I had a few agent questions. I see by the fluff text that the use of alot of agents is considered 'low skill' 'noob' behavior, but what are the real downsides of it?

For example, whats the disadvantage of having an agent program running in the background when you're just cruising around, basically doing the 'catch wireless signal' or 'detect hidden node (general proximity)' actions as extended tests? The skill rating will be less than if you did it yourself, a factor of the agent pilot skill and whatever its program rating is, but where's the downside?

On an extended test, unless you glitch and raise the threshold basically your mid-level sniffer agent will eventually find all hidden nodes in your immediate area (signal range) within...what a few minutes? (Since its combat turn interval).

Or lets say you load up an agent into something like a Radio Signal scanner, which, dependent on size, could have a higher 'sniffer' rating based on its rating rather than 'sniffer program' per say. And you just leave that on, sniffing out radio traffic. The action description capturing the signal describes that no one can detect the capture unless they have access to your commlink, (or the device itself). So why wouldn't you want to just hide a radio signal scanner somewhere, where it just works 24-7 sniffing and capturing and recording? Then at a later date you just decrypt anything that seems worthwhile, or use another agent to do keyword/specialized checks of the raw data you have to see if any interesting conversations pop up.

Heck, you could park your car in a structure, and have it sit there for hours just sniffing and scanning the parking structure around it if it had a decent enough signal rating.


Am I missing something, or would it be a good idea to do this nearly all the time? Whats the downside?

No downside.

Yay agents. They're the drones of the wireless world.

EDIT: Actually, dumb can be a huge downside when they encounter something they don't understand / were not told to act on.

True enough, but if you're intending for just a specific brute force application, the abovementioned find hidden node, sniff/track/record traffic and that's all that agent is tasked to do that shouldn't require much in the way of fuzzy logic addition should it?

You just need a decent comlink to run your agent and all programs.

And for the sniffing. You can do that but most telefon calls are rather uninteresting and so will be most matrix traffic.
Additionally you can not intercept encrypted wireless traffic without decrypting it prior to that.

We use agents to probe nodes that might get important in our on going game. Just in case ...
E.G. GridLink, LoneStar, or DocWagon.

Agents are pretty awesome, no argument. However, there are two possible ways to run them, and each one has its drawbacks.

First, you can run the agent on your commlink, but then it counts against your program limit and multiple agents will decrease your response eventually.

Second, you can set them free, but then they are dependent on the node they run on. Most public nodes will have a very low response, limiting their capabilities quite significantly. Additionally, each one will have a comm ID that links back to you, so if someone is looking for your data trail you just made things more easy for him.

But yes, even for a hacker, having an agent that runs when you aren't using the commlink is great. If you have a Response 5 commlink (max at character creation), stick a Rating 4 Agent (max at char creation) in it with analyze 5 an attack 5. You've still got one free slot without compromising performance, and you've got an agent making 3 checks a turn to spot a hacker that's gotten through your firewall (that will smash said hacker in the face).

it's not foolproof - nothing is - but it's better than antivirus.

Agent aren't scary only on PC hands, i'd say. I'd say they are scary on NPC hands. There is nothing to stop a corp on a high security neighbourhood to add agents to blimp drones to catch those pesky, sinless, commlink-silent types. You could build those thinks on crosswalks and other kinds of junctions where people have to stand still or walk slowly and let them do their magic...

I guess in a way that becomes a gamesystem design problem, in that you go "Well, why the hell don't corps do the same thing?" and not come up with a great answer. Some say diminishing returns, and I can kinda buy that, but on the other hand, pretty much anyone can get away with running at least 3 agents pretty much 24-7.

Because a Rating 4 agent costs the same as a month of "medium Lightstyle"
Agents are not cheap. And Corporations will consider the cost benefit analysis before shelling out that much for agents.

And yes, corporations /could/ copy instead of paying for each license. But they won't, because they could run into issues. You really think the BSA doesn't exist in 2070

And you can only run 1 agent on a commlink.
You need a nexus to run multiple Agents.

That's only a problem if they can't write their own agent programs. I'm sure every AAA corp has at least some kind of tech department that could write up a rating 6 agent and make 5 million copies of it. Same for programs that the agent will need, just write one rating 6 one and copy it 5 million times. Needn't be rating 6, as that is somewhat high end, but a rating 3 would work fine.

And since all devices have device ratings, you could load an agent into every single camera, toaster, drone, etc that the company owns and have them all do whatever tasks you want.

You can't tell me the few tens of thousands of investment this would take wouldn't be totally worth it to have millions of agents at the company's disposal.

So yeah, the reason it doesn't happen is because it is one of those things that would make running near impossible, because the corp could likely assign an agent to track every single person in every city they operate in 24/7. They wouldn't get tired or bored, would constantly go through all available video feeds to find the person, would be able to determine areas the person visits, people they meet, etc.

