Lurker's SR5 Review, Started to Really Digest the Book, Here are thoughts Options

[hermit]

I'm not sure what you mean - how can a hacker hack an ivory-tower-mode signal 0 PAN?

By routing his signal through the flower pot, color-change wallpaper or gang RFID in a meter radius round your character. Makes hacking a mobile target harder, but everyone has to stop moving eventually.

[Irion]

Huh? It's a nearly retrotech piece of technology now, with the capabilities of modern sights with embedded targeting computers. The only handwavy part is how it syncs the targeting reticule on your field of vision.

Thats nice to say the only. It is also the only function this thing has....And really we are talking hard physics there. The whole matrix is some esoteric concept to begin with. So it now improves gear connected to it. Well, considering the matrix rules, thats not espacially silly....

[Mäx]

Honestly I do love the fact you are bashing the new rules taking smartlink as an example. The SR technology which should be inferior to using iron sights to begin with.
It is (since like ever) one of those technologies which can't work under no circumstances, if physical laws apply.

What the frak are you trying to say.

[Werewindlefr]

By routing his signal through the flower pot, color-change wallpaper or gang RFID in a meter radius round your character. Makes hacking a mobile target harder, but everyone has to stop moving eventually.

You need to know that the fact that the character is withing a meter of this or that meshed device, which is itself quite difficult if you don't have a visual and the character isn't on the matrix.

[hermit]

You need to know that the fact that the character is withing a meter of this or that meshed device, which is itself quite difficult if you don't have a visual and the character isn't on the matrix.

Getting a visual in sR4 is pretty much a no-brainer, the core book says so itself. Sure, it is harder than hacking someone who has 300 live feeds going and a firewall of 1, but if you want to eliminate the threat of yourself being hacked, skinlink, not signal 0, is the way to go.

And hopefully it will do the same for SR5.

What makes you think there even will be SkinLink in SR5?

[Tzeentch]

Thats nice to say the only. It is also the only function this thing has....And really we are talking hard physics there.

? I'm a bit hard pressed to take the bolded seriously. Smartlinks seems like a pretty straightforward system to explain, if there was any need to. Optical pattern matching is a thing even if you couldn't track the position of the gun relative to the users eyes.

The Matrix is a thinly disguised astral realm, yes. That's been the case since .... William Gibson actually.

[cndblank]

The other think to remember about wireless connections is what happens as soon as the guns come out?

At least with my players, the jammers get turned on to max.

All of a sudden all the wireless connects go on the fritz!

And it pretty much puts the decker right back to where he was in edition 1.

The geeky guy who is a lousy shot and carries a deck.

[Werewindlefr]

but if you want to eliminate the threat of yourself being hacked, skinlink, not signal 0, is the way to go.

I know, I just hate skinlink on the account of being applied phlebotinum, so I prefer to houserule it into oblivion.
In SR4, there isn't a lot of gear that needs wireless to function anyway - smartlinks can use induction pads. As for the rest, hacking an ivory-towered signal 0 PAN is a somewhat more challenging in a combat situation. If SR5 allowed you to set your wireless in low signal ivory-tower mode, I would be a lot more satisfied than with the current situation.

[hermit]

smartlinks can use induction pads.

Which, incidentally, are what skinlink is.

[cndblank]

You know the weird thing about smart links in SR5 is they have them ass back wards.


They should add +2 dice if no wireless and and +2 to the limit if there is wireless.

By the fluff, they make it easier for anyone to hit a target.
Point at the target and when the dot lines up mentally give the fire command.

All the range finding and other stuff that comes from a wireless smart link would allow a pro to be more precise/accurate.

[Werewindlefr]

Which, incidentally, are what skinlink is.

Maybe I'm mistaken - I had the feeling induction pad was a real piece of hardware (cyberware, even) that acted as a receiver for Smartlink data and then transmited it via wire to the cybereye/headware.
Regardless, skinlink's "surface skin electric field" goes a bit too much into bullshit territory for my taste.

