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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Cybereyes rules unclear

Posted by: hieleke Sep 30 2003, 10:17 AM

The SR3 rulebook states that cybereyes will accept additional vision enhancements of up to .5 essence points.
Does this mean that both eyes can accept a total .5 essence of enhancements. Or can you just put in a .1 enhancement and than add .4 essence for free, making the essence cost only .1. If this is true, why won't all shadowrunners just add a camera since it's free anyway?
Could someone explain me how these rules work exactly??
Cheers.

Posted by: Sphynx Sep 30 2003, 10:20 AM

http://shadowrunrpg.com/resources/faq.shtml#3

QUOTE

Does the reduced Essence Cost from cyberware grade (alpha, beta or delta) count when calculating the "free" Essence Cost of accessories for cybereyes and cyberears? For example, does an opticam (normally 0.5 Essence, 0.4 alphaware) take up the full 0.5 of free Essence in the cybereye, or only 0.4?
Yes, the grade counts when calculating the 0.5 of free Essence. So an alphaware opticam would only take 0.4 of the free Essence.
[As several fans pointed out, the previous answer provided to this question was contradicted by an example in SR3, so the FAQ has been modified appropriately.]

Posted by: Abstruse Sep 30 2003, 10:45 AM

Look at it this way. See the computer on your desk? It has room for X number of hard drives and floppy drives and Y number of CD/DVD drives. You can add more, but you'd have to go outside the case, therefore taking up more room on your desk. Whether or not you have 3 CDROM drives, 2 hard drives, and a floppy in the computer, or just one of each, it's going to take up the same amount of space on your desk.

And yes, before anyone says anything, I know you can only have 4 IDE devices on a standard ATX motherboard. It was just an example.

The Abstruse One

Posted by: DV8 Sep 30 2003, 11:12 AM

All the cybernetic enhancements you will find in the SR3 mainbook are ones that you can get applied to natural eyes as well as cyber-replacements. An opticam, built into/onto normal eyes would cost .5 essence, but if someone would go in for the cyber replacements, they pay .2 in essence, and get the added bonus of adding .5 essence in replacements to the cyber-replacement eyes without it being an extra essence loss.

As Abtruse said; the eyes have enough room to house .5 essence of replacement without being more invasive, neurologically, because it's all contained in the cyber-replacements.

Why wouldn't someone go for an opticam when getting cyber-replacement eyes? Well, people in the Shadowrun universe don't know about essence as a game statistic, and therefore don't know about the rule that they don't have to pay the essence cost for up to .5 points of essence in cybernetic modifications if they get cyber-replacement eyes. And if that's true, then we have to look at real world reasons why people wouldn't get one.

1. It costs 20,000 nuyen. Not everyone wants to lay down that kind of money for, effectively, a Sony handicam used at birthday parties and weddings.
2. Being elligible for the benefits of cyber-replacement eyes means that you actually have to get your eyes pulled out of your head and replaced with synthetic ones. Most people don't like the idea of throwing away perfectly functional flesh eyes in exchange for cybernetic eyes.
3. Why the hell would you want an opticam, when you can get a slew of other cybernetic replacements that are a lot more functional in every day life?

Posted by: Abstruse Sep 30 2003, 11:16 AM

Besides, most of us would rather have Low Light, Thermal, and Flare Comp instead

The Abstruse One

Posted by: Sphynx Sep 30 2003, 11:40 AM

Nah, LowLight, Image Link and Flare Comp.

Sphynx

Posted by: Morphling The Pretender Sep 30 2003, 01:22 PM

Ultrasound vision all the way, man. Not always better than Thermal, but it won't completely blind you if there is a furnace AND complete darkness...

Not that my GM is that cruel.

Posted by: Ed_209a Sep 30 2003, 02:41 PM

QUOTE (Sphynx)

Nah, LowLight, Image Link and Flare Comp.

Sphynx

I'll second this.

If I can get/afford alpha, I might toss in Elect. Mag too.

I see Thermo as being situational enough to be worth just buying goggles.

Posted by: Cray74 Sep 30 2003, 03:33 PM

QUOTE (hieleke)

To answer your question, it works like this:

Say the first piece of cyberware you get is cyber eyes, .2 essence total. You now have 5.8 essence.

The eyes can hold .5 more essence in upgrades without taking away additional essence from YOU.

