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mintcar
Is there any way to benefit from being two deckers in a team when taking on a tough host? I have a run planned that will be very harsh on the team´s lead decker. But they have a back up decker with some skill. How should they utilise this?
Kagetenshi
If you've both got high DFs, the answer is yes, as you can achieve different objectives simultaneously. If one of them has a low DF, though, they'll just make life harder on both of them.

~J
mintcar
Wouldn´t that only speed things up? Including the security tally?

I suppose you could use the second decker´s computer skill like a complementary skill (I think I remember rules for aiding skill tests somewere) if he was hitching. But is there nothing else?
hobgoblin
depending on you useing the matrix version of keeping tally or not. using matrix, going tag team is a nice way to take on a big host or pltg as you keep seperate tallys for diffrent people. but useing sr3 you keep one tally...
Kagetenshi
Actually, by strict canon what happens is that each person has their own tally until someone logs off, after which anyone logging on starts at the logged-off person's tally. It's unclear what happens if you have multiple people who log off, whether you start with the higher tally or both tallies added together.

~J
hobgoblin
by strict canon, what strict canon? there is nothing to indiacte in the matrix book that the tally rules for sr3 carry over. and i dont recall hearing about errata to that effect either...
Kagetenshi
There's nothing saying that they don't carry over, and nothing in Matrix contradicts SR3.

~J
mintcar
So they keep different tally´s, and most IC (eccept I suppose, stuff like scramble) triggered by one decker does not bother the other. So that makes it good to go tag, right? The only problem comes if the weakest link triggers alerts. But if the deckers are fairly matched in the DF department, the benefits outweigh that problem. That right?
Kagetenshi
Previous topic.

~J
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
There's nothing saying that they don't carry over, and nothing in Matrix contradicts SR3.

~J

that is realy the issue isnt it? they dont say either or. therefor we end up with discussios like these. it would be much better if one by default expected a more recent book to override a older one if it contradicts the older one.

and i would say that the very fact that they talk about one tally pr decker contradicts the tally rules in sr3 that talk about one tally pr host. hmm, it would be interesting to hear the write of that chapter of the matrix book's opinion. that would be the closest i can think to canon...
mintcar
Thanks Kage. Once again you save my day. If I made a top 10 list, I guess you´d have to be on it. nyahnyah.gif
mfb
i've talked with ShadowFAQ about this one, but haven't gotten an answer on it. if you're running a decker-heavy campaign, i would strongly suggest houseruling the sec tal rules.
Weredigo
I don't see any reason it wouldn't work. Give the runt decker the task of fooling the security slaves while the crack decker goes for the paydata/CPU, also it wouldn't hurt for the runners to soak 1K nuyen.gif or so to hire a bunch of newbie level deckers at a hundred a pop to just hit and harass the place from the outside.

Let the new guy fix things

Let the grey beard break things

Let the howling mass of littles distract . . . distractions always help

and Let the good times roll...
fistandantilus4.0
The good side is that when all hell breaks loose, the sec deckers will most likely go to everyone making all the noise.

On the downside, the system would go on active alert, so any mistakes on the experienced deckers side would result in heavier consequences (read:Black IC). But as long as he can get by (a high enough DF), and the system doesn't go into shutdown, it could work.

The matrix equivelant of having a gang go nuts in the corp parking lot while the team slips in the back I guess.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (mfb)
i've talked with ShadowFAQ about this one, but haven't gotten an answer on it. if you're running a decker-heavy campaign, i would strongly suggest houseruling the sec tal rules.

I disagree. While piecing the rules together breaks brains, I think the current rules work just fine together.

~J
hobgoblin
if the rules break brain and needs to be pieced together then they are badly worded at best and hopelessly broken at worst...
Kagetenshi
Badly worded, yes. Hopelessly broken, not in this case.