[kzt]

That starts to really stretch credulity given the timeframe that hacking attempts are made in Shadowrun, and the ease by which they can be conducted. A single hacker can just sit in a public area and grief a person every few seconds by bricking or disrupting their electronics and cyberware. The game obviously doesn't get into the full logical consequences of its mechanics, and everything is written under the assumption you are facing opponents at some level of cyberwarfare parity, but it should be kept in mind when writing the background details and shadow-comments for what is rather obvious inference from the rules.

All the people who actually understood the idea of second order effects were either fired or quit working for CGL.

[DWC]

The other think to remember about wireless connections is what happens as soon as the guns come out?

At least with my players, the jammers get turned on to max.

All of a sudden all the wireless connects go on the fritz!

And it pretty much puts the decker right back to where he was in edition 1.

The geeky guy who is a lousy shot and carries a deck.

Glad I'm not the only one who's a big fan of the rail-mounted directional jammer. That might have to become an area jammer going forward, though.

[DWC]

Which, incidentally, are what skinlink is.

No, it's not. An induction pad only communicates with another induction pad. A skinlink allows an external device to communicate with the user's brain via DNI using the body's electromagnetic field. Induction pads require one in your hand and one in the grip of your firearm. In the case of the skinlink, the second pad is your body.

[binarywraith]

WOW that is Soooo cyberpunk!

It makes perfect sense to play a cyberpunk game with no cyberware.

Because I don't need an edge.
I mean it is not like there is magic out there where someone can roast you by just looking at you, or summon a spirit to ruin your day, or can run on walls or break the laws of physics.

No reason what so ever.

I tell you the more powerful the magic gets, the more everyone else is going to be using cyberware just to stay in the game.

And they are going to set it up so that it can't be nerfed by a hacker.
Especially when most cyber ware was first developed for the military.

Yeah, except the part where cyberware isn't really keeping up with magic power wise, and has crippling and exploitable flaws that leave your half-million nuyen 'edge' at the mercy of every skript-kiddie wannabe console cowboy in the Barrens.

I, for one, welcome our new Mystic Adept overlords.

[Novocrane]

No, it's not. An induction pad only communicates with another induction pad. A skinlink allows an external device to communicate with the user's brain via DNI using the body's electromagnetic field. Induction pads require one in your hand and one in the grip of your firearm. In the case of the skinlink, the second pad is your body.

More like a cyber safety gun mod & cyberware / smartlink cyberware combo, really.

You need to know that the fact that the character is withing a meter of this or that meshed device, which is itself quite difficult if you don't have a visual and the character isn't on the matrix.

No, not really.

When a wireless device needs to pass information to another device in mutual Signal range, it simply sends the data. If the destination is not within this range, for example when you are in the UCAS and trying to speak to Mr. Johnson in Lisbon, the information travels from device to device in a process called routing.

When information is routed between devices, it is non-sequentially sliced into a number of pieces and sent to the recipient via multiple paths; this makes it almost impossible to intercept the traffic except within Signal range of the sender or the receiver, the only places the information is in one readable piece (Capture Wireless Signal, p. 229).

The routing functions of a device are handled by a separate component of hardware than the other functions of the device. This makes the routing process invisible to the user, and allows the device’s node to connect to the Matrix even when it is operating in Hidden mode (p. 223).

In summary, sending info to a hidden node is a matter of throwing the information out in random packets, and then letting mesh electronics do the rest.

[phlapjack77]

Signal rating 0 was good enough, no need for magical skinlinks.

Signal rating 0 was still pretty vulnerable: 3m range. How often is your character within 3m of SOMETHING that is wirelessly enabled? Unless they go into a deadzone, nearly all the time.

Not if you took the mesh network idea seriously.

Exactly

You need to know that the fact that the character is withing a meter of this or that meshed device, which is itself quite difficult if you don't have a visual and the character isn't on the matrix.

3 meters. ~10 feet. Almost always going to be within this distance of something that is a meshed device, since pretty much everything is a meshed device in the SR world.

