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Vulnerable Chrome
Decking has never been more clutch...

It should be possible, via decking to shut off someone's chrome. Of course they could just turn it back on, it would be useful nonetheless in fight to temporarily flip that lever. Especially if they don't have the visual display which tells them their chrome has been turned off.
Of course, there would also have to be means of protecting against this, such as being able to install ICE on your neuro processor.
There's already a tool that can disable chrome, being able to disable it remotely would be too OP.
Maybe I don't understand how cybernetics work, but OP in which way? If you can just turn it back on that doesn't seem that powerful to me at all. It's what, 3 to 5 seconds to type the command to turn your cybernetics back on?
I do think it would be cool to have decking be more useful in combat or pre-combat preperation for sure, so I think thats a good line of thinking on that.

It might be best to learn more of how these systems work ICLY though and experience more of the game first, it certainly might not work the way you're thinking.
The game is incredibly obtuse about how information about mechanics is obtained, so I refuse to accept any flak about not understanding those mechanics.
There is no flak.

I'm not saying you gotta understand every intricate detail of the mechanics, i don't think anybody does, but this idea may be based on some incorrect assumptions on information that could otherwise easily be learnt in-game or after you've had some time to experience the game first.

I do like the idea of deckers having more utility in combat, as i said tho.
it seems all of you need a better understanding of how things work, not just OP. you can't simply turn chrome back on by yourself without some quite rare and expensive tech and the knowledge of how to use it

although adding to this it could be cool if deckers could give off the same effects as an EMP, though maybe toned down a little. Electrocute them, damage their hardware a touch, so on. As for how they do it, I'm torn on if it should require scanning the person in advance (keep in mind scans take a solid 10 seconds and are impossible to do stealthily, so i don't love this idea), or be a geocode command like so:

#location-execute-command
1234
overload_cyberware
(target SIC ID)
#endlocation-execute-command

of course, it would generate quite a bit of grid heat
>There's already a tool that can disable chrome, being able to disable it remotely would be too OP.


god forbid deckers be able to do anything of more consequence than pulling a bunch of worthless data that's already common knowledge from a device after making their way past security guards, retina locks, daemons, ICE and obsessive gridcops
Yeah, I mean.

Maybe there's something to be said about the remote damage ability. I agree that that might be pretty OP but. On the other hand, to be an effective combat build you need two skills. To be an effective decker, you need three skills. Requiring more UE.

That said, if there was like, QuickHacks which required a Decker to be in the same room as their target and had it's damage scaling by how much chrome / nanos someone had…. That'd make Deckers capable of being involved in combat.

If we look at CyberPunk 2077, Contagion could deal more damage based on the amount of nanos a target has, while Short Circuit deals more damage based on the amount of chrome you've got...

That'd make sense to me.
Yes that was what I was hinting at Baguette but I dont like revealing too much info icly.
Also, keep in mind there isn't just ONE decker in the game. Plus, anything a Decker can do, someone else can get a Decker to do for them. And, they can get it done in such a way that the Decker doesn't even know exactly what's going on, if you're clever. So.
The UE argument is wrong. I won't say more, but you're going to have to learn about skills, stats and the differences.

Remember scaling weapons and armor protection, the cost of those items, the cost of combat-adjacent cybernetics.

How does a person protect themselves against someone remotely impacting their chrome? Would they be able to ICE themselves? Would they be able to put daemons on themselves? Would they be able to get a piece of chrome that directly fights attempts? Would there be the ability for the targeted chrome to have a chance to resist and cause damage to the person's term who is doing it?

These same questions for any type of combat as it relates to decking causing damage.

