Combat Decking

For example, a decker could run a program to return a list of SIC IDs/chrome serials within a certain range (maybe just the same room?), perhaps save those as devices, and use other software to damage that chrome or harm its owner. Maybe, for the sake of balance, there's a damage drop-off depending on the range from the decker at the time of execution. This could also open up avenues for chrome ICE. If you want it to just be limited to deckers, maybe a cracked gridterm can be vulnerable to delivering shocks either through the casing or a linked GridSight port.

These are just ideas I've had, I think I'd be pretty open to other forms of getting deckers more involved in biz. At the moment, while a huge improvement, deckers' utility is still pretty limited.

Deckers already have a lot of great support options as it stands when it comes to PvP.

And really, deckers have such insane array of tools available now (and as I uderstand even more is coming), and are in such demand… If someone doesn't care about, they are either intentionally leaving a vulnerability or do not know better, but decker's are crazy capable now. Though doing so requires doing some risky things to set it up and maybe some creativity and IC knowledge.

And of course this isn't the matrix. If it were deckers could kill you from rooms away.

I do think the balancing could be difficult and sounds like a mountanous project for several people to take one but it could add so much and encourage rp between archetypes that are very different.

Honestly, for all the complaining about balance, do you realize that deckers put UE in three different skills and coming out with advantages that won't save them from most things? It's a huge UE dump. Grid 4 is awesome, but deckers are still the runts in the game despite that massive investment. While for instance, with just short blade and dodge I can make it as a combatant in most situations.

You can say that sure, blade and dodge gets you far in a scrap, bur earns you almost no chy unless you want to take some pretty high risks. Deck lets you earn chy much more safely.

But this topic is now entirely off topic, so I'll just bow out.

Right now Deckers are a great support role when combined with a Bruiser friend who can handle the meatspace problems.

If you play your cards right you'll be protected and have a constant stream of income from your more dangerous clients.

I'd like to see deckers be able to do even more though: shut down vehicles you've scanned; or temporarily short out someone else's gridterm because they're intruding on a network you're protecting, potentially causing harm to whoever is using it at the time, etc.

Using decking skills for direct combat is a step too far but deckers should be like tech mages able to influence the world to create conditions that could make or break an operation. They should be working closely with the people who do violent things to make it harder for other people who do violent things.