Recruiting: Down in the Gutter - Second Phase, Life in Redmond's Newest Street Gang Options

[Vegas]

I was just reading 3rd edition SOTA 2064, and it said there are rule for BTL programing options in Cannon Companion p67-68. I don't have the book right now, but I'll be checking on it. Might be useful for house ruling the BTL production.

Just an FYI, the rules in CC do NOT answer any of the concerns you brought up, they cover more the modifications that can be made to BTL's to effect how they operate as well as how they are used in order to increase/decrease availability and cost and street index. Included in those are the specific programming options for different enhanced effects like Poly POV and RAS Overrides and the like... It doesn't cover the actual production tests and what is needed to produce BTL's as you're looking for.

[Spike]

Second batch of takes are up, in case anyone's curious. Almost to where I was last night when I critically glitched (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Haven't done Ink or any south of him yet.


Also: I got a peek at Dozer's subtitles... heh.

[lkim]

@Vegas
Ah, thanks. Well, I thought it might have some rule for the production to changing it to fit 4th ed. setting. That means more work for WR1 and the staff? Sorry (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Spike]

I always thought that BTL chips were really just SIM chips recorded and unfiltered 'Hot SIM', which is why you need an illegal Hot SIM modification to your simrig to use them (or I guess a BTL chip player... haven't seen any simrigs for any BTL addicts in the gang so far...)...

A 'Good' BTL they may go a step farther and isolate tracks (like emotive ones) and ramp them up a bit (Better than life, they say), in fact that may be be a standard industry practice.

That may be accomplished, theoretically, by increasing the gain on the recorder.

Aside from the actually minor technical accomplishments, making BTLs shouldn't be much harder than making Anime Music Videos or flash files. Just a lot more illegal.

though I suppose the fluff sort of contradicts itself here a bit depending on the edition...

[Dantic]

But yeah, the fact that vehicles don't have an "R" around them seems to indicate that driver's licenses are obselete/no longer necessary by 2070.

I wouldn't presume this true, some type of certification would be required I'm sure, with endorsments for bike, CDL, etc. but with everything tied to your ID, accessed through the wireless matrix and your PAN.

[Spike]

Allow me to point out that there are no laws at all requiring you be licenced to USE a car or motorcycle before you can buy or own one.

Speaking as a one time worlds worst car salesman I can tell you we never asked for drivers licenses to sell cars (ID for other stuff, sure, but not to see if you could drive. That only came up if you wanted a test drive...)


How you get it home is between you and your tow truck driver...

[Eyeless Blond]

Given how cheap the book puts them (20-200+ nuyen), BTLs probably aren't particularly difficult to produce, in the abstract, unless you're going for original works. I imagine most of the stuff a third-tier ganger would put out to be very mickey mouse stuff, like cracking an existing full-X recording, removing the limiters and jacking up a few selected tracks, and making copies. Sorta like how anime fansubbers take a video file they've recorded or cracked from DVD, add subtitles, recompile the vid and distribute it.

Real nickel-and-dime stuff. Maybe if you're good, you'll do a decent enough job cracking, altering, and recompiling the BTL that people will actually pay you for it. If you have the cred for investment and a production team, you might even make original recordings (probably cheap porn, but if you get really good and have really good equipment you could do better), and make real money. At this point you could possibly start charging the 20-200 nuyen that people charge for pro work; until then you'll probably only be able to make 5-10 nuyen a pop, and count yourself lucky for that.

[Dantic]

I always thought that BTL chips were really just SIM chips recorded and unfiltered 'Hot SIM', which is why you need an illegal Hot SIM modification to your simrig to use them (or I guess a BTL chip player... haven't seen any simrigs for any BTL addicts in the gang so far...)...

A 'Good' BTL they may go a step farther and isolate tracks (like emotive ones) and ramp them up a bit (Better than life, they say), in fact that may be be a standard industry practice.

That may be accomplished, theoretically, by increasing the gain on the recorder.

Aside from the actually minor technical accomplishments, making BTLs shouldn't be much harder than making Anime Music Videos or flash files. Just a lot more illegal.

though I suppose the fluff sort of contradicts itself here a bit depending on the edition...

