Some help with various Matrix thingies ..., Stuff that just makes me go HUH? Options

[Nephyte]

There's some things about the Matrix that I discovered tonight that make me just go HUH? Then there's some questions for things I don't understand.


A) Security Deckers. Looking at the Lone Star security Sheaf in Target: Matrix I believe you encounter 4!! Security Deckers before a system kicks to Active Alert and brings a 5th Sec. Decker.

Now, I have to assume that being a corporation that most of the security deckers protecting their systems would be located near each other. Wouldn't it be a bit obvious when Bobby gets smacked around in the Matrix and starts suffering dumpshock? Wouldn't you just kick the system to Active Alert right then, and flood it with Security Deckers to stop the invader in his tracks?

Shouldn't this concept apply to all times when a Security Decker shows up and gets beat? Or at least most situations?


B) Isn't Validate kinda a cheesy damned program? As far as I can tell, Log On to Host and then Validate an account. At least personal level, and most likely security. If you're really good, just Log On then Validate yourself a Super-User account.

I mean, with a Fairlight Excalibur and a couple level 10ish Progies, this is almost a garaunteed success whenever you try it against everything except the most Elite of Elite systems, and even those are still vulnerable (far more so then is comforting) to a Elite Decker for this type of intrusion. SuperUser access and Log out, Log back in on SuperUser and everything is at your disposal.

Yeah, I realize it's not like every player out there has a Fairlight Excalibur, and level 10 programs dancing about, but lets face it, that's every deckers goal.


C) Am I missing something or is there no difference between the various security color ratings other then Security Tally Acceleration? Oh, and the chance of paydata...

It seems wrong somehow, that a Green - 10/13/14/12//12/13 system is actually harder to hack then a Red - 8/12/11/11/13/12 system. You're just gonna have security on you faster is you get a tally in the red system, but the Green system is actually harder to break overall...


D) Semi-Related to Topic. Assuming I have 6 Computer skill, 9 Hacking Pool, and 1 Task Pool, how many dice can I roll maximum? Is it 12 or 13? (6 Computer + 6 Hacking/Task Pool or 6 Computer + 6 Hacking Pool + 1 Task Pool)




General Questions about the Matrix:

1) System Architecture. Can someone explain or give an example of a multi-tiered system and how it would be handled from a hacking point of view. What I mean here is say you need to log onto Host A (Acme Corp PLTG), and from there move to it's security Host (Host B), and then once there, you can visit the Administration or R&D nodes (Hosts C & D). Are systems set up like this ever and if so how is it handled? Do you just Log On to Host A, Log On to Host B, then Log On to Host D if you wanna hit the R&D Host?

Is there any steps in between?


2) Are you limited to a Novatech Hyperdeck - 6 at the start of the game or a Renraku Kraftwerk - 8? I know it's typically rating 6 for stuff to start, but I thought I read somewhere that Cyberdecks were the exception and the Renraku board was available at the start.


3) Is there a limit other then Active Memory on the size of a program I can run?


4) Assuming you have SuperUser (Root) Access to a system and a security decker comes along does the SuperUser Access give you any camoflauge? Obviously I imagine if I delved into the rules I'd find out there's a way for a SuperUser to invalidate the Security Deckers accout or something, but moving beyond that. Would the Security Decker recognize me as an intruder because my persona is so different from Corp standard, or am I reading to much into Icon recognition?

Further, I believe I read somewhere that your persona's sharpness is directly related to your MPCP. The Higher you MPCP the more distinct and the sharper an image your Icon is. Wouldn't this be an instant beacon for any law enforcement/security type to recognize a user whose *probably* accessing their system or a public system with an illegal deck?


5) Further on the above point, don't Sec. Deckers "patrol" their systems while on duty? I'd assume that any fairly decent sized corp would have a few of these people at least on duty at any given time. What are they doing while on duty? Reading the paper and drinking coffee waiting for a system alert? Or are they actively watching the systems while jacked into the matrix?




I think that's it for now. I'm making the excuse now, that I'm a matrix noob for the most part, and woefully out of practice when it comes to my rules-lawyering =/

[Pistons]

[TinkerGnome]

Assorted responses:

A) Systems are big and deckers are often doing a lot of stuff. If you get into combat with one and he gets away or uses a system command to call for help, then you're probably going to get more than one.

B) Superuser accounts are extreemly hard to validate for anyone except the truely well equipped. At a certain point, they're child's play on most systems, but that's just the way it works.

C) What Pistons said, plus the initiative of IC and the TNs for cybercombat are all based off of host color.

D) You can roll 12. You can't add more dice from all pools than your base skill. If you had two relevant pools with 30 dice in them, you can still only add your base skill rating in pool dice to any roll.

