When Agent is listed in the book, it is listed as one catagory-- Agent/IC/Pilot. Is it essentially the same thing, in the case of being loaded in a commlink?

Can I have it loaded in my commlink to defend that node (in this case, is it an IC)?

Can I have it run clearsight autosofts while hooked up to my image-linked glasses and earbuds (which are feed through my commlink) so that it can analyze my surroundings via AR, or point things out to me (assuming it is a high rating pilot program, so it is smart enough to grasp this)?

If these are the case, can I still have it travel via matrix with me to other nodes, to help with other hacking jobs?

I'm investing a good deal of my money (and legwork with help of a fixer contact to track down and) to buy a rating 6 agent for my commlink. Since he will be such a high rating, I'd like to name him and have him available as my go-to buddy for all commlink and matrix related stuff-- even have a feed of my sensors in the "meat world" so he can see what is going on. Would these work okay? This is also my first agent, so could some of you more experienced folk recommend some other neat things, tips and tricks on ways to use agents?

They really are all the same thing. I honestly have no idea why they bother to try to distinguish them all as completely separate things except to seed confusion. But that seems to be their entire plan when it comes to any rules relating to the Matrix as a whole.

You may want to just browse through Unwired a bit more and read up on all the options available. They start introducing even weirder subgroups of agents in there, like mooks (which is what you're after) and a bunch of other goofiness to make things even muddier than they already are. In the end, as long as you follow the basic rules, you're doing fine. You can call your agent an IC if you really want to. It doesn't really matter in the end. And yes, they can pretty much do anything a hacker can do.

Ah, thanks so much. I had thought this was the case, but the books are vague about a lot of things. I read through pretty much all of unwired a few times, and remember seeing the bit about mooks.

So I can feed my image-linked glasses, earbuds (with audio enhancement 3), and other sensors into my commlink-- then have my agent essentially work as a pilot program like a drone would, and have it use clearsight autosofts? I'm picturing this as my agent talking to me via audio over my earbuds to warn me about things. And to overlay images over my sight in Altered Reality, so it will highlight potential threats and interesting information with colors and arrows. Is that viable? Also thinking of loading emotion software to it, so it can also perceive and analyze people's emotions around me-- so it can flag when someone is acting nervous and such.

Also, as an addition to this, can I have a spy drone also feed its senors to my commlink-- and then this agent to analyze and point out what it thinks is important?

I'm also looking for a few unique and inventive ways to use agents for fun and profit. Tips in general are great.

PS: Dr.Funkenstein, you weren't mean this time-- and was actually nice and helpful. What gives?

You had me at hello.

Remove the copy protection, clone it a couple of dozen times, and start the real brute force hacking? (*Cue discussion of why this is bad, even though it seems possible*) Combine with the rules for clustering a bunch of commlinks to get around the subscription limits, and unleash your Agent army on an unsuspecting world, while remaining fairly safe yourself.

I like your idea of a "co-analyst" with clearsight and such. I'll have to look into doing that myself.

You might be interested in the various sensor softwares shown in Arsenal. An Agent who basically examined footage of things you see during the day can be very handy; "that gay with the funny gate has been spotten five times today. He's 60% likely to be following you.."

I think there was some software in Arsenal to give your gun a personality (which can be hilarious.) There might be something like it in Unwired too. You should try that, and discuss a neat personality with your GM.

yes, tho the devil is in the details.

IC is basically a defensive agent. Or basically a agent loaded with analyze and attack (at least).

but a pilot is System with decision capability (tho never specificed, it should be able to use analyze and attack to locate and remove a intruder. but a simple disconnect action may work just as well, except for the no crashing on part of the intruder).

in other words, search for "agent smith", and read up on the past debate(s). Just keep migraine medication and fire extinguisher handy...

One thing I like to do for my more urbane characters is get an automated Lifestyle spoofing.