Simrigs are for recording BTLs not slotting them, although it can be used for playback. As long as you have a hot sim adapted commlink, your good to go. Other than that, I generally agree, it's simply a matter of tweaking the levels of certain sim "tracks" and coding it to self erase after a certain number of uses, etc. You need to remember though, that all this coding takes time, but once you have the BTL finished, you'd make massive amounts of copies to distribute. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Remember too that BTLs are distributed more in SR4 as downloads, not chips to be slotted as in olden days, but in the barrens, burning them to an OMC and selling them face to face is probably a popular option.

For most of the above reasons, I'd say the cheapest way to get into the BTL biz would be to hack an already established program that has gained popularity and make copies to redistribute as your own. That being said any BTL producers worth ripping off would have some very high end protection embedded into their product, so have fun hacking it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Spike]

For some reason I figure a lot of BTL's would actually be hacked and altered commercial releases, particularly porn. Easier and cheaper to lay hot track sensation recordings over high quality immersive recordings from a professional studio than to actually produce high end, but illegal, porn from scratch. from the customer's perspective he REALLY feels what its like to jack Suzy Senic-Valley, though in reality he's got a dim track of that coupled with a hot track of a 50 nuyen hooker in a sleazy motel.

Then there's the big budget action flicks... no BTL producer is gonna be able to recreate that, but hack it? Hell yeah! Its already illegal, so who's gonna worry about copyright violations?





EDIT::: though this might explain the whole 'imported azzie BTL' thing from earlier. They can, and DO, make professional quality BTLs... legally, then sell them illegally. Can't match that on the black market, so they're top end goods.

[Dantic]

If you realy wanted to make some money, getting into the BTL/simsense biz, I got two words for ya "snuff sims". Beat down some rival ganger, have your bio-med guy implant a simrig (It doesnt really matter at this point if he's not a full doc, or if the job is done well) After letting him recover enough to get up and around on his own, you throw him into the fenced off area around the old basketball courts and have at him. (don't send Grack, you want someone with a little self restraint who won't kill the poor bastard right off (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif) ) Then after he's dead you rip the simring back out so you can reuse it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif) Also hyper amped snuff sims can be slipped into the coding of a normal BTL, then when the unsuspecting is hit with the snuff tracks, instant heart attack, great way to knock off a chiphead. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Spike]

Ugh... it just occured to me one of the less savory things Maus has probably done in the past, with or without knowing it.

Though if yer stealing from Strange Days, you realize the snuff films in that were either 'accidental' or from the perspective of the killer, and the murder chips were just amped white noise.

I imagine snuffing chipheads isn't exactly taxing work, what with the whole 'out of touch with reality' bit.

[lkim]

So... to produce BTL, unless I'm making the original, doesn't require simrig? Just tool (commlink?) and hacking skill?

BTW, what's "snuff sim"?

[WinterRat1]

@Vegas
Ah, thanks. Well, I thought it might have some rule for the production to changing it to fit 4th ed. setting. That means more work for WR1 and the staff? Sorry (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

I hate to say this, but at the risk of sounding like a jackass, it’s actually not going to be more work for myself or the staff, it’s going to be more work for you.

I want to be clear it’s nothing personal, and it’s not a punishment of some type. What it boils down to is BTL production apparently requires an entirely new rule set for one PC. Furthermore, it’s for a PC that belongs to a player who is essentially an unknown.

In other words, I don’t know you. That’s not a good or bad thing, it just is. But you’re not in a situation like Vegas, where I talk to her on the phone or via Gchat several times a week, and I know she’ll be here until the game dies or she does, whichever comes first. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

The point is, because I can definitively count on her being in the game come hell or high water, I am 100% certain for me to create a new rule set for her would not be a waste of my time, since I know it would be continually used throughout the life of her PC.

Attrition in forum games is exceedingly high, and I have neither the time nor inclination to go through the trouble of creating a brand new set of rules that will only be used for one PC in one game. And if you drop out for any reason, suddenly I’ve created an entire rule set that no current PC is going to use (and most likely no future PCs either), all for a player/PC that’s not even in the game any more.

Given the well-documented tendency of players to disappear without so much as a courtesy explanation, the odds of you (or in all fairness, any brand new player) sticking around are easily less than 50%. I don’t know the exact statistics, but having GMed on the boards for the last four years running I can say with 100% certainty that a heck of a lot more than 1 out of every 2 players drops out of their game in a fairly short amount of time.

