Those were direct aides. Why do you insist that Deckers be treated differently than every other specialist.

Apply your logic to the face, or the sniper, or the occult investigator or the street sam. ... stop singling out Deckers to be a super special snowflake that has to have their abilities work in EVERY situation. While other characters like the Street Sam do not have the same requirement for you.

You'll note that I did use others as an example when explaining things - and information is indirect, because it is merely the potential for an effect.

Rhat, I noticed your replies are suffering from the "one-sentence syndrome" again. Is it that your position isn't that defensible anymore, or that the discussion just doesn't interest you that much?

Happens when I get frustrated, among other occasions. Keeps me from saying things that perhaps I shouldn't.

Thats sartire of its finest.

Honestly his position is quite easy to defend. As I said a while ago. SR4 was just silly in this regard. The only thing wireless did was open an avenue for the GM to be a dick. You did not tell, you deactivated your XYZ.
The fact that this boni make that impossible (if you have it activated you get the bonus, so if you do not use the bonus it is off.
This alone is an improvement. That most of the people seem unable to get the fact that it is not the wireless boni that made cyberware "worse" is quite frustrating, I have to admit. Cyberware got tuned down. One reason is, that the dicepools should now come form skills and attribute so less dice pool modifiers.

No worries - too bad you didn't fall for my false choice trap...

Perhaps you should not be sticking deckers on a super special pedestal.

For example a combat medic in the party would be nice. But in a lot of situations there ability will not directly deal damage to the enemy. Because that is not their role. A decker's role is not to deal direct damage but to aid his team in dealing damage by disrupting the enemy or better directing their fire and attacks. Their job is bypassing security of various types. And being a force multiplier. A sniper is not much use in a bar fight as a sniper.

Stop trying to shoehorn Deckers into every role and situation.

You should really stop pretending I'm calling for deckers to deal direct damage. I get that your argument would be easier if I were, but it's just coming off as ridiculous.

Also, snipers have a great fallback option via shotguns, which are baked into their specialty by sharing the skill.

Everytime we suggest a decker coordinate his team and handle information which is their specialty you say not good enough. That comes across as you want direct damage.

and what is wrong with a decker just using a gun?

You keep wanting Deckers to hack cyberware. It makes no sense for most cyberware to require wireless access at all. A couple might be able to make the claim to need the processing power. Problem is there is no reason the processing power can't be included in the implant. And it in fact makes more sense to include the process power. If someone can be triangulated and caught by an RFID chip... I know you can do the same with the cyberware on the net. Having your cyberware give away your position is a bad thing and something the corps would not want. As they want their shadowrunners they are paying to be successful.

We have given you tons of examples of things a decker can hack in virtually any situation. The fact that you lack imagination on how to use a decker is not our problem or the GMs. Deckers do require the player to think outside the box. You claim hacking commms on gangers won't help... how distracting would it be to have your commlink start blasting music? Or having the streetlights start to strobe? or have every car in 100m alarms go off?

A street samurai can't use their gun skills to hack or be a face. Why do you insist a decker have special combat options?

I think this is tangentially related - in the new videogame SR:R, deckers have an ability called "Mark" that makes it easier to hit the person marked. Was this ability in any of the editions (SR1-3) ? Seems kinda tacnet-y, and even if it is sorta MMO-ish in behavior it still seems to make more sense than wireless bonuses.

If you had the right gear for it, you could do it.
Said gear was hellishly forbidden and expensive though.

Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Rigger Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Face Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Adept) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Mystic Adept) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Mundane) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Smuggler Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Weapon Specialist Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Bounty Hunter Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Street Sam Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Spec Ops Guy Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Infiltrator Do?

Almost all of those people are GOING TO SHOOT/PUNCH/KNIFE THE OPPOSITION.
Mages are not likely to start casting fireballs or stun bolts (Escalation in a Brawl is usually a poor choice, unless it isn't).
Hackers can hit the incidentals easily enough, but are going to be more effective just brawling than they will be hacking anything (unless it is a protracted situation, which it can be)
Same goes for the Rigger, since Drones stand out, and he likely has none in the bar with him (If he does, then HAcker likely has things to hack as well, becasue reasons)
Investigators are out of their element (Fighting is generally not their focus), so they hide or brawl.
Same with the Bounty Hunter and Face. Once a fight breaks out, Facing is pretty irrelevant. You have already decided the Face was irrelevant in your scenario.
So, The Physical Guys go to town, and the others help to clean up when given opportunity.

