[Mustakrakish]

Hello everyone. One of my players is playing a decker and everything is really great. He took the perfect timing quality, and he's using it to reconfig his deck a lot. Which is cool by me. Thing is, that he came to me after the last session and told me that every turn reconfiguring his deck, changing softwares and all is taking so much time that it's not fun for him.
It is quite true. While the rest of the group are doing their turns quickly, when it's his turn, we always stop and talk about what is the current deck configuration, what softwares he is switching, and after he is doing his actions because of the perfect timing he will switch again to something more defensive and once again, we return to talk about this and that, and what are the changes and all that.

How do you guys handle it? do you know any alternative rules maybe? we would really like to make it a little bit faster.

[fseperent]

I would suggest your player write out configuration/software combinations on pieces of paper and indicate which combination is the current setup.

[Mustakrakish]

Thats a great idea!

[Jack_Spade]

Yeah, this trick works best if you use the configurator program to set both programs and attributes. That way you can just say: I switch to defense, offense or stealth confic and be done.

[Marcus]

Don't allow time to stop and talk. All rapid configurations should be pre-calculated and written out ahead of time. Perfect time is like the right note at the right beat. It should flow naturally, and if doesn't then it shouldn't work. Decking well is about master of a plan, and when that plan fails know exactly what your going to do ahead of time. That doesn't have to super stupid complex. it can and actually should be pretty simple. I sneak in, sleaze to the max, I hack on the Fly X, if/when i get caught, I trigger Y quality and shedding any marks and log the heck the out.

As a player gets more comfortable those plans will get more complex, and that exactly what should happen.

[Hobbes]

Don't allow time to stop and talk. All rapid configurations should be pre-calculated and written out ahead of time. Perfect time is like the right note at the right beat. It should flow naturally, and if doesn't then it shouldn't work. Decking well is about master of a plan, and when that plan fails know exactly what your going to do ahead of time. That doesn't have to super stupid complex. it can and actually should be pretty simple. I sneak in, sleaze to the max, I hack on the Fly X, if/when i get caught, I trigger Y quality and shedding any marks and log the heck the out.

As a player gets more comfortable those plans will get more complex, and that exactly what should happen.

As a note to GMs, if your player isn't doing some version of this, it's partly your responsibility to get on the same webpage as your Hacker Player.  It's part Analysis Paralysis and part not being comfortable enough with the rules. 

Hack on the Fly, Edit File (or Editor CF), Control Device (or Puppeteer CF).  Those three actions should cover almost every Hack your players attempt.  All three are resisted by Intuition + Firewall.  Control Device if the Decker is trying to make something happen in Meat Space.  Edit File for almost anything that is information based. 

While there are all kinds of niche Matrix actions for specific things, most of them use the same Dice Pool as either Edit File or Control Device.  So ask your Player "What do you want to do" and if you don't know if there is a Matrix Action that covers it, fake it with Edit File or Control Device.  Odds are you're going to be using the same dice pools.

And this breaks the PCs job down to one of five configurations.  Defense, Hack on the Fly, Edit File, Control Device and Legwork.  Write down those configurations, you're set. 

[Finstersang]

If you have enough time and a laptop or tablet at hand, you can also make a sortable table with all the Matrix Actions, with each one row for: Time needed, Marks, Other Requirements, Limit, Skill used, Attribute used, Defense roll/threshold, a very brief description of what the action does, and a page reference. Or better, let the player make it. Just compiling this list helps a lot to get a better grasp of your options.

Protip: Use separate columns for alternative uses/forms of certain actions and for "hidden" actions, like tests to restore functionalities etc. If you use houserules (tweaks to existing actions or made up additional actions), highlight them.

[Mustakrakish]

We are doing quite fine with the matrix actions. Its the configuration itself that takes time. He can change twice because he's got two free actions. And he's got more thing on his deck that allows him to configure even more as far as I remember. So each turn he is changing to something, getting software that compliments it, doing his actions than changing to something more defensive.

Now, in combat, it's kinda okay, because it's mostly offense and defense. The problem the player had is when he is not in combat for every action that he is doing in the matrix he wants to make sure that he got the best config. So it was like "I wanna do this so I change to this-this and this. Now I wanna do this so I will change to this and that". And so on and so forth.

Now from one point of view, I can just tell him that he is doing each action with the most optimized config, but what if someone caught him by surprise? then not having the right config is important.

[Hobbes]

Now from one point of view, I can just tell him that he is doing each action with the most optimized config, but what if someone caught him by surprise? then not having the right config is important.

If you're "in combat" wouldn't he be in the defensive configuration when it's not his action?  And out of combat he's in "Legwork" configuration, which is basically the Defensive configuration plus Browse.  And if you're stopping the game in the middle of legwork to have some Wandering Matrix Monster solo combat with your decker you're playing a very different game than me.

If you haven't rolled for initiative don't fiddle with action economies like Free Actions and whatnot.  What the Firewall stat is during the 1/2 second between a Hack on the Fly and an Edit File action doesn't matter.  Roll the Hack on the Fly, get the Marks, move on to the next Matrix Action.