Netrunner: breach contracts from the Afterlife

A fixer posts a breach contract on a board in the Afterlife's back room. A netrunner takes it, jacks into a real Night City terminal for a timed breach, and brings the data shard back. A successful breach puts the shard in the netrunner's pockets; a failed one is traced by NCPD. The netrunner is paid when the shard reaches the fixer, and the fixer keeps a cut. The job also ships four quickhacks: Ping, Short Circuit, Overheat and an NCPD radio jammer.

The job is the rp_netrunner resource, version 2.0, from the Open2077/open77-resources repository. It is built on the world-interaction libraries and is experimental like them.

How a contract plays#

The netrunner#

You need the netrunner job and must be on duty: type /service to clock in.

1. Take a contract. In the Afterlife's back room, press E on Talk to the fixer. The contract board opens: one row per open contract with its code, the terminal and where it is, the tier, the pay, the time left and the fixer who posted it. Pick a row and confirm with Take it. From anywhere, /netrun contracts lists the board in chat and /netrun take <code> takes one. You hold one contract at a time.

2. Bring data chips. Every breach that runs to the end burns one data chip, whether it succeeds or fails. Without a chip the breach is refused before the bar starts:

   You need a data chip to jack in (the breach kit).

3. Go to the terminal. /netrun tells you which terminal, where it is and how long you have left. At the terminal, press E on Breach the terminal (or type /breach next to it). You sit and type at a desk, stand over a tablet at the den, or sit on the ground with a laptop at the junction box, while a Breaching the ICE bar runs: 12, 18 or 25 seconds depending on the tier. X, walking away, dying, getting in a car or clocking out stops it, and nothing is used:

   Breach aborted. The ICE never saw you: nothing was used.

4. The roll. The server draws the outcome when the breach starts. Your odds are the tier's base chance, plus 8 % per rp_jobs grade, minus 5 % for every attempt already made on the contract, kept between 10 % and 95 %.

   Tier	Name	Bar	Base chance	Reward	Deadline
   1	Street node	12 s	75 %	300 to 700	15 to 60 min
   2	Corporate subnet	18 s	55 %	800 to 1600	20 to 90 min
   3	Datafort	25 s	40 %	1600 to 3000	30 to 120 min

5. Success. The data shard lands in your pockets:

   Breach complete (75% odds): the data shard is in your pockets. Deliver it at Fixer drop - Afterlife back room within 38 min.

6. Failure is a trace. The ICE logs you. Officers on duty get a dispatch line and a map pin at the terminal, your NCPD record gets an entry, and your own game raises its NCPD heat to level 1 for two minutes. The terminal's ICE then stays on alert for a minute, and a new attempt there is refused until it calms down. The contract stays yours; the third failed attempt burns it.

   Breach failed (55% odds): the ICE traced you. You may try again (attempt 1 of 3).
   TRACE: NCPD ICE logged your signature. Dispatch is on its way.

7. Deliver. For a contract the board posted itself, go back to the fixer drop and press E on Talk to the fixer: with the shard on you, it starts the delivery (a short give gesture and a Handing over the shard bar). For a contract a player fixer posted, hand the shard to that fixer in person: ALT+click them and pick Hand over the data shard, or type /netrun deliver <their id>, within 3 m. They answer on an offer card. If that fixer is not in the city, the drop at the Afterlife pays instead and their cut still reaches them.

   Shard delivered: contract VLY3 closed, +297 eddies (the fixer's cut: 53 eddies).

8. Deadline. A contract not delivered in time expires. A shard of an expired contract goes stale and leaves your pockets. /netrun abandon gives back a contract you have not breached yet; a breached contract cannot be abandoned.

The fixer#

You need the fixer job and must be on duty.

