comStar Firewall alert - PhaseThrough

military and police units, professional sports teams, emergency
services, shadowrunners, and occasionally other scenarios where
real-time team networking is crucial.
tacticaL networkS
To an individual, tacsofts can sometimes offer interesting advice,
but they really thrive when used in a networked environment.
They are designed to pool information from team members, assess
the overall situation, and coordinate a more effective response with
split-second AR data feedback.
For a tactical network to function effectively, it requires a
minimum of 3 members. Each member must be running tactical
software of an equivalent rating (if the ratings are unequal, the network
functions according to the lowest rating software) and must
be subscribed to the tactical network (taking up one subscription).
Members may be characters running the tacsoft on their commlinks
or drones running the software on their systems.
Tactical software has a maximum rating of 4. You may only
be part of one tactical network at a time.
Sensor channels
Tactical networks rely on data supplied in real-time by sensor
systems to maintain an up-to-date model of the tactical situation.
In order to function effectively, a minimum of sensory input is
required from different sources, measured in the form of sensor
channels. In order to be counted as a member of the tactical
Unwired
network (and to receive bonuses from it), each member must
contribute a number of sensor channels equal to the tacsoft
rating x 2.
Sensor channels are defined as any type of sensory input
that can be transmitted to the tactical network (and that contributes
in some way to analyzing the tactical situation). Each
sense or sensor accounts for a separate sensor channel. This
sensory input could include:
Natural Senses: Visual, audio, or olfactory senses
recorded via simrig each count as a sensor channel. Natural
enhancements such as low-light and thermographic count as
additional senses.
Cybernetic Senses: Any visual, audio, olfactory, or
other sense acquired via cybereyes, cyberears, olfactory
booster, orientation system, etc. Sensory enhancements
such as low-light, thermorgraphic, smartlink, ultrasound,
radar, spatial recognizers, and so on each count as a separate
sensor channel.
Sensor Systems: Data acquired from worn, carried,
or mounted sensor systems of various types (cameras, microphones,
range finders, motion sensors, etc.) may also be
contributed to the network as a sensor channel. Drones sensor
systems also count; each drone can supply a number of sensor
channels equal to its Sensor rating.
Brimstone’s team is running a Rating 3 tactical
network. To count as a contributing team member (and
thus to receive bonuses from the network), Brimstone must
contribute at least 6 sensor channels. Luckily, Brimstone is
a cybersamurai with her share of senseware. Her cybereyes
(channel 1) are enhanced with low-light vision (channel
2), smartlink (channel 3), and vision magnification
(channel 4). She also has an orientation system (channel
5) and has strapped on an ultrasound sensor (channel 6).
All of these sensor systems are linked to her commlink,
where she is running her tacsoft, which shares their input
data with the rest of the team via tacnet. If for some reason
one of her sensor systems was knocked out ( for example, she
dropped her ultrasound sensor), she would lose a sensor
channel and would no longer count as a member of the
tacnet team.
centralized tacnets
The decentralized network structure of traditional tacnets
works well for urban combat situations. Under some circumstances,
however, a team may prefer to adopt a more centralized
model, where the tactical soft is run on a single commlink, which
effectively rides in a command and control position. In this situation,
the other team members do not need to run their own
tacsoft, but they must slave their commlinks to the master node
(see Slaving, p. 59). Each slaved node takes up 1 subscription
slot on the master node’s persona (see Subscriptions, p. 55). This
has the advantage of protecting the network against hacking
(especially if the team’s hacker runs the master node), but also
carries the drawback that the network will fail if the master node
is somehow taken out.
Simon Wentworth (order #1132857) 9
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