And what part of "cloud computing" is required to make a baton get bigger?

The extremely responsive DNI part, which might be expensive in terms of processing power.

Assumptions 1 and 2: In reality, you can do both at once. SR5 can allow it, if you allow quick drawing to be done with weapons other than pistols.

Assumption 2.2: Batons don't actually get tangled on anything. You need protrusions for that, and a baton is a smooth tube. Anyone can draw and snap a baton with zero training, it's easier than drawing a pistol. And in any event, a DNI won't help you draw a baton, only open it-- if you fumble and drop the baton, DNI won't save you. Really, batons snap open very easily. Something like that might help them retract, they're a pain to re-holster, but it wouldn't snap it open.

Corollary: Right now, batons snap open without any powered assistance. If you want them to snap open via DNI, you need to add some sort of solid state mechanical device, like a solenoid. (Three, actually: most batons have three sections, and ideally you'd need one for each.) Even allowing for 2070 technology, it'd just add weight. On top of that, solenoids require power, so you'd have to include a battery pack of some sort. It can be small, but it'd also add more weight and be more cumbersome. So, even if the wifi and computer controls have negligible weight, the system itself will be much heavier than one without.

It's a lot like saying a sword can be aided by adding wifi. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't add any real benefit to the game, it just forces a poorly done vulnerability onto the game.


I'm not against deckers having more to do in the world. I'm more against trying to poorly and artificially force equality in combat for deckers. Even D&D 4e didn't go this far-- while they emphasized everyone having something to do in a fight, they didn't try and make everyone do everything equally. Deckers are support characters in a fight, but these silly rules are trying to make them just as dangerous as front line combatants.

What part of "send my brainwave data to the cloud" is more "responsive" than "using my nervous system to move my thumb a quarter of an inch"?

Also, this is totally rehash at this point.

I'm not saying the conventional method isn't fast, just that it requires a certain amount of effort/focus, enough to make the difference between a Free action and a Simple action. (In other words, enough of a difference that the DNI augmented user has time/mental space to take an Observe In Detail action or similar.)

And while I've never tried to whip out anything that was growing while I was drawing it, I imagine that if I did, 'tangling' might be a concern. (Sorry if this was unclear, in my example I was imagining the DNI baton extending even as it's being drawn.)

With regards to the additional weight, is that a big concern with something that you're going to be clubbing someone with? Even if it is, people in setting might consider it worth it, especially when you consider additional possible features of the electronic version, like quick/easy retraction and being able to guarantee that it won't be taken from you and used against you.


Travel time for a nerve impulse to propagate from your brain to your hand is on the order of 20 milliseconds I think.

Assuming you're generally using computational resources within about 1 mile or so, lightspeed lag to your computational resources will be measured in microseconds.

It's easy for me to imagine that a super-responsive DNI that uses Cloud resources could be faster than actually having a finger push a button. Also, you could get much better control.

Video example for Readying an extendable Baton.

Wireless could have been implemented in an interesting way. I would have liked to see tacnets, sensors, and drone warfare expanded more. But the wireless bonuses don't make any sense. Sure, you can come up with some technobabble and handwaving to try to justify it, and say your extendable baton extends faster because the wireless emits the photons through the main deflector array, but why bother shining up a turd?

But can you imagine a situation where pushing a button is more complex than dropping prone, kneeling, or making one of a multitude of different communicative gestures (silence, stop, go that way, flip an enemy the bird)?

If anything, I think using a smart link to extend a baton is far more dangerous and impractical than a push button. A person could easily train muscle memory to draw the baton into "loaded position" as shown in the video and then push the button. It would be far trickier to control your thoughts so you don't think "extend" as you reach for the baton, causing it to extend prematurely and creating a danger to yourself.

