Playing using SR3.
Planning a the next run for my players and I'm wanting to have the team's decker face off against an opposing decker in the system of the building the team is infiltrating. I cannot seem to find either base damage ratings for attack programs (Killjoy, Black Hammer) that target other deckers or actual examples of how that would work in combat. The closest thing I have found is by going back to SR2 corebook and looking up how Matrix combat there is done. Is it the same for both editions? Or am I missing something in some obscure corner of SR3 or Matrix books?

The Matrix Combat section of the rule book confusingly only talks about deckers vs. IC, but it applies the same in decker vs. decker combat.

As to your specific question: You can attack other icons with any loaded attack program and a simple action.



The special damage that is alluded to under the Resolving Attacks header on the same page (226) simply means that Black Hammer will inflict physical damage and keep the connection open (for fun tracing mechanisms and SWAT dropping in on the decker's physical location) and Killjoy inflicts stun damage and keeps the connection open.
Edit: Oh, and also anyone hit by any of those two utilities cannot just jack out with a Free Action anymore, and must spend a Complex Action and pass a Willpower test against the rating if they want to do so, assuming they're still conscious / alive.
It's important to note that the Attack utility only inflicts damage on the matrix icon and will crash the deck once its Condition Monitor is filled. No danger to the decker there.

At least as I understand it. It's been a whole bunch of years.

Pretty much what Bannockburn said. The key to understanding this is to see that a decker's online presence is just another matrix target. The only thing that's different is it reaching back to meatspace (assuming hotsim, etc. etc. etc.). Of course, this can get a bit more complex with firewalls and other defences on either side, but you probably knew that already.

For sake of completeness:

1. Every persona is an icon but not every icon is a persona. A persona is first and foremost the decker icon created by the deck unless special conditions arise (see following points)
2. Standard Matrix combat occurs between icons and icons only have a "physical" damage track. The involved deckers themselves won't take directly damage from standard Matrix combat unless Simsense Overload or Dump Shock occurs. Simsense Overload is caused by IC exclusively (none of the combat utilities to my fuzzy knowlegde replicate that effect). Dump Shock - next to being caused by non-graceful logoffs - may occur either due to IC or an attacking decker crashing the icon / persona of a decker via default Matrix combat.
3. Specific combat utilities like the previously mentioned Blackhammer and Killjoy replicate the attacks normally associated with Black IC (lethal and non-lethal respectively) just without the whole "keeping the line open for a trace location" but with the potential for the same Stun or Physical Damage to the attacked decker.
4. Matrix page 122 adds Improvised Combat (attack and defense) against other icons as variation to Standard Matrix combat
5. Matrix pages 73 and 74 add additional combat utilities that work against personas but don't necessarily do bodily harm to the decker

Are you sure about that?



The "identical to those" seems to suggest to me that this effect is specifically included. Now the rest of the latter paragraph seems a bit stranger to assume (does a decker get a free attack with Black Hammer when the opponent jacks out or is jacked out? Probably not), but I don't see an exception. The referral to "blaster-like capabilities" is of course a reference to damage to the cyberdeck.

Could be that I somehow misinterpreted that, but that's basically how we handled it in the days of yore.
Of course, if the decker is killed, the question is moot, since this is specifically mentioned as terminating the connection in the next paragraph, but an unconscious decker should still be online, shouldn't they?

Sure in the sense that the usage of Blackhammer and Killjoy usually works towards outright killing / completely knocking out the opposing decker (at least from a runner perspective) and at that point this Black IC effect takes hold:

p. 230
The Matrix connection automatically goes down if black IC kills the decker.

So lethal Black IC doesn't actually hold the connection open indefinitely and non-lethal Black IC doesn't hold the connection open indefinitely either as it explicitly acts like lethal Black IC just with Stun damage ... and while both get a Blaster like final shot (which you correctly identified as not being present as effect on Blackhammer and Killjoy) they both cannot prevent the Matrix connection from going down.


While stricktly speaking Black Hammer and Killjoy will indeed cause the same "no graceful logoff as a free action" limitation for the attacked decker that is benefical towards locations attempts (via other ICs / utilities) you can expect differences in actual scenarios:

Black IC of any kind typically doesn't run without the support of other IC variants like Trace IC which actively tries to locate the decker in question and have started their work earlier (trigger stages on the tally) and thus will indeed benefit from the Black IC's effect of preventing easy log-offs. On the flip side your typical runner decker won't engage in Matrix combat against another decker where he uses something like Black Hammer (that one in particular) or Killjoy in a scenario where he also wants to run a tracker utility to find the physical location of the attacked decker unless we're talking very very specific run scenarios or being desperate and thus willing to give up on the locating part. In the same vein: By the point a corporate security decker actually uses Black Hammer or Killjoy against an intruding decker there's not much interest left in the "keeping the line open for trace location" bonus that Black IC provides by limiting the graceful logoff options ... at that point they better have the location already or the (further) usage of Black Hammer and Killjoy is bound to kill the existing Matrix connection and making tracing impossible.




More of a difference in how we see these things playing out in practical terms




Nope:

p. 230:

If damage from non-lethal black IC renders a decker unconscious, the decker’s Matrix connection is automatically broken. However, the non-lethal black IC still gets a final shot at the cyberdeck’s MPCP and the data downloaded during the run.

Fair enough, I completely missed that last part.

Most of that I've already found, but what sets the Wound/Damage Level of Killjoy Black Hammer? With IC it's based on the security color code of the system it's on (Blue/Green does Moderate damage, Orange = Serious, Red = Deadly) So does that mean Killjoy/Black Hammer base damage codes are set by the system the deckers are fighting in?

Since both of them explicitly work like Black IC the answer is that their base Wound / Damage levels are indeed ...



... depending on which host type the attack is carried out. In a Blue/Green environment it's [Rating]M, in Orange systems it's [Rating]S and in Red (and also UV) it's [Rating]D. In all instances with the possibility of staging it further via successes.



As a consequence of them working like Black IC: Yes.

****************

Going back to my original comment and the exchange with bannockburn:

I guess I have now been reminded why the whole "keeping the line open" concept is around and depending on interpretation would actually apply to Black Hammer and Killjoy but not to standard lethal and non-lethal Black IC (and I actually mentally switched the roles Black IC and Black Hammer/Killjoy have in the general scenario) :

p. 221 states:

The black hammer utility is a black IC program that targets the decker, not the deck. It can kill a decker without knocking his cyberdeck off-line, so that the decker’s jackpoint remains traceable.

and

Black hammer lacks the blaster-like capabilities of mainframe-driven black IC, but otherwise its effects are identical to those of lethal black IC (see Black IC, p. 230).

There are two possible interpretations to this:

1. the sentence about not sending offline is a contradiction once you actually follow the the second sentence (using the rules of Black IC) and therefore no killing /knocking unconscious without sending the Matrix connection offline (and thus the deck as well). This is largely what my original statement revolved around.

2. the sentence about not sending offline is is indeed valid and thus Black Hammer and Killjoy - unlike Black IC that explicitly cannot do that - are able to retain an open Matrix connection but then without further details on how that is supposed to work or how it affects actual tracing or how long the effect persists. This is where my memory made the incorrect flip between Black IC and the Combat Utilities.

The second interpretation will change the scenario of security decker vs. runner decker for purposes of tracking down the felon who dared to attack the sanctity of a corporate host system but in runner decker vs. security decker or runner decker A vs. runner decker B the ability to trace the location of the killed / K.O.'ed opposing decker will still be negligible in most situations.