You decide you don't want just plain 20/20 vision, you want fancier cybereyes. So you add the low light vision (.2 essence) option package. The eyes can hold .5 essence worth of upgrades, and the low light is below that. With low light installed, the eyes can hold .3 essence worth of options still. Your essence hasn't changed - you still have 5.8, but the eyes can only hold .3 more essence worth of upgrades before your essence starts getting debited.

But you want more in the eyes, so you add in thermographic vision. This is another .2 essence. Since you have .3 essence capacity left in the cybereyes, your essence doesn't change. It's still 5.8 points. However, after installing the thermographic vision, the cybereyes are down to .1 essence capacity.

At your school or social circle, sunglasses have become lame and out of style. You decide to add flare compensation (.1 essence) to your cybereyes. Again, your essence doesn't change - it's still 5.8. However, your cybereyes can hold no more equipment without affecting your essence.

Well, too bad. You want an image link (.2 essence) to display porn videos while you're at boring meetings or you're in class. The cybereye's essence capacity has been used, so now the .2 essence for the image link comes out of your essence: you're down to 5.6 essense points.

Second, most vision enhancements go in both eyes. So if you get low light (.2 essence), you're paying for the pleasure of having it in both eyes. The .5 essence space in the eyes applies to both eyes.

Third, even if the essence capacity is "free," you still have to pay nuyen.

Posted by: hieleke Sep 30 2003, 04:36 PM

Okay, I think I got the point now. But let me ask one more thing. As I see it now, it's the first implant in an eye that makes the essence costs. So no matter if I install a .5 or a .1 improvement, I still get to add another .5. This means I could probably put up almost 2 full essence points in my eyes, whilst costing me only 1 full point of essence.
But let me get this down. If I wanted an opticam (costing .5 essence), I'd be better off installing something like a display link (costing .1 essence) first. This way I will have both improvements, costing me only .1 essence instead of .5 right?
Cheers.

Posted by: Ed_209a Sep 30 2003, 04:43 PM

Close. It's the Cybernetic eye replacement itself that has the .5 essence capacity. _Only_ the .2e cyber eye does that.

Other mods (called retinal mods) don't have that freebie.

Posted by: Sphynx Sep 30 2003, 04:44 PM

Ah, I see where you're mis-understanding now.

The ONLY way to get the 0.5 for free is buying Cyber Replacement. THAT's where the 0.5 extra is. So, if you first buy Display Link (and not Cyber Replacement) then no, you don't get any 0.5 extra, that display link is installed in your Organic eye. Spend 0.2 for the replacement eye, then install 0.5 of stuff for 0 essence loss.

Sphynx

Posted by: hieleke Sep 30 2003, 04:57 PM

Aha, I got it now. The rulebook is not exactly to clear on this.
So can I also take two Replacements (as you have two eyes) and than add a total of 1 essence point, or can it only been done once?

Posted by: Sphynx Sep 30 2003, 05:24 PM

Once. All sensory cyberware is done for both eyes. So you buy replacement once and have 2 cybereyes.

Sphynx

Posted by: Cray74 Sep 30 2003, 06:43 PM

QUOTE (hieleke)

As I see it now, it's the first implant in an eye that makes the essence costs.

No...

The cybereyes by themselves have a .2 essence cost. You have to pay that. You can't put the cybereyes' own essence cost in the cybereyes' "free" essence capacity.

If you get cybereyes with NO options, you'll pay 0.2 essence.

If you get cybereyes with a 0.2 essence option (like thermographic), you'll still pay the basic 0.2 essence for the cybereyes (but not the option - the thermographic option doesn't exceed the cybereyes' capacity).

If you get cybereyes with 0.4 essence worth of options (like thermographic and optical magnification 3), you'll still pay the basic 0.2 essence for the cybereyes (but not the options - the 0.4 essense worth of options doesn't exceed the cybereyes' capacity to hold 0.5).

If you get cybereyes with 0.6 essence worth of options (like thermographic, image link and optical magnification 3), you'll still pay the basic 0.2 essence for the cybereyes, and then .1 essence more (because the options exceeded the eyes' capacity of .5 by .1). So you'd be down by 0.3 essence.

QUOTE

Aha, I got it now. The rulebook is not exactly to clear on this.
So can I also take two Replacements (as you have two eyes) and than add a total of 1 essence point, or can it only been done once?

