Yeah, I'd agree normally. But Cetiah is talking about a whole team of hackers. If you want to have a hope of them not acing the task, then you have to be look at these sorts of numbers which is why I said Shadowrun isn't really up for this type of scenario. We need to be playing Project Management: The RPG, really.

As I said, I'd either GM fiat it as a plot device or more likely trick the players into not vetting the software. I'm pretty confident I could pull the latter off with all but the most utterly paranoid of groups. Misdirection is kind of my specialty as a GM, I like to think.

Neither of these solutions have anything to do with the protocols you suggested though. As you said, Shadowrun doesn't handle this very well. Unless a GM is willing to handwaive the issue away, simply saying "there's protocols" won't help because you'll get hackers who say "but I'm a hacker; bypassing protocols is what I do" and "shouldn't my software/hardware skills be useful for this?"

And where did you get that I was talking about a team of hackers? I'm talking about a community of individuals; not the same thing. It's like if I said guns are easy to acquire because of smugglers... I'm not talking about a large group of smugglers performing an operation to sell on the streets (which could work...) but a communtiy of self-interested individuals that are nearly impossible to fight against and exterminate as a whole.

As I said the only solution is to just say there's perfect copy protection, which is basically what you'd done. I use perfect copy protection to say "it just can't be done" but if you want dto describe that as a plot device, or a perfect booby trap, or a threshold 16, 24, or 256 task, then that's up to you. But it's any different than what I've been saying. Simply describing the protocols and pretending like it works within the rules won't work - what you're suggesting now is essentially the opposite of what you were saying before.

P.S. I hate the idea of a perfect trap, or a data bomb the PCs can't detect/disarm, especially in any kind of widespread distribution. It has too many reprecussions throughout the game and setting and ultimately defeats the whole point of hackers being a legitimate security concern or widespread threat.

No of course they don't. They're very separate issues and I'm lost why you have got them muddled up. Earlier on I proposed a solution to the Agent Smith problem which was low-level defences in the Matrix against self-replicating agents (virus). Later on, you asked about why anyone would purchase software from a company when they could buy a pirate version from a "reputable hacker". One of the reasons I gave why people would prefer purchasing a copy (and not the strongest of the reasons, btw) was the possibility of backdoors and boobytraps. You asked how I would handle this and I answered. It is nothing to do with the earlier discussion.

You said that in your game there was an active community of hackers that were busy cracking corporate software. You referred to Open Source projects. I made the assumption that they would work together on big tasks like this. Hence I used the word team because it seemed appropriate. It's no big deal. I said that I chose an abnormally high threshold because I expected the team rules to be used. Don't jump at me for that. You were asking what thresholds I would use and I explained how I arrived at them.

Cetiah, you really don't understand what I'm saying. If I were to write a program that deleted all the files on your hard-drive, you could copy it as many times as you like and it would still be a bad program. If I wrote a program that was 200MB of source code and did something desirable, but deleted your files under an unusual, specific circumstance, you might then have a heck of a job finding that out from reading the source code. It's a problem for you that has absolutely nothing to do with copy protection whatsoever.

And just to be clear, I have never said that there is perfect copy protection. Never even come close to saying such a thing.

The 'protocols,' as I explained before, were something from a separate issue, the Agent Smith problem which is what I came to this thread to contribute on. But I don't like the implication in the above. Everything I have said about the protocols not only works according to RAW, but was actually said to provide good fluff reasons why the RAW is as it is.

I'm not a big fan of it myself, but the way you have set your world up, which we've established is different to cannon, the corps are backed into a corner. Every hacker will have Rating 6 everything, bar hardware. Nothing else is consistent with what you've told me about your game. Every time I posted the data bomb idea, I've emphasized that what I would personally do is instead use the approach of taking advantage of player assumptions. But you keep choosing the worst part of a larger argument. I give you five reasons why a corporation would purchase software and you try to take apart just one of the reasons. And when I give a few explanations of that reason, you criticise just one of them. And when I offer you three solutions to your criticism, you object to one of them saying "I hate the idea of a perfect trap."

You asked for solutions to some problems and I did my best to offer those. And considering my sole interest here was what I felt to offer on the Agent Smith problem, then unless anyone has intersting things to say on the original topic, I think I'm now pretty much done, here.

Regards,

-K.