Simply put, the risk-reward ratio is not enough to convince me it’s worthwhile for me to spend time I don’t have making a rule set only one PC at most will ever use, for a player whose reliability and consistency is currently an unknown. Again, that’s not a criticism, simply a statement of fact.

This is a similar situation to when the game started, and Unarmed wanted his character (Doc) to be able to manufacture drugs. What we did then is the same as what we’re going to do now.

You create a rule set that you think fits the BTL production process to the best of your ability. The staff and I will evaluate it and give you feedback, you adjust it, and we go back and forth until we have a rule set we’re satisfied with.

If you have any questions, of course feel free to let us know, but you should know up front that if you want to do something the rules do not currently account for, it is your responsibility to create the necessary rules for your PC.

[WinterRat1]

I'd like to add many of the comments that were just posted are all helpful, useful, and applicable to this particular situation. Hacking and taking off the restraints is simple enough, as Eyeless said, but since it's so simple good luck getting people to pay much for it.

I assumed you were talking about making real money, not just cheap ripoffs that will net you 5-10 nuyen a pop, if that. That's going to require production and unique product, not something many people can do for themselves, hence my above post.

Of course like I said, if you're just going small time like Eyeless and the others described above, ignore my post about coming up with a rule set. Just do your thing, sit back and watch those 5 nuyen roll in baby! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[lkim]

@WR1
I'll try to come up with some rule for the production of BTL, as best as I can come up with it.

Here's some questions just top of my head.

1. In the contraband page of Wiki space, we have BTL rating, if you don't mind could you explain?
2. Making of BTL: Once you have made BTL, are you going to allow for future copies? Are you going to allow rip of BTL or simsence?

That's it for now, but I'll probably come up with more questions later.

[lkim]

Just one another question pop up in my head.

How would you (everyone) rate the BTL? Like easiest to hardest to make.

I would guess: Mood < Dream < Trip < P-fix.

Comments?

[WinterRat1]

Like we told Eyeless earlier, I don't have time to monitor this thread and answer every question that pops up all over the place. Put together a list of your questions and then PM me and I'll answer them en masse.

You are of course free to still ask those questions in this thread to solicit the thoughts and opinions of your fellow players.

[lkim]

Just basic thought about making BTL.

Making brand new BTL.
Requirment: Simrig, Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (8+rating, 1 day) Mood & Dream
Hardware/software (BTL) (10+rating, 1 week) Trip
Hardware/software (BTL) (12+rating, 1 month) P-Fix

Making copies of existing BTL.*
Requirment: Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (8+rating, 1 hour) Mood & Dream
Hardware/software (BTL) (10+rating, 1 hour) Trip
Hardware/software (BTL) (12+rating, 1 hour) P-Fix

*Making multiple copies at once increases the time X per copies

Converting existing Simsence to BTL
Requirment: Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (4+rating, 1 day) per person. (sim porn, for example, would have more than 2 people. To switch from person to person, would require more time)

Hows that sound? Comments?

EDIT:: changed simsence to BTL part.
EDIT:: changed time period for trip and p-fix
EDIT:: inserted time increasment for copying multiple BTLs

[Spike]

I would imagine persona fix chips to be the hardest, though to be honest other than knowing 'better than life', 'chips' and a few technical details about how they supposedly do their thing (hot sim track, amped up, yadda yadda) I actually don't know much about them.

I'll explain my reasoning on the chip types mentioned:

Mood chips are fairly simple. As I understand, they are meant to be used while doing other things, so there isn't even a need for a full SIM track, just the relevant emotional state running at hotSIM bandwidths. The price junkies pay for it is directly relevant to the quality of the emotional track itself, not the technical difficulty of making the chip. In other words you need someone who expirences a pretty pure emotional state AND makes a great subject for recording AND a damn near perfect read to get a great track to turn into a mood chip. I imagine garage cookers just scan tracks from existing chips, legal or not, and when the chance on a good quality emotional state they steal it entirely and process it a bit to make it BTL.

