Probably. Any device linked to the PAN can be hacked, and you can edit or command the device (but you should do it quickly, before the device reboots, either manually by the user or automatically by the OS). Of course, just making the device reboot can throw a wrench in the works.

Probably not. You could connect to each and every single guard's PAN as a separate node, with the LAN being the main connection to do it, but you'd have to deactivate each gun individually (unless, for some bizarre silly reason, there is a killswitch code for all smartlinked guns connected to a PAN that is connected to the WAN). You can have a number of nodes "open" in your view equal to your System x 2.

This just means you can find each Sec Guard's PAN from the central hub. That doesn't mean you can killswitch all of the PANs simultaneously from the central hub. You can probably crash the central hub, but the PANs would find some other way to route themselves for communications. Messing with each individual PAN is a separate device or node that you have to subscribe to, and you can only mess with one node at a time.

Grand Theft Auto: Seattle

make that multiplayer, with a sammie riding shotgun for when the feds pull you over.

a hacker to deal with the stuff you dont have time to deal with.

and a magican for all those unforseen events

hmm, nice way to get a group gatherd, they are hired to steal some wheels for a collector or something, 60's seconds style

Threading is the ability for a Technomancer to either boost the ratings of existing Complex Forms or create a new "temporary" Complex Form. Threading causes Fading, and takes concentration to sustain (-2 to all dice pools).

They have a firewall rating. Not sure if that means they are hackable. They can "shut off" their connection to the Matrix in emergencies, which implies that they can be hacked. Note that hacking into a commlink/technomancer is most likely useful because of the devices hooked into the PAN, and not necessarily for the act of hacking into the commlink/technomancer itself.

Yes. And they can have ECCM Complex Forms to overcome Jamming.

sure, a piece of lead will jam up his brain pretty good......

ooh, care to give say how electonic warfare has changed since SR3? Still a nightmare?

Well... there are many ways to use the Electronic Warfare skill (from Encrypting/Decrypting to detecting "hidden" nodes to intercepting communications). However, Jamming is a simple comparison of ratings. If your Jammer rating equals or exceeds the target's Signal + ECCM, then it's jammed.

Meh. Probably not. It will certainly make them cranky or perhaps frightened. Imagine suddenly losing your sight or hearing, and you get the idea... if it has happened before, it could be a nuisance (especially for socially well-grounded technomancers or veteran runners), but some technomancers may panic.

Summoning/Registering Sprites and Threading Complex Forms are the two tasks that come to mind that cause Fading. While technomancers can get a commlink and use programs on that commlink, they will need to get an entirely separate skill to do so, as the Technomancer and Hacker versions are separate skills. p233

Does this count for coding too? good technomancer coders don't make good holoLisp coders?

Technomancers have their own version of the following skills: Computer, Cybercombat, Data Search, Electronic Warfare, Hacking, Hardware, and Software. Thus, since they get the Software skill, they can code as a technomancer skill. I don't see any text that limits the Software skill, preventing a technomancer from intuitively coding a project similar to the way a Hacker would write a program. They just would not be able to use said programs to Hack with their Technomancer-version of skills, since the programs aren't Complex Forms and thus do not allow the Technomancer to exercise his/her own mind-machine interface.

There is 4.5 pages on vehicles in combat.

Highly Abstract. There are two types of Vehicle Combat: Tactical Combat and Chase Combat.

Tactical Combat takes place in the same turns as meatbody initiative, and is used in situations where vehicles are mixed in with flesh-and-blood characters, like a Drone versus the party or trying to avoid a Citymaster or a biker gang. Use Acceleration as Walking/Running rate of the vehicle (listed as a walk/run number). You can do maneuvers or Ram as the driver of a vehicle. Pretty much analogous to regular initiative and combat, except that in order to do any fancy movement or collisions, you have to make Vehicle tests.

Chase Combat takes place in Chase Turns that are 1 minute long, and represents extended engagements between vehicles only. Chase Turns are started with an Opposed Vehicle Test in which the Winner gets to choose one of three "Engagement Ranges", Close (leap from one vehicle to the next!), Short (medium range on ranged weapons), or Long (long range on ranged weapons). The winner (most hits on a vehicle test) gets the choose the Engagement Range against the losers. During the Chase Turn, one can do maneuvers (Swerving to cut someone off, forcing them to crash, trying to out run your pursuers, etc.) or fire weapons, or whatever.