~J
hobgoblin
if you want to merge the rules in sr3 with the rules presented in matrix i think they are, as the rules in matrix at no time talk about the rules in sr3. this forces the gm into leaps of creative logic like what you present kagetenshi, and in my view it have no place in so a vital piece of the matrix system as the secuirty tally is.

it makes no logical sense that if a host tracks a seperate tally for every icon present, that a totaly diffrent icon that connects after a old one goes away should inherit the old ones tally. only reason i can ses for doing it that way is to avoid teams that continualy log in and out to reset tallys. but if that is the idea, why was it not clearly stated in the rules? allso, its not that hard to get around that idea. just have a team do staged logins. 2 logs in a first, then another logs in when one of them have gotten a bit of tally, repeat until either mission is done or running out of members (or if the time taken is long enough you can have allready existing tallys be zeroing out). yes it leads to the need for bigger teams but only slightly. and it makes for a bookeeping nightmare for the gm as he is supposed to keep the tally hidden from the deckers.

only way i can see your system work kagetenshi is if the tally is connected to host account, not icon. then one can state that if you log out of a account and someone logs into the same account some time later one gets the remianing tally. but then one have to track exactly what accounts are available and so on and the decker can then be changeing accounts constantly to try and eliminate tallys.

in either case, it forces the gm to make up rules more or less on the fly for a part of the system that is very important that works correctly the first time round. there must be a logic behind why a tally migrates from one icon to the other, if not then its just another case of vegm.gif in my view...
Kagetenshi
Tally doesn't begin to reset until the entire host is clean.

~J
hobgoblin
and what tally do i get if 3-4 people have just logged out? the first that logged out or the one thats highest?
Kagetenshi
Either the highest or all of them added together, GM's interpretation.

~J
hobgoblin
hrmf, i went back to vr2.0 to see how what was the original idea for the tally. and it seems that the tally removal prosess described in sr3 was put on top of the existing vr2 rules to cover a hole (i cant find anything in vr2 that looks like its covering tallys after a person goes away, atleast not in any logical place).

then matrix comes along and wants to recreate the matrix from something that decker-only into a general access computer network. this gives us individual tallys, action for legitimate logins and the other stuff.

one question that comes to mind is what happens when i go from a LTG where i have a bit of tally into a PLTG where someone have just logged out with some tally. do my tally jump if the person that logged out had a higher tally then i had? if so, do i then trigger ice he have allready triggerd and defeated?

and what happens to the office-rat that logs on with a cyberterm? do he inherit my tally even tho he have a valid account? remeber that cyberterm didnt exist in sr3 rules and therefor those rules didnt have to take them into account. to the sr3 rules the only people that would be logging in and out would be deckers. with that in mind it makes sense for tallys to be pr host rather then pr icon in sr3.

but in matrix the office-rat with a term exist and therefor have to have rules that take this into account. why should a host be blasting its own users as an after effect of some decker messing around in there. and what happens to the sec decker that pops in right after one of the team deckers goes offline? do he inherit the tally and the ice left over by the decker that left?
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Mar 13 2005, 09:15 PM)
Either the highest or all of them added together, GM's interpretation.

~J

all together, oh how that sounds perfect for vegm.gif abuse...

remember, a rpg isnt a contest between the players and the gm...
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Mar 13 2005, 09:15 PM)
Either the highest or all of them added together, GM's interpretation.

~J

all together, oh how that sounds perfect for vegm.gif abuse...

remember, a rpg isnt a contest between the players and the gm...

Look, if your problem is GMs fucking players over, get a new GM. No amount of good rules are going to prevent that.

~J
hobgoblin
right now im in no group, but if i end up in one in the near future im most likely the gm.

but why encurage a behavor of fucking the players over?
Kagetenshi
Again, if your GM is going to do that, you can't stop them. Finding a decent GM is the only path.

