The permit needed to keep your augmented spine is about $1100 bucks, assuming the army doesn't get some kind of bulk discount. The cost of (surgery to remove it + morale hit - return value ) would grossly exceed the cost of the permit to just let the guy keep it. I didn't say they'd leave you a cripple.

Three is an average on the stats.

I expect a young twenty something freshly though boot camp would have 4s or better.

The military would likely be going for low maintenance ware on the standard package. Stuff like cybereyes will have been around for a long time.

And for the more advance ware, well that would include a longer term of enlistment and signing up for reserve duty. And coming in for maintenance would just be part of the reserve duty.

I'd also expect Data Jacks to still be standard.

Nothing like jacking in to keep thinks nice and quiet.

Yeah, the post active duty permits for the cyberware would be part of the recruiting package as good for long as you kept a clean record with no felonies.

Instead of the GI Bill there would be the GI Ware permit.

I mean Wired reflexes I is nice and doubles your actions, but I would be more scared of someone with Muscle Replacement 3 or some one ODing on Cram.

Cybereyes and cyberears are probably one of the more common implants as well. Flare and bang compensation reduce the losses of shellshock and increase readiness. Image/sound and eye/ear recording units drastically reduce fog of war for the commanders, too.

It cracks me up that, in a time when many returning servicemen are being tagged as "PTSD possibilities" and are losing their gun and adoption and foster parenting rights (among others) because of it...folks think that sixty years in the future, when the world's even more litigious and paranoid, they're going to let folks just wander out at the end of their service loaded down with combat-grade cyberware.

It cracks me up that you think people would ever enter the service and have essence eating ware shoved into their bodies knowing they will lose the ware when they leave, but keep the gaping hole in their soul.

Well, I'm checking out the rules for addiction now.. Cram would probably be a physical addiction, not mental; that gives a Body + Willpower [2 for stimulants] test to resist addiction. Given a typical soldier, I'd assume Body 4, Willpower 3. Body might be higher, but stress could also make the Willpower lower. The chance for a failure on the test is (2/3)^7 + ((2/3)^6)*(1/3) = 0.263374486, or 26.3%

The chance to make the test is 73.3%; but what about the chance of making it through ten consecutive tests? 0.736625514
^10 = 0.047040028 = 4.7%

What about 30 times (the dosage needed for WWII)? 0.736625514^30 = 0.000104088 = 0.01% chance of making it through WWI without failing a test.

My computer doesn't do the required degree of precision to get an answer > 0 for Vietnam.

Keep in mind that every time your addiction threshold increases (including from nothing to mild, I assume), your tolerance increases, and your dose needs to be doubled.

Some thing no one has mentioned is, we all think it is normal to get a bunch of cyberware. The general public may not see it as normal. I have a feeling cyberware may be seen like plastic surgery today. Their will be people who will get cyberware to replace broken, damaged or lost limbs and organs, but their will be people getting it for other reasons too.

Just because cyberware may seem like it makes a lot of sense for combat solders to have, politicians may really think it silly elective surgery that is perceived as cosmetic, freakish, or fetish in nature, and decide not to fund such cyberware.

Data jacks may be common among office an tech type people, but if your job isn't in a office you may have no need of one.

Cybereyes although not uncommon, the most people do not want to go getting their eye rip out. Most of the people who have them, are likely to middle class people who do not want to ware glasses. People who drive or pilot vehicles for a living may even get low light and flare compensation added to their eyes, but most people will find it unnecessary, and people who get cameras in their eyes might be thought of as perverse voyeurs.

Many contact sport athletes will most likely have bone lacing, depending on league rules. So your ex-college foot ball player might have some impressive body ware even thou he now flips burgers.

Move by wire, reflex enhancers and wired reflexes, may make you move faster, they also make you jumpy, and twitchy. Making you look like you main line coffee. Added to how invasive these are ton install and not much real use to most every day people they are some of the least likely ware you will see.

I maintain that it is the invasiveness more than anything that will prevent the military from providing general-issue Wired Reflexes (well, in addition the brass and politicians would probably have the same argument going on here about what to do post-discharge). I don't see the military putting anything more than 0.5 essence into troops at a shot ("Minor Surgery"), though anything 0.2 or less would be totally fair game ("Superficial Surgery" aka outpatient).

