Noise for distance is minimal, if you're within a relatively short range. -1. If a hacker is trying to work across grids (there's a public, local, and each corp has it's own Grid network), they get an additional -2. If they don't have access to the grid you are on, they have to hack their way onto it, which can cause them problems and takes an action or three. But, the Public Grid is low-bandwidth and crap, so everyone gets a -2 on it. So you can just operate on the Public Grid to give yourself a little extra defense.

You can also get signal jammers. These provide their rating in noise. This is a toy everyone's largely overlooked, I think. If you don't have a decker on your team, carry a Rating 4 Jammer with you (800¥, Availability 12, so the best you can start with at chargen.

Right there, you're taking away 6+ dice from enemy deckers. Combine that with 12 defense dice, and you should be relatively safe.

And wireless bonus connections are magically immune to noise?

Well said. What confuses me is the fact that everyone against the new toys assumes you HAVE to use them. If you don't want to play with the toy, turn off your wireless. Now you are playing the baseline Street Sam in SR5. No one in SR5 not on the matrix has any advantage over you. It is a level playing field. If they want an advantage they open themselves up for the risk.

Okay, hadn't thought Grids have such an effect. It'll only stall a little but it might be something. How do you detect a decker (via VR) in your vicinity? Matrix Percepton? Can you run an Agent to be on the lookout?


Do Area Jammers affect WiFi Boni? Other than that, okay, that sounds ... well, somewhat workable. I'll have to run some simulations once the PDF comes out, I guess.

I'm largely keeping an open mind about SR5, leaning towards being hopeful and positive it'll be a good thing. But I think a return to the massively overpriced cyberdecks is pure crap, just my opinion. I dislike the idea that if a single piece of gear is taken away from a character that he'll be gimped and largely useless. A magician loses a focus, he can still cast spells. An adept loses his weapon focus, he can still swing a regular sword. And it's a bit more difficult to take cyberware away from a sam... even if it gets bricked, all you need to do is get it repaired and it'll function again (though I haven't read the costs for these operations yet.) But a decker? Take away his cyberdeck and what can he do, honestly?

It used to be any good decker would have his programs cracked and backed up, and a spare commlink laying around in case the one he's using got slagged or stolen. Now? He'd better be from a well-off family to have another cyberdeck costing hundreds of thousands of nuyen laying around, or be able to go out and buy a comparable one in case the one he's using gets destroyed.

To me, it's just a very large hole to dig out of in case he loses a single piece of gear, and to me that is just wrong.

Maybe crainal decks will be marginally viable now.


... and get most of your stuff nerfed heavily (like smartlink, laser sight, wired, ect). It's not like the System doesn't heavily come down on people who don't use the toys.


It is not once you bring corpsec into the game.

Because you do, otherwise many pieces of gear are totally useless.

If it is useless to your build don't buy it. It will also be useless to anyone else not going active. Again level playing field. If you want the bonus go wireless. the point is there is choice. There are item that I will enable and items I will not. That choice will likely change depending on the individual character as well. Maybe even the circumstances.

A fail to see baseline and bonus as a nerf. Are you comparing a SR4 Street Sam to a SR5 Street Sam? Of course they are different. SR5 to SR5, same build, with wireless off = baseline. Characters are equal. Turn the wireless on for both. Characters are still equal. Turn the wireless off for one. The Character with the wireless enabled has the advantage of the bonus (I assume he can make use of the bonus or there is no point in activating the wireless), but is vulnerable to hacking.
It also adds a richness to legwork. Is there a hacker with the patrol group, or at the facility? Similar to is there a ward on the place for mages. Do we go in with foci active, do we go in with wireless active? The answer to both questions depends on circumstances, need, and risk benefit analysis.

A baseline smartlink does nothing for you unless you have a pool of at least 12 (then it does something for you in 1 out of 6 rolls, which still is minimal). I fail to see that as functional gear. Unless you activate wireless, you'll have a hard time, as a beginner character, to get any use from that item. And unless you run a game round bums in teh barrens, you'll encounter demiGOD-backed forces who do not have to worry about Wireless as you do, and we're back to inequality.

