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[Resource] [Gear] Vending machine drone and small items for it and Stuffer Shack

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Namikaze

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« Reply #15 on: <01-12-15/1754:41> »
That is certainly true - but why does it need a Body and Armor rating?  Someone's afraid that someone will knock off a couple thousand nuyen of tattoo removers?  :)
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BRodda

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« Reply #16 on: <01-12-15/1817:58> »
That is certainly true - but why does it need a Body and Armor rating?  Someone's afraid that someone will knock off a couple thousand nuyen of tattoo removers?  :)

Short answer is yes (at least in my games). More for things like a few thousand in burner comlinks, but take a look at some of the vending machines at malls that sell thing like Proactive.

Long answer: Vending machines like this are primarily used in B and C class neighborhoods. Someplace where having the liability or risk of a person working at a store is to high. It also fits into my world view of SR should look. The corner store has been replace with automats; basically a room full of vending machines. No need to pay a person to work there, no risk to staff during a smash and grab and more secure against things like trolls who really want a candy bar. It adds to the feeling of alienation and corps maximizing profits.

So I achieve a few things with these machines:

1) I show that corporations don't trust people who don't like in good neighborhoods.
2) The common belief that trolls and orks are thieves and brutes who will just take what they want if the machines are not sturdy enough.
3) That there are desperate people out there who being able to shake down a vending machine could mean the difference between life and death. And businesses have to prevent them from doing just that or else it eats into profits.
4) Corporations see actual workers as a liability.
5) That customer service is practically nil.
6) What the corporations see as theirs they will violently defend.


Namikaze

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« Reply #17 on: <01-12-15/1908:09> »
Putting it in B and C neighborhoods makes a lot of sense.  I wouldn't see something like this lasting long in the Barrens, and it seems like the snobs would want something a little more personal.  And it does make a lot of sense to make it a drone so that you can use some of the vehicle mods, like the anti-theft tampering system.
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Emperors Grace

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« Reply #18 on: <01-13-15/1047:16> »
Why not just make them effectively unhackable by having them only switch wireless on as needed for burst transmission of status/location back to home at variable but prespecified (by home) times?

Aside from a couple of contigencies (turning wireless on if being physically damaged to upload a camera feed, etc...) I can't imagine the drone needing to be connected to the grid 24/7.  Especially since they'll need to return at regular intervals to have product replaced.

They need to be able to process wireless money transfers from the customer to the corporate bank account. You might be able to bust out the payments, but they need to be constant open to receiving communications from customers, and that is the bigger issue (getting hacked to give away free product).

Not needed for certified funds/corp scrip.

Low value transactions could still be batched, much as credit cards used to be taken as imprints and then batched later.  The small losses that would occur (especially in better areas) could be written off in the same way as "shrink" in modern retail (and possibly offset through capture/indenture of the crook based on the face ID).  It would far beat the cost of lost opportunity or a lost drone.

The issue is that there still needs to be a wireless connection between the comlink and the vending machine so the vending machine knows what account to take the money from. That input is where the hackers come in.

Ah, I'm apparently still stuck in 2nd Ed.  I was seeing a credstick being slotted when I stepped through it in my head.

You're right that it would be a commlink now.  Maybe a restricted near field reader would tighten things up?  Have to be within a few inches, signal on for only the length of read (few microseconds) once the camera detects the device in front of the reader, etc...  Maybe scream like a banshee (on & off line) if input other than a account # comes through?
« Last Edit: <01-13-15/1057:18> by Emperors Grace »

Rift_0f_Bladz

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« Reply #19 on: <01-14-15/2046:34> »
Soak pool of 7 won't stop a serious physical attack, but in B/C neighborhood I can see it being strong enough against all but dedicated melee attacker.
Quote- Mirikon on 7/30/2019 at 08:26:51
Agreed. This looks like a 'training wheels' edition, that you can use to introduce someone to the setting, and then shift over to something like 5E or 4E. Like how D&D 5E is best used as training wheels for D&D 3.X.

