Does the AGI own its own gear? Being an AGI with an attitude of bodies are for schmucks, it might be possible the character hasn't spent any money on anything. How much money has the characters spent on gear? If a character manages to save enough cp by being frugal with credits and gear, the character is going to be a bit more powerful. If that was the case, it would not be unreasonable for the group ask the AGI player to spend a little on group tools. Alternatively, you might want to consider using some of the rules from the Transhuman book. It include rules for what an infomorph can do with limited processing power (a ghost rider module might limit you to a max aptitude of 20), offer Eidolons for the AGI to buy (think morphs for infomorphs), and other software and hardware to buy. It might make the AGI a bit more powerful, but it would also give the character something to spend money on. The AGI PC might try to move out of the ghost rider module so it could live in a portable server. The nature of infomorphs does allow the character to go without physical skills. You can spend skill points differently to reflect the fact that you don't have physical needs. You can live quite well using drones and robots to attend to your physical needs. It will help to create characters that appear to be more skilled than they should be. It is a part of the setting and game mechanics that there are things that you can do in this game that can give you a serious advantage over those who choose not to follow or can't follow your strategy. It should be noted that Alpha forking is illegal in most habitats. It gives people too much of an advantage and there people who aren't ready for there to exist more than one copy of them. Beta forking is more legal, but you have to merge or delete the fork after 4 hours in most places.

A ghostrider is probably a personal computer, so aptitude caps would be 20. (As opposed to a server or enhanced server). I could see wounds on a battlesuit causing rolls on the glitch table for a ghostrider, but I don't think the normal penalties make a ton of sense.

So, the question I want to ask is where your game is set, because you can make for all sorts of trouble depending on where you are. The first thing I think of with this AGI is to make situations where the AGI will just have to sit and watch everyone; for example, a long salvage and fight scene on a derelict spacecraft or habitat with no intrinsic mesh connection. The AGI gets to sit there and yell into everyone's comms (if there's no interference), but lives or dies by others' Freefall, weapons, and Hardware:Spacecraft/Habitats rolls. Obviously, you don't set the whole adventure there; it would be great if the AGI used his/her mad infosec skills to find this place where he/she gets to be a ghostrider tourist on everyone else's fun. But the player then gets to learn that he/she is going to miss out on some of the actual adventure because he/she can't do anything that requires a body. As for threats, threaten the exosuit. A lot.

• Nanodisassemblers can be hacked mid-action, but that means the AGI is spending time protecting itself instead of attacking.
• "Due to the paucity of mesh connections in this area, your mesh signals, encrypted as they may be, are basically beacons. For seeker micromissiles that are flying at you right now."
• "The opposing hacker has used a zero-day bug in the exosuit's system to gain access. You can shut him down, but the suit is now immobile and it'll take minutes to purge the system and get the thing moving again."
• "You can't all fit in the escape pod if he's wearing that exoskeleton."
• The only jack point for a server that needs a physical connection is basically an open field of fire for any guards wandering in.

You don't need to give the AGI player penalties, you just need to make it clear that there's a risk his/her infomorph will be stuck in a dead piece of technology or in a semi-functional exoskeleton filled with a dead transhuman floating through the vacuum of space, and that's not totally up to him/her to prevent, because the AGI doesn't have a physical body.

So, out near the TQZ, you can have issues with the mesh that will make your AGI less directly useful. Beyond the obvious exsurgent jamming weirdness that could happen, regular mesh inserts aren't meant for the "broadcast to satellite" capability that you need for tapping into the Martian planetary mesh far outside the major cities. And even then, you're going to add a couple critical seconds of lag. The other thing you can do with a TQZ adventure is, at the end, have the exoskeleton taken in by Firewall (or worse, Ozma) for "decontamination," and then your AGI has to find a new home for a little while. If you just want to be a little bit of a jerk, you can have an exsurgent with psi-epsilon anti-electronics. "With a wave, the exsurgent drains the power cells of your exoskeleton. It is now a big metal box you're stuck in."

