So you're also interpreting Detect Hidden Node as giving the user the locations of the detected nodes (and nothing more without Analyse). I think that, too, but technically it's not spelled out in the book.
The description is just too short, to tell us explicitly, if we just get a list, number from 1 to n "Detected Nodes, which one would you like to Analyze first" or if it is showing us where each detected node is. And this makes a huge difference.

And the description in SR5 is also much too short, to clarify several questions. It spells out, that you first ask, if there are one or more runinng icons in the area and that you only get a yes or no for that with one hit.
In the next step can "unhide" a running silent icon with a certain opposed roll and it will be visible for you from then on. This step seems to be the answer to the question "now that I know that there are one or more running silent icons, show me one, any one", because it's described that you get a random hidden icon.

We know, that the devs were also thinking of another way, how to see running silent icons, because of the table entry on page 235 "you can spot an icon running silent, if you know at least one feature" (slightly paraphrased). We see, that this is asking another question, taken literally only for one icon:"Show an icon running silently, that has the feature xyz".
As said it make a big difference, what a feature is.
Can it be type of icon or type of device? Can it be location? Can it even be past behavior (that has just attacked me)?
The answers to these questions change completely how important/useful running silent is and it is unfortunate, that it wasn't described in more detail.

You always know at least one feature of a Hidden node: It is Hidden!

To my mind, that should be more than enough for your commlink to filter out the wireless background chaff, with the appropriate Scan + Electronic Warfare roll. Remember, a hidden node is still a wireless transmitter. Frankly, if you're anywhere other than a sprawl, I would say that the difficulty to locate a hidden node is Electronic Warfare + Scan (1; 1 Initiative Pass,) because that commlink/smartgun/whatever is merely only not broadcasting the identification tags identifying it as a node.

Wirelessly, it's still transmitting, which is plain as day to anything which is detecting wireless transmissions. It's just that in the fragging city, literally everything is broadcasting, and it can "hide" in that.

This is what your Electronic Warfare + Scan roll is getting you: it's sifting through all of the wireless chaff, identifying the wireless signals emitting from nodes which are identifying themselves, and eliminating them. Once you've eliminated the radio sources which are properly identifying themselves, what you have left are the hidden nodes. This is why it is appropriate for Detect Hidden Node to be a threshold test and not an opposed test going up against the other guy's EWar + Stealth. It's not about hacking, it's about straight-up old-school Signals Intelligence, and is grounded in simple physics; radio waves can be detected and there's no way to hide them. The only foolproof way to defeat EWar + Scan finding your hidden commlink is to switch off its wireless, so that it stops being a radio signal source altogether. If you absolutely must have a connection and it's an equal must that your connection must not be noticed (say, because you are a sniper,) then get a laser-comm set-up to beam your wireless transmissions to another laser-comm set up half a kilometer away and from there go wireless through another commlink, or use a fiber-cable to plug into an old-school data outlet. You could also try using a directional radio antennae to beam to another commlink to route your info, but that's not nearly as safe. This is also why a nonstandard wireless link and other measures can raise the threshold to find you, by going outside the channels usually used for wireless communications, and thus being harder for EWar + Stealth to find. (Though let's not get into the question of how the nodes you're communicating with are receiving your transmissions.)

I also said that Electronic Warfare + Scan should give you the Signal rating of the hidden node, too. So if you find a hidden node with a Signal rating of 6 or 7 or greater, you know you're about to have a bad, bad day, because only high-end hackers and mil-spec gear have signal ratings that high and are going to be hidden.

As far as SR5 goes, though, don't look at me. I try to keep my answers and my gameplay, especially as regards the Matrix, grounded at least in the physics known to someone with a high school education, whereas with SR5 they went off the deep end and tried to make it some bullshit analogue to the Astral. See my signature for more details on exactly how much sense the wireless matrix rules in SR5 make.

I do appreciate the viewpoint. SR5's Matrix rules are, I agree, pretty absurd.


That said, I am still having trouble fathoming how Rhat isn't understanding this, although it's likely he's just trolling.

Let's use an in-game example.

Bob the Decker is walking down the street when he spots a couple of Yakuza enforcers chatting on the corner. Bob owes the Yaks money, and likes having all of his fingers, so isn't really interested in a fight. Only one of them has a gun, though, and he figures if he can disable it real fast, he can bolt and they won't catch him.