Dream Chips are next up. Just guessing from teh name that they do the cutout bit (chippie lies there like a beached fish) while they do their thing. Also guessing that they involve a few mood tracks (maybe lower quality tracks that don't make the cut for pure mood chips, but you're using several) and limited sensorium feeds, nothing fancy just stuff to enhance the trippy effect. Of course, these are probably in hot demand with club kids, like trance music its not enough to just repeat sounds and beats you've sampled you actually have to put together a cohesive feel. Most Dream burners probably don't even consider themselves BTL producers, they're underground artists, man.

Trips are like regular SIM's, like movies. Hard to do as a BTL unless, as I suggested earlier you're hackign someone elses chip to increase the expirence, or like Aztechnology, you can make them legally in one place and sell them illegally somewhere else. Many will be 'real life' expirences. Real chippies will like the voyeuristic aspect of other peoples lives just as much, maybe more, than they like utterly fake lives of regular SIM movies. Here you really are hacking stuff more than anything else, or making hotsim home movies with too much gain. Depending upon your source it could be easy or hard to get quality material out there. (making quality bootlegs is as much art as a good Dream chip, making quality home movies just means good gear and plenty of suckers to wear it...)

P-Fixs are probably beyond street level to make at all. You're making complete personality overlays or alterations, and that requires not just hotSIM recordings over long periods of specific subjects but advanced degrees in psychology. While the chip itself is nothing, constructing even crude personalities is hard hard work, and getting recording suitable enough to make into P-Fixs raw probably requires pretty out there technical knowledge to boot. Its the marginal edge of SIM technology...

But I could just be smoking a hot Mood chip right now, and feeling frisky...

[lkim]

@Spike
I agree with you, except I was thinking Dream would be more of sim movies, not Trip. Trip is one with wierd senses, like mentioned in the book, "breating under water."

[Neuntöter]

Well, all of Will's personal takes are up now, for those of you that want to take a look. I am not perfectly happy with some of them for now, especially Shade's take is giving me a bit of a headache, so i'll have a final look-over tomorrow after a good night's sleep.

[lkim]

House rule for our contraband are;

Dreamchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 25 3/12 hrs
Moodchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 75 3/12 hrs
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 200 4/24 hrs
Tripchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 30 2/12 hrs

Which means, at the chargen, I could only buy rating 2 of any chips, and the prices are;

Dreamchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 25 = 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Moodchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 75 = 300 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 200 = 800 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Tripchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 30 = 120 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

If I were allow to make copies, it would take;

Dreamchip (one-shot) & Moodchip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (10, 1 hour)
Tripchip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (12, 1hour)
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (14, 1hour)

And making multiple copies at the same time would take 1 hour + x amount of copies.

Sounds fair? Comments?

EDIT:: fix the Tripchip, P-fix mix up

[lkim]

You know, Moodchip BTLs have "street names that tend to reflect the nature of the experience, modified by a color: Blue Passion, Red Meanie, Cool White," are examples they have in the book.

Any new color coded name you want to give to Moodchip BTL?

Ex. Black Dispare, Green Calm, etc.

[lkim]

I seem to remember that some extended skill used in Matrix reduce it's time. Anyone know the page number for that?

[Dantic]

Just one another question pop up in my head.

How would you (everyone) rate the BTL? Like easiest to hardest to make.

I would guess: Mood < Dream < Trip < P-fix.

Comments?

I would say Dream < Mood < Trip < P-fix

Just basic thought about making BTL.

Making brand new BTL.
Requirment: Simrig, Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (8+rating, 1 day) Mood & Dream
Hardware/software (BTL) (10+rating, 1 week) Trip
Hardware/software (BTL) (12+rating, 1 month) P-Fix

Making copies of existing BTL.*
Requirment: Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (8+rating, 1 hour) Mood & Dream
Hardware/software (BTL) (10+rating, 1 hour) Trip
Hardware/software (BTL) (12+rating, 1 hour) P-Fix

*Making multiple copies at once increases the time X per copies

Converting existing Simsence to BTL
Requirment: Commlink, Hardware/Software skill, Data chip (for hard copies)

Hardware/software (BTL) (4+rating, 1 day) per person. (sim porn, for example, would have more than 2 people. To switch from person to person, would require more time)

Hows that sound? Comments?