So, 5 or 6 archetypes provide indirect aid, while the directly physical take the brunt of it. BUT THERE ARE STILL THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR SPECIALTY THAT IS USEFUL, MEANINGFUL, AND DIRECT. For example, in a protracted encounter, the aforementioned hacking of the bar's CCTV/Camera system to help coordinate tactical movements (Immediate Local Situational awareness), or the opposition's communications net (if this is more than a brawl and you are facing more experienced teams that are actually out to kill you), or call your vehicle to come crashing through the door (extreme, but doable), or grab a balloon drone to gain overwatch to give warning of additional forces incoming, or Spoof communications to opposing forces, and you can always grab a gun and shoot someone if things went south. You are only limited by your imagination, situation, and the environment.

You are trying to limit the options artificially by trying to construct situations that are sterile, but these do not really exist in play. There are always things that a Specialist can do, if he looks. Sometimes that means you need to ask a question or two, and other times it means that you make suggestions on environmental conditions. I do not really know how you play, but when a scenario jumps off, if the GM had left anything as vague as you seem to do, I would bne asking questions. FOrtunately, I do not really have to ask a LOT of my GM, since he geives pretty good exposition, and he rolls with suggestions of players for environmental things more often than not, when it is plausible ("Is there a Fire Suppression System in this Place? Awesome, I trigger it to screw with Targeting and general difficulty of breathing, since Halon is toxic... Glad we are wearing our Filter Masks with Oxygen feeds/Internal Air Tanks/Adept abilities to hold our breath").

I am deeply disturbed by the lack of "Burn it all down" options.

Tried that, but apparently all the matches require a wireless bonus to ignite as a Free action.

And yet, the bar always keeps its sprinklers wireless active because that's what absolutely every NPC does, because nobody in-setting can think for themselves underneath the veneer of corporate loyalty, even out in the Barrens or the less-corp-ridden areas. Because kuul-ayd.

And, for that Barrens Bar scenario, I would like to respond "hack a truck parked outside, and ram it through the front door to cause some havoc and damage, because my hacker is a spiteful little drek-bomb with a sliding scale of caring about collateral damage that lowers in times of danger."

Didn't Netcat do that in a short in some book? Wirelessly drive a truck into a bar or something during a shoot out?

My take on this issue is that Catalyst took the wrong approach on how to allow hackers to mess with people's cyberware. They could have just let them do it simply because it has wires and electricity running through it. We're so stuck in this mentality of wifi and modems because that's what we're used to in real life.

Put wireless aside. It's merely an option. Either be susceptible to hacking and get a bonus, or choose not to be and don't. Don't care about the why. It's because analog is immune to science or something right?

You can argue that adepts don't have the same disadvantages, but doesn't that fly in the face of the 'horses for courses' arguments people are using? Can a samurai be susceptible to attacks from astral space on themselves or their foci? No.

Then there's about 10000000 things you can do to still have your wireless bonus and not be in that much danger. Spend some decent money on a good comlink, learn the full matrix defense action and slave your most important wares to your deckers deck. Adopt some tactics to flush out the decker first, if there even is one. I'd say they should be pretty rare. Or you could just be boring and turn your wireless off and lose some minor bonuses.

It's really not the end of the world. You might even get some players wanting to play deckers now. Stranger things have happened.

So can we actually discuss Tacnets now?

The impression is people don't want to do dice pool increases...but how else can you show the advantage a tacnet gives

nm

the problem with Dice pools is that, people have issue with DP bloating, its fairly simple to get huge dicepools in 5e right now, & we also now have even more room to increase dicepools, In a Long term game having a base of 15-18 dice before any bonuses is easy (gun pools with 8 agi & 10 skill will not be unheard of) so adding 2-3 more dice onto those pools will not benefit them, especially if the Limits can be reached fairly easily.

I would suggest looking into increasing limits as a portion of the tacnet, if you are looking for a rule bonus, or you can just houserule it to fluff.

