Long post that pretty much nobody else needs to read. This is Preston doing a practice run, hacking into a Stuffer Shack and accessing a security camera to start editing its feed.

Mercy: you might want to jump to the bottom ('Lessons learned' and 'outcome'). I didn't bother with programs for this run, nor most of his qualities, but they wouldn't have changed things by much. I'll put up a shorter IC post to cover this experience.

Deck ASDF = 3546
Stuffer Shack: Host rating 2, ASDF = 3245, assume no noise

hack on the fly to get in: hacking 4 + logic 5 = 9d versus host 2 + Firewall 5 = 7
P: HotF vs SS host: 9d6t5 1
SS: SS host def: 7d6t5 1

no mark, OW score 1, but I think host not alerted. Try again.

hack on the fly to get in: hacking 4 + logic 5 = 9d versus host 2 + Firewall 5 = 7
Preston HotF on SS: 9d6t5 2
SS host def: 7d6t5 2

Another tie! OW up to 3.

hack on the fly to get in: hacking 4 + logic 5 = 9d versus host 2 + Firewall 5 = 7
Preston HotF on SS: 9d6t5 5
SS def: 7d6t5 1

Finally he gets a mark, OW up to 4

Initiative matters now.
Preston is intuition 6 + data processing 4 +3d6 (cold sim) = 26
SS Host is host rating x 2 + 4d6 = 21

26: Preston moves to running silent (-2 on all rolls), takes a simple action. Then for kicks changes his icon to that of an anthropomorphic cartoon mooose.

21: Host hasn't noticed anything yet.

16: Preston enters the host (complex action)

11: Host Patrol IC checks for intruders.
SS patrol spot hidden: 4d6t5 3 It knows something hidden is around

6: Preston uses matrix perception to find the security camera showing the counter clerk. Computers 5 + intuition 6 = 11d, P mat perc -- sec cam: 11d6t5 4. Threshold won't be higher than that -- he finds the camera he's looking for. (data processing action, so no increased overwatch)
(I realized after that he should have been -2dice for running silent, but not going back to re-roll now)

1: Patrol IC tries to spot the hidden icon (only one around). 2xrating = 4d, SS patIC -spot hidden: 4d6t5 0, no luck
However it then launches Tar Baby on the theory that there is a hidden icon in here somewhere.

New turn, init again.
P: P init T2: 10+3d6 19
SS: SS init T2: 4+4d6 20

20: SS patrol IC tries again:
Patrol IC spot: SS patIC spot: 4d6t5 1
Preston's defense: logic+sleeze = 10d P resist spot: 10d6t5 1
Incredible, but only a tie, he's not spotted yet.

19: He checks out the camera for suprises (matrix perception)
P matrix perc vs camera: 11d6t5 2
enough to learn 2 things: data file is protected, and there is no data bomb.
(I realized after that he should have been -2dice for running silent, but not going back to re-roll now)

10: SS patrol IC tries again:
Patrol IC spot 4d: SS patIC spot hidden: 4d6t5 0
Preston's defense 10d: P def vs spot: 9d6t5 2

9: Preston needs to mark the camera, using hack on the fly 9d -2 (silent running) +2 (devices) = 9d
P, HotF: P: mark camera: 9d6t5 1
Camera def: camera def: 4d6t5 0
He succeeds, if only because the camera is really, really, bad.

Initiative again! I finally remember Preston's overclocker, and retcon that he adds 1 to his data processing rating, taking it into account from now
P: 11+3d6 P init: 10+3d6 20+1=21
SS: 4+4d6 SS init: 4+4d6 21


21: Preston tries to crack protection on the camera file
Crack file hacking 4 + logic 5 - 2 (running silent) =7d P crack camera file: 7d6t5 1
file defense:camera prot def: 4d6t5 2
He fails, and since it is an attack action he takes one point of matrix damage to his deck, and one point of stun. But the host does not know where he is (still has to spot him). OW up 6

21: Spot again
Patrol IC spot 4d: SS patIC spot: 4d6t5 1
Preston's defense 10d: P def vs spot: 10d6t5 4
still no spotting -- Preston just has much better equipment.