So, Bob scans the area for icons and doesn't see the gun. Fair enough, he'd automatically spot it if it was online normally. He looks harder (makes a Matrix Perception Test), and makes a success! With that, he can spot that there are two icons running silent in his signal range (100m). Likely one of these is the gun he wants!

Now, he has a hard choice to make. The Yaks haven't noticed him, so he decides to go ahead and try and spot the gun's icon. He picks the icon he thinks is most likely (The GM or Player chooses randomly) and starts checking it out (rolls Computer+Intuition [Data Processing] vs the icon's Logic + Sleaze).

Bob's doing well today, and he manages a net hit on the first icon, spotting it! He quickly checks it for more information (Matrix Perception Test), and discovers it is a commlink belonging to the unarmed Yak. Curses. Well, time to try the next icon. Since there is only one running silent icon left in range, it is the only possible choice, and he rolls against next.

Meanwhile, the Yakuza have noticed the guy trying to duck behind a stall and fiddling with a cyberdeck, and are coming over! Bob rushes through, making all the rolls needed to unmask the icon!

It's a sign on the nearby building that the proprietor didn't want skriptkiddiez hacking.

The Yakuza proceeds to shoot Bob in the face with his throwback pistol.


Now, Rhat, do you understand why you don't actually -know- anything about running silent icons? You can assume all day that there's an icon for that object you want to hack out there, but the random selection is there because your character has no idea which one it would be, or if it even has an icon. You can't filter icons with no information about them.

You still haven't accounted for ALL the rules in your reading, wraith. In your reading of the rules, what does the line about knowing a feature about an icon Running Silent mean?

It means that you have looked at it already and now know a feature of that Icon. Using your Interpretation, I could Filter for a Sleaze Attribute... but how does the Deck know what has a Sleaze attribute and what does not until it has examined it? That Matrix Perception on each individual icon needs to be performed to filter what has a Sleaze Attribute and what does not. It cannot differentiate on Zero Information. In other words, you cannot know a feature until you have looked at the object itself. It will not show as a Comlink (while runinng Silent) so you have to actually examine it to determine that it is a comlink.

And under what circumstances has that occurred without having already spotted the icon? Because remember, the rule states that it lets you spot an icon.

Which is why I fear most people will drape themselves in hundreds of stealth tags..

It doesn't. It means that you have spotted it before, and you can now filter by that feature (since you know have a Feature selected by your evaluation), and as you add more icons that you have evaluated, the filter becomes more precise, as the icons move from Group to those that contain the subgroup (your filter). But you MUST evaluate it to add to your filter. You cannot filter without evaluation. Hell, even search engines do that. They take an input, look at a data point to see if it matches that input, adds to the compiling list of matches, and then moves to the next data point for additional comparison. But you will NEVER find a match if that data point has not been evaluated.

Which is the logical end result of having a Wireless Requirement for gear, and a desire to be protected from the hacker. Of course, if you want to be completely Protected, you just run silent because the idiotic Wireless Bonuses are not even really all that useful, and can be easily ignored. And will be how I roll in SR5. *shrug*

Pretty much my thought... except for that annoying smartlink. to cover for it, I will run it and my 5 cyberdecks silent and sew ¥10,000 worth of stealth tags into my clothing and gear.

Followed by renting a cargo plane stuffed with stealth tags to air-drop (loose delivery) into the air above your target building (and surrounding area) a day or two before your infiltration. Just in case someone thinks that "hey, there shouldn't be a glob of stealth tags there!" Because now there are millions of stealth tags EVERYWHERE on EVERYTHING being tracked into buildings because they got stuck to someone's shoe.

And to make sure they are well and truly everywhere we have to have some of the dropped tags inside bouncy balls.

Don't Taunt Happy Fun Ball.

I think I'll just go with 'keep my wireless gear slaved to my commlink, slave my commlink to my hacker's deck, and use stealth tags'. Seriously, if someone's willing to take the effort to uncover everything before I've shot them, kudos to them.

And boy, did we ever, ever, ever veer off topic.

Just go Dark... It is the only way to be sure. And it protects you from your Hacker as well.
Besides, you cannot slave slaves (No Chains).

For someone firing at an unaware target, the two dice gained from turning on that wireless really aren't worth the risk of detection. They amount to less than an average hit, in a situation where you're already going to clobber someone with 5 to 7 hits, with a base damage far above their physical damage track, and enough AP to make a mockery of almost any wearable armor.

So, by your reading the rule doesn't allow you to do what it says it allows you to do?