Yes. That is the baseline for SR5. Many non-gun focused starting characters will have no need to spend extra resources on Smartlink at CharGen unless they want the option of going active when they need the extra dice. Baseline is baseline, and it is equal for EVERYONE.
Now it remains to be seen if opposition takes the -2 baseline dice pool into account. It would be poor design if the players were unable to take on the opposition because of this new baseline.

And it makes no sense what so ever, helping beginners to have a better chance at hitting is exactly what smartlink is supposed to do.

A bad design choice.

If opponent defense pools drop by two it is a net wash. Either way the overall concept is sound and the specific bonus they chose as a baseline to smartlink is a separate matter.
As for smartlink and the baseline bonus. That is something I was glad to see as well. As a gamist I believe any item that is generally considered a must have item should be looked at. There should always be an alternate choice that is viable at least 25-30% of the time. This was not the case with smartlink. Now this is a game design philosophy, and I understand that you are from a different philosophical school on this. I'm not telling you that your wrong, I am merely expressing that I like this particular direction.

Close. The real design principle you're looking at is "as few obvious choices as possible." If something should obviously always be taken or obviously not taken, it's a bad option to offer. If it should sometimes be taken, especially if the option has different values in different situations, then it's a good one.

Currently no, they are not different. Both are stupidly overspecialized builds which need to suffer.

But by your logic, nothing-but-shooting-sam should totally be able to participate in social situations and drive the team van. "The more interesting and different things a character can do, the better it is"...


PS:

Given that a decent signal jammer will rob the whole opposition of their wireless boni, I fully expect jammers to become the next big thing.

Wait wait wait. Why would a starting runner be up against the GOD at chargen?

There is so much cognitive dissonance for the people arguing for why wireless bonuses are bad things.

"Magic is better because it can't be hacked." Which is weird since over in the magic thread people are complaining about how bad magic is because the Street Sam gets more dice and can kill people better.

"SR5 rules are a complete nerf compared to SR4." Except you can't play with gear straight from SR4 because everything has been rebalanced to work with a new system and new statistics. So its not a nerf, its just a changing of stats to work with new rules.

"Wireless every where isn't secure and no one in their right mind would be online." And there are rules to support being offline. So you do have that option.

"It doesn't make sense why cyberware needs to be online." Everything needs to be online. That's a common trope of cyberpunk. The Matrix is so integrated in to the SR world that it will always effect you. By removing the Matrix you have removed a core part of the world. The game is not designed for people to be completely able to ignore 1/3 of the game.

I think that wraps up most of my thoughts on the matter.

If it's that easy to thwart, and is obviously a point of bitter contention with the playerbase, what the hell were the devs smoking to push it?

You can "automatically" spot any icon (Matrix avatar of a device, persona, etc) that is not running silent (aka, hidden in SR4) within 100m of you in the Matrix.

You can scan for icons running silent with an unopposed Matrix Perception test (Computer + Intuition [Data Processing]). You only need 1 net hit to know a hidden icon is out there.

Once you know there are hidden icons, you can try and find them by making a Matrix Perception Opposed Test vs the targets Logic + Sleaze). If you get more hits, then you can find the icon. You can then track that icon regardless of distance unless they make a successful Hide action (Electronic Warfare + Intuition [Sleaze] v. Intuition + Data Processing) or they logout or reboot, in which case you lose them and have to track them again. If you're marked, you have to either remove the mark or reboot to lose them.

And yes, you can have an Agent running and on lookout, though you need a Cyberdeck to run an Agent and it takes up one of your Program slots (Of which you don't get many).



Wireless bonuses are... Screwy. But no, jammers do not effect them. They're a binary concept. They either have access or they do not.

Every time more about matrix boni are revealed more obvious it get that they work purely by matrix magic.

I don't disagree, really. Just saying, it's possible to play those. I try and make my characters fairly well rounded and able to do a couple different things, though I've been told by a couple people here on the forums that I make my characters "wrong" and they're gimped because they're sub-optimal" and not throwing as many dice as they possibly could. (Under SR4 anyway, though I imagine SR5 won;t be much different)



*IF* social situations or driving tests regularly took 25-50% of actual gameplay time, I would agree. But they do not. Even an intense social scene is mostly roleplaying and any character can participate in those regardless of his skills or attributes or cyebrware, because it's pure roleplaying. Stuff that requires dice, etiquette tests and negotiation? Those are done in a minute or two. And with the exception of the occasional chase test or possibly a rare dogfight/vehicle combat scene, you're not going to be in a van or vehicle for all that long. And if this sort of thing is occurring o a regular basis you may want to talk to the GM about gameplay expectations.