They have to write their own agent programs
they have to continually update them
Then you have to have the ability to upgrade all those agents with software updates.

And think about the invasion of privacy issues. It would actually be a PR nightmare. And it's a hacker's paradise.
You sneak into one of said cameras. And you hack in, cause the agent to shutdown. You copy, edit, tweak, make some changes. Then you put him back in and restart him. Now you have an Agent inside working for you, who finds other agents and infects them with a virus that turns them.

1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 16 -> 32 -> 64 -> 128 -> so on
Except it's worse than that, because each agent infects multiple other agents.
Before the sysadmins are potentially aware of it, half of their internal agents are turning on them. Driving response time to 0, hacking into systems, and sending the databack.

That hacker, has 1 agent sitting in a camera, with an optical tap, and a laser transponder sending databack to the hacker. He's not even going through the main gateways of the corp, so they have no idea traffic is leaving their network.

Like I said, not even remotely difficult for an AAA corp.

Meh, wouldn't be that bad. The corp could after all only watch you where they have access to the footage, which means only in places that they own or are public, which means only footage that they would normally have access to. It's just now they're actually looking over it. It isn't even remotely legal, and I'm sure PR wouldn't be that bad (if anyone even found out about it)



Only if the people setting it up are morons. Tons of ways to prevent that, the first of which is a simple virus scan before it can interact with other agents, the second is not allowing agents to contact each other (no reason for them to after all), third is uploading fresh copies from the main source every day or so, and so on. Tons of ways to prevent any of that.

It is actually up to the GM whether Peripheral devices can run a particular program or not. An Agent is a pretty sophisticated piece of software, and I can't really see many toasters or coffee pots being able to run one of those. Not that a hacker can really do much with a toaster or coffee pot, though...

Granted a mega can have a ton of agents doing all sorts of things. But what do you have each agent do? There's far more then just hunting down Runners, and while the number they could potentially have is limitless, the number they could feasibly use at a given time is more realistic. And how profitable is hunting runners compared to say... using those agents for breaking past firewalls with advertisements and spam? Everyone says they hate spam and I believe it, but it still happens so it must work enough to justify it. I think SR spam would be even more effective if it can do audio, video, and even emotion. It's not that they can't do it, it's not that there isn't a benefit to doing it, it's that there is a GREATER benefit to doing something else. To use them in a manner that isn't as profitable as an alternative would eventually be weeded out by analysts.

Also, corporations are departmentalized. The agents that the research dept has is under their use, not the matrix security dept. The agents that the stuffer shack has running can't just be hijacked by Aztech's legal dept to help look up case numbers, not without approval at least, even though they are owned by Aztech. Not to say it wouldn't happen sometimes, but it would either be with permissions or would be done against regulations.

But that isn't to say that in a moment of crisis the mega might not have them all dedicated towards a different goal with an executive order or something. It just wouldn't be the norm to have them all out spying, not in my opinion.

That, and Megas already have a ton of agents in the form of IC and Black IC. I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of tasked agents though. They don't mind the PR as long as they can distance themselves from the 'foolish individual who set it up without their knowledge'.

In Emergence, there are a few examples of the Megas trying to get something better than agents to do more or less the same things, so they are very interested.

The Adaptable agent autosoft helps out their dogbrains significantly. Also, the Radio Signal Scanner from the core rulebook does what you're wanting (or at least what you mentioned) much, much cheaper.

EDIT: Reread the OP, and you did mention the RSS. That's a standard piece of gear on my characters, by the way.

DOUBLE-EDIT: Also, check out the thread I have linked in my signature. I have some work done on drones and agents and whatnot.

Really? Where is this? And does this mean that bringing my secretary Agent into a node with me precludes the node from loading its IC? Because that would be delightful.

Regarding the tireless agent army for corps, is Agent rating analagous to Pilot rating, in that it has to be "for" a given task? I think a fleet of Big Brother Agents eating up processor load would be less likely than a fleet of Whip Agents that monitor and improve employee productivity. I tend to suspect that corps don't spend as much as they could on security on a general, world-wide level, instead spending hundreds of thousands (or more) nuyen on protecting high-value isolated locations.

What would the Big Brother Agent army look like, by the way? If the Agent's running on a central node subscribed to the various cameras, then what do you need? Facial Recognition, Command, what else? It might be interesting to use the set-up for a corporate neighborhood.



