You keep saying this, but it still doesn't mean it's good game design or worth respecting.

A retcon still has to be internally consistent to be worthwhile, and given that the answer to jammers and wireless bonuses seems to be officially 'uh, no, those don't stop that connection'...

Entirely secondary.

This discussion should be about game design or game design respect, not "why something in game works the way it does" if you want to bring those objections to the table.



I believe that you are incorrect. Jammers may stop a connection at a certain rating, correct? It's just that the underlying mechanics have been abstracted so that you don't need to be an Electrical Engineer to calculate what to do on your turn.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

The whole discussion is hinging on the plausibility of the new systems being retconned into the game world. The fact that the new systems aren't internally consistent with the rest of the established setting, and neither the new book nor the writers themselves can come up with a consistent explanation for how they work means that they are fundamentally flawed.

That's where the whole objection comes from.

I suppose that you and I disagree, then. I haven't seen anything that is internally inconsistent with the established setting.

I have seen fringe cases where people have raised objections to how the core system operates inside of the framework of that fringe case, but by and large the system appears fundamentally sound.

Edit: And I mean that both from a thematic, as well as mechanical, exploration of the rules. Seeing the underlying effect of limits on dice pools makes my toes tingle with delight.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

For those saying "Well it's a Retcon". It isn't. Not really. Because the Sixth World Lore they are using is using the SR Time from all previous editions. Thus from 2050-206x there was no Wireless Matrix. Until then things like WR and RE worked fine together and a Smartlink turned a bad shot into a moderate one.

The Microsoft, Sony thing is a great example of how the Megacorps would react with the Cyberware gig. Ares implements their new Wireless "bonus" Cyberware and Shiawase immediately grabs 50% of their market share by offering the latest is Stand Alone Cyberware.

Here's how some of my house ruling/setting revision is looking.

For Action reductions most Online will be replaced with DNI requiring some form of Cyber plug in (the ubiquitous DataJack) or it already being internally wired (most Cyberware). The OnLine bonus for these pieces of ware will come in the form of an Analysis and Response Agent "cloud" allowing you to activate or deactivate (x) pieces of OnLine gear in the same Free (or as a Simple) action. This will have the possibility of drawbacks to it as well as being open to a hacking attack.

Other Online bonuses are likely to being swapped over for +Dice in StandAlone Mode and +Limit with Online active. So you use it only when you're likely to be needing to beat the limit buffers (and don't want to use Edge for every roll).

Some fluff...
Each corp is obviously running its own Grid on the sly (extraterritoriality) and Corp Sec leap ahead of the game because they can run their Cyberware with full Online extra functionality with little worry, unless of course one of those new Deckers gets into the Corp Grid and bypass the security there, then he can hack their gear! Shadowrunners maintain functionality by running Stand Alone, the foolhardy may run on the Grid to up their performance but that does make them vulnerable. Very good teams with a decker running overwatch may take the risk of patching into the Corp's private grid for those same bonuses, of course you'd better have a VERY solid firewall etc if you're doing THAT.

Joe average Cyberware is usually grid connected most of the time. Providing all the fancy bonuses that they never use, up to the moment "patches" for their OS and all manner of handy AR interfaces along with a marketing departments dream of return information. Function not unlike a whole bunch of modern social networking facilities, phones and tablets ect. Obviously Shadowrunners have that stuff purged pretty early on.

The individual placement, composition, size and shape of each grain of gunpowder is important in determining the vectors of the explosion. It's not uniform.

Tapping the bullet before firing it will cause those grains to shift slightly, which will alter the outcome.

So unless you have sensors inside the bullet recalculating the data on the propellent then no.

You don't have enough data.

From the perspective of said person: Because of "REASONS". Please, don't ask for the precise nature of these "REASONS" or how they can be labeled as being "logical", because that's beyond my capabilities ... and most likely beyond the referenced person's capabilities as well.

I think suspense of disbelief is a perfectly valid topic of discussion in this thread.
You need a system that is fun to play and run, has game balance, but doesn't blow out the group's suspense of disbelief.
And if the genre has been around long enough then it just becomes part of the genre (like a little domino mask keeping the ID of a superhero secret).
Shadowrun is its own genre with 24 years of background and history explaining how things work.