11: 21: Preston tries to crack protection on the camera file
Crack file hacking 7d : P crack prot: 7d6t5 4
file defense 4d: camera def: 4d6t5 1
cracked, OW up 7
11: Spot again (skipping due to roll fatigue, probably fails)

1: edit file: Preston computer 5 + logic 5 -2 silent running =8d vs 4d defence. Should work most of the time, but with OW going up steadily, and the occasional failure. Doing one set of rolls here:
Preston edit: P: edit file: 8d6t5 5
file defense: file def: 4d6t5 1
and he makes the clerk vanish from the camera feed for a few seconds by some sort of magic. No change to OW because it is a data processing action.

Lesson learned:
- With his current skills, even on a VERY low rating host, if he gets poor rolls he'll have failures.
- He can't really afford to be running silently and taking the extra -2d on all actions, especially as he won't use hot sim (that low point neg quality is suddenly looking like much more of a big deal!)
- His dice pools are low enough that swapping firewall and sleeze back and forth probably isn't worth worrying about.
- Most programs either add utility or add to ASDF ratings. His limits are high enough compared to his dice pools that helping attack/sleaze is not a big deal. Firewall always helps for defences, and dataprocessing at least adds to init.

Outcome: He'll be buying up his hacking skill by +1 shortly (10 karma), and dumping the rest of his karma into whatever might help (possibly buying up edge to 4, if I have enough karma in time). It is still going to be very iffy.

A "few" comments:



Sadly that's not the case: as per CRB, p236: If you fail a Sleaze action, however, your target immediately gets one free mark on you (or its owner does if your target is a device). This means it spots you right away, along with the whole owner-alerting and IC-launching thing.

So you have a mark on you from the Host, it's alerted (and sometime in the month a Spider will come see what happened. Maybe...)



That would be a second mark on your ass. Doesn't matter since the Host can't do anything to you as long as you're outside, but...



Your init matters only for the number of IPs you get.
And I assume you mean the Patrol IC init, and not the Host (since by itself, it doesn't have initiative).



The third one anyway ^^



You're running silent, so it needs to beat your Logic + Sleaze (plus modifiers of course).
But if it succeeds, it does more than knows there's a hidden icon in there: it found you, and the Host is alerted, alarms go on, etc.
Next turn, the Host launches a Probe IC.



See previous point for the Patrol. Next one must be a Probe (to Mark you, otherwise it can't do anything to you) and not a Tar Baby.
A Host DR 2 can only run two ICs at the same time, so it then would have to recall the Probe to launch another one to do something. Not sure which one exactly, probably a Track since it couldn't hope to do much anyway.



Even with good skills it happens... I experienced that on a DR3 Host, and I have decent pools.



Since the bonus and penalty cancel each other, yeah, it's nice to be in VR (at least as far as this goes).



Then keep your FW high ^^



Consider programs like fork, smoke & mirrors, and stuff like that then.

Thanks for the feedback, impair! I was thinking that with sleaze it was if they had net successes on you, but turns out that is just for taking damage from attack based programs -- thanks for the correction. So he should have rebooted between attempts, or if he carried on not worried about running silent, as with a mark in him I think it would see him automatically?

When I'd built him I'd OT read the matrix section carefully, and thought that programs added dice, not just increased asdf rating.

smoke and Mirrors seems like it mostly protects you from one thing? (don't |Ave the book in front of me to remember what exactly.). And kind of forces you to go heavy on noise reduction? I must be missing something about how good it is?

On fork, the CRB says something about modifiers from both targets, but I don't really see modifiers in matrix skirmishes other than noise. Am I missing something there?

And since you seem to be good at this stuff, one more question, do multiple attacker penalties apply in the matrix? (I.e. does a weak agent have value just for that factor?)

No problem.



Yup. Though the Host would launch a Probe in either case as the first response, since it's not something the Host gets to change by itself.



Depends on the program, some give you dice: armour, defuse, sneak, etc. Admittedly not the most useful of them, sure.



Smoke & Mirrors makes you more difficult to find when you're running silent: since it increases the Sleaze attribute from 1 to 5, you add 1 to 5 dice to resist being spotted. So... Yeah, pretty powerful.
As for noise reduction, you have one from your datajack, if you load the scrubber program, you have 2 more, for next to nothing. If you add the vectored signal filter module to your deck (for the huge amount of 800 nuyens, DT p65), you get two more so...you entirely negate the penalties (note that you could have a malus from local circumstances like spam or distance in any case but a Host).