I realized that my tldr should go at the top so,

To answer the OP, I don't agree that we need a whole new batch of rules for a tacnet in game. I think there are enough rules to deal with as it is, and including something like this would mean including yet another level of preparation for players and for GMs alike, and that just doesn't sit well with me. They made a good decision to try and get a few more things for deckers to do, and the rules are better and make better sense than they did for SR4. Just get some hacking stuff simple and out in the open and making it part of regular combat instead of a totally separate gig helps keep a third of the game, ie the Matrix, in the middle of what are easily the most touched-on rules.

I agree with you that under the current system though, it just feels silly to leave your stuff on and hope nobody dicks with it. I don't think the patch is to add another layer of complexity, I think the patch is to adjust the expectations of people and to beef up the bonuses.

"why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?"

I agree that the bonuses should be a bit more intuitive and played up better. I had the same reaction as many of you, "why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?" Who would want their wired reflexes to get bricked? But I thought about some more, and waded through some of the flames and petulance and the good ideas in this thread, and I thought that maybe there could be a better way to illustrate just how pervasive and important the Matrix is, and how much faster the machine is than man.

I think it might just be a matter of perspective. Maybe none of us are really thinking in terms of Da Future ™.

The Matrix as a jungle

You see, in Da Future ™ the internet is literally everywhere you go. It is a living, breathing environment, woven so cleanly over the real world that you can see and talk to people who aren't even really there. Out in this great vast world, there are ghosts and technomagic and freakin gods, hiding in the numbers. The total cascade of data is so huge and so bright that rendering it all would make you go blind. Let us imagine that the Matrix is actually a jungle, because it certainly is as haphazard and dense as one. The trees and vines and foliage would be all the millions of wireless repeaters and antenna towers, the thick air would be the radio waves themselves. And the predators stalking through the bush would be me and you.

So what does it mean to be wireless? Why would you ever leave your cyberware on?

Triangulating the problem

The Matrix connection is, as I understand, still just radio waves on a particular frequency. Even if something is not transmitting right at you, even if it is a secured signal, it is still transmitting, and that transmission can be triangulated and the source pinned down, especially if they are in the same room as you. You might not be able to hack them, but you will know they are there. Think of it like a sound that only dogs can hear, except that this dog is very good at isolating the frequencies that by their motion and heading seem to be wishing violence on you.

Let us imagine now that wired reflexes has, in addition to all those adrenal boosters and doohickies, some very sophisticated Matrix programming as well. Let's say that it can triangulate the location of nearby objects based on their Matrix connection, like say nearby transmitting commlinks, RFID tags, or other cyberware, like a sort of elegant sonar. If a coffee mug falls from the table, and the coffee mug is wireless enabled (to auto heat the coffee, natch) your reflexes are already aware of the location at their primal electric level, and by the time you have thought "Hey, I wanna grab that mug" your hand already has a few miliseconds head start, and is practically guided right to the cup. Let's say instead that you want to shoot someone in the face. Well, your reflexes already know there is a person there based on the clump of radio signals emanating from their person, and using simple algorithms the reflexes have already come to a decision about how tall the person is, how far away their face is from your bullets, and guides you towards that tragectory before your synapses have finished firing.

Using the Matrix, your wired reflexes are even more wired, you are even more aware of most of your opponents...you are a tiger hunting your prey, you are on them before they know, before even you know, because you are already one with both the real world and the Matrix. I think we can agree this is possible...in Da Future ™.

A few more examples

You can extend this metaphor further. How about if you could get a Body bonus from dermal plating being wireless? Let's say dermal plating has a system to tag whenever a gun is pointed at it, and it then shifts itself slightly to better shield the point of impact? Your cybereyes would almost be better than seeing in the dark, as you could view opponents who were behind any obstacle so long as they had some kind of wireless something on them. And why wouldn't they?

There are people who routinely scrub themselves down with tag erasers, who run totally dark and leave off all wireless bonuses, and come up as total blanks to your Matrix senses. What about those crafty devils? Well, what about them, those who have even no commlink? Well, unless they are using magic to communicate, they are completely cut off from their own team, and will have to communicate by shouting or waving hands or smoke signals. Good luck to them! Even now, even today, almost every damn person you know, almost everyone in world, has a cellphone on them. And don't tell me you are the kind of person who always turns off your cell phone in the movie theatre instead of just flipping it to silent, or that you would happily cut it off as soon as the bullets stop flying because hey, who really wants to call for help?

