So allowing players to slice a computer system from their ship is an option if they are able to setup a way to connect to that network directly. Just going through the Holonet is often not an option unless you are trying to slice the station/planet wide news feed.

People here have no idea how many VPNs and Bastion Hosts I have to jump through in order to get to lab test equipment of certain … sensitive … customers. Not their production networks, just the test networks that aren’t connected to the production networks in any way.

And that wouldn’t be anywhere remotely close to what you’d have to go through to get onto classified military networks.

For anyone who wants to seriously debate this topic, I suggest that you go get a DoD/military job, with a Top Secret clearance, and maybe add a few SCI compartments to that.

Once you get there, feel free to come back here and tell me how easy it would be.

HINT: I had a TS/SCI clearance, and I know what it took back when I was working at the Pentagon.

I like the idea of the pen-pal droids. Maybe that is the Star Wars equivalent to asking Google. Google is based on bots, right?

The idea that a corporation puts out these networked droids to help people find directions and get answers to trivial questions, but also keep a detailed big brother file on you, is kind of appealing. Just imagine what all that data in the wrong hands could mean to a nascent rebel cell / up and coming criminal enterprise.

Reference the availability of information: If it's not out there, it's not out there. Imagine if the Jedi Council did a background check on Senator Palpatine. "Gee, sir, it seems you have a significant gap in your employment history and there's also this matter of distrubing wire taps where you keep saying 'something, something, dark side.'"

Sorry for the length of post.

1: You assume there is a gap in his employment history for them to find. Legends has him learning the Sith arts while maintaining his career and I doubt the new canon will have him not doing the same. He was a civil servant by day and a student of the Sith by night basically.

2: And why would his apartment or office be bugged exactly or his calls wire-tapped? Unless they have some evidence linking him to a crime, something he was careful to avoid until i was too late to stop him, the Jedi won't be spying on him.

Reference the availability of information: If it's not out there, it's not out there. Imagine if the Jedi Council did a background check on Senator Palpatine. "Gee, sir, it seems you have a significant gap in your employment history and there's also this matter of distrubing wire taps where you keep saying 'something, something, dark side.'"

Sorry for the length of post.

1: You assume there is a gap in his employment history for them to find. Legends has him learning the Sith arts while maintaining his career and I doubt the new canon will have him not doing the same. He was a civil servant by day and a student of the Sith by night basically.

It is depressing that the older I get, the least believable parts of Star Wars shift from telekinesis and faster than light travel, to someone being able to find the time to be a master villain in parallel with a career.

The only two believable super heroes are Batman and Superman. The first because he's a billionaire who doesn't have a job and the other because he has superpowers that let him complete his work at super speed.

The idea of someone building a super-successful political career by day and mastering dark arts by night, is by this point harder for me to accept than spaceships and lasers. The latter is just something I haven't come across yet. The former makes me ask - "how would you find the time??!??!"

I know what you mean. Between full-time work and full time classes, I've had to put my dreams of mastering the dark arts on hold for awhile.

Reference the availability of information: If it's not out there, it's not out there. Imagine if the Jedi Council did a background check on Senator Palpatine. "Gee, sir, it seems you have a significant gap in your employment history and there's also this matter of distrubing wire taps where you keep saying 'something, something, dark side.'"

Sorry for the length of post.

1: You assume there is a gap in his employment history for them to find. Legends has him learning the Sith arts while maintaining his career and I doubt the new canon will have him not doing the same. He was a civil servant by day and a student of the Sith by night basically.

2: And why would his apartment or office be bugged exactly or his calls wire-tapped? Unless they have some evidence linking him to a crime, something he was careful to avoid until i was too late to stop him, the Jedi won't be spying on him.

Right. Hence my flippant way of trying to prove my point...."If [the information is] not out there, it's not out there."

By controlling what information is out there for the player's to find (GM's job as the primary storyteller), the GM can prevent a player from using the Destroy Plot Talent: "Use a Maneuver to interact with an iPhone and make a Player Knowledge check [simple] to destroy the fun for everyone." Again, being flippant.

