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Abbandon
Oh man my brain is about to explode from trying to read(and understand) the sr4 rules on the matrix and reading a couple of the posts here on dumpshock.

My question is...when you are going wireless what is the archetecture of the nodes??

I mean in sr3 you had sans, nodes, slaves, cpu's and they were all interconnected. You may have had to go through 10 nodes before you reached a datastore or cpu.

In sr4 i only hear about and read about nodes. Are there still slaves, nodes, stores, cpu's ?? It seemed like there are just nodes and you just search for the single node you want and try to mess with it. If your going after a datastore/node could you still have to go through a bunch of other nodes before you reached it or could you just go straight to it??


This wireless stuff goes right over my head (no pun intended)
Jaid
basically, an SR4 node is almost more like an entire system from earlier editions.

basically, any given node is probably going to have any number of those different types of connections... they've just simplified it. those things still exist, in a sense, they've just all been integrated into one thing so that you don't have to spend two hours on decking a simple system, but rather can spend a couple minutes RL and get on with the rest of the team's actions.

you can, of course, have groups of nodes, and certainly if you want to represent tiered systems i see no problem with having tiered nodes, but basically it was a change made so that decking was more integrated.
hobgoblin
QUOTE
I mean in sr3 you had sans, nodes, slaves, cpu's and they were all interconnected. You may have had to go through 10 nodes before you reached a datastore or cpu.


the last version that had that was early SR2. with the VR2.0 book and SR3, they dropped that for generic hosts. and those hosts where somewhat similar to SR4 nodes, only with 2-3 more stats...
fool
While it really is much simpler, it's still more complex and confusing (to me at least) than the magic or compbat.
kigmatzomat
Think of a node to be a modern computer. Have you ever logged onto a school or corporate PC? Doing so gives you access to some of the files on that computer, usually some files on a server, as well as any thumbdrives, CDs, or floppies. You can also use some printers and possibly scanners.

SR4 is the same way. You log in and your Comm becomes a PC on that network with the privs of the appropriate user type (user, security, admin). In a school setting that might be student, teacher, principal. Students have access to shared devices and public data files but can't access eachother's files or files related to the school. A teacher can probably read all their students files and has limited access to restricted files (can read but not write student peramanent records, can edit attendance files for their classes, etc) but doesn't have full access to everything (like other teachers' pay scales). The Principal can get into anything.

But the school is just one node in the county school system. To access the records of a student in another school, a principal would have to log into the School Board node or the node of the student's school. On those nodes the principal might just have "teacher" level access but since they wouldn't have any classes on file, would have virtually no ability change student records.

Eryk the Red
Most important thing to remember is that a node is a single device. So a "system" would be a group of nodes, which actually represents a network of devices. Like a security computer, some cameras, remote turrets, and whatever else. Each device is a node. Most of those devices will be subscribed to the computer, meaning that you can't access them without access to the computer (though you can spoof commands to them, tricking them into believing your comm is the computer). You could easily map this stuff out like the old systems in SR2. In this case, you would have the computer (an SPU or CPU probably, I'm not too familiar with SR2), and then connected to it are several other nodes, one for each device. However, the conceptual simplicity of computer systems in SR4 makes such maps usually superfluous.

Also, it may seem a little bit crazy to have to deal with an individual node for every device you deal with, but if a device is subscribed to another, the other device can be used to command it. SO, said security computer can be used to command all the cameras to shut off or turn left or whatever, without having to sit and access each camera node separately.

Now, this is all just my conceptual understanding of Matrix stuff. My campaign (surprisingly) doesn't deal with it much, so I'm no expert on the actual rules for it.
hobgoblin
a node dont have to be a single device. but its presented as that in SR4 as its mostly about comlinks. to me a node can be any number of devices, but under a unified interface so that you dont know (unless you care to investigate) that your accessing the data from the server down the hall and not the local machine.
Abbandon
Ok i should have given an example but it was late and my head was about to explode hehe.

My limited understanding of SR4:

#1. You activate your comm and you go AR. You then slide through the matrix to this lone star building A, You have moved through several networking nodes as normal traffic. You then go VR and start hacking now that you are at the node for lone star building A. Lets say you successfully hack the node. You are then able to.......look for files?, mess with security camera's??, mess with locked doors?? , Lighting?? ALL from that one node??

or

#2. You reach lone star building A and start hacking. You successfully hack into the node. Do you then have to goto each individual node for files, camera's, doors, locks ??


Whats are the pro's and cons of spoofing vs hacking? Those are the only two ways to give commands in the matrix right? If im understanding correctly spoofing would let you not have to deal with the IC of other the other nodes? Whats the benefit of hacking ?

Lets pretend we are in Lone Star building A's system. There are 12 security camera's throughout the facility, 4 on each floor that is only 3 stories high. Is there a right or wrong way to hand how they are placed in the system?

Could you make a node for each floor of the building and each node would let you mess with 4 camera's. Or would you put all the camera's on one node. Or would you be sadistic and put each camera on its own node??


I can see how they tried to simplify things so that you could just hack a system and then do everything from there so you would be able to do stuff while everyone else is fighting, instead of taking 50 turns just to try and get control of all the camera's in a building.

I guess my problem is i dont really know how to balance matrix actions against the teams real life actions. I guess you just want to have everybody doing something at the same time and nobody doing stuff on their own.

So for example....you pop into a building and you take out the security camera's(one node) which the hacker monitors in AR. Then as the team gets into a fight the heacker trys to turn off the lights or something and then pops back into AR mode and helps with the fight (two nodes). Then they get to a final room where a cell is and the team fights the gaurds while the hacker opens the maglocks(three nodes). ??
Serbitar
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