The point you are ignoring is that combat scenes crop up in almost every game session for almost every game. There are exceptions, the "professionals who never get seen" type of groups, but they're fairly rare. As a player, a GM, a writer, and a developer, I expect at least one combat scene per game session. And I expect that at least 1 hour in a 4 hour game session will end up being dedicated to combat. Simply because even trying to streamline and speed up combat, it still takes a while to run, because it's very dice, action, and strategically intensive.



They actually don't rob them of their bonuses, sorry. At least not in the core rules. Wireless bonuses are not dependent on dicepools, so noise penalties don't actually effect them.

I think they're still be very useful for teams that don't have a decker, and even for those that do might be useful to keep on until the decker wants to start muddling around in the Matrix, then you switch them off. Though they're likely not that great for sneaking in places, since giant static zones in a corp facility will stand out.

Bull

*shrug* Aaron has an explanation for them that involves "cloud computing" or some such that supposedly makes sense. When it comes to real life computers, I'm strictly a user and know very little about how they work. I freely admit that. I also had nothing to do with the wireless bonuses, beyond agreeing with the base concept as being interesting. So you'll have to argue that with someone else. I accept them as part of the new rules and roll.

Doesn't thwart it. Just makes it more difficult. It also pretty much stops your own decker in his tracks as well.

I'm just presenting options for defense for those guys worried that if they have no decker, everyones just going to shut them down and beat on them all day long.

Its new and scary. The "playerbase" (Which so far is pretty much 20-30 people here on the forums, and is not all that representative of the playerbase as a whole) is reacting to a lot of half information, misinformation, and hasn't actually looked at or tried to utilize the new matrix rules to any degree since the books not out yet. And every time one of the freelancers here tries to explain anything, we get thre epeople screaming at us that we're wrong and stupid, and three other people twisting what we say to misrepresent it or place it in the worse possible light.

Look at this argument here:

"Holy crap! Mages can now cast Control Thoughts! They get Magic plus spellcasting! They can have 12 spellcasting and theres no cap to their magic! They could be tossing 20+ dice!! ANd all I can resist with is Logic + WIllpower? At most 12 dice? We're fucked. If we don;t have a mage in the party, they can just take control of me and make me kill myself! Corps are just going to have mages at every facility with this spell!"

It's effectively the same argument, just utilizing something that's been in the game since day one. Hell, it's arguably even worse than the hacker argument, since there are fewer ways to add to defense and it's much harder to start off with 12 dice for defense.

Strawman and all of that, I know, but just saying. You can flip the argument a bunch of different ways. And honestly, I'm too busy and too tired to do any more, so I'm done.

Check it out when the book launches. Try playing with it some. ANd try to lose some of the bias that these boards are trying to flood everyone with. And if you still don't like it, well... Sorry. I tried.

Bull

Oh, and just to add... It was nice to actually converse about this a bit rather than just having everyone jump on my shit. Thanks guys. Always good to have the occasional semi-civil conversation.

Sadly, I do have some work to do (both writing and taxi work), so I'm gonna tag out for a while. Maybe Aaron or someone else will be able to play for a while and answer anymore questions you have. ANd hopefully I helped at least a little.

Bull, are you working on the anticipated equipment or augmentation books and/or do you know their current state of development?

Also, am I correct in assuming that biotech enhancements do not have wireless bonuses? If so, following the theme of the new edition, what is the "price" a character pays for choosing biotech (other than higher prices, but much lower essence loss) and are the bonuses provided by biotech similar to SR4?

Thanks.

Nothing against you Bull, but this just keeps getting worse . .
So the gadgets need to be online to get matrix bonus.
But they don't actually need to be able to connect to the Matrix at all, if even something like a Jammer does not work?
What.