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LordGrizzle

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« Reply #20 on: <02-02-15/0002:27> »

And honestly I tried it as a level 1 device originally. Gameplay and rough estimations showed that a LV1 device would lose about 5000 nuyen in product a year due to hackers (if not more). Some kid from the Barrens could just show up with a bottom of the line deck and empty the machine out in about 2 min.


just saying you still Need a 50k deck and some skill which is actually harder than most real life vending machines. At School we quickly found the administrative Access codes for the veding machines quite easily, totally not abusing the free Access to Soda and coffee...

Aryeonos

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« Reply #21 on: <04-10-15/0913:41> »
And this is where my suspension of disbeliefe ends, requiring a skateboard sized crey supercomputer to hack a vending machine. Of course everyone and their grandma (probably their grandma more seeing as she was born before all this corp drek was proliferated) is going to be hacking vending machines. It doesnt take much more than a couple scripts and a cheap computer to do some damage today just with wifi and bluetooth. Why would it take that much more in the future? Its not like they`re dumb to these attacks but the corps know to balance security costs against shrink costs till they reach an acceptable average. Now the money gained with a semi intelligant vending machine that can raise and lower prices and generate its own advertising is gonna make mountains of money against shrink and hugely reduced opperating costs, including advertising which is a huge part of it. I would for sure add in the ability for it to be remote controlled/rigged or just let it move of its own accord to maximize proffits on location
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Hooska

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« Reply #22 on: <04-13-15/1830:13> »
I think it sounds like a pretty spiffy machine ^w^

Kind of new to the game personally, so I can't say much on how appropriate the stats, then again, it seems you have plenty of feedback on those already :P

I love the flavor of the machine itself and the items in it, as well as the idea of well fleshed out flavor pieces like this. My players are huge fans of all different sorts of small gadgets and toys, so I'm heavily tempted to wheel in a few of these for the next session.

Aryeonos

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« Reply #23 on: <04-15-15/0329:17> »
No kidding, its these things that get taken for granted that I love getting fleshed out.
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LordGrizzle

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« Reply #24 on: <04-16-15/0603:26> »
And this is where my suspension of disbeliefe ends, requiring a skateboard sized crey supercomputer to hack a vending machine. Of course everyone and their grandma (probably their grandma more seeing as she was born before all this corp drek was proliferated) is going to be hacking vending machines. It doesnt take much more than a couple scripts and a cheap computer to do some damage today just with wifi and bluetooth. Why would it take that much more in the future?

Well you are forgetting. Security is the reason WHY they changed the matrix from 4E to 5E. You have to imagine it like this: Yes it takes only a couple of scripts BUT! a commlink is nowadays an extremely restrictive device. It only allows certified code that probably was written with the tools of, and certified for a lot of money by a corp to be run. (Compare: Real life app-stores run by Apple and Microsoft) You can write that script on a scrap of paper but you don't have a singular possible way of running that code. In addition the grid itself (and all traffic HAS to be transmitted via the grid) checks all data streams from and to your device so you also couldn't download malicious data or use it.

In the worst case if you really were able to run some malicious code through a backdoor, since commlinks don't sleaze they would immediately get an overwatch score of infinity and get converged so hard, their commlink would literally light on fire.
Because that's what the grid overwatch division is for.
And, honestly that's not such an unrealistic picture. It's one of a few possible scenarios of how the internet could develop. If the big three of computing right now move everything to their clouds there also would be very little left of a free internet and anybody who wants decent content would have to buy into and subsequently be controlled through their technology.

So you see, that is the reason why you need a deck because the grid on it's own is so secure that you need a highly specialised workstation to run any self-devised code or malicious actions.

At least that is my picture. YMMV but just don't forget, the matrix is not the internet. Not now anymore. It was, but it isn't anymore...

Aryeonos

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« Reply #25 on: <04-16-15/0836:33> »
Yyyy-no. The only way your device is kept so safe by Gewgle and Appre is if you get your apps from their app stores. Now if you flip the fuckitall switch and say, yes I would like to run stuff I download from my internet browser just like a regular computer all bets are off. They vet the apps that go to their store before letting it be DLed by the general public, they can't police the internet.

And originally the only difference between a deck and a commlink or any other device is the Evasion and Masking "chips" in a deck. A deck didn't leave a trail, it's not that it was invisible, or somehow jumped over GOD's jurisdiction it's that it made it hard to pin you down or track you. Still could be done especially if you were careless.