1) There's some topography in the main book for host connections. You can also check out matrix tricks in Matrix (such as chokepoints, vanishing SANs, etc).

2) The general limit is the CMT avatar. The issue is whether or not MPCP is a rating which falls under the rating 6 cap. The avatar has MPCP-7, and is avail 8 or less. The Kraftwerks is right out since it's got a higher avail.

3) Nope.

4) Your icon rating depends on your... icon rating. Check out Matrix. It's basicly a chip you slot into your deck. You can always change them between runs, etc.

5) Security deckers are actively patroling, but hosts can be huge. The reliability of a patrolling decker finding intruders is so low that it's not listed.

[Dashifen]

[NetJacker]

What´s the damage code for killjoy and black hammer utilities?
SR3 mentions only the dmg for the IC, can anybody explain how this works and the tests to be made?? :|

[Pistons]

[Madda_Gaska]

Another way to look at it:
You are sending the black hammer 'message' to their icon through the host that you are mutually on. Therefore, it is the ability of the host to dish out obscene levels of simsense that judges that damage level.

Of course, there could easily be seen to be problems there, but it works after a fashion.

Two cents on the security decker question too:
I don't know about anyone else here, but if I was just wandering around the same host, keeping an eye out for deckers, I'd probably get bored stiff. Consider: it could well be a 9 to 5. One could not keep concentration for that long.
Therefore I'd think it would be more likely that there would be some online at any one time (as well as some off- soykaf, soygarretes, etc), and many of them (if not all) at any given moment would not be on the host, but would rather be on chat hosts (which include message boards), news hosts, game hosts, or whatever else their company might allow. This would basically mean that, in the event of a trigger that alerts a decker, they get paged and immediately (if they like their job) drop back onto the host and start checking up on what is going on.
Of course, on a grid they have that many more deckers, so there is likely to be one on, but they aren't likely to be too actively looking for people to persecute (unless they are in a bad mood and have handed their notice), just keeping an eye out for actual attempts to damage the grid.
That's just my thoughts on that though.

[Nephyte]

A) Regarding my statements about Security Deckers.

Assuming the Sec. Sheaf follows as such. (Lone Star Sec. Sheaf)

3 - Probe 10
7 - Equal Security Decker
12 - Trace 10
15 - Equal Security Decker
18 - Scout 10
22 - Passive Alert, Security Decker (1D6 1-5 Equal, 6 Superior)
27 - Contruct 8 (Sparky 8, Blaster 8)
30 - Security Decker (1D6 1-4 Equal, 5-6 Superior)
34 - Non-Lethal Black IC 10
39 - Active Alert, Security Decker (1D6 1-3 Equal, 4-5 Superior, 6 Superhuman)


Ok, so at some point you're probably going to be engaging a security decker in combat there, and we'll assume you somehow manage to do it without raising your security tally beyond 11. Now you whoop his arse because you are pretty good, and he suffers dumpshock from being dropped. Now, Lone Star is a Red - 8 System. So the Sec Decker is taking 8D stun damage from dump shock, which is more then likely going to knock him unconcious unless he's really lucky.

Now, I'm just saying, the security sheaf seems silly to me in that, if a Sec. Decker is getting knocked unconcious responding to a security tally you would immediately put the system on High Alert and Flood it with available resources. At least, that's what I would do anyways.


B) Super User accounts just seem like gravy to me :P I can see why they're in the game as it add's an aspect of what a Decker would want to do in a system. Just, they're a lil to easy to accomplish in my opinion. (Me and a friend were running various matrix runs last night so I could brush up on my Matrix skills, and he could see what playing a decker was like in 3E).

With a starting character (We've always allowed Renraku Kraftwerk-8's to be allowed at the start of the game. It's just something that happened a long time ago and has never been changed >,<) he managed to successfully give himself SuperUser access to Lone Star's system 3 of 5 tries without a problem, and the other two times he got there but with passive alerts activated, and I really didn't know what to do in such a situation yet.

The best part of a SuperUser account is the fact you can automatically create new SuperUser accounts! Now that's gravy.

C) That makes sense. Just ingrained into my brain that a Red System should be harder to hack just on pure rolling then a green system should ever be. That being said, I definitely understand a Red System is still harder, they've just changed the particular way of it being harder.

D) I'm going with the person who said 12 total dice =)

[Nephyte]

1) Does anyone have any examples of hosts they can provide. I'm still learning this whole thing, and while I've seen some decent examples, I'd like to see even more system designs.

New!6) On page 115 of Matrix there's a chart for creating Security Sheafs on the fly, and you are supposed to roll 1D6 for the Alert Table. This table allows for results higher then 6 and can go up to 10. However, I can find no modifiers for this table. Is this a case of rerolling 6's? Seems like if that's the case that it's far to easy to hit the 8+ options on the table.

