This is a little off topic, but I feel like, while a potent deterent, the way demiGODs and GODs work is a little boring? Does anyone else think it would be more fun to actually stat out corporate demiGODs, at least, and let PCs throw down with them when they're feeling gutsy?
So I'd like to think out loud and get some opinions from other perspectives than my own. Generally: How does IC know what Personae to attack after it's been deployed by the Host?
So from a meta standpoint, "obviously" the IC attacks the Player's hacker because the hacker is the protagonist and the IC is the cyber antagonist and opposing protagonists is what antagonists do. GM omniscience is enough to direct the IC "NPC" to attack the PC Hacker from the meta perspective.
But in universe, it seems there are some holes in the lore and/or rules. Something besides GM omniscience has to guide the IC to attack the hacker. Patrol IC is described as being the first line of cyber defenses.. it performs matrix perception actions to find trouble. But that's the rub... you can't even get into a host without having a mark on the host, which makes you for security purposes a legitimate user. And that's a comment from the Patrol IC's own description! So obviously there's no reason the Patrol IC to be looking at the hacker's persona. It must be looking at marks on the host, which it can theoretically determine somehow as fraudulent. There's really no guidance "fluff" or a hard mechanic for determining when the Patrol IC "sees" the Hacker's shenanigans. It pretty much seems to boil down to the GM's whim. "Yeah, this is bogging down. You've been in the host long enough; alarm goes off because the Patrol IC finally sussed you out. Here comes more IC..."
Now if the hacker fails a sleaze action and a Host mark gets put on his persona, it seems fairly obvious that the system should go on alert and start deploying further IC. A failed attack action seems it should probably work the same way, although the host and its IC don't have the benefit of having a mark on the hacker's persona.
So let's say a failed attack action is the case. Or a hacker having successfully erased the Host's mark after a failed sleaze action. Without a Host's mark on the persona, how does the IC know who to attack in an in-universe sense? Again the hacker appears to the Host to be a legit user, as his mark is still on the host. It seems clear that the IC is willing to attack "legitimate" users, as it's mentioned in the Lore more than once. Can a Host "remember" or designate a persona as a known/suspected problem icon, even if there is no mark upon it, and that's the in-universe basis for GM omniscience guiding the IC to target the PC hacker?
If you're not running silent, I suppose if the GM wants to preserve some agency for the player rather than just arbitrarily telling the player "Patrol IC sounds the alarm" after X turns, the GM could/should tell the player that the Patrol IC's attention is coming over your way and you're about to be scanned again at the end of this round/beginning of next round. That gives the player the opportunity to perform an innocuous matrix action inside the host so as to remain looking innocuous, or to decide whether pressures in the physical world are more important than preserving the quiet inside the matrix world and to keep hacking despite the IC's impending scan.
it performs matrix perception actions to find trouble.
how does the IC know who to attack in an in-universe sense?
First, a Patrol IC goes around scanning basically everything. On devices it would probably check for...
I don't think IC can interact with Device Icons out on the grid, even if they happen to be slaved to the Host...
If the IC can't interact with those device icons
However... It's possible I'm wrong, and that it's possible for a device to be slaved to a host without the icon being in the host. If someone can show me where the book says I'm right or wrong (before I find it), then I appreciate it. If not, then I'll bring this to the errata team.
p. 233 GRIDS. Grids on a Run
All the devices and people in a Shiawase facility will be using the Shiawase global grid
(All devices will be on the Grid. No devices will be inside the Shiawase facility host. Some devices will be slaved to the Shiawase facility host for better protection but they will still be out on the grid - in this case the Shiawase global grid. if you enter the Shiawase facility host you will have a direct connection to all devices out on the Shiawase grid that are slaved to the Shiawase facility host).
Reading and re-reading this thread, something finally hammered its way through my thick skull (firewall I may have; data processing apparently not so much). At least, based on what I'm reading, it seems to me that:When you are hacking a camera or a lock slaved to a host, you don't have to worry about ICE
- The device is on the grid, so you don't have to go into the host
- IC only runs inside a host
There may be times when you want to go into the host (such as when it's firewall is high enough that you want to edge one roll to get a mark on it, go into the host, then use the direct connect to only go versus the device rating of each slaved device that you want to hack).
Am I correct in this? And if I am, what can be done about it, from the host/security point of view? Send a spider out onto the grid to .... do what I'm not too sure. But otherwise I don't see an option for _actively_ defending devices.
The way I understand it a device slaved to a host won't simultaneously be out on the grid. Because it's "in" the host, even if it's significantly geographically removed from wherever the physical computer serving as the host is located.
p. 233 GRIDS. Grids on a Run
All the devices and people in a Shiawase facility will be using the Shiawase global grid
(All devices will be on the Grid. No devices will be inside the Shiawase facility host. Some devices will be slaved to the Shiawase facility host for better protection but they will still be out on the grid - in this case the Shiawase global grid. if you enter the Shiawase facility host you will have a direct connection to all devices out on the Shiawase grid that are slaved to the Shiawase facility host).
For my campaign, which starts tomorrow, I'm going to go by the RAW for the most part. Anything that is slaved to a host via wireless will follow this convention. But for anything using wired security, with wireless disabled, I will show the device inside the host. That won't happen often, but I feel like it needs to be an option.
- "Local Hosts", which may or may not be accessed from the Matrix and have some kind of physical backbone that you can attach wireless-disabled devices to. In this case you would be forced to enter the host to hack the slaved devices. Iīm not entirely sure on that one, but it would make sense.
p. 233 GRIDS. Grids on a Run
All the devices and people in a Shiawase facility will be using the Shiawase global grid
(All devices will be on the Grid. No devices will be inside the Shiawase facility host. Some devices will be slaved to the Shiawase facility host for better protection but they will still be out on the grid - in this case the Shiawase global grid. if you enter the Shiawase facility host you will have a direct connection to all devices out on the Shiawase grid that are slaved to the Shiawase facility host).
I won't argue with RAW of course, but I do see an issue with how this tightly written explanation affects other situations. Say I have a host, with a device hard-wired to it, and that device does not have wireless. Where does that icon appear? By RAW it would still appear outside of the host, but it seems like the host would be the one putting it there as the Matrix has no way to know where this device is, other than what the host tells it.
And of course these situations would be rare, as wired-security is supposed to be, but they should still be expected, and the Matrix should handle them in a way that makes sense. If directly wiring something doesn't actually provide any benefit then nobody would do it, and the book does at least say that people do it.
Is there anything in any of the books that says device icons can't (as opposed to don't) show up inside a host? I'm guessing it isn't covered because of the wireless assumption, but without that it's suddenly a question without an answer.
IMO, among the mega's this would never be an issue. But for a low end host, with an owner who is tight on nuyen, using obfuscation and layering security would make sense. Sure, the new Matrix could have been designed not to care about that, and the mega's won't care if it affects those with less nuyen, but it seems like people would find a way to make it work.