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> Being a half-assed Decker.
FuelDrop
post Mar 10 2014, 08:29 AM
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Okay, our group has just got permission to get some basic decking talent so I'm going to basically be a 'learn as you go' Decker for our team. My primary job will be to loop cameras and otherwise get security out of the way, so I'm thinking of pretty much focusing on the skills Computer, Hardware, and Hacking. My Logic is 4 ATM (probably not going to change soon but you never know, might win lotto or something) and it's unlikely I'll be exceeding skill 4 in these areas in the near future (heck, I'm not even going to have decking until I get a deck to start learning on). I plan on being almost exclusively an AR Decker so things should be interesting there, and I'm honestly unlikely to get past my starting Deck for a while.

Obviously there are a ton of holes in this build that are going to severely limit my options but it's what we have to work with so yeah. Any suggestions on what I should be looking into as far as favorite tactics, best programs and the like are concerned?
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Umidori
post Mar 10 2014, 08:33 AM
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This may sound a bit crazy, but if you're not going full blown dedicated decker and you're sticking to AR, I'd recommend just buying the gear and tricking out an Agent to do the hacks for you. Same level of competance, but you pay in cash instead of karma.

~Umi
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Smash
post Mar 10 2014, 08:49 AM
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QUOTE (Umidori @ Mar 10 2014, 07:33 PM) *
This may sound a bit crazy, but if you're not going full blown dedicated decker and you're sticking to AR, I'd recommend just buying the gear and tricking out an Agent to do the hacks for you. Same level of competance, but you pay in cash instead of karma.

~Umi


That's pretty good advice. I'd also suggest that if you are going to do it yourself and this if your deck is crappy then focus on the 2 stats that are going to keep you alive and out of trouble: Sleaze and Firewall. Keep Data Processing 3rd (unless you're doing some innocuous data searches between runs) and just write off Attack.

Virtual machine is good for a shitty deck because it might be the difference between running 1 program or 2 and you're probably going to run rather than fight if you get detected so the extra matrix damage isn't too much to worry about. I tend to just run Stealth and Encryption most of the time because these up your 2 most important stats by 1. Browse is handy again between runs. Edit may also help you out at times when editing camera feeds, etc so you don't have to change your setup but want more of a limit for data processing. Programs are cheap so just get them all anyway just in case.
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FuelDrop
post Mar 10 2014, 09:07 AM
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QUOTE (Umidori @ Mar 10 2014, 04:33 PM) *
This may sound a bit crazy, but if you're not going full blown dedicated decker and you're sticking to AR, I'd recommend just buying the gear and tricking out an Agent to do the hacks for you. Same level of competance, but you pay in cash instead of karma.

~Umi

In this game Karma is far easier to come by than cash so am going to pass on that one for now. Good advice that might come in later if more cash becomes available but until then Karma is what I have to throw around.
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MrGlee
post Mar 10 2014, 10:20 AM
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Decking in SR5 can be rough for people just getting into it. When you consider that running silent gives a -2 penalty(normally balanced out with VR's +2 bonus), you can be in a rough spot. Just by reading the numbers you have, you will be stuck at 6 dice if you don't want to be found with a single simple action.
Intuition and Logic are both super important for deckers. Finding stuff in the martix, rehiding after you have been marked, and to resist a lot of martix actions. Don't know Zero's stats, but just make sure neither are subpar stats for her.
I would strongly consider investing in Agents. While not martix monsters by any stretch of the word, they can reach a maximum of 12 dice on almost any test for 12k. If you can't, the Martix programs I would recommend are Sneak(+2 dice to resist Trace actions, and GOD/DemiGOD won't get your physical location if they converge on you), Baby Monitor(always know Overwatch Score). I suggest these in part because they are helpful to you and the GM(He won't have to track OS without keeping it hidden from you, so everyone can remind each other of the ever growing number), but with your lower dice pool, I think you will end up failing a lot more tests, which means more retries, which means more OS.
You are also going to want Electronic Warfare, as failing a Sleaze action will give you a mark, which will lead to you needing to erase the mark, then hide, and hiding uses Electronic Warfare.
And for sure get Virtual Machine, because you need at least two programs

EDIT: and I think my biggest piece of advice is, talk to your DM, because any spider worth paying for is gonna destroy you, since they need to be at least better than Agents to be worth it, so you want to make sure you aren't gonna be running into decked out Spiders or high rating programs every hacking mission, cause I am pretty sure there is nothing we can do to help with that..
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Lobo0705
post Mar 10 2014, 02:08 PM
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I would recommend making a decker character from scratch rather than make one on the fly, so to speak.

