except that stealth tags don't say they run on hidden mode, they just say they can't be found. which is kinda silly, to say the least, but whatever.

It will have exactly the same threashold as a commlink in that situation.

Stealth Tag daisy chain to avoid broadcasting????

Amusing concept. I'll bite that stealthtags are 'undetectable' as written. I can even see how that works, they don't broadcast unless told.

Unfortunately for your idea, you just told them to start talking. Once they broadcast they are detectable. Now You'll want me to actually confirm that with rules...

Personally: I think RFID tags can't really work like this. Due to their 'microscopic' size I rather suspect they lack any real processing power, they are hard coded with whatever information they contain and that's it. The 'stealth tag' that only broadcasts when told to is going to be about as complex as they get.... and ironicaly, would probably be larger than non-stealth tags, while still being essentially invisible to the naked eye.

Now I just have to either find the right text to justify it, or the right lack of text to say 'you can't prove me wrong...'

The most complex thing RFID tags can do is broadcast Sensor Information.

But it doesn't offer any advantage from running in hidden mode - you are still braodcasting.

I'm not so sure that located in this sense means physical location. I can't actually find the rules for the bug scanner but I seem to recall that it is basically a handheld Scan program. The Scan program lets you "locate" the signal but it doesn't triangulate its position (Track program, BBB 219). Anyone got the quote on bug scanners?

ah, reprogrammable RFIDs

i read about a person walking into a store that used RFIDs to id goods, and moved the id of something cheap onto a expensive bottle of wine using a handheld RFID RW-device

Actually the argument he is stating makes sense. The OP basically said that it devolves to 2 extremes: Luddite or E-Warrior.

So if Stealth RFID tags don't transmit on general request and only transmit on a very specific passworded request, why can't hidden mode commlinks be treated in that fashion?

The BBB states they use special frequencies and "other tricks" to avoid detection and that they are encoded to remain silent. It also states that they can't be located with a commlink or bug scanner unless the codes are known. To me that means that unless the security spider can figure out the codes, then nothing in a 40m radius can locate it. Period. If we wanna go with the BBB stating that "almost every device is computerized and equipped with a wireless link" and be tools about that then we should at least consider that Stealth RFID tags cannot be found.

If an RFID tag can carry a super complex Olfactory Sensor Rating 6 (which can detect diseases by smell, continuously analyze the air for biological or chemical substances and pick up emotion scents) then I'm pretty sure it can handle being a router/transmitter.

Thing is, runners sharing their PANs are going to need to transmit data to each other a lot. A stealth tag, by contrast, doesn't transmit data except when prompted to by an appropriate code.

I see no reason why a runner's comm shouldn't be set to only transmit sporadically or not at all without the right stimulus (just like a stealth RFID tag). Of course, if there is no stimulus you have either limited or no access to the matrix or your team-mates, and lose any dice pool bonuses you might get from those connections.

My initial response to the OP still hasn't really been answered to my satisfaction. Sure, we can extrapolate the setting as we understand it to generate circumstances that we have to adopt the extremes of either luddite ninja or e-war specialist teams to work around, but why bother? What benefit does it bring us to say, for example, runner teams must avoid magic, and all take the murky link and magic resistance qualities because wards are ubiquitous and insurmountable and everyone is being followed by watcher spirits summoned by a great dragon? I exaggerate, but even so...

Coming from a RL military background....

If it transmits "anything" it is detectable, frequency hopping or not. The frequency hopping is not over the entire EM spectrum. Frequency hopping merely makes the chances of the signal getting thru any interference, man made or not, better.

The only way they can be "undetectable" is of the tags not to transmit at all.

There is no reason why RFID tags and comms could not use "burst" transmission methods. Yes they could be detected, if but being in burst mode would make locating the transmitting device harder to locate.

Detecting a signal and locating a signal can be two different tasks.

With some over the counter equipment in todays tech, I can and have picked up frequency hopping signal devices and or devices/things interfering with frequency hopping devices. In some cases the signals were basically operating in a intermittent burst mode.