• Post. At the fixer drop, E on Talk to the fixer opens the board with Post a contract at the bottom. Pick a terminal, then a reward inside its tier's range and a deadline in minutes. Posting costs you nothing: the client pays the reward on delivery, and you are paid your cut then. Every netrunner on duty hears about the new contract.
• From chat. /netrun sites lists the terminals with their reward and deadline ranges, /netrun post <site> [reward] [minutes] posts, /netrun cancel <code> pulls a contract nobody has taken yet.
• Follow it. You are told when your contract is taken, dropped, breached, delivered, burned or expired, for example "Ada Kovac took your contract 5RJ6." and "Contract 5RJ6 delivered by Ada Kovac: your cut 150 eddies."
• Receive the shard. When the netrunner hands it over, an offer card names the runner and the contract. Y accepts, N declines; both keys can be rebound under Pause > Settings > Key bindings, and /interaction accept or /interaction decline in chat do the same. Accepting passes the shard to your client: the netrunner is paid and your cut lands in your cash. A declined hand-over moves nothing and the netrunner keeps the shard.
• Limits. You may have three open contracts at once, and a terminal carries one live contract at a time. You cannot take a contract you posted.

The Afterlife's own fixer#

The board keeps three contracts of its own open, posting one more every minute while fewer are open, each on a terminal nobody holds a contract for. The reward is drawn inside the tier's range, rounded to 50 eddies. Its cut goes to the fixer society. These contracts are delivered at the drop.

NCPD#

An officer on duty sees a failed breach as a dispatch line and a toast, with a map pin at the terminal for a minute:

[NCPD DISPATCH] NETRUNNER: ICE trace: breach attempt at Junction box above the Afterlife (6 m)

The dispatch does not name the runner. The trace is written to the runner's record (/casier <id> shows "Traced:" and the terminal), and the data shard and the quickhacks are contraband that /fouille finds.

What everyone nearby sees#

The netrunner's pose at the desk, the tablet or the laptop, and the give gesture at the drop. The server plays the postures, so every player nearby sees the same scene.

Commands#

Site keys for the commands are watson_junction, den_node, corp_lobby, club_office, plaza_desk and office_workstation.

Quickhacks#

An on-duty netrunner can also hack other players. Each quickhack burns one item from the pockets, has a 30-second cooldown and leaves a trace one time in two (a dispatch line and a record entry, no heat).

ALT+click on a player offers Ping, Short Circuit, Overheat and Hand over the data shard while you are an on-duty netrunner. Short Circuit and Overheat use the platform's hacking kit: your operating-system slot holds one grade at a time, so the first Overheat after a Short Circuit loads the Overheat grade and asks you to run the hack again once it says "Deck ready".

Where the kit comes from#

• Data chips are an rp_inventory item that scrappers find in wrecks and salvage.
• Quickhack: Ping is sold by Dex, the black-market dealer under Kabuki Market, at night.
• Short Circuit, Overheat and Jammer have no seller in the pack: add them to a shop of yours, or hand them out with netrun.give.

Money, items and what can go wrong#

Every step that moves value is one open77_transactions operation, and the delivery is one rp_economy sale.

A delivery pays exactly once. Its operation id is fixed per contract, so a retried delivery returns the first receipt instead of paying again.

Disconnects and restarts#

• The board lives in the database: a restart of the resource or the server rebuilds it, with every contract, its taker, its attempts and its deadline.
• A taken contract belongs to the character, not the session. A netrunner who disconnects finds it again on reconnecting. The deadline keeps running while they are away.
• The shard is in the netrunner's pockets and survives a disconnect and a restart.
• A breach in progress when the netrunner disconnects or the resource stops is released: no chip is burned and no shard is created.
• A delivery cut short by a stop, after the sale and before the contract left the board: the next start finds the sale paid and retires the contract without paying again.
• Forgotten on a restart: a hand-over waiting for consent (the runner keeps the shard), a terminal's ICE alert, quickhack cooldowns, a running ping or jammer. Heat the job raised is lowered again when the resource stops.

Set up the netrunner job#

Requirements#

• A MySQL or MariaDB database. The board, the pockets and the cyberdeck records need it.
• The platform libraries open77_transactions, open77_actions, open77_uikit, open77_contextmenu and open77_hacking, with the libraries open77_actions depends on (open77_animations, open77_props, open77_interactions).
• The RP pack resources rp_jobs, rp_inventory, rp_economy and rp_ncpd.
• Optional: open77_player_interactions for the hand-over to a player fixer (without it, a player fixer's contract is delivered at the drop), open77_notifications for toasts, rp_identity to name players by their character.
• Clients with the RP animation archive for the poses: amb_d7c499_sit_chair_table_keybo at the desks, tablet2 at the den and laptop at the junction box (animation catalogue). A client without them runs the breach without the pose.

