I have noticed a gap in the attack utility market, we have straight icon damage, icon impairment and straight beating the frag out of the meat. Aside from tracking and IC specific attack utilities thats your lot.
So does anyone have any ideas for a deck targeting utility?
The ball is rolling when you consider Hog going after programes via the MPCP, now how about some canned Sparky or tinned Blaster, real hard ware melters.

my color may be off, but IIRC, gray IC targets cyberdecks directly.

Yeah, it's Grey. Sparky is not your friend, unless you needed a new deck anyway.

well, there's Erosion and Hog, both on Matrix p73. Erosion is the offensive utility version of Crippler/Ripper (it doesn't specify if the degradation is permanent or not, so i assume it is). Hog just crashes programs in active memory; you can swap them out to get them working again.

Please re read the top post.

Decker attack utilities that target the hardware of the cyberdeck, that means does damage to the cyber deck hard ware. Most likely the MPCP.

Fair comment on Erosion Mfb but that has a software repair in the Restoration utility and the persona chips do not have to be replaced.

The operation method of Hog is what interests me with the ability to target the MPCP of a deck to crash the active memory function. Such attacks could be intensified to produce effects similar to grey IC but wielded by a decker.
The question is how would this work and in game balance terms if it is a good idea. The latter depends mostly on the rules that are applied....

it's still not quite what you're looking for, but check out my thread for anti-host utilities that are similar to your idea.

Thanks mfb, just finished some nice ideas there.

The hell I did. Spell check was the limit on that thing, so I have no idea why you think I changed it?

How about this?

Attack utility

Razor
Modifier: 10

When a decker successfully hits a persona icon it induces a sporadic series of electrical pulses designed to damage the cyberterminal/deck.
Roll MPCP against the power of the Razor utility reduced by hardening, any net successes by the Razor utility reduces the MPCP by one, on a one for one basis.

This is quite a powerful utility but the stats are in favour of the cyber terminal most of the time. It also has the drawback of only being effective against deckers and otaku, much like Killjoy and Blackhammer.

What do you all think?

hm. i'd make the multiplier 15 or 20, i think. more than Killjoy (nonlethal black utility), less than or equal to Black Hammer (lethal black utility).

12?

~J

i'd go higher simply because of what's involved. someone KOs you, you're up and running again one headache later. someone knocks your MPCP down a point or two, that hurts.

I hear you, but as IIRC Grey IC is more common than all three kinds of Black, it still feels weird.

~J

could chalk it up to SOTA factor--it's new, so it hasn't been optimized down by standardized shared libraries, etc.

Sparky has a multiplier of 12, while for example killjoy has a multiplier of 10 compared to non lethal black IC being a multiplier of 16.

However, that being said, it is the most fighting proggy in some aspects, deckers lose hundreds of thousands of while otaku face brain death and all the while the persona icon is being impaired too.
I think that puts it somewhere between Killjoy and Blackhammer so I'll go with your advice and raise it to a multiplier of 16.
O and change the name to Scorch.

Thanks for the input.

y'know what'd be really, really useful? a tar baby attack program. hit your opponent with it and they lose a random item from active memory. even more useful would be something that attacked storage memory, so corp deckers can wipe that juicy paydata.

Or even a tar Baby utility that works just like the IC and crashed any utility used on the Decker.

Hog has got active memory covered and can take out utilities that don't need to be actively used.
A variant on a tape worm program might work or perhaps a scramble IC equivalent attack utility for data erasing?

haha, forgot about hog. im teh morron. hm, i had a Poison program somewhere. make an attack, and it injects the target with a worm.

Perhapes the attacking decker could also just hack the cyberdeck via system ops to locate and destroy the files on the storage memory.
Difficult in cyber combat but after suspending the icon via Killjoy, Rip or Blackhammer a possability

i like the idea of being able to hack an opposing decker's system, rather than just throw attack programs at him. that's one of the nice things about SR4.

Why would you be able to, though? What, reasonably speaking, would a cyberdeck be running a server process for?

~J

that's what's silly. you've got this great VR environment, but only on servers? the VR should be a client function.

That's irrelevant, though. What service would the cyberdeck be running that would accept outside connections?