By My reading it allows exactly what it says. *shrug*

Really? Because I'm not seeing anywhere in your reading where knowing a feature of an icon allows you to spot that icon as a result of a Matrix Perception Test.

No, what you are not seeing is my agreeing with your position.

That's not my position, that's the fragging text. From the Matrix Perception Table:



What do you think this line means?

Wow, I love circular arguments.
It allows exactly what it says it allows.
Damn.

I just wish there was a game mechanic definition for "feature".

Ok, I'll give it a try:
One side interprets, that "spot" in this table entry of Matrix Perception means: see something you didn't see before, something that was "invisible", "hidden", running silent. This would be an additional thing to what is described in Running Silent.

The other side interprets, that "spot" means: I already have a list of icons that were running silent, but have been "decloaked" by me with the process described in the Running Silent paragraph and I "spot" on this list (I filter) those, which have a certain feature. This point of view is founded by the argument, that without having discovered an icon, you cannot get any information about it so that it would be illogical that you could discover only things that have a certain feature.

Imagine you have some invisible people in a crowd.
The first interpretation says: I don't know how it works, but somehow I can spot all invisible people that are wearing red jackets. Because you can interpret "spot" in this way.
The second interpretation says: Without first making one or more of those invisible people visible, I cannot ever say anything about red jackets. So the only meaning of "spot" can be: if I have made a lot of people visible, then I can "spot" those who have red jackets (for example because I'm not interested in those who wear something else). Indeed "spot" can be read this way, too.

I hate it, that this sentence in the table entry can be interpreted in both ways.

I personally think, that in a way this second view is quite logical, but it means, that this "spotting" is nearly useless. And this again means, that this awful rule, that if you have more than one hidden icon in the area, you are only getting results for a random icon, makes running silent super powerful, as soon as there are several running silent icons in a 100m radius. And that would pretty much be always the case.

If you don't take the first interpretation of "spot" then running silent gives near complete protection against hacking, because of the "random" thing.
With the first interpretation, you have a good chance to "see" something that is running silent, if you know, what you are looking for (depending on what feature is intended to mean).

The way I interpret it is as follows:

"Feature" is one of the other pieces of information from the Matrix Perception table. So, DR is a feature. Matrix Attribute Rating is a feature. Etc.

So, you start out not knowing *anything*. You need a Matrix Perception check (Simple Test) to determine if there are any Running Silent devices out there.

Once you know that there are Running Silent devices out there, you pick one at random and try to learn more about it by using Matrix Perception (Opposed Test, Computer + Intuition [Data Processing] vs. Logic + Sleaze.)

Other then the fact that it's Opposed, this is a normal Matrix Perception check. Meaning that for every net hit, you learn a feature of the device.

Once you've learned a feature, you can spot the device. You can now go back to Matrix Perception (Simple Test) to learn more, or use other Matrix Actions (or Resonance Actions in the case of a TM) on that device.

Notably, spotting is what you do AUTOMATICALLY if an icon is not Running Silent.

Circular is best... You always come back to where you started, and you never get lost.

Knowing doesn't mean guessing. You can guess that is a device out there that has a Sleaze attribute, but until you perceive it and discern that it does you are only guessing, not knowing.

I'm going to go with DMK's/TJ's interpretation.

I believe everyone is missing that other part of running silent:

So if you spot and icon you know information about it (such as "it is a firearm"). The owner switches it to silent running. You would lose that icon except you know something about that icon (because you spotted it before it went silent) therefore you continue to spot it or can re-find it without having to use the opposed test on it.

I agree though, if you haven't spotted it before, you know nothing about it until you have passed the opposed test on the hidden icon.

And viola...
I admit I forgot that piece of information...

Great example by the way wraith!!

And that's where the second part of the question comes in. How would the action be meaningfully different if you're speculating?

Did you completely ignore Fogarn's post? Number 129, I believe.

I like this example.

Now a question. Since the decker knows there is a gun, can he attempt to look for its silent running icon? From your example, the decker is assuming that of the two silent icons one of them is the gun. When the decker rolls his (opposed) perception test against the gun and fails he could assume that either the gun is better hidden than he thought or that it indeed does not have a hidden icon. But knowing that there is a gun and there are silent icons, would this be possible? The text does state that knowing an attribute of the icon allows this, and knowing that the gun should be generating an icon IMO should allow the roll.