Load the resources#

In server.jsonc, add the resources to resources.load after the ones you already have, libraries first:

"resources": {
  "load": [
    // ...your existing resources...
    "open77_transactions", "open77_props", "open77_animations", "open77_interactions",
    "open77_uikit", "open77_actions", "open77_player_interactions", "open77_contextmenu",
    "open77_notifications", "open77_hacking",
    "rp_jobs", "rp_inventory", "rp_economy", "rp_ncpd", "rp_identity",
    "rp_netrunner"
  ]
}

In the same file, make pockets, stashes and wallets accounts of open77_transactions:

"convars": {
  "rp_inventory_backend": "transactions"
}

Let the job write and create shards#

Two open77_transactions settings decide which resources may change which accounts and who may create items (who may write). Set them once in the server console:

tunable.set open77_transactions writers rp_netrunner:char+stash/contracts, rp_economy:cash+bank+soc, rp_inventory, <your other writers>
tunable.set open77_transactions mint1 rp_netrunner sys:netrunner * 300; rp_inventory sys:* * 2000; rp_economy sys:* money 2000000

• writers. The default * lets every resource write and needs no change. If your server uses a list, add these entries to it: the job writes the netrunner's pockets and its contract board, and rp_economy writes the wallets and societies the delivery pays. Keep your other jobs' entries.
• mint rules. The first rule lets the job create up to 300 contract records and shards an hour. The rp_inventory and rp_economy rules are the ones the RP pack already needs: the delivery's reward is money rp_economy creates. Keep the rules you already have; use any free mint1 to mint6, or append a rule to an existing one with ;. Without the job's rule, posting is refused with "The board cannot create that (operator: a mint rule is missing)."

rp_economy also caps the money each resource may have it create: rp_netrunner is on its allowlist at 30,000 eddies an hour (EconomyConfig.mint.callers in rp_economy's server/config.lua). Raise it for a busy server.

Start the job#

ensure open77_transactions
ensure open77_actions
ensure rp_netrunner

These three declare auto_start false. To start them with the server, put the same lines in server.jsonc:

"startup": {
  "commands": [
    "ensure open77_transactions",
    "ensure open77_actions",
    "ensure rp_netrunner"
  ]
}

The server log then shows:

[rp_netrunner] deck rp_netrunner.deck v1 defined: short_circuit, overheat
[rp_netrunner] coordinator ready (store=sql)
[rp_netrunner] items defined through rp_inventory: 6
[rp_netrunner] ready: 6 breach sites, 1 fixer drop(s), 7 targets, 0 contract(s) on the board (job netrunner)

Staff the job#

The netrunner and fixer jobs ship with rp_jobs. Neither is joined at the employment agency: a boss hires, or an admin gives the job. In the server console:

setjob 12 fixer 3          # player 12 becomes the fixers' boss
setjob 14 netrunner 3      # player 14 becomes the netrunners' boss

Each boss then hires staff with /embaucher <playerId> [grade], or by ALT+clicking a player and picking Hire into Netrunner or Hire into Fixer, and everyone clocks in with /service. A netrunner's grade raises the breach odds by 8 % per grade. For a quick test, netrun.setup <playerId> [netrunner|fixer] [grade] gives the job and puts the player on duty in one step.

Console and ACL#

These commands are restricted: run them from the server console, or grant them to admins. Each one takes explicit player ids and goes through the same server path as the prompts.

To let an admin use them in game, add the permissions to their entry in your ACL file (server ACL):

"permissions": [
  "command.netrun.*",
  "command.setjob"
]

The player commands (/netrun, /breach, /ping, /court_circuit, /surchauffe, /brouiller) need no ACL: the job checks the job and duty itself.

Configuration#

The contract job is in the resource's server/config.lua (NetrunnerConfig); the quickhacks are in shared/config.lua (Config), which the client also reads. Rewards are in eddies, durations in milliseconds and positions in metres. After an edit, run restart rp_netrunner: the board is kept, and a breach running at that moment is released with nothing used.

Add a terminal#

1. Stand where the netrunner should work, facing the keyboard or the box. Type /pos to copy your position, and /rot for your yaw.
2. Append a site to C.sites in server/config.lua, with the pose that fits the spot: desk for a chair at a keyboard, tablet standing, laptop sitting on the ground.
3. restart rp_netrunner. The log's ready: line counts the new site, and /netrun sites lists it.

