Recently as I sat alone in my basement playing Shadowrun with myself I ran through a scenario of a hacker with all stats and programs at 5, hacking a Comlink with all stats and programs at 3. I though of it as two guys sitting in a moderately busy public area both within the signal range of each other both using AR. The targets Comlink is running in Hidden mode.
I started with Detecting wireless nodes (reference BBB pp. 225, also pp. 117)
I figure that in most scenarios the hacker knows who he looking to hack and so he knows what he’s looking for when trying to detect a hidden node. But, the book says (pp 225), “finding a particular node in a crowded area might be more difficult…�
This made me wonder;
If everything and the kitchen sink are wireless what area isn’t crowded? Most devices have signal 1 = 40 meters [130 ft.] range. Most devices, (the coffee maker, terminals, streetlights, Comlinks, soda machines, billboards) are passive but many are active and if all electronics are wireless matrix enabled you’d have to be standing within range of at least 100 nodes at any given time How do you determine node density and its effect?
I assume from the fact that you can search for hidden nodes that ‘ghosting’ is more than a matter of turning down your signal to 0. Since the book lists the test to locate a wireless node in a crowded area as Electronic Warfare + Scan (variable, 1 combat turn) I wanted an easy way to determine how hard it would be. Because it seems like a perception test I decided to use the Perception test table and came up with;
Use Perception test thresholds.
*Threshold 2 - Normal environment 50-100 Comlinks and 100-200 devices in range.
Example: Typical office, shopping center, industrial factory during normal operation.
*Threshold 3. - Crowded Environment, 100 – 300 Comlinks in range.
Example: Busy street or shopping center, crowded nightclub restaurant or convention center,
*Threshold 4 - Packed environment, more than 300 Comlinks, more than 400 devices in range.
Example: Spam zone, concert or large sporting event, political rally or demonstration.
Since scanning for a hidden node is harder it’s “an Electronic Warfare + Scan (4) Test� even when you know what your looking for I figure I’d add 1 to that threshold in a Crowded environment and 2 in a Packed environment. Note that the book does Not say that this is an Extended test. For the purposes of my scenario I called it a normal environment so my hacker used 10 die to make that threshold 4 and it took 2 turns for him to find the targets Comlink. I figure he rolled pretty lucky because he's onlyt got a 44% chance to hit that threshold
Now that he’d found it he would try to hack it on the fly (pp. 221) because this is a personal device it only has Admin account privileges (pp. 216; “Account Privileges� last paragraph) So my hacker with all stats at 5 would roll 10 die against a threshold of 9 to hack the target with all stats at 3. It took him 3 Passes to hack an exploit. This means that the target Comlink gets 3 rolls on 6 dice in an extended test with a threshold of 5. Because my hacker has stealth 5 running. I found that a Comlink with all stats at 3 has more than a 60% chance to detect a hacker with all stats and stealth at 5. Six out of ten times the hacker triggers an alert against a rating 3 device. Suddenly Hacking just became a lot harder than I thought. I know that probing is almost a sure thing but there are some pretty good tactical defenses against that. It depends on your ability to get the target to sit still (within your range) for three hours.
I’m not a mathlete. The 60% failure rate of my hacker is based on the excellent XL spreadsheet I snagged from Serbitar (Props dude
) Am I right about this?At this point my mind took a Wild Jaunt through the jungles of Shadowrun weirdness. Up to this point I had been thinking in terms of AR. But what if my hacker were using VR? He’s hacking a Comlink not a Host so once he beats the threshold he’s Perceptually inside someone else’s Comlink. Which brought me to some really weird questions.
Normally a Comlink projects an Icon of the device’s Persona into the matrix. However, a Comlink is a matrix node so does a Comlink provide Virtual Dataspace for people who hack in?
If you hack someone else’s Comlink in VR What does it look like inside?
In VR, can you take your own persona into your Comlink? If you can; what does your PAN look like?
(I think mine would look like my house. I’d have a room for my cyber eyes where I could look out at the meat world. I’d have a room for my datajack were I could sit and download p0rn. I’d have a room for my car and each of my drones. It would be just like my house with more rooms and better furniture.
)For that mater what does it look like if you VR hack someone’s Smartgun link? And why would such a device even spend any processing power to provide a virtual dataspace?
It gets weirder; If a hacker hacks your Comlink but triggers an alarm you are alerted. Can you then take a simple action to switch to VR to conduct Cyber Combat with the intruder inside your own Comlink?
If any of this is true, do you realize that when you hack a Technomancer your mind is actually inside his brain? If his persona is off in the matrix somewhere does that mean that he’s not home?
Sitting alone in my basement I’m thinking that sometimes Shadowrun is just silly. If I were playing a face to face game some of this stuff would really annoy me and I would be thinking that the rules are too arbitrary, their implications in the setting can really make playing the game a pain in the ass.
Has anyone yet tackled delineating the differences between Devices, Comlinks and Hosts?
how big a slice of the spectrum does that kind of device density use in RL? I think a bluetooth pan uses 2.42ghz – 2.8ghz and it can only connect 8 devices right?