Fork is useful in combat, otherwise not much. As for modifiers, I suppose it could be from specializations, different noise values (you're not limited to Hosts after all), different programs, etc.
For what you're doing at the moment, I'd suggest an Agent, Scrub, Smoke-and-Mirrors and Stealth.



Combat rules are not really my forte, so I'm not sure what you mean here: I think in meatspace you get a -1d penalty to defend against each attack after the first, so you're asking if it's the same in the Matrix? No idea really. As far as I know, there's nothing specific about that in the Matrix section, so it could go either way.
However, it's a terrible idea for one reason: any damage the Agent takes, your deck takes. The Spider would just have to nuke your Agent, and you'd get a bricked deck pretty quickly. So Agents in combat are not really a good idea.

Ugh, I'd written my last reply on my phone, which I really shouldn't do since I make so many typos and errors. That last bit should have been multiple attack not multiple attackers, sorry.

I hypothetical Fork question: In the specific case of trying to get marks on two cameras with Hack on the Fly, Fork could be used for that? (which could make for edge efficiency -- edge one attack role to (hopefully) be able to mark both cameras).

I was trying to follow the way such a hack was laid out in the “Let’s Go to the Library” hacking example on ShadowGrid. It looks like the interpretation there and your interpretation differ; there once patrol IC succeeded on matrix perception vs a hidden persona, the persona became visible and was able to be attacked (no need to launch Probe IC first). Thoughts on this? (It is kind of key, between the time to launch the extra program, and max program count).

Also, FWIW I bargained Mercy down to a Novatech Navigator as a deck, as Preston will be able to pay for that in only about a hundred more posts, not counting buying anything else or paying lifestyle and making debt payments . Probably should have aimed lower yet from that point of view (he’d probably benefit more from a couple of points of logic from bioware than from a better deck), but at the same time Tanya wasn’t going to produce a rinky-dink deck, so the Navigator seemed to be a fair compromise on ‘a good deck’ and ‘he can realistically finish buying it out within this game.’ Anyway, rating 3, so three programs barring virtual machine or a program carrier. I’m thinking that he’ll put an armor module in the hardware bay (protect the precious!) and hardwire in the mod that cuts down on noise (seems like it could be useful a lot of the time), so probably not a program carrier, but virtual machine would be a possibility if a fourth program really seemed needed.

Re: playing games with swapping deck attributes. He has Perfect Time now, so has two free actions per pass, and can play the game of swapping Firewall and Sleaze or Data Processing to have a better limit on an action, then swap it back at the end of the action to keep firewall high. Had bought that when I was targeting a bargain basement deck with only one or two decent attributes. The extra free action can also simply be used for faster program shuffling too, making it easier to live with the 3-programs-at-a-time limit of the deck.

In his eventual target, he can get physically close to the cameras he is trying to hack. I think you’d indicated that he could mark them and try to edit the files on them without going into the host, but that they’d still be protected by the host’s firewall and rating? (and that the host's IC may be periodically checking for marks, so is likely to get alerted sooner or later). If so, that would be an option where he would not have to run silent (but a spider could still leave the host to come out on the grid to attack him, right?) Or did I misunderstand that?

For Fork, yes: you can use it on any Matrix Action. So combat, tracing, marking, etc.

You can attack an icon as soon as you see it, yes. If I talked about marking first, it's because it's more effective that way (more damage and your target can't hide, plus any other actions you may want to do needs marks). With a Host DR2, attacking is useless though, so they would probably do something else. Armour is a nice program to have, not sure about having it hardwired though. It's useful, but only when you're in combat. It's a valid choice, depends on tastes I suppose. I didn't really pay that much attention to programs since I don't have access to those to be honest. Having as many programs as possible is probably a smart choice though, so the virtual machine is almost a must have.

Note that while the Agent is not a good idea in combat, having one around is still a good idea: if nothing else, it can monitor you to check if you're Marked.

And that's exactly this for the cameras yes. You either have to run silent, take the -2d penalty and risk being spotted, or staying outside but having to beat the host protection at each turn. It really depends on what your priorities are.

Why have to beat the host protection each turn (assuming that they don't have something scrubbing off marks all of the time)? I'd have thought that once you mark the camera you could go ahead and 'edit the file' (aka tamper with the video feed) for the turn just with an edit file roll? (and wouldn't the resistance be the same whether or not you are in the host, since either way the camera is protected by the host?).