Right. Hence my flippant way of trying to prove my point...."If [the information is] not out there, it's not out there."

By controlling what information is out there for the player's to find (GM's job as the primary storyteller), the GM can prevent a player from using the Destroy Plot Talent: "Use a Maneuver to interact with an iPhone and make a Player Knowledge check [simple] to destroy the fun for everyone." Again, being flippant.

I like to think that I usually get the dry humor, but that's because I tend to think that way. But having post after dry-humor post of mine get taken seriously has made me realize the futility of such endeavors.

Not that it's stopped me in the least...

Reference the availability of information: If it's not out there, it's not out there. Imagine if the Jedi Council did a background check on Senator Palpatine. "Gee, sir, it seems you have a significant gap in your employment history and there's also this matter of distrubing wire taps where you keep saying 'something, something, dark side.'"

Sorry for the length of post.

1: You assume there is a gap in his employment history for them to find. Legends has him learning the Sith arts while maintaining his career and I doubt the new canon will have him not doing the same. He was a civil servant by day and a student of the Sith by night basically.

It is depressing that the older I get, the least believable parts of Star Wars shift from telekinesis and faster than light travel, to someone being able to find the time to be a master villain in parallel with a career.

The only two believable super heroes are Batman and Superman. The first because he's a billionaire who doesn't have a job and the other because he has superpowers that let him complete his work at super speed.

The idea of someone building a super-successful political career by day and mastering dark arts by night, is by this point harder for me to accept than spaceships and lasers. The latter is just something I haven't come across yet. The former makes me ask - "how would you find the time??!??!"

As an anecdotal reference: I have NO CLUE what my state representatives/Senators do 24hrs a day. I might be able to track down some of their time each day if I cared too, but I don't. I do know that there is a ton of time in the day to study and learn because I once went to school full time, worked at a coffee shop, worked at a hat store, worked for a textile warehouse, and DJ'd at night. So the amount of things one can accomplish in 24 hrs is only limited by what you impose on yourself.

So I can easily extrapolate the above to a Sith Lord. An extremely patient Sith Lord who is willing to wait 20+ years to see his plans come to fruition. Which Full-time Senator/Chancellor is part of said plan, so... I buy it.

Edit: A Sith Lord who is probably also siphoning extra energy from the Dark Side so he doesn't need as much rest.

Edit, edit: Also keep in mind during the Clone Wars he has executive powers, so I am certain some of those powers include limiting media exposure. So there would be no headlines like: PALPATINE GOES TO THE BEACHES OF NABOO DURING A WAR!! Meaning the media isn't tracking his every step like they do a US President.

Also we're uncertain how far along in the training he was when he became senator and just how much time out of the day being a senator, or even carrying out whatever job he had before becoming senator takes when there isn't a massive crisis brewing.

if you want to play in Star Wars universe "as is", just tell your players "this is not how the network works, Star Wars does not have google". If they argue, remind them that this is a "long long time ago in a galaxy far far away"

If however, you wish to play in a more "Shadowrun-esque" game (which is awesome and one of the reasons I like EotE so much), you first need to re-write the rules for computers, networks, slicing, and security. I have written a "mod" that handles that, loosely based on the Shadowrun book "Matrix 2.0", with some extra stuff, however it is really only good for this kind of heavy on information/networks/hacking kind of a setting.

If you want, I can send it to you

I would like to see that, mind throwing it up some googledrive or something ?

Tapes survived in the consumer environment until the late 80s. But one hard drives became cheaper floppies took over then CDs in the 90s and then DVD. I used to have a tape drive for my commodore 64 in the early 80s.

We were using tape backups well into the mid-2000s at a graphic design place I used to work at. Never underestimate the power of inertia!

I believe most nuclear weapons systems still use floppy discs...

Well that's me not sleeping tonight. Thanks!