So, basically, all a Samurai has to do is the following:
"Lol, every thing i use is completely 100% online, but nothing can be done because due to miniaturization i carry 1 Jammer for every gadget i own!"

Because GOD are the Matrix Gestapo and are Everywhere? Security deckers are known as demiGODs, so they're integrated into the GOD structure now (somehow). And yes, starting characters will be up against security personnel.


How many dice does a mage get to sling spells? 5? Because a sam gets 10. 12 if he is eager to be hacked.


... and where do you get that from, I wonder. Cyberpunk isn't Googlepunk.


Yes, they are (unfortunatly). So I suppose the Jammer doesn't actually Jam anything, it just ... floods the Matrix with ... Matrix stuff ... that makes Matrix stuff work less but ... somehow ... only some Matrix stuff. Noise, going by what you said elsehwere. Well then. They shouldn't be called Jammers, but hey, confusing labeling is the name of the game in SR5, it seems. Of course, don't Jammers draw heaps of attention to their activity?


Okay. Couple questions here:
- What size are the respective pools? Quickstart rules didn't contain any program stats for the decker. His deck only has Device Rating, can fork and add +2 for attacks.
- How much of this can a character who does not possess a cyberdeck do?
- Agents are cyberdeck only now and take a program slot? How many program slots does an average deck get?


Hey, I prefer those too. Gets a lot more useful information, and is a lot less headache-inducing.

Now I am a bit confused by this and hopefully Aaron or another can expand on this. On the one hand a device has to be in contact via its wireless and would receive bonuses, if its off that it doesn't.

BUT if said signal is jammed/interfered with it still works as if fully connected?

I can understand if the device has a certain rating to overcome as the jammer will have a rating as well representing the electronic garble it is throwing out and if it doesn't exceed that of the device in question it certainly will not sufficiently interfere with the item's reception, but if a jammer will not work at all then what other circumstances can or can not apply?

I know that the core rules can cover only so much, but that seems wrong if it stands.
Especially if you have civilian ware totally immune to military grade jamming.

I was thinking the one thing that a Security Team on it's home turf could do is supplement their comm gear by using a fiberoptic line on a spool so key members of the team would be physically jacked in to the matrix using the Corp's own fiber optic infrastructure.

They would be less mobile but immune to jamming.

Or a SWAT sniper using a small laser commlink to stay in touch with the command center.

I'm confused on one thing Bull. Now it's entirely possible it's merely the product of misinformation but... Several other posts in several threads mention that you cannot 'chokepoint' your 'ware via commlink etc. It has to be connected to the Wireless Matrix direct. However your statement says that a R6 commlink will give you extra protection against cyberware hacking?

Of course it could also be because i have zero familiarity with the Matrix of SR4-SR5 and lack some crucial core concept data.

I disagree on that one. The ubiquitous wireless connection that allow portable equipment to be online is a very late addition to the cyberpunk genre. Ghost in the Shell (1989-1990) which is now branded as a reference, has the protagonists communicating wirelessly all the time, but objects, like firearms or even most vehicles are still offline (it even shows a public payphone at some point...). Really, for the moment sci-fi authors realized how cyberpunk had failed to anticipate the future of communication networks, most of them actually moved onto something else. Masamune Shirow has been rewriting GitS for almost twenty-five years now, and it's about the only piece of work people can refer to regarding ubiquitous network in a cyberpunk setting.

(Make no mistake, I'm a great fan of Masamune Shirow, though I held Appleseed to be way much more visionary, regarding geopolitics and terrorism, than GitS has ever been on technology.)

And Appleseed had a cool moment where one of the protagonists hacked an enemy combatant by catching him unawares and firing a cable into the comm port on the back of the opponent's neck.

That would be cool.




-k

My understand of it is that you cannot daisy chain chokepoints (ie connect cyber to commlink A, comlink A to comlink B, etc.) to make a chain of comlinks to hack through. My understanding is that you CAN slave your gear through a single comlink or cyberdeck. That is not official but it is m understanding from following along. If I am wrong can someone clear it up for me/us?

