I gotta side with Kagetenshi on this one. When you're on a low-security host it's far easier to just use Evasion and sleaze your way past all the IC forever than to do any sort of attacking. This is particularly true if you don't allow the optional rule to allow you to use hacking pool to supress IC.

Here's a question for all you veterans out there: what kinds of wireless interfaces would you spend nuyen on at chargen? Is it a good idea to toss out the cash for a satelite dish and related gear in the beginning, a cellular link, or are these sorts of things better to wait on?

If you've got a Rigger who can stick a fixed dish on their van, it's far more than worth it.

~J

Radio, cellular and satelite. Having radio and cell is good for doing info searches in the field and accessing public databases. Set yourself up a fake MSP account and go to town.

Satelite is great for not worrying about the corp ever finding you and the downside is very small. Accessing the satelites can be a problem because you only have rating six programs which can leave you with nasty target numbers. It is however your only option when out in the barrens or cruising the Salish-Sidhe unless you have a monster power boost.

There is of course the 'stealth' option on attack programs.

Once again though, it's like "entrapment".
"Never carry a gun. You may be tempted to use it."

A very poor and expensive option. You will never be able to afford attack 8M+ stealth 8. Low grade IC isn't a threat to a good decker and when you see rating 10-12 IC bearing down on you the stealth 8 wouldn't do it then either. 2-4 on a red system could be 1-2 trigger steps putting you at square one.

If you are going nuclear, get the best attack program you can, kill every thing that comes up until the system enters shutdown mode then keep using swerve until your mission is complete. Not a good option but it forces them to power off the system manually and lose data or just hope the security deckers can boot you.

I should never say never. Maybe someone has 2.3 million to drop on a program. Nobody I know.

Remember, evasion is your best friend. Save the attack program for the deckers.

Ummm... aren't we the deckers?


Besides, programs are too expensive to be buying all the time. Either get the connected edge, or write your own.

Yes it takes for ever, but at least you'll have something to do in the downtime.

And after you write that Attack D +stealth 8, you can sell it to Hackerhouse and buy yourself a few other nice proggies.

I disagree. With an average of one security tally per test (one per two if you allocate hacking pool, etc), that isn't very many Null Ops tests before the next piece of IC or Passive Alert goes up.

~J

it's a minimum average (if there is such a thing) of five operations between IC pops. that's not bad, for the type of intrusion beginning runners get hired to do. it won't be easy; the decker's not going to be ghosting through the system with no trace. but it's possible.

That's about fifteen seconds. Keep in mind that the IC isn't going to be dealt with in a single round either, and additionally each piece of crashed IC makes things worse.

~J

Keep in mind, though, that every time you destroy that probe IC 4-5 you're either raising your tally by that same 4-5 (unless you *really* dropped alot of cash on that attack prog, and even then it'll be more like 2-3) or dropping your DF by one. Of course this all assumes you're not using the optional rule of supressing IC withhacking pool; then and only then could you get away with attack before you pick up that ludicrously high Sneak attack program (and can suck down that SI 3 1,024,000 Y price tag or wait the two years base time it'll take you to write it yourself.

where are you getting 15 seconds from? and, yes, i'm assuming you're a) suppressing the IC, and b) using hp to do it whenever possible.

Null ops for five combat turns is fifteen seconds. On hacking pool you're still dropping your DF unless you weren't using it to raise DF; even if you've got free hacking pool, you're lengthening the time it takes to successfully perform tasks.

~J

that's not how null ops works. if you don't do anything for ten minutes, you do a single null ops test at the end of that time, with a TN modified by the amount of time you've been nulling.

*Digs for SR3* You sure on that?

Edit: answer's somewhere in-between. "The gamemaster may require a decker to perform one or more Null Operations whenever the decker is waiting for something to happen".

~J

Precisely, Kagetenshi. No starting decker can get more than 9 hacking pool, two of those needing an encephalon which is really hard to justify for most characters, without heavy investment in a Cerebral Booster 2 and a custom 450,000+ Y deck, both of which are heavily up to GM fiat at chargen. Six of those HP are going to your DF, leaving you with 1-3 for IC supression.

Net effect: your HP has earned you those precious 45 extra seconds, giving you a full minute of overwatch time before the Stuffer Shack you're infiltrating (You're assuming overwatch on a Blue-Easy, right?) hits its next trigger step, which is likely to be something even more nasty than the Probe IC you're supressing (likely a Passive Alert by now.) So what do you do the rest of the 9 minutes it takes your buddy to break through the maglock at the front door?

(EDIT): Ah, hmm, just reread that section on null ops (SR3 p. 218 if anyone's interested). I gues that *does* make overwatch more possible than I thought, though you're still rolling against Control which is usually the highest subsystem rating. *shrug*

oops, not a TN mod, a raise in the effective security value. if you've nulled for <10 seconds, no change; up to a minute, +1; up to an hour, +2; up to 12, +4, +1 per every further 12 hours.

edit: if a stuffer shack is hitting passive alert on the second trigger step, something's really wrong.

Blue-Easy hosts typically hit Passive Alert on the third or fourth trigger step.

This being primarily a factor of the gigantic void between trigger steps.

~J

hm. i use the random host creator in Matrix as a guide; with that, you don't tend to hit passive alerts until the 5th-6th step no matter what type of host you're on. i prefer that the hosts scale by trigger step, rather than by actual security tally--that is, all hosts have roughly the same number of trigger steps, but varying maximum security tallies.