Latter editions moved away from 1995 and said, well computing has evolved to the point where it's really the software that does all the work these days not the chipset per se, some are faster than others sure or can juggle more programs but they're all roughly on the same page. Needing to go back to unbelievably expensive devices was a big screwup from 4th to 5th imo, it was just a heavy handed game balance step to counter so many complaints with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. Going back to decks was just to appease people who wanted the nostalgia and old school shadowrun theme, instead of y'know hard scifi technology moves forward and gets smaller. And yes it gets less expensive as time goes on and the downside is everyone can get their paws on it and it does become less secure because we can't protect against everyone at once, just 99% of the lay people, but apparently that's just not enough.

Anyway, that's my 3 hard payments of 29.99 Nuyen, and why I stick to 4th ed rules but still keep up with the story, some things are just too stupid in my eyes to get past.
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Pixie

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« Reply #26 on: <04-16-15/1122:01> »
Aryeonos,

If you want to ignore the in-game reasoning that's been given to explain why things are how they are, then go ahead.  But you contradict yourself in at least one point in your rationale.  The key thing here is that you claim that the changes to the Matrix are going backward, and that they were just appeasing people rather than moving forward in the tradition of scifi technology.  The fact that the new Matrix is so advanced that we can't explain it using modern technological terms is proof that it is now the ultimate in science fiction.  It is, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "...a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic."  In other words, the new Matrix rules now fall squarely into proper science fiction development.  If you can't explain it, but it still works in that world, then it can be technology.

To put it another way - look at Star Trek.  This is the great metric for measuring how science fiction that seems completely fantastic can become reality.  We've developed the basics of cloaking technology, communication devices that in the 60s were pure fantasy, and quantum mechanics has had the greatest achievements since its inception in the 1900.  All of these things seemed like magic at the time, because they were completely absurd and no one could figure out how they worked.  Many people took the concepts of Star Trek and said that they're so fantastical as to negate the whole show.  It only lasted a few seasons, after all and stayed out of film and television for decades.  And yet, now we use some of the technology of Star Trek in our daily lives.

The idea of the internet as it is now was a complete fantasy in the early 1980s, when the cyberpunk genre was first birthed onto the world.  Many cyberpunk authors presumed (correctly) that the fledgling internet (a DARPA project at the time) would supplant the widely-used BBSes and Usenet with images, sounds, and eventually full-sensory experiences.  While you can still find many of the old text-based items out there, a lot of what those early cyberpunk authors believed would happen has happened.  What seemed like pure fantasy in the 1980s has become reality now, only about 30 years later.

So your argument that the future version of the Matrix could never work, etc. is based entirely on what we know now.  But Shadowrun, in addition to having an alternate timeline, is also 61 years in the future.  If things that seem like complete fantasy can become reality in 30 years, why would your understanding of the internet and computers be valid in the world of Shadowrun?

I get what you're saying about the size component of things.  Presumably Moore's Law still holds sway in the Shadowrun universe.  The thing is that the world has been "reset" a few times.  And the corporations are trying to slow down progress because they can't keep up.  Those two components justify all the changes that have taken place.  Additionally, they fit the Shadowrun theme of the corporations trying to put the little guy under their heel.  The technology of Matrix 2.0 was amazing, but the corporations realized too late that it put a lot of power into the hands of the people.  They don't want that, ever.  So they decided to put their heads together and (in record time) they unleashed Matrix 2.1, which took all the power away from the little people and gave it back to the corporations, where it belongs.

To put it into the context of the Shadowrun universe: we were so close to freeing ourselves of the corporate shackles, but they caught onto us and now we're back where we started.  Those bastards.

Aryeonos

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« Reply #27 on: <04-16-15/1932:32> »
Well, not really though. In unwired it makes it very clear that piracy is very difficult, with warez nodes constantly having to move as the Grid Overwatch Douchebags Division roots them out. Hell it took a test, and money to get pirate software, that took hacking skills to find. I had to spend the better part of my down time every month either patching or looking for up to date code for my software. It wasn't easy or simple, most shadow nodes had to be well hidden or on the move, or such a tool of the corps that they left it there, shadowsea being one of those tools.

