he can hold his own- so why would he change?

The point is these guys are still going to be out there and probably in more numbers than the modern AR SOTA 'riggers' After all he spent essence getting this stuff put in his body, does he want to waste that? Not everyone wants SOTA. as a RL analogy, they are still making new games for PS2 even though the fan boys drool over SR3

[Karaden]

As I said, it is one of those things of life that benefits outweigh the risks and costs.

Sure, his stuff still runs fine, but if any of his old school drones have any kind of wireless connection, they're going to get fried in about two seconds by any decent hacker. And if he disables the wireless, then he's going to only be able to control them by a direct jack, which would put him in the line of fire and thus not be very useful.

Really, he has three options.
1. Upgrade
2. Have a bunch of drones that can be hacked by any kid with a commlink
3. Be required to stand next to his drones whenever he is using them, which makes them mostly useless.

Now there may be an exception or two in the case of his personal vehicle, but once again he is only going to be able to jack into it directly, which means he's sitting in the car. While that isn't so bad, your basically looking at one increadablly minimal advantage which any SR4 person can have.(This is something you can do just fine in SR4 by having a datajack and turning off the wireless on your car)

As for the lost essence.. take it out, sell it (Parts and such are still going to be worthwhile) and fill the hole with some of the new age rigging stuff (Which there is believe it or not). Rigging isn't all that different now then it was, so he'd still have all that experience and know those tricks. Anything he could do with his old equipment he can do with the new stuff, and so much more.

[Snow_Fox]

As for the lost essence.. take it out, sell it

and the person to whom he sells it? We've just created another 3rd ed rigger. You've just made DLN's point

[Karaden]

and the person to whom he sells it? We've just created another 3rd ed rigger. You've just made DLN's point

read about five more words and you'll notice I said parts and materials, not for someone else to use. I didn't say he'd get good value from it.

[hermit]

You're all forgetting that the 3rd Ed VCR effectively included boosted reflexes in it's rating, effective solely in VR, and a skill boost based on the VCR's level. That's one hell of an advantage, especially in the light of 5 possible IP for hackers.

I suppose you could emulate this more or less with a st of cybersuites.

A quick idea:

Vehicle Control Rig level 1: VCR, Sim Module, Reaction booster 1, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 1 Rigger nanites (total: 1,17 essence)
Vehicle Control Rig level 2: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 2, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 2 Rigger nanites (total: 1,44 Essence)
Vehicle Control Rig level 3: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 3, Simsense Booster, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 3 Rigger nanites (total: 2,16 Essence)

Now, granted, the essence cost is way off, but at least, you get somewhat comparable boni and initiative out of this. Also, if you're playing with a GM who likes his matrix, you might consider clustering the suite components by default and upping their matrix ratings. Wireless removed is, of course, a nescessity, as is linkage to the datajack implant, if only for that SR3 feel. Also, you could, of course, sue that cluster as an internal commlink (which would requitre it to be wireless enabled, and have it's ratings pushed to 6, and a cryptosense module, a simsense accelerator and a response booster added).

Then again, wireless enabled cyberware is only a measure of how stuopid you are and serves no purpose other than screwing it's owner over, really, so I wouldn't have any save for commlinks anyway.

[Starmage21]

Then again, wireless enabled cyberware is only a measure of how stuopid you are and serves no purpose other than screwing it's owner over, really, so I wouldn't have any save for commlinks anyway.

I look at it as more of a fluff function. Shadowrunners will have theirs disabled by default, but average joe cyberware lover might need those wireless connections for diagnostics and such.

Even shadowrunners could make use of that by using DNI and wired connections to an implanted commlink. If you wanted your local cyberdoc to look at the diagnostic utilities, you could skinlink it to an external commlink or broadcast that information wirelessly from your implant commlink.

[Ryu]

A quick idea:

Vehicle Control Rig level 1: VCR, Sim Module, Reaction booster 1, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 1 Rigger nanites (total: 1,17 essence)
Vehicle Control Rig level 2: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 2, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 2 Rigger nanites (total: 1,44 Essence)
Vehicle Control Rig level 3: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 3, Simsense Booster, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 3 Rigger nanites (total: 2,16 Essence)

I´d be like, totally grateful if you would add the prices to those suites (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) . Please?