WearzManySkins

i dunno... if your commlink was to randomly transmit a brief burst of data every 1-2 seconds with random times in between (especially if the bursts are very quick) i don't see why you couldn't gain at least some benefits out of it. especially if you had some sort of program (high rating agent with some kind of autosoft and edit?) to sort through and estimate gaps

okay then, plan C... buy a bunch of satellite links. at 500 nuyen each, you should be able to afford plenty.

now, put in ECCM 3. (they start off with device rating 3, and if you don't think a device with the sole purpose of signaling doesn't have the capacity to run a program to improve signal rating... well, you got problems)

they can now overwhelm any wifi inhibiting materials of rating less than 12. oddly enough, anything they bypass is completely ignored (i would personally have thought they would be reduced, but such is not the case).

long story short, if a four man team each buy 5 of these, and place them around the city, then that's now 20 signals going into all the supposedly wifi inhibited areas in the city, pretty much (technically, the GM can always introduce higher rating wifi inhibiting walls, but it's much cheaper to spam than it is to prevent it, i would say).

now then that's gonna generate some signal interference right there. have them move around, turn on/off randomly, etc for more fun... screw with everyone's security system.

now imagine that there could very well be regular people doing this sort of thing (probably not so much with the ECCM, mind you, but whatever). for every satellite link in a 100 km radius (including the satellites broadcasting back, mind you), that's gonna generate wireless signals in any place with less than rating 9 wifi inhibiting equipment.

conclusion: even supposedly wifi inhibited areas could easily be full of wireless traffic. all the runners need when they go in is to bring a transmitter that fills the entire inhibited area and a little bit outside, and that can penetrate the wireless inhibiting stuff. in order to determine if your signal originates from inside the facility or outside the facility, they now have to hack in... and i think it's safe to say that hacking into every single high strength signal is:

a) too time consuming
b) way too likely to backfire and result in them getting sued, fined, or otherwise penalised by the law
c) too resource intensive

so, there you go. problem solved. all it takes is 500 per satellite link, and a one-time investment of 1,500 between the whole team, and you can render the wireless scan completely innefectual.

Uh, a Sattelite Link has a Device Rating of 3, and thus a Signal Rating of 3.
Only the uplink has a Signal of 8.

Wow, you really don't want to concede an inch. The satellite uplink is a satellite dish itself. It directly states that it allows a user to uplink to comm satellites in low-Earth orbit, creating wireless connectivity where no wireless networks exist. It doesn't go through a WiFi router, a repeater station, or other nonsense, it connects straight to the satellite through the portable satellite dish.

The Device Rating, which you say gets overridden based on specific stats, only applies to the Response, System and Firewall of the device because the Signal rating of the device is given as 8.

I just don't understand your argument. It seems like you're just being a rules lawyer for no other reason than to keep an argument going. There's no way that any self-respecting GM would be that much of an ass just so he can railroad you into having to play things his way or the highway.

Let me explain, once again:

There is a thing piercing the sky, called uplink. That's got a Signal of 8.
That is what the description says.
Additionally, the whole device has a Device rating of 3... thus got a Signal of 3, to serve as a repeater on the ground.


Now... tell me... where's the railraoding in not having the repeating function of a portable sattelite dish a broadcasting power of surveillance radar?

Let me try to clarify. A satellite uplink is useless by itself. Just try watching satellite television without a television. It doesn't work. The uplink must be connected to a comlink on the ground, somehow. If it isn't connected to your comlink then you can't actually do anything with it. Now, you could put the uplink on a motorized auto-targeting mount on a cyberlimb and wire it directly into your comlink, but that's just tacky. We can assume that the uplink acts as a wireless device and any comlink within range can connect to it. Rotbart van Dainig is suggesting that the signal is limited to 3 for this purpose.

Actually, if the dish itself has a signal of 8 then it simply doesn't work at all. According to the Signal Table in the BBB, a signal rating of 8 has a range of 100 kilometers. However, communications satellites orbit the earth at a little over 35,000 kilometers. If the dish has a signal rating of 8 then it cannot possibly communicate with any communications satellite. Period. End of sentence.
(One should note that the description says Low Earth Orbit, which communication satellites never use because they move to fast to maintain a good signal. However, LEO begins at 200km, still well outside of the signal range of the satellite link, and ends at 2000km.)

For this reason, it is highly unlikely that the signal of 8 refers to the connection between the satellite link and the satellite. It would require a signal in excess of 9 to to reach a communications satellite. If the pattern on the signal table repeats itself, it would need a signal of 13, in fact. If they are going to stick with LEO despite the difficulty of tracking a satellite at that orbit then a signal of 11 would be necessary to cover the entire spectrum.

There are rfid that have a internal battery, and can potentially transmitt all the time.

Well, when have battery life ever been tracked in a sr version?