EDIT:: changed simsence to BTL part.
EDIT:: changed time period for trip and p-fix
EDIT:: inserted time increasment for copying multiple BTLs

I would agree with your intervals for the most part, and your thresholds, quite fair all around, maybe even a little too fair, may be able to lower all thresholds by 2 since you add rating.
I think that additionaly however you would need an edit program, specificaly designed for simsense (according to edit descrition it can modify video, audio, images, etc. but no mention of simsense. This would count as a hacking program for cost and availability, and no chip produced could exceed the rating of the edit program.
I would say that your comlink should also have to be hot sim modified to be able to edit sim tracks without loosing resolution, thus defeating the purpose.

I'll explain my reasoning on the chip types mentioned:

Mood chips are fairly simple. As I understand, they are meant to be used while doing other things, so there isn't even a need for a full SIM track, just the relevant emotional state running at hotSIM bandwidths. The price junkies pay for it is directly relevant to the quality of the emotional track itself, not the technical difficulty of making the chip. In other words you need someone who expirences a pretty pure emotional state AND makes a great subject for recording AND a damn near perfect read to get a great track to turn into a mood chip. I imagine garage cookers just scan tracks from existing chips, legal or not, and when the chance on a good quality emotional state they steal it entirely and process it a bit to make it BTL.

Dream Chips are next up. Just guessing from teh name that they do the cutout bit (chippie lies there like a beached fish) while they do their thing. Also guessing that they involve a few mood tracks (maybe lower quality tracks that don't make the cut for pure mood chips, but you're using several) and limited sensorium feeds, nothing fancy just stuff to enhance the trippy effect. Of course, these are probably in hot demand with club kids, like trance music its not enough to just repeat sounds and beats you've sampled you actually have to put together a cohesive feel. Most Dream burners probably don't even consider themselves BTL producers, they're underground artists, man.

Trips are like regular SIM's, like movies. Hard to do as a BTL unless, as I suggested earlier you're hackign someone elses chip to increase the expirence, or like Aztechnology, you can make them legally in one place and sell them illegally somewhere else. Many will be 'real life' expirences. Real chippies will like the voyeuristic aspect of other peoples lives just as much, maybe more, than they like utterly fake lives of regular SIM movies. Here you really are hacking stuff more than anything else, or making hotsim home movies with too much gain. Depending upon your source it could be easy or hard to get quality material out there. (making quality bootlegs is as much art as a good Dream chip, making quality home movies just means good gear and plenty of suckers to wear it...)

P-Fixs are probably beyond street level to make at all. You're making complete personality overlays or alterations, and that requires not just hotSIM recordings over long periods of specific subjects but advanced degrees in psychology. While the chip itself is nothing, constructing even crude personalities is hard hard work, and getting recording suitable enough to make into P-Fixs raw probably requires pretty out there technical knowledge to boot. Its the marginal edge of SIM technology...

But I could just be smoking a hot Mood chip right now, and feeling frisky...

I would disagree some, Dream chips would be like the "normal simflicks", with all the levels just amplified to enhance the experience, thus the easiest to produce. Mood chips would be a little harder to edit, since it would require ripping tracks and usually disabling the RAS, but once you got used to editing them fairl regularly, then they would both be about the same, thus the same thresholds to produce. Trips are, well different, and probably considerably more difficult, I'd probably start with a simrecording from a junkie taking a drug trip, and work from there, with a lot of editing and tweaking. I agree P-fixes would be very difficult, probably requiring a facility, and some help, and possibly needing to be tailored to the subject who will be using the p-fix.

House rule for our contraband are;

Dreamchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 25 3/12 hrs
Moodchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 75 3/12 hrs
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 200 4/24 hrs
Tripchip (one-shot) (Rating + 2) * ¥ 30 2/12 hrs

Which means, at the chargen, I could only buy rating 2 of any chips, and the prices are;

Dreamchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 25 = 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Moodchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 75 = 300 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 200 = 800 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Tripchip (one-shot) (2 + 2) * ¥ 30 = 120 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

If I were allow to make copies, it would take;

Dreamchip (one-shot) & Moodchip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (10, 1 hour)
Personafix Chip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (12, 1hour)
Tripchip (one-shot) (Rating 2) (14, 1hour)

And making multiple copies at the same time would take 1 hour + x amount of copies.

Sounds fair? Comments?

P-fixes should be higher threshold, not tripchip, otherwise I'd say I agree. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)