It's really simple. You start by buying or building a custom commlink with System 5. The other stats don't really matter too much unless your GM wants to start playing hardball with it. Optimize it for Spoof and get an Agent (Rating 5) loaded with Spoof 5. Then just set it and forget about it, letting it increase your lifestyle by one category every month automagically. That High to Luxury increase is the most cost-effective use of it. For the 10,000¥ or so it costs to set it up, you get a 90,000¥ lifestyle increase each month. The threshold is "only" 100, but the agent has all month to boost finish it with 11 dice at a 1 day interval. So that's an average of about 110 successes in a 30 day period. Assuming the GM isn't using the diminishing returns rule for extended rolls, of course.

It's even better if you're using the alternate lifestyle rules in Runner's Companion. The intervals drop to 6 hours for each category, and if only have a couple categories you want boosted (such as Necessities, Entertainment and Security), you end up with tons of room for error in excess successes. The only thing you have to worry about is the GM decided to have someone investigate the spoofing. But the spoofing rules by themselves aren't contested at all.

It works for lower lifestyles, too, and you can reduce the initial cost quite a bit based upon the number of successes you need. Middle to High is only 48 and Low to Middle is only 12.

I hear you.

Personally, I've ruled that while Agents and IC are interchangeable, Pilots are different. This is mostly because we use house rules that do not apply software degradation to stuff that's not really as involved in a security race, such as most autosofts, skillsofts etc.

Yeah, but what GM wouldn't have someone investigate the spoofing? An automated agent, working for months at a time: think of the datatrail a device like that would leave, spoof-renting all the stuff you'd need for a Luxury lifestyle; that's a lot of stuff, after all! Every guard's paycheck has to be spoofed, every Thai food delivery, the repair bills for the vacuum drones, the upgrades for the trideo. That said, I do think it's odd that the rules don't really discuss this at all; read simply, it makes it seem as if none of these ramifications are relevant; I know, I know, the combat rules don't mention how long it'll take Lone Star to show up after you shoot someone, either, but some mention of the consequences wouldn't have been amiss.

From a metagame perspective, it's kind of shitty to spend 10 grand and have a free mansion for the rest of time. I think there's also something kind of wrong with the thresholds. Assuming you're buying hits at 4-to-1, and averaging over the month, the dice you need to assure each lifestyle are: [Please, feel free to check my math!]

Luxury: 14 dice.
Threshold 100, 400 dice needed, 30 day period, 400/30=13.333
High: 7 dice.
Threshold 48, 192 dice needed, 30 day period, 192/30=6.4
Middle: 2 dice.
Threshold 12, 48 dice needed, 30 day period, 48/30=1.6
Low: 1 die.
Threshold 4, 16 dice needed, 30 day period, 16/30=0.5
Squatter: 1 die.
Threshold 2, 8 dice needed, 30 day period, 8/30=0.2666

This is, of course, assuming steady work over an extended period, which means either an agent, or someone with a lot of spare time. If you want your free lifestyle but don't want to work every day for it, the necessary amount of skill rises; 6 dice will get you a Middle lifestyle with eight days of effort, for instance. Not unreasonable.

Anyway, the "life spoofing agent" will happily work day and night for you, and a really dreadful one can steal you a middle-class lifestyle for, what, 1200 bucks worth of agent and program? Seems like something there isn't right.

Fascinating. Actually I kind of like the idea.. some of the better hackers might spend their days like this, only picking a 'Run when they want to buy something special.. This could cause a whole "invisible" section of society to survive.

Some of those dice pools are so low that it's A: impossible to buy successes; and B: likely that a glitch or a critical glitch will occur. Imagine the fun a GM would have with that!

You can only boost your lifestyle be one category. You can't go from Street to Luxury doing it. If you want a Luxury lifestyle you have to at least have a legitimate High lifestyle. And a rating 3 Agent with Spoof 3 and Sneak 3 is enough to get you from Middle to High with ease (an average of 60 successes per month). If you do want to buy automatic successes instead, just bump it to rating 4 and you get the same effect 'guaranteed.'

As long as you don't crazy with it, I doubt many GMs would worry much about it. The rating 3 one, including a rating 3 fake SIN, costs just over 13,000 nuyen to set up and it's just saving you 5,000 nuyen per month. Not that big of a deal. And since it's being run on its own dedicated commlink, it never actually traces directly back to you so much as the SIN you have associated to that commlink. Which will doubtlessly be different than any you use any other time.