(It may be that I'm missing something pretty fundamental about how hosts work, my apologies if this is the case. I found the matrix rules read very smoothly and seem pretty straightforward -- up until I try to do anything with them. At which point it becomes very apparent that the writing didn't work for me as well as it seemed to at first. They are in desperate need of a few long, official, ooc examples of how some common hacks are done, by technomancers, by classic deckers, and by intrusions experts)

=================

And because you are so helpful, and at least a few steps ahead of me on this matrix stuff, copying in a question I asked over on Shadowgrid:

Looking for some help on how you trace matrix connections. I’d think that there must be a way, but so far all I’ve seen is tracing marks back to their owner (trackback in DT), or snooping on the traffic (snoop command).

The specific case I’m looking at is finding hidden cameras in a room, and trying to determine who/what they are sending their data to. I guess that if they were within a host that would be apparent enough with matrix perception, but if they were sending their data to another device, or to a persona (i.e. commlink), I’m not clear on whether matrix perception would be enough, if you’d use some other action, or if you can’t actually do it.

(I’ve only recently started working m way through the matrix rules in more than a vague ‘the NPC hacker pops open the lock for you’ sort of way. I think I’m getting a grip on most things, but I’m entirely at sea on how you deal with this situation. Did a couple of searches on here in the expectation that this has been discussed before, but either not, or I didn't come up with just the right search words)

Having a mark on the camera means you can edit the file (which means you have to mark the file itself of course), but that all: the camera is still slaved to the host, so it still gets its protection. Even if you have three marks on it (and, as a consequence, on the Host itself).
If you're IN the Host though, you're considered as being directly connected to the camera, so it's "naked", and only has a pool of 4 to 6 dice.




As far as I know, it's not possible. Possibly because it would be very powerful otherwise: if you want to find someone, just call him, and you're done.
At in least in the general sense. In the example you give, I suppose it could be considered that there's some kind of configuration file you can find on the camera that defines where the stream goes (assuming it's not slaved to something anyway, then the configuration could be done on the Master), a file you could hack to see its content.
Of course, that's not true if you're a TM: the Data Sprite's power Camouflage, can allow that (you hide a file in another file, since you own (or at least the sprite does) the hidden file, you find it automatically, so you can track the main file).

Thanks again! Very helpful.

Sounds like he really does need to jump into the host.

Just for reference, if he could get direct connection to the camera (not possible in this case, I looked at myomeric rope tricks but I don't think it is feasible here), does that change things?

It changes that you're pretty much free to do whatever you want to that poor camera. Whatever you want to do, you'll succeed and the Host won't be able to do anything against it.
Other than the rope, you may consider drones (in some situations, may not be feasible here), or even a Mage with Improved Invisibility (but it's not easy either, the camera has a decent pool to resist).

Thanks again -- I've mostly gotten around this stuff in my home game by the shaman PC using some combo of invisibility, levitation and concealment to get the NPC intrusion specialist into position for direct connect with whatever then need to deal with (Or just using silence to cover the sound of a monofilament chainsaw cutting through a wall to bypass a lot of security), so my first choice was definitely to get a direct connection, but with multiple cameras with overlapping fields he can't afford to be plugged into just one camera, and I don't see a way to multiplex direct connects.

I'm waiting for Mercy's opinion on two questions for now, it leaves me time for this ^^

I thought I answered the questions about the deck. What did I miss this time?

First question is about the use of puppeteer on the Spider to grant myself the access rights.

It's been a month, so new update! Previous one was on 09/02.

Active people:


Inactive people:


Careful for Preston, you went in the past, from 16:45 to 15:13, I supposed it was 17:13.

Of course it was 17:13, it always said 17:13, you never saw it say 15:13 .... eyes on the shiny pendulum, repeat after me ....

(sorry about that, and thanks for the catch)

+++++++++++++++

Marking cameras: 9d+2d for specialization with devices, versus rating 2 cameras 4d:
mark camera: 11d6t5 1
camera resistance: 4d6t5 0

Has mark, then needs to crack protection
crack protection: 9d6t5 3
protection resist: 4d6t5 1

Edit files (copying)
copy files: 10d6t5 6
files resist: 4d6t5 1


No real rules for picking out erased data, although the fact that there are programs to do a better erasing job than regular erasing suggests that this can be done. So I assumed Software + Logic (=10 dice) versus some threshold (3, perhaps?)

look for old data on the cameras (software): 10d6t5 6

Heck of a roll, and he has the limit up to 7 for this exercise. So I assume he pulls up what old data is there.