1) Given you saying that cash is hard to come by, I'm not sure how you are supposed to afford a deck in the first place - and any one that you can afford will be crap.

2) Running against a decent host (rating 5-6) means that their dicepools for most tests against you are Host Rating + Firewall, which for almost all hosts is the primary or at worst secondary stat. That means their dicepools will be 13-15 - and yours will be 4 (your Logic) + your skill - which is currently 0.

If your GM is willing to tone down the combat a bit, you may petition him to let him change some of your superfluous combat skills into decking skills.

Failing that, if you can't directly hack the cameras (i.e sneak up to them and physically jack into them), or directly hack a device that is connected to the same camera that the host is connected to, and thereby gain a mark on the host - then don't bother trying, because you aren't going to be able to do it.

Not trying to be a buzzkill - just giving you the realities of the way the rules work.





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Moirdryd
post Mar 10 2014, 02:46 PM
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Well the low end decks are only bad against Corporate Hosts or vs Dedicated Deckers. Against a non-matrix overwatched sensor and camera system even a basic deck an above average stat of 4 and a skill of 4 will probabley serve you okay as most cameras and sensors have a DR of 1 or 2 and odds are your looking at a DR 3-4 Commlink if they're slaved to anything at all.

So a basic deck, a couple of programs and 20 karma you can probabley get through most of the Vory security for the peripherals you're hitting.
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Lobo0705
post Mar 10 2014, 03:15 PM
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QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Mar 10 2014, 10:46 AM) *
Well the low end decks are only bad against Corporate Hosts or vs Dedicated Deckers. Against a non-matrix overwatched sensor and camera system even a basic deck an above average stat of 4 and a skill of 4 will probabley serve you okay as most cameras and sensors have a DR of 1 or 2 and odds are your looking at a DR 3-4 Commlink if they're slaved to anything at all.

So a basic deck, a couple of programs and 20 karma you can probabley get through most of the Vory security for the peripherals you're hitting.



Why would the Vory have a worse security system than lets say, a public library? (Which has a host rating of 3-4). That puts the host dice pools at at 9-11 dice - which means with 8 dice you are having a problem hacking them.
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Moirdryd
post Mar 10 2014, 03:47 PM
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Because its highly unlikely that the Vory wants the paper trail the Host creates and it's easier for the security system to go overlooked if it's not linked into a Host. Granted the Casino will quite possibley have a Host but again the Devices may not be slaved into it and there's a reason for it is internal Paranoia, putting everything on the Host grants access to people inside. For Corps that's fine, for Syndicates that's a risk I doubt they'd accept.

Plus there is also a reasonable suspension of disbelief to be had for the game to work, otherwise everything would be on rating 12 hosts at all times, because why not?
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Lobo0705
post Mar 10 2014, 04:28 PM
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QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Mar 10 2014, 10:47 AM) *
Because its highly unlikely that the Vory wants the paper trail the Host creates and it's easier for the security system to go overlooked if it's not linked into a Host. Granted the Casino will quite possibley have a Host but again the Devices may not be slaved into it and there's a reason for it is internal Paranoia, putting everything on the Host grants access to people inside. For Corps that's fine, for Syndicates that's a risk I doubt they'd accept.

Plus there is also a reasonable suspension of disbelief to be had for the game to work, otherwise everything would be on rating 12 hosts at all times, because why not?



I'm with you for some of the above - however I still think there would be a host - not a really high level one, but a rating 3-4 is not that high level.

One of the things I'm really looking forward to having from the Matrix supplement is exactly how much hosts cost, what is required to set them up, etc.

After all, you can have a rating 1 host for a personal site - i.e. somebody's house. How much exactly is this? 10K? 50K? 100K? Who sets it up? Is it registered anywhere, or are there "shadow hosts" that are not know about by the government (which I HAVE to believe there would be, and that is the type of host a criminal syndicate would be using)

However, price, more than anything, will help determine what is protected by what type of host (or if it even is protected by a host).

