Ok, so according to the book of SR5 12 to 15 grand per runner is not unreasonable pay for a runner team on many jobs (More with a decent face, but still)

Ok, so let's say that during the adventure you encounter an enemy decker with a rating 2 deck. Not unreasonable. You defeat him, and swipe his deck.
Now you sell it.
call it 30% (25% + 1 net hit complements of your face, who's likely to have a better negotiation dicepool than a decker who's after a new deck.)
That's 30-33 grand, or in a 4 runner team 7.5 - 8 grand each. That's half your paycheck from a single piece of loot. A good roll from your face will get you a lot more, adding 5 or more grand per hit before dividing it up.

In effect, any time you face off against a decker with even a lousy rating 2 'link who doesn't have it implanted will be a gift of a lot of cash in a very portable form.

On the flip side, is it really worth it for a small facility to get this massively expensive piece of gear and an operator? Or is my willing suspension of disbelief just sub-par?

Pay scales for SR per the books have always been stupid. SR5 is just more stupider.

I would think most matrix opposition you would run into in a facility would be of the spider variety. I would guess that dude would be jacked into a terminal somewhere off-site or on-site, rather than using a portable deck.

Odds are an in-person decker would be pretty rare on a corporate run. You'd probably see the corporate decker in full VR more than standing around with the random guards. And a lot of corporations would probably skimp on hiring a decker for every facility in favor of hiring a few deckers for the entire division to code IC and spiders and let GOD do most of the dirty work by ratcheting up OS.

I would just make it that the buildings spider has an actual console in an office somewhere, and if the runners want to take the time and hardware test they could take some of the parts, but there is no easy to loot deck

To me it is the pricing, that is broken. Prices in SR4 apeared a lot more reasonable to me. Sadly SR5 is a return to overpriced gear. Especially with professional gear, defining your profession. There is no use in being a computer-crack if you do not own a completely overpriced tablet... yes I loath Cyberdecks.

Since you can slave devices to a host, it'd be more efficient to have security slave their devices to one host, and leave the decker off-site and capable of monitoring a number of security sites from that host. That way the host provides a static defense bonus, and the decker can remove marks and whatnot. If things get really bad, the decker can track the invading hacker's marks back to the hacker and attack him through the Matrix.

A larger facility with its own host might have an on-site decker, but almost assuredly he wouldn't be wandering around looking for runners to data spike. That's what the dudes with machine guns are for.

Sure, you can get that for a Deck, but it does take a whole bunch of time to sell the thing. one of the key problems in most resource systems are that the timescales are often ignored when it comes to fencing goods etc.

I had a team back in SR3 that thought they'd hit it major, but we're horrified at the three months to move their highly specialised loot.

Can we please have one conversation about the new rules system without someone bitching about how the game's ruined? Seriously, getting a little tired. Some of us actually LIKE the new system and would like to discuss it and its ramifications without having some grognard try to skirt the no edition wars rules without offering a single constructive thought to the conversation.

what

It's dumpshock dude. Don't be silly

Fast food fight has a decker with a rating 2 deck (retail 110 grand) as a fry chef. Heck, if the runners pilfer that and sell it they get at least 25 grand for it on a 1 grand each run (assuming that you pull off the second objective).

This! IS! DUMPSHOCK!

Inflation, man. Or something... >.>

Sure they can FuelDrop, but it's probabley going to take at least 2Months to sell the thing.

Naah... Dump it to your Fence... It is his job to sell it. He gives you your cut (20%), and then sells it to some newb Decker tomorrow for full price.

Weren't it the "grognards" who reintroduced those prices for old times sake?

Say what you want about SR4, its prices were much more reasonable. While imperfect, they at least gave you reason to believe these items you were dealing with existed in a believable economy.

SR5's pricing model, especially in terms of cyberdecks, goes back to that old-school economic retardedness, where you might make a couple grand on a job but need that piece of gear in the hundreds of thousands of nuyen just to stay ahead of the curve.

This is especially prevalent in any of the official Missions, (even in SR4!) where the pay for doing the job sometimes doesn't even cover the expenses for the job itself. I guess Johnsons can be serious misers, even when throwing money at what is essentially a black ops crash project.

Don't forget you also have to hack the device to transfer Ownership, which takes awhile. The Ownership mechanics, by my understanding, were put in place to reduce looting etc.