In conclusion, with some random thoughts

It is a double edged sword to be wireless, for be sure. You don't want to be open to Matrix attacks, and yet, you want to be ready to be attacked. This is why you have the option of turning it on or off. But to most people in the world of Da Future ™, cutting off the Matrix component is like putting on earmuffs or wearing sunglasses indoors or stuffing your nose with tofu. It has got to leave you feeling a bit antsy.

What this whole thing means gamewise is, there should be bigger bonuses for having wireless on, or smaller stat gains if it is off. Wireless bonuses should look much sexier than they do, and for all the reasons I outlined above.

Also the possibility of the street doc failing his matrix damage repair roll and permanently bricking your cyberware is too much worry for a player. They should just prevent cybercombat damage from happening to cyberware. Like you can crash it, you can knock it offline, you can feed it false signals, but you can't ruin it just because some kid felt like ruining it or you went to too many porn sites and caught a nasty virus. I mean, come on, the only people that cyberware bricking really affects is the PCs, and maybe the occasional NPC that they torture.

I have more to say on this subject, as to why in the world the corporate opposition would run with wireless enabled. Actually, their reasons make much more sense, though only for the corporation, not for the poor individual guard. But that is for another post.

yes, in some ways, that is part of how wireless is, but the thing about it is this. Wireless that is turned off stops sending those signals, Can you connect to a wireless hotspot that is not transmitting? no, can you even tell that it exists? no.

We are runners, the Lowest drek that exists, we murder, we loot, we do what we have to do to survive, & frankly, if you think I'm gonna let some damned script kiddie botch my run because someone on my team was giving him an open signal while we were breaking into that new Ares Facility, I'll put a bullet in the one who didn't police his signal, the decker who didn't catch it & the script kiddie who rolled over on me to those damned Lone Star dogs.

Point being, yes, the wireless world is all around us, but we do illegal things, is the man stealing from a house going to bring his cell phone with him? probably not. if he does will it be off? if he's good it will. So I personally will only turn wireless on when it is absolutely needed, because having my commlink on is bad enough, giving him a dozen more access points? screw that.

PS- your view of the world is for those who more or less follow the law I think, as such, it doesn't belong in the rules for people who break the law on a daily basis.

The problem is a lot of stuff that has a wireless bonus would not have one. It does not make sense. Wired reflexes need a wireless connection to connect with reflex boosters? Why... A round trip to the matrix and back is going to take more time then wiring the 2 pieces of cyberware together via DNI.

Yeah, and apparently smartguns can't adjust for wind anymore without accessing the Matrix 2.0 version of weather.com (or whatever), even if you're firing inside a building. Especially when 20 years ago the only way a smartgun worked was by having a length of fiber-optic cable run from it to a datajack or your smartlinked glasses and did the exact same thing without a jackpoint.

I agree it is hard to work all systems into the new paradigm of matrix access, especially for things like the Smartgun which quite clearly had linked equipment before. Maybe there are people who go looking for older used cyberware specifically to get those kinds of benefits?

But as to why the smartgun gets a wireless bonus, I would point to using RFID triangulation instead of wind resistance as a reason that it gives benefits for having wireless on indoors. Like the examples I mentioned, it makes somewhat more sense to believe that your smartgun is running some formulas to calculate the location of the vital parts of the target automatically based on an aggregriate of their radio signatures, as opposed to logging in to weather.com.

I think with what I mentioned above, you can provide a decent in-game reason for why a shadowrunner would chose to have his wireless on. Runners might be out of the system, but there is no reason they can't use it (or abuse it) when given the option, and I think the RFID triangulation + the equipment automating part of the action provides a clearer reason for the existence of what is an obvious security gap in cyberware.

If you really want to reject wireless for a shadowrunning team, that is fine. It concretely closes a possible backdoor that could be exploited. But keep in mind that first line corporate security will be running wireless and getting the bonuses from it (and will be vulnerable).