The reason not everything is protected by a rating 12 host is because the resource expenditure to protect it would be out of proportion to what was being protected - although for right now, we have to guess at the amount of resources actually spent on those Hosts.
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Sendaz
post Mar 10 2014, 04:49 PM
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Plus also consider, the Vory would realize no system is ever 100% secure so they might have a mid level system to keep out general nose poking, but as they are fair hands at data hunting and hacking themselves, they probably would invest a lot in trace programs, agents and similar so they can then find out who did it and send some bodies over to rearrange the decker physically.

Their reputation for retaliation would keep a lot of eager beavers from dipping into that pool.
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Critias
post Mar 10 2014, 05:14 PM
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Half-assing being a decker is fine, as long as your GM half-asses being the Matrix.
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FuelDrop
post Mar 10 2014, 05:33 PM
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It'll be interesting to see if it is even remotely possible to learn decking from the ground up, and let's be fair I'm not going to be half-assing it forever. But yeah, It'll be a heck of an experience playing a decker at the start of their career and working my way up from the most rank of amateur to a level that's fairly respectable (I do intend to get Cerebral Boosters and just keep pouring points in as I go as I'm good enough in my primary roles that I can effectively ignore progressing in them and still do my job as well as needed).
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DrZaius
post Mar 10 2014, 05:52 PM
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QUOTE (Critias @ Mar 10 2014, 12:14 PM) *
Half-assing being a decker is fine, as long as your GM half-asses being the Matrix.


This has been my experience as well. Having played a hacker in 1 game, and watching a player in another, hacking in SR5 is tough; even for a dedicated hacker. You're going to have trouble stealing WiFi at Stuffer Shack with a mediocre hacking talent, and the extra turns you will be spending trying to compensate will hamstring your character; literally. Trying to hack a daisy-chain of security cameras, my hacker character was literally unable to move with the rest of the team because he had to use all his actions from all hell breaking loose.

-DrZ
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Jack VII
post Mar 10 2014, 06:15 PM
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Your guy is a combat dude right now?

If you're easing into it, I think you need to focus on things that limit defenses. The biggest weakness in any Host seems to be slaved devices. If you can get access to just one slaved device that you can direct connect to, you may have a decent shot at hacking it (assuming it is considered unattended and using DRx2 to resist). If you can get a MARK on a device, you mark the Host and can enter it. At that point, you have direct connect to all of the devices slaved to the Host, so they shouldn't be any more challenging to hack than the first device (which hopefully isn't that challenging). Once you get that first MARK, you also don't have to stay connected to the initial device and can continue on with the team. Just make sure to either run silently in the Host or do a lot of Matrix Perception checks so that any IC that glances your way only registers a valid persona doing innocuous stuff. Your GM kind of has to work with you on this to some degree.

Another alternative is to primarily focus on defense in the early going. Since a lot of the defense a decker can provide is based on Firewall, just jack that up as high as you can and slave as many of your team's devices as you can to it.
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DrZaius
post Mar 10 2014, 06:41 PM
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QUOTE (Jack VII @ Mar 10 2014, 01:15 PM) *
Your guy is a combat dude right now?

If you're easing into it, I think you need to focus on things that limit defenses. The biggest weakness in any Host seems to be slaved devices. If you can get access to just one slaved device that you can direct connect to, you may have a decent shot at hacking it (assuming it is considered unattended and using DRx2 to resist). If you can get a MARK on a device, you mark the Host and can enter it. At that point, you have direct connect to all of the devices slaved to the Host, so they should be as challenging to hack as the first device (which hopefully isn't that challenging). Once you get that first MARK, you also don't have to stay connected to the initial device and can continue on with the team. Just make sure to either run silently in the Host or do a lot of Matrix Perception checks so that any IC that glances your way only registers a valid persona doing innocuous stuff. Your GM kind of has to work with you on this to some degree.

Another alternative is to primarily focus on defense in the early going. Since a lot of the defense a decker can provide is based on Firewall, just jack that up as high as you can and slave as many of your team's devices as you can to it.

It is also possible I (and my GM) were misreading the hacking rules when I was playing my guy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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Jack VII
post Mar 10 2014, 06:48 PM
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QUOTE (DrZaius @ Mar 10 2014, 01:41 PM) *
It is also possible I (and my GM) were misreading the hacking rules when I was playing my guy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

No, I think y'all were probably running it correctly. Looking at the numbers, hacking any Host that would likely be worth hacking is going to be somewhat tough for a chargen hacker. Also, given the vulnerability to Host hacking through direct connect devices, a lot of devices one might encounter on a run are probably wireless enabled but not slaved to the Host, possibly including ubiquitous stuff like light switches/HVAC controls/etc. If you're just going up against low DR devices, it shouldn't be too terribly tough.