I don't really have much to contribute here beyond what's already been said, but this is nagging at me:

Daimonin wrote:

He also dropped his SOM and COO to 1 (The idea being he's just REALLY not comfortable controlling a physical body) ... The way I've done it is that an infolife can transmit an image of itself into a room, and observers muses automatically (unless ordered otherwise) insert a greyscale image of the infolifes avatar into their owners observations.

Having a SOM and COO at 1 isn't so much "bad at morphs" as "doesn't understand moving"; the character has all the physical competence of a newborn. More importantly, this should carry over to all their "physical" actions, such as those of their AR avatar. It would also apply anytime they want a remote-controlled device to perform an action which isn't completely preprogrammed, as well as their "body" in Simulspaces. As for being threatening, May I draw attention to Scorcher and Narcoalgorithm software, EMP grenades, Radio Jamming, and the rules for Hardening?

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

Attempting to hack exsurgents ... should probably just cause immediate exsurgent infection

Seconded. And exsurgent virii, in my game, are mean. No audio output in the infected machine? That's OK, we'll cycle the cooling fans at the right speed for an auditory basilisk hack. Think you got out clean? We're just hiding in some tech that you don't expect a virus from, like how ,ebola survives in eye fluid after the rest of the infection is done. Also, an AGI is super-susceptible to being overwritten by exsurgent code.

Good post Trapped!

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

Daimonin wrote:

So to delete an ego you would: 1. Hack into the system with admin privileges (required for steps 2? and 4). 2. Opposed infosec to entrap the ego in the system (assuming it's the home device). 3. Opposed infosec to locate the defender. 4. Opposed Infosec to lockout the defender (Locked penalty -20 applies to target). If step 2 was skipped, then the defender ego can roll an Interface -30 right after failing step 4 to move itself, but as long as step 2 was made, this roll automatically fails/cant be made right?

This seems correct, though purely by RAW I think the infomorph always gets a chance to escape, the hacking rules are sparse enough that pure RAW is dangerous to use though.

My read on RAW seems to be a little different. The Entrapment text specifically states that if the opposed test is successful (For the intruder) the ego is prevented from transferring itself to another system, while the Lockout text says an infomorph [u]may[/u] take its next action to evacuate. If the infomorph is prevented from transferring itself then the option to evacuate looks to become useless and instead the infomorph must do nothing. Definitely isn't as clearly stated as it could be, but RAW and RAI seem to work together here. On a side note, don't forget that the Entrapment text suggests that a muse could free the trapped ego if it isn't locked out (Doesn't state how though, opposed Infosec maybe?), so conceivably other accounts on the device could as well. Needing to lock them out might add in some extra steps.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

Daimonin wrote:

Does step 2 carry a difficulty modifier? Cyberbrain Hacking mentions -30, but that may be specific to cyberbrains?

Yes, launching countermeasures (such as locking, locating, lock outs, shutting down a system, etc) take a -30 penalty when doing them as subversion.

Just to clarify, that's on page 148 of the Transhuman book, and you need to know the Mesh ID and have access to the device the infomorph is running on to brainhack an infomorph. Otherwise it's all the same.

Daimonin wrote:

EDIT: Hmm I just realized hacking takes 10 minutes, 1 at most for brute force. So I guess it's not really something you can do to back up your team during combat.... That's rather unfortunate...

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

With a really focussed hacker it's possible to brute force into a system in 2 action turns, thanks to the time reduction cap being 90%. The easiest way to do this is to be a speed 4 ego with mental speed or multi-tasking, which gives 60% time reduction off the bat. Getting the last 30% can be complicated though, as it either requires taking a -30 penalty to actions, having sleights (instinct can get the last 30% for you), or just rolling high. Takes a lot of effort to pull off, but can be a really cool character concept.

