well, firing your gun with DNI is also a simple action. and that's a lot simpler than transmitting instructions to a drone. still, i can see how one might argue the point.

luckily, though, we don't actually have to argue about this. on page 220 of SR4, it states that issuing a command to an agent or a drone is a simple action. (see why some of us prefer hard rules? see? see?)

Preventing infinite chains in no ways prevents the other problem of automation

Ah well, I'll conceed defeat on that point, but that in no way solves the problem of parallel action!

Now here comes the big question
If I am being attacked b y 2 pieces of IC, do they become redundant? They are identical rating agents after all
If not, then these two count as being non identcal. if so I will swipe the code for them and crack them at my convenience.
There now I have two agents helping me with all things, Hell there are 10 AAA corps, they will each have their own style of Agents so I will collect one of each.
So I can't have an infinite number of Smiths on a run. but I can have multiple teams of 10 Smiths on a run

2 IC would both attack you, but they wouldn't actually benefit from that fact. There is no "friends in melee" bonus for matrix combat.

Agents are only goint to be perfectly redudnant if they're identical. If you copy an agent and tell both of them to do something, it will be just as good as doing it with one agent, since they'll both do the exact same thing, down to the nanosecond. But if you had two different agents, they would each follow different progamming and accomplish the task in a slightly different way. Corps are not going to use bootlegged, copied agents, they'll pay the yen and get a full suite of commercially available agent progs which are all different.

Not at all! You can do what you like. I am saying that I don't think it's the best idea to arbitrarily cut out (or even nerf) a big part of the Matrix (linked devices and subscription) just to prevent it.

The only argument I am really involved in is whether commlinks can be subscribed to one another.

no, you're also arguing about what arguments you're involved in!

No, I've finished that now.

So, you wait until they've readied their Agent Smith army, have planned and developed their tactics around that, and then you "don't punish" them by suddenly telling them it won't work?

Yes.

Someone check me on this, but in the Storm Botnet, aren't all the bots identical?

no, actually. that's what makes it so badass... er, bad. there are different types of bots for different purposes, and they all mutate constantly. it's a really, really slick operation. and it's also really scary, because it's apparently for sale.

regardless, the redundancy thing is just a houserule intended to keep Agent Smith from being too powerful. it's no worse a sci-fi explanation than anything else in SR, so if it accomlishes what a given gaming group wants it to accomplish, huzzah.

Point regarding telling agents/drones what to do: Pg 222, under 'Issuing Commands' I'll sum up: It's a simple action to issue a command, Different commands require different actions (though, yes, issuing teh same command to 180 agents would only be one simple action).

As for the universality of Pilot, please give me a reference to where you can remove a pilot program from your car and put it into anything. According to the description of pilots on 213-214 they act as the system rating of the drone, which would imply that they are hardwired into the specific item they are 'piloting'. Checking the targeting Autosoft, I can see it is keyed to a specific catagory of weapons, which means your Pilot Program will not, regardless, be able to suddenly control a Tank Main Gun, even if it COMES from a Tank. That's the Autosoft, and its specific to that type of gun.

So, It wouldn't be houseruling to penalize a hacker for taking a Car pilot and using it to control a tank, in fact it appears to be Houseruling to let him do it at all, though I am willing to entertain a debate to the contrary.

However, you're actually right about the non transportableness of pilots (I hate being wrong, but teach me to have an interweb fight without my books, I shaven;t read arsenal yet.)

While I can certainly port pilot programs in the BBB, because they are described as a special type of OS, and those are freely transportable in arsenal, you've got this instead.



So I'm now wrong, and you're now right. Damn rules, the last critical and all important sentence isn't established or referenced in the BBB anywhere at all.

As for agent's abilities to understand 'hack that drone' however.



I'm not sure you need the auto soft to fire a gun. While the pargraph about using autosofts implies that you do, none of the drones that can move or have senors have them. It's quite weird.

it seems it all hinges on subscription, a part of the rules that are short, vague, and even "contradicted" in faq, got to love this.

btw, did anyone read the small note on p214 about issuing commands? if the gm think its to convulted, or for whatever other reason, he can set a treshold and roll pilot+response to see how well its interpreted...

