Communications, Data & Security

Information technology is woven into everyday life throughout the SWTOR-era galaxy. Characters communicate from the field, receive holographic transmissions across interstellar distances, carry records on datapads, work through computer terminals, operate sensors, protect sensitive information, and attempt to penetrate systems that were never intended to admit them.

The technology is sophisticated, but access still has circumstances. A transmission may be protected, intercepted, jammed, or disrupted. Information may exist on a local system without being available remotely. A terminal may require authorization. A recovered datapad may be encrypted. A damaged installation may retain records even after losing outside communications.

Personal & Holographic Communications

Portable communicators, personal holocoms, fixed holoterminals, and shipboard communications appear throughout SWTOR. Characters contact allies from the field, report to superiors, receive instructions remotely, and use larger fixed systems when their circumstances call for more substantial communications equipment.

Different equipment can support different circumstances. A personal communicator, military field unit, shipboard holocom, or specialized intelligence system does not need identical range, protection, durability, or capabilities. SWTOR establishes dedicated secure holocom equipment as well as ordinary personal and shipboard communications, leaving room for both routine contact and more specialized systems.

Environmental and tactical circumstances matter. SWTOR depicts communications arrays, jamming equipment, difficult planetary conditions, and damaged infrastructure affecting whether information can be transmitted reliably. Communications should therefore be neither perfectly dependable nor arbitrarily disabled: the location, equipment, infrastructure, interference, and story circumstances should explain the problem.

The HoloNet

The Galactic HoloNet is one of the setting's principal long-distance communications and information systems. SWTOR treats access to HoloNet information as familiar enough that an unusual enhancement can be defined by how directly it connects a person to that network: Mako's cybernetic implants, for example, maintain a constant connection to the Galactic HoloNet.

Her augmentation demonstrates an exceptional form of access rather than establishing that ordinary HoloNet use is rare.

For roleplay, a HoloNet connection should answer whether a character can reach an available network or service, not whether every piece of information in the galaxy is available through it. Public material may circulate widely while private correspondence, classified intelligence, corporate records, criminal information, local archives, isolated research systems, and data stored aboard a particular vessel remain restricted or entirely separate.

Relays, Jamming & Interception

Communications also depend upon infrastructure and control of the signal itself. SWTOR missions depict communications arrays linking installations, signal jammers suppressing transmissions, listening devices intercepting conversations, and intelligence personnel working with intercepted communications.

These systems create several different kinds of problems. Characters may need to restore a damaged relay, reach a stronger transmitter, disable a jammer, locate a concealed communications source, protect an outgoing message, determine whether a channel is compromised, or recover information from equipment after transmission has already failed.

Datapads & Portable Records

Datapads repeatedly appear throughout SWTOR as portable carriers of information. Messages, orders, reports, research, codes, recordings, maps, personnel material, and encrypted data can all plausibly be stored or transported on such devices when the owner has a reason to keep them there.

A datapad does not need to contain everything its owner knows. Professionals may separate personal and institutional records. Operatives can carry sanitized equipment. Researchers may keep sensitive work on restricted systems. A stolen device can therefore expose something important without becoming a complete archive of its owner's life.

Terminals, Networks & Archives

Computer terminals and larger data systems appear throughout developed SWTOR locations, including starships, government facilities, military installations, laboratories, businesses, settlements, intelligence sites, spaceports, and industrial complexes.

For roleplay, distinguish where information exists from how it can be reached. A starship may retain navigation or maintenance records locally. A damaged facility may still contain surviving files after outside communications fail. A research installation may deliberately keep sensitive material separated from wider networks. An abandoned computer may function even though the service it once connected to no longer does.

Remote access should therefore be established by the particular system rather than assumed. Some records may be available through a network; others may require the characters to obtain credentials, use specialized equipment, enter the facility, recover the original hardware, or physically reach the computer that stores them.

