For some task or another you probably need all the programs in the book, but what programs are really essential for a (non-technomancer!) hacker to be able to do something useful?


Which are the absolute must-have programs, any hacker should have?

Which programs are good to have, but not that important?

Which programs are not so important, and can be left out?


What's your assessment?

Bye
Thanee

analyze (perception tests), exploit (to log in), stealth (avoid detection).
thats the bare bones, to just get into a system. then you need browse, edit, and command to do your job, and probably decrypt and defuse for the good paydata.

Reality Filter. I cannot stress enough how useful it is. It either grants +1 to all your matrix actions (assuming you bought all your programs at rating 6), or it doubles the number of programs you have running.

Spoof - Control cameras, security monitors and drones.

I'd also like to stress the common programs are pretty much a must have. In fact I have it in my campaigns were the default OS has all the common programs at the System Default rating. (After all, what good is a default OS if it you can't DO anything with your commlink?)

This is great for non-gearheads, though isn't much of a cost saver is you upgrade the OS of your original comm.

Here's what I was thinking so far (with Response 5/Signal 5 Commlink):

System 6
Firewall 6
Analyze 6
Browse 6
Command 6
Edit 6
Encrypt 6
Reality Filter 6
Scan 6
Armor 3
Attack 3
Decrypt 3
Defuse 3
Exploit 6
Medic 3
Spoof 3
Stealth 6

The common-use programs are cheap, the hacking tools are the expensive ones, where I'm trying to get a decent selection without spending too much on them (not really a primary hacker).

Next in line are probably a Biofeedback Filter (just because it could potentially get pretty ugly otherwise, although I'm not entirely sure how Black Hammer and cold VR interact... can you get lethal damage then, or is the worst to happen, that you go unconscious and your commlink gets compromised (as if that wasn't bad enough LOL)), and improving the Spoof to 6, I think. In addition to that ECCM and Sniffer sound fairly useful for some applications. Track maybe, too.


@nick: I see... if you have a Rating 5 (Response) Commlink and Rating 6 System/Programs (or similar constellation), you get Response 6, and thus you can use your programs at Rating 6 instead of 5 now. Nice!


Thanks for the comments so far!

Bye
Thanee

Just get all your programs at Rating 6. It doesn't cost that much, and the headache of keeping track of what rating all of your programs are at isn't worth it.

Not much?

It's 27k alone just to improve the few listed with 3 to 6 there... that's over 10% of the maximum resources and adds up fast with 40-50k spent on that stuff already (including a good commlink). As I said, it's not a primary hacker, so much of the 250k resources are used up otherwise (cyber- and bioware mostly).

Bye
Thanee