Retconning some thing that is a serious game balance issue is perfectly valid especially if there has been a Matrix crash or a major new upgrade to explain the change.

But there are a few Matrix Bonuses that just seem to be a bad choices.
Retconning major changes to the point where yesterday you could do this with your gear and today you can't do this without connecting to the Matrix is heavy handed for no good reason and really defies the suspense of disbelief.

Some idea's just don't work and they really just need to errata in that DNI links can active gear as a free action and exploding bullets will not report back on the targets' health.

As I've said before, I've got no issue with wanting to have wireless bonuses.

I've got no issue with there needing to be a retcon to make it work.

What I do have an issue with is the bonuses they came up with.

Even if the previous edition futzed up the lore and supporting mechanics?

Hrm. That's true, enough. It would require loads and loads of data. I suppose the question is really: How much data it takes to make an accurate enough model. Right? That's true of real life, when I need to my computer to perform operations on functions of continuous variables, but my poor little computer can't, so I instead opt for polynomial approximations of what I'm looking for, right?

And that's good enough to get to the moon and back?

So, is the grain of gunpowder germane to the question of abstract wound cavities? If so, to what degree? And at what point is a approximation good enough? Eventually when your results may be sufficiently abstract, and your library is sufficiently large, the complexities of these questions may become less important.

Let me follow through with that logic, however, and ask: Do you have a problem with an Ares Predator having a static damage code assigned to it? What is it, like... 6 or 7 or something? I'm not aware of any randomization to that damage code that occurs as a result of grains of propellant tumbling around. Is this inadequately realistic for you?

It seems to indicate that wound cavities in SR are both predictive and deterministic, right? Is this a shortcoming of the system?



Hahahaha.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

There's abstraction and then there's bullshit.

Flat damage codes is abstraction,* informing the user of the target's health after firing the gun is bullshit.

It's bullshit because there's no adequate way to accurately model the result in such a way that the outcome can be considered "deterministic" in-universe. Because of that data-gap it is not acceptable (breaks suspension of disbelief) to abstract it away.

*Getting hit with a bullet hurts. Hurting is damage. Guns do damage. Damage is numbers. Ergo guns do numbers.

Hold up. Players also have hit boxes. This is an abstraction. It, in no way, accounts for the migration of individual grains of sand throughout the casings that eventually propel the projectile that will remove those hit boxes. Is this a short coming of the system?

I don't think it is.

Doesn't this abstraction translate, in some way, into real and tangible game terms? For instance, isn't there some arbitrary point where a given target, with a given composition, will take 3 damage boxes from a given attack? And doesn't that translate, in some way, into actual In-Character Knowledge through case studies? If so, they why is it impossible for such approximation and abstraction to exist in game as well as out?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

If that abstraction is possible, why isn't it done at the gun-level rather than the bullet-level?

This is where magic has it easier.

If the spells change or things gets a bit loopy, we just blame it on the changing mana levels and feel a little better because well... things happen.

You think suddenly discovering your gun has a wifi link (and seems to have had it all along) made for a bad day? how about being Human today, and a 3 sizes bigger Ork tomorrow with halitosis from heck? Again.. blame the mana.

Able to ground spells through an astral body or item into the physical in 2050 but not in late 2060's, blame the mana. Or all mages suddenly having a sense of fair play and voluntarily avoiding that because you know we are all just those kind of guys. *looks around for the halo and beam of light* meh, was worth a shot.....

No WizFi yet, though we are working on it.

Read this book series. No seriously.
(I highly recommend the audio books, the reader does a fantastic job. Quaaaarrk.)

Mmmmm. ...Good question.

Let's see...

...Maybe part of it is done at the gun level, but completion of the model with any degree of reliability requires feedback from the bullet itself. Such as, for instance, data that may be extrapolated from it's ballistics that are used for confirmation that it struck the intended target, and how it struck the intended target?

So, the gap between 'mostly useful model' and 'actually useful model' is completed by including the bullet. Which is the difference between guessing 'Hey, shooting this guy with this Ares Predator should do some abstract measurement of damage' and 'Hey, shooting this guy with this Ares Predator DID do this abstract measurement of damage,

Enh? Enh?

I mean, it's a little of a stretch, but it's not COMPLETE nonsense, right?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

I remember the author from way back, but never got into it. May have a look.