I think the same (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) !!
It would've been great if using the Matrix WiFi would give You some Bonuses (like in Tac Net, Additional Infos ,etc) this would've been a "True Carrot" but what we've got now is a "Disguised Stick" which often doesn't make much sense at all
(Laserpointer, Throwing Knives, Silencer (!) and many more) all this just for the Sake of " so that a Decker is usefull in Combat" (Which he was in SR4A already, the Player just had to be a little imaginative. a remote controlled Car or Motorcycle is deadly in 4A ( Search for the Headless Murdercycle), remote closed or opened Doors can help or hinder tremendously in a Fight.
and (by the way) I'm playing SR5 now for a Year in one Homeround and on different Cons in Germany.
I've never (not even once) had a scene where a Decker tries to Brick something (I asked a player once why he didn't . he said he doesn't like it and it takes too long).
So for me it looks like CGL invented stupid Rules which everybody (or at least the mayority) hates and which no one uses ingame
(and I wonder if they could be named Moot rules is this the right expression ? )

He who would rather dance with a Carrot than with a Stick
Medicineman

Given that computer games that're designed to "not work quite right" if not always online are generally hacked to be fully functional offline within a week of release, I feel it's pretty optimistic to assume some enterprising decker isn't going to figure out a way around it and sell cracked gear that acts as if it's wired, but isn't.



Any processing power the system actually needs can fit. And if it doesn't need it, again, say hello to Mr. Enterprising Decker.



This...is no way explains why I need my baton to be online in order for it to extend faster. It doesn't take processing power for that simple a command. Unless it's been deliberately modified to NEED more processing power, in which case...you get the idea.

Essentially, the entire idea of wireless bonuses revolve around the entire shadow community lying down and taking it. W don't see that today, with things as trivial as entertainment software. I think freelance black ops types are going to be willing to put in the effort to unfrag their gear so they don't HAVE to expose themselves to cyberattack just to get the most out of their stuff.

It's actually less complicated than drawing a pistol. A baton literally requires a snap of the wrist to deploy, which happens to closely match the movement needed to draw it. To draw a pistol, you not only need to clear the holster without snagging on something, but then disengage the safety and bring it on line and aim. In both cases, DNI won't help you, because it involves motor coordination.



Very much so. A baton weighs about a pound, which makes it a light, easily carried weapon. It's also very concealable, and not very cumbersome. When you add extra weight, you throw off the balance of the weapon, and make it harder to use. Think of it this way: a longsword might only weigh 2 lbs. But, if more weight is really more effective, why didn't they use 6 lb swords? 10 lbs? 20+? Well, that's because heavier weapons are harder to use.

As far as being taken from you? Sorry, but the rules say it takes a free action to extend or retract, not that you can't extend it manually-- or, that if it's taken from you, it'll automatically retract. So, that's rather pointless.


The bulk of the time involved in drawing any weapon is clearing the holster and bringing it on line. DNI won't help with that, and if the move to draw is combined with the move to deploy, there will be no time differential at all.

So you don't like the way 5e handles Simple vs. Free actions generally? That seems like a somewhat different complaint.


Well, we don't really know how an actual DNI system would work. According to RAW, it's simpler and easier than manually pushing a button. Is that idea fundamentally plausible? I think so.

Motor control, even though it feels to us very instinctive and often effortless, actually involves a great deal of careful coordination and precise timing. Your brain gets information from proprioception nerves that tell it about the orientation and position of your body, but there's a lag. It never actually knows where you are, only where you were. (In practice, when trying to move quickly your brain does a lot of guesswork, it simply can't afford to wait for these signals.)

Similarly, there's a lag between activating motor neurons and actually getting muscle movement. So, your brain doesn't send signals about what it wants your muscles to do now, it has to send signals about what it's going to want your muscles to do, taking into account the various differing lag times for different nerve fibers and muscle groups. It's like planning and running a fireworks show; you've got to set all the different rockets with their different fuses in just the right way to get the nicely coordinated series of explosions you're hoping for.

Now, for certain specific tasks, we can get pretty good at this, especially with training. But in general, it seems that we expend a great deal of (unconscious) mental work just trying to compensate for the fact that nerve impulses propagate very slowly, and certain problems are simply unavoidable.

