| From: | tjlanza@************.com (Timothy J. Lanza) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Deckers vs Riggers/CCSS in SR3 (WAS RE: A few answers |
| Date: | Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:58:59 -0500 |
>Integrated building security requires the ability to use drones and
>remote sensor systems.
Fine, give the rigger's drone network access to the building's sensors in
the same way a rigger gets access to a SnakeEyes user, read-only.
>If a team actually entes a facility, drones have to be dispatched to
>combat the threat.
And if the rigger screws up, he dispatches his drones to shoot the Poland
Springs guy. With a computer in control, it knows that the Poland Springs
guy is supposed to be there. A rigger can forget, a human might not.
>That's where the riggers come in. It seems better to lose a little ability
>and responsiveness in things like swipe card management
Lose the ability all together. The human mind is very good at pattern
recognition. It's not so good at data lookups.
> than it does to lose the ability to effectively manage multiple drones.
A CCSS does not enable a rigger to handle any more drones. In fact, the
building should count as one (if not more than one) drone against the
rigger's remote deck limit.
>Besides, riggers have always been able to use remote sensors effectively.
>That was never a core function of a decker.
It's still not a function of the decker. It's a function of the building's
security host. A man sitting at a terminal watching a screen, a man jacked
into a simdeck watching a VR simulation of the building, or a decker jacked
into the host directly monitoring security warnings on the host is far more
effective than the rigger. He quite simply pipes up over the radio,
"Security Breach, Level Five, Lab Ten." The computer has already done the
locating for him.
The rigger has to go, "Jeeze... my thirty-seventh asshole is tingling.
Somebody must have gone through a door they weren't supposed to... Hmm...
Sphincter Number Thirty Seven... Which door is that? Oh, right... That's a
lab. Which lab was it again? Right, level five." Only /then/, after he's
figured it out, does he get on the radio and say what's going on. Too much
thinking, not enough acting.
>I guess my question isn't "Why did they hand over facility security to the
>riggers?", but rather "Why did it take so long for them to hand over the
>security systems to riggers?".
>
>That, and two riggers can fight for control of a building's CCSS
>system in less than three minutes once the (properly equipped) rigger
>finds an access point.
How do you figure? The security rigger isn't going to get kicked out and
just sit there. He's going to come back and try to retake his system. If he
doesn't, he's out of a job.
>Try that with a Decker. Two hours later, the other players have gone home,
>and there is still no real resolution.
The matrix run should be in support of the players. You don't have to stop
action for the rest of the crew while you run the decker. As a GM, you
should be able to handle switching back and forth between multiple scenes.
This is /especially/ true when one of them is directly supporting the
other, aka a "meanwhile".
--
Timothy J. Lanza
"When we can't dream any longer, we die." - Emma Goldman