[Werewindlefr]

In summary, sending info to a hidden node is a matter of throwing the information out in random packets, and then letting mesh electronics do the rest.

Ivory Tower isn't hidden, it's not connected to the matrix. You're not using the flower pot as a matrix relay, you're using it as a universal radio emitter. But since your target isn't on the matrix at all, you have to know where it is physically or you don't know what to use as a radio-emitter.

3 meters. ~10 feet. Almost always going to be within this distance of something that is a meshed device, since pretty much everything is a meshed device in the SR world.

Yes, but how do you know which one to use as your relay if you don't know where the target is because he isn't connected to the matrix at all?

[KarmaInferno]

No, it's not. An induction pad only communicates with another induction pad. A skinlink allows an external device to communicate with the user's brain via DNI using the body's electromagnetic field. Induction pads require one in your hand and one in the grip of your firearm. In the case of the skinlink, the second pad is your body.

Pretty much.

Skinlink is based off some real world experimentation to modulate the body's own electromagnetic field to deliver data. So you could have one data source in your left hand and a receiver in your right hand could communicate with it. It has some real plausibility but of course current progress it just beginning to tap the potential.

Induction pads generate their own modulated electromagnetic field to communicate across a small air gap with another induction pad. This is well known tech.

Ivory Tower isn't hidden, it's not connected to the matrix. You're not using the flower pot as a matrix relay, you're using it as a universal radio emitter. But since your target isn't on the matrix at all, you have to know where it is physically or you don't know what to use as a radio-emitter.
Yes, but how do you know which one to use as your relay if you don't know where the target is because he isn't connected to the matrix at all?

You don't have to know. Mesh networking means you throw the signal out into the Matrix and if the target is connected in some way it automatically gets there.

In short, if a zero-signal matrix device is within 3 meters of ANY other Matrix node, like a wireless-enabled flowerpot, it's on the matrix. Period.



-k

[Novocrane]

Ivory Tower isn't hidden, it's not connected to the matrix. You're not using the flower pot as a matrix relay, you're using it as a universal radio emitter. But since your target isn't on the matrix at all, you have to know where it is physically or you don't know what to use as a radio-emitter.

Then perhaps you should stop using personalised descriptions and stick to the conventions given in SR4 for the purposes of discussion. That would be active, passive, hidden and offline.

[Werewindlefr]

Then perhaps you should stop using personalised descriptions and stick to the conventions given in SR4 for the purposes of discussion. That would be active, passive, hidden and offline.

So it's impossible to use another wireless communication protocol between your devices and just block/ignore anything coming from the matrix? Everything wireless has to use stuff that the matrix can interpret?

[binarywraith]

So it's impossible to use another wireless communication protocol between your devices and just block/ignore anything coming from the matrix? Everything wireless has to use stuff that the matrix can interpret?

Yup. Technology A is Technology A.

SR's never gotten down to the idea of software incompatibility. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[DWC]

So it's impossible to use another wireless communication protocol between your devices and just block/ignore anything coming from the matrix? Everything wireless has to use stuff that the matrix can interpret?

Yep. The entire idea that criminals are functioning outside of the mechanisms of The Man, having skillfully subverted his own tech for their devious purposes is dead.

[Werewindlefr]

Then I admit I had a very wrong picture of how things were working. In my mind, a wireless device could work without ever communicating with the matrix and form a PAN with its own wireless protocol, unintelligible from a matrix standpoint. Which I think should seem like a relatively sound way of being much more secure against hacking.

[DWC]

Then I admit I had a very wrong picture of how things were working. In my mind, a wireless device could work without ever communicating with the matrix and form a PAN with its own wireless protocol, unintelligible from a matrix standpoint. Which I think should seem like a relatively sound way of being much more secure against hacking.

It would be a secure way against hacking. That's why it's not allowed. The game seems to have embraced the idea that if you find something that would completely stop something from being able to effect you, it is handwaved into not being effective.