My current character is a combat decker. he upkeep is 11,200 a month. most runs my team gets covers this but doesn't leave much else. So with programs and upgraded decks being so costly I was trying to figure out a way to making more cred. my team is fairly magic heavy 2 physical adepts, a mage, a bear shaman, a rigger and a combat decker. I believe the rigger has an upkeep cost as much as mine. the others seem to be fairly low.

some ideas i've tryed

organ booting - picking up joygirls and hacking em and having my street doc contact sell their organs. unfortunately i've found this pretty much sucks for creds as well as picking up more enemies then you need. ie pimps, bodyguards, usually criminal organization at some level

theft - I've done some B&E in random houses, small jewlery stores. etc. nothing really worth the effort usually.

My next idea was to try this. as i'm a decker that can write programs, worms, etc. would it be possible to write a virus that would take small seemingly "unnoticeable" amount of nuyen and dump it into an account. this presents a problem of laundering the money.

tell me what you think of this plan or any other ideas that you might have for me.

my deck is a highlander Transys
most of my programs are rating 6.
I realize i desperately need a sleaze program upgrade, but it costs around 100k nuyen for an upgrade to my sleaze program. hence i need to make some cred.

Silver

Demand more money from your Johnsons. Your team has a bunch of uncommon and specialized skillsets (two deckers and a rigger, not to mention the mage-muscle), so you should be coming at a premium.

~J

Spend downtime programming your own utilities.

I looked at writing my own programs, but it seem to me that the cost of writing your own programs and buying them were not that much difference. Unless i'm totally off here. wouldn't it seem to be more efficient to simply buy the programs?



Silver

First off do you own the Matrix book or have access to it. Recommended to anyone having to deal with the matrix(ie everyone). There are some tips and tricks in this book that you can use to try to rack in the nuyen but and careful GM tries to put these things in check(Keep in mind MetaGaming is Bad). Set up safe jackin spots and sell their locations to other deckers. IE B&E someone's place and set up and bug for a trace. These locations are one time uses...but if you are good maybe two or three. Try forging credsticks. Hit up a Cred Machine on a A sercurity rated street. Go on some Paydata runs. 5k per point usually fenced at 20-25% of the data's worth. Alot of money in decking.

writing your own programs doesn't cost any nuyen at all. it just takes a good amount of time. if you have a programming suite with the self-coder option, you can even cut down on the time you spend programming. if you want, you can even sell your programs for more cash. another option is to go on paydata runs. you don't want to do them too often, just when you need to scare up some extra cash.

Deckers have way more opportunities than any other character types to earn money. Just making a few extra little pay-data runs per month should double or triple your income.

Blackmail.
'nuff said.

and if you get lucky enough/gm is nice, you may even be hired to eliminate the blackmailers of someone you're blackmailing.

Crank out a programming suite, rating 4 to 6, and start coding your own rating 4 to 8 utilities. Sell a few at street rates and you'll be in some decent cash.

First, any system you enter just before you leave poke around for pay data. Don’t share this mony with the rest of the party (at least not fully) your taking the extra risk so you should get the extra reward, and what they don’t know wont hurt you

Second you have 2 deckers in the party, trade software, programs can be copied so you can both chip in and each take a copy of the new program, or you can work together to code something you both want and then sell a third copy

Edward

I think he ment his character was the (one) combat decker.

Silver: the answer is paydata. Every system your character hacks has something of value to someone. I'm not talking about whatever file you were hired to steal or destroy or whatever. I'm talking data unrelated to your mission, but valuable to somebody. You just need to find it and someone who will buy it. This can be an extended RP situation, or there are streamlined rules in the Matrix book for quick and dirty search and sell transactions. This is pretty much the only way I've seen that a decker can keep up with the rest of the team in terms of character upgrades and has been a SR staple since first edition.

The rigger equivalent would be stealing vehicles/drones....

Just remember if you GM is a stickler for the rules that there is a cost of fencing and it is allot lower than the book price. So only do the job if it pays extremely well, otherwise your fence might become like a jewish jeweler and rip you off.

Um, I find that as long a a decker has a computer at home with a lot of memory and backup storage, he can write his own programs. He writes programs with the same skill he decks with : Computer. All he needs is time.

He can even write his own programming suite - My wife's decker wrote one in about 3 months of gametime. It only took that long because she kept getting interrupted by jobs. Now that it is done, she's looking at doing some seriously fast programming.

Finding paydata in hosts can be good, if:
1) You know someone to sell it to.
2) Going after it/ selling it won't screw up the mission you are getting paid to be there for.
Going after paydata is a lot like physical looting. Sometimes its a good idea, other times it's unprofessional or could get your team killed. It's a risk/benefit assesment.

Yes as mentioned many times. Paydata and programming. Rating 4-6 proggies with an option or 2 even if you don't want to use them your self will be quick to code and fetch a good price (more so if you are Connected)

I looked at an Adept that could code (backstory got stung by Black ice) and found that i could make more per month coding then running. (The points were VERY tight mind)

Try something of your own initiative- steal the paydata without somebody asking you to, then sell it to the highest bidder.

The most lucrative runs are the ones you initiate yourself, no middleman

the important thing to remember about paydata, is its information that you can copy. the more contacts you have, the more people you may be able to sell a copy to.

paydata sometimes is usefull all by itself: the shipment will be on truck X, which has termination code Y, and will be going down street Z at a certain time.

also, if your a B&E specialist, you can rob stores. i recomend focusing on those with high-end electronics, especialy programs and skillsofts. why save up to buy a new cyberdeck when you can just steal one? a run to get a couple fairlights would be worth the risk (keep one, sell the others).

now as a decker, you can find where the good stuff is. most stuff goes through warehouses at some point, just find the right one to hit. and be sure to have a big enough truck to make off with the goods.

Speaking as a combat decker, don't forget to use your skills to drop your overhead costs (and your mission costs) to make life cheaper. My group has gotten a couple of low cost hotels to use as safe houses, pricey ones to hide out in, free rentals cars when we travel (or do surveilance), constantly changing cell phone numbers to avoid tossing cell phones, free storage units to keep our Hot cars in, etc. Don't pay for anything unless you absolutley have to. For programming, steal yourself server time or find someplace that has a host, break in, use the root terminal to make a permanent superuser code and go to town. Good times.