The devs really wanted to make it too difficult to afford decent gear, didn't they?

Most facilities won't have an on-site Spider. The new, "unhackable" Matrix eliminated a healthy chunk of the hackers out there (Until they upgraded to Cyberdecks, which took a while), and the new IC protocols are enough to stop quite a few of the rest. (I/C ... it's like a decker that you don't have to pay for, yay!)

If the place isn't extra-territorial, they may have a decker service online or, failing that, have an alert system that contacts Knight Errant or Lonestar to swing in. Law Enforcement deckers sit at the precinct house and log in remotely to frag you up. The basic Trace action is a *terror* for Joe Decker since the law enforcement guys can, and will, dispatch a car to come pick you up and you really don't want that action.

If the area's Extraterritorial, then there'll be a decker somewhere, but only on-site for a larger location. The MCT Hexagon in Seattle has deckers in the place, for instance, but Research Facility #18 probably doesn't... they just have a decker from the Hex pop in when an alert goes on.

Of course, if you really start hammering systems, that's when they call in a guy from teh Home Office. You don't want that. It ends badly.

If you're running against a corporate decker who happens to have her own deck on her person and you can get to her, there's still the matter, as BishopMcQ mentioned, of transferring ownership. Since the deck's owner is most likely the corp, not the decker, they'll be able to spot the deck any time they like, and then a trace is just a Matrix action away. Of course, you can always turn the deck's wireless off, but you can't change ownership without the Matrix, so whoever ends up with it will probably resent the fact that you didn't tell them it was hot. You could travel to a really remote location and do the ownership hack there, in hopes that you can get away before the corp can make a response, although being in a sparsely populated area means that attack drones or (if they really hate you) cruise missiles will become more likely than investigation teams. In the end, it seems like a lot of hassle.

simple solution. wait for it. almost. pay more than suggested?

Why stop at looting Decks ?
Cyberware in SR5 is so expensive ,that
it pays off to butcher Streetsams to get the (now used) Cyberware

Hough!
Medicineman

Yeah, that makes me think of our old 2nd ed games where some players loved to collect used cyber from fallen foes and try to sell it. We were young and pretty Pink Mohawk at the time, so it was fun for all involved. Pretty sure that crew drove about in a tricked out Citymaster and Lonestar learned to just leave them be.

The memories.

Remote hackers are only good at defending hosts, where IC are also available. To deal with any threats on a grid, they'll suffer from penalties because of Noise Level. Being less than 10 kilometers away barely qualifies as "not on-site", so the Noise Level is going to be at least 5, possibly 8 (over 100km).

Using wireless negation paint to protect devices in a facility also forbids to rely on remote hackers, since the rating will add to the Noise Level.

Actually, it would be also next to impossible to affect any device on a grid in Seattle (at least on ground level and in the first few floors) from anywhere in North America, save Seattle itself and Vancouver Island, because each 5 meters of dense foliage adds one to Noise Level rating, and it's called the Evergreen State for a reason.

Regarding cyberdeck Ownership, it is needed to perform Full Matrix Defense action, isn't it? So I hope for them that corporate hackers do get ownership of the cyberdeck they're using.

I remember this kind of play... Tamanous didn't have anything on us.... Dreamchipper.... we sold pieces of Jack the ripper, Junior and Khan, dumped Cleo in the street and sold her bird. Didn't even think anything of it.... it's hard to dissuade people new to SR from that sort of activity... especially when you're guilty of it... over 20 years ago.

Guilty as charged. Once had a character buy a ton of ice from the local gas station just to keep the bodies fresh until he could sell them

I would imagine, considering the noise mechanic now prevalent in the new Matrix that most corporate systems would be connected somehow with a noise free option to their central hosts (be that fibreoptic, or laser or whathaveyou) so that they CAN defend them remotely, as well as have regular intercourse on an international level without having to deal with noise.

Or at least that's my vision on how it'd work.

I don't see runners ever really running into corporate spiders in the flesh, and the grids are supposedly protected by G-Men and DemiGODs who you'll not see in the flesh either. So that'd leave things like spec ops (or Star/Knight Errant HRTs), organized crime, other runners, gangers(? lol), and the like. I really wouldn't think you'd run into too many decks on a typical shadowrun. At least in the 6th world in my mind.