~J
mintcar
I think I´m just going to ignore that security tallies are inherited when deckers log of. From what I´ve gathered, I now think the developers finally decided that tallies are individual. If some decker came in and stired up some minor trouble, the corp doesn´t want regular users to even notice. Therefor the system keeps an extra eye out for that specific intruder. Only if alerts are raised are all users effected by the extra security. This seems very ballanced to me. The inherited tally must have been a way of simulating how the system is effected by the deckers actions even after the decker is gone. I think this is accomplished by letting the alerts linger.
ef31415
QUOTE (mintcar)
I think I´m just going to ignore that security tallies are inherited when deckers log of. From what I´ve gathered, I now think the developers finally decided that tallies are individual. If some decker came in and stired up some minor trouble, the corp doesn´t want regular users to even notice. Therefor the system keeps an extra eye out for that specific intruder. Only if alerts are raised are all users effected by the extra security. This seems very ballanced to me. The inherited tally must have been a way of simulating how the system is effected by the deckers actions even after the decker is gone. I think this is accomplished by letting the alerts linger.

The inherited tallies have always bugged me.

Imagine Janiac Decker comes in, raises 9 kinds of hell, and logs off one link ahead of the black ice. Then Joe Cubical gets back from his coffee break, logs on, ...
and gets hammered by all the ICE that was ment for Jane.

RunnerPaul
Wouldn't Joe Cubicle have a company issued passcode that'd give him read/write access to whatever files are appropriate to his job function? Joe Cubicle logs and loads his TPS Report so that he can edit the cover sheet on it, the IC doesn't even notice. Joe Cubicle decides to cruise the mainframe on his coffee break to find out the annual salary of the Vice President that heads his department, information that the HR department considers personal and confidental, and he gets geeked by the blackest of Black IC.
hobgoblin
that is the thing, if one go with inherited tally that is only effective on icons that dont have proper access then the first trick in the book would to go in, get a low level user account, come back useing that account, aim for a higher one and then work form there. this, in my view, make inherited tally a redundant system and therefor not use if one use the matrix version of the rules.

and to kagetenshi, no everyone have the luxury of going out and finding a new gm...

RunnerPaul
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
then the first trick in the book would to go in, get a low level user account, come back useing that account, aim for a higher one and then work form there.

Just like the black-hats do in Real Life. Neat parallel there.
hobgoblin
i know. and it allready exist in the matrix rules (given the diffrent levels of free success action based on access level), makeing the transfering tally a redundancy thats not worth the paper to keep it on...
mfb
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
I disagree. While piecing the rules together breaks brains, I think the current rules work just fine together.

here's why i think the current rules are broken and in serious need of fixing.

1) if everybody inherits everyone else's security tally, and security tally carries across all hosts on an RTG, why is the Matrix not shut down completely on a daily basis? five idiot wannabe deckers could shut down the entire Seattle grid just by tripping through the LTGs running up 2-3 security tally on each, snowballing their tallies through the city until all of the LTGs reach their shutdown threshold.

2) Larry the Loser racks up 400 security tally on the Mom and Pop's Crappy Foodstuffs host, then logs on. two seconds, later Fastjack logs onto the same host with his very bestest deck, which sports a Masking persona of 61654464 and a Sleaze utility of 164568, for a total DF of 30909522 (including the +6 for allocated hacking pool). god himself should not be able to detect Fastjack's intrusion, yet this crappy little blue-6 host not only detects him, it mobs him with three hundred pieces of IC. yet meanwhile? Harry the Horrible Hacker, who logged on at the same time as Larry, but who racked up 0 security tally and did not log off, is wholly undetectable to the system.
hobgoblin
and fixed they are if you only use the matrix one and dont try to bring the sr3 one into the mix. why? then the tally is hooked you you specificaly...
mfb
and, since i'm bitching about it, here's how i'd fix the rules:

1) security tally only follows you in limited amounts: up to 2, for tally originationg on a blue system; up to 4, for a green; up to 6, for an orange; up to 8, for a red. i can see hosts and LTGs sharing some data; i can't see every host--especially the Jesus Christ Red-Insane ones--dumping their entire security log onto the open Matrix every time a decker logs off their host. telling the whole world exactly how Decker X was able to penetrate your defenses is a great way to maintain host security, yessir.