(Those are SOTA. Assume that old-school paid much more essence for old-tech versions)

[hermit]

Point about SOTA.

VCR 1: CR, Sim Module, Reaction booster 1, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 1 Rigger nanites (total: 1,575 essence, costs 37.000 Nuyen)

VCR 2: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 2, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 2 Rigger nanites (total: 1,845 Essence, costs 55000 Nuyen)

VCR 3: VCR, Sim Module (hot), Reaction Booster 3, Simsense Booster, Nanohive (1) supporting a colony of level 3 Rigger nanites (total: 2,565 Essence, costs 135000 Nuyen)

All Raction Enhancers have a trigger that ONLY activates when they're in VR. This trigger is hardwired and cannot be triggered otherwise, so it's worth nothing in the flesh.

I had to add the nanites to get that skill bonus, however, since even Shadowtech mentiones nanites as parts of neurocyber, I guess that should be okay. Also, the costs rising doesn't quite go along with 3rd's VCRs, but there you go ...

The boni the VCRs suites offer:

- one less TH on all vehicle tests
- +2 on initiative while jumped in
- +(level) on all vehicle tests
- + (level) reaction

This is fairly close to what the original VCRs felt like. We have a maximum 2 IP with a VCR 1, 3 with a VCR 2 and 4 with a VCR 4. You can add 6 initiative and an IP easily with a decent commlink, but that's progress for you, I guess.

Also, new essence ratings, because I remembered wrongly and took 3rd's nanostabilisation instead of 4th's for essence ratings.

Any comments, suggestions and corrections (it's late, I might well have miscalculated) are welcome!

[Ryu]

Thank you! You are missing the base-VCR bonus of +2 dice while jumped in.

[Not of this Worl...]

In short, SR4 doesn't handle this well.

Stick with SR3 and be happier. If you like wireless you got all the rules in Matrix and Rigger books to just change the setting and make it more omnipresent.

[TonkaTuff]

I'm not quite seeing why the old-tech rigging systems are supposed to be so vulnerable to the commlink hacker, anyway. Rigging networks were among the most secure data-transmission systems available, pre-Crash, and any rigger worth his salt (or who's player/GM had the rigger book) in the old days had to know as much about wireless networking and electronic warfare as he did about driving. Giving him Hardware and Electronics Warfare at equivalent levels with a Spec (Old Tech) bonus. And they're using hardware and broadcasting protocols that most of your post-crash hackers probably don't have ready access to (after all, who expects to have to deal with an old-school rigger in this day and age?).

Grandpa Rigger is broadcasting on three discrete transmission channels, simultaneously, which means Hacker Jr. is going to be stuck attacking one at a time. And each one only accesses a particular part of Grandpa's RC deck, limiting the possible methods of attack and forcing a re-intercept if Hacker wants to change tactics. And once he does get in, he's got to fight on an unfamiliar battlefield (being limited to the capabilities of the deck) that Grandpa knows like the back of his hand. The hacker can try brute-forcing it by flooding the airwaves. But that also limits his own abilities, and many riggers have hardware and deck plug-ins designed specifically to break through physical RF interference.

The largest drawback would probably be that he wouldn't be as flexible as a 4th ed Hacker-Rigger, because their expertise was, by necessity, so extremely focused. Plus, when not actively in use, the older drones are slightly more vulnerable to outside interference due to their lack of autonomous data-security. Though the protocol does require that ownership be hardwired into the drone's firmware and they're expecting data on all three of those channels - so you have to do a lot of cracking and spoofing to convince the drone that you're its owner. And there's definitely no such thing as a 'hidden' rigger network - that thing's going to stand out like a beacon because it's putting out so much RF energy - it may even cause interference with the lower-powered Wi-Mat hardware in the area.

[hermit]

On converting drones:

I'd consider all old-tech drones to operate with strong encryption of the encrypt module's rating worth of hours, and running an encrypt program of half the module's level (optimised to run on the drone with no degradation). Furthermore, all traffic would be equally encrypted. All drones have an agent of autopilot level running them; all autosofts run on their level. Robotic pilot and their pools are simulated by respective autosofts (adaptability ect). All old-tech drones take three subscription slots and can only subscribe to old-tech RCDs.

