I suppose i could use your warhawk as a 3rd throwing weapon lol. But im not skilled in normal firearms....yet.

Running Cerberus is going to be real interesting for awhile heh. I was thinking about becoming good with pistols or really awesome at thrown weapons. I havent spent any of my karma yet and there are so many directions I can go with it.

He was intended to be primarily a fist fighter but Rocky is so much better at it and its gonna take lots of money to buy cyber before i couldcatch up to his numbers so I think i should be more average and spread the love around. Oh yeah and then there is the fact that its kinda hard to get near the bad guys when they have guns hehe.

Well, the problem right now is that Rocky is a one trick pony, he does it really well but only the one thing.

I have some karma to spend as well, as soon as I have some time, and figure out what I want to try and do with it.

JD

Caittie is sorta a one trick pony too, with no combat ability, until she somehow gets a drone or two. Luckly, she can be versitile in the matrix and whatnot.

Well if y'all consider the fact that none of us were supposed to be Shadowrunners before we hit bottom, it's not unusual that all of us are pretty much one trick ponies Hopefully we'll all survive long enough to round out skills and learn from one another

Ok, I dont know exactly how Adamu wants to work this, but Caittie removed herself from the security camera feed.
She still registered her commlink with the door to her coffin, but paid with a certified credstick, so there shouldn't be any name associated with it.
Her commlink is on passive, currently, though her TM node is hidden.
If you access her commlink for a SIN, assuming you know how or can, the name reads 'Caittie Dreamer' and puts her age at 21. Since it is in passive though, I dont think you have to hack in to get the most basic of info.

Going to load up the agent with Sniffer, Scan, Track and Spoof, and initially set it to begin scanning the area for nodes - listing out the identifying information.

Dunno how successful that will be with passive nodes, or how many Smith is going to have to dig through, but "Cattie Dreamer" would probably be flagged worth investigation, since there are unlikely to be any more Cattie's in the building.

As for talking to the manager. I have no idea if coffin motels, in 2070, are mostly automated, or not. I assume they could be, but that there would probably be SOMEONE on site to make sure everything was semi-legit, and that the electronics were working, and that no wanted criminals were hiding out in there. The same sort of sleezy motel managers we have around now adays.

If so, while the agent does the scanning, Smith will speak with whoever is there, hoping to con then into giving up the information on the little girl staying there... if there is no one there, at all, and the thing is completely automated - he might start loading up the programs necessary to hack into it to get at their guests records.

Then, whichever method (if any) yields results first, will cause Smith to either get the attached coffin number, or have the agent track the node down to try to limit the possible coffins she could emerge from. He would then want to ask Fortunato and Sledge to guard the doors to that coffin, but would try to communicate with Cattie matrix-style, first (since that's probably more polite, and less likely to spook her).

He figures, since she is on the run, being contacted by a stranger, or having her coffin doors opened, or hearing a knock, or whatever will cause her to flip out and do crazy irrational things that will only draw attention to the group (bad attention, if Louie's goons are anywhere nearby)... so he'd prefer to start out by trying to send a message to her via the matrix - and go from there.

Anyways, I don't think I should push forward any further, until Adamu posts about the interior setup of the hotel, or the results of the scan.

Oh yeah, the rolls

Also, my program set-up, for if it matters soon (if Cattie goes to hack back)


Also, is it common for the coffin doors (and lights, etc) to subscribe to the PAN of the guest, so they can enter and leave at will? or is it still controlled by the hotel node - and the guest has to push a button on the inside or swipe a card on the outside or something to get in? Oh, and is the hotel's node active/visible on the matrix?

Mr Johnson might want to ask Fortunato and Sledge for suggestions on how to approach this situation.

How much detail did Mr Smith share about the girl and two trolls?

Pragma
Does Fortunato have a commlink?

Adamu
About how many occupants does the coffin hotel have?

I'm pretty sure coffin hotels are vending machine like and almost completely automated.

Yeah, if that's the case, and I agree it probably is, Smith will start hacking - but since it will take a while, (and he doubts he can out-hack a hacker) he'll forward a message to Sledge & Pragma asking for their ideas, or to offer any assistance they can.

Mostly, I figured I'd give adamu a chance to let us know that the place is on fire, or crawling with mob goons or something first.

Edit: But, if you think we can safely move on - given that its automated, I'm fine with that. I've already posted the first 2-8 rounds of hacky stuff that Adam wants to try... meanwhile, he'll ask (ideally via matrix connections to you two, but out loud to Fortunato if neccessary) for some ideas.