For ideas of what a hacker god could do Webmage is interesting though obviously well off any scale of game play you could reasonably run, but when you can read about Hacking your way INTO the underworld (Greek Pantheon style, not the mob) you know its gonna be good.

And actually his sidekick ally/laptop would make for an interesting deck indeed.

He's done a few series. I found that series by accident when looking for Thusrday Next novels. I was pleasantly surprised.

-- Shadowrun can't even keep cased and caseless ammunition straight, and puts carbine and assault rifles (that share the same ammo in the real world) in different categories for ammo. I wouldn't look very hard at this area of abstraction or you might suffer 1d6 Sanity loss.

Oh man. And I've got so little left to spare. This could get ugly.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Which is nothing more than an opinion...

Hehehe. I've noticed you're a staunch defender of SR 4th Edition.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

It has issues, most of which I have come to live with.
Sadly, I will likely not get into 5th Edition much, due to financial reasons. Some things in 5th Edition are intriguing to me, but there are things I have read that really are disturbing. Oh well...

Having not played it, I can't comment extensively on the issues, though there are some earlier edition mechanics that I'm going to miss. That said, a TN of 6 being the same as a TN of 7 will not be one of those.

And hey, the PDF is only $20. So while subsequent books may be more pricey, that initial entrance barrier is low, no?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Of course it's an opinion.

Point is that "futzed up the lore and supporting mechanics" is subjective. I don't think that they futzed up the Lore OR the mechanics. *shrug*
Not that they couldn't have been cleaner than they were, to be sure.

Entry requirement cost is not bad, no, I just will not likely be able to afford it any time soon.

Devices typically either cease operation while updating firmware, or require a reboot afterwards. Who the heck would be stupid enough to allow this to happen during a run/patrol/mission/duty shift? Even legal users would need to be able to refuse or schedule automatic updates, especially for military-grade gear. And Shadowrunenrs are SINless. They are not legal customers. Their gear is black market, unlicensed, and possibly being used to cause material and financial harm to the manufacturer.

Again, even a legal customer using gear in the field would schedule these for downtime, or on-demand.

Shadowrunners really, REALLY do not want this. Expect the gear to be black market, cracked, and reporting to nobody. Legal customers like black ops and military, even the police, might also object to confidential and possibly classified information being sent back in real time. Corporations might also be uncomfortable about rival companies being able to get hold of this data. Intercepting individual matrix packets may be difficult and expensive, but even a suspicion that the the Mega-Corps might have the resources and manpower to do it would make any corp think twice.

again, a Shadowrunner would most likely have a cracked black market version that no longer reports to the corporation.

Try playing an MMO over a wireless connection to your router, and measure your latency. Now use a cable connection to the router instead. Much less latency, simply because of the processing time wireless needs at both sender and receiver to handle the extra encryption on the wireless packets.

Now consider that the whole point of wired reflexes is to remove every single extra microsecond out of your reaction time, to let you shoot before the enemy can shoot you. Users pay through the nose for a better model of wired reflexes that makes them just a fraction of a second faster than the cheaper model.

If some of the required software is kept online, not in the cyberware, then that would mean that every single nerve impulse being accelerated by the cyberware is being processed by that software, in the cloud. Transmitting the signal to your commlink is already, at the very best, the same amount of time as it would take to get the signal to whatever would have processed the original nerve impulse.
Now add the time to

1. encrypt the data packet
2. upload it
3. route it through the matrix
4. process it in the cloud-hosted software, creating a new data packet
5. encrypt the return data packet
6. upload it to the matrix
7. route it back to the original user's commlink (Including validation of said user's identity)
8. decrypt it
9. and finally get the packet to whatever would have processed the original nerve impulse. (Which we originally held off on by sending the signal to the commlink instead)

This additional delay would result in the gear being useless in any combat situation. Imagine fighting against a wired to the gills black ops specialist only to hear the street sam next to you scream "LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG!"

Why do people always trot out the "but lag" argument? When has anything in Shadowrun ever been affected by lag?

