One of my players wants to use a Software test to start increasing his Programs and Firewall past a 6, are there any rules that limit this other then the long month intervals the player needs and the threshold he needs to meet?

Other than requiring a system you can actually run it on, no I don't think so.

Fluffwise
large Megacons are supposed to run rating 7 Progs on rating 7 Systems
If I where the GM I'd ask your Player to make a Run to obtain a rating 7 System then he could develop and run his Progs .

with a rating 3 Dance
Medicineman

That's the beauty of it. Thanks to how silly Unwired is, you can run a Rating 12 program, on a Rating 6 system, on a Response 3 nexus that you bought at Best Buy.

actually, since SR4A you can simply program you own Software with rating >6

cya
Tycho

How?

The System of a Nexus is not limited to Response.

A program may have the Optimization option up to Rating 6 which allows it to run on a System with System + Optimization equal to or less than it's Rating providing Optimization does not exceed System.

Therefore a Rating 12 Program with Optimization 6 will run on a System 6 which is in turn running on a Response 3 Nexus.

I concur that this is BS!

Not that it would matter: The Optimization Option is valid and thus, a Response 6 Commlink will do.

It'll just cost a bunch, and take a lot of time to code.
That said, I believe there's a sidenote stating that corps and especially military run programs with ratings over 6.
So if your player uses it, he's always risking to attract GOD's attention.

The beauty of running Rating 12 Stealth program is that you don't attract attention anymore.

And AIs can increase their inherent programs to that kind of level without having to spend 5 years coding. There's no rules on an AI adding program options with karma though. Not that it would be a stretch to make some simple rules to flesh out the stingy AI rules of RC...

And Technomancers.... well, let's not get into that too much. Starting characters able to have as high as 18 in a complex form, fresh from creation.

And summon level teen-huge sprites, too.

Naw, at character creation the best they can do is 12 unless your GM is doing an optional BP/karma build amount that allows for submersion at character creation. But yeah, Resonance 6, Stealth 6, Exploit 6. Call forth 4 rating 6 registered sprites, thread Stealth and Exploit up to 12, have two of the sprites sustain, have the third sprite loan you some Stealth and the 4th some Exploit and viola, 18 in both CFs.

If its that easy for the guy on the street, imagine what the govornment and the megacorps are doing. You think the most powerful TM's in the world are livin in the shadows, or in luxury corp. mansions?

Sprites can only sustain a thread for a few rounds though. After that you drop back to normal, or lose 2 dice per sustained CF.

With a stealth of 18, the amount of dice lost on matrix actions doesn't matter, because by RAW no one and nothing may in any way shape or form act against you.
The game simply breaks down at high stealth program levels.
Well, the matrix is broken to begin with, so it just breaks down to even more hillarious levels.

How many rounds do you think you need to hack admin access of a node with Exploit 18? And with Stealth 18 you're guaranteed it's not going to see you unless you're hacking military grade stuff and it's getting good rolls. And once you're in, well, that still brings you to 12 stealth once the threading ends.

This is the sidenote, Unwired p.112:

And how exactly does it prevent the hacker from writing a Rating 12 Stealth program himself?

Nothing, I guess. I'm not saying the sidenote makes sense, it wouldn't be the first incoherence in the matrix rules. It's just interesting to see how rare such programs are supposed to be, although a single skilled person can code one in a few months. It seems that 6 is an implicit limit to many ratings in Shadowrun, although they often forget to mention it. Personnally I wouldn't allow my players to code or build anything past rating 6, unless it is clearly allowed.

Perhaps limiting the Program rating to Software skill is a solution – like the Latex Face Mask (and similar) rating is limited by Disguise skill.

Of course, that'll make the bound Task Spirit coding on an old-school terminal rule supreme.

Which was the case in SR4, but this requirement was left out in SR4A

cya
Tycho

AFAIS, there is no such restriction in SR4, either. At least not on p. 240 – where should it be?

Ok, my mistake, this was only stated in the German Fanpro Edition...

cya
Tycho

Wait maybe I'm missing something here... With a 6 & 6 dice pool to program, and a threshold of rating x 2 for the program (I'm going off of the ancient Fanpro 4th ed, 1st printing so forgive me), 1 month increment, you're looking at an average roll of 4 successes per solid month of effort (no runs, vacations, etc etc), so you're looking at 6 solid months of coding, with no other income coming in. In a programming environment, you're looking at 100 credits a day, which is around 10k of development time if you managed to get the software done in 3 months minimum. Again, with no income coming in.

Even if you doubled your dice pool up to 24 dice through various means (skills, rating 5 programing suite, etc), you're still looking at 3 months of solid, 40 hour a week coding. For one rating 12 program. Figure another month or two to add on optimization six.

That seems, to me, out of the realm of most PCs that aren't already doing really well.

Also, that rating 12 program *does* require upkeep.

Page 109, 2nd paragraph under Pirated Software:

"In game terms, illegal and pirated software- and also programs that a character has coded himself (p. 118)- degrade over time, reflecting that the program is slowly becoming outdated."