(Edited by crashdown at 6:05 am on 7/17/2026)

I literally just said maybe remote attacks were too much.
And there's others who think it isn't, so that question is for them too.
yeah plus we're entirely ignoring that if you don't want a decker to fry your shit you can simply hire another decker to ICE you up
to keep them from just prodding at you over and over until your ICE is gone though maybe we need some kind of ICE variant that can temporarily disable the attacker's terminal under certain conditions
I'm not others. I'm me.
nobody gives a fuck about penniless deckers getting folded in half by solos on the daily but as soon as a solo is potentially threatened by a decker having new abilities we need a government commission on it
It's about balance, Baguette. It's the same reason a gun shot to the head doesn't one shot everyone, lockpicks aren't a thing, severing limbs with blades in combat was disabled, people can't run over others with cars or do a land on Baguette with scarab to crush someone to death and so many other very fun and hilarious ideas.
yeah it's not just this though. any time there's any suggestion for giving deckers a smidgeon of actual utility or ability to use their skills for combat (you know, like every other piece of cyberpunk media on the fucking planet) you get 10 guys who have never hired a decker in their life let alone played one kramering in to tell you why your idea Sucks Actually and deckers should be grateful they aren't all just lined up and shot
I can't be held accountable for not knowing about hidden skills and hidden UE investments, or other secret mechanics. If you want feedback to be more valuable then you make the mechanics of the game more transparent. That's not on me.

But, I don't see why a solo couldn't get ICE placed on them to act as an armor for QuickHacks, and I don't see why it wouldn't require a scan as any other thing in Decking.
One thing you'll learn very quickly in Sindome is that if you're not a combat archetype, you're a second class citizen. You get to play the game only as much as the nearest character that has invested in combat capability decides you should get to play the game.

Practically every legendary SD character has been (or pivoted to) a combat archetype. As such, sixty percent of the game at any given point is also a combat archetype, and any suggestion that so much as hints at needing them to do something other than sit outside someone's apartment for 8 IRL hours straight is met with handwringing concerns about "balance". Because it'd just be awful if another archetype could straight up turn off the combat one, right?
hell you dont even need to be at your pc the full 8 hours you can just set up an auto-triggering @macro to do literally all of the work for you

(Edited by Baguette at 6:55 am on 7/17/2026)

Yeah, I guess I keep forgetting this is a PvP game first, RP second.
not even. if it was a pvp game at least deckers would be able to do something resembling combat with their three fucking skills they need to play their archetype
Frankly, my suggestion here about QuickHacks would require four to be valuable in combat. Programming, Cracking, Systems and Dodge.
there are other archetypes that you need a passable ability in one or maybe two skills to be really good at. with decking you need to be fucking god-tier in three (or 4-5, really) different things if you dont want to just be standing around with your dick in your hands. and naturally this archetype has no built-in combat ability and has to spend whatever scraps of UE they have left on a combat skill that isnt going to do them any favors anyway. but if you dare suggest they be able to defend themselves against the valuable and time-honored profession of standing outside an apartment, setting up a @macro and then going off to do your taxes for 8 hours you will be laughed out of the forums
hell, maybe instead of it being a traditional hack you run from a gridterm, it could be a "weapon" that scales off decking related stats/skills. like you go to an electronics store (or a black market seller, depending on how legal this tech ends up being) and buy a dedicated "deck" that deals electric damage to your opponents

i literally dont see any way this could possibly be shot down given its quite literally just "a functionally melee weapon that scales off decking" but im sure one of you will find a way
That thing where staff can make your room shoot electricity out of the sockets at you or your SIC chip cause some kind of shocking damage I think would be a reasonable fit here.

You could balance it by only able to make the room able to do that with requiring a scan, big grid heat, and a room designated to have such ability.

You could balance a SIC chip frying to if the person is in signal or not, maybe even disabling their chip only in the area with signal in addition to damage.

Not the grand short circuit quick hack but it could be a start to see how it goes!
You could even make something like this actually consume the scan, even.
I like this idea a lot actually, maybe some specific item or chrome that could interface with other players offensively. Psyo-cyber-wizard type tech. Maybe it's highly illegal or something unless you have a license like guns?

