[ArkangelWinter]

Screw CrashCart, they may be largely running Ares Macrotech

[DaveDaveDaave]

Yup there is that plot. Surely tho if that were true the fact that sugar consumption at Ares head office had gone up by 500% and office efficiency by some 2000% would give the game away? Hmmmn compared to some managers I have worked with body stealing insects from the deep metaplanes don`t seem tooo bad. Let me be the first to welcome our new Insect Overlords.

[lurkeroutthere]

I, for one, would love to update the old SOTA rules and bring 'em forward sometime.

The SOTA rules were straight terrible, and you are a terrible person for wanting to make them come back. /Kidding

"Hey guys you know what would be great? Lets add more costs, inconveniences, and book keeping to playing mundane characters, that will really increase the fun factor."

[Wakshaani]

Heh.

But who said it'd only effect mundane? There've been quite a few magical advances as well, from the Unified Magic Theory to the death of Channeling to new spell formulae... lots of room there.

Mostly, it's a GM tool.

"Here's a chart that you can roll on to set up, say, 12 months worth of SOTA. Once you know what'll be hot and what won't, you'll have a head start on adventure seeds."

Obviously, they'd be optional rules. Nobody wants to have, say, a Samurai Tax. But there should also be a mechanic around for those who want to portray the constant push for upgrades.

If nothing else, you have to make your deckers cry. (Aw man, I just *bought* that new I/O speed, and now there's a new FASTER type rolling out in a month? Awww...)

[lurkeroutthere]

Which is just a Decker Tax when they already could be playing the Technomancer Master Race.

Maybe my biases are showing but i hated SOTA with a passion.

[JustADude]

I, for one, would love to update the old SOTA rules and bring 'em forward sometime.

The SOTA rules were straight terrible, and you are a terrible person for wanting to make them come back. /Kidding

"Hey guys you know what would be great? Lets add more costs, inconveniences, and booking to playing mundane characters, that will really increase the fun factor."

Which is just a Decker Tax when they already could be playing the Technomancer Master Race.

Maybe my biases are showing but i hated SOTA with a passion.

I'm right along with this. I don't even use the Program Degradation rules when I run a game: The way I figure it, most programs wouldn't really have enough of a change in core functionality to affect anything on the time-scale of a typical game unless you're doing a epically long campaign.

Take anything to do with Drones as an example. Yeah, there may be bug fixes and compatibility updates for new systems, etc, etc, etc, but if you haven't updated your hardware configuration for that drone in any way, then there's no reason for your Pilot 6 or Targeting 4 programs to go from epic to trash in a handful of months.

As for Exploit and Spoof, the two that most fit the justification of things ending up "out of date," since there are people actively attempting to counteract them... I consider them to be a "toolbox" of flexible utilities that you use to do your job as a hacker, not a big list of plug'n'play script-kiddie exploits. It's your Hacking skill is what lets you use those tools properly, and staying abreast of Security Protocols is apparently automatic, like the Street Sam keeping in practice with their guns.

[Mirikon]

When I ran a game, if the hacker paid full price for the program, then I assumed they were getting patches from somewhere automatically, but if they paid the 'hacked' price (which is what, 10% of regular, right?) then it would degrade, because obviously they aren't getting patches unless they do it themselves.

[JustADude]

When I ran a game, if the hacker paid full price for the program, then I assumed they were getting patches from somewhere automatically, but if they paid the 'hacked' price (which is what, 10% of regular, right?) then it would degrade, because obviously they aren't getting patches unless they do it themselves.

Reasonable. But did you enforce the Registration and Copy Protection if they picked it up from a digital Shadow Mall type place? What about if they bought them Legit Retail and then cracked them?

[Mirikon]

Yes and yes. Because even hackers selling their warez don't want all their toys going out free to the entire 'trix. And if you crack the protection, then you're not getting updates any more, so it would degrade.

My reason for either ruling is simple enough. Sure, you bought the original at full price. But let's say we're talking about an autosoft for a drone. Rigger buys one Defense 4 autosoft, cracks it, then copies it to his fleet of 4-6 drones. Suddenly, his entire force has gotten much more powerful, for relatively low cost. And if it goes that way for autosofts, it goes that way for all programs.

[lurkeroutthere]

Software Piracy is just one of those things I sacrifice on the altar of gameplay. I do like being able to get software "on the fly" but other then that Unwired just made a hot mess of the software rules.

[farothel]

There's an easy way around those software degradation rules.  Unwired p118: Patching is a logic+software extended test (1 week interval) with as treshold the difference between the degraded rating and the regular rating.  So if you do it every month, this is 1.  Every hacker should be able to buy this one hit (in fact even a starting hacker should be able to buy 2 hits on that test).  Now you take a warez group contact (which most hackers will do anyways) of a number of people equal to the number of programs you have (I don't know exactly how many there are).  Every person in that group (including the hacker PC) takes one program and patches it every month, distributing the patches over the network.  That way everybody has 1 week of work per month, which you normally can do during downtimes between runs and everybody keeps all programs up to date.

[JustADude]

Oooh, very nice work-around on that one Farothel. One more reason to have a Warez-Group on your Speed Dial; especially once you start writing/buying Rating 10 programs.