In both cases, the driver of each vehicle needs to make at least one Complex Action each turn controlling their vehicle, or risk crashing next Turn (and the vehicle is uncontrolled next Turn, giving a -2 to all actions to the passengers).

I can so see Nelson, the Bully Hacker hacking into Nelson the Technomancer forcing him to hit himself while saying "Stop hitting yourself, Stop hitting yourself..."

Getting hit by AV missles seems like it will be tough on them. Check out the Combat thread, there are details there on how it works and numbers for it all. I didn't seem much in the way of examples though, and haven't tried to work them out yet.

Good news is that for cars and larger it looks like they are going to have many more boxes of damage to survive. For example a Citymaster will have 16 boxes in it's condition monitor.

Yeah! Now you´re talking!! No more The Punisher combat vans in my campain. Could it actually be possible to remove the Q branch cheesiness of most runner groups? I want street level hardcore criminals now, not super hero spies.

should not be to hard. just limit the number of buildpoints so that they cant afford that tricked out bison with cromed armor plates

Max starting money is 250,000 now. And while costs have dropped, vehicles is one area where all the costs I've seen posted are about the same or only a little cheaper. I suspect even if you max out your cash you wont have incredibly tricked out suer vans at the games start in 4e. Also the basic cyber for a rigger was never expensive so any reduced costs there are negligible. Maybe a rigger can have better rigger cyber at the start for the same cost.

Without the book(curses) I can't see what you can get, but it seems that the money allotted is fairly street level as is. Maybe limit it to 25 max build points if someone wants it even more street so a max start cash of 125,000. My concern with this is it would seem to hit riggers the hardest since there area of expertise is the area that hasn't gotten large price cuts. At 125,000 a sam can probably still fully trick themselves out, but the rigger would be very limited car wise. So it would be a normal sam and super street level rigger.

VCR-1 was pretty cheap, 60K i think for standard grade. But you were looking at dropping a huge amount of cash to get at least Alpha above VCR-1. VCRs were very essense hungry.

I never bothered to alpha it unless I had spare cash. I had a vcr, a datajack, a smartlink, and maybe I'd take some eyes or ears for the heck of it. So my essense sucked, I just didn't care. And besides it wasn't street sam essence suck. It may limit the other types of cyber I could add in but since I never planned o adding in other cyber it wasn't a problem for me.

So far, things are going smoothly in our group. We've only tackled a handful of situations so far, though.

You can actively subscribe to 2 X System Rating Drones, nodes, etc. at any time, if memory serves.

SR1 had 1 minute vehicle turns. The number of combat turns was reduced from the typical 20 per minute. Does SR4 do this too? If not, I don't think you'll ever see more than 1 chase turn, everything will be shot to shit before then.

One problem seems that if you get a -1 penalty for every 3 boxes of damage, a 12 or 13 box troll with 1 box left will have more severe penalties than the average 8 box pedestrian with 1 box left. Is this how it works?

Just a technical note, the minimum number of boxes you can have is 9, since it's 8+(stat/2, rounded up).

Anyways, to answer your question, yes. An average pedestrian will likely have 10 boxes (3 body), so at 9 boxes of damage, he's one below dead, and looking at -3's. A troll with a 13 body could have 12 boxes of damage and be one below dead, but suffer -4's. So yeah, the troll is hurting worse... But, by the same token... He's also taken enough damage to kill the lesser man.

While the human has dropped dead from damage, the Troll is still on his feet. WOozy, hurting, but he's still standing enough for a last ditch manuever or to possibly drag his sorry carcass out of there.

Bull

I presume you mean the touch link, and I presume that a Technomancer can use it (their version of a "secure link" IMO). As for the Mentor Spirit/Sprite question, I'm not sure I follow you. Can you elaborate what you mean a bit for the rest of us please?

Make the AI's technomancer totems!

I can see it:

Maegara gives you +1 to access opperations.
M16...does whatever it is he does
Deus gives you +1 for going crazy

But seriously it could be cool

That's what I was thinking. Scary of course. I think the Technomancers would likely be vulnerable to the AIs more than anyone else.

I was thinking about hacking PANs and how since everyone is connected all the time, then everyone has a sort of network ID, so tracking people should be theoretically easier (unless you are using SW/ forms to spoof your network ID/ address which sounds like a good idea). I guess more effort is going to need to be made to protect yourself from hackers in this new wireless world.