you fail because it is widely admitted that extended tests are a bullshit mechanism. Your claim and your challenge to prove was not "was is the better dice roll mechanism, single test or extended test", you wanted to be proven, that the Matrix in SR2345 is already an extremely powerful tool. You asked for similar dramatic effect like a spirit and a fireball, you got examples. Pleaes be satisfied.



*sigh*

Really? That is your counterargument?

Well, here is the most basic answer. THERE ARE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SECURITY (and security behavior). Contrary to your claim "Dumpshocker" have usually no problem that a lot of people, companies, organisations and groups are constantly online and chitchatting inside the matrix, protected by matrix security ranging from low to high. But "Dumpshocker" has usually an issue if your *Stealthsuit* must show up on the matrix screen of the site security. Or if the wifi bonuses does not show up on the security grid because of *bla* Or that megacorp companies who wants to control the matrix have no problems giving out supercomputer power without any control, time or money restriction to every smartlink and online silencer user in the city without checking for the legal permit of such an item ... but on the other side sending in GOD if you shit into the wrong direction.

This forceful breaking of the suspension of disbelieve is, what a lot of people do not like.

SYL

Yes, if the opposition is a professinal black ops / runner / SWAT / special forces team: sure.

But even that is covered by the many rule suggestions done in the past 2 years (apparently completely ignored by you): tacnets, drones, radio. Must I really explain it again or do you know the basics of this argument?



First: a car is device rating 3 which means around 6 dices. Except of course every car is the White House "Beast", the car for the president of the UCAS. I had already that kind of discussion with Cain who insists, that a script kiddy is skill 4 security specialist and not an unskilled user of hacking programs. So, no 10 rolls. 2, perhaps 3.

But yes, extended tests are stupid, that is news literally from 2005. And yes, hacking a high end black ops car/van/truck take more rolls - but not 10, depending on the situation and the competence of the enemy mechanic (who spiced up the car) and the competence and equipment of the hacker (base roll of 12 dices + mods vs 20-25 dices from the hacker at that level). But then again most cars in the sixth world have a maglock 3 and a pilot/autosoft 3 at max for their security.

It is basically like real world buildings: most buildings, sometimes even buildings having millions of $ or € in values, have no real door/window security or guard concept, perhaps a basic alert system etc. A thief can literally walk into these buildings and go out. Some have a medium level of security. Still manageable, but you have to be careful, use special tools and tricks to circumvent security. And then there are the last x% where you need to plan for weeks and month, collect information, must make training runs and use every trick in the book to get even past the first door. In that area you will find professional runners, corp black sites etc. And yes that means a hacker will not necessarily find an open matrix form him to hack, but willl have to infiltrate the area from the inside, find weak spots and get creative (my favorite: stealthy mini/small toy drone with several dozen meter for fiber cable).

Guess what: the street samurai will not find a dozen sleepy guards eating donuts. And yes, the mage will have to check out on how to break through a half dozen high level security spirits and several wards. Shocking news! And in these kind of areas it is a pretty stupid idea to announce your presense by showing up with a smartlink, online silencer and an online stealth suit - except that apparently no one cares to check to which devices the megacorp supercomputer and the billions of sensors provide information to.

Again: check out how other games solved this issue, on how the make the hacker archetype useful inside combat and even in areas without transmission. CP2020 is your first stop.

SYL

Yes, the GM can do that, and that is okay because in a Top Secret Zero Zone, anyone actually transmitting is pretty damn stupid, regardless of which side they are on unless there are certain parameters in place, one of which is that nothing (wifi) can get in from outside, and vice versa. Any facility that I would design with Top Secret Research in mind would have nothing but hardlines on the important equipment, and anything with an exterior access would NEVER physically (No Hardline nor Wifi connections would they ever share) interface with anything internal that could be compromised.



Please note that the Actions I described were all actions that a Spider/Hacker takes with his own systems. So no, there is nothing more involved than a single roll, if any.

Never said that some of the actions described by Apple would not take a handful of rolls in SR4A (and if you note, neither did he), they do (especially if you are using ALL the security speed bumps that are available (most don't) - any they are still just speed bumps), and even then, I was glad to do it. I think hacking is WAY TO DAMNED FAST to start with, even in SR4A (and lets be honest, the 2 rounds I spend doing something is a pittance, time wise - wow, I just spent a whole six seconds... pretty sure the sammies can keep everyone busy for 6 seconds), so speeding it up is not something that I am looking for. I can live with the Speed of SR4A, and strongly advocate Strong Encryption of at least 1 Minute on each and every device in use in anything that takes security even a bit seriously. For more serious places an hour, two hours or six hours is not out of line (more than that seriously impacts system down time/reboot time), in my opinion. That said, if you WANT fast hacking (and lets face it, most people do), CP2020 does a far better job than SR5 does for most of the things that are being discussed (Fair Disclosure, CP2020 does not have multiple actions, so each turn is a standard of approximately 3 Seconds; so hackers with their 3-5 actions in SR4a equate to the CP2020 Netrunner's single action in CP2020). Even SR5's elimination of Extended rolls for Simple/Complex actions still takes time (though on par with just a few seconds - how odd that sounds when the difference between fast and slow is apparently only 2-3 seconds). Maybe that is the disconnect here. I am perfectly happy to spend 3-6 seconds on hacking something with all the bells and whistles (or even a minute or two for things that may be a bit harder, like cracking the Encryption on a system), while it seems like you want it to happen in times of partial seconds. The latter, for me, is simply to damned fast for such actions.

And we still come back to the original premise. There are just some things that should NEVER have matrix access to start with. And if you cannot purchase them legally, someone will craft them for the Black Market/Security/Military Industrial Complex so that they do not compromise themselves.

EDIT: After reviewing the CP2020 book... Normal actions happen in 3 Second Combat Rounds (page 97), while the Netrunner operates in 1 Second Combat Rounds (page 151). So at least as fast as the bog standard Hacker in Shadowrun and a bit slower than the fastest Hacker with 5 passes... Helps if one actually looks up what one is talking about before he opens his mouth. Apologies.

You have to differentiate between the amount of dicerolls and the amount of ingame time used. CP2020 and SR hacking in a a matter of seconds (ecept for SR4 probing), Eclipse Phase hacking was measured in minutes IIRC.

I have no problem with hacking being done in seconds or in hours (thats a matter of the metaphysic of the corresponding game world) - I just want less dice rolls.

SYL

That is true, and is often something that I overlook in comparisons. I am all for less dice rolls involved. In my opinion, Hacking is just too fast in SR5 (and often in SR4 as well). I get that the goal is to have the hacking playable in tandem with combat, but that does not mean that a Hacker needs to be hacking combat equipment to give him a viable niche (especially when that equipment has absolutely no business having a Matrix presence). Pick up a gun when lead starts flying. That is why you have it.

Not neccessarily: I like the concept of combat hacking. After all it can be quite cool if a hacked truck crashes into the enemy. I like the idea of temporary minihacks giving a hacker some short term access to screw things up for a second or two before the enemy firewall / tacnet / hacker overwatch can screw things out. I described some of these ideas here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=40095&hl=

It is an awesome topic, to be sure, and if your goal is combat hacks, they are great tactics (I used a few of them myself, though not with Extended rolls stripped out, so they were still slower than what you proposed - which I really had no issue with).

I think that the issue at hand is not really about the speed of hacking, but the speed of intervention. Opposition Response takes TIME (rarely should it be instantaneous), and when you know the response team takes a minimum of 6 minutes to be on site and ready, then there is the time to accomplish a lot of things, if your team functions well together. Often, though, reaction times get compressed, so you lose out on options for no real reason other than to provide some color to the scene. And this can be frustrating to players, especially when it occurs consistently.

The again, maybe I am just out of the loop a bit. Happens from time to time.

That is not what I was asking. I was asking for those effects to be on par. While, i apologize that I did not clarify at the time, that on par means that it must be done with a similar action economy. On par does mean that should be equal as in that why I would make a decker over a mage is that I can do what the mage can but in a different flavor and just as well. But the problem is that I as a decker cannot do it just as well, because the mage can do it faster and better and doesn't have to worry about needing the GM to come up with contrived scenarios in which I can use my ability to be like a mage, when a mage can be powerful on demand. So I will not be satisfied until hacking is as awesome and necessary as magic is.



The problem is if Dumpshock loves SR4a, or maybe its just TJ, but there is no reason why everyone would not be running a response 6 commlink, with a rating 6 system, running rating 6 firewall and rating 6 encryption, and make everything admin access only, or at least slaving everything to such a device.

As for SR5, if you have something scanning every turn for wireless signals you'll suffer -1 to repeating the action. So literally a spider can't just set up an agent or drone to scan for hidden devices or else he'll start to get a lot of false positives as the agent/drone glitches as their dice pools get smaller and smaller. So clearly you can run with your stealth suit's wireless on as long as you don't give the Matrix overwatch any reason to believe that there is a device running silent in the area. And if you do give that away, oh man...sure suckes to have to actually worry about Matrix security in a game with the Matrix as a core premise. That sounds super not fun. I mean, it'd be like having to worry about invisible spirits spotting you from the astral. That'd be totally broken.



No enlighten me. Why would anyone use drones, and tacnets in a world of hackers that can make such devices totally useless, and yet you would never want your gun to be wireless?



So explain how exactly does CP2020 handle hacking. TJ has said they use menus. So what does that mean? So give a play by play. Walk me through an example hack. Something simple. A data steal. We got a secure server we need some McGuffin from, and maybe something more utility like hacking a turret and gunning down the guards protecting a facility.

So basically you just want to play a technomage, rather than a hacker. The Mage and the Hacker should not be able to do the same things. They should present a choice between different abilities. They should bring something different to the table. As it stands (at least in 4A), the two do bring something different to the table, but I'll grant that there is a problem. The Mage is able to do too many damned things, and intrude into some of the things that a Hacker can do. You should want to bring both the Hacker and the Mage. Not because they overlap in their abilities, but because they are different, and add different abilities to the team.



Read the description of what the different ratings mean, apply a bit of real world common sense (What! Common sense in a game with magic, undead, dragons, and parallel worlds/dimensions!?) and you'll have the answer as to why only a limited number of places will have Matrix equipment with Rating 6 across the board. Rating 6 is the cutting edge military stuff. It is not what every Joe Blow is running around with, or what every shop is running. The average place is far more likely going to be running Rating 2-4 comlinks and other stuff. But sure, if you want to approach the topic only from the mechanical side, then absolutely everything in the entire setting should only be running things at maximum ratings, seeing as anything less than that is really a waste of money, and a potentially greater liability than it could be. I'll grant you that it's unfortunate that the game mechanics don't support the logical fluff interpretation, but no. Not everyone and everything is running Rating 6 Response, System, Firewall, and Encryption.



Because in an average situation, odds are that a common crook is not going to be rendering your drones and tacnets useless. So the corps play the odds and scale the security in accordance with the expected threat scenario. The average security guys are scaled against the typical threat scenario. At the end of the day, to the corps it's about money. Higher rating equipment cost more money, and unless the stuff being protected is worth the extra cash to protect it, then they will not spend that extra cash. The average candy store is not secured like Fort Knox because it's not worth it. The candy store is protected against common burglers and stupid amateurs looking for an easy score. Shadowrunners are not your standard run-of-the-mill threat. They are professionals hired to successfully break into places that are out of reach of less skilled people, who belong to the average threat category that the security systems generally speaking are set up to defend against.
Also, it is worth keeping in mind that there is rather a serious difference between risking loosing the functionality of a periferal piece of equipment and a critical piece of equipment. If you are at sea, loosing GPS information and radar might create challenges, and potentially result in dangerous situations, but loosing the engines or hull integrety can be pretty catastrophic. Same thing with Drones and Tacnets. Unless you don't have any other equipment, you should still be able to function, even with the loss of both. But if you are going into harms way, and you can't rely on your gun firing when you pull the trigger, you are facing a rather more serious problem than your Tacnet shutting down, because if your job is to potentially shoot at people, you can't do your job if you don't have a working gun. But you can still shoot at someone if your tacnet is shut down.

And that is what especially insidious with a tacnet.

Rather than crashing one the smart decker would twist the tacnet feeds so those people linked in would be getting bad info rather than no info.

But the game mechanics really favour crashing over corruption, which is why people in turn just shut off the wifi rather than trust their decker to keep things going.

No, I want to play a character that can't be handwaved away and has something to do on runs other then runs that are built specifically for that archetype, IE datasteals. A hacker as necessary to a team as a mage is. You say can mages aren't necessary, which is pseudo true, however if you have to deal with enemy mind control you'll really wish you had counter spelling, or if you have a spirit you'll really wish you had a spell slinger to do unharden damage to it. The Matrix should be the same. Sure would be nice to have a decker when a Feral AI attacks your team's gear, or a decker to make your teams gear harder to be detected, but considering how easy it is to completely ignore the Matrix, it makes deckers not even nice conveniences.



You can't play the common sense card if you're going to say no Shadowrunner would ever run with wireless on, even if there are clear advantages to running with wireless on, because suddenly if a Shadowrunner taking "obvious" Matrix procussions by turning off all wireless, then why wouldn't everyone? So if in SR4, a runner would run with every bit of max out Matrix defense at max, skinlink everything, etc etc, why wouldn't everyone? And that's why SR4's Matrix isn't very good, and why SR5 was able to address these issues. Because why would you need a max rating commlink if illegal deckers are rare and have to spend an arm and a leg for a deck and can't hack infinitely without getting hit with the banned hammer from GOD? I still think SR5 could have taken it further, but baby steps, since clearly people aren't ready for it.



So, why would the corp not expect their Tacnets to not be hacked in SR4 but would expect all guns everywhere for ever to be hacked and made useless in SR5? Why would a Street Sam, expect his gun to be hacked in every facility if odds are, every facility can't possibly afford an on site spider, but instead would have a remote spider log into the host to protect the data there from the decker.

What do you mean "next"? That's how the Leadership skill works now.

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The biggest problem with SR5 wireless bonuses is that they are presented in the worst possible way - an unfun choice between gimped functionality, or leaving yourself perilously exposed to a potentially permanently damaging attack from an undetectable vector. Even in GITS, they tended to go into "autistic mode" when they encountered enemy hackers. And it's bad for the decker, too. He, like the mage with counterspelling, is stuck babysitting the rest of the team from attacks. And his own attacks are bogged down by cumbersome, ambiguous rules. I think playing up the capabilities of tacnets and drone warfare would have been a much better route to go, if they wanted hackers to have more to do in combat.

Unless you are running in a matrix free zone, the Decker should still have enough to do on the run, without trying to mess with the oppositions guns and cyberware. The matrix is so pervasive in the setting, that there ought to be networks all over the place. There ought to be cameras, doors, and drones to potentially contend with, as well as alarms and security spiders. On top of which you can then add whatever is required for the datasteal, data corruption or whatever matrix related job the run involves. I would argue that if played "believably" the Decker is a more important part of a team than a Mage, specifically because the Matrix is everywhere. High powered mages are not all that common, and you can still shoot a Mage or Spirit, or defend against a Spirit using the Attack of Will option, as well as weapons with high enough power.


Because there is a difference between gearing up to prevent some 2-bit hustler from nicking the contents of the cash registre, and preventing a special forces team from doing the same. Corps can protect against anything they want, if they want to. But at the end of the day, it's a numbers game to them. How much is it worth to protect this place? Every low wage security guard could theoretically be kitted out as Street Sams with deltaware comming out their ass, but having a low wage security guard equipped with 3 million newyen worth of 'ware and equipment is just not cost effective, if we are talking about protecting the sales records of a department store. Nor is it worth spending 5-10 times the construction cost in order to run hardlines in the armoured walls for all matrix related devices, if you are building a regular office building. But it might be worth it if you are designing a high security R&D center that cost millions to operate every month, and the content of which is worth billions.


We don't disagree that SR4's Matrix rules and setting didn't have problems. I find it is problematic with the setting that all forms of encryption is so quick and easy to break, because it means that the only way to keep your matrix equipment "safe" is to not have it turned on at all. Everything else is really just a speed bump that will slow down the inevitable. From a mechanical POV, that means that as a player you have a significant incentive to run only the highest rating matrix stuff you can get your hands on.



Corps would certainly expect their tacnets to get hacked under certain circumstances. Because in SR breaking an encryption only takes seconds, regardless of how hard it is. But depending on how well the tacnet is protected, the probability would vary. A Rating 1 amateur hacker probably wouldn't crack the Rating 6 firewall (though mechanically it depends on whether you use degrading dice pools on extended tests or not).
But which scenario are we talking about here? Because there is a very large difference between the consequencs of being hacked resulting in a survivable inconvenience, and being hacked resulting in loosing control of your arms, legs, eyes, and nervous system, as well as your weapons, and having wireless turned on being the equivalent of broadcasting your position to everyone around you with a loudspeaker, and leaving behind business cards with your name and address. The more dangerous you make the wireless connection, the greater the incentive to not having wireless connection enabled on your person. The easier it is to hack someone's equipment and take control of it/shut it down/destroy it, the greater the incentive to not use it at all. If you want a scenario where not being properly protected by a hacker = death, if you have any wireless connection on your necessary equipment, then you have a VERY high motivation for not using wireless enabled equipment.
In the scenario you describe, where the runners are breaking into a low security office with a very low probability of encountering security hacking, then yes, they might well use wireless enabled equipment. But that again depends on whether having it turned on broadcasts their presence and leaves behind digital footprints that can be used to ID and track them.

On GitS, and making it into Shadoowrun, alright. Shadowrun was based on applying real world stuff and projecting it into the future and asking what would it look like. Remember the crash of 1985 in real life? Remember all the 8 bit games and whispers about soon we would have VR. I can go on about this but. shadowrun took it and added magic dragons to make it its own. Anyways it boils down to a game setting, with stuff and decent enough logic givin for the parameters.

In GitS it was based on something more straight line like a cover to cover story. The author of said story doesn't have to over think or justify anything because no matter how many times you watch it or read it nothing is ever going to change. It's not playable because the intent wasn't there for it to be played, in a sense.
Case and point if its a rule it works both ways. You allow brain hacks (insert math formula/ dice mechanic) both sides can use it and certainly would use it. (Players/Npcs) Ok your decker or street Sam what ever gets his brain hacked turns on the party. Does the party kill you? Subdue you? There's a firefight going on so having you backdoor them isn't good either. What does the group do? What if your player gets his brain hacked and you get alittle note from the GM saying your a spy kinda like the tabletop game Resistanace? Now you and your crew are really screwed. Its legal its in the rules, its logical, only argument is "it wasn't supposed to happen to me". Now you know how the street sam feels getting his gun bricked or laughable his survival knife.

In GitS they had the laughing man, right remember that guy? It turned out to be a kid. What would of happened if it was a terrorist group bent on controlling masses of people and overthrowing society? Example the smart guy from the watchman decides brain hack the planet and hes not a good guy. (not the motion picture btw) The show would of ended or through dues ex machine they stop him like every single James Bond movie. So that's my point in a setting game where you play in, if you add it people will do it, use it, manipulate it. When it happens to the players, its "My GM is a dick" spam across the net. Like -insert mmo's pvp forum here- "NERF class/ ability/weapon"

Closing thought. Sure we have control thoughts spells and such but there is a flip side drain( if it doesn't fit for your GM can adjust drain) there is no real tic for tac on a decker/hacker bricking. In the old matrix there was IC that would destroy your deck or possibly kill you, so it made sense of risk vrs reward.

Ah, well, action economy and "on par" are totally different beasts. So no, extended tests. But to be honest: the topic was that the matrix should be as powerful as weapons, cybernetics and magic - which the matrix is, just with more dice rolls (something which, as already stated several times) is one of the few good things in SR5. Don´t forget, you need sometimes several dice rolls in SR5 as well, so in some ways this would be some kind of "extended test".



Well, a mage is master of personal power, from flying to fireballs. However a hacker, by its very nature, is the master of the infracstructure and the surrounding system. It is the basic starting point that a gamemaster must improvise here to allow a hacker to thrieve. Hacking into a building through multiple layers, using drone trucks on the other side of the world or scamming people in realtime through their data access is something different then simply throwing a fireball. In that case you must compare a hacker to a mind control mage, where a gamemaster must improvise as well, when it comes to the reaction on spell victims of influence, control thought etc.



As it was already said: remove extended tests from SR4, and you have a valid starting point for true improvements, even for combat hacks.



Well, I do know that you do not like the word, but have you ever looked into reality? I mean most people possess a PC in the range of 500 to 2000$/€. Most office PCs as well. Same goes for the majority of military and police computers. Only a small part of today computer base (servers, proxys, firewall entries etc) could be considered Rating 4+ computers.

So, if you the CFO of a corporation and a thousand different departments are fighting for your budget approval, yes, it makes one hell of a difference if you have to pay 1000¥ or 10 000¥ for the new computersystems for 100 000 corporate office slaves. You may have less problems when you have to equip an elite hacker black ops squad or the special forces of your company or the private PAN of your CEO, but in gods name, no unimportant corp slave will get an expensive rating 6 link.

There is no such thing like an unlimited budget. Never forget that.



I linked an entire thread just a few postings above that. Pleaes do me a favor and read that before you ask the very same question I already answered.



Sure.
1) Step one: open the MENU (aka persona) - usually instant. Its an abstract representation of your programs and possible actions. Think smart touchscreen.
2) Click on "locate remote".
3) All non hidden remote devices in a radius of 400m are shown (one action). As in SR most nodes are not hidden, but encypted. They usually show up only on specialised software (legally the controlling and authorized software for that specific equipment, but of course the software of a netrunner is a little bit more generous ).
4) Hack the requested remote device (one action) automatically with the corresponding program, for example "Dee2" for heavy industrial equipiment like trucks, construction yard. One roll (1d10 + modifier vs one value)
5) Have fun with your imagination: trucks ramming, transformers overloading, yunk drones snapping, commercial spot drones going kamikaze... whatever.

Thats it. 2 combat action used, 1 dice roll done (Cyberpunk 2020 uses 1d10 + skill + modifier, add up, against a difficulty from 1 to 30, as a base system).

let me quote direcly:



The datafortress hacking is more or less directly akin to a scout/minidrone/astral mage scouting a building, with more or less the same rolls necessary as a real thief would need to to. Simply imagine what your infiltration specialist would have to roll (hardware, con, infiltration etc), a CP2020 netrunner would have to roll too (with programs of course. The data fortress has grid layout, in some ways you could compare it to the Shadowrun Returns matrix, if you have played the game.

SYL

Everyone as in "the population of the Sixth World"? No. Or do your personal computer has the same security level as the CIA mainframe? Does your home has the same security level as a bank vault?

Everyone as in "on the same professional level as runners" like SWAT Teams, special formces, corporate black ops and other runner teams? Yes, of course.

But here is the tricky part: with tacnets and scout / combat drones activated, an wifi active team gets a massive dice bonus (+1 to +4 in SR4) together with the abilities of the drones (indirect fire, snipers from the air, gas attacks etc). A wifi silent team will have less possibilities, will be harder to detect (because one detection area will be black) and will have less dice in combat situation (if detected which is at the same time easier, because of the perception bonus).

So, you have the possibility to stay silent and hope that you are lucky.

Or you have the possibility to go to an all out warfare on the matrix, magic and physical plane.

Or you can attempt a very silent probing/hacking of the enemy net before or during the combat and manipulate the data, turning the bonus into a malus, faking sensory data, giving wrong orders or taking over the drones. And of course the enemy hacker can try the same or defend their tacnet.

All possibilities have advantages and risks. Your choice.

And yes, its a far better choice then online silencers, online knifes, online air tanks, online stealth suites and online batons.

The authors of Eclipse Phase put that way of thinking far better to words than I could ever





But as many people pointed out in the discussion here: the concept does sound nice on the paper, however it does not translate very well into actual gameplay.

SYL

The bard in DnD and PF could do a little bit more. But yes, Leadership is now very useful for giving out some minor dice pool bonuses (both in SR4 (in a splat book) and SR5.



But but but ... autistic mode is evil. Funny enough that the SR5 author of the wifi online bonuses brought up the GITS hacking world without any knowledge about the GITS world. Someone with a dragon avatar and "necro" in the same if I remember correctly. was the same game who forgot how the rules worked in SR5 in the first place and was confused about "wifi online" and " integrated in your PAN".

SYL

I have to say I am really enjoying this thread and all the ideas & arguments coming across is making me rethink some of my own conceptions/ideas.

`
Word!
The stuff about TacNets is interesting.

Ima houserule something based on that.

Gotta check out the EP and CP2020-rules first though.

I just love how we get into security measures may it be personal, equipment and or cost and everyone just goes bonkers with out ever looking into the stuff.
Know what the 2nd highest paid thing in the corporate world is under advertising? You guess it security, and after what just happened to sony hell we might just see it eclipse advertising.
*Monitors in the real world run 4 hour shifts. You know the guys watching camera and sensors. Because in that environment a 6 hour day is considered long.
*Has far as cost for security personal and all that of course it varies but its cheaper for a company to outsource to a security firm in the real world then to go it in house. Contracts vary but some, you pay for installation fees camera's key cards bla being installed and sign a contract for X long but the firm covers equipment upgrades bla so in the end your just renting it anyways and cutting a check to said firm. Since its contracted its set to the contract and clauses. You don't have to worry about paying worker related insurances.

Lets just talk about cost for all these doodads of equipment. I am just going to abstract this concept about cost(to make) to worth (what the retailer paid since that's what the company sold it for) to what your paying for it. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/pol...e/nike101-8.htm I personally think its a lot less to make but I am not going to dig for it. I am using this as add hock representation if said company did it in house vrs retailer if is subsidized from parent company how ever many removed. So you see, book price lets say in shadowrun for said computer or security doodads insert is going to be a lot lower then price listed especially if they bought in bulk like a retailer AKA parent company to its lesser. My point to all this security is a lot cheaper then you estimating it to be.
Now since people are griping about Wi-Fi scrip kiddies and all that breaking into and how hacker/deckers what ever are supposed to be some uber group compared to mages in rarity. Lets just take a look at the real world for a place where criminals and industrial espionage collide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzgmnWt48JY
Go ahead and use that links information for your game:) I wanted to talk about Keiretsu AKA the money wheel and a few other dirty tricks to get around advertising so capital gains can be spent on CEOS, R&D and security but basically corps to small companies might be cutting corners but they wouldn't be skimping in security department at all. Pensions, wages, and down sizing sure but never security. Counting 2 crashes, and how volatile corporate espionage is in the 6th world.

You mean Sony PSN two years ago with the loss of 75mio consumer data combined with unprotected credit cardinformations or todays Sony SPE with the loss of 100 terabyte of internal and private data combined with unprotected passwords saved in open Excel files? As you can see, Sony, despite beingt hacked in the past, did not learned anything.

It is far easier for an individual to spice up security through all areas than for a multi-million-employee-megacorp. Trust human incompetence and lazyness. It is one of the most imporant reasons why there will never be adequate security.

SYL

I disagree here is why "75mio consumer data" isn't it, it's consumers. This 2nd round of being hacked has now cost it who knows what. In total on and off the books, including future costs, its going to be a big number what ever it is. At this point in time corporations are trying to get governments to pick up the tab as far as internet security via bills policy, so we will see but again it was a Sony branch it wasn't lets say a R&D building and we got VITAS running around.
Here I thought you would of checked out the bottom link apple:)

I did.

SYL

I agree that is how it should be. But seeing how easy it is for people to handwave away the Matrix, clearly that is not true.



This is dumb. Because you will leave behind physical footprints. You'll be shot, leave blood at the scene, you'll cast magic and leave your astral sig in astral space, and you'll walk in with your PAN which will record your Matrix Access ID. Should you attempt to minimize it, sure. But its illogical that you should have to worry more about the Matrix when you can cheese the Matrix so hard and completely ignore it. And people, for whatever reason are very happy to ignore it. If we want to play the "realism" game then not broadcasting on the Matrix should be an instant red flag. But its not, because suddenly running with wireless off is actually more safe then being flagged as a person of interest who has no Matrix presence. You can't have this both ways. The Matrix is suppose to be so invasive that you have no choice, you have to be online. And yet the SR4 rules don't support it, and SR5 at least encourages it with online bonuses.

@apple

I agree that SR5's Matrix, while faster than 4th, is still a bit too slow for my taste. But it was a "necessary" stepping stone seeing how many people complained about how insecure it was when SR5 first came out. Hacking should be fast and deadly. I like the idea of bouncing back brute force attacks and marks, and I think that does add a lot of risk/reward in SR5's Matrix, but I just wish I didn't need 3 marks on things to do a complex command action for example. It makes hijacking turrets or crashing cars take too long. Spoofing could work and be much faster, requiring just 1 mark on the owner and 1 spoof action. But you have to assume that a drone's dog brain is smart enough to not crash a car or shoot corpsec.

While Eclipse Phase's Tacnets make sense, but why would anyone use them in Shadowrun when clearly they're easier to hack. If SR5's Matrix is such a mess because smartguns are so easy to hack so that +2 dice aren't worth it. Why would +4 dice be worth it? Or do we need to inflate the cost and benefit to make it worth wild?

The current Tacnets in SR5 basically make Matrix security better on top of also giving some pretty nuts bonuses. So they've clearly gone a very different route in SR5. So HTR teams would probably always use a Tacnet in SR5 since it gives them bonuses and makes them more secure on the Matrix. If we had Eclipse Phase's Tacnets, we'd actually give ourselves bonuses but make the network less secure. So the philosophical difference seems to be EP you only get bonuses with Tacnets but open yourself up to hacks. SR5 is, you open yourself up to hacks, but you get Tacnets to make your network more secure. I still think SR5's implementation is better since it makes hacking more viable at street level and not just something for prime runners.

So it sounds like most hacks in SP2020 take about 2 actions, so probably 2IP in SR terms. What's the downside? I assume there needs to be some prep work with loading programs or something, right?

I already answered that. I even linked an entire thread just about that.



Compared to the costs I am note quite sure if tacnets in SR5 are widespread in any meaningful way.



None IIRC. (it has been a decade ago literally).

At least when it comes to meat space manipulation (locate remote => control remote). Hacking into computers / virtual space runs where of course depending on the data fortress design of the Gamemaster and comparable to any building plan the GM throws at the table. IIRC smaller netruns were done in a matter of minutes (similar perhaps to astral scouting runs). Of course, if the runner wanted to go through the entire megacorp central node both the GM and the rest of the group cried in pain. But that is nothign new in SR either.

Well, you needed the programs and a cyberdeck (size of a book or cigarette pack). Program space was limited, so you had to choose your programs when going out (a little bit similar to SR23 RAM/program space). But then again you had space for around 10-20 programs and you could swap them with one action from a chip backup in one action. And of course you could increase your memory.

Pricing was ok, hardware into the lower 4 digit range, software in the 3 digit range, which would translate roughly into the same ¥ area (prices in general were much cheaper in CP2020 than in SR1235). The hardware had only a small influence on the total netrunner power, it was more attribute, skill and program strength and movement in data fortresses (comparable to SR4, very unlike compared to SR1235.

The basic rules had software programming rules (which were much more usable than the SR rules for programming), rules for netrunner teams (and very good reasons why they should team up), AI and virtual space programming for player characters (so you could sculpt your own team fortress if you want), programs had names and style, not only "attack 6" or "agent 4" but Succubus., Bloodhound, Jackhammer or Soundmachine (akin to Ingram Smartgun or Ares Alpha) and rules for building data fortresses with AI or normal CPUs, scalable from Stuffer Shack selling AIs to megacorp central node deathtraps.

Of course the rules were published 1990, so for example there were rules about long distance calls costing money *cough* which seems a little bit too outdated today. But the core system was way better than the matrix system in SR1235 and 4.

*sigh*

Good old times.

SYL

I think the trouble started when hacker, riggers, and technomancers became the same. I like what apple copied about the eclipse phase with all these tactical applications but to me, most of it was a riggers job. I am not saying that hackers should be useless or anything to me if I had to class them id say something like a DnD rogue in a way, you break in, you steal, instead of gold its data. You sleezing past guards and traps. Yet again its not DnD there is nothing stopping you from "cross classing" or archetype mixing. You can be a combat decker or a decker/face or have three other things that you do well.

To put a it all in perspective, its like the game has become a MMO with dice, and they implemented a new combat system. Its no secret that a few big name brands in this industry are trying to make it so to grab the demographic. To me its just counter productive. Why are you sitting here playing a tabletop game when you can be sitting in your own room chatting with your online friends and doing little to no math and its instantaneous? You could be doing practically the same exact thing but with no pants on. That's the problem when you make a game and implement "everyone has to use combat fight kill grab lootz." What happened to use your brain not just for visualization but some cognitive thinking and planning? What happened to use you mouth and actually negotiate then roll dice? Not roll dice and one sentence falls out you mouth and it was handed to you. I know some of you GMs out there, I am not hating or am I calling you out but you get things like "oh no I wont let my players/npcs die less its dramatic death", "I fudge dice", "I have all these preconceived story arcs" and this and that. It just boils down to the same recycled story formulas straight out of a creative writing class.

I don't blame the GM's for this because its what's spoon fed, and they may not be aware of some older stuff in roleplaying games that will help them create living worlds that they are trying to describe/GM. That my friends, no videogame can do because it can't create it just does what its scripted to do, metaphorically and literal. So why emulate that in your roleplaying games?

Ah, no. Definately no. Issues with the non-playability for a large part of the community alreaedy started in SR2, even with the release of Virtual Realities. The issues with hackers/deckers both in combat and out of combat fro all editions including SR5 was always the same: way to high prices (solved in SR4), complicated rule mechanism (partially solved in SR4, tedious long rolls (extended tests in SR4, multiple tests in all other editions) unclear rules/world interaction and a strange mixture of real world thoughts applied to a fictional net system founded in novels 20 years ago.

Btw: please stop always telling, that riggers and hackers were the same. There are some areas both archetypes use (hardware, some skills like electronic warfare, but in the end they both use vastly different skills for their main job. Hacking a mainframe is something different then piloting antro drones with heavy machine guns.

SYL

um I didn't say always were I said "when" talking bout 4th btw. I disagree that 4th fixed the price like I just got done explaining deckers are thiefs they steal and sell information that may not include a whole crew to get to some places. They could make money just by going into the net and stealing, which was balanced in IC trashing your deck and prices. I agree with you there was problems when splat books come out there always are cause it makes something new. New rules ect ect. They had names for programs at one point it wasn't always program 3. Look you obvious like cyberpunks system hey that's fine, I personaly liked parts from 1st and 2nd splat combo for the matrix.