The examples of "type" of vehicle for Pilots are "groundcraft" and "aircraft" not "Alpha Juliette" and "MiG 41 Interceptor"

-Frank

That's because it's a retcon masked as 'clarification' - changing the way things worked in the BBB.

A thing that wasn't supposed to happen.
Same goes for Sensors and Weapon mods.

Seems it's too hard to simply state that they did not produce the desired result in the BBB and commit an errata.

UNfortunately not



Pilot is extremely vehicle dependant now

And suddenly, the setup from the BB makes no sense at all anymore:

General Pilot, specific Maneuver Autosoft.
Now it's Ultraspecific Pilot with specific Maneuver autosoft... that teaches the Pilot to better understand the vehicle... uh, wait.

Both the rules for Pilot and Sensor, the most importat ratings for vehicles/drones were made worse in Arsenal, adding GM fiat as balancer.
The fact that a crappy 100 Nuyen Emotitoy has Pilot 3 Sensor 3 while most comercial vehicles only have Pilot 1 Sensor 1 adds in 'nicely'.

Since we are aware that the "Smith" problem exists we decided to do the following:

-One agent per commlink
-One IC per commlink
-Only one version of a program can be loaded on a commlink - use highest value.
-Ignore the IC/Agent Errata regarding payload, they have Rating amount of programs.

Having multiple agent smiths would do nothing as the highest value would apply as would IC

An agent should be a virtual helper and not the "press-a-button-to-hack" solution and this would tone them down but still keep them useful.

There is no Errata of Program Payload - just a wrong FAQ.

Agents have their own System, so any Program they run is ruled by that, not the System the Agent runs on.

The specific pilot I think is fine, because the pilot isn't just maneuver, it can do this without the autosoft, the autosoft just makes it better. So I see no problem with Pilot being specific. As to Sensor, once I read through it and puzzled over it for a day it all became clear and made a lot of sense.
See this topic: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=20548

Basically it came down to only cars at purchase have sensor ratings, once you modify those the sensor rating no longer applies. Which I feel is works quite well, since sensor is used for so many things. I will say they need to have more as to the rigger's use of sensor, specifically targetting. Since effectively it just takes a camera upgrade (100 per rating), so for 600 you've got a 6 Intuition effectively. Which is why I'm ruling that you also need the Vision Tracking software for it to work properly (Value now 3,600 for Rating 6.. still cheap but getting closer).

It says it cannot do it without the autosoft though.





If an autosoft provides specific skills so you can make tests, that does imply that without the autosofts you cannot, and to back that up, you've got the crashing a gunnery autosoft *disables* a drone's ability to fire.

It is madness.

Oh and they directly contradict that specific example they quote on page 239 in arsenal too (I thought that wasn't going to happen) in that a standard delivery drone with a gun fitted - the Modified GMC Chariot (Disguised Combat Drone) on page 119 doesn't have a gunnery autosoft

Crap editing for the win.

Also, to prove that the specific pilot thing is bollocks



Seriously, you're telling me that vehicle specific pilots don't include that?

Well, if I hadn't found the bit where ordering an Agent was an action, regardless, I would still point out that 'hack that drone' is not terribly complex. However, it is also not terribly useful by itself. Given that it is an action, by RAW, I am willing to be more lienent on how the agent carries out INTENT.

And my point still stands: Do you want your mage ordering agents (inferior hackers compared to a dedicated specialist) or do you want them zapping shit?