In theory, I/O systems that could bypass our sluggish peripheral nervous system could be very nice indeed. The baton could tell you, instantly, with no lag¹, "Ok, your hand is on me, feels like a good grip. Ok, I'm clear of the holster." And you could tell it, instantly, with no lag¹, "Ok, deploy now."


Those games are generally artificially bound to be online, as a kind of DRM scheme. In 2015, we're not very good at DRM, so these systems are cracked very quickly.

I'm thinking more of actual limitations based on processing power. Like, that OnLive vaporware that was going to let you play the most demanding modern desktop games on your smartphone, by actually running the game on the Cloud. The economics of it don't seem to have worked out for OnLive, but in a world where bandwidth is cheap and abundant², the basic idea seems sound.


I'm not sure how you know this to be true? How much processing power is needed to run an extremely responsive DNI?


So, drawing and deploying a traditional retractable baton should be only 1 Simple action, not 2, because it takes about the same amount of time as drawing and readying a pistol? That strikes me as a reasonable sounding complaint, I know very little about the relative time involved in drawing and readying various weapons in the real world. Regardless, I don't think it's crazy to say that a DNI augmented one could be better than a traditional one.


By default, remote control has priority over manual control. I certainly would allow someone to send a message to their electronic baton to retract and stay retracted. (This would be a Free action, so, you could do it when it wasn't your turn, or even in an initiative pass where you don't get a turn.)

Other possible advantages: you can use it in very close quarters, just point it at the other guy, activate it, and it'll push him away, giving you distance; you could use it to poke at people, which I understand isn't generally advisable with traditional retractable batons; it's basically like a version of Sun Wukong's Compliant Staff, which is just cool. Even taking as given that it's heavier than a non-electronic one, that might be a tradeoff that people in setting are willing to make.


It's not just time, the difference between Free and Simple is a combination of time and mental effort. Wireless + DNIs are a pretty wonderful combination, they're just noticeably better and easier than even pushing a button.

Drawing, deploying, and getting into striking position are all separate noticeable stages in that video posted upthread. Now, visualizing the guy in the video just pulling the baton out and getting straight into striking position, with it deploying itself on the way; I can imagine that being slightly faster/easier. Oh, or imagine if you store it in a holster pointing downwards. Then, even as you're reaching for it, it starts extending slightly, so you can easily get a good initial grip with your whole hand, instead of first having to pull it out with a couple fingers and then solidifying your grip afterwards. Hm, if the DNI gives it good info on your hand's position and velocity, it could almost leap into your hand as you go for it.


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1. Well, if you're communicating with Cloud servers you'll get some lag, but measured in microseconds rather than milliseconds.

2. 2075 looks like a world with cheap and abundant bandwidth, I assume OAM or something similar panned out

Wait. DRM and encryption get better by 2070? I find this hard to believe, given everything about the setting. A novice hacker with $10,000 worth of gear* (or about as much as I paid for my used car or one SIXTH as much as my sister spent on her new horse) can hack into the systems of triple-A multinational trillion-dollar-bottom-line businesses in under a MINUTE.

*This is ignoring the total-bull of the hacking deck 5th introduced, prior to that you could use any old cell phone. But it's still only as expensive as last-year's model brand-new car.
I do respect that it should take more dough to be any good, there's just no good explanation for the change other than as a complete retcon because it was recognized as being bad before. Except it wasn't a retcon because ShadowRun never retcons anything.

Project bloat?

I am going with wireless access to all the porn in said cloud.

Teasing aside, quite a few items and their bonuses really didn't jive.

Look at the internal air tank with a wifi bonus to tell you what level of air is left.
Really? because that would have been right on top of my list of things that shouldn't be wireless.
Especially when you consider that if you try using this underwater at even fairly shallow depths, the water wrecks any signal rating so good luck guessing how full that tank is.

