Sanity Check on Decker/Technomancer Participation in Combat

Well, in hot-sim VR you should at least get 1 pass more than the street sams etc, so while you have to spend time looking for those hidden icons, you should have additional passes to hack them.

Also, as this is in case of surprise, you're naturally not as effective. If you have time to prepare, you have a much greater chance of being incredibly useful - you can get marks before combat starts then fuck them up whenever you need to. Of course, the limit is how long you can wait, as you will be accumulating OS.

Edit: A TM can use complex forms rather than hacking to fuck their shit up faster, too. Certainly with a few registered sprites.

Edit 2: IIRC if you know some details of the device you're looking for (a colt m23, a light pistol, etc) then you get some kind of bonus on matrix perception. I think.

Deckers are like old school wizards. They are amazing when they have prep time, sort of left hanging when caught out on short notice.

One good idea for such a situation is see if you can hack any devices that are in the area. Cameras are great, and as others have said look for hidden devices. Unless on short time you can always go early and setup a counter ambush.

You're missing a couple things, but overall, yes, hackers of all types are not good in sudden firefights where they have no forewarning or time to prepare.

Assuming you know you're going to get in trouble soon, or just want to stay safe, you can start making your Matrix Perception before the fighting starts. You can find hidden icons and, even without marking them, just spot them until you reboot or they hide.

There's also some actions which are more suited for immediate impact hacking. Data Spike in particular doesn't require marks, though it benefits from them. If your deck is running attack as it's highest attribute, with Decryption and Hammer running, you can take out a lot of devices in one go. Even better if you have Fork.

Beside that, talk to your GM about what should reasonably be running silent. Most people runners interact with will have their gear running silent, but, say, most vehicles are probably connected to GridGuide. Those probably aren't running silent. Also, if the enemy party has someone in charge of their Matrix Security, getting a mark on any slaved devices will get you a mark on the master device too, letting you spot it for free.

Beside that, try not to be caught unaware. Make a Matrix Perception test when you enter a building, or right before entering. Then look for silent-running smartguns, drones, and other important devices.

First of all:
You can get more information for each hit you get on Matrix perception. And there is no opposition here. So you should get 2-3 Hits (or you skilled wrong for a Hacker), first get the silent running ones, then you can simply filter them by using the next hit to only get those of weapons and the third hit to get the one that are at a certain location (so you would get the weapons of a specific person).
Next pass try to spot it. After that, you can attack.

Most important of all:
Don't go after the tech of the enemies your meatspace-friends are going for. Attack the other ones.

Here is an example of our last game. I had the advantage that non of the devices were running silent (because they were just some stupid gangers in an area where matrix connection is already pretty weak so the chance of encountering any hacker on the streat was relatively zero... oh boy where they wrong ^^).
Anyway, the fight started, I went into hot-sim VR and got at least 1 more pass then anyone else. I started looking at the enemies and picked the one nobody else went for (because there where other more dangerous threats that the others had to go for first).
So Matrix perception to spot the right Icon (no opposition, as they weren't running silent). Then I started to hack with Brute Force (it didn't matter that they noticed me, the fight was already underway). Got my Mark and used the additional Free Action to use Control Device for ejecting the Clip (since this is a free action when having wireless enabled, control device is a free action as well).

So now that guy was already wondering what the hell was going on, as he couldn't shoot anymore. He got another clip so he inserted that immediately. Well, next pass, did the same thing again. Brute Force for the second Mark, ejecting the clip afterwards.
I basicaly prevented the guy from doing anything as he had to take aim and insert a new clip again, while I gained more and more control of the weapon.
Next pass, knowing that I already damaged the Weapon (had several hits with Brute force so I could do some damage), I decided to remove that guy from the battle for good. I used Data Spike, bricked the Weapon. He didn't have a spare one (at least none that were usefull on his range) and the Situation already went bad for him, as his fellow gangers fell one after the other (as our sniper one-shoted one after the other every pass he got). The this was basically the end of the Game, the last guy just ran away.

Yeah, we might now have played this completely by the books, but the important lesson here is: pick the right target!
If you go after someone that your meatspace-friends are already attacking, then you will lose that targed befor really getting to do anything. So don't do that.

And as everyone else already said: Your highest effectivesness will come when you can prepare! Getting at least 1 Mark on some of the enemies weapons before the fight starts will give you an immediate advantage.

Some tips:
If you're a decker, get an Agent! Just let him scan for silent running icons and let him spot them, forwarding those datas to you. Now you only need to Mark him, no more perception checks needed!
If you're a technomancer, get some sprites! For one task, a sprite will participate in a whole fight. Register 2 or 3 Fault sprites and just tell them all to destroy the enemies weapons. That will totally f***k those guys up. And don't bother with reregistering, it's just not worth it. Just compile and register a new one because you'll get more Tasks thanks to the compiling where the sprite gets only level dices, that should give you a few more net hits and thus, tasks.

1. When you go into Hot Sim, your Initiative increases pretty substantially. So you should be getting more actions in. Also, you get +2 to everything done in Hot Sim, and a further +2 to any Matrix Perception (meaning +4 to Hot Sim Matrix Perception checks).

2. The 1st MP check notices how many Hidden Icons are around, and basically where they are. Not to say you know precisely, so that you could single out a pistol over a commlink by sight (which wouldn't matter much in Hot Sim since your eyes are closed anyway).

3. Depending on interpretation, you can filter out certain Hidden Icons by selecting a feature they should have. For instance, looking for Icons with a Smartlink system, will narrow it down to only the guns. However, there are still several guns on the field, so you have to randomly try each one after that.

When you make your 2nd MP roll, you aren't still looking for Hidden Icons, you are making an Opposed roll against the single Icon you've chosen to investigate. If you succeed, it is no longer Hidden to you. You can see it for what it is, and affect it normally. You have Spotted the Icon now.

4. Just b/c someone dies, doesn't mean his Icons vanish. Technically, you still have to sort through guns and Comms belonging to dead combatants. So you may be rolling to disable guns that are just lying on the ground, leaving the ones still shooting functional.

• • As you said, it does take a while to narrow down a bunch of Hidden Icons before you can start affecting anything significant. That's kinda the point of making things Hidden in the first place. It makes them harder to target and brick.

Bear in mind, a single Combat Turn is only 3 seconds, regardless of how many passes you get. So you shouldn't be terribly disappointed that you didn't uncover all the tech, and brick all the opposition, in those 3 seconds. Picture an action movie, and realize everyone was dead before the brass hit the ground.

Being a TM doesn't make this particular situation any easier. You'd still have to Spot the devices before you could act. And none of the Forms really make that any easier. Having some Sprites with you might have helped, if they were also making MP checks. If they found a target, and started attacking, you could direct your efforts to that same Icon. But otherwise, it sounds like the encounter went over about as well as could be expected.

Something I'm experimenting with is "Reckless Hacking" - you can do a complex action as a simple action but both actions are at -4 dice pool. Let's a hacker do more in combat but with greater chance of failure. Still testing it out.

No, hackers and TMs are pretty useless in combat time.