Take a look at the Intuitive Cracker trait in Transhuman, 20-40% decrease in the timeframe when brute forcing. Also remember that mental speed and multi-tasking are multiplicative with speed, so a speed 4 ego with mental speed (Or multi-tasking) gets 12 actions per action turn, with three each phase. A brute force hack will still take a minimum of two turns though, however actions you don't sacrifice to buff the speed can still be used for other things (Like more hacks!) The character actually doesn't take much effort to pull off. Toss in three AI helpers (Muses can be copied) and customize some elite exploits to +30 even with the -30 for admin access and +30 for brute force you're still looking at a max +60 on the roll. Remember that for task actions every 10 MoS means a 10% timeframe reduction (Up to that 90% cap. EP. 120) so if your skill is high enough for you to feel comfortable getting in, you can slack a little bit on sacrificing actions and let the MoS finish out. If you do lower it by 80% instead of 90% though, you've doubled the number of phases it's going to take, so it can be a bit of a gamble. Alternatively it can be rushed, and you can take chance out of the equation and just go in with a lower bonus. ----- Something I'm surprised I haven't seen come up yet in this thread is DOS attacks (In the Transhuman book, so might have been missed). It's a short term debuff for infomorphs that can lower their speed, aptitudes, disable upgrades and plug-ins (Especially nasty against other hackers if they've plugged in their exploit/spoofing software for convenience when moving rather than set it on the side), give them glitches, or force them to reboot repeatedly. Besides all the nasty bits they get hit with, it's relatively easy for an attacker to pull off: They just need a mesh ID a complex action, and an Infosec check. If the device isn't being actively monitored (Putting turns into it), there's not even an opposed checked. You won't shut them down for the entire fight, but you can hinder them at the start long enough for your robots and synth NPC's to give your physical players some fun. It doesn't seem to affect synths or robots either, so it's a good way to "encourage" your hacker to try standing on his own two legs. Also really hammer him with the aptitude maximums. Sure an infomorph can have an aptitude maximum of 40, but that doesn't help if whatever device he's running on (Like a ghostrider module) maxes him at 20. Lowered aptitudes through devices, DOS, or whatever else you want to come up with will likely hit his skills, or at the very least lower his WIL and help you play with him on the stress front a little more easily. If he wants to keep his character concept and his aptitudes, get him looking at a either a distributed process which will make him weaker to brainhacking, and DOS attacks, or point him towards a portable server (Which you can shoot at and he can have an AI drive). Once he starts grabbing software plugins and upgrades, remember that you can still take away his "gear" by forced deleting it during a hack. Takes a long while by RAW for an NPC to see it, especially if he's smart and running digital veil, but there's been TITAN viruses known for deleting data, so something like that's feasible. As a character optimizer myself, I'll just ask that you keep in mind that's how some players have fun. We like to whack things with big sticks to feel like we're contributing to the party, and there's nothing more frustrating than a GM walking in and saying everything's immune to sticks because yours is too powerful. With a little bit of creativity and knowledge of the rules yourself, you can give the other players some opportunities while he feels like he's helping elsewhere, and even poke him with your own stick some (We don't like to admit it, but when somebody points out a legitimate hole in our builds, pouring back over books for hours and finding out how to optimally adapt is quite fulfilling).

It's worth noting, another possibility for destroying an Ego is to lock it down, and then physically destroy its home server. Also, I don't see why a GM wouldn't allow Multitasker assistance. That seems like the point.

I don't believe the multitasker is being used to assist oneself, extra actions just reduce time. I also don't think that speed and extra actions reduce time multiplicatively, as they fall under separate headings for time reduction.

Ah, I see what you meant now. The multi-tasker doesn't create full forks, so can't grant bonuses to the self. You'd want a cyberbrain, two ghostriders, and a decent psychosurgery skill for that, or a couple of security AIs.

Mechanically it doesn't create forks, as it gives one ego extra actions, and forks act on their own initiative. Thematically I could see that working, but I don't know if it's an intended effect.