Considering the time that you guys arrive and whatnot, I guess Caittie would still be awake. It's only been around 2 minutes since her wild adventures in the depths of the Matrix and it's my take that it would be really hard to fall asleep immediately after something like that.

I've been trying to think up realistic reactions (yeah for a TM, realistic...) for the plans you are talking about in OCC, though I wont know how to exactly play it until I see the IC posts. In every one of them though, it comes down to Caittie being paranoid, though its not paranoia if someone really is out to get you.

Yeah, and every time she goes to a coffin motel to hide out it gets raided by mob guys.
I'm looking forward to Smith spinning the tale just right to get everyone on board, but I'm definatly concearns OOC that the slightest spook and the lights are going to go out, the sprinklers will come on, and we'll lose ya...

Dont worry, as soon as she hacks into your commlink and sets up a shadow admin account, she will be in touch with you.
Though, Adam has a commlink that outmatches anything she has run across yet. Heh, when he sees what she has for a commlink, he will probably shit himself at how she is able to do anything. Though I beleive Adam used the same tactic in his last run.

Another big question I have right now is, what will Adam see when his scan actions pull up Caittie's TM node?
Will it be a bunch of garbage code that indicates that there is something there, but his agent cant understand it, or what? And to further go into that, what if Adam tries to hack into Caittie's TM node?

Both of our brains wil lexplode from trying to comprehend what is going on.

... or I set up an admin account on your node. .. actually, I have no intention of hacking your node... I wanted to hack the hotel's node.

hacking a hacker's commlink is a good way to piss it off and make it not want to work for you.

Hmm... well you could hack my commlink and put an admin account on it very easily, but I dont see how you would be able to create an account on Caittie's brain...

Think in terms of TM Brain = Persona. You can fight a persona, but you can't hack into it. A persona needs system to run on.

Except that a TM can thread programs and link to devices... which a system does, not a persona.

Still, I agree, there should probably be a large subset of things that typical nodes can do, that TM nodes cannot - and housing hackers should definatly be one of them.

Okay, let me try to catch up on all your questions.

Coffin hotels - yes, almost 100% automated. Naturally they have to be periodically serviced by humans, and how much varies by hotel (do they have automated room cleaning systems? using a drone sophisticated enough to stock the towels in the vending machines itself would invite theft of drone. Whatever - there is a fine balance between the possibility and the practicality of full automation). The long and the short of it is that at any given coffin hotel, there's about an even chance of staff being around or not. Though almost no chance of there being any staff operating in any sort of 'open to public inquiries' public mode.

As it happens, this morning you can't find any staff on site. There is a comm number posted to call the business office if you need to talk to someone.

BlackHat, your scan reveals all the nodes in the building. All the team members, if they have them, commlinks and other personal devices in almost all of the occupied rooms, nodes for the automated systems, including a node for each room, which includes the door/check-in/cred receipt thingie.
You find the hotel main node, to which all the other hotel nodes are connected.

What I am not seeing in all your rolls is anyway to sift all this data. You have hundreds of nodes here - most with some open info, most also with info you would have to hack to get at. I assume you will look first at room nodes for check-in info, but all that's public is occupied or unoccupied - user info is private (if any was even offered).

The Caittie Dreamer info is out there, but like I said, you've got hundreds of nodes here...and you did not say yet that you are trying to get into tenant commlinks.

The place has three floors above ground, two basement levels. Rooms stacked three high on each floor on both sides of hall. 150 rooms in the building, of which you guys find that about half are occupied.

Yes, it is possible for occupants to include the room in their PAN, but there are manual controls as well, since the sort of people who stay in these places are the sorts that might not have comms.

I think that answers all the questions I saw in the last two pages.

Konsaki, if you want to fill us in on what floor you'd like to be on (if you already said, my apologies), and whether you are using a PAN or a manual connection to the controls, or whatever.

Finally, as you know I don't claim to understand the fine points of this TM vs. regular matrix stuff better than anyone else afflicted by the current RAW. But as a rule of thumb regarding your recent discussion about the characteristics of TM nodes, recall the key point that they can hold no memory whatsoever. By extension, that cuts a lot of the 'regular' stuff most nodes can do. Hazy - hell yes, but it is a good place to start when rationalizing the rest.

If I missed anything here, do let me know.

I'm waiting for Pragma before posting IC again.

Changing program loadout to:

Takes two rounds to do that, a few seconds for some suggestions, then hacking the hotel node on the fly. No time to waste! Will use Edge up to twice (if necessary), and will go for Admin access. (I figure, security access might have access to cameras and doors and whatnot, but admins probably are the only accounts with legit access to personal data... and Adam would need to pour through a lot of it to find what he needs. Rather than make a million hacking rolls to do so, it seems better to get this one big roll right very quickly.)

