I've recently become involved with a group that's running out of the 4e/20th corerule book. We have five people involved, four of which have created characters that are heavily combat centered and have little to no experience with the Matrix, baring recreational use. (Two that are essentially combat mages, a street samurai, and a weapons specialist) I took it upon myself to create a hacker/rigger, and upon urging from our GM, also spent BP points to raise my charisma enough to effectively act as the group's face.
I know, I know. Spreading my character out between three "roles" isn't the smartest idea, but I've handled it fairly well, despite having to use the maximum 200 BPs towards her attributes. The only other downside is that I had to sink in A TON of nuyen into equipment to properly outfit her for both rigging and cybercombat, leaving me little wiggle room to play around with skills.
Now, rigging was something that I got a handle on fairly quickly. Figuring out drones and autosofts was fairly simple and straight forward. My problem comes in with using the Matrix and cybercombat. (As has been the problem with 4e, I've seen) Now, I've been through The Wireless World section and all of Unwired at least three times and am still running myself around in circles.
I need someone to explain a few things to me. My elf is running a Transys Avalon commlink with a Novatech Navi OS. (Response 4, System 4, Signal 4, Firewall 3) What exactly do I need to do/spend to upgrade these stats? Because let's face it, a Firewall of 3 is meh. I know the Signal Rating is equal to that of the System rating.
I picked up the Pro User Common Use Program Suite (p.232) which gives me the Analyse 4, Browse 4, Command 2, and Edit 4 programs. Looking through the rest of the book though, it lists off other programs that can be used for Matrix actions like Exploit, Track, and Spoof. Do I need to create these with the Software skill, or are those included under the overarching Matrix programs you can buy during character creation? (p.232) Because if that's the case, I have Common Use 6, Hacking 5, Agents/IC/Pilot 4, System 5, Firewall 6. (Though I'm fairly certain that these pertain to something else.)
As you can see, I have a basic understanding, but not one that's well enough to play the character properly. If someone could give me a quick overview of what the frick I'm supposed to be doing with all of these programs, it would be greatly appreciated.