I have a player interested in pl aying an AI (In a drone body) and has some basic questions as it has raised some details I had never thought of before.

An AI is limited to the response of a node it is occupying.

This makes sense but brings up something that I have never considered (the only hacker I've had to deal with is a TM). When an AI, for that matter a hacker is attacking or interfacing with a node, where are they occupying? Are a hackers programs that they are running, affected by the node that they are currently "in" or the juiced up commlink on their hip? Do their programs travel with the icon and begin execution upon the remote node.? Or is the situation more like a datafeed ?

Also as a side note, I note that AI's seem a litte worse off then hackers in general. Any good houserules that people have come up with?

Thank you

I was asking exactly the same questions when one of my players wanted to play an AI!

A hacker only ever uses the Response of their personal commlink; usually the one they've tricked out to Response 6 etc. They make subscriptions to the nodes they're hacking/otherwise accessing. All the hacker's programs run on their own commlink. The exception to this is if they choose to load an agent, plus any programs the agent might want to use, into someone else's node (usually to take advantage of their processing power rather than wasting their own).

An AI is very similar. By default, we assume they normally operate out of their home node, especially since they can increase its rating well above 6 simply by being there.

AIs have the potential to be utterly amazing; a Rating 6 AI can have six Rating 12 programs (their inherent ones) which they can run on any system they load onto. No hacker can ever hope to do that. Qualities such as Sapper and Authority and Rootkit make them far superior. Their only downside is that they're limited to 3IP (possibly able to get 4IP if you intalled a Simsense Accelerator in their home node -- depends on the GM). I'd leave them as they are, they're awesome enough.

Welcome to the wonderful world of trying to make sense of the AI rules.

raggedhalo is correct, though. While AIs can move to another node, they don't need to. And they really shouldn't, staying in their home node and profiting from the enormous matrix attributes is much better.

well, a setup i would toy with is a offline home node, and a couple of optional bodies, with at least one being anthroform with max mimic.

If your home node's offline then you have a hell of a time getting into it...

The AI PC in my game was the emerged Pilot program of an Ares Citymaster. You just want your home node somewhere safe; you may as well make use of the fact that it can have Rating 8 or 9 stats straight off the bat.

heh, here is the deal.

the drones are parked with a fiberoptic connection to the home node. so when the AI want to go out and about, he moves himself into one of them, disconnect the fiberoptic and takes a trip.

Then you are still in the home node, and when you disconnect the drone you get dumped(unless you use wireless connectivity). The exception is when you actually move wholesale and make the drone your new home node, which actually takes alot more time and effort than just rigging a drone.

No, you can choose to load yourself from your home node into another node (for example if you wanted to break into somewhere behind a faraday cage, you might load yourself into a Kanmushi microdrone and sneak in). It's just not a very smart choice as such.

the thing to keep in mind is page 110, unwired.

I have two questions -

1) What happens when an e-ghost AI jumps into a drone? Is he considered to be jumped in? Whats to stop the AI from using the drone's CPU as his home node?
More importantly, what happens if the AI is running the drone and the drone is destroyed? Would the AI suffer dumpshock?

2) Anyone know what ingame effect building a UV host would have on an AI?

- J.

That's more than two questions. =i)

Here's how I interpret what's written:

1. It can't without the Pilot Origin quality (the answer to the follow-up question is "Work it out with your GM"). See previous answer. Nothing. Exactly what it says in Runner's Companion. No.

2. ... maybe ...

1) Guess you mean he already took the Piloting Origin Quality. He can rig the drone like a rigger and is considered jumped in. Nothing stops him from using the drone as a homenode.
If the AI is jumped in and the drone is destroyed it means "ciao bella" for the AI as statet in RC. It's one helluvah dumpshock.

2) You have your own digital playground where you can create anything so real that nobody can distinguish it from reality. As for everyone who got Admin for a UV Node.

Keep in mind that by RAW, while the pilot origin quality allows you to "jump in" a drone, you don't actually get any benefit from doing so. Thanks to an inherent command program, remotely controlling a drone (which you can do without any quality) actually gives you a better dice pool. The quality is only remotely useful if you don't have command and are in your home node, then it gives you about 2-3 bonus dice (roughly the same as the rig) thanks to your higher response.
Being able to use autosofts is useful all the time, though.

Sorry I should rephrase -

An e-ghost AI can control a drone, but cannot "jump" into said drone. Would that be accurate? No, he didn't take the Pilot Origin quality. Can he control drones at all?

- J.

An eGhost is an AI in all but name and his former self. He can remotely control every device including drones with a command program just like a hacker or AI can. He can't jump into a drone as long as he doesn't have the quality which allows him to do so, again, just like an AI. And he can simply order the drone to do his bidding just like any other legitimate user, of course.

Here's one for ya... Can an AI access Know- and Linguasofts and actually have them be useful??

Emphasis mine.
Explicitly allowed.

Thank you for pointing out the derailment of my brain train... I read the AI section ten times and completely missed that part every time.