Having had worked on the access control systems for Nuclear bases. I am not worried

You want to be worried about the US nuclear weapons systems? In the same recent NPR report where I heard that the nuclear bases are still using floppy disks (which are becoming a problem because they getting harder to get) they also spoke about "the wrench." The wrench was a tool needed for installing nucular warheads on top of ICMB missles. There were three bases that needed this tool. How many wrenches do you think there were? Two for each base, in case one gets lost behind a missle where no one can reach it? Nope. One for each base? Nope. Try just one. They would FedEx the wrench between the three bases. Yes, that is FedEx, not some sort of military package delivery service. (Note: they now have two wrenches for each base, so don't be too scared.)

Imagine a scene in a James Bond movie or an EotE mission where the robbers break into the military base and are all set to steal the warhead but they can't because the wrench to remove the warhead was just shipped off to a base across the country that morning. In fiction, that just wouldn't fly. The audience would scream it's dumb, but that's how it could've played out.

To pull this story in line with the topic of this thread. A character can google the answer all they want, but if the tools to actually do the job aren't in place then you can't do it. Also, just because you have the instructions in front of you, doesn't mean you know how to do something. Look at the running jokes about IKEA furnature. No one knows how to put it together even through you get the instructions in the box. Access to Google isn't the end all be all that players want it to be. You still need to have the practical know how on how to do things. And if that little wrench isn't included in the box, no amount of instructions will help you get that bookshelf or ICBM put together.

I'm kind of worried that you'd tell that to random strangers on the internet...

That was exactly what I thought. I almost replied that now I would sleep even less well! I would have thought no-one with that level of security clearance would refer to their work ever.

I don't have a security clearance. I was not on any base. I worked for a company that did those security systems.

Oh great. Now there's a whole company of people who worked on nuclear weapons security systems that never required security clearance of their employees. I'm not going to sleep for a year!

But knowing how those security systems work will not help you.

Knowing how a security system works always helps break it. If nothing else, it tells you what approaches wont work and lets you focus on ones that might.

Problem is that security systems can't really be defeated with out knowing everything about a set up. And even then you really can't defeat them. Any interruption of power will set off the alarm no matter how short it is. Not knowing the exact voltage needed including how much wire and what its resistance is and the resistor in the line is. My knowledge will do you no good. As I know how the security system works. I do not know any of the specifics you would need to know to do anything with my knowledge. And even if you had that knowledge you are up against physics. So really my knowledge does you no good.

See - it just keeps coming. Okay, so now I know that if the power is simply cut it sets off the alarm but if I keep the voltage going, it wont. But you've also just told me (and the Internet) that I have to get the exact voltage right - that it is voltage sensitive. You know you talk about "being up against physics" but it's actually not that hard to determine the voltage flowing through a wire. I was actually testing the electrics on a live system the other day. You've also told me that there are people around (you for example) who can tell me the exact specifics of resistance, etc. because you installed it. So now, it's just a matter of tracing back from the username Daeglan and your posts a real person.

Everytime that you argue about why the system is secure, you tell us more about how to get around it!

I wanted to know something trivial about the thousands of years of Mandalorian history one time, and the GM went ballistic. "Gosh, I just assumed I had walked into the library and got out a (insert analogue of book) about a culture that, I don't know, conquered half the galaxy at some point." - got me a glare.

So I made the dang impossible roll he wanted... and got success. (Hey, anything is possible if the purple dice all show up threats ). This was an intersession thing, and I was annoyed enough though, that I just never mentioned the roll.

I'm kind of worried that you'd tell that to random strangers on the internet...

That was exactly what I thought. I almost replied that now I would sleep even less well! I would have thought no-one with that level of security clearance would refer to their work ever.

I don't have a security clearance. I was not on any base. I worked for a company that did those security systems.

Oh great. Now there's a whole company of people who worked on nuclear weapons security systems that never required security clearance of their employees. I'm not going to sleep for a year!

But knowing how those security systems work will not help you.

Knowing how a security system works always helps break it. If nothing else, it tells you what approaches wont work and lets you focus on ones that might.