@Karma Inferno: I made a post somewhere about alternate methods of providing access for a Cyberware hack instead of having the stuff online that (as far as those of us who dont like it) shouldn't be. Short lived Nanite-Virus type grenades, Transponder-"Dart" invasive ammo and Wireless Interface Slap Patches. As well as a Direct Link Data-Tap micro drone. Lots of toys for Called Shot options.

Give me a couple of days the read the PDF when it's released and I'll be working up some rules around those concepts and putting them up on Dumpshock for those of us who want our Cyberware DNI secure (with exceptions) but still think the hacking idea has merit and is cool.

Eh, I personally hold SAC in higher regard, in that it was themed around the social and cultural impact that the Internet could have on people...and was released at a time where social networking as we know it today was still in its infancy, and is more relevant now then when it first hit the airwaves.

No. That is simply a lie. A common trope is, that an international network of computers (Grid, Matrix, Internet, whatever Net) is extremely important for everyday and everyones life, and often is the reason for plot hooks.
SYL

So a jammer jams radio signals, but is does not jam radio signals?

...

I am not really quite sure that is is fair to say that players are judging on wrong/incomplete informations.

Why does a jammer cannot jam online bonuses? But jam radio communication and wifi hacking? But wifi hacking can hack online cyberware/items which ware receiving online bonuses.

If I may ask: why did you try to re-invent the wheel when it comes to cyberware / item hacking and did not just used established hacking rules, like hacking the radio communication, tacnet, remote drone control and/or the online commlink (which often acts as a PAN center for the rest of the DN'I controlled items worn). Why open this extra can of worms?

Do I understand correctly that there are now 3 different radio communication / data transmission / control systems?

Online bonuses: cannot be hacked (directly), cannot be influenced by noise, cannot be influenced by jammers.

Item/Cyberware with an ative matrix connection: can be hacked, jammend and influenced by noice, situationally of course (includes everything from security cameras to your online tripid to unfold)

Drone control: works on a totally different system? Can a decker influence drone rigging?

SYL

Atually that is part of GITS (Manga) as well, in the first part of the manga series IIRC.

SYL

Everything is Online for a list of examples of the trope in use. The ubiquity of "the always online" is in fact a trope, and you can not debate that its not, because there are very clear examples of it in cyberpunk literature. Or is something like Snow Crash not cyberpunk enough?

You can say that you do not like this trope, but you can not say there aren't clear examples of the trope in use by cyberpunk novels, video games, films, etc.

Shadowrun is dystopian. The mega crops try to influence their control on everything and everyone, with their all seeing and unblinking eye, the only problem with that is that it doesn't work in practice. That's why its dystopian and not utopian.

I'd be happy to. A device can have its wireless bonus blocked by noise if the noise is higher than its Device Rating (p. 421, SR5).

Seems simple enough.

Is there any way to use a jammers noise rating against it for ECCM tasks?

I thought that was should happen, but just wanted to check.

So Jammers do have some viability.

Thank you for clarifying this.

Aaron responded to this slightly higher up the thread with the following:

A device can have its wireless bonus blocked by noise if the noise is higher than its Device Rating (p. 421, SR5).

So a jammer can work, you just have to beat the Device's rating. I imagine some stuff will be easy to wreck their bonus while military will have better gear requiring better jammers before they lose their bonuses.

Thanks for clearing that up.

What is it now? Did Bull mean that you cannot directly influence the bonus but simply jam the connection?

SYL

@apple: Aaron wrote that "A device can have its wireless bonus blocked by noise if the noise is higher than its Device Rating (p. 421, SR5)." So you can, just not with every jammer, it's a binary thing.

And the smart link has which device rating?

But GOD are like the Red Samurai, and you don't put beginners up against Red Samurai. You put beginners up against beginner security guards, which are like the DemiGODs, and even then they have different capabilities.


Between 1 and 6 program slots for the cyberdecks in the core rule book, although beginning characters can only acquire decks that provide 4 program slots.

As far it was posted either here or on Jackpoint, you automatically trigger a GOD strike team if you have 40 hits on the security tally (illegal matrix actions). Is that true?

SYL

Wow. I'm stunned by your opinons on gaming sessions and the occurance of combat scenes. I've never thought that we'd have totally different expectations on RPG sessions - as a player, a GM, and as a writer.