Nice easy job, even for his modest talents

Quick training montage post to explain Preston getting his hacking back up to 5, and cybercombat up to 1 (12 karma spent)

If you're not careful, you'll end up catching up to us

Darn it, you weren't supposed to notice me creeping up on you!

(but actually, thank you for the time stamp checks -- that prompted me to try and move forward through time a little more quickly, and hopefully at some point end up in the same time zone. I look forward to getting to interact with some of you IC at some point)

Matrix Search re: gang war: Matrix Search: gang war: 11d6t5 5

His limit is 7 (data processing), so keeps all successes.

It's back

Yah! I was starting to worry ...

Hum, Regarding "Cynthia & Spokane", are we in a "everyone waiting for someone else" state?

Probably. I was wondering if Spokane would post something, but I can push it along if it does not happen in a bit. He is probably waiting to see if anything happens with the two guards. I guess that puts it all on me. Sorry.

It's alright. Stuttrboy hasn't been very active in his games for a while now, probably not a lot of time at the moment (or as Ennui said on Into the Chaos OOC thread, he's at the hospital at the moment).
Hopefully it'll get better soon. In the meantime, we can do a lot of stuff to keep us (or myself anyway...) occupied in the Matrix.

Beta: for us the only calm places were Downtown and Fort Lewis, nothing specific was said about Tacoma nor Auburn. Not that it's really important of course.

Oh and Cynthia gave all the info about the agitation in the streets to Tanya an hour before Preston does (at 02:06 exactly), Preston will have to do better to make an impression ^^

Tanya is evaluating everyone's efficiency based on challenges and equipment. She is trying to put together the best team possible for the next stage. Can everyone spell Columbia?

Imladir - - ah, tbh I stopped reading the other threads back near the beginning, and didn't really make any effort to find out the reality expressed in them. Mercy gave me a timeline of 'this is what you figure out when,' and I've just been improvising from there to make a bit of a story out of it.

If it can help, the stuff you're working on happened here for Cynthia (the white text in the middle of that message).

I'm prefering not to know more than Preston knows for now, but might go read it once I've passed that time point.

Preston was supposed to take an hour to nail down the discrepancies then half an hour to figure out what is really going on (starting from 2pm). It looks like he is getting some help in that latter part now, so he should have a fair picture within a few more posts, and then perhaps I'll take a look at things from a different POV. Or maybe not, I'm kind of willing to be surprised if/when Preston ever gets to meet the others.

ETA: Mercy: what is the noise level like out there? I'll have to wait until I get home tonight to check the noise for the distance. Tanya's place is somewhere along the Pugget Sound coastline, I'm assuming more or less in the middle of downtown? (Just figuring out one end of the line for calculating distance). The target area is, I'm assuming, somewhere in mid-Redmond? My first rough estimate is ~16km, just based on a middle-to-middle estimate.

Sorry that you have not been reading all the threads, Beta. I find them kind of interesting and try to read them all.

Fair enough



That would be -5d for the distance. Don't forget you would probably have a -2d for different grids too (unless you get lucky). Plus one or two noise from the local conditions.

Yes, it is going to be tough from where you are. Do not be afraid to say that you cannot do this. After all, you and Tanya are testing your limits.

I started off following all of the threads, but then I got busy and didn't have time, and never tried to get caught back up. I kind of regret falling off teh pace, as there is lots of good writing out there, no question of it! But at the same time I found that I kind of enjoyed flying blind. I always figured that at some point Preston might be teaming up with others and that will be great, but that in the meantime I'd take the opportunity to wallow in some fairly extensive character exploration and development.

As for the noise, the dice will tell us if he can do it or not ....

Intuition + computer = 11 dice. Noise around Monique is 2, +5 for distance = 7. Against that he is using a datajack (-1 noise), and is running signal scrub (-2 noise). Sadly he doesn’t yet have the hardware module that would reduce noise further, so the net noise is 4, leaving him at 7 dice. He has data processing as his top ASDF attribute at 6, boosted by overclocker to take it to 7 (limit should not be the problem!).

matrix perception @ Monique: 7d6t5 2

Meh, I think that is enough to see personas within 100m, but I don’t think matrix perception lets you get more precise than that as to location? Might catch cheap links running silent, but pretty hit and miss.

