Tag team decking, Is there a way? Options

[mintcar]

Is there any way to benefit from being two deckers in a team when taking on a tough host? I have a run planned that will be very harsh on the team´s lead decker. But they have a back up decker with some skill. How should they utilise this?

[Kagetenshi]

If you've both got high DFs, the answer is yes, as you can achieve different objectives simultaneously. If one of them has a low DF, though, they'll just make life harder on both of them.

~J

[mintcar]

Wouldn´t that only speed things up? Including the security tally?

I suppose you could use the second decker´s computer skill like a complementary skill (I think I remember rules for aiding skill tests somewere) if he was hitching. But is there nothing else?

[hobgoblin]

depending on you useing the matrix version of keeping tally or not. using matrix, going tag team is a nice way to take on a big host or pltg as you keep seperate tallys for diffrent people. but useing sr3 you keep one tally...

[Kagetenshi]

Actually, by strict canon what happens is that each person has their own tally until someone logs off, after which anyone logging on starts at the logged-off person's tally. It's unclear what happens if you have multiple people who log off, whether you start with the higher tally or both tallies added together.

~J

[hobgoblin]

by strict canon, what strict canon? there is nothing to indiacte in the matrix book that the tally rules for sr3 carry over. and i dont recall hearing about errata to that effect either...

[Kagetenshi]

There's nothing saying that they don't carry over, and nothing in Matrix contradicts SR3.

~J

[mintcar]

So they keep different tally´s, and most IC (eccept I suppose, stuff like scramble) triggered by one decker does not bother the other. So that makes it good to go tag, right? The only problem comes if the weakest link triggers alerts. But if the deckers are fairly matched in the DF department, the benefits outweigh that problem. That right?

[Kagetenshi]

Previous topic.

~J

[hobgoblin]

[mintcar]

Thanks Kage. Once again you save my day. If I made a top 10 list, I guess you´d have to be on it. :P

[mfb]

i've talked with ShadowFAQ about this one, but haven't gotten an answer on it. if you're running a decker-heavy campaign, i would strongly suggest houseruling the sec tal rules.

[Weredigo]

I don't see any reason it wouldn't work. Give the runt decker the task of fooling the security slaves while the crack decker goes for the paydata/CPU, also it wouldn't hurt for the runners to soak 1K :nuyen: or so to hire a bunch of newbie level deckers at a hundred a pop to just hit and harass the place from the outside.

Let the new guy fix things

Let the grey beard break things

Let the howling mass of littles distract . . . distractions always help

and Let the good times roll...

[fistandantilus4....]

The good side is that when all hell breaks loose, the sec deckers will most likely go to everyone making all the noise.

On the downside, the system would go on active alert, so any mistakes on the experienced deckers side would result in heavier consequences (read:Black IC). But as long as he can get by (a high enough DF), and the system doesn't go into shutdown, it could work.

The matrix equivelant of having a gang go nuts in the corp parking lot while the team slips in the back I guess.

[Kagetenshi]

[hobgoblin]

if the rules break brain and needs to be pieced together then they are badly worded at best and hopelessly broken at worst...

[Kagetenshi]

Badly worded, yes. Hopelessly broken, not in this case.

~J

[hobgoblin]

if you want to merge the rules in sr3 with the rules presented in matrix i think they are, as the rules in matrix at no time talk about the rules in sr3. this forces the gm into leaps of creative logic like what you present kagetenshi, and in my view it have no place in so a vital piece of the matrix system as the secuirty tally is.

it makes no logical sense that if a host tracks a seperate tally for every icon present, that a totaly diffrent icon that connects after a old one goes away should inherit the old ones tally. only reason i can ses for doing it that way is to avoid teams that continualy log in and out to reset tallys. but if that is the idea, why was it not clearly stated in the rules? allso, its not that hard to get around that idea. just have a team do staged logins. 2 logs in a first, then another logs in when one of them have gotten a bit of tally, repeat until either mission is done or running out of members (or if the time taken is long enough you can have allready existing tallys be zeroing out). yes it leads to the need for bigger teams but only slightly. and it makes for a bookeeping nightmare for the gm as he is supposed to keep the tally hidden from the deckers.

only way i can see your system work kagetenshi is if the tally is connected to host account, not icon. then one can state that if you log out of a account and someone logs into the same account some time later one gets the remianing tally. but then one have to track exactly what accounts are available and so on and the decker can then be changeing accounts constantly to try and eliminate tallys.

in either case, it forces the gm to make up rules more or less on the fly for a part of the system that is very important that works correctly the first time round. there must be a logic behind why a tally migrates from one icon to the other, if not then its just another case of :vegm: in my view...

[Kagetenshi]

Tally doesn't begin to reset until the entire host is clean.

~J

[hobgoblin]

and what tally do i get if 3-4 people have just logged out? the first that logged out or the one thats highest?

[Kagetenshi]

Either the highest or all of them added together, GM's interpretation.

~J

[hobgoblin]

hrmf, i went back to vr2.0 to see how what was the original idea for the tally. and it seems that the tally removal prosess described in sr3 was put on top of the existing vr2 rules to cover a hole (i cant find anything in vr2 that looks like its covering tallys after a person goes away, atleast not in any logical place).

then matrix comes along and wants to recreate the matrix from something that decker-only into a general access computer network. this gives us individual tallys, action for legitimate logins and the other stuff.

one question that comes to mind is what happens when i go from a LTG where i have a bit of tally into a PLTG where someone have just logged out with some tally. do my tally jump if the person that logged out had a higher tally then i had? if so, do i then trigger ice he have allready triggerd and defeated?

and what happens to the office-rat that logs on with a cyberterm? do he inherit my tally even tho he have a valid account? remeber that cyberterm didnt exist in sr3 rules and therefor those rules didnt have to take them into account. to the sr3 rules the only people that would be logging in and out would be deckers. with that in mind it makes sense for tallys to be pr host rather then pr icon in sr3.

but in matrix the office-rat with a term exist and therefor have to have rules that take this into account. why should a host be blasting its own users as an after effect of some decker messing around in there. and what happens to the sec decker that pops in right after one of the team deckers goes offline? do he inherit the tally and the ice left over by the decker that left?

[hobgoblin]

[Kagetenshi]

[hobgoblin]

right now im in no group, but if i end up in one in the near future im most likely the gm.

but why encurage a behavor of fucking the players over?