No, like I said earlier, the costs for cybereyes is in pairs. That 0.5 essence capacity applies to a pair of cybereyes, not each eye individually. When you get low light at 0.2 essence cost, you're paying 0.2 essence total and getting low light in both eyes.

Posted by: Drain Brain Sep 30 2003, 09:52 PM

IIRC, EVERYTHING is done in pairs in cybereyes. This is to avoid headaches when you get mis-matched signals.

Thing is, though, that it doesn't make much sense when you're talking about things like a camera, which only "film" from one POV, rather than making a 3D image out of the two POVs that a pair of eyes provide.

What say the masses on that?

Posted by: Dragoonkin Sep 30 2003, 10:13 PM

I would assume that with paired eye recording you'd record a semi-Trid image.

Posted by: The White Dwarf Sep 30 2003, 10:19 PM

Ok, heres how cyber eyes essence works:

The eyes themselves cost .2

They can hold up to 1.2 essence worth of modifications, beyond that the eye socet is just too small to fit more.

The first .5 of that 1.2 is free in the sense that it wont count towards your essence limit.

If you alphaware/etc the eyes, all the modifications must also be alpha/etc. But the limites (1.2 total, .5 free) remain unchanged, meaning you can cram a bit more in.

Example for clarity:

I buy my sam Cybereyes for .2 essence. After seeing Predator, I think it would be nifty to be able to cycle through all the vision modes. So I buy Flare Compensation (.1), Low Light (.2), Themographic (.2), and Ultrasound (.5). The total cost of the modifications is 1 essence, but being cyber eyes the first .5 is free. So the total essence loss for the eyes and modifications comes to .7 essence. Were this all to be alphaware, the total would instead be .3 for the mods (since the .5 doesnt change but the mods get smaller) and .16 for the eyes, or a total of .46 essence.

Edit to add Single Eye accessory section:

Cyber eye essences are done in total for the pair. If you read the single eye section in M&M they say to treat single eyes as only having room for .25 of free mods. Thus if you were to get a mod such as a Display Link in one eye, and a Camera in the other, you would still add the costs together normally for determining essence costs. This is actually more advantageous. Consider the above example. If you follow the single cybereye rules for essence cost, the display link fits in the .25 but the camera does not. However, by counting the eyes as a pair, they both fit for free. Plus its a lot easier on the book keeping end. Just notate which eye the single eye mods are in, in case it ever comes up, but you can save yourself the trouble of doing each eye's impact individually.

Posted by: DV8 Oct 1 2003, 05:47 AM

White Dwarf, if you had bothered to actually read past the first post, then you would've seen that the question had been answered three times already, expanded upon, and dismissed as solved.

Posted by: The White Dwarf Oct 1 2003, 09:51 AM

Whats your point, just to try and say I cant be helpful because someone else said it first? Or that I cant phrase a reply in my own words? You obviously had some motive to take the time and reply with what can only be interpreted as insulting me and assuming I didnt read the thread.

I did read the thread, and several posts towards the end had additional questions or assumptions that hadnt been touched upon again since they were asked. I felt adding a summary post after they were made would aid in answering those people.

Adding negative comments does nothing but annoy those theyre aimed at and add spam to a thread, move along.

Posted by: Drain Brain Oct 1 2003, 04:01 PM

Actually, I thought that your post was informative and helpful, Mr Dwarf, not to mention well written and in perfect English. Kudos.

Could you expand on the single-eye rules by giving me a page/book reference?

DB

PS: Sorry, DV8...

Posted by: The White Dwarf Oct 2 2003, 06:45 AM

A listing of which things count as single eye replacements is in M&M on p.44, its got its own bold heading. Also the paragraph below clarifies only one accessory per eye can be a laser, opticam, or weapon system.

Posted by: Drain Brain Oct 2 2003, 10:59 PM

Now you mention it, I seem to recall something of that ilk... but thanks for the exact reference!

Posted by: blakkie Oct 3 2003, 12:44 AM

QUOTE (Ed_209a)

QUOTE (Sphynx @ Sep 30 2003, 06:40 AM)

Nah, LowLight, Image Link and Flare Comp.

Sphynx

I'll second this.

If I can get/afford alpha, I might toss in Elect. Mag too.

I see Thermo as being situational enough to be worth just buying goggles.

The Image link also would allow you to wear somewhat custom versions of the goggles -anywhere- on you body, like the back of your head. You would then literally have eyes in the back of your head that could see thermal signatures.