Actually, you're completely missing the point. It has nothing to do with transmission speeds - allow me to diagram the sequence for you:

Local:

[Node 0 to Node 1]--[----------------------------Processing at Node 1------------------------------]--[Node 1 to Node 0]

Distributed:

[Node 0 to Node 1]--[Node 1 to Nodes 3-FFF]------[***]-----[Nodes 3-FFF to Node 1]--[Node 1 to Node 0]

It is not that the time to go from the smartgun to the commlink to the nodes in the area and back is in any way less. It is that the time to go from the smartgun to the commlink to the nodes in the area, do the processing and then back again is (for an algorithm that is sufficiently compute-intensive) less than to go from the smartgun to the commlink, process everything and back again because serious time-savings occur at the processing stage - large enough time savings to outweigh the time lost to transmission. What this allows, then, is for much more computationally complex algorithms to be used in the distributed version, which accounts for a great deal of the bonuses (I have NEVER claimed that this accounts for things like the extendable baton). Most if not all of the "action economy" ones seem to me like they should work just fine when you don't have actual Matrix access, but still have the wireless on.

And I still don't know what kind of distributed processing an extendable baton needs.

Okay, okay, of everything that's been said in this thread, I can't stand for this delta-grade horse manure. It beggars belief that you'd be posting regularly on Dumpshock AND hold a legitimate claim to sanity in ANY form.

Sorry, Patrick, I have to call you out on this

/Joke

Back on topic:

As for the "distributed computing due to complex algorithms" issue... I'll program my own software for things like Extendable-anythings that don't require such a huge cloud investment. DNI->Datajack->(Commlink->)Baton can handle that, functional, elegant, non-bloated, and securely. I'll open-source it for anybody in the shadows, since I'm just that nice of a guy. Cyberware will cost a little more for that treatment, or a lot more if you're a corp-er.

Last I checked, the rules DID say you could program your own software, and it wouldn't need much to handle "(intGETVALUE A thru Z; if A > 0 AND [SUM B thru Z] < 1 THEN RUN[voidEXTEND_BATON]".

If I can do this today, I can do this in 2070. It would take a massive shift in physics to prevent this basic sort of programming from working.

If it still worked with wireless on in areas where there was no Matrix connectivity, it would actually be pretty trivial to explain the extended baton - wireless is needed, and the ONLY time a wireless connection is not also a Matrix connection is a dead zone, because that's just how the Matrix works in SR4 and 5.

When has the matrix worked at the same speeds as combat?

In general terms of "how many actions can you achieve", the Matrix in SR4 is actually faster than the fastest Street Sam - the one and only way to get 5 passes in SR4 is specific to Matrix passes. Lag is simply not a concern in the operation of the Matrix as it has already been presented.

And aside from that, "this problem has always existed" does not equate to "this problem is not a problem".

Because Physics is a bitch and she's wearing a sandpaper coated, barbed strap-on.

Actually, in SR4 working over commsats lowered your Matrix reaction because of lag.

Meaning: Lag only exists in highly unusual circumstances that would dramatically increase the transmission times over the norm.

Encryption adds only the tiniest bit, for the most part wireless problems occur because of the nature of being wireless: Shared medium, limited bandwidth, attenuation, noise...

@Rhat: Under your model, a runner could just strap five average commlinks to his back and get the same bonus

Not really, no. I get that it might intuitively seem that way, but it doesn't really work out.

Because...?

(In case your argument will be anything along the lines of "five dedicated devices don't make up for 50 shared devices", no problem, commlinks are small enough to be worn at the wrist. Add another ten or so)

That might involve cracking the security on the baton itself, since I'm pretty certain that it would have such measures. After all, after all this work, I doubt the corporations are willing to just let anyone write their own software for it. But, that being said, if you did? Excellent.

Because in Rhat's little world, the spare runtime and network bandwidth on a city block worth of toasters and coffee pots is somehow more powerful than a fucking cyberdeck.

This conversation's pretty pointless, the guy's willing to stretch to any lengths to declare that this stuff makes sense.




Where the hell does 'willing' come into it? That's the whole point of the existence of deckers. Willingness to have your stuff hacked has dick-all to do with what's actually going to happen to it once it gets out into the wild.

It's not so much about LETTING me do it. My first planned character for 5e, should I choose to accept, is going to be a decker/medic with the Anarchist Black Flag. My goal, specifically, is to develop tech to bypass all the cloud computing, whether through additional co-processor installation on gear, through modding the hardware, re-coding the software & firmware, or some combination thereof.