Next paragraph:

"...Software programmed by the hacker and open source programs never degrade in this fashion, but may require patching to remain current at gamemaster's discretion"

It seems to be contradictory. However, the only thing I can figure is that it's referring to planned obsolescence as a source of degradation specifically in the paragraph, and obviously programs you write yourself won't have that issue.

That still means programs degrade. I wasn't able to reference the time it takes to patch up software you write yourself, but going by the 1 week/program, that means that if you want to earn enough money to eat, you probably aren't going to program and maintain more than 3 programs.

The unwired rules seem kind of wonky to be sure, but they aren't completely broken.

I looked pretty heavily into this kind of stuff for a character, but I think the piracy and updating / patching section of unwired keeps it in check pretty easily... although I would still impose the cap of programming your own to your software rating....

but with those rules anything a character programs himself regularly degrades at a rate of 1 rating per month (hacking programs) unless the character takes the time to patch it ( which is again a programming roll at an interval of 1 week )

so with a simple combination of capping programs being created to software skill... and using these rules, a character may be able to whip up some pretty awesome r7-8 programs if he's willing to put the time into creating them... but he wouldn't want to do too many because even just 2 of these programs would mean he's spending 2 weeks of the month just patching his 2 programs to keep them awesome... this also explains why 6 is kind of the soft cap for programs in general... cause with the degradation system it not only keeps the separation in power levels between the big 10 and the rest of the world, because few other entities could bear the resource burden of maintaining a full compliment of R8 or R9 programs... it also keeps the general public in check and easily updated and fixed with enough scale on their end that the "big dogs" who dish out for the r6 programs feel mighty compared to the r2-r3's but are still cheaply made and distributed by the corps and no risk to the corps should anything be used against them.

if I were a dm I may (maybe) houserule that the intervals for creating and patching r7+ programs be doubled... but only after having more experience with the system.

also for technomancers (yes they are matrix majesty) but a quick fix to some of their brokenness that somebody suggested but I believe makes sense, is requiring that for any sprite to assist or thread a complex form the sprite must possess it ( possibly not allowing a bonus greater than the sprites ability )

edit: damn you beat me to it dixie, caught wife agro as I was typing

I'm admittedly pretty new to the 4th matrix system but have been pretty heavily reading it in the last month and this seems pretty well balanced to me, because as the technomancer may be able to get complex forms of rediculous ratings, they in general loose out on the quick boosts to all matrix skills that you can pump in from cyberware, easily able to boost logic 2-3 pts and logic skills in general another 4-5 pts easily with some others giving skill specific bonus's like the elect war bonus from math cpu... all f which can easily add up to throwing another 5-6 die on almost any matrix test a cybered hacker may make, without the need for sprites and threading and time limitations and fade consequences.

A Sleep Regulator or magic equivalent will let you pour in a lot more than 40 hrs in a week for coding. Like three times more.

that would give you time to perhaps continue with running on a semi normal schedule, but still the time input to create it, then the time intervals to maintain such a program, would be cost and time prohibitive

plus I know if I were the GM and a player made and kept updating an R12 program I'd quickly throw in a run where a security rigger or other lowbie sees the program in action and escapes to report it to his supervisors... leading to whole lots of subplots for simply keeping your big nasty out of the hands of "the man"

and again, this r12 program would require a char with natural software skill of 12 with that quickie home ruling... so by that point... kudos... well done... let the corps come

You might want to take the time to check out the errata for Unwired.

Self-coded programs no longer suffer from degradation.

Unless, of course, the GM deems it necessary... as detailed in the quote...

Keep the Faith

there is one programming aspect I haven't seen noted anywhere that I can remember


is it possible to simply "upgrade" existing programs to a higher rating to save time from starting from scratch

could a player roll to code an upgrade to his existing self-coded rating 5 exploit to increase it to 6

doing this to avoid starting from scratch adding months to the process...

personally if there's nothing covered in the books on this I'd allow it (at the very least on open source and self-coded programs)

Its not so bad if you assume that a day's of work is a day's man-hours of work. And you have edge, rush job, and a rating 5 programming suite, and a sleep regulator. You're almost right on thresholds - its rating times 2 for hackware, and just rating for common use.

For the record, though, SOTA rolls are completely ass and a pain to deal with, and we've thrown them out of our game.

In Software Tests to program a competent hacker easily has 20+ dice:

Encephalon (merely must have for a hacker)
PuShed (dito)
Programming Suite +5d for 5k
Cerebralbooster
VR Bonus
etc.

and when you use a Nexus Programming Enviroment you only need half the time.

a 0Karma Hacker i built had 24d on Software tests (without min/maxing towards it), so that is not really a problem.

cya
Tycho

Firmly within the bounds of GM fiat though.

I would imagine your average Hacker would spend enough time role-playing coding during downtime to never have the GM step in and say 'this code-base is getting stagnant you need to spend some time patching it.'

YMMV but there is now no longer any mechanical necessity to patch self-coded programs.

