I'm all for SIC rips being more exclusive and more expensive.
That being said, is anything being done to balance the other side of the equation? By that I mean, the fact that once a character gets targeted by certain people / faction, due to the tools available, a SIC rip is really the only option.
This could open up something perhaps involving cyberdoc - decker/techie engagement with a client who wants some kind of pirate firmware on their SIC chip -- to balance this against competing directly with SIC rips, it'd be a temporary mechanism to defeat what Hek is referring to, or at least counteract it in some way.
Without getting into details, it could outright make the tools in question not work for say, a week, or a few days, then revert. Or it could make them less accurate, or delayed. There's a number of ways it could work, where a SIC rip is still the optimal solution, but getting your cyberdoc to work with a decker to give you a shorter-term solution that's more affordable could buy you time also.
Feels cool, feels themely, and creates a mid-range option without making a SIC rip useless.
I like Jameson's idea, and god knows we need decker types to actually do stuff without needing GM magic, so I'm all for it, and this would be something small while we wait for Grid 3.0. And Hek is absolutely correct also, SIC rips are more or less the only recourse against certain people/factions, and it is immensely punishing. I'd like to see a bit more development when it comes to SIC chips and SICnal. Pirate boosters, jammers, all that stuff could provide a lot of tactical options and RP.
However, the changes made today to triangulation tech make the sort of usage they've had in the past completely impossible.
I'm pretty confident I pushed the older version of this tech to its absolute limits and I thought it's perceived power was highly overblown.
Limited uses per location pretty much completely eliminates one of the greatest strengths of the tech.