-- server/config.lua, a new entry at the end of C.sites
{
    key = "my_terminal", label = "Back-alley terminal", area = "Kabuki, Watson",
    tier = 1, pose = "tablet", npc = true, enabled = true,
    position = { x = 0.0, y = 0.0, z = 0.0 },   -- replace with /pos at the terminal
    yaw = 0.0,                                   -- replace with /rot, facing the terminal
    measured = true, source = "walked in game",
},

To retire a terminal, set enabled = false instead of deleting the entry. A contract already posted on it can no longer be breached and expires at its deadline.

Pay more, cut more, forgive less#

-- server/config.lua
C.tiers[1].reward = { min = 400, max = 900, default = 600 }      -- street nodes pay better
C.tiers[3].durationMs = 30000                                     -- a datafort takes 30 s
C.cut = { rate = 0.20, npcTo = { society = "fixer" } }            -- the fixer keeps 20 %
C.failure = { mode = "reopen", maxAttempts = 2, siteAlertMs = 120000 }  -- a failure puts the contract back on the board
C.trace.wantedLevel = 2                                           -- a trace brings more heat
C.trace.revealName = true                                         -- dispatch names the runner

To run the board with player fixers only, set C.npcBoard.enabled = false.

For resource authors#

The job publishes a host-wide event after every committed step and exposes exports. The fixer board (rp_fixer) listens to breach_success for its breach job orders; see Fixer.

-- server, after every committed step
AddEventHandler("rp:job:completed", function(e)
    -- e.job == "netrunner"; e.kind is "breach_success", "breach_failed" or "deliver"
    -- e.data = { contract, code, site, tier, reward, cut, poster, fixer, point,
    --            success, chance, grade, attempt, traced, outcome (breaches), net, via (delivery) }
end)
AddEventHandler("rp_netrunner:contract", function(phase, summary)
    -- phase: posted, taken, abandoned, breached, attempt_failed, failed, delivered, expired, cancelled
end)
AddEventHandler("rp_netrunner:traced", function(e) end)    -- { playerId, site, label, position, contract, ref, wantedLevel }
AddEventHandler("rp_netrunner:jammed", function(active) end)

-- synchronous reads
exports.rp_netrunner:contracts({ state = "open" })   -- summaries: code, site, tier, reward, cut, net, secondsLeft, ...
exports.rp_netrunner:contract("K7Q2")                 -- one contract by code or id
exports.rp_netrunner:sites()                          -- terminals with their ranges and whether they are busy
exports.rp_netrunner:activeContract(playerId)         -- the contract a netrunner holds
exports.rp_netrunner:isJamming()

-- writes (they yield): post as the board, or for a player fixer on duty
Open77.exports.call("rp_netrunner", "post", { site = "corp_lobby", reward = 1200, minutes = 45, fixer = 3 }):await()
Open77.exports.call("rp_netrunner", "cancel", "K7Q2", 3):await()   -- an open contract, by its poster

A trace also raises rp_ncpd:alert("netrunner", position, text, 0) and writes exports.rp_ncpd:addRecord(playerId, "netrunner", text, 0).

When something is refused#

The job explains every refusal in words. The ones players meet most, and the ones an operator can fix:

Limits#

• One contract per netrunner, one live contract per terminal, three open contracts per player fixer and 24 contracts on the board.
• Terminal positions come from the game's own work spots: the desks are office workstations where a pedestrian types in the base game. Stand at each terminal you open on your server and correct it with /pos if the pose does not sit right.
• The crowd. The terminals keep walking pedestrians away, but an NPC already standing on a terminal is not moved.
• NCPD heat is local. The heat a trace raises is applied in the netrunner's own game: the police it brings are seen by that player only. While a client has world population suppressed, its game refuses the heat (wanted level); the dispatch and the record still happen.
• The shard belongs to the taker. Given to someone else, it cannot be delivered by them, and it goes stale with the contract.
• Hand-over messages. A cancelled hand-over names the reason with a short code, for example "The hand-over was cancelled (player_moving): you keep the shard."
• New money. Rewards are created on delivery, capped by rp_economy at 30,000 eddies an hour for this job.
• Poses need the RP animation archive on the client; without it the breach runs without them.
• Quickhacks need open77_hacking and a cyberdeck record, which needs the database.