And then add dice from your fellow hackers that you work with and do a team work test.


BTW-In SR4 you cannot reduce the time below 1 base time interval can you? I recall that in previous editions the time was the max and the number of extra successes reduces the time, do the extra dice beyound the threshold do the same thing in SR4A?

No, the only way to reduce the interval is to Rush the Job or to use a Programming Environment.

From the Program Options section of Unwired p114. Sounds like, if you want to rule that a player can code up their software, you've got grounds as far as fluff is concerned. Personally, I'd have to give it the nay-no.

You can even add Options to existing programs – in fact, even to not-selfwritten / OSS ones, though you need to crack them first.

the big benefit to "upgrading" your own programs would be having the fallback ability back to the standard program... say if you buy a renraku r5 program... and then because you're a great programmer "patch" / upgrade the program to a rating 6, of course being a homebrew program it would fall back into degradation, but since you've bought the r5 then if you can't afford to spend the time to keep it updated then just fall back to the bought r5 program.


basically giving yourself a baseline that your programs can't fall under, and a starting point to save you some programming time from having to start from scratch.

Not really. Once you've cracked a program to do your own upgrades, it is no longer updated with patches, and thus is affected fully by degradation.

Or apparently according to the errata if you crack it yourself it never degrades. (actually I'm wrong here, but it leads into other thoughts)

What a stupid f*cking errata. I'm sorry, I understand the idea that you patch it yourself, but the errata sets up something insane where I write/crack 50 programs, patch each of them on my own, and it just magically happens with no time restraints.

Although, I read the errata just now, and it reads the same as the book. Self-coded programs do not degrade from built-in obsolescence. That's it. The way I read it, the software still degrades at the GM's option (which isn't that how the entire Unwired rule set functions? At the GM's option?)

Otherwise, here's an idea to reign in stupidly high rated programs:

You can't patch software higher than rating 6. It simply degrades until it hits 6, and then you can update it as normal. Say you discover an incredible exploit, develop it, and create a tool that uses it to gain unparalleled access (rating 12). As you use this exploit, it gets noticed, it gets patched, and the effectiveness of it degrades. Since it's designed around a specific purpose/exploit vector, it isn't something that can be "brought up to speed" and maintained. At rating six, you've more or less reached saturation of countermeasures, and you can start dealing with them as normal.

This makes rating 7+ programs incredibly useful, but limited in their lifespan.

I refuse to believe that the majority of the reason why software becomes out of date in 2070 is because a timer goes off in the code. That's one of the most stupid explanations for degradation that I've ever heard. As *a single* reason why software degrades, among others, I have no problem with, and in fact it's a cute idea. But the sole primary reason? That's stupid.

Again, rating 7+ programs are only an issue due to the f*cking optimization trait, which only adds up to 6 successes to the threshold and lets you run impossibly powerful programs on a normal commlink.

How about a houserule that you can only run as many "levels" of optimization as your commlink's system rating? So if you have system 6, your commlink can run two Optimize-3 programs, three O-2 programs, or one rating six. It'd give you some oomph, but prevent three or four rating 12 programs on a 0-karma commlink. After all, even with optimization, there's only so much you can squeeze out of your commlink.

Either that, or double the successes required for optimization (rating x2) and double or even triple the interval (2-3 months instead of 1 month). Christ, it takes a year today to optimize a video game for a hardware-frozen console like the xbox or playstation, and even then it doesn't work particularly well all the time.

Optimization needs to be either be very expensive or limited.

It's not just that the program falls apart. Matrix communication protocols are changed and updated constantly by the folks who control it. It's really a top-down compatibility thing.

Sort of how Apple Quicktime works just fine, but it needs to "update" like every 4 hours.

ROFLMAO.

touché!

Actually, My Hacker does not have an Encephalon, Cerebral Booster or PuSHed, and Is quite capable of programming without them... He generally throws about 14 Dice (16 with Specialty), and with a skill of only 3 (Professional Rated)

You really do not need all of that stuff to be a competent Hacker/Programmer...

Keep the Faith

Indeed, that is how it is at our table at least... I am constantly spending downtime tweaking the code...

Keep the Faith

To solve this drone programing farms totally RAW and very cost effective once you have the drones patching there corse wears. Yes it makes no sense that drone can program better than men but they can and they do it all the time with no need to rest. While you go out and score the big bucks. Start with some Rating 6 cracked programs keep them patched sell the patches via a site put poffits in to more drone to sell more patches and start a few on coding from stachs some custom stuff or adding flashy bits to you existing code. Rince and repeat till you have every program at rating 12 fully optimized and such all powered by a farm of second hand drones that cost 50-200 nu-yen each... while you might need some more powerful drones later on the cheap as cheaps ones will do to start you up. Yes I have a TM doing this but he get to add sprites to the mix too lowering his set up costs. Whle he cant have malwear complex form nothign stops is drone from cooking it up for him. Yes my GM has fraged my operation a few times with GOD and such raiding my drone farms.