~J

i don't know, but they already do. otherwise, you wouldn't be able to hit them with attack programs or IC.

i dunno, maybe i'm way off on that. i've just never actually envisioned most decking as being a matter of logging on to the host as an outside party. i see it more as a matter of sending in subversive code disguised as normal traffic from different connections, rather than as a sneaky-invisible single logon from which you do your haxx0ring. so, to me, it seems perfectly natural that you should be able to do the same thing to a cyberdeck, or any other system that interacts with the Matrix.

As a precedent, The Street Survival Guide has stats (host rating and security sheath) for decking into home telecoms and public data terminals.

The ability of hacking any machine from SR4 could be replicated in SR1-3 by providing a host rating and security sheath for decks, computers, ghos.. etc.

even if it is a single connection, that would just make decking a decker easier. you'd just have to disguise your output to him as information he's expecting to receive.

I think that as a security rating and ACIFS for a cyber deck, should be MPCP for security rating and the masking+Sleaze utility for the ACIFS totals. This would make it hard but not impossible and shows the deck has protection by its illegitimacy.
A deck does not carry IC so a security sheath would be unnecessary.
As you have to effectively attack the decker's in question icon, you can expect for them to retaliate in cyber combat.
Also I would say only the Spoof utility would reduce TN's of the system tests as the cyber deck is essentially only a connect terminal not a host under SR specifications. It also lack a user functions save for the using decker hence having to Spoof control.

Fair enough, though SR terms a host is a system that can fight back and without IC programes being loaded into the storage memory of a cyber deck, its decker cyber combat or nothing.
As far as am aware the telecom units do not generaly carry IC, hence my above suggestions

The SSG (p120) gives basic telecoms a blue 4 8/8/6/6/6 rating with probe IC 2 running on Windows Hasta la Vista 2050. The decker remains your best bet.

I've ran some play tests with my Scorch utility idea and it's well sick if not broken. In grey IC/black IC situations they only get to blast the deck after crashing the icon, so in effect a single event ordeal.
Scorch has multiple hit potential and in skilled hands can quickly toast a low end deck through a combination of hacking pool and position attack.
This can be off set with good defence strategy as with all combat but if unexspected can be devastating due to the loss of MPCP and associate persona levels.

Would some of you dump shockers try this yourselves and give me some feed back on your take of events.
I need to know if I should change the utility to a simple attack utility turned blaster or if it is balanced as is.
Regards,
Pendaric

Underwhelmed by the reply, I suggest that the Scorch utility should be changed to every two net sucesses reduce the MPCP by one. This reduces the truely nova hot side of the utility to a more balanced level for game play.
The dual effect of Scorch is too powerful otherwise, this rewritten version requires tactical use of hacking pool in both attack and defence for effective use.

i guess the real question is, why would someone use this utility? sure, it reduces the target's MPCP--but in the short run, it's actually less effective than just throwing down the biggest attack program you can get ahold of. if you take my MPCP down two points, but i knock you offline, i've won.

what you should do is, make this an option for attack programs. basically, make it work like black IC--if you knock them offline, you get a shot at their MPCP. that way, you get the best of all worlds: you reduce the effectiveness of the scorch effect (since it only gets one hit), you make it a viable alternative to normal attack programs, and it remains scary to deckers.

eeewwhhww thats nasty.
I didn't cos I didn't think a deck driven utility as opposed to a host driven ic had the processing power to do it. The nasty thing about this is that it reduces persona stats as it trashes MPCP
edit sort of a really nasty ripper.

What about an attack utility that pulls programs out of the opposing decker's active memory, and downloads them into your storage memory. Say, per net success you pull a rating point from the program.

Attack utility: Rape

Carn't see how that would work. Neat idea but I think it is more of hacking their deck. I am sure we discussed something like this? Some where on here erm I'll have a look in a moment. Edit ah yes further up the thread, silly me.
Hog would be the closest thing but you really carn't get half a utility.

Am resurrencting this thread as I have been inspired by SR4's Nuke program. The simple idea that the the damage done to the system only lasts till reboot is nothing short of genius!
As such if my Scorch utility for SR3 applies the same logic, only reducing the MPCP temporally, so all system stat's refresh next matrix session. It is no longer sick and wrong and considerably more balanced and game viable.

If anyone still cares, your opinions on whether my take is correct or flawed would be appreciated.

Hey, man, let's keep it PG-13.

Slot the corp mass appeal certificate!
Decker X cert for win.