Hacking (2) + Exploit (5) + Edge ( 8 ) = 15 dice, AR (Threshold: Firewall + 6)
Round 3:
- #D=15 : 261562621421451 n1=4 n6=3 nHit=5
- #6=3 : 254 n1=4 n6=0 nHit=6
Round 4:
- #D=15 : 425456461265252 n1=1 n6=3 nHit=7
- #6=3 : 146 n1=1 n6=1 nHit=8
- #6=1 : 5 n1=1 n6=0 nHit=9

That should just about do any system on Earth. Lets hope its not top-notch!

If'n he can get inside, the one peice of information I have (that I can think of anyways) that might help him narrow down the search is (assuming I can get access to the hotel's records) that the room would have just been rented tonight, by a young woman. Of course, a decent hacker could have hacked in here and forged any of that data - so although Adam can't rely on that, entirely, he's happy to help select some good starters by using that criteria.

He'd probably try to access internal cameras, if he can, (although Cattie won't show up on that) it might conflict with Sledge's report of which coffin's are occupied - which would be a good suspect right there...

From that, I dunno, I'm winging it. Another trick that might help would be if I can gadge the relative strength of the signals I am detecting... that's not really covered by RAW, but it seems like a common enough thing in real life. I figure, a hacker would carry a real good commlink... like the one Adam is using, so any PANs with crappy little rating 1 antennas that barely reach the building's node probably arn't his target.

Question for Adamu, how many exits are there?

@Blackhat + Adamu

Ok, one thing I see that you need, Blackhat, is a Browse test to sort through all that info you just aquired. It would be like opening a webpage or word doc and then hitting Ctrl+F to search through it instead of reading each line.

As for which floor and room Caittie is in, I'm going to pull from my real life preference and say she is on the Second Floor, Room 2032 which is Floor 2, Stack 03, Row 2 (Middle of the stack). The location is 3 stacks north from the South Stairwell emergency exit of the building.

She registered the door of her coffin to her commlink for ease of opening and closing.
She paid with a certified credstick, so there is no link to a name. You can retrive the commcode number from the door due to it needing it for registration.
Pinging the commlink itself will bring up this info, 'Caittie Dreamer, Age 21' and a picture of her face like a drivers license would have. Everything else would require hacking in, mainly because I dont want to think up an alternate history and junk for her fake SIN right now.
Your Scan test also brings up another node, not registered with the door, inside the coffin, but it's information is heavily garbled. You think it must have some super heavy encryption because your commlink doesnt understand some of the symbols, but it registers as a valid commlink address.

As for the low signal theory, I was under the impression that you could adjust your Signal down from its max if you wanted too. This would be used mainly to prevent people from hacking into your commlink at max distance (Signal 3 is 400m, 4 is 1km, 5 is 4km) and force them to come in real close (40m or 100m for 1 and 2 respecively) or abort the attempt.

Hopefully this works within your standards, Adamu.

BlackHat, I think, a brows test is (Datasearch)+(Brows-Program), not (Computer)+(Datasearch)!

EDIT: If you don´t have Brows (though I doubt that Adam is lacking such a basic program), Every OS functions as a Brows Program rating 1.

IIRC, Adamu said that you couldnt tell the signal strength of the targets while performing a Scan test, it was either you can see them or you cant, based off you being in their signal range.
I dont remember him saying you couldnt adjust your own signal strength, but that might be my own faulty memory.

Hmm... even so, your program is off. You need the Browse program to sort through all the information that your Scan program gathered. Data Search is used when you are searching the Matrix (Google), while Browse is used when searching a data group you already have (Ctrl+F on a web page).

Well, looking at Smith's sheet, I can only conclude that what BlackHat MEANT to type was Data Search 1 + Browse 4 (????). (Can't see why he'd run the browse at 4, unless by adding it to his program list everything slowed down???)

Anyway, the dice are rolled are less than he could have rolled, so here are his results based on his search parameters of (1) young (2) females based on passive or active PANs:

18 hits ordered in ascending age, from 12 to 53. Based on that few hits, simply scrolling through them finds a 21-year old elf woman named Caittie Dreamer...none of the other hits seem likely.

Note that BlackHat was correct insofar as he contended that Browse is generally used to search either (A) a node or system or (B) the Matrix at large. But I see no reason why, having collected a pool of data somewhere between those extremes he couldn't apply the program to that field.