The recent changes giving deckers super powers is already a great start, I think a little PvP power would be great! Good idea!
I stand by the idea, as well, of Contagion quickhacks. Something that doesn't do an immense amount of damage but causes the SIC chips in that room to just cause those it's inserted into to become sick / poisoned, taking small amounts of damage over time until it wears off, or until they are treated by a medical type.
id hardly call them super powers but yes the initial changes with grid 4 were a good start. i think my idea of giving them decks they can buy which functionally act as melee weapons that scale off decking skills and deal some kind of electrical/emp damage would be great, im just trying to think of how people would defend against it. hiring deckers to scan and ICE them, with higher ICE levels acting as tougher armor?
Yeah, absolutely. ICE acting as armor is wholly reasonable, and there are enough deckers on grid that it's not unreasonable for anyone, solos and non-combat types alike, to go find and hire a decker to do that.
of course, i think you'd need to make sure you can't "dodge" these attacks and can only really defend against them with ICE, as jumping out of the way of someone hacking you doesnt really… make sense
Probably would make sense to lean on existing anti-EMP chrome to counter this type of damage. Or even some anti-decker chrome install to nullify/reduce the ability at the cost of CPU/PDS.

I would disagree that it shouldn't be dodge-able though. Just purely for PvP balance, call it a mis-fire of psionic cyber wizardry or whatever, but 100% attack rate for anything is bad biz.
yeah maybe. not sure how i feel about chrome that entirely nullifies it but being able to reduce the incoming damage through it at the expense of CPU/PDS makes sense. some kind of "personal firewall" chrome or something

(Edited by Baguette at 7:53 am on 7/17/2026)

Yeah, I think it's important to keep in mind that just because decking was undeserved in the past doesn't mean it needs to be able to do everything now that it is getting some love.

In my opinion, it's one skill among many, and is primarily a utility skill. At best, it should be a supporting player in PvP and combat skills should be doing the brunt of the work for PvP.

If you want to fold solos, become a solo, or hire one. If you want to be the wizest decker this side of Neo-York, you're not gonna be folding solos. Just like the solo isn't going to be cracking any ICE or slashing nodes worth a damn.
yeah sure but then deckers are routinely getting snapped in half for playing their archetype and have next to no recourse. i think deckers being able to participate in pvp is perfectly fair given the amount of skills you need to invest in decking to be any good at it
Three skills among many.

But I see your point.
if there was one singular "decking" skill (like there is for artistry, medical, driving, secure tech, arms tech, etc) then i would see your point but there are THREE decking skills, which you need all of. being able to use those skills for combat rather than just their current ability of "pulling common knowledge "pay"data nobody gives a fuck about" seems like a more than fair tradeoff
Lots of people get killed without recourse, that doesn't mean mechanics should be able to snipe you with a wrench. Although using a torch welder as a melee weapon does sound pretty fucking cool now that I think about it.

The recourse is hire a solo to kill your enemies, or not make enemies, or make powerful allies that will protect you, or well the list kind of goes on and on.

It's also important to keep in mind that there isn't a single PC that isn't on the menu, just as a reminder, even the baddest of the bad get theirs.
hire a solo? with what fucking money lmao? 90% of deckers are broke as shit because nobody hires them for anything as a result of their skills still not really being very useful unless you have a vested interest in buying data you can get for free by listening to pubSIC for two minutes
Time to run crates for vengeance!
yeah what a fool i was for hoping to get some money or, god forbid, roleplay out of investing my time into an archetype
Maybe an alternative /addition is being able to shove riggers out of their robotics, vehicles, semi-autonomous drones and remote sensation apparatus, or interfacing with that in some way. Making things more difficult to control, etc.
woah careful now it almost sounds like you want deckers to be able to do something
That seems a little dramatic. You can ICly get a job to generate funds. You can run candy/gear to gangers/guards. You can do crates. You can take out a terrifying loan with a shark. There's plenty of ways to get money over time to exact vengeance against your favorite bad guy.

As for RP around your archetype that's kind of a separate issue that shooting lightning bolts out of your LiteTerm isn't going to fix.