It'll be the people who try to abuse the system, such as with the Luxury example I gave earlier, that will evoke a GM's wrath. That's literally stealing over a million nuyen a year. That's not going to go unnoticed.

That's basically a tacsoft you're talking about there. The rules for that are in Unwired, page 124. It's a super nifty and super useful tool, essentially giving you (and your team) the ability to access eachother's current location and sensors. You can see what everybody else sees, hear what everybody else hears, it color codes friends and foes and can assign their places on a digital overlay of the architecture, identify enemies weapons and armor, as well as give you a bonus to a slew of dice pools equal to channels of sensory input/2, capped at +4. There's also a minimum member requirement for the tactical network, but I'll let you read about that.

But you'd have to ask your GM if you agent was allowed to manage it all.

Certainly. Yeah, I've read about tacnets, and I really do want to set one up. The biggest thing about the agent though, is it will be fun to roleplay. A sort of super-logical personality giving me snide remarks here and there (usually not snide on purpose-- just pointing out annoying statistics he "thinks" might be useful). Just wanted to make sure it was a viable option before I go over the specifics with my GM. He seems to find the idea amusing though.

Just give the device you're running the TacSoft off some Personality Software. Same net effect in that regard. You could even just get a Virtual Person and link the two together so that your interfacing with it is done by the Virtual Person. Or Pet. Or whatever else you fancy.

nice! I was looking at a gun mods earlier, where it gives your smart-linked weapon a personality. I'll look into that. I want him to be a creepy robot voice in my ear, rather than a physical being though.

I read that mooks were slang for agents... ? I admit that could have just been my spin on things.

- J.

Gah! Double post!

- J.

As far as I know that's exactly it. "Mook" is just used for a generic agent that you use for any and all purposes, as opposed to ones you get for specialty gimmicks like the lifestyle spoofer I mentioned earlier. Keep in mind the Matrix rules confusing the living hell out of me.

Don't forget about program degradation. Next month you have rating 2 Agent with Spoof 2 and Sneak 2, until you buy new programs or make them yourself.

Assuming the GM uses those rules. Which, in all my time playing, I've never once seen a GM bother with SOTA rules because they're ridiculous in a game like this. Even back when they applied to everyone and everything technological (weapons, armor, vehicles, cyberdecks, programs, etc.), not just hackers.

But if the GM is -- and they better be applying it to everyone equally, not just this program as a way of "punishing" the player for using it -- it's not even a real issue. At best the spoofer will have the job done way before the month is over. At worst, you just have to get a second one dedicated to patching. You don't even need a payload for it; Agent 3 by itself will do the job since the test to patch is just Software + Logic (1, 1 week). It can patch itself, the other agent, and both of its payload programs every single month. Heck, an Agent 2 gets it done, too, by buying the one success it needs for each patch. If it's a really big concern, just use a commlink with System 4, upgrade the main agent and its payload programs to 4, and optimize the commlink for Agents. Then you have 9 dice on each of the main tests, giving you an average of 90 successes each month which is almost double what you need. So it can patch the patching program with the leftover time while the patcher patches it.

In the future, everyone should have a robot in their ear. After putting on your com for the first time you should hear 'Hello there, [insert name]! I am your new personal assistant program! Please give me a name!" Just a trial copy of an agent program set as part IC, part gopher. Software sales, man, and it keeps people from hacking John Public's comlink and using it to build a botnet. Or, the corp trial agents could be put in flipmode in case that corp ever needed to go to war on the matrix. A billion com doomsday botnet run by Renraku. Oh hells yes.

Been reading over the replies here and a few things caught my eye.
Mooks are hacking agents that essentially will break the law without whining and refusing to do it. Per Unwired there also the only agents that will replicate.
As far as the ridiculous lifestyle issues, I like the rule for diminishing dice pools for extended tests. Something I had to put into place to keep the teams hacker under control and it works just as well for other issues like spoofing lifestyle.