I'm agnostic on whether DRM is better or worse in 2075 (though, there is a lot of talk about buying music). If you continue reading the part of my post directly below the bit you quoted, you'll see that I'm actually talking about something different.


That makes no sense at all and is, I think, completely unjustifiable.

As are the vast majority of Wireless Bonuses in SR5. *shrug*

I honestly see where they were trying to go with this, the last few years technology went for wifi bonii in a few silly things
(Pace makers for one !!! )

and I guess it just didn't pan out the way they thought it would go, the same way any 1950's -1990s Sci-Fi attempted to predict mobile phones and flying cars ..

had it taken off, our suspense of utter disbelief may have been muted.

I can actually work my head around a few things and let it slide, and I guess I'm open to more houserules than most
especially the
"if it works better wired than wireless in hour head, then have the bonus"

Trying to make repercussions for tech heads the same as background count for mages .. is a tad silly.

I just can't get away from 3rd edition WIRES for everything after Matrix crash .... it's nicely dystopian enough for me ...

Made me laugh out loud.

It's not a concept without merit. In some cases you could totally justify some gear needing intense amount of processing power. In those cases, the gear would work on its own, but could work faster if you have access to the cloud. That fits in with the wireless bonus actually being a bonus.

The problem is that the implementation was sloppy and downright insulting to people's intelligence. Items and actions that should require NO processing power (let alone large quantities of it) require you to be online just to get basic use out of them. The bonuses didn't feel like bonuses, they left like essential parts of the systems that was only accessible if you made yourself vulnerable. Instead, it should have felt that you had the choice to squeeze more out of the gear in exchange for a little risk.

You're still thinking it happens sequentially. In real life, it happens simultaneously.

Let me use pistols as an example. You're thinking that the sequence goes a bit like this: Unstrap --> Clear Pistol --> Disengage Safety --> Bring on line --> Aim, etc. In reality, a lot of those steps will be happening parallel to each other, so it's a bit more like this:



I think the term for this is "critical path"-- since these things happen side by side, it's the time of the chains that matter. In this example, if the time to disengage the safety and aim is less than the time to clear the holster and bring online, it doesn't make any difference at all. So, even if it provided a significant time savings (which is still highly debatable), it'd make no difference overall.

Also, the rest of what you're describing-- the gun and DNI helping you with the position of the gun-- isn't part of DNI at all. Those abilities are part of a smartlink and/or skillwire system. There used to be smartlinks-a-la-carte rules, where you could buy the components of a smartlink separately. That's long gone, but the breakdown of what goes into a smartlink is still valid-- in this case, it's not the gun that reads your body position, but the limited simrig that connects to the smartlink processor. So, what you're talking about does exist, but it's not part of DNI-- they're part of other pieces of gear/cyber.


The problem is that it takes an action. So, the other guy has a chance to take your baton and beat you repeatedly about the head before you can tell it to retract. It's not like a biometric safety (which is an added extra), if someone steals your gun, they can shoot you before you can make it disengage.


Batons are actually ideal for use in close quarters, the arc required to deploy one is identical to the arc required to use it, so if you have enough room to effectively attack, you have room to extend the baton. This isn't like a longsword, which requires a fair amount of room to draw. You most certainly *can* poke at people with an extended baton; their locking mechanism is very sturdy. In fact, retracting one can be kind of difficult.

As far as the extendable staff idea goes, that's simply not practical with a baton. Batons tend to be about 20-22 inches when extended (about 53cm), which simply isn't far enough to give an effective push. If I remember my mythology right, the Monkey King's staff could shoot out infinitely, so he could do stunts like push people over cliffs, trip people across the room, etc. 20 inches just won't cut it.


They did break it down for the layman, but in reality, they're not distinct steps. They happen in parallel. You don't need it pointing downwards, either; the simple act of drawing and getting the baton into position coincides with the arc required to extend the baton. So, the critical path analysis says the important time is the longest one-- how long it takes to draw and get into position. DNI can't help with that.

