SR4A: Is Firewall 6 impossible? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Andinel]

I was looking over making a character earlier today, and with the new updated rules for improving devices, since the highest base Firewall is 3, is it now impossible to get a Firewall of 6 on any character's commlink? Or is this an unintended change?

[JoelHalpern]

The thing that strikes me in this debate is that it depends very heavily on what is being upgraded, and what part of the device is not upgradeable.
In some regards, the limits make sense, in others they don't.
But some of this is inevitable in abstraction. We are not dealing separately with device power supplies, busses, and all the other intricacies. Signal upgrading is presumably alrgely a matter of power. But replacing the power supply is a lot more than replacing the wifi chip. So which does "upgrading signal" correspond to?
Similarly, while we can (and many people do) replace the CPU on a board, there are bus and power limits that affect what you can do. (Among current machines, cheaper machines come with slower busses and bus controller chips.) So is a response upgrade just a CPU upgrade or a CPU, buss, etc?
While I do not like the cap they are proposing, I can understand that with the simplifications it makes internal sense.

I just wish that they had made it an optional rule. Because it changes many of the choices, and makes many things mroe complicated in unfortunate ways, even if it makes sense.

Yours,
Joel