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Use these, or not. Your call...
New Classes:
Transportation
(Difficulty = 25)
(Cost Multiplier = UNKNOWN)
Strictly speaking, this is not a new class of program,
but the difficulty was never published. To restate another source, transportation
programs affect the storage and movement capabilities of a deck or system. This
was sent to me by a friend who contacted RTG(Thanks, Deadlock!).
Netrunner Enhancement
(Difficulty = 25)
(Cost Multiplier = x10)
A nifty feature from the pages of the
dearly departed publication, Interface. The Netrunner Enhancement class
affects the stats of a Netrunner, either his INT, initiative or some other
feature of his performance in the Net. To keep the lawyers off my back
I won't go in to detail about the two published programs that make use
of this feature. To be brief, one of them increases the INT and initiative
(with a risk of crashing at inconvenient times), the other allowed up to
three Netrunners to link their online minds into one temporary artificial
intelligence. Oh, sure, the new AI isn't really under their control, but
tell me this doesn't sound chill!
Nueral Net(Artificial
Intelligence)
(Difficulty = 15 + 5 per point of INT
over 3)
(Cost Multiplier = x30)
This is a new one by me which is inspired
by another issue of Interface. In an article by one T.H. Stone, the core
program of an AI was a program with an intelligence of 3. You could buy
one of these from a company he described briefly, but the whole thing got
me thinking about how that INT 3 program came from. The way I see it, this
is distinctly different from the option psuedo-intellect. This seems to
imply more than 'a fuzzy logic process imitating INT 6.' The psuedo-intellect
option may allow a program to make predetermined decisions based on a limited
amount of choices and input. With a nueral net, a program would be allowed
to figure out and incorporate new information and act upon its own decisions
in a simlar fashion to the human mind.
Naturally, this is a very difficult class of programming (hence the very high difficulty), but it never seemed to make sense to me that something as complex as an artificial intelligence could emerge spontaneously just by having sufficient CPUs. The high difficulty is designed to encourage cooperation between multiple PCs. No single prgrammer is likely to have the skills to handle this alone. For more on actually creating an AI, please see the page on Artificial Intelligence Programming: Seraphims.
New Options:
*Note: many of these options are meant
for the section on AI programming. These are in RED.
Internal
Database
(Difficulty = 5 for every database included)
The program may incorporate a database
and access it if it has the Psuedo-Intellect option. Each database takes
up an extra 1MU and may be updated or expanded after the program is created.
Search
Engine
(Difficulty = 10)
The program has the capability to scan
any database and retrieve information based upon given search parameters.
The Psuedo-Intellect option or AI class must be used. Also, the database
must be accesible to the netrunner at the time, or else have the necessary
Anti-System, Decryption or Intrusion alogorithms included in its code,
plus Movement and Memory.
Restricted
Branching
(Difficulty = 15)
Many AIs go rogue because they tend to
process information that goes beyond what they are requested to. This option
would inhibit the access an AI has to new or outside information. The upside
is the chance of the AI going rogue is reduced. Unfortunately, the AI can
only do exactly as it is told. Incorrectly stated requests will be fulfilled
exactly as requested, but the results may not be what is intended.
Hardcoded
Restrictions
(Difficulty = 10)
Don't want your AI to stray into anything
Arasaka related? Tired of little Timmy using it to download the latest
3Ds of Virtual Vickie? Well add this option to the AI. Hardcoding operating
restrictions into the AI will physically prevent it from performing certain
actions. And because the restrictions are hardcoded into the core INT,
the AI shouldn't be able to modify this. Theoretically, that is.
Limited
Adaptation
(Difficulty = 10)
AIs have their behaviors and reactions
programmed into their core INT. But this option allows the AI to adapt
and tailor itself to the nature of its usage to a limited extent. If the
users generally expect and show polite behavior, the AI will respond in
kind. If it is only used to access a particular type of information, then
the AI will anticipate the users needs by automatically calling up that
information.
Open
Ended Hueristics
(Difficulty = 5)
The option that defines the classic AI.
Instead of coding their personalities and interactive abilities, the nascent
AI is exposed to a set of data and through experimentation, it modifies
and alters its own code to achieve the goal of its designers. It should
be noted that although the AI is modeled after human thought processes,
it is decidedly not human. The results could be far different than what
is desired. GMs should be encouraged to play this up. The lower Difficulty
comes from the idea that the AI is doing all the hard work.
Extended Programming
Time
It never made sense to me how anybody
with a high Programming skill and/or appropriate Expert Skill could ever
not
have the knowledge to create any program he wanted. That is, if they're
given enough time. This option (more of a house rule, really) corrects
this problem to an extent.
When the total difficulty and programming time has been calculated, these numbers may be altered by a very simple equation: Final Difficulty = Difficulty x (Time increase by percent).
Example: Let's use the Hellhound example from the Cyberpunk 2020 main sourcebook. The Hellhound in question has a Difficulty of 40 and writiing time of 240 hours for Spider and Edger. But if they are willing to increase the programming time by 1 to 50 percent the programming difficulty would be lowered by an equal percentage. If they increase the programming time by 50%(the max) the programming time is 360 hours, but the difficulty is now only 20, well within the range of these two hotshot programmers. The maximum percentage is capped off at 50 because any program too long in creation may be considered obsolete by the time it hits the market. It should be noted that the final MU is not altered by this at all.
Pre-written
Structures: Skeletons
From Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:
"Most of programming is a matter of laying
groundwork, building structures of words that have no particular conection
to the task at hand...To write a really good [program] from scratch would
take a long time, but he puts one together in several hours by recycling
bits and pieces of old projects left behind in his computer. Which is how
hackers usually do it."
-description of Hiro Protagonist on a
raft doing one of the things he does well
If a programmer has written a dozen or so decryption programs in his career, why should the difficulty of writing another one be the same? Wouldn't a pro realize that certain routines just get rehashed over and over again? With this option a programmer can create the skeleton of any particular function or option and reduce the difficulty of the final product.
An function skeleton has a difficulty of 25% less than the original function. For example an AP program skeleton would be dificulty 15 instead of 20. The major restriction is that these skeletons are highly personalized. They are made according to a particular programmer's style and syntax. Another programmer may be familiar with somebdoy else's coding style, but the time spent adjusting to it would negate the benefits. A skeleton may only be used by the person who makes it.
They are created as follows: Function Difficulty + 10
The "10" is not Program Strength, but a modifier to reflect the extra difficulty in creating a program that is written to be used in a variety of ways. For example, there are multiple ways to decrypt a file lock. Creating a skeleton to provide for many of these possible methods would understandably be difficult. But once written, it can provide benefits for a long time to come.
In my own real life programming it's often very convenient to just re-use the basic forms, objects and logical constructs as needed. In class once I was able to surprise the instructor who, having asked the class to write an impromptu C++ program. Having a skeleton prepared with all the header files, usual variables and procedures I normally use already created enabled me to complete it before most of my classmates (This one is for you, Millennium!).
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Bodycount:
as
of 12/05/1999
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"The computer has become the new cool tool."
-Billy Idol, Cyberpunk