I have personally hired deckers and seen them hired quite a bit, but I suppose your mileage may vary based on a bunch of IC factors.

Baguette, I can tell you are really passionate about the archetype and ways to make it better. It does feel like reading your comments here and in other threads though too that you have a bitterness over the archetype itself and the limitations of it. The points should be made and forums are absolutely the place to bring these discussions up though I am concerned that you may be internalizing some of this too personally given the tone of many of your comments. I am not saying don't offer suggestions (I think it is great that you do and that there is a lot of perspective you offer that is valuable to have). The bitterness over things may be something to re-examine though.

There are other archetypes that take just as much investment and have arguably much less actual application in game, but your path is what you make of it. Coded limitations are frustrating, sure. I have my own gripes. But if it is making you bitter to this point, maybe step away for a moment, take a break, or consider a change to play style so you can get to what is really fulfilling for you about the game.
IC job - either nothing to do with decking or corporate
running candy/gear - nothing to do with decking
crates - nothing to do with decking
loan - nothing to do with decking

not to mention all of these things would take like a month at the very least to save up enough for a revenge hit, by which time said decker has probably been laid out by 4 or 5 other solos Just Because
It does seem like there could be some Red sector jobs baked into the game related to decking.
you're right, maybe i am bitter. because it seems like no matter what i do, no matter how much effort i put into this fucking thing, deckers are and always will be treated like a punchline. they're rarely hired for anything and when they are they either have to jack their prices up massively or get paid next to nothing, which becomes incredibly frustrating when all of their hardware is extremely expensive and incredibly easy to steal (compared to solos who have similarly-priced equipment, and then magical untouchable slings to keep them in without the risk of being dipped), and then nobody even bothers to use the public-facing aspects of the grid anyway, so what's the point?
To keep things back on track;

Yes. Daemons, and ICE for players are wholly reasonable things to have. Maybe a Daemon monitoring a solo could then be transferred over to their uh. HUD chrome. I forget the name, So they get LIVE updates of, "Oh crap, someone is trying to QuickHack!"
all of that is to say when i take time to come up with a suggestion that i think would improve things not just for deckers but for the game as a whole (in terms of culture, atmosphere, roleplay, etc) it's either not mechanically feasible (e.g. hijacking TV channels, which I completely understand, there's not really much you can do about that besides tearing out the whole scheduler code and rebuilding it) or i get six different guys who've never played a decker in their life telling me how my idea sucks without offering any kind of alternative (unless it's one that ends up defeating the whole point of the suggestion and/or reducing it to doing Literally Nothing)
You need a break homie. Maybe time for a vacation character? Or retire your existing and make a badass super solo who folds deckers for fun?
And at that, even add some counter measure software which temporarily boosts ICE by a large amount but wears off and resumes to the previous level of ICE.

There's a lot of options here, a lot of things that can be done.
Sorry BlackSoul yeah we got off topic. Solid ideas for deckers, thanks for suggesting!


Just roll a combat char bro. Aint decks.

(Edited by Bruhlicious at 8:37 am on 7/17/2026)

right yeah just dismiss everything im saying like usual. i don't want to play a fucking solo. that's the point

(Edited by Baguette at 8:37 am on 7/17/2026)

vulnerable-chrome (decker crashout zone)


decking is pretty cool, i would NOT make a character around it unless I wanted a cushy topside gig that had prettttty light interaction with the job itself and was focused on other biz.

that said i can see the strides moving in the right direction. right now, decking is a great utility to have, but as a whole basis it's pretty light on utility and purpose. there are some solid characters around it and i do have some confidence in it.

