If static zones were meant to be based on your signal strength, they might have thrown in a rule or two about them!? As is, the best interpretation I can come up with is your physical proximity in the zone creates the modifier irrespective of how strong your commlink is.? As for dead zones, it claims that "powerful signal boosting technology" is necessary to access the matrix from a dead zone.? This says to me something greater than a signal 6, meaning that a dead zone would have to be well outside an ordinary device's usual signal.? Dead zones are hardly an issue for hackers though, since they can just slap on a sattelite link and connect from anywhere in the world.

The signal strength model does indeed make the most sense, but it sounds like a big waste of code and has no explicit precedent in the rules.? Static zones are static; if you don't have a GM who can arbitrarily say "yeah, your commlink reaches outside of the static" then it's just not worth the effort.? By creating a whole new system for dealing with static zones we're essentially making houserules, even though we're adding rules where none really exist rather than modifying existing ones.?

I say we just designate low-tech and far-flug areas as static zones.? The only dead zones are ones with essentially nil wireless or nearby wireless, ie the wilderness.? If there are any places in the Barrens that are far enough away from the city and sufficiently devoid of tech to be considered wilderness, then by all means make them dead zones.? However, even the crappiest places should, to my mind, be close enough to hit some sort of wireless network and bounce past the holes, albiet with a -3 penalty.? The only places within an actual city I can conceive of as being dead zones are places inhabited by technophobes who not only don't use wireless but also actively jam wireless activity within their territory.? Only then does it make sense to say that a part of the grid is cut off from the greater mesh network.

I suspect we can agree that explicit precedents within SR4 are in short supply at this time.? We're working from (basically) a single chapter of a single book, plus what can be gleaned from System Failure.

Some holes exist that can be filled in only through (unfortunately) implicit determinations, which are dangerous and best left in the hands and minds of the GMs.? Rather, admins, in our case.

Oh, and an ifelse() to compare two variables isn't a big amount of code.? ? I won't dare attempt to disqualify the "waste" descriptor, as that's a relative term and (again), ultimately not my decision.


Agreed; and since we're looking at a persistent world with multiple GMs there will have to be some global declarations set down.? If the commlink code is going to be anywhere near as automated as Dixon's previous (and Cthulu-esque) Matrix codebase then there's going to have to be a simple check to find out the Matrix situation in any given location.

Previously, there would be attributes on any room with a dataport that described the hardline's attributes (with a few variables). Nowadays all we'd care about is if we have wifi there or not.


You make an important distinction there.

I utterly loathe houserules (for reasons mentioned elsewhere), but SR4 has both intentionally and unintentionally left us many blanks to fill in.? The site admins are going to have to make calls on some things, extrapolating their judgements from the RAW.? It sucks, because it's more work for them and the side effects always have the potential to be more annoying than any possible solution, but it has to happen all the same.

Even if it's a matter of a single line put in the @Desc of certain outdoor areas saying "You don't have wifi here" then they still have to make some sort of new declaration, be it arbitrary documentation or code-based checks.? Code, as is its core purpose, makes things more interactive; but additional interaction may not always be desirable.

~~~~~

When it comes down to it, the change of venue between tabletop and MUSH brings with it some operational changes.? Some minor, some not.? I fully endorse the philosophy of "published canon, for good or ill."? Roleplay just tends to happen in between the lines.

Well, let me clarify something here. NS has three reality levels. Each are accessable separately. One is physical reality, that we live in. The second is astral reality, that magic pcs can access. The third is Matrix reality.

Ideally, we'd have descs for all three. Right now, we have only descs for physical and astral because we (I, anyway) am sort of baffled as to how to describe it. We've talked about a few options, including using Tacmaps, but we've yet to come to a conclusion on it. So, our starting point has been: where is there access and where is there not?

Code options, like attributes, are always nice, but remember, (I know I sound like a broken record) we don't have the coders to do too much right now. So whatever solution we decide on will probably at least at the beginning have to be somewhat unsophisticated.

Well, to get back to the basics, where is there access, and where is there not?

Access is basically everywhere that isn't under a rock or a nuclear war zone.  The only relevant question is 'how much access do you have' in 99 percent of Seattle, and just about anywhere public.

I'd say the easiest way and possibly the most realistic depending on how you view the matrix is that in deep places in the barrens and whatnot that static zones would be random and possibly roaming. One can assume given the proliferation of even signal strength 1 tags about and whatnot, and the fact that in the barrens not everyone is going to be stripping their clothes of the tags, or their coffee mugs, or what have you that static zones exist when and where the GM running the plot/scene/whatever say they exist.

Maybe the explosions over there that drew your PC's disrupted the network as people ran for their lives or got the hell out of dodge before LS shows up. Who knows, maybe it's just dead outside right now and you can't get a clear link.

Tell the GM what signal strength you have, the GM applies modifiers as appropriate. I can't imagine any hacker is going to sit down for day to day hacking in a static zone and this makes it easy to cover them as variable phenomena rather than just 'Static zone!' except in certain few select places.

Just an idea.