2) hosts only spawn one copy of the IC triggered at any given trigger step. the IC automatically "sees" the decker who triggered it, any decker who triggered a previous trigger step, and any decker who triggers any future trigger steps. the IC also gets a free Sensor test, upon activation, as per the rules on page 209 of SR3; it gets another Sensor test to notice any icon that logs on after its activation. other deckers are invisible to the IC unless they a) make themselves visible by attacking it or otherwise calling attention to themselves, or b) the IC makes a Locate Decker test.

3) i think there was a third bullet, but it's slipped my mind.
hobgoblin
err mfb, the only system that copys over a tally is a PLTG when you enter it. single hosts dont do that. all LTGs under a given RTG share tally tho, but RTGs do not transfer tally from one to the other.

what kagetenshi is trying to do is a merge between the tally rules in sr3 (where the tally stays on a pr host basis and drops over time) with the tally rules in matrix (where you track one tally pr decker). to me thats a redundant work of mind and rule bending as i see the matrix rules overriding the sr3 rules in that area. if he wants to play that way in this games fine, but he should not present it here on the forum as canon.

and you 2) fix basicly takes the power of the ICE construct and applys it to every ICE on a host. making the construct basicly just a multifunction ICE. i dont see a reason for going that far as the matrix rules works nicely in my view.
mfb
i know RTGs don't share tally. they don't have to. there are enough unskilled deckers in the world that each and every RTG should probably go down from high security tally at least once a day--even legitimate users doing stupid things can rack up security tally, according to the rules for IC construct target selection on page 92 of Matrix. you're correct, though; individual hosts don't pass on security tally. replace 'host' with 'LTG' in my previous statements, though; the arguments still stand.

my 2) makes multi-decker host hacking a viable option. IC constructs still have the advantage of being smarter than your average IC, and of being purpose-built for a specific cybercombat style.
hobgoblin
99% of people that connect to a LTG will have a user account there that allow them to do a bit of searching and moveing to whatever host they are looking for (while getting billed for their access). going by matrix every icon have their own tally, and even on active alert a valid user will not notice much as they are only useing their allowed actions.

and not even a dumbass decker will want to take down a LTG, for one it will bring on the GOD deckers, and maybe lone star, and most likely atleast one decker from the telco that runs the LTG, and dont forget that he is without phone, grid and most likely tv while its down. hell, he will most likely even piss of any other decker that was useing the LTG at the time. lets just say your reputation hit rock bottom and then some.

ok, i can see how 2) helps multi-decking, but i dont realy see the need. but if you want to play that way in your game, feel free...
mfb
far from losing rep among the decker community, anyone who managed to bring down an entire RTG would very definitely gain rep. besides, you're basically saying that the security philosophy behind the Matrix--all of it--is that they're just hoping nobody will be enough of an asshole to shut it all down. besides the obvious, there are two major problems with that: one, the Matrix was built in response to a virus that was an asshole enough to shut down the entire Internet; durability in the face of attack is going to be one of the designers' major concerns. two: Winternight. if it were possible to shut down the entire Matrix--and, by the current rules, it is--they'd be doing it fairly often in an attempt to force the world to not depend on the Matrix as much as it does.

i forgot to mention that 2) is necessary if you're using only a single tally for every host, which is much saner than trying to say that every decker has their own tally except when someone else ran up a tally on the host before you logged on. the part where it makes multi-decker attacks easier is just an added bonus. i'm trying to install MxO, and the damn thing keeps crashing, so my thoughts are kinda scattered. sorry.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Mar 15 2005, 08:44 AM)
to me thats a redundant work of mind and rule bending as i see the matrix rules overriding the sr3 rules in that area. if he wants to play that way in this games fine, but he should not present it here on the forum as canon.