Alternatively, he could have used Data Search + Scan if he was targeting a particular PAN, say, Caittie Natome (higher threshold without a commcode, of course). That probably would have reported the Caittie Dreamer PAN as a possible hit - so now that I think about it more I should have probably given him that in the first place.

But you've got it now, and there has been no cost or ill effect at all, so there we go.

Note that the Caittie Dreamer PAN is subscribing a particular door in the place.

Now, to lay all this signal strength to rest -

1) First and foremost, all that manipulation of signal strength is abstracted by the Electronic Warfare rules. So this whole discussion is sort of like asking to make a strength test to impact an object with your hand, instead of just making an unarmed combat test.

2) But I love when players go beyond the limitations of the abstract rules to solve problems, so it's a discussion worth having.

3) What you CANNOT do is adjust your 'receiving strength' so that you can narrow out all the signals that are far from you. Your signal strength is to send, and the other guy's signal reaches you or it doesn't. You can't just lower your sending strength and screen out powerful senders.

4) You CAN lower your signal strength to prevent hacking - hacking requires two-way communication (barring an agent actually getting into your node and operating on it instead of from its home node, I guess). So since hacking takes 2-way communication, if you lower your strength you can force your enemy into your lowered range.

5) Not a damned thing I say here should be considered final or binding - all of it is just temporary band-aids.

I sometimes think the designers purposely wrote the new Matrix rules the way they did to force RAW-bound GMs away from the comfort of their BBBs and into the realm of making their own rulings on the fly.

Yup, knew you guys would have posted three more times before I got that one up!

IIRC, Scan doesnt triangulate where the node is, just that it is within range of you. You would still have to hack into the hotel node to find out where she was staying, because it would have the registration information from the door. Sorta a roundabout way of finding her, but you can get to her that way.
Since you limited your Scan to those two perameters, I'm pretty sure you didnt see her TM signal.

Fair enough, I'll post IC about the hacking, scanning, filtering, etc - but, even though the whole process will take around 30 seconds, it might be nice to let Pragma or Dire post IC (I think Dire is waiting on Pragma) with whatever ideas they have too.

Adamu, let me know if you need me to post any other rolls to compare the SIN/node that I think is my best choice with the hotel's list of guest assignments to pick out a coffin to start at.

Also, I'd like to hear from Pragma if/that Fortunato has a commlink, and whether or not he's getting my matrix transmissions.

I'm still waiting for Pragma so Sledge can kill the power to the building, start a real fire for a fire alarm, and Fortunato can meantime either do an Astral search personally or with a spirit. (How many teen elf girls can there be in a coffin hotel of 150?)

That way no need to discuss these matrix rules!

Or we can simply go knocking on every door asking for Caittie.

Lol, in THAT case, I hope it takes more than 30 seconds to cut the power!
That way, when the paniced crowd flees the scene, we can converge on the correct coffin right away.

Based on Greg's charsheet on our Wiki, he has a 3/3/3/3 commlink with earbuds, contacts and a subvocal mic. He can receive anything you send, if he allowed connections from both of you. Considering the situation, Greg would be playing the fool not to.

Yeah, then (out of character) I hope before Sledge get's to the main power cables, Smith fires off a message saying something like "Got it!", and she secretly aborts "plan: mass-panic". I'd like to keep this as quiet and simple as possible, but considering I said we were in a hurry - cutting the power isn't a horrible idea either. Its a step up from anything I had outside of hacking or smooth talking someone in charge

... of course, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...

and it is the kind of idea that made Smith say "feel free to suggest something".

Electra - Satyrical Ending, little boy crying for Momma
Carla - Sisterly sacrifices
Fortunato - Down on his luck, things are changing, but which way?
Caittie - Is this the stuff dreams are made of.. or nightmares?
Mr Smith - Rookie mistakes in this business aren't pleasant
Sledge - knocking on doors, she's going through them one way or another
Rocky - champ on the ropes, will he come up with the knockout punch?
Cerberus - there's only so much a friend can patch up, a destroyed business relationship with the mafia might not be one of them
Conall - Midnight hour, when worlds collide, which way will the wind blow?
Etain - Battles joined
John - Someone's done an end around... a trick play in the Big Game, and it looks like no one was expecting it!

Yeah, lets say I had to do the hacking... it really only matters because of determining how many edge I walk away from this thing with - but since you said I'll rape it up, I don't mind using up the two edge to seem semi-compitent at what he was setting out to do.

@BlackHat

I laughed and grinned when I read the last few lines of your last post. What a surprise he will be in for...

Yeah, I am looking forward to that. Adam will probably be pretty cool with it, but he'd much rather spend time with a hot hacker chick than a cute hacker girl.