Idly, don't wired reflexes and reflex enhancers have DNI triggers? IE, you can turn them on and off so you aren't jumpy and twitchy all the time?

You're assuming that Joe Citizen (or better yet, Joe Sinless) is aware of and understands the relationship between augmentation and Essence. Essence is a game mechanic. Is there any fluff that indicates that the menu of mods at the local Body Clinic lists the Essence Cost™ next to each mod? I imagine there is an understanding in the fictional SR medical community that implanting too much 'ware causes physiological and psychological problems, but we shouldn't assume that they have our precise knowledge of the game mechanics. Extrapolate that ambiguity out to the notoriously misinformed general populace and I don't believe armed forces would have any trouble playing up the benefits and downplaying the negatives. You can hide an awful lot in the fine print, as anyone who has gone through the recruiting process can tell you.

Yes, but going for the UCAS and CAS militaries only here:

Informed Consent. If the docs know implanting cyberware can effect things like it seems generally known to the medical populace in SR...They have to explain that. In layman's terms. Before doing surgery in all but emergency situations.

To do otherwise really risks your medical license.

I think I mentioned this in another post they may not know about essence as we know about it, but they do know a body can only have so much cyberware before there are ill results from it.

But here's the problem.

My quick read of the rules and such tells me that the line is different for each person before ill effects result.

Some people can only take an essence point worth of cyber before problems crop up, some can take 5 points before looking at cyberpsychosis. Some can edge towards 6 points of cyber without a problem.

There seems no way to tell before implantation where a given person's line is.

This is not good.

In medical terms, this means there is functionally no standard of care. No bright line "This is how much cyber a person can take without issue".

It makes every cyber implantation effectively an experimental procedure.

Under such circumstances, corps may get away with implanting their black ops folks with cyber, as may nations.

But there is no way you could get Joe Soldier or Joe Citizen to get more than a minimal amount of cyber. It turns every implantation subject into a guinea pig. Nobody would want to be a guinea pig like that.

In short, well. The writers could do with clearing this up...Because something doesn't work. Either they can figure out where the lines are, or there's no way cyber becomes as mass-market as they posit.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of veterans of the first Gulf War who were compelled to sign release waivers and given experimental and unapproved drugs that were supposed to protect them from chemical and biological weapons. Sure, the Congress found out afterward and had some stern words but I'm sure our military would do something like that again if they felt it necessary. Take that mindset into the dystopia of Shadowrun where there is even less accountability to the public and your argument is weakened.

Move-by-wire might make you twitchy, but since when does Wired Reflexes make you look like you mainline coffee? I'd imagine it would probably take some getting used to at first, but after training with it for a while you'd probably get used to it. Wired Reflexes would make the world slow down around you, to half or a third of the speed, I can't imagine someone not thinking that was cool, especially considering that it can be turned off and on at will. Let's face it, cyberware gives you super powers. Super strength, enhanced reflexes, weapons, armor, toughness, enhanced senses, you might still need to buy a jet pack if you want to fly, but cyberware makes you superman, and we all know how well normal people fight against superman. Every person here has made a 'running character who used Wired Reflexes, and cyberarms, and all the other super enhancements that a truly cybered character benefits from, how many mooks with *chuckle* combat drugs could that character take out without taking a Stun? Do you really think the UCAS military would field basic soldiers against the real monsters that cybermen are? I could imagine some third world country outfitting their men with sleep regulators and Cram because their budget's too low to support anything better, but despite the losses that the UCAS and the CAS have suffered in recent years, they still have a military budget that makes all the humanitarian efforts out there cry. The simple fact of the matter is, no matter what the ethical implications are of heavily cybering your combat forces, 100 soldiers with regulation guns, a dose of Cram, and data jacks, aren't going to be able to stand against 1 decently equipped streetsam. Basic grunts won't work in the military of 2070 because they're about as fragile as eggs and can't dodge worth a damn, and skillwires can't teach tactics or when not to piss your pants in fear. The reason I said that drones would be the only thing on the battlefield is because the people on the battlefield would have to be monsters in order to be able to survive, which they can be with enough cyberware.

Um. Formatting, please. At least create some paragraphs, Patrick. Please.

On to Semerkhet: It depends heavily on the environment. In the SR world, General War is pretty unlikely for the UCAS. Relations between the UCAS and CAS are posited to be peaceful, if not perfect. Relations between the UCAS and NAN states are said by canon to be amicable, at least.