If the corp wants to put out bloated software? Me and mine will be making cleaner, faster code that doesn't devour system processes nearly so much while working just as well. Your hardware doesn't have enough processing power? Let's throw a few more co-processors, and hack the firmware to ONLY need your PAN, at worst, instead of the matrix.

Will the corps like it? No. But if I start small enough, and work my contacts, then there'll be a slow trickle of military and CorpSec professionals that'll come to me for modding, for updates, for the basic necessities of gear functionality in their professions. If I just gave the designs and specs to the UCAS Military? Heck, even post mortem that'd stick it to "The Man" (in this case, corps) by breaking one of it's holds over the military and government. Everybody runs for different reasons, and an anti-corp ideologue taking over the market share (or giving it to a military) because corps are too stuck up each others rear ends would be just the right kind of havoc to bring the house of cards toppling down. If they switch back to the old protocols and offer the same as me? Well, runners, we just made the biggest titans bend down to our level; we made them CONCEDE! Even post-mortem, that'd be win-win.

This Algorithm doesn't prevent premature baton extension. That's a MAJOR problem (even in 2070) for both end user adoption, as well as end user satisfaction.

Most metahuman studies seem to indicate that premature baton extension is the number one reason that another baton is ultimately selected for active service.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Once again see you can see more on this in recent history with the tragic Baton Bashup of '68 when the Radical Ions scriptkiddie gang sold second-rate batons out of Prague utilizing their own gimped software, resulting in a series of accidents due to malfunctions in the extension/retraction software with injuries ranging from broken fingers and wrists to at least 3 cases of blunt force trauma to the groin region when local toughs carried the baton tucked in the front of their synthleather jeans.


When will the madness end!! Always get your software from approved HackerHouse™ suppliers of fine software and decking accessories everywhere.

Right!

Though, in all seriousness, if I had a player that was adamant about removing the distributed computing safety mechanisms from their baton, I'd probably let them with an understanding that without the analysis offered by distributed computing, they may find their baton incorrectly interpreting their intent and both extending (and collapsing!) at inappropriate times.

Perhaps this could be somewhat mitigated by an adequate number of successes on the appropriate coding/integration tests. Maybe with additional considerations for if it were ever used by an individual other than who it was designed for, by an individual of another metatype, etc.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

There's also medication and treatment to help with that.

Wait... are we still talking about the same thing...?

As for the Baton extension thing, the A>0 is for an active mental command over a direct-PAN link, the "SUM(B thru Z)<0" is a simplified "safety" check; if any of the conditions that flag B thru Z (or whatever the total number of variables is), then the baton won't extend. It's an incredibly oversimplified code, but one that wouldn't take up more than a small fraction of a TB of processing power. It could, also, potentially be "Spoofed" for the Baton. It works well into the "Gear is hackable" and "gear is transmitting signals," via the PAN instead of the entire Matrix, without "the gear is leaving a footprint on the local matrix for everybody and their mother to track down" issue. We haven't even addressed if every Grid is "On the Matrix," since they ARE segregated and may not play nice. I'd like to avoid such idiocy and pedantry, personally.

PAN should be fine for most, while still leaving a creative "Spoof" or "Attack" effective. My variance would even give people an option of either connect to the PAN via std matrix signals, or slave it and give up any independent protections (save for against a Spoof). If it's about distributed computing, there's always going to be a number of dedicated devices that can substitute that processing power more efficiently over a PAN than over a secured, encrypted, remote connection to several different devices. Unless, of course, physics has shifted too dramatically. And, once again, PAN still leaves you susceptible to hacking and spoofing.

This isn't an "all or nothing" discussion; there's room for concessions on either side. If you REALLY want gear to be hackable, give us a better explanation, or work with us to make one. I've already given a couple, personally.

Heheheh.



Absolutely. Iterating through an array of flags is super lightweight (provided, I suppose, there aren't like a bajillion flags).

The issue in question is not the difficulty associated with that sort of a task. Once all the numbers have been crunched, the data has been processed, the signal has been interpreted, running a final check prior to execution is trivial.

The problem, operating inside the framework of your algorithm, is not the complexity of checking flags but the complexity of correctly setting flags. It is the analysis and interpretation that carries the most overhead, not the final check for execution.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS