Am I wrong or does this basically turn a hacker into an undetectable ghost?

Nah. It's pretty much required to be able to perform as a hacker. Anything much lower than that, and you will set off alarms every other time you hack an average commlink.

Even a Stealth 6 is absolutely no guarantee on better guarded systems.

Bye
Thanee

At the height of my Cyberlogicians career, he was running Custom Stealth 10 with Options. Even that was not a guarantee against high level systems. The Technomancer, on the other hand was nigh invisible with the threaded Stealth of 16.

Getting the Mute option on your Rating 6 Stealth prog is what actually does the stuff. That way, even if IC spots you, you still have an entire combat turn to muck around before the alarms get raised. If you've already got a security or admin account on the node you're hacking, that's more than enough time to steal whatever data you're after, modify the access log and leave. Hell, you could probably just tell the IC that nothing is wrong and force its script to go on another cycle before it gets a chance to notice you again.

I don't think Mute works like that... you do not usually use Stealth actively, and thus Stealth does not trigger any alarms.

Bye
Thanee

The wording is kind of vague. I've been in games where it was ruled that because Matrix Perception is an action and is partially opposed by the hacker's Stealth program, it counts as Stealth being used in the action even if the hacker in question isn't the one performing that action. I've also seen it ruled the other way, which makes Mute incredibly narrow even by the standards of most program options.

When you enter a system isn't the TN to notice you your stealth rating? So you need a perception Dice Pool of around 18 to see someone with rating 6.

I believe it is an opposed check vs Hacking + Stealth.

Bye
Thanee

For the Hack on the Fly action, every time you take one of those actions the system gets a free Analyze + Firewall (Stealth) extended test to detect you. So no, not a matrix perception of 18. 12 will do fine. Hell, even 6 may get you if you roll well.
For a probe test (Long hack) they get one free Analyze + Firewall (Stealth) test to detect you when you first log on and it isn't extended. So in that case, yeah you need a really high pool (18 like you said) to reasonably detect the intrusion. That sort of hack takes hours and hours though or days and days if you do it in AR.
Mute is a must have for Hack on the Fly and irrelevant for Probe Hacks.

Why irrelevant? It's quite possible to trigger an alarm. It's just unlikely, but with 9-12 dice in a well-defended system, 6 hits are not common but also far from impossible.

Mute should be on the Exploit program, though (in my opinion, anyways).

Bye
Thanee

Yeah it should be. Using that is the action that triggers the alert and thus gives you that round to do whatever you sneaked into the system to do. I say it is irrelevant in that, if you are doing only long hacks, you aren't likely to need it. Who does that though? You will have it on your software anyway for Hack on the Fly but for most long hack cases, it isn't likely to be needed.

If you are going for a security/admin account, IIRC the chance isn't completely unrealistic. I need to dig up the graphs I made for Hack on the Fly, unfortunately the image host seems to have deleted them...

Yeah, even a really good hacker typically needs two or even three attempts to get in on the fly with security/admin access.

It's possible to get it done in one with a huge dice pool and Edge, though.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah that's why I said you need Mute for Hack on the Fly. It is almost a certainty that you will get detected, by even the weakest of systems. After all it is an extended test with a threshold of your Stealth. They will rack up the hits needed eventually.
The Probing hack or Long Hack is just a single test they get to detect you and that isn't very likely unless they have a very large pool for detection. Since we are talking about 4A here, unless you are going against a military system, the host pools will top out at 12 dice (6 Firewall + 6 Analyze). Not too likely to score 50% hits on a 12 pool. Not impossible but also not likely.
The threshold for the hacker goes up if they try for higher account access (+3 for security, +6 for admin) but that has no bearing on the detection pool the host system gets.

Thanks, I had missed that the test is extended. I've been trying to make 6 hits on each roll!

...and here they are, the chances for hacking various nodes running Analyze at an equal Rating:
Node Rating 1 Normal

Node Rating 1 Security

Node Rating 1 Admin

Node Rating 2 Normal

Node Rating 2 Security

Node Rating 2 Admin

Node Rating 3 Normal

Node Rating 3 Security

Node Rating 3 Admin

Node Rating 4 Normal

Node Rating 4 Security

Node Rating 4 Admin

Node Rating 5 Normal

Node Rating 5 Security

Node Rating 5 Admin

Node Rating 6 Normal

Node Rating 6 Security

Node Rating 6 Admin

Node Rating 10 Normal

Node Rating 10 Security

Node Rating 10 Admin

Yeah that would make it difficult.

Whoever hacks a Rating 6 system on the fly either has a lot of dice and a lot of Edge, or loves Cybercombat!

Bye
Thanee

Or does not have another option that is viable at the time.

Hacking 6
- Exploit +2
Exploit Program 6
Comm Link optimized for Exploit +1
Encephalon 2 +2
Full VR +2
Pushed +1
Hack on the Fly quality +2

22 dice, neo cortical nanotech doesn't (shouldn't) count based off conditions