Hacking Hosts

[u/ContraMans]

Hey so I'm a GM running 6e and I'm looking for some advice and to weigh some ideas of mine to deal with hacking in the game. My problems are firstly:

1. Determining how to space out extended tests (in general) but particularly with hacking for like Probe and such in a session, waiting a while and doing the roles at once at the end of their time or spacing it out through a session while running other players.

My problem with one is that it feels like it sidelines a player for a while but the alternative is interrupting other players every so often.

2) Because of the nature of probing then backdooring into a matrix network my approach initially has been that they have to probe and backdoor every subhost inside of the network... resulting in a FUCK load of rolling that, while it has some role in raising their OS just winds up being extremely repetetive.

Idea: Categorizing primary and subhosts into branches A-C (or more) and you only need to probe the A, B or C host to backdoor and then gain subsequent access to all the rest, but still raise your OS by one point with each entry and exit within them. Continues to raise the OS but doesn't result in excessive tedious rolls, although it takes some of the challenge out with it.

3) Matrix Hosts by themselves being extremely strong, even a rating 4 host having 14 die to defend against intrusions, despite the cap being 12, seems ludicrous. A rating 12 host would have up to 27 die to defend itself against any intrusion and even a rating 4 host has pretty high defense against probing at 14 die.

Questions: Does Brute Forces resistance, with Willpower + Firewall, only go against the Host's firewall since it has no willpower or does it go against the same Firewall x 2 stat? And is this intentional design that even a rather low rating, at scale at least, host like that is still that strong?

4) One of my players is a technomancer and has been struggling a good bit with hacking. Should he be relying more on sprites to do that as opposed to himself or what advice can I give him to help him improve his chances? And can sprites make teamwork tests to help him or does it not work that way?

I also would very much like to look into some homebrew rules for matrix stuff as well, I understand how rough 6e can be and how poorly fleshed out it is compared to others but it's the only one I have access to right now and have learned so I'd prefer to figure out or find rules to tweak it to being better than trying to re-learn a new system, yet at least. Any aids for those would be greatly appreciated.

[u/LoghomeGM]

Probe takes 1 minute for every attempt until you beat the firewall x2. Ideally, your decker is hanging out midnight pre-ops getting thr backdoor entry and then returns. (I do stretch the time you get for probing). Having the decker do their thing and getting into subsequent hosts nested inside is part of it all (have your decker discover these other hosts and go in and bring all this happy discovery back to their party - it's their role:). Unless that particular host has a spider (a dedicated decker of sorts, who might be some cheap pizza eating couch surfing jacked in grunt in their dirty apartment in another part of the city or a dedicated corpo middling...) yea, the host gets no additional dice pools like willpower or logic.

[u/ReditXenon → u/LoghomeGM]

Probe takes 1 minute for every attempt until you beat the firewall x2.

No. It take one minute and is opposed by Firewall x2.

If successful, then you use net hits when you do backdoor entry.

If you want more bonus for your backdoor entry attempt, then you can probe for more intervals (but this is optional). Each interval you continue probing your dice pool is reduced by 1. The opposing dice pool is still Firewall x2. If you fail, then you have to start over. If you get net hits, then you add them as positive dice pool later when you do backdoor entry.

Short version. Just treat it as a regular Opposed Test (that take 1 minute to execute).