Why would corporate security leave wireless on? The most important reason is tracking. Every time that smartgun goes off it is recorded, everything a guard sees through his eyes is immediately available on the servers. As soon as a firefight breaks out, not only does everyone know about it, but they immediately have an accurate model of what is happening. Ares can use the data for bullet trajectories to decide which of their guards performed best under fire, while Lone Star can use the same info to protect themselves from lawsuits from their clients ("No, our bullets clearly missed your employees by more than 3cm, which by our service contract is an acceptable distance for safe counterfire"). If any corporate employee decides change jobs or go rogue, that equipment can also be shut down remotely, adding an extra problem for possible defectors.

The guards are not going to like it, but I guarantee it will be part of their jobs to leave that stuff on. The worse thing that can happen to a corporation is a smudge to their corporate image, which will be followed by lawsuits and a hit to their bottom line.

As for secondary or elite response teams, like Knight Errant or some emergency response guards, well, those guys will go in with wireless down, if they suspect they might get hacked. Come in hot and clean up the mess, as it were. If there is no suspicion of a hacker, then, why eschew the bonuses?

If you don't think wireless is smart for your runner team, leave it off, but I would definitely leave it in for corporate security response.

Maybe fluff, but on page 421: "Your Ares Alpha can’t auto-adjust for the wind direction and speed if it can’t download local up-to-the-second weather conditions,"

Page 428, where the Ares Alpha is detailed, says it has a smartgun system as stock equipment.

In essence, a smartgun can't benefit you (DP bonus) unless it's got a fraggin' clue what the weather's like, even if you're underground where it doesn't matter.

And if the opposition leaves all their wireless stuff on... Data Spike (10 Matrix Damage with a dice pool of 18+ is quite possible for starting decker characters). I'm sure said corporation will love repairing and/or replacing numerous pairs of cybereyes; maybe a drop in the bucket on the bottom line, but it's also downtime in lost man/hours. Then there's those same guards that just had flaming bits of ball lightning in their eye sockets...

Remember, those of us familiar with older editions, particularly of SR4/SR4a, are having issues because of the sudden and mandatory wireless necessity to get many of the same benefits that did not require any kind of wireless functionality before. A hidden arm slide, for example, used to put a handgun into your hand for a Free Action, even if it was purely mechanical in nature. Now it must be wirelessly connected to the Matrix in order to do the same, and unless I missed it it doesn't state that it must be part of your PAN with a pair of trodes to get this split second of extra speed.

SpellBinder, thanks for looking the info up.

I think corporations are much more willing to be cruel and indifferent to their employees and much nicer to the people who buy their products. Maybe they do have to send a guard off to semi-elective cybersurgery and a few weeks of counselling but it is better to pay that than risk there being no primary footage of the time a paying customer was accidentally caught in crossfire, and another megacorp gleefully leading a wrongful death lawsuit against them.

I've been playing Shadowrun on and off since first edition myself, so the Matrix changes in the last two editions are huge changes for myself as well. The first time I heard the Matrix was reworked to be all wireless in 4e I thought it was stupid. How could they ruin decking like that? Then I looked back on it and remembered a time when you had to draw up an entirely separate run for the decker alone, with squares and circles and triangles, on a lonely piece of graph paper. Too many times I saw a runner team just opt to say, "We hire someone for Matrix overwatch" and have the GM make a handful of rolls to determine the results.

Now I look at the changes in 5e and I think, finally, the Matrix is actually integrated in some way with the real world. The decker can actually play support in combat, instead of sacrificing active skill rank for some points in pistols to plink off a few shots. The decker finally reaching the point of being an integral team member strikes me as a good thing.

There have always been inconsistencies in the game, like how mana spells and aura interact, or how fast an autofire would complete ingame vs. how fast it would be in real life. That things were one way in one edition and now they have changed in this new edition doesn't bother me so much as it used to. Sure, it might used to have been a free action, now it is not. I can roll with that. I understand if it is a sticking point for you, but I think that bringing back the decker and leaving a little vulnerability for the runners is a decent trade off.

You get to the heart of the problem when you mention a decker burning out someone's eyes with a dataspike though. The main problem I see is the risk of permanent cyberware damage vs. reward for using wireless, which will never really be enough to a player. So why not rule that you can crash cyberware but not destroy it with that dataspike? Have the affected system come back online after x number of combat passes. This one change would certainly put more people at ease, and still leave the door open for some Matrix based attacks during combat.