IC for this coming later today.

For a more precise location, you need to Trace each individual icon yup.

@Imladir Is one of your actions trying to identify or get information about the user or are you just interested in the files she is looking at?

Oh I do want to know who it is too (which is why I asked for the commcode, but I didn't think to be more precise, sorry).

Your Matrix Perception of the user can be resisted if the user is hiding that information, correct?

The only way to hide anything is by running silent, otherwise I don't think it's possible.
Of course, a simple Matrix Perception only gives the commcode. It's only by hacking that you can find more (which Cynthia does here so it doesn't really matter), like agenda, directory, etc.

If we wanted to do that by the book, once I have marks on the Persona, I'd have to look for each file she has, identify the interesting ones by their icons, then check for databombs, remove encryption if there's one, and finally copy its content. So if you prefer I can make the rolls, but there would be a fair amount of them. And given the relative dice pools, I don't feel it would bring anything interesting on the (metaphorical) table ^^

There is/was a Dumpshock poster who liked to say (maybe had as his siganture?) something like "Magic gets more powerful as the GM understand it better, the matrix gets less powerful as the GM understands it better." I'd add "and players" in after "GM" in that, then nod enthusiastic agreement.

The task sounds simple enough: scan the matrix to see what personas are near Monique (who had let Preston mark her gear before she headed out), and let her know where they are. At first I was thinking that this was a simple matrix perception task, but then I tried to figure it out in actual game terms last night. Yikes -- this is actually a lot harder than I'd realized at first.

Imladir, or anyone else, please check me on the following:

Step one is locate Monique. Despite having marks on her link and smart-gun, after reading through the rules I think Preston has to succeed at Trace Icon action (Computer+Intuition [data processing] vs firewall + willpower). In essence, although Monique wants Preston to be able to trace her, there doesn't seem to be a way to selectively lower your defenses other than for inviting marks, so to be protected in general she also makes it hard for Preston to locate her.

This is 11d - 4d net noise* = 7d vs Monique's firewall+willpower, which will likely be 11+d. Meaning that just locating her could be challenging, despite the marks ( * noise was worked out in yesterday's posts. Really wishing I'd moved faster to get that 'vectored signal filtering' (aka noise reduction) module, but I hadn't expected to need it just yet).

Before the roll, I'll buy Preston's edge up to 4 (20 karma -- thankfully I just imported 18 karma from a couple of now retired characters in another Stormy Waters universe game, so have more than enough), then I'll pre-edge the roll (going 11 dice and exploding sixes) and hope that luck is on my side.

I don' think that there is anything else that could be done -- Imladir, anything else you see? (I'll roll for this soonish, but was hoping that I've missed something that makes it more likely to succeed)

Assuming that he can locate Monique, then Step two is yesterday's matrix perception roll. Mercy wrote me and said that "Preston uses will see three links in a line ahead of her plus a group of four in a bunch at the head of the line and another two about fifteen feet away off to the right"

However, from what I can tell, Matrix Perception will give a general set of info (there are so many persona around, in roughly this configuration), while Trace Icon is needed to get more precise location. So off the matrix perception, Preston will send an initial ARO to Monique about overall numbers and grouping.

Step 3 could be to get more exact locations. To make life easier on myself, I'm going to assume that the initial matrix perception at least gives some idea of the grouping, so running trace icon on one per group should be enough to get the more precise locations.

However, Trace Icon requires two marks, so first he'd need to get those, which would start attracting GOD's attention. He can dump his overwatch score by re-booting afterwards, but then he'd also loses his marks on Monique's gear, and so not be able to locate her later on.

(and a side note: if he were running an RCC and could slave Monique's smart gun, he'd then be able to share target information, giving her extra dice, but while Rigger 5 says that you don't have to be a rigger to use the new matrix actions that it lists, it then says that things have to be slaved to your RCC to use that ability. (I was all excited about the possibilities on this one until I read more carefully).)

ETA: Next time he gives them stealth tags (which he owns) to carry, I think you can always locate items you own?

@Imladir From what I can see, an agent is not a program, even though it fills a program slot. Your request was for programs currently running. Am I reading this wrong?