To be fair it's not very dystopian if you got SotA cutting edge technology right out the gate (which you can easily do with SR4A hackers... Ignoring all that rating x military black ops making shit up stuff of course)

There's a point: what happened to all the matrix gangs that used to go around hacking cars and generally being a nuisance? A 50 gran minimum buy-in for a cyberdeck is well outside of most gangers price ranges...

I have no problem starting off with mid-grade gear, but the ability to obtain better gear, maybe even approaching some of that SotA stuff, should be possible on a time scale that doesn't involve the heat death of the universe. Saving up pennies, nickels, and dimes to buy something costing hundreds of thousands of nuyen is ludicrous. Simply put, the devs put down the pay scale in the rules, and go so far as to entrain them in the Missions. Then they ramp up the price of pieces of gear to the point that it's put out of reach of the players and makes no sense in the in-game universe. ("I can buy this cyberdeck, or I can retire! Decisions, decisions...")

Hey, at least Adepts and Mages are still getting Karma at a solid rate...
Oh wait...

What is so difficult about fixing it so that "In the time it takes to initiate you should make enough money for a shiny new Drone, an upgraded deck or some cool new 'ware"?

Don't forget that in the inevitable Matrix book there will probably be rules for incremental upgrades.

Or the ability to B/R your custom upgrades.

Base 3k¥ * (1+ 4 (Highest Opposing Pool 16) + 1 (at least one other)) = 18k¥+ per run is not THAT bad. Assuming a weekly group got 40 games in a year (only con-style single day runs), that´s some 720k¥ minus living cost per year. (Ignoring 600¥/negotiation net hit/run. Ask your face.)

Character POV: Let´s say 200k¥/year ingame (no taxes). Earning that, would you prefer to stop working and live a low lifestyle for the rest of your days? Or spending much money on increased survivability and a medium lifestyle, putting aside some 100k¥/year?


Individual games will be much different: Single runs can take much more than one session, and not pay at all. Some runs will pay extremely well because the deed is worth it and only the characters can commit it. We prefer a higher payscale even in SR4a, but we also have pro-bono runs, "special interest" runs paying only living costs, runs for personal goals etc.

Cannot be stated enough...

I'm on board with raising prices on gear that is just too good (Muscle Aug/Toner were waaaay too cheap and have been adjusted accordingly, for example) but the new prices for decks will keep me from EVER playing a decker. The Fairlight costs nearly as much as a permanent High lifestyle for god's sake.

Replace a few chips and done. Null Sheen! How hard can it be? If you are a good enough hacker to get the gear as loot, you will have absolutely no issue with the requirements of changing ownership. *shrug*

Of course, if you are that good, you should have your Fairlight Excaliber equivalent deck in no time as you craft it yourself. Also Null Sheen.

Why would you ignore SOTA gear above Rating 6 in SR4A? No reason to do so, in my opinion. It should have had Ratings from 1-10 (or 12) to start with, in my opinion.

yeah, for all those who are thinking it's super-duper hard to change ownership and requires awesome matrix skills and putting the device on the matrix where it can be tracked etc...

ummm...

it's a hardware test. now, granted, this is SR5, and i'm sure somewhere along the line there'll be a screwdriver that only works to it's full potential when connected to the matrix (because turning a screwdriver isn't something that just *anybody* can do, you need the new wireless matrix to make it work).

but nevertheless, you can do it with a hardware test, it's fairly time-consuming and perhaps not exactly easy, but it really isn't something that the corporation can catch you doing with matrix tracking.

presumably, selling it before it's ownership is changed will net you less of a profit of course. but if you can't change the ownership, it's still got plenty of value, because someone out there is selling those second-hand cyberdecks you're selling, and odds are good that they do in fact know somebody who can change device ownership reliably.

Which beggars the question: If you're good enough to build one of these on yourself... why would you risk everything on a Shadowrun?

Natural Selection. When the new Matrix went up, all that kind of chaos got shut down. The Powers That Be (NeoNET and MCT being the big two, but Aztechnology, S-K, Ares, and so on) wanted the next Matrix to be safe and secure ... after two crashes and the chaos of the wireless "Everything is hackable, whee!" decade, they all got together and realized that it was bad for business. If no one could trust the Matrix, then they couldn't trust the megas, and if they couldn't trust the megas, well...