New!7) If I were say uing a Novatech Hyperdeck - 6 and wanted to upgrade it's Active Memory, and Storage Memory where exactly would I look to find the costs? I've been using 7.5 and 6 :nuyen: respectively for these (pg. 67 Matrix) but I'm not sure if those are the correct values to use.

[TinkerGnome]

6) For random generation, you rarely if ever use exploding 6s. For that table, you add the number of trigger steps already passed to a straight 1d6 roll. So the first trigger step is a 1d6, the second is 1d6+1, and the fifth is 1d6+5. This applies to steps on the same alert level. So when you flip into a different alert mode, you reset the count. (See Generating Security Sheaves on p112)

7) You're looking for Matrix p 56 and p 60. The costs for parts are 1.5 per MP and an OMC at 2x the size for active memory and .5 per MP and an OMC at the size of the storage memory. OMCs have been errataed to .5 :nuyen: per MP, so that gives costs of:

Active: 2.5 :nuyen: per MP
Storage: 1 :nuyen: per MP

[Nephyte]

@TinkerGnome


Aren't those the costs for self cooking new Active and Storage Memory? Taking the parts from scratch and doing all the coding/cooking neccassary yourself to make them Active and Storage Memory?


I'm talking about taking pre-made Memory and slotting it into your machine to upgrade it.

Or do I have to cook entirely new chips if I want an upgraded memory? (Or buy entirely new chips)

[Pistons]

[TinkerGnome]

Active and storage memory have neither coding or cooking attached. You just buy an OMC and some of the parts to connect it and then wire it in. It's a computer B/R (4) test if I remember correctly.. not much point in paying someone to do it.

[NetJacker]

[/QUOTE]

Now Pistons here helped me but i guess once more the rules gives us freedom to do what we want, since the area of my question is certainly uncovered.

I guess i´ll use a house rule for the black hammer and killjoy utilities where you have to buy each utility by its damage code (just like the attack utility). I´ll have to change the multipliers and costs and everything but whatever.

or i could make it always do M damage or something.

[mfb]

incidentally, task pool is not seperate from hacking pool when you're decking. task pool is added directly to hacking pool--i'd give a page reference if i had my books; it's in Matrix, i believe, in the section on hacking pool towards the front (first 30 pages or so). ergo, with 6 skill, 6+ hp, and 1+ task pool, you can roll a max of 12 dice.

[tjn]

[Kagetenshi]

At some point I'm going to have to sit down and hack out some houserules for Validation. To me, it seems like it should be a multi-part process that's decently, but not horribly, involved; there should be a legitimate weighing of the advantages to getting an account as opposed to doing things the old-fashioned way, rather than the current "almost never worth it not to" system.

~J

[hobgoblin]

one thing one must remeber about the LS host is that its most likely only the local office host, its not the glacier host that contains the links to fbi and other law enforcements agencys and the archive of known criminals, that suckers i most likely hidden behind some layers of chokepoints, and physicaly put into a locked bombshelter in their head office...

what you get access to hitting the LS host given er shift times and so on, maybe the desksargents collection of metahuman porn in his personal folder or something. getting superuser on this system isnt realy of any value.

getting a superuser account is only of value if your goingto take total control of the host. most of the time your only after some files or slaves, and then you most likely want a personal account inside the group that have access to those files. no need to go after the big guns if you dont have to, thats whats keep a good decker of the radar of the corps and the law.

lets say your after some research papers, if the host is online (bad idea!) you go in, grab a user account for the files you want and then grab the files without getting a opposed test :)

if your after some camera slaves then most likely they are under a normal user account but with a passkey requirement (the guard have to physicaly key in to get access to the feeds). why give a security account to a person that dont have anything to do with the internal security of the host? most likley any new user account that is created to have access to the camera feeds automaticly gets a requirement for a passkey, and the only way to change that is to go security or most likey superuser (you have to edit the security defaults of the host). but if you can steal or copy a key then you good to go :)

sure a newbie decker will go for superuser acces (just like most script kiddies shout about how many systmes they have rooted) but a person that have been around the biz for some time knows the value of discression. if they see a faked user account then maybe they will pass it of as a screwup by someone setting up a account for a new worker while a new superuser will raise nine kinds of hell if found as then the entire system is compromised and most likely a lengthy rebuild/audit will be done to see what the account have been used for and to make sure that any holes are sealed.

basicly its the same as not bringing a panther cannon to a downtown johnson meeting. right tools for the job...

[Kagetenshi]

The +8 or so to the TN for trying for SU handles the "right tool for the right job" aspect just fine. People won't grab them if they don't need them, because they probably won't get them anyway.

~J