am i wholly misreading pg 217 of SR3, or is the Locate Decker sys operation pretty much a lost cause? see, after you've completed the system operation part--rolling your decking skill vs Index minus your Scanner prog--you have to make a Sensor test with a TN equal to the target decker's Masking plus Sleaze. i mean, my otaku is pretty close to starting level; i haven't upped his Masking or Sleaze since i rolled him up. the TN to find him, using the Locate Decker operation, is 14. that's... that's insane. if i were in charge of the rules, i'd say the TN should be equal to the target decker's DF, with the additional caveat that every 2 succs on the system test (round down) lower the TN of the Sensor test by 1. but that's just me.

Sure...then every single NPC decker will nail an intruding decker. Decking would be laughable to even attempt then. The DF indicates that someone is in the system doing something they're not supposed to, not that this one user is doing something. Unless I'm misreading the decking rules, which is very possible.

The Abstruse One

hm. point. sure sucks for the guy who fails his initial sensor test to note the new icon.

get some ripper ice down on the decker fast and you will see the masking going nowhere. there are a 100 ways to skin a cat, most of them messy...

well, there's no real way in the rules to trigger IC on someone else. although... hm, maybe a modified Relocate Trace operation, where you can sic the trace on someone else? that wouldn't help you find a decker you can't currently see, though.

I've always played it as rolling vs DF. I mean if you're making a locate decker operation in the first place you're suspicious that someone's there. As far as I know the test isn't automatic, so either some one notices system anomoly or they have a deck who just sits in host and attempts to locate icons over and over again.

SR hacking is insanely stupid, but whatever.

one could allso be so means to say that probe attack help in locateing deckers (like painting a big neon bullseye on him will)...

as for the rippers, they can be placed in a normal secuirty sheaf (probably very low) specificaly targeting the maskeing chip. as no legitimate user will ever pack a masking chip (i hope, if not then its theyre own fault it got burned) and when triggerd will go after the decker like a mad bull trying to burn away the masking rateing.

to bad tar ice cant harm sleaze utils...

but i dont realy see the problem here, a decker is suppose to be hard to discover, thats what makes him a decker. ice will go after him no matter what...