[deathbat21]

So, I don't really understand how to use Agents. I mean, I get the whole semi-autonomous thing and how you can load copies of your programs into them. But what specifically can you use them for? Someone help. D:

[Mystalya]

I've seen agents used for anti-hacking prevention. It basically sits there and if someone enters the node or commlink it drops stun on them and tracks them depending on it's rating and abilities.

[SpatulaODoom]

You can think of them as the matrix equivalent of a drone.

That use of an agent would essentially make it a form of IC.

It can also be used as a hacker's aid, healing him or repairing his programs with the appropriate program during a fight, tracing an escaping enemy while the hacker works at something else, etc etc.

I expect that the most common use for a low to moderate rating agent is data-mining. Load it up with a browse and a stealth program and set up some search parameters and let it go. While you're going about your day doing whatever, it is tracking down, collecting, and collating data on the subject of your choice. Come back a day or two later and you'll have a ton of collected, verified(ish), and ordered information on the subject of your choice ready to peruse.
It's efficient for that sort of stuff because extended tests only care about total number of hits and whether you glitch or not. The Agent can work 24/7, so even a lower to moderate rating agent can do as well as a skilled tech-head who needs to sleep, eat, and worry about meatspace stuff to some degree.

[I_V_Saur]

If a node just aneeds to be crashed, a small army of Agents in nearby nodes can send a flurry of Nuke progs - or, for that enemy that just won't die, you can Hammer them to death. With fifty Agents at once. No matter how many glitches you get, by that point, you win.

[Shaidar]

You can use a properly equipped Agent to delete your log-off record and then delete itself, for that traceless hacker.

Or you leave an agent behind to send a message informing you that a certain action occurred.

Even with non Hacking programs Agents can be powerful tools of the imaginative hacker, very similar to a TM's Sprites.

[mtfeeney = Baron]

Would you have to buy a new agent if you left it behind to delete itself?

[Shaidar]

Not if you coded it yourself, but if you purchased it un-cracked then yes.

[mtfeeney = Baron]

Ah, because you can't copy copy-protected programs... Gotcha.

[Aryeonos]

What? No, you just loaded a copy of the program onto the other node, the actual software that spawns them is yours, it just won't let you run multiple instances of it on the same node.

[I_V_Saur]

Always sounded to me like you buy one Agent, period. Not the prog that spawns it. From there, if it isn't copy-protected, or you crack said protection, then you can simply copy-paste a new one or thirty whenever the urge tickles you. Thus, if you buy it, and it's deleted, that's money right down the drain.