Can anyone come up with a canon reference to the fact that you can't attempt to take control of a rigged system through a remote server network? Let me paint a picture of what I mean:

Once upon a time in a far away place lived Rigger A, who owned sneaky Drone X. Rigger A heard about a rigged building which he thought might contain the treasure of the ages, and whenceforth he decided it should be his for all time. Verily he decided to get the treasure. Through his contact, Pseudonym Z, he learned of a concealed access point to the rigged system, which he could access sitting in his van four blocks away by using Drone X. Being a sneaky bugger he fixed Drone X up with the necessary gear to plug into the access point. So our hero sent in Drone X (which, let us not forget, is sneaky and cunningly avoided all the guards). Drone X plugged itself into the access port, Rigger A engaged the security Rigger in a mighty (Willpower) duel to Deadly Stun and triumphed, and then the system was his.

Now, the problem with the above fairy tale is that Rigger A cannot use Drone X to plug into the rigged system, access point or not, because Rigger A must plug himself into the system in order to hijack it.

So, assuming someone with better eyes than me finds a canon reference for the above, riddle me this:

What if Rigger A fitted Drone X with an electronics autosoft and an electronics B/R autosoft, and also gave it a radio link and access equipment (dataline tap etc). Rigger A then spent the treasure of the ages (which turned out to be Karma aplenty - who knew?) on Computer 6 and bought (using Karma for Cash) a spiffy cyberdeck with a radio interface. Rigger A then sends Drone X in, approaches some component of the rigged network (a camera, for argument's sake), gets the drone to access the rigged system per the rules in R3, the drone plugs in its dataline tap linked to a radio interface, and Rigger A then jacks out of his RC network, jacks into the radio interface through his cyberdeck, engages in a Willpower contest which he wins, and then gets control of the network.

Apart from the fact that Rigger combat using a cyberdeck is harder (although you do get limited program access, which balances things out a bit), and apart from the obvious drawback of being reliant upon a traceable jammable radio signal, can anyone point to any flaws with this reasoning?

Oh yeah, and sorry about the long post - seven hours in court today.

Assuming that your GM bought off on having a drone being able to splice the dataline tap into the CCSS, there's nothing wrong with attempting to hijack the building over a remote network. It would, however, add a unique vulnerability in that any other onsite rigger could perform MIJI attacks against your network simultaneously.

Actually, there is some wierd canon stuff about this in R3 revised. a drone with the electronics warfare program and a remote deck can initiate MIJI attacks on it's own. So, in theory, a drone in your network can connect in and assume control of a buidling.

i guess the drone would use Pilot rating in place of Willpower, for rigger combat.

Uhhh... since when couldn't you have a drone jack in?

If it doesn't have to worry about splicing into a line with a tap, you can just jack in and proceed to sockbeat the opposing rigger via your network.

At least, that's how I've always seen it. Never done it that way (have yet to find a handy open port that a drone could cruise up too ), but I always thought it would be possible.

Grim Shear
"Whoa... trippy."

shouldn't be hard, as long as the drone has a manipulator of some sort.

My interpretation is thus:

Yea, this intrepid Rigger A, with his stealthy Drone X, hath embarked on a mighty quest. With a trusty dog-brained van driving him around randomly, and a signal repeater slung beneath a faithful mini-blimp; Yea Verily, Rigger A has way too much money. (not that that be a bad thing...)

Supposing that our intrepid Rigger A hath procured a l33t drone that has the proper tools to splice a data-tap, and has the manipulator-arms that sufficiently mimic that of a human's (think Valkyrie Medical Telepresence Station), the datatap is quite simple.

Supposing that our Intrepid Rigger A is not detected by the security forces, or his repeater-drone isn't shot down by an Anti-Radiation Missile fired by his dastardly foes; our hero has gained himself access (albeit limited) to the shell surrounding the Treasure of the Ages. Therin lies the rub. Bandwidth, always king, always the limiter.

The bandwidth of a Full-on Rigged system is always going to be more than that produced by a measly little drone, even one with massive mojo built in. CCCS systems are almost like hardwired Remote Decks in their intricate nature. To penetrate one using only one channel of a RCD is a great way to fry said RCD. Just as decking over radio-links blows chunks, overpowering a CCCS system over radio is nigh impossible my friend.

The cyberdeck would be useless over the RCD link, by the way, since the CCCS converter that allows it to play on the CCCS network speaks a different protocol than does the RCD network. The VCR understands, the CyberDeck does not, not without a lot of work, and a really l33t programmer.

My final verdict? Nice try, 3 Karma for trying, I'll keep the money you spent on making the uber-drones, and we'll call it a productive evening. You might be getting a call from Company Y, looking to cut some royalty checks. That is, if you trust them far enough to let them find you, that is...

BaronJ

fie, say i! fie! o generation of monkies, look ye to the bountious bandwidth that may be found in a condor with a laserlink and a high-end sat uplink, and rejoice!

Forsooth, maybe you're right however I understood there to be a converter which allowed Hijacking Rigged System attempts using a cyberdeck. Yes I know about the VCR interferes with decking rules in R2 (and possibly in R3, I can't remember) but I can afford two datajacks.

Here's an even knottier problem. One of the various sneaky tricks I'm cooking up for an existing character is this - I am an adept who does rigging so I don't have the essence to be messing around with high-rating VCRs. So, what I propose to do is get a rating 1 VCR, a low-rating cranial RCD with the necessary encryption to secure my network, and I will put a high-rating RCD with all the RCD accessories in a stealthy blimp drone which will float unnoticed (hopefully) in the general area, within network range. I will then use the CRD server rules in relation to using that blimp as the principal RC deck.

Now, my sneaky plan is this - I already have a decent computer skill, and the planned network consists nothing but drones with decent Remote Pilot Advanced Programming (high-tech robot-rated drones). Can I stealthily sneak over the facility one night my blimp, walk into the facility the next day with the mindless peasants/computer programmers/corporate slaves, sit down somewhere out-of-the-way, establish contact with my stealthy (and hopefully thus-far undetected) blimp, use the blimp with it's electronic warfare capabilities to steal the security rigger's drone network, use those drones to create havoc and confusion and mayhem (including some fire supprt) via pre-programmed commands, then leave the blimp to run the network (as it has a decent program/pilot rating), jack out of the network, finish the run in person (adept abilities lean towards stealth), get out and later recover my blimp?

Or, in short form, do we need a rigger in the network at all any more? can a decent drone with some crafty pre-programmed commands and a high pilot rating (and probably the electronic warfare autosoft) run a drone network to the level of ability required for simple, mundane tasks? Would not a cool trick be to steal a remote network through MIJI, hand the network over to the master drone simply to deny the security forces the drones, and then take them on in a much more even fight, and let the master drone beat off attempts by the security rigger to re-establish contact with his network?

Before you start the "verily, you are a rank bad hat and a knave of the first water" comments, I don't suggest the concept of a 'Master Drone' is useful for anything but the most basic of tasks, for example - "get all drones in the network to immediately move to point X, then keep them there while fighting off any attempts to re-establish contact with the hijacked drones."

the scenario you craftily supply us with is eminently doable. however, i'd recommend getting a robot pilot for the aforementioned blimp, with a goodly dash of fuzzy logic and some improved neural network algorithms.

Word. Fo shizzle.

Seriously though.

What prevents the drone from merging with the system port in this example, and by extension, making the system another part of the rigger's original drone connection? How different are the emulation programs of a drone versus a rigged-building?

Yea, this trick has already been performed (or a variant of it) using a modified Mr. Fix-It and a long string of small rotodrones with laser links as relays.

On-site decking from offsite!

~J