@Fueldrop: For some advice, if your main focus is going to be dicking with things rather than hunting down paydata, you might want to consider taking a Device specialization between the 3rd and 4th rank of Hacking and maybe an Edit File specialization between the 3rd and 4th rank of Computer (more bang for the buck that way). Grab the Edit common program. This would allow you to keep your Data Processing attribute relatively low while still giving you room for successes when you need to loop camera feeds or whatever with the Edit File command.
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FuelDrop
post Mar 11 2014, 12:11 AM
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QUOTE (Jack VII @ Mar 11 2014, 02:48 AM) *
@Fueldrop: For some advice, if your main focus is going to be dicking with things rather than hunting down paydata, you might want to consider taking a Device specialization between the 3rd and 4th rank of Hacking and maybe an Edit File specialization between the 3rd and 4th rank of Computer (more bang for the buck that way). Grab the Edit common program. This would allow you to keep your Data Processing attribute relatively low while still giving you room for successes when you need to loop camera feeds or whatever with the Edit File command.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I'll probably go for rank 4 then specialize due to it taking 4 days to learn rank 4 compared to a month to specialize, but yeah that was my plan.
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Smash
post Mar 11 2014, 01:48 AM
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QUOTE (Critias @ Mar 11 2014, 04:14 AM) *
Half-assing being a decker is fine, as long as your GM half-asses being the Matrix.


But I'm using my whole ass (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)
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FuelDrop
post Mar 11 2014, 01:51 AM
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QUOTE (Smash @ Mar 11 2014, 09:48 AM) *
But I'm using my whole ass (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

While I, on the other hand, merely am an ass.

What? I couldn't resist a setup like that.
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Sendaz
post Mar 11 2014, 01:57 AM
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QUOTE (Smash @ Mar 10 2014, 09:48 PM) *
But I'm using my whole ass (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Great.... Now I have images of Ace Ventura Decking using his Ass.

Hope he warmed up those trodes first.......

Coming Soon:
Ace Venture 3: Assventures in the Digital Jungle
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MrGlee
post Mar 11 2014, 09:06 AM
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Oh, another thing I forgot to add, anytime you come across another decker as an enemy, take their deck. If it is better than ours, consider upgrading, otherwise sell it for tons of money(especially if you have hardware and can repair it). I normally don't consider looting an SR thing, but the cheapest deck is still more than most cars, and fits right into your pocket. Should help with any money problems you have getting a decent agent, or at least help with upgrading your deck if you get more skill with it
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Sendaz
post Mar 11 2014, 09:14 AM
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QUOTE (MrGlee @ Mar 11 2014, 05:06 AM) *
Oh, another thing I forgot to add, anytime you come across another decker as an enemy, take their deck. If it is better than ours, consider upgrading, otherwise sell it for tons of money(especially if you have hardware and can repair it). I normally don't consider looting an SR thing, but the cheapest deck is still more than most cars, and fits right into your pocket. Should help with any money problems you have getting a decent agent, or at least help with upgrading your deck if you get more skill with it

And so the Highlander Deck evolved, a cobbled together overclocking Frankenstein of a Deck, adding on the parts from the decks taken off the fallen foes and with them their processing power.


Because in the end there can be only one (Deck)!

Would be particularly awesome if it had some kind of nanite tech or wires that shot out and integrated the captured deck, like Cartman's Trapper Keeper. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
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RHat
post Mar 11 2014, 11:26 AM
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QUOTE (MrGlee @ Mar 11 2014, 03:06 AM) *
Oh, another thing I forgot to add, anytime you come across another decker as an enemy, take their deck. If it is better than ours, consider upgrading, otherwise sell it for tons of money(especially if you have hardware and can repair it). I normally don't consider looting an SR thing, but the cheapest deck is still more than most cars, and fits right into your pocket. Should help with any money problems you have getting a decent agent, or at least help with upgrading your deck if you get more skill with it


There's tracking issues with that, especially given the amount of time it takes to change ownership...
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