The amount of infrastructure needed to stop, scan, test, identify and halt malicious code for every single packet transfer is just ridiculous. The whole point of hacking and cracking is that you're tricking the machine, or the human element, or both. What you send out looks innocuous to the machine, and makes it do something within its operating protocol and it goes "Okay, that seems fine, I'll just do that little thing, I'll run a troubleshoot diagnostic on that part or move that actuator or run this computation." Thing is, you're making it do those little things, maybe a thousand times, or in a sequence that makes it do what you want. Spit out a credstick or a bag of gummy bears, turn off some of its censors so that an authorized vendor can restock the product which by your spoofed ID you very much look like to the machine. There was no shortage of clever you had to be to make things happen, and you were still a minority in the population.

I could totally accept that corporate security started tightening up, like allot, started instituting more stringent protocols whatever. But even previously, most offices were all wired, wifi blocking paint, and polorized windows. If you wanted anything important you still had to go inside or tap a land line near the premise, you had to physically be there and either you were clever to bluff your way in, sneak in, or take a risk and shoot your way in. Important data on premise was in proprietary format, so you had to be running the same OS as the company working on it (Why you just didn't need their builder program I don't know, but that's the way they wrote it.) to even view the file. Let alone if you want to sell it, you have to move it off as certified data, which erases the original copy, and find someone who can appreciate the value of it and find a buyer.

I understand they want to tighten things up for gameplay or whatever, but the general path they've take has been on the side of hard scifi, not explaining away things as super science. They do explain away fantastical things, but using the logical progression of technology. Like ASIST, which was something of a rarity in 2nd ed is now everywhere, that's given the matrix a 3rd dimension of travel, you can be in it, think it and make it. That's already fantastical, and the corps with their infinite funds use it to no end to out think the general population and make some fantastic things to sell, and some real wiz brutal things to protect their profits. But today, we already have ways of using mental impulses to control things, I'm reminded of an experiment where they had a monkey bound up, hooked to basically a trode net, controling a robotic arm to give it bananas. You can see where that'd go, you can see the influence -both ways really. It's not fantasy, it's science fiction, you take what's loosly probable today and see where you can imagine going with it.

Not only that, but think of it from a setting standpoint. You have greezy little gutter urchins scraping to get by out there, toughest one gets to eat. Then you have the little one not too tough by street urchin standards, but he's smart and he's got a 2 bit link he lifted, and he's helping his little friends get by by hacking a vending machine or two, or a maglock to let them get some place secure to sleep for the night, whatever. There are mountains of people struggling to get by and some of them are clever enough to exploit the system, not because they have the budget for some 50'0000 nuyen skateboard but because they're clever. That to me is way more gritty cyberpunk than: The system is so wiz powerful that your machine literally lights on fire, and you spend another 25'000 nuyen fixing it. Yeah, there goes street level play.

The gibson is so powerful that your machine explodes, and on sight security tries to melt your little decker buddies brains, sure. 7-11's slushy machine is connected to the omnipotent grid and sets your head on fire when you try and get a free slushy, that's just ridiculous. Low level machines should have some cheap tricks, measured in nuyen not brilliance, to fend off hackers, be tightened up, not wireless whatever. But steamrollering the whole setting was just another unnecessary thing in 5th ed. Looking at it now, my Commlink from my last character was 28'160 Nuyen, that's hacked programs and all, way out of the reach of most people who don't live and die by it in the shadows. Any way, I'd be happy to debate this at length in another thread about the matrix, but not here - we aren't going to see eye to eye, but I do enjoy a healthy debate and I always learn a thing or 6 in the process.
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LordGrizzle

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« Reply #28 on: <04-16-15/2211:07> »
Any way, I'd be happy to debate this at length in another thread about the matrix, but not here - we aren't going to see eye to eye, but I do enjoy a healthy debate and I always learn a thing or 6 in the process.

I propose we take this off-topic discussion to it's own thread:
http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=20552.0

Shadowjack

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« Reply #29 on: <07-18-15/2257:03> »
Fun idea. I love to see stuff like this!
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