That's bullshit. Argue that the rules don't work well together all you want, but if SR3 says something and Matrix says something, and Matrix does not state that it overrides SR3, and nothing about what Matrix says contradicts what SR3 says, then the combination of what they say is canon, thank you very much.
QUOTE
and to kagetenshi, no everyone have the luxury of going out and finding a new gm...

Yes, they do. Or at least walking on their current GM. If you sit tight for a bad GM, don't whine to me about it.

~J
hobgoblin
kagetenshi, drop it ok? if you want to play it your way fine, but i dont see your interpetation as anything even close to canon. if they wanted the sr3 tally system and the amtrix tally system to merge then it would have been spelled out how to do it in matrix, pure and simple.

and if the gm was a asshole i may well walk out on it. but i still think that its much better to have rules that dont leave to much in the hands of the gm as that will intentionaly or unintentionaly lead to trouble. its much simpler to explain to some player why something happens if you can point to the rules that did it then to have to say that you basicly pulled the outcome out of your ass.

and on to mfb. if the virus killed the ned it didnt do so by taking down the links, then it was a side effect of it takeing down important business, goverment and other servers. the net went down as an effect of fear. people where afraid to loose vital data to the virus and rather pulled the plug on the net connection then keeping the system up and fighting. and the multipath structure of the net at the time didnt in any way help in trying to contain the virus and thereby make the job of defeating it simpler.

basicly the design of the matrix isnt supposed to be unkillable. its supposed to be splitable. this so that if a new virus is detected in say seattle, they can pull that LTG of the UCAS RTG and keep the rest of the matrix working as before while the local techs get on with the clean up. its just like a outbreak of ebola, you try to contain, then heal (or let it run out of victims and basicly die out on its own).

i dont think deckers like fastjack or the laughing bandit would cheer on the decker that took down a RTG. the matrix gangs may do so tho. but as you grow in understanding of how the matrix works you either learn what not do to so as to keep main interest going or you end up dead in a dark alley.

and isnt the TGs supposed to have extra long sheafs? something like 2-3 times longer then a normal host? i would expect that by the time it hit active alert you would be dealing with GOD representatives and maybe some other security deckers, but thats just my opinion.

yes you can allways roll in with a crash utility and take down the RTG or one of the LTGs if thats your fill, but take down the RTG and all you loose is the ability to do long distance connections for the time it takes for the to bring it back online (if they dont have a backup standing ready to ensure 99.999% service availability). take out a LTG and all you do is mess up the life of those in the area it covers, and those that try to contact that area.

hell, even today you see a page or a area of the net go missing for some time if a main link between points go down. you can still access other parts of the net.

the net of today can survive a outside attack againt a area that it covers, but it cant slow down or contain a attack inside itself. the matrix of sr may be more sensitive about outside attacks but is more able to contain a threat from the inside. to put the whole matrix offline you have to take down every RTG at the same time. i wish you good luck...

and this is the last from me on this subject. the original question have been answerd for some time and we are left to argue play style and setting interpetations. and that is getting us nowhere. until some erratas or faqs comes out on this subject it will all be interpetations of the text, taken appart like some priests discussing the correct way to read the messages of the bible. enjoy your games gentlemen, beer is on me.
mfb
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
if you want to play it your way fine, but i dont see your interpetation as anything even close to canon. if they wanted the sr3 tally system and the amtrix tally system to merge then it would have been spelled out how to do it in matrix, pure and simple.

QUOTE (Matrix @ page 210)
See Security Tally, p. 210, SR3, for basic Security Tally rules.

i think i'm going to let this comparison stand on its own.

a) since when is that the security philosophy, and b) why does that mean you can make the LTGs easy to take down and it'll all be okay? just because your house is modular doesn't mean it's a good idea to build it out of cards.

fastjack and the smiling bandit may pooh-pooh your accomplisments, but everybody else will be impressed. or, they would be, except that crashing an RTG is child's play. fifty particularly stupid users logged on at the same time could crash the entire RTG by accident. i get more stability than that out of windows NT.
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