Authentication, Slicing & Access Control

Slicing is the established SWTOR term for accessing secured computer systems and related electronic protections. Official SWTOR material describes it specifically as a skill used to access secured computers and lockboxes, while missions extend the idea into security terminals, access panels, facility systems, and protected data.

Security may also depend upon ordinary authorization. Access codes, identification cards, assigned credentials, physical keys or devices, restricted terminals, and organizational permission can all matter when supported by the particular system.

Skill does not make every target equivalent. A commercial terminal, security console, military network, intelligence archive, unfamiliar alien system, and ancient installation can present very different problems. A capable slicer may still need compatible equipment, stolen credentials, technical knowledge, physical access, additional time, an insider, or assistance from another specialist.

Successful access can also be incomplete. One credential may open only part of a system. A slicer may recover data that remains encrypted, disable one security measure without affecting another, or gain access while leaving evidence that someone later discovers.

Encryption & Secure Communications

Encryption is firmly established in SWTOR. Protected transmissions, encrypted datapads, encrypted data, specialized ciphers, secure holocom systems, and decryption work all appear within the setting.

Some encryption can be exceptionally difficult. During the Great War, the Imperial cipher code-named Umbra resisted Republic attempts at decryption so successfully that the Republic eventually pursued the physical capture of an encryption device after theoretical cryptographic work failed to break it.

That example supports sophisticated cryptography without requiring every encrypted message to be equally formidable. Security is better treated as specific to the people, equipment, organization, and importance of the information involved.

A protected system might combine encryption with credentials, compartmentalized permissions, physical access restrictions, monitoring, security personnel, or deliberately isolated storage. Defeating one layer should not automatically defeat all of them.

Likewise, strong encryption does not need to end a story. Captured hardware, stolen credentials, compromised personnel, cryptographic expertise, an insider, a recovered key, intercepted material, or access to the original system can create believable ways forward.

Surveillance & Counter-Surveillance

SWTOR establishes sophisticated technologies for reconnaissance, detection, recording, tracking, and technical observation. Probe droids can patrol and collect information, sensor systems monitor environments and installations, tracking devices can reveal movement, and intelligence operations make use of intercepted communications and surveillance equipment.

Droid-based reconnaissance and the limits of automated analysis overlap with Droids & Automation.

Surveillance should not imply perfect awareness. A sensor can register activity without establishing its cause. A listening device can capture a conversation without proving that its interpretation is correct. A recording may exist without anyone having reviewed it. A tracking device may be discovered or removed. Logs can be incomplete, falsified, corrupted, or deliberately erased.

Communications and data systems are most useful when information creates another decision rather than ending the story. When a transmission, database, recording, datapad, security system, or surveillance record matters, establish the circumstances surrounding it.

• What information actually exists: a message, security log, manifest, personnel record, recording, map, sensor report, research archive, financial record, intelligence assessment, or something else?

• Where is it stored: a public service, private network, local computer, datapad, droid memory, starship system, isolated archive, or damaged installation?

• Who normally has access, and why: public availability, employment, ownership, credentials, assignment, rank, technical responsibility, or personal trust?

• What does gaining access require: legitimate permission, social engineering, bribery, theft, slicing, recovered hardware, physical infiltration, an insider, or another specialist?

• How trustworthy is the information: accurate, outdated, incomplete, corrupted, falsified, propagandized, deliberately planted, or correct but misunderstood?

• What evidence does the interaction leave behind: an access record, intercepted transmission, missing device, altered file, security alert, witness, or nothing anyone has discovered yet?

• Who else can contribute: slicers, investigators, technicians, intelligence personnel, droids, soldiers, criminals, archivists, corporate employees, linguists, witnesses, or people with legitimate access may each hold a different part of the solution.

A recovered transmission might identify a destination without explaining what happens there. A security record may establish that someone entered a facility without revealing why. A partially decrypted archive can answer one question and create another. A stolen datapad may become valuable enough that several people want it recovered or destroyed.

Information should give characters something to act upon.