I didn't mean to hijack the thread from the discussion about the tactical network, I just wanted to provide the opinion that maybe we don't need so drastic a patch to the rules to smooth out the problems with wireless.

That's the thing though, Bricking in its most basic form is supposed to be temporary, but the fluff involved suggests that you have fire & such burning through the piece that just got bricked. For a gun, ok, just rule, that it gets dropped, no worries, time to pull out your back up. Sword? ok it still has a nice edge on it. but your cybereyes which are socketed in & connected to your brain? what are we as player's supposed to make of that? from a temporary inconvenience?

I am fine with working around wireless, I will just revamp things or eliminate options as needed, but I would like some sort of semi official idea of what should take priority, the fluff that was written to go with Bricking? or the lack of rules to go along with the effects of bricking Cyberware. As it is right now, if someone were to brick cybereyes in my game I'd rule permanent blindness & having to go through some sort of regenerative therapy to be able to get the cybereyes fixed, & that would be a mild case.

Well said. Devices are made to spit out loads of information that other devices might find useful or can make useful. People are taking this 'wireless' concept down one single narrow path based on reality.



I think another good reason is that hackers just aren't that usual. Just because every 4th runner is one (and who's to say how many groups of runners may operate in a single city. I don't think it's meant to be all that many) doesn't mean that every 4th schlub is one. The wireless reflexes and reflex booster argument that keeps coming up seems rather flawed to me. Why do they have wireless? Probably because they're designed as military tech and that is large scale confrontations there probably isn't much in the way of front-line hacking. In addition, having no wired connection means less invasive surgery, quicker recovery times, less hardware and therefore less cost.

Maybe not every 4th schlub, but we are runners, we go after things that other deckers are hired to protect more often than Joe the plumber does. Data Steals are probably many people's bread & butter, & Data Protection is a non-running Decker's bread & butter usually, as are security system admins, So running into a Decker is not unusual Granted this will vary by game, a street level game will probably deal with them far less, while a game that has you running against AAA Corpsec teams will probably have you running against decker's more often.

The problem is that sure the corps don't care about their employees. But if they keep having to replace them because shadowrunners bricked their gear... well that is going to have a serious impact on their bottom line. If the Shadowrunners their Mr. Johnson hired can't get the job done because of bricked cyberware.. That also is going to effect their bottom line... The Civilians sueing them over bricked cyberware that script kiddies bricked because it is funny is not going to have a good effect on their bottom line. The whole wireless scenario for cyberware just does not make sense on any level. Security wise... bad idea, Employee wise bad idea, public wise bad idea.....

The whole premise of we are going to force wireless bonuses on the players to give hackers something to do....Means you are forcing a lack of security on the players... Which the Corps would never do. They would never force a security flaw on their own forces...Because that would be in a word....STUPID.

I am the kind of person who does not own a cellphone, a tablet or a netbook. Why? Because there is NO Reason that someone needs to talk to me 24/7/365. I have no need of such connectivity, even today (because I am not so desperate for instant communications in 37 different flavors). So... Maybe that is one of the reasons I think that the wireless bonuses are so stupid, as they exist currently. If you are in the Security Field (in whatever manner you choose to describe) in Shadowrun, you would be a moron to have your Cyberware (and the vast majority of your other electronics) wireless enabled. *shrug*

I have a smart phone and a tablet/netbook (HP Slatebook x2) but I don't have a Wireless Internet plan because like Tymeaus, I don't need to be on the Internet 24/7/365. If I want to get online and I'm on the road I hit a McD's and use their wifi.

@Goonshine: what if the opposition is using laser links? Sure they need line of sight with one another, but it's doable. What if they're using non-standard frequencies to communicate and are rotating those frequencies so you don't know what to listen for.

Also, you're Wired Reflexes example, what's to prevent the Sam from getting a piece of 'ware with JUST a Matrix receiver? He's getting all those wonderful signals your version of the system would generate, but wouldn't transmit anything BECAUSE. IT. CAN'T! The sam gets the benefits, but none of the drawbacks.