I want mine, if I'm playing, zapping

Hmmm, very interesting examples. I still think it would go a long way towards fixing this sort of thing to say that, at some fundamental level, the Matrix is designed to prevent self-replicating code, and as such two copies of the exact same thing cannot exist in one place. They merge, or something, I don't know, it's not really important. Now if you define "place" as your PAN (or any other cluster of inter-subscribed devices), instead of each device, then you can't have that same agent in every subscribed drone doing Medic actions, you can only have one of them. You could still buy more Agents, but that's not much more problematic than the possibility of buying more drones or buying more bound spirits. (Okay, bound spirits DO have a hard cap, but I don't see it hit all that often, it's too dang expensive) You could have lots of drone pilots doing Electronic Warfare, I suppose, but I don't really mind that someone with lots of drones can jam the hell out of local matrix communication and, in general, have a better wireless network. You can still use a single agent to defend all your subscribed devices, but if you want multiple copies of him on each device they have to be unsubscribed, completely separate, and that limitation strikes me as very re-balancing.
That would go a really, really long way towards solving Agent Smith problems.
I'm still not sure that any of this solves your other issue of simply buying a second agent and making your own skills useless. It really makes me think that Agents should be limited to rating 4. If, with your attribute, skill, tools, AR bonuses, etc you can't muster an 8 die pool, maybe getting an expert system to do the job for you is a good idea. Higher rated agents could still exist as government hammers and plot devices.

This is why I hate munchkins posing as rules lawyers. They scream and yell in the name of rules fairness, but end up just picking and choosing which ever most benefits them. Seeing whole arguments devolve into that is just dumbfounding.


Or it could be that the Matrix rules do suck.

Whatever else you think of the matrix rules, the AR hackastack + agent just using medic on you every IP is clearly busted and clearly legal. I'm decidedly under impressed with the drone rules now I closely read them too.



In your game, the correct order is 'disable that drone via all means at your disposal as fast as possible.' in all probability rather than 'hack that drone' but I'll just use hack that drone as a quick proxy for now.

No reason you cannot do both really, as you pointed our your mage also shoots guns and stuff, so they can throw in 'order agents around' in addition to whatever else it is they do. You'll lose one simple action per however long it takes an agent to disable a drone.

However, not all of the run is physical combat where the mage has line of sight (and as such can cast spells), agents allow the mage to be a fairly solid hacker at those junctions (like legwork).

True that, but again, the main arguement I've been adressing is that the HIB negates the need for a dedicated codeslinger... or not.

First: the bar to entry on 'hacking' is low enough that just about everyone can be fair to middling competent without really hurting their character, so there isn't much need for a dedicated hacker for most runner teams. If one or more players chose to HIB it all the way, that's their call. As a GM I, or anyone else really, should be flexible enough to handle the fact that none of my players really wants to be a specialist codeslinger.

Second: If someone DOES chose to be a specialist Codeslinger, there are benefits to 'doing it right', rather than being a 100% scriptkiddie firing off agents left and rigth (which, however, does remain an option...). A dedicated Hacker can get his dice pool significantly higher than 12, can spend Edge, and generally has a lot more control over what happens in the matrix than a guy with 'a lot of agents'.

More importantly, I've pointed out that anyone who is regularly sacrificing their actions to order around their agents/drones when that isn't their primary job is actually wasting time. Sure, not all of a run will happen in IP, but anything important (where you really DO worry about success or failure) probably should. And unless you are running naked through the woods, most stressful threats should be multipronged anyway. good security will have its own matrix support, magic support and gropos with guns. If your mage can tell his Agent to 'hack that drone' over there, the Samurai should be able to smack the living shit out of him for not doing his job. At which point the Hacker smacks the Samurai around for not doign HIS job...

In other words, why isn't the Mage busy with manifesting spirits and counterspelling incoming death and attempting to overcome enemy counterspelling? And if none of that shit is happening, who cares WHO kills the drone, as long as it dies before the MMG goes off and whacks half the party?

er.. yeah. Thats my point. Agent smith makes actual skills of minimal use in many areas, and matrix management entirely a possibility without the character having any actual skills. But as 'hacker' is an archetype right in the book, I'd like to seem them powerful and useful.

I wrote this diatribe about how the rest of your argument is wrong to, because due to factors like 'drain' a specialist action may not be available to the specialist, so they need fall back positions, and the utility gained by the party of jettisoning the specialist hacker and replacing him with someone with real skills outweighs the occasional wasted action, but the main thrust of my point is that.

spoof command, anyone?

a agent can be spoofed, just like a drone. a hacker can not...

btw, whats the idea for coming around the subscription limit again? subscribing to a node at admin level and then order the agents/ice running on it around?