Problem is that security systems can't really be defeated with out knowing everything about a set up. And even then you really can't defeat them. Any interruption of power will set off the alarm no matter how short it is. Not knowing the exact voltage needed including how much wire and what its resistance is and the resistor in the line is. My knowledge will do you no good. As I know how the security system works. I do not know any of the specifics you would need to know to do anything with my knowledge. And even if you had that knowledge you are up against physics. So really my knowledge does you no good.

See - it just keeps coming. Okay, so now I know that if the power is simply cut it sets off the alarm but if I keep the voltage going, it wont. But you've also just told me (and the Internet) that I have to get the exact voltage right - that it is voltage sensitive. You know you talk about "being up against physics" but it's actually not that hard to determine the voltage flowing through a wire. I was actually testing the electrics on a live system the other day. You've also told me that there are people around (you for example) who can tell me the exact specifics of resistance, etc. because you installed it. So now, it's just a matter of tracing back from the username Daeglan and your posts a real person.

Everytime that you argue about why the system is secure, you tell us more about how to get around it!

uhhh not that simple. send the wrong voltage down the wire and the alarm goes off. Oh and the sensor is not reachable. Being on the inside of a large blast door and all.

These are principles that all security systems rely on and they are designed to alarm if you try and tinker with them. Hell just opening trying to access the wires will set off the alarm. Trust me. You are not beating physics.

Daeglan, on 21 Nov 2014 - 4:34 PM, said:

How did we get on some topic of realistic security system minutia ??? Out of respect for the members, please start another posting regarding realism in Star Wars security systems and networks (wireless or otherwise). It has just gotten SO petty with the back-and-forth. Perhaps personal messaging is the way to go for you to work out your differences in a private setting. Thanks.

For those who'd like to get back to the topic, the discussion concerned (to summarize) the effect quick-n-easy access to data in our lives (i.e. 'Googling' any topic you want and getting answers by hitting a few buttons) affects players in game play who want their characters to get on a computer and pull up whatever they seek in the same way.

I just finished reading Tarkin. It's supposed to be part of the new canon, and there are several obvious parallels to what we have today. It's pretty clear that Holonet = Internet, and Empire = China...as far as the latter, I mean the ability to filter and control, but it's not 100 percent effective unless they do a total blackout (which hurts economies).

I just finished reading Tarkin. It's supposed to be part of the new canon, and there are several obvious parallels to what we have today. It's pretty clear that Holonet = Internet, and Empire = China...as far as the latter, I mean the ability to filter and control, but it's not 100 percent effective unless they do a total blackout (which hurts economies).

Listening to it myself and no the holonet is not the internet. At least not in any way we would recognize. Yes people can put stuff on it. but it ddi not come across in anyway like what we have. And yes it is controlled in much the way China controls their internet.

The Holonet is not the Internet. I explain things to players who expect it to be as follows:

Star Wars is not an Information Society. The realworld Internet was designed to be a highly resilient system that could withstand devastating force (nuclear attack) and still enable all members of it to be able to reach all other members - It is a large net which has the principle of routing around damage built into it as basic aim. I.e. its primary goal above all else, is to enable communications.

The Holonet is not that and never was. It's a state run communications system and its primary aims are security and top-down control. It doesn't have the goal of withstanding a massive and devastating external attack by a party of equal power, because there is no party of equal power to the Empire. Where the Internet is decentralized, the Holonet is has control centres. Where the Internet tries to enable to party A to get their message to party B via any path available, the Holonet tries to make sure communications from party A get routed up to the local control stations and then routed down to party B after identities have been confirmed. Where the Internet allows anyone to connect and start serving up a webpage, the Holonet checks with C&C and looks to see if your systems have been properly registered in triplicate before they are allocated a communications channel.

The Holonet has different design goals to the Internet and is thus different in implementation. The Empire does not fear external attack. It fears internal dissent. Your analogue for the Holonet is not today's Internet, but the military communications network of a fascist state.

Good luck with that!