Now that is a good idea, but I doubt the GM would give it.

The idea of the wireless bonus is the two way communication between the devices. For a smartgun it has to give it's location to be able to access the suitable data for winds and such. Again though I foresee some bright techie building a more portable system that you can just drop and it will start assessing local wind and other factors and start pumping data in a limited area for your own smartgun to utilize the information.

Your Wired reflexes don't really talk as much to the Matrix, but it has to validate updates/patches otherwise how do you know that was a valid download and not some malware? Likewise it would send in error reports/performance information that goes toward the next patch/update. But then other users are providing the performance reports so those patches will be coming out anyway, will they really be delayed just by the shadow community not chiming in?

A medkit is a good example of benefitting from the online connection as it allows it a much better datapool and additional instructions to allow it to operate by itself.

But to be fair, how much of this really needs to be so constant? For most devices, why can't it just require a daily or weekly update that you then pop online for briefly to download just to keep SOTA status and then back to offline?

I mean if you are talking about the rumoured Move by Wireless System which absolutely HAS to be online to even provide basic function that's different but the ongoing debate over wireless, the online bonuses and alternate methods is going to go on for some time yet.

If this were a whole new edition, like the transition from SR3 to SR4, it wouldn't be such a problem for me; there was a gap of several years and a completely new game mechanic then. SR4 to SR5 is "the next day" and the same foundation of rules, but with many changes that don't always seem to make sense. I know I'm not the only one feeling like this.

As for the Reboot part, that was in SR4 too. You could crash a node (which is basically any wireless device) with a Hacking + Exploit (System + Firewall, Combat Action) Extended Test, but the node would get a +4 to its Firewall if you didn't hit the threshold in the first Combat Action. A crashed device took its Device Rating/System in turns restarting, then made a System + Response (10, 1 Combat Turn) Extended test before it was up and running again; much slower compared to the single Combat Turn of SR5. Granted it's slower than a Data Spike in SR5, not as costly or long lasting for the victim, not everything would be as useless while rebooting, technomancers would kick ass doing this compared to hackers... Oh, wait, maybe that's why...
By RAW, it must constantly be online. Or at least online as long as you want the appropriate bonuses.

ahh the items such as medkits, now these items I can work with, why? because the wireless only needs to be on while you're using it, & generally you only use these items for a round maybe 2, then you're done with them for a lil while, so I want to use a medkit, I pick it up, activate the wireless, use it for what I need, then wireless off. if a Decker is waiting for me to activate that medkit just to find an open connection, then he's rather bored isn't he?

And why on earth would you want to broadcast more data to make you easier to target?

So the decker has something to do in combat.

Because CGL thinks its more Fun for The Hacker and the whole gaming Group if everything is hackable
( & see Spellbinders Answer)

with a Fun Dance (nhoooot !)
Medicineman

They probably should have thought on that one a bit more. *shrug*

Also RFID triangulation probably would make a smartgun useless ...in the jungle. There's no wireless out here! My smartgun doesn't work!

Unintended Consequences.

Nah. You're supposed to have a satellite link to connect out to the matrix so you can have a massive EM footprint.

Maybe the critter you're trying to shoot has RFID tags from the guys it ate.

I do think that rhat is doing a terrible job of defending his position. What he really should be saying is a as formally designed the matrix users could not effect combat with there matrix specific skills. people who were great as physical skills could, they could use a gun, a knife, sneak about, (this catagory would encompass more than street sams, it would include any person who relies on there phyical skills to get by), those who excell in mental skills could ( leadership this would be your faces, your demolition experts, setting traps, using poison gas, intellegence), those who could use magic could, whose who controlled drones could, the matrix user himself could not using his special ability directly affect combat absent some other envirmental factor.

I think that is correct, the problem then is that you just can't implement a solution and ignore the logic of the universe. There is no good reason for putting cyberware on line. However you can get around that. The government wants to track all cyberware purchases and thus mandate that all cyberware must be online at all times. I could see governments doing that.

The next problem, is why would shadowrunners, gang bangers, and those people who give the finger to the law, why would they do it. They would not, there just is too much risk. they would instead create a tactnet.

therefore design principals should not be that the matrix wireless rules suck , but instead they are such that no shadowrunner, gang banger or high level corperate security firm would use them.

however people like advantages and so they developed the tacnet to give themselves those advantages.