I'm going to rechristen the problem I hate 'The Borg'

'The Borg' is the replacement of actual character skills with plug n play stuff like autosofts, skillsofts, and agents. So instead of a hacker your street sammie buys an agent and some skillsofts - merging with the borg - and is now a l33+ hacker.

'The Borg' cannot be spoofed, as anyone with skillwires is three skillsofts away from a base 'hacking' DP of 10.

I agree with you that skill wires are a problem. And sure, it seems a bit wonky (but its the same problem as the skillwires, and unless you want to houserule out stuff, you have to stick with both...) but if you let you of your anger, let go of your hate, the dark side won't consume you.

First, a HIB can't replace a dedicated hacker on a team anyway. Someone has to have all those other technical skills that Agents don't get to use (hardware maybe...). A hacker can get better dice totals, which has yet to be refuted, a hacker gets Edge.

And he can still use agents to run other tasks for him.

You keep bringing up 'edge cases' to defend why the Mage is gonna be stomping on the Hacker, thus eliminating the hacker. What if there is no target but matrix... what if the mage is wounded and stunned from drain so he doesn't want to cast anymore.

Great. That means the player isn't bored and tuning out at the table while their character is 'useless'.


Like I keep saying, this is a GM situation. Any player can simply buy every.single.motherpucking.skill as a skillsoft and buy up their skillwires at the start of the game. I have NO IDEA what they plan to do with their Karma at that point.

Its their decision. Its my decision to put them into situations where their skillwires are less useful to them, like they get shook down by Lonestar and several of their key chips are confisticated, like that hooker they hired the night before was a klepto... like some Johnson hired another runner team to take down the team and act one was to utterly negate the usefullnes of the idiot-cyber-savant.

Ditto the Hacker in a Box. A real hacker gets his commlink fried or stolen? He picks up a new one and moves on, maybe busting out some quick and dirty hacker warez to keep him going. Sure, it sucks, but it doesn't mean he's helpless.

Not so true of the guy relying utterly on his Agent and suite of sweet warez.


Don't you watch TV? Read Comic books? This is like the standard cliche of anyone who is dependent upon a single peice of equipment to function. Take it away for a while. If a player's only combat skill is a specialized pistol (auto), put them in a situation where rifles rule the day. Have their automatic taken away and the first gun they scrounge up/steal is a revolver. Even for one fight. There is a reason they get extra dice for specializing that way: its a limiter. And limiters are useless unless they come up once in a while.

Yeah but it's still a complex action for you to do anything meaningful in the Matrix and a Simple Action for you to tell an Agent to start doing something in the Matrix. A shiny new non-identical Agent at rating 6 costs six thousand ¥. That's basically always going to be a better deal than purchasing actual Matrix Skills.

However many commlinks and Agents you happen to have, it is always a better deal to send in another Agent than it is to accept your number of Agents as sufficient and start hacking yourself.

---

And that's before we consider the possibilities of extended instructions as regards to attacking with Agents. I mean sure, it takes an action to tell an Agent to do something, but what if that something is "Start Hacking into the Aztechnology Camera system at 11:35" or "When I send the Black Spot Email, start hacking the Shiawase front door" ? Such orders can be given laboriously one simple action at a time, and then the actual experience of the corporation being hacked is that some arbitrarily large number of high rating Agents started hacking all their available nodes at once.

-Frank

Actually, tiered nodes are given as security increase example in the BBB.

Agents at rating 6 cost 12000Y (2500Y/Rating) and that’s not counting possible mark up due to availability and how easy it would be to obtain within the timeframe the character wants it – and if there is a seller available at all…

Personally I would only allow a simple action for commands if they are short or pre-scripted so one only sends them – a simple action is not a very long time to give a complex command.

Wouldn't that be 15,000 ?