I'm afraid I don't any good news, except that maybe, if the owner of a device allows you to locate it in the Matrix, you don't need to Trace it (something like "the owner knows where it is and transfers the data to you"). A cheap an easy way to negate most of the noise would be a satellite link (negates a noise up to 5 for the distance component for the cost of 500 nuyens), maybe there's one not far.

On the bad news however... Not "too" bad, but if you're not on the same grid as the devices you're working on, you suffer from a -2d penalty (same if you or them are on the public grid). And yes, that makes the Public Grid the best grid to use if you want to protect yourself. You can identify the grid with a Matrix Perception, and changing grid is a Hack on the Fly action resisted by 4d for the local grid, 6d for any other grid (so you'll succeed, the point is that it's likely to increase the overwatch score).

You always know where something is on the matrix as long as you have Marks on it (and being owner is as if you had 4 Marks). As for the physical location, I don't think anyone would ask you to run a Trace against your own stuff...

Here it is

Thank you. Apparently I should have told you that she has an agent running.

And since the Agent is a program taking a slot, she has one program running that shouldn't be
But I'll survive, don't worry ^^

What about the Trace though?

I checked everything out, program wise, in Hero Lab and nothing is red, so not sure why there is an extra program running.

Ah, this is most of the problem solved. Can get to the matrix location, can use matrix perception to see what other persona are nearby on the matrix (most people will be with their personas). Do don't need to do a trace icon to travel to Moniques's location -- Phew!

So "Step 1" goes away, "step 2" was the perception roll already covered, and he can do step 3 to give some exact coordinates to Monique. I'll IC it from there.

This goes with Preston post 211

Matrix attributes were ASDF=3475 (+1 from overclocker applied to D).

Turn 1:
Init: 13+3d6 = 26 Preston init: 13+3d6 26. nobody else rolling so Adrenalin Surge doesn't apply

init 26:
Change to public grid from Emerald City Grid (legal, no roll)
Free action swap S with F, giving ASDF=3574

Init 16:
hack on the fly (HotF) vs Nazgul: hacking(devices)+logic=12, -4 noise -2 public grid = 6d[5] P HotF vs nazgul: 6d6t5 5 wow, what a roll!
Nazgul defense, let's assume will 4 for 5d Nazgul def: 5d6t5 2
OW =2+2d6, 1 mark on Nazgul

init 6:
HotF vs Nazgul (same dice): P HotF vs nazgul 2: 6d6t5 3
Nazgul defense: nazgul def 2: 5d6t5 2
OW 4+2d6, 2 marks on Nazgul

Turn 2:
Init: 18 P turn 2 init: 13+3d6 18

init 18:
Trace Icon action: computer+intuition=11d, -4d noise, -2d public grid = 5d, ugh. But defense is willpower plus sleaze, links have no sleaze, so 4d on defense.
P trace icon: 5d6t5 1
nazgul trace icon def: 4d6t5 2
no joy
ow 4+2d6, still 2 marks on Nazgul

init 8:
Trace icon again: P trace icon 2: 5d6t5 2
def: nazgul trace icon def 2: 4d6t5 1
Free action: >>Monique [Peter] One of them to your right<<
Free action 2 (from perfect time): squirt coordinates to Monique
ow 4+2d6, still 2 marks on Nazgul

Turn 3 init (just in case I need it) Preston init turn 3: 13+3d6 26

Where do I find the frigging rules on assensing?

CRB, p312 & 313.
In addition to the table, the main points to keep in mind is that any barrier blocks astral sight (a wall of course, but a window too) but not movement (you can go through walls in the astral, no problem). Mana barriers make things harder to see from one side to the other (a penalty equal to the rating of the barrier, a Lodge is considered a barrier), and you can never move through the ground (you need to find passages, natural or not for that) or go beyond ~80km of altitude (limits of the Gaiasphere).
Without Assenssing, you only know basic information: there's an aura and that's pretty much all. Even the shape of the aura (metahuman type or sex) is open to debate. One thing you would instantly know is if an aura is in the astral or merely visible there (something present in the astral has a much more vibrant aura)
If a mage (or anyone in the astral for that matter), wants to know more, an Assenssing roll must be made. And an Assenssing roll is an observe in detail action (complex action, so only one per IP) which only works on one aura at a time: no Assenssing every members of a group in one fell swoop.

Finally, to Assensse, you must have the dual nature (naturally or through astral perception/projection), which means it's pretty easy to be spotted in turn.