You would still need to mantain the original intent that matrix user have away to directly influnces combat outside of enivrmental factors. I agree that a GM should be doing this, but i think as a game desing you have to assume to the worst of a gm, and designs as many tools as possible to get the game to work with a worst gm as you can imagine.

base princpals.
1. the tactnet shouldnt be expose it's users to catastrophic consquences- why use it if it did?
2. A matrix user is required to run, maintian it and consquently are vunerable to hacking by other matrix users
3.the bonuses should not be numerical, instead they should be on the lines of like the detect life spell. the bonus should let you break the normal limations, but not in a numerical way.
4. this makes the tachnet more meaniful, since it is not made more useful or less useful based on each participannts dice pools.

A serious suggestion for a tac net: Evenly disperse all Matrix Damage (after resistance tests) across all devices (and I mean ALL devices, your goggles, smartgun, commlink, etc.) that are a part of the tac net to a minimum of 1 damage. If there isn't enough Matrix Damage to hit all devices, then only some take the hit. Matrix Damage is continually applied evenly across all devices.

An interesting idea, but what would be the premise behind it? Since the items are connected via the TacNet they would be sort of their own cloud/distributed processing so damage is spread across the system?

Just picturing the first guy looking at hacking one TacNet member's commlink and has already done 30+ points Matrix damage and it's still going (due to sharing it with the rest of the team) and the poor decker thinking he is hacking God's own Commlink or something....

Or would he notice the damage dissipitating over a virtual web so to speak?

Yeah, their own cloud/distributed processing bit sounds good.

I'd say the dispersed Matrix Damage would be noticeable with a normal Matrix Perception check. Especially if one checks an unhit device and sees it has taken Matrix Damage too.

I think at this point it might be best to create a new thread to actually discuss tac-nets (one with a less hostile title probably) because this thread is incredibly derailed

Anyways, to give tac-nets a bit of direction, there are a few design questions to weigh in about the tac-net

First, what are the goals of the tac-net?
From what I gather, it seems that the goals are...
1) To make the matrix important in combat without having special conditions on the playing field without having a major security issue (IE why would you put your spine out in public airspace)
2) Give a sense of teamwork and professionalism to the players.
3) Add additional options to the players on how they want to run the group (do we run with a tac-net or without, if this is well written there should be no illusion of choice)

Next, there are some questions that have to be answered

Is the Tac-net a piece of hardware or software?
If it is hardware, you can do some cool things with it, suppose you treat it like a cyberdeck or RCC and allow it to run tac-net software (I stole this from earlier in the thread, but forgot who suggested it), So you could run some sort of software that would give guns subscribed to it +1 accuracy or +1 to the dice pool, or whatever.
The downside of hardware would be this is another item that presumably the decker would have to pick up. I suppose others could pick it up, but if it is the deckers job to defend it and hack the opposing tac-net why would the face pick it up? Also, how would technomancers work with the tac-net?

If I am wrong about what people are thinking of the ideal tac-net would be, do chime in.

Tac Net in its base form from a story or fluff perspective should do a few important things.

1. Support the tactical positioning of the team using it this should be accomplished in a few ways.
a. Allow anyone in the unit to mark people as one of 4 possible targets- Hostile, Neutral, Friendly, or Objective by doing this, someone on Overwatch from a higher vantage point can mark where hostile's, & such for the team as they move into an area to ambush or otherwise deal with the targets.
b. Allow for private & secured communications between the team at medium to long distances, this way the team won't have KE randomly finding their comm channel by accident as they are doing a run.
c. Put any & all information on tactical AR overlay for anyone who wishes to see it. The Decker can find building schematics, put them up on AR overlay, then the Overwatch places known locations on the overlay for the team before the rest even enter the building.

2. It should avoid additional Dice Bloat. We already have large dice pools available, if anything the TacNet should modify existing limits. Additional information can make someone's actions more effective in a situation.

3. One thing to figure out is how it will be incorporated, the simplest method is a basic program, primary program run off a Deck, sub programs run off commlinks or deck's creating a Master/Slave sort of relationship, linking everything to the master program.