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From:	caseless@*****.com (Stephen Allee)
Subject:	Deckers vs Riggers/CCSS in SR3 (WAS RE: A few answers regarding
Date:	Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:43:47 -0800

Message no. 1 Integrated building security requires the ability to use drones and
remote sensor systems. If a team actually entes a facility, drones
have to be dispatched to combat the threat. That's where the riggers
come in. It seems better to lose a little ability and responsiveness
in things like swipe card management than it does to lose the ability
to effectively manage multiple drones. Besides, riggers have always
been able to use remote sensors effectively. That was never a core
function of a decker. 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. Try that with a Decker. Two hours later, the
other players have gone home, and there is still no real resolution.

From:	zebulingod@*******.net (Zebulin)
Subject:	Deckers vs Riggers/CCSS in SR3 (WAS RE: A few answers regarding
Date:	Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:08:27 -0800

Message no. 2 Stephen Allee wrote:

>
> Integrated building security requires the ability to use
> drones and remote sensor systems. If a team actually entes a
> facility, drones have to be dispatched to combat the threat.
> That's where the riggers come in. It seems better to lose a
> little ability and responsiveness in things like swipe card
> management than it does to lose the ability to effectively
> manage multiple drones. Besides, riggers have always been
> able to use remote sensors effectively. That was never a core
> function of a decker. 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?".
>

See, you said "integrated" and then you didn't address the other half of the
equation. How is this system integrated? You didn't touch on the computer or
astral security aspects. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather have the rigger
concentrating on his drones than the whole building. I mean, go ahead and
jump into your Steel Lynx and take out that guy in corridor A. While you're
distracted, someone's just snuck into Lab C8 and stolen something that's
gonna lose you your job, if not your life.

I don't think many executives would agree with your "it's better to lose
some security, as long as we still have our guns!" mentality. Bottom line is
that you should have a system in place where the person in charge of
security can easily tell what's going on and where. As I understand it
(using an example from today) I can write a computer program to tell me if
certain conditions are met (ie, a door opens without a keycard) but riggers
don't work that way. They *feel* and they *react*. (That's my own
interpretation of the rigger "experience", YMMV.) So a computer can flag an
action, and the decker can react. If the reaction is advising the rigger to
send his drones to zone 3, that's even better. It frees up the rigger to do
his job, which isn't sitting around and wondering if Bobby will forget his
swipe card today or not, but catching Joe Shadowrunner in a crossfire
between two Sentry II units.

As for using remote sensors, you're right, it isn't something deckers do.
But you're referring to sensors in the mindset of targeting and shooting,
rather than a vidcam and pattern recognition.

As for your "question" I think it's obvious. Riggers shouldn't be in total
control of a building security system. It's too broad, and they're too
specialised.

> 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. Try that with a
> Decker. Two hours later, the other players have gone home,
> and there is still no real resolution.
>

I think you need to reread both rulesets again. Both can be done in less
than three *minutes* of gametime due to the way Shadowrun abstracts a lot of
things. And I think you need to pay more attention to the Rigger
Encrypt/Decrypt modules, as they are not some sort of automagical panacea
which can just hand you the keys to the castle, so to speak.

Zebulin

>From The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that
such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the
counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

From:	zebulingod@*******.net (Zebulin)
Subject:	Deckers vs Riggers/CCSS in SR3 (WAS RE: A few answers regarding
Date:	Tue, 29 Mar 2005 18:15:32 -0800

Message no. 3 Timothy J. Lanza
>
> 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.
>

I like this idea, actually.

>
> 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.
>

My biggest beef right there. A building should require a whole slew of
"drone slots" due to how many things the rigger is supposedly keeping an eye
on. Either that, or take external drones away.

>
> 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.
>

Which actually argues for a team of decker/rigger.

> 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.
>

LMAO

> >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?".
> >

How about cost? What does CCSS cost with all those gun-toting drones of
yours? Now, compare that to the cost of the decker. (Either way, the
building is going to get wired with computer equipment outside of the cost
of CCSS, so the building wiring isn't going to be a factor.) I'm thinking
your rigger is gonna cost a helluva lot more. And what do corporations base
their final decisions on most of the time? Their bottom line.

>
> 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".
>

Yep. And it can work, once the players/GM understand the
Matrix/Rigger/Combat/Magic/General Game Mechanics rules like they should.

Zebulin

>From The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

15. I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that
such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the
counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Deckers vs Riggers/CCSS in SR3 (WAS RE: A few answers regarding
Date:	Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:23:25 +0200

Message no. 4 According to Stephen Allee, on 29-03-2005 22:43 the word on the street
was...

> 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. Try that with a Decker. Two hours later, the
> other players have gone home, and there is still no real resolution.

That has little to do with the in-world reasons, though. It's a
difference in the game systems to resolve the break-in that means one is
quicker than the other.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Kemen (keemde, h gekeemd): het spelen van computerspelletjes
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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