[Starmage21]

I'm not quite seeing why the old-tech rigging systems are supposed to be so vulnerable to the commlink hacker, anyway. Rigging networks were among the most secure data-transmission systems available, pre-Crash, and any rigger worth his salt (or who's player/GM had the rigger book) in the old days had to know as much about wireless networking and electronic warfare as he did about driving. Giving him Hardware and Electronics Warfare at equivalent levels with a Spec (Old Tech) bonus. And they're using hardware and broadcasting protocols that most of your post-crash hackers probably don't have ready access to (after all, who expects to have to deal with an old-school rigger in this day and age?).

Grandpa Rigger is broadcasting on three discrete transmission channels, simultaneously, which means Hacker Jr. is going to be stuck attacking one at a time. And each one only accesses a particular part of Grandpa's RC deck, limiting the possible methods of attack and forcing a re-intercept if Hacker wants to change tactics. And once he does get in, he's got to fight on an unfamiliar battlefield (being limited to the capabilities of the deck) that Grandpa knows like the back of his hand. The hacker can try brute-forcing it by flooding the airwaves. But that also limits his own abilities, and many riggers have hardware and deck plug-ins designed specifically to break through physical RF interference.

The largest drawback would probably be that he wouldn't be as flexible as a 4th ed Hacker-Rigger, because their expertise was, by necessity, so extremely focused. Plus, when not actively in use, the older drones are slightly more vulnerable to outside interference due to their lack of autonomous data-security. Though the protocol does require that ownership be hardwired into the drone's firmware and they're expecting data on all three of those channels - so you have to do a lot of cracking and spoofing to convince the drone that you're its owner. And there's definitely no such thing as a 'hidden' rigger network - that thing's going to stand out like a beacon because it's putting out so much RF energy - it may even cause interference with the lower-powered Wi-Mat hardware in the area.

Most people assume the same kind of tech-creep occurs in shadowrun that occurs in the real world. After 8 years, a proprietary data protocol that wouldve been used in standard VCRs and/or wireless cyberdecks used for drone/vehicle control are going to be not only unsupported, but any gapingly large holes in security are going to be both widely known, and not(probobly built right into any professionally usable exploit-class program).

[Ryu]

I totally agree with old-tech systems being worthless for security reasons. Outdated protocols can be emulated with ease at least as long as you have access to the wireless matrix. Massive increases in processing power (and, as it stands now, mathematical breakthroughs) make old-tech encryption useless.

And a wireless standard that is a mere five years old, but was used for every single drone, should be on the standard lists of things Exploit can deal with. So you can rescue the old-school VCR if you like (by rebuilding it and increasing essence cost for fluff reasons), but you are not entitled in any way to stand on better grounds because of outdated tech. That runs counter to the whole gameworld. The encrypt module should be worthless, or anyone would do it.

[Daddy's Litt...]

I agree with Tinkatuff about riggers. Heck I started the thread so I had better. The old rigger vehicals were hard wired. They are not vulnerable to hacking. But I agree old drones would need and upgrade to their security since they were already wireless.

[Ryu]

Hmm. Old drones would just get a new response chip and a software upgrade, riggers have always upgraded their vehicles. The question is how you can most easily fill the gap in character development that comes with the time jump. NPC or PC, both have to deal with a very different world.

I´d say that drone riggers would embrace it. New month - new toy. Vehicle riggers could afford to opt-out (fear-mongers), or adapt and become drone riggers. All who use drones would have an incentive to learn hacking, if just in order to keep their own network secure. Given the kind of money some of those old-timers must have, upgrading in a time of massive cyberware price decreases would be almost a given.

(BTW, actual character rebuilds should be MUCH easier using the karma-build system from RC than using BP.)

[Isath]

The ratings that such tech has, are relative ones - they only simulate a balance between things. So "hightech" that is 5 or more years old, will not bring the same relative advantages as it once did. With that given, I would have the rigger that does not want to upgrade, face some serious difficulties with maintenance, as they settle for dead-end-tech. They would not get the same boni as they did, when their stuff was hot. When I look at one of my old computers, I see models, that where quite hot a century or 6 years ago maybe. They still work to this day, some of them handle themselfs very well, but they are more than slow compared to the new stuff.

It's sad, but it also is the way things go.