The critical path analysis is very interesting, but keep in mind, the difference between Simple and Free is not just timing, it's also a question of mental effort/focus/coordination. DNIs are so easy to use, you can control things linked to them significantly more easily than you could push a button or flick a switch.

This makes sense to me, since you're able to bypass slow sensory neurons giving you information about what your hand is doing, and bypass slow motor neurons giving the hand further instructions, which will generally need to be queued up and fired off well in advance to do things in a reasonably timely manner¹.


I'm a little confused by the gun talk, can we stick to batons for now? As to what exactly Wireless + DNI gets you, I'd say that's pretty up in the air. In general, a DNI has the potential to be a very valuable high speed two-way street, getting you information from the device as well as allowing you to send commands.


You can take your Free action whenever you want, it doesn't have to be on your turn. You even get one on initiative passes where you aren't allowed to otherwise act. If you already used your Free action for this initiative pass, you're out of luck until the next initiative pass starts, but, how's the guy getting the baton away from you and hitting you with it all on the same initiative pass?


The bit of text you quoted there actually includes me speculating about ways DNI could help you draw your baton more quickly and easily…


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1. Cool little story: In order to hit an MLB fastball, batters need to make all the decisions about how they'll swing, and queue up all the relevant nerve impulses, shortly after the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. (To be a good batter you have to become very good at reading pitches very quickly.) This, despite the fact that it takes more than 400 milliseconds for a 95 mph fastball to travel from the mound to home plate. There is a lot of room here to trim fat.

No, that isn't my complaint. My point was that your analysis of Free Actions being based on the mental effort/focus/coordination breaks down when you compare the mental effort/focus/coordination of extending a baton as a simple action to the effort of many of the other free actions. It doesn't mean the system of how Free Actions are selected is bad, it just means I disagree with your explanation.

Further, even if suspension of disbelief can be used to make wireless extension an improvement over a button push, there are still other technologies that exist today that would be more useful then a mental command. For example, my camera has a sensor next to the electronic viewfinder that causes it to automatically activate when something (usually your face) is near the sensor and to deactivate, preserving battery, when there isn't. If you are going to install electronic controls for the extension of a baton a sensor like that would be superior to any mental activation. Simply put a sensor and the end of the baton that causes it to automatically extend when it is no longer blocked by the holster. That removes any possiblity of human error from thinking the "extend" command at the wrong time. A simple switch could be added, which can be switched on/off to prevent the baton from unextending after it is drawn. Since it doesn't take an action to switch off the safety of a gun, it shouldn't take an action to switch off the safety of a baton.

The ability to make the baton unextend if taken by an enemy might be a real benefit if a wireless interface, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the Free/Simple action analysis.ic



Weren't you arguing that quick and easy aren't the grounds for a free action? Perfectly timing an early extend so you catch it in your hand without dropping it might make the action ever so slightly faster, but it also increases the effort/coordination required to make sure you don't drop it or hit yourself with the extending baton.

That's actually more complex, because DNI would involve giving multiple commands. When you draw a baton, you do it in one smooth action, drawing and deploying all at once. The way you describe, you'd have to get the right movements and mental commands in the right order, or your baton will deploy at the wrong time.

Let me try a martial arts analogy. When you're a beginner-- or explaining things to a beginner, as in the video above-- it's helpful to list things in sequence. But when you actually make a kick, you don't think about the sequence, you think of it as one fluid motion. Thinking sequentially actually slows you down, makes the movement less effective, even if you have a bit of assistance.


Well, we can be reasonably sure it doesn't trespass on what other pieces of gear do. The level of assistance you describe is closer to skillwires in function.


There's lots of different ways. If you deploy your baton at the wrong time via DNI, you could drop it (note that this isn't really possible with a manual swing). Then, they take a simple action to pick it up, and then beat you with it.


The problem is that a lot of that is muscle memory, training-based. DNI can't help there. Skillwires could, that's their job, but DNI alone won't make a difference.