idea off this, what if…room based PDS surge hack?
Baguette does need a hug. We love you, Baguette
I am always in favor of deckers being able to do more. I do not think it's possible to call anything OP until you actually do it in the game and it turns out to be OP. Combat characters in general are already so OP compared to everyone else that jumping to "this will make X character too powerful" feels reactive and status quo to me.
That would be pretty cool. Scan a room and temporarily jack the PDS requirements of anyone in the room on command?
someone suggests "solos should be able to force choke people from 10 rooms away" and at most they get talked down to 8 rooms before it is swiftly added to the game

a decker suggests "can we have any ability to meaningfully defend ourselves" and you need seven peer-reviewed studies from four different journals accounting for every fringe edge-case use

@crooknose holy shit thank you. i felt like i was going insane
Oh, maybe QuickHacks come in these like, little flash drives / QuickHack Chips, that then need to be transferred over to specific type of cybernetic in order to use. The chips are consumable once the QuickHack is programmed into it by a decker, and the cybernetic requires SICnal in order to function or something.

All of which can be built and is modular, by an Electro Tech type, but is programmed by a Decker.
All the more reason to can the deckers and break out the robo hunk solo.
Buying an 8-room choke-out collar. Get at my chip.
Daddy chill.
idea, move decking BEYOND quick terms, tools and gadgets that use decking skills to pull off things in a room. a device that grabs the sic ids of everyone in a room, gadgets, tools, so forth. succesful based off their stats vs the ice of the devices

add ice to sic chips! protect from effortless sic checking! make this a kind of ice that degrades over time! sic hopping is no longer a time trial reflex macro test but a thing you can get someone to secure you against.

a tool that can scan someone and learn their sic-alias!
That tool exists ;)
im back on team crashout
until you look at it too hard yeah
Don't troll the thread. Don't antagonize people to antagonize them to see if they'll get angrier. If you can't I'll either lock the thread or make it so the people doing that aren't able to continue.

Disagreeing or constructive criticism are fine ways to engage, acting like a jerk isn't.
@baguette I gotchu babe
I think the supremacy of combat PCs and the minimizing of other archetypes is very frustrating. It feels like every discussion about balancing boils down to maintaining that disparity. Maybe that's entirely perception and the reality is far more nuanced, but in my time here its rang true in my experience.

I have never heard a compelling argument why explosives should be so alarming weak, or why combat robots are such a joke in combat when they cost AV prices, or now why deckers shouldn't be able to effect technology in ways which are entirely themely.

I understand entirely if the reason is that this is the state of play and drastic changes would require time and technical overhauls that are just not feasible. I accept that, what I do -not- accept is that this is how it ought to be.
yeah you and crooknose are wording it better than i can i think. if it's purely due to technical limitations (like the stuff with TV hijacking) i completely understand, but it really seems like people are happy that deckers can't really do anything, which i find completely baffling
can't quite speak to decking, but rigging imo is in a very similar position (requires an investment in multiple skills to be able to build and maintain robots, combat robots are horrible fighters for the price they're at and much more punishing to lose, has had some very nice recent qol changes but are still ultimately just as vulnerable, and lack of any (mixside) hiring opportunities, both in coded jobs and in people ic who are willing to hire for services, besides a single position topside.)

i would not mind decking and rigging becoming a little more closely intertwined and deckers being able to scan/mess with robots mid combat if remote/robot combat was slightly more accessible. hacking into security-bots or drones would be a great way to promote techie-versus-techie warfare (which i would also love to see more of besides 'hey i hacked your node and drew a dick on it') but currently i find the actual application value of both disciplines pretty underwhelming
yeah, riggers absolutely need more love too

speaking of "techie-on-techie warfare", it is currently TECHNICALLY possible for deckers to have little grid battles, but doing so requires writing a daemon with a specific skill that has been brought up to a level that i dont think any character in the game has (or has ever had) so that entire aspect of the game just does not get used. i'd argue that the skill level required for daemons to perform tracebacks should be drastically lowered, especially given the grid_remove_known_device command exists which means someone triggering your daemon can just nullify it anyway.
Techie vs Techie would be immensely fun.

Imagine NLM sending stealth drones down to Red only to get caught be a decker, hacked and stolen. But then NLM counter hacks and it just becomes a big loop of digital combat.