So, the new protocols effectively gave us Matrix 3.0 (No one's calling it that mind you, but it's handy for discussion) ... The safest, most secure Matrix, ever. All teh fears of random street gangers hacking your stuff, hijacking your car, dropping planes out of teh sky... poof, gone overnight. At the highest levels of skill, the deckmasters and the codebreakers got together and, eventually, figured out how to get around it, but as of now, the parts needed to do it are rare and super-expensive. Those people with the know-how to build them don't sell themselves cheap. In time, the costs will drop and we'll get a more lower-grade of entry-level hacker, maybe even script-kiddies again, but it won't be soon.

That, of course, leaves Technomancers and rogue AIs as potential, uncontrollable, threats. They can still change Matrix 3.0, and they're largely out of corporate control. You'd better believe that those guys are being painted badly in all media and hunted down even more than before. Hrm. Wonder if that'll go anywhere?

Well in the fueldropverse Deckers are almost extinct, primarily because cost of decks making a self taught decker rarer than a great dragon, the high turnover of runners and the difficulty of finding an existing decker with a spare deck who's willing to mentor you. We've pretty much established that corps don't use Deckers per se for security, so any ex-corp Deckers are probably ex-firewatch or equivalent.

Kinda ditto on riggers, though far less so. Too expensive to get into outside of a corporate environment, so most new riggers are ex-corpers.

EDIT: riggers might be former wheelmen who save up. Rookie Deckers also have to worry about the wrath of GOD, meaning that fewer groups will hire them even if they don't attract the men in black while practicing.

I am beginning to think Deckers are just a myth...

riggers are much less impossible. the military will almost definitely make use of them, which makes rating 1 control rigs a lot more plausible (if you accept that it's possible to keep one when you muster out). former corporate riggers should also actually be reasonably common... with an RCC cheaper than the cheapest cyberdeck, a noise reduction program, and a datajack, a rigger can actually control drones from quite far away. the cheapest rigger command consoles are very much within reach for someone to get by themselves, and at least a few of the drones are quite plausible for someone to own based on the low cost. rigger interface is also fairly inexpensive, so anyone who can plausibly own a vehicle could equally plausibly own a vehicle with a rigger interface.

self-made riggers may be rare, but i don't consider them truly impossible either. used rating 1 control rigs cost only ~31k nuyen, which is at the high end of plausible self-funded equipment, but not impossible (and even more plausible if, say, you manage to acquire on in a less pleasant way than purchasing it legitimately). heck, i could even see organized crime loaning people the money (which you'd then have to pay back by doing smuggling runs etc, and you'd probably never truly escape their grasp...)

heck, you even use the same skill set to rig as you do to drive manually... no special training required whatsoever.

so yeah, riggers i don't find so unlikely. i can certainly agree that self-made deckers should be extremely rare though.

(incidentally, corporate-owned deckers i find entirely plausible, with the new matrix rules... their ability to punish unprepared opponents is frankly terrifying, and not every enemy of the corporations consist of people who are essentially the equivalent of military black ops. being able to brick the eyes of some idiot ganger who's lobbing molotovs at their corporate facility and livestreaming it is advantageous. but i wouldn't expect them to give their deckers portable decks... they'd almost certainly be made deliberately bulky and built-in to the facility where they're kept).

My take on the security decker is that she isn’t using a cyberdeck, but she is using the Host. Hosts have the same attributes as cyberdecks and though the rules do not spell it out as such, I would think that a host would be able to run cyberprograms. Following this logic Hosts should be much more expensive than an equivalent rating cyberdeck, and I’m sure we’ll find that out someday. For now that’s how I envision the security hacker/spider, and as I am more familiar with SR5 than our GM (for the moment) that’s how I’ll pitch it to him. I know it is really a house rule, but it makes sense in context.

Hmmm, won't the corps themselves be interested in spreading the knowledge of how the new matrix can be hacked? After all, if the new matrix is 100% secure, they can't spy on their competitors...

-CJ

Because it's only mentioned in passing and never given any hard rules for (atleast in unwired, I don't own any of the SotA/Black books... Not a gear porn fan)

That and I don't like that the highest 'publicly' available software should be the starting point... It puts you in a spot where the hacker can either access anything that's not Lofwyrs personal fanfic collection or where even grandmas cookie shop is covered in R6 Black ice... Which is both really inconvenient from a balance standpoint and really detrimental from an immersion standpoint...

What is the status in FuelDropverse of highly augmented samurai with hundreds of thousands of nuyen in 'ware?