Didn't really answer the question. Searching for something you know is present (though you don't, since the device might have been shut down) isn't meaningfully different from searching for something you know is there, especially from an in game standpoint.

The decker knows there is a gun in the real world. The decker does not know it has a silent running icon, because obviously in the example it doesn't. You cannot filter icons by information you do not have, in this case you cannot select the running silent icon of the gun because you have no idea which one it could be if any. All you know is that it doesn't show an obvious icon, and there are running silent icons within 100m or the same host as you.


Does that clear it up?

Yup. So the only way to find an icon that is running silent is by random chance since you can not know anything about it until you've found it, even though the text says otherwise.

Yup.

I don't write the system, or edit it.


In fact I'm pretty sure nobody edits it.

Sorry to jump into this 1/2 way through and it may have been already answered but couldn't the decker just rely on his AR overlay to help identify which nodes are worthy of investigation once he's detected them?

That's the thing. The perception test just says "there are 1500 silent nodes within 100m". It doesn't give you any more information than that, so your AR would not help in the situation.

Which is frankly bollocks. If you detect hidden nodes, your AR overlay should show you their direction from you and rough distance.

So sewing 100 stealth RFIDs into your clothes might make it hard to find and hack your commlink, but it'll basically negate any concealment you may be in, well enough for shooters to make called shots to your face, and unquestionably well enough for spotters to call in mortar/drone/airstrike/artillery fire on your position.

I agree, however the book doesn't say that so we are left with broken rules. There are a lot of ways to fix this issue, but they would all be house rules until something official comes out to make a repair.

If I turn on my cellphone's wireless, it will tell me how many networks are within range to connect to. It doesn't tell me where the router are, what type or model they are, or how close they are. It just informs me they exist. I'm thinking this is fairly synonymous. If I wanted to get more information, I'd have to really look at the router I'm trying to connect to.

From the way Running Silent is described, that would make sense to me as well. It's described as shutting a device down to minimal network activity, after all. So not putting off enough packets to let AR triangulate it, while still doing enough data transfer for a decker to determine -something- is there, makes sense to me.

Admittedly, this is applying the way real world signals work to SR5 Matrix, which is inherently flawed as a discipline.



Ahah, that's the page reference I couldn't remember, thanks Forgarn!

Rhat, there's the answer to your question right there. That line you will not shut up about is referring to exactly this. If you have spotted an icon before it goes into running silent, you can re-spot it with a Matrix Perception Test because you know something about it that will let you filter it out from the rest of the silent running icons.

Lets assume that every non-hidden device, or at least a large percentage of them, have GPS enabled and know their exact coordinates.
Even at only 5% this still works, given how pervasive wirelessly enabled objects are in the setting. So this is a reasonable assumption.

Let's also assume that icons in hidden mode are still broadcasting some kind of identifier. In fact, they'd have to, even in hidden mode, or there would be no test to find them: you would simply fail. Because they are observable after a matrix perception check, they must be broadcasting some kind of uniquely identifying information. So this is a reasonable assumption. Sleeze just means that it isn't volunteering position data, etc. etc.

Furthermore, all wirelessly enabled devices must be capable of routing traffic to these hidden devices, or they would lose their matrix bonus when in hidden mode. This means that some kind of routing information is available and can be polled by other devices in the vicinity. Sleeze just means that the device itself won't respond to direct ping request. But if it has pinged other devices...then those devices know that it's inside mutual signal range (at a maximum distance of the non-hidden device's own broadcast range).

If A, B, and C are true, then the following is also true:

Any wireless device can approximate the location of another wireless device solely based on the known GPS coordinates of GPS enabled devices and whether or not a requested icon's UUID is within broadcast range and the size of the GPS enabled device's broadcast range. The more devices that have GPS enabled (A) the more accurate this approximation will be (you only need three that are in range, if their coverage overlap is small enough).

(B and C simply allow the matrix to function at all.)

Therefore there is enough information available to pinpoint hidden icons for an AR overlay without having to reach blindly into a bottomless bucket of hidden icons.

Sure, but is the info being put out enough to be noticed by the user in the blizzard of other AR icons that is a walk down the street in SR5 terms?

When you're getting the set of hidden icons, it's enough to get some positional information on them.

And yet it isn't, because you can't locate an icon you haven't spotted. Yay rules!

Also, go read the thread.

Actually, the Running Silent section is, well, silent on this point.

Yeah, because you have to read about spotting, a couple paragraphs up the column on the same page.