Knass may I use this in a document (giving credit) for my campaign explaining the Holonet and communications in Star Wars? Primarily for my own use but I will probably make a PDF of it and add it to my signature.

I'm kind of worried that you'd tell that to random strangers on the internet...

That was exactly what I thought. I almost replied that now I would sleep even less well! I would have thought no-one with that level of security clearance would refer to their work ever.

I don't have a security clearance. I was not on any base. I worked for a company that did those security systems.

Oh great. Now there's a whole company of people who worked on nuclear weapons security systems that never required security clearance of their employees. I'm not going to sleep for a year!

But knowing how those security systems work will not help you.

Knowing how a security system works always helps break it. If nothing else, it tells you what approaches wont work and lets you focus on ones that might.

Problem is that security systems can't really be defeated with out knowing everything about a set up. And even then you really can't defeat them. Any interruption of power will set off the alarm no matter how short it is. Not knowing the exact voltage needed including how much wire and what its resistance is and the resistor in the line is. My knowledge will do you no good. As I know how the security system works. I do not know any of the specifics you would need to know to do anything with my knowledge. And even if you had that knowledge you are up against physics. So really my knowledge does you no good.

See - it just keeps coming. Okay, so now I know that if the power is simply cut it sets off the alarm but if I keep the voltage going, it wont. But you've also just told me (and the Internet) that I have to get the exact voltage right - that it is voltage sensitive. You know you talk about "being up against physics" but it's actually not that hard to determine the voltage flowing through a wire. I was actually testing the electrics on a live system the other day. You've also told me that there are people around (you for example) who can tell me the exact specifics of resistance, etc. because you installed it. So now, it's just a matter of tracing back from the username Daeglan and your posts a real person.Everytime that you argue about why the system is secure, you tell us more about how to get around it!

You can tell the voltage flowing through the wire at the point you are at. Not tell me how you bypass it? You can't cut the wire. Alarm goes off. You can't replace the voltage because the alarm will go off. These systems are not really defeat able because of physics. The effects of changes to the wires happens at the speed of light. You are welcome to try. But none of the stuff you see in movies will work. They all set off the alarms.

See - it just keeps coming. Okay, so now I know that if the power is simply cut it sets off the alarm but if I keep the voltage going, it wont. But you've also just told me (and the Internet) that I have to get the exact voltage right - that it is voltage sensitive. You know you talk about "being up against physics" but it's actually not that hard to determine the voltage flowing through a wire. I was actually testing the electrics on a live system the other day. You've also told me that there are people around (you for example) who can tell me the exact specifics of resistance, etc. because you installed it. So now, it's just a matter of tracing back from the username Daeglan and your posts a real person.Everytime that you argue about why the system is secure, you tell us more about how to get around it!

You can tell the voltage flowing through the wire at the point you are at. Not tell me how you bypass it? You can't cut the wire. Alarm goes off. You can't replace the voltage because the alarm will go off. These systems are not really defeat able because of physics. The effects of changes to the wires happens at the speed of light. You are welcome to try. But none of the stuff you see in movies will work. They all set off the alarms.

FYI, voltage doesn't flow. Current does. Voltage (the difference in potential) can only be determined between a point and a reference (generally either the return path or the "ground" wire). This is why you can hang from a 125kV line and not get hurt (see all the birds on power lines) as the difference in potential between your hands (or a birds feet) is 0 as the 125kV is relative to ground.

I have to say that, whenever any of my players start any sentence with words similar to "well, in our world..". I just look them in the eye and say the following "A long time ago, in a galaxy FAR FAR AWAY"

That usually quiets them down.

Lots of insight here.

Knass may I use this in a document (giving credit) for my campaign explaining the Holonet and communications in Star Wars? Primarily for my own use but I will probably make a PDF of it and add it to my signature.

Received permission from Knass. There's a link to, "Info Tech", in my signature. It won't agree with everyone's opinions of course.

Received permission from Knass. There's a link to, "Info Tech", in my signature. It won't agree with everyone's opinions of course.

Yet another useful file downloaded.

Thanks again! ;)