Uncomplicating Active Memory, One way to streamline decking Options

[Morphling The Pr...]

I was having a discussion about decking with another player in my playgroup, mostly about Otaku. Eventually the conversation became a look what was good and bad about decking and otaku. It eventually came down to "Otaku don't need to worry about active memory, and that alone makes them so much less of a headache." This got me to thinking: isn't there another way they could simplify that process of handling a cyberdeck's active memory?

One way to do it is to simplify the active memory into a smaller number, and say that only a total rating of programs equal to the active memory can be run simultaneously. For instance, instead of the KraftWerk having a 1000 AM, it might have a 70. The problem with that is that this makes all programs equal, from the hardly useful ones to the ones used all the time. Maybe programs with multipliers of 3 or higher are effective rating x 1/5, and above 6 is effective rating x 2. It's not simple, but it's simpler.

The simplest way to do it is to presume all decks have an active memory equal to their storage memory. This might make deckers more like mages, as they constantly have every program running, a la sustaining foci. I forget if there's an IC that looks for programs in Active Mem rather than when the program is run, but if there is, I'd apply it much more in this case.

One potentially less drastic way to simplify active memory is to make the entire Swap Memory operation a free action, rather than a free to drop and a simple to add. It won't let deckers get caught with their pants down as much, but since Attack is a Simple action, it might let players 'quick draw' their battle mode and get blasting faster.

I can't think of any others, but I bet someone must have. Any suggestions or additions?
One potentially less drastic way to simplify active memory is to make the entire Swap Memory operation a free action, rather than a free to drop and a simple to add. It won't let deckers get caught with their pants down as much, but since Attack is a Simple action, it might let players 'quick draw' and get blasting faster.