In short, it's peacetime. Maybe Cold War, but peacetime. In such an environment, I see broader concerns certainly becoming an issue.

For combat drugs, that means the problem of post-drug issues, which would make them unlikely.

For cyberware: Again. It depends on whether the medical community can predict the limits of implantation and predict who'd be a good candidate for implantation. If they can, I don't see cyberware being ordered or required (Halley's Comet did, IIRC, produce some unexpectated cases of people gaining Magical ability, and they'd be cognizant of that possibly happening again), but I do see it as being available. You wouldn't take it out at ETS - your honorable discharge would in effect be your permit to possess said cyberware. In exchange, cybered enlisted personnel would be like officers are today - you can resign your commission, but absent that you never stop being an officer even when you exit the service, as I understand it - you're just not on the Active List, and are subject to recall up to a certain age.

This goes double for bioware, I'd think, since you can't turn it off.

Yeah, because the military never puts anything bad into their soldiers right now, right? That the soldiers don't explicitly understand, willingly (and without any pressure) consent to, and completely grasp the long-term effects and ramifications of?

Critias: I'm not sure it depends on the soldier at issue.

It depends on Congress and the results of lobbying, really.

And public policy isn't so simple to work out, since on an issue like this the lobbyists would really cancel each other out.

On the one hand: Yes, cyberware gives immsense benefits. BUT on the other hand, latent awakening is not unknown...And indeed happened en masse in 2061 to people...So it's not an open and shut case.

On the other: The UCAS is not at war with anyone. The CAS may be, but the UCAS ain't, and I guarantee you this would depend on the country. That being the case, even the military would be pressed to deal with post-service issues.

Unless if a person is awakened or is a technomancer, most people can lose 5 essence with out any effects.

Their are some things that will lower essence other than bioware and cyberware, like spending too much time around toxic areas, being infected, and addictions to sims sand drugs all lower essence in people.

I believe that any good cyberdoc would have training to recognize that line. Street docs, unethical, overworked or poorly trained docs may not see or pay attention to that line.

Their is also the time constraint of getting cyberware as well. Just think about the amount of time it would take to implant every one who enlisted, and the recovery time from the surgery.

Example Naval Station Great Lakes which trains all the naval sailors in the US currently about trains 50,000 sailors a year, so we could estimate in 2070's they would train around 25,000 sailors a year do to the new size of the nation. Around 480 sailors would finish training in a week. Lets say getting a datajack take around 4 hours to get, the average naval cyber doc is able to do implant 2 sailors a day. It would take a small battalion of 240 cyberdocs working 7 days a week just doing datajacks to keep up. I can not think of a worse to waste resources.

That's quite a lot of unsupported speculation. This is science fiction we're talking about. A datajack is one of the most routine cyber-implants in SR. It could just as easily be one cyberdoc overseeing a clinic full of autodocs implanting fifty soldiers at a time. Is my scenario any more unlikely than yours?

Lone Star SWAT Suite (Per AUGMENTATION (cause I'm slightly retarded) pg 48)
~This cyberware suite constitutes the standard cyberware load-out for members of Lone Star SWAT teams. Similar cyberware packages have been developed for members of other law enforcement corporations of military units (such as Knight Errant, the UCAS Army, or MET2000). The Lone Star SWAT suite consists of:
- TrumanTech SunFire A flare compensation, thermographic vision, and smartlink eye modifications
- Biogene TacBone RP plastic bone lacing
- Transys Livewire wired reflexes (Rating 1)

Essence cost 2.52 Cost 16,875 Nuyen.
Alphaware Watchman version Essence cost 2.02 cost 33,750 Nuyen

Game, set, match. Also, I believe it was mentioned in an earlier edition book... perhaps Fields of Fire? That ex-military have their cyberware deactivated or tuned down, not removed. (And I'm sure there are plenty of Street Docs willing to reactivate them for a price...)

Nicely done.

Augmentation has rules for the amount of time necessary to surgeries. Datajack is quite simple and fast. But Wired Reflexes is a VERY complex surgery that takes almost all working day of a doctor and takes a lot of time to heal. AFB right now, but I'll check as soon as I get home.

Nowhere does it say how many folks in the UCAS Army get the package, though, or what's done with it when they muster out. The package exists, sure -- but the SWAT equivalent would still be top-end guys, not every single infantryman that rolls through.