4e Hacking: Cyberwarfare, Looking for advice from veterans Options

[FuelDrop]

Working on some stuff for my 4e hacker character. My primary focus has been on maxing out Stealth and Exploit/Spoofing, relying on avoiding fights and cleaning up all trace of my presence rather than getting into cyber fights, but it's pretty inevitable that I'm going to end up in a matrix fight eventually.

My question for more veteran hackers is: what programs should I focus on and avoid, and what upgrades should I prioritize?

At present my first program loaded is Attack, since that works on IC, Spiders, and Technomancers, with my Black Hammer and Blackout being for if I know that I'll be facing living opponents. Would I be better off opening with one of the others, or maybe Nuke (which seems good for knocking out weak hostiles quickly)? Disarm is also not a terrible option I suppose.

What upgrades should I prioritize for combat programs? Area, Targeting, Armor Piercing, and Rust all seem like good options but obviously the ever scaling availability means that putting them all on a single program is hard. What's my best return on investment early on?

[Sengir]

I'd say don't try to be too clever, especially when only doing combat as a side job. Crash and Disarm are in most cases just trading one of your CAs for one of the target's CAs, unless you have more IPs than the target that's just running down the clock -- not exactly what you as the intruder are aiming for. In most cases, the simple Attack is the safest solution, although Nuke is also nice.

As for program options, Ergonomic and Optimization are essentially free lunch, Armor Piercing 3 costs the same as Targeting (since unrated options are calculated as R3), and if you can fit it Area is obviously helpful.

[FuelDrop]

I'd say don't try to be too clever, especially when only doing combat as a side job. Crash and Disarm are in most cases just trading one of your CAs for one of the target's CAs, unless you have more IPs than the target that's just running down the clock -- not exactly what you as the intruder are aiming for. In most cases, the simple Attack is the safest solution, although Nuke is also nice.

As for program options, Ergonomic and Optimization are essentially free lunch, Armor Piercing 3 costs the same as Targeting (since unrated options are calculated as R3), and if you can fit it Area is obviously helpful.

Good advice. I have specialized cybercombat for anti-IC combat, is that a good choice?

[Sengir]

Good advice. I have specialized cybercombat for anti-IC combat, is that a good choice?

A clear and definite "depends", if you GM prefers spiders over IC then it's obviously not a very useful choice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Iduno]

I'm not sure. The decker-specific mission I ran, the players deleted the computer's memory with a grenade. That decker did the stealth portion of the stealth/sword adept's mission using edge, and I don't even remember what happened with the mage's mission.