From: | Gurth <gurth@******.NL> |
---|---|
Subject: | On The Fly programs (was Re: Wartime) |
Date: | Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:28:23 +0100 |
> > Hacking on the Fly...damn, if I thought about it long enough...was that
> stuff
> > in VRI???
>
> Does anyone have them?
Of course. Anyone with SRI and/or VR 1.0 has those rules. Since you've
been asking about them so much, here's what VR 1.0 has to say. (Copyright
FASA Corp 1991, I only typed it in here because VR 1.0 is out of print,
etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah.)
-----
PROGRAMMING ON THE FLY
It is possible for a decker to improvise a program not currently in his
deck's active memory. It is even possible when he does not have that
particular program. To create a one-shot, immediate-use version of a
program, the decker expends dice from his Hacking Pool. The number of
Hacking dice expended must be equal to the desired rating of the program,
/squared/. A Rating 1 program, for example, would require one die from the
Hacking Pool (1^1 = 1), a Rating 2 program would require four dice (2^2 =
4), a Rating 3 program, nine dice (3^3 = 9), and so on.
If the program is not used /immediately/, it is lost when the Hacking Pool
next refreshes. The decker may, however, continue to expend the required
number of dice to keep the program active every new action.
Degradable utilities can only be improvised once during a single Matrix
run.
One-shot, on-use, "on the fly" programs are generally referred to as
flygrams. Flygrams do take up active memory equal to one-half the size of
the appropriate program of that type and rating.
Hacking Pool dice cannot be used to augment flygrams except in the manner
described above.
-----
That's all there is in VR 1.0, and I think a few observations are in
order:
A) Tom Dowd is obviouslty pretty bad at maths. 3^3 is not the same as 3
squared, and it certainly doesn't equal 9 :)
B) It makes very little sense to be able to write a one-shot program in
under 3 seconds, while writing the same thing for regular use takes twice
the program's size in days (i.e. weeks or months).
C) The VR 1.0 Hacking Pool was much bigger than the VR 2.0 Hacking Pool,
so if you do want to use the above rules, I suggest dropping the rule that
the number of dice expended must equal the square of the program's rating;
using the base rating instead should drain the Hacking Pool enough, IMHO.
D) Why can you only write one copy of a degradable utility? This looks
like a game-overbalance issue to me.
--
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