Why exactly do you feel the need to "put it under control?" Especially in such an overbearing fashion? Some Extended Tests, like the ones involved in spoofing lifestyles, have such crazy thresholds not to reflect difficulty but to reflect the time required to do it. Spoofing a High Lifestyle to a Luxury Lifestyle isn't any harder than spoofing a Low one to a Middle one, it just takes a hell of a lot longer since you have a lot more to take care of. Diminishing dice pools completely ignore that factor, making it all but impossible to do the former with its threshold of ~100.

And, again, you can't spoof a Street Lifestyle up to a Luxury Lifestyle. It only allows you to do a single jump. Street to Squatter or Middle to High. You can't do Street to Squatter to Low to Middle to High to Luxury. And even if you could, you couldn't since it takes a minimum of one week per step. Ignoring even that, it's all you'd be doing anyway since the last few steps require multiple weeks to perform unless you have some kind of super awesome commlink at your disposal that's throwing dozens of dice on each test (nevermind the limit of 20 per roll).

Then you also have the fact that the cost to do it, if you choose to automate it, is roughly equivalent to several months of rent. It only really pays off in the long run for most situations. The only time it saves you money in the short term is spoofing a High lifestyle to a Luxury one, and that's going to definitely draw unwanted attention if you try to do it constantly. Squatter to Low, not so much.

A standard book "Agent" is a legal program and as such will not undertake any action that it knows is illegal, this would include any skill check from the Cracking Group. A "mook" is an Agent that has been modified to undertake any action, legal or not.

I've been considering giving Lifestyles an Availability rating; to reflect that official scrutiny increases on people with more money. You can still get a lifestyle "above your station", but your SIN better be good.
* Squatter/Street: -
* Low: 3 (finding a cheap pad is pretty easy)
* Middle: 6
* High: 9R (very few SINless at this level)
* Luxury "A": 12R
* Luxury "AA": 15F (simstars, prime runners, company men, governors etc. - not precisely forbidden, but only for "deserving" people)
* Luxury "AAA": 18F (reserved for CEOs, archmages, IEs etc.)

Both fake SINs and spoofed Lifestyles are checked more thoroughly and often the more you rise on the lifestyle ladder. Maybe Public Awareness should factor into this too; at some point the paparazzi are going to stat digging trough your trash.

Certainly I agree with that; our opinion of "crazy with it" might differ, though. I'm definitely not saying players and characters should never do this; lifestyle spoofing, and even automated lifestyle spoofing with agents, is not just possible, it's inevitable, given Shadowrun's information infrastructure.

On the other hand, I personally find the Lifestyle Spoofing Agent [LSA] to be troublesome. It's too easy to get free lifestyles for little investment. Your examples all show a very quick payoff, usually like three months to make back your initial investment, and then it's free running from there.

More importantly, any extended lifestyle spoofing should be difficult to maintain, and this can certainly be the balance for my "too easy" complaint. The higher the lifestyle, the more likely someone will notice what's being stolen, and the more complex the expenditures become. Spoofing a Low lifestyle means a lot less stuff and staff than Luxury, and involves less complex interaction with very smart computers, too; "borrowing" electricity from the makeshift network on the edges of the Barrens involves many fewer data checks than sucking a mansion's worth of power from Seattle Edison.

Anyway, I agree with most everything you've said on the subject, I'm just a little more quick to jump to consequences, and more concerned about the LSA loophole. Ultimately, the very nature of security means that if stealing lifestyles becomes very very easy, then enforcement is likely to go up, as money is invested to recoup the losses; if enforcement is low, people are much more likely to steal lifestyles, leading to an increase in enforcement. No matter what state the system begins in, it will trend toward maximal enforcement until rates of theft decline, limited by the available resources of the enforcing agency. In this, the situation borrows heavily from evolutionary arms races in Darwinian theory.

All that said, why can you only steal one step above? Why can't someone with a Low lifestyle steal a High lifestyle?

i think the lifestyle spoof and similar hinges on glitch and critical glitch chances, and the outcome of such...