That very assumption goes only one kind of way - a very short way to the funny farm.

DOH!

A rigger (ab)using skill(wire)s has that stuff any way, it's just a major shift in focus.

Anyway, if you think skillwires are a problem, agents are like that except cheaper and better, because for less money they deliver more skills at higher ratings.



To be honest, as you point out a mage + agent is a very difficult comparison to make. But a rigger + skillwires + agent(s) is a much closer comparison, and the rigger is pretty much better than the specialist hacker, offering real ultimate firepower, significant physical spying capability, transport while running hot (though many transport powers are not particularly an advantage due to the fact is a group came), for a minor reduction in hacker effect.



Yeah I do, but aside from the fact that skillsofts are really software, and you can store them on the toaster in your apartment or your gmail account, and 10 nanoseconds after lonestar makes you delete them you can get another set, behaviour like that honestly doesn't really address the situation you're trying to fix.

Borg enabled characters have more flexibility to deal with a variety of situations (like our rigger, who has significant combat, leg work, unique powers (transport) and hacking skills in one character), so they are going to be hit less with 'take stuff away' strategy than a conventional specialist hacker. Take the riggers commlink away and he can directly skinlink to his car, round up his agents via that, and get on with it with only a minor hit to his skills - he's lost hacking, but skill has massive firepower, surveillance and transport. Take his skill softs away, and he loses the ability to fly some of his vehicles, and he'll need to get to his backup copies before everything breaks because he doesn't have maintenance skills, but he's still not doing to badly.

Make the borg enabled mage stand in a rating 6 background count, and well, he's now a fairly average hacker. Take the borg enabled sammie's guns away, and well he can use/buy an exotic weapon (monowhip) soft and flip out, and hack a bit too.

Take the specialist hackers commlink away and he's weeping salty tears.

Agreed. But that's the way the game is written. Its like playing a superhero game and complaining that flying characters ignore ground based obstacles.





Your point was that the Mage is going to render the hacker useless. Now is that it is the Rigger who will render the hacker useless?

I think the point of SR4's system is that the Rigger IS the hacker, there isn't enough difference between them. its not 'vehicle/drone guy' and 'code cracker' guy any more, its' 'tech/electro-wiz guy'. One guy, two closely related jobs.






Take the rigger's vehicles and drones away and he's weeping salty tears. Take a gun specialist sammy's guns away, HE'S weeping salty tears.

You have to compare like to like. Taking the Mage's Gun away... yadda yadda.

If someone is that highly dependent upon skillwires, letting them just magically store backup copies on their toaster willy nilly is self defeating, much like letting someone with an HIB just direct their agents as if they were PC's, rather than making them go through the mild aggrivation of actually having to issue those orders. Then again, maybe they DO have it on their toaster. Too bad that enemy runner team is squatting at his Doss waiting to take him out, with their own, not HIB hacker watching the house nodes in case he sneaks back.

Frank has an example of how agent armies are broken up thread a few posts that deserves honorable mention. First he supposes that the hacker has infinite downtime to prepare his Agent Army. Then he supposes that nothing will go wrong with his ultimate plan. I love those sorts of suppositions. By the time I was 16 I had taken over the world at least three times using ideas like that.

Never mind that it makes sense that hacker will have semi-autonomous software doing shit for them in 60+ years. I can just picture a Kevin Smith looking mouthbreather squatting in his ma's basement running half a dozen (or more hacks) simultaniously while he's playing video games and eating a pizza. Oops! Somethings going wrong, someone spotted his agent and is runnign a trace, oops, that one is busy hacking a node, just like it was told to... but it appears there are netcop equivilents just happening by on a routine check of the security right now, oh, look that one that was super critical, just failed because the node was shut down for routine updates... which problem does he address first? Can he address them in time? Lets assume that he's smart enough to have told his agents to alert him to problems...


Of course, the Sammy took HIS last paycheck and used it to hire some street gang to do his part of the next run for him.

Even without cyberware, anyone can turn money into a run by proxy. Whoopty-doo. Why is this one such a thorn for people?