Maybe it's four or five; all I know is that all of the Blue-Easy hosts I've created in the past few weeks (all using the random creator) triggered at the fourth step.

Edit: on P114, Matrix, the Blue and Red grids trigger Passive Alert and Security Deckers at the fourth step (24 and 12 tally, respectively) while the Green and Orange trigger as the fifth step.

~J

Also something you have to bare in mind is that you have to know how long your going to "Null Ops" for.

You might think you need a minutes worth og time but it might end up being longer or shorter, if longer then thats another Null ops you need to do.

I have two deckers in my team, right now. First ones ever though. One decker/assasin (used to work alone so needed to find out personal stuff about his targets) and one combat decker. The combat decker has been around for almost a year so we´re getting used to small matrix runs. I totally screwed up the first ones, using 2:nd ed numbers for the hosts while using 3:d ed rules, making them insanely wimpy. But as I said, we´re starting to get the hang of things.

No one has asked to be a decker before (or rather few ever did so I didn´t bother learning the rules, making it impossible for those who eventually did...), so we always used the decker contact solusion. Now I´m ready to take it on! I´ve read through the "complete moron´s" guides. Maybe going to take another look at them... Anyway, the point is that deckers will be a big focus for me from now on. I convinced the rigger player to change to a magican. My current group is 2 magicans, 2 decker/something, and 2 combat oriented characters, with a bit of face sprinkled around. I think that will be just about what I can handle in terms of different perspectives.

So basicly: If I got to choose (and I do) I would pick deckers as one of the 3 most essential archetypes. If the decker has combat, stealth, electronics B/R and negotiating skills to boot (which isn´t imposible at all), it´s probably the most essential character.

Unconvince that Rigger! Riggers and deckers go together like CPUs and cache.

~J

I know. But I can´t handle it, man! It just too much having that extra perspective to take into account. I´ll stick to matrix and magic on top of the regular stuff for 5 years or so. It took me over 10 years to finally take on decking. This "rules" thing has never been one of my strongest points. That´s why I still behave like a shadowrun newbie around here at times.

VCR-1s are very cheap.

~J

Which is pretty much all that would matter to the Corp training and implanting a Rigger for the job.

Say you're working at ¥25,000 a year as a security guard. You get the chance to turn that into ¥30,000 (or even ¥28,000) a year for just the price of letting them implant a VCR in you, plus it's a much safer assignment. Do you think the Essence cost is going to bother you much?

~J

It's not the cost of the implant, it's the cost of paying the guy it's implanted in's salary. As well as the salary of the rest of the security riggers on his shift. And the crews on the other two shifts. Exacerbated by the fact that it's a job description that requires an implant, which means if they quit because they're unhappy with their pay, they're harder to replace than your average security guard.

CCSS rigged security was never meant to be a whole building solution. It was meant to be the last layer of defense wrapped around the most sensitive areas, as part of a defense-in-depth scheme. Of course it's those most sensitive areas that your typical shadowrunner is most interested in, but there's all the other layers of defense that you have to get through first.

Take a look upwards a bit. For any place that remotely needs the security, it'll pay for itself.

~J

Oh, I agree. But it won't pay for itself as quickly as some of the cheaper solutions would.

I would think the biggest factor in decker rareatity is the game play difficulties as the decker goes on his decking adventure and get what is it, 6? turns for every turn everyone else gets.

In my experince, groups that have a decker that knows what he's (/she's) doing, as well as a DM that knows it thoroughly enough to keep the pace up are pretty inistent on having a decker around one way or the other.

The slow down can be a real killer, unless it's a rough run. Then everyone's around the dekcer player praying he doesn't screw up and cheering when he makes the right roll. They're usually pretty giving with the Team Karma pool too.

Under the right circumstances, the slowdown (what there is of one) can be a godsend. Nothing takes the pressure off quite like deckertime; it's a bit like a free time out.

~J

store run!

Again, see the passage I cited. The GM can require "one or more" for any period of inactivity.

~J

so in the end its gm's say, but as the null op is layed out one should only realy require one and then look at the length of time waited. the question is how much of a one wants to be...

yes, but see the passage that comes right after that, where it tells you exactly what you need to roll, and when you need to roll it. this is a discrepancy in the rules; given that "one or more" is mentioned only once in passing, while the specific rules are laid out in a fairly large paragraph and given two examples, i'm going to go out on a limb and say that the "one or more" line is probably a mistake.

edit: i ammend my previous statement. i can see a GM making a player to multiple null ops tests in a row, one test every time his security tally is raised by the previous null ops test. for instance, if i want to do a null op for ten minutes, but i only get enough successes for eight (as determined by the GM), any security tally i got with my null ops test would be applied at the eight-minute mark. at that point, i can see the GM calling for another null ops test to cover the remaining two minutes.

what i can't see being fair is a GM saying "okay, to null for three minutes, i'm gonna require two null ops tests." the rules cover what happens when you try to null for three minutes already; calling for multiple rolls base purely on the amount of time that's passed is not, i think, how the rules are intended to work.

Hi,

can you avoid Null ops IF you validate an user account? If you create an user with access to cameras, doors like a sec guard you could do the overwatch with out problems. And you could hack your user account in a Blue-Light Stuffer Shack host.

Gorath

as i recall, null ops are included in the list of operations a valid user-level account can perform without a test. so, yes.