Yoinked. Not for high-sec areas, which get better protection, but I like the idea of blimp drones lazily drifting over major metropol intersections, with mid-level facial recognition and gait analysis. Spot a face, run it against the SIN database. If it's ye old criminal SIN, gait analysis and send a note about direction of movement to local law enforcement. Gait analysis can also help spot concealed weapons, right? I'm thinking low rating on the Gait Analysis, because if it could presumably spit out a false positive for "carrying a weapon" you have plausible deniability for hassling undesirables. "We had to tase him, sir, our blimp told us he was concealing a heavy weapon." It's also great from a game perspective because it gives an obvious target to hacker characters who are looking to do a bit of spying/shadowing*, and if it's a law enforcement device there'll be slightly more risk/interest in the hack than just hopping from one convenience store camera to another.


[*] I think the best possible tests for a piece of common-use tech in Shadowrun are "Could this make a runner's life a hassle?" and "Could a player use it as a tool at some point?"

Unless you run multiple commlinks or you upgrade your datajack with a Response chip (which you can do with any device). Allows you to run Commlink programs.

Theoretically.

I figured he meant that running an Agent with all the cool programs would eat up all available resources. Of course, if you use the ergonomic programs in the link in my signature, there's no worry of that.

Why would the Boy Scouts of America care if you copied an Agent istead of paying the licensing fee? Obviously they are much more influential and powerful than I first thought...

As for Multiple Agents/IC on a Comlink, that is not true, you can run multiple Agents independantly within your comlink, and they will use their own Access ID (but they are not a real persona), so they act as a program would (with its payload also counting against yourprocessor program limits). You cannot have copied Agents operating within the same node (unless you have copied them, and then altered their access ID, which takes some effort), as nodes will not allow identical Access ID's to occupy the same node. SO, if you want multiple Agents in a Node, you must have bought them independantly (They are not copies of each other), or you must have altered a Copied Agent's Access ID (hopefully to something unique).

Thes rules can be found in the SR4A, Pages 234 - 235.

Business Software Alliance

not boy scouts of AMerica

ANd yeah, I was misreading the rules on agents and personas. Commlinks can only have 1 persona in them. But Agents are just programs

Whew... And here I was dreading the boys in blue showing up to take an accounting of my software practices... Glad that has been cleared up...

Yep...

What no one outside the Boy Scouts of America realize is that it is actually a recruiting ground for those who will become the world's most elite assassins. With their advanced survival training (So called 'camping trips') they can access any part of the world with easy. They often pair up with someone from the Girl Scouts of America, who are trained in disguise and social engineering (So called 'cookie sales').

What is, in fact, actually true about Scouting is that the movement was essentially founded to help children grow up to be effective soldiers after enlisting in the military. In fact, history shows Scouts being used time and again as paramilitary auxiliaries.

Take a look at the fetch modules...

I can see some hackers figuring out how to do the same for unrestricted agents, slap them in there and they just cost 1 subscription point.

Though I would rule they basically have to build a commlink. In example for a rating 4 mook you need a commlink built with: Response 4, Signal 0 [hard wired to host commlink], System 4, Firewall 4. Then you have to add the software for the mook: Analyze 4, Attack 4, Armor 4, Stealth 4 for a stealthy combat drone version

If bought I would look at the fetch module prices for the price increase modifier (pilot X, analyze x, browse x included.. so divide the price by the total value of them)

And now the paranoia really begins... thanks a lot...

I laughed so hard at this, because it is partially true!

I was a scout for three years (my fricking father never bought me a scouting book so I never advanced, even though I had the training), and I am currently pursuing a Criminal Law carreer. You'd be surprised (well, you wouldn't) that the Marines, Sheriffs, police, Army, EMT, and many other related first-responders look very, very favorably on anyone with Eagle Scout status. It's almost as likeable as actual military experience.

Very True...
I was a Life Scout Myself... only lacking the Community Service for Eagle before I eventually got out...

.... My wife was a girlscout. She was a cadet (whatever that's worth), and her mother was leading a troop or whatever for a while also.

... My son will be the next supersoldier...

Who was the last supersoldier?

Dolph Lundgren?

I had a good laugh at that. Then I realized 'hey, You know, i saw Desipicable Me recently.'

as it turns out, amajor premise for is 'girlscout cookie sales are greater than madscientist shrinkray lab supersecurity'.

Oh my gawds.

Funnily enough I saw that shortly after making my post

Sorry to go back on-topic but the main drawback I see to running agents doing "detect hidden node (general proximity)" is honeypots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_%28computing%29

What you're looking for though such an action is a target weaker than yourself. The flip side is "Snoop onto Them as they Snoop onto us", in short, a possibly better hacker looking for targets, and you showing up on his/her radar.

Grabbing signal traffic is something I'd have more tin-foil hat fun with. I have to believe that there will be people in the future who (perhaps rightly) believe all traffic is being captured, stored, and analyzed. I can see groups of Neo-anarchists adding false signal to the noise in an effort to send the corps on wild goose chases. I'd happily send my players on a wild goose chase that wasn't intended for them.