Delta grade equipment... from 2061. What is it now? Options

[Hat]

So the characters in my game are likely to come across bodies of old black ops personnel and possibly even recover cyber that was held for transplant. It would have been beta or delta grade.... in 2061. It's now 2070. How would you show an improvement in the 2070 gear over the 2061 gear? Any suggestions?

With a sweep of his...

Hat

[Stahlseele]

SR4 has done away with the clusterfuck that were the SOTA-rules, so you'll have to handwave that part and downgrade to beta from delta and to alpha from beta to your liking . . else it just stays beta or delta stuff and if they wanna use the parts they have to deal with the used parts rules . .

[Drogos]

Did they add those to Augmentation? If so, I really need to swing out and grab that...eventhough I need to anyways (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Stahlseele]

well, there's at least one thread dealing with a used parts cyber-zombie or something like that, so i'd guess yes *g*

[Hat]

Thanks.

With a sweep of his...

Hat

[Kerberos]

So the characters in my game are likely to come across bodies of old black ops personnel and possibly even recover cyber that was held for transplant. It would have been beta or delta grade.... in 2061. It's now 2070. How would you show an improvement in the 2070 gear over the 2061 gear? Any suggestions?

With a sweep of his...

Hat

Well according to RAW they can't use them at all. Page 32 augmentation:

"Only standard and alpha-grade cyberware is available as second-hand cyberware. Beta- and deltaware implants are too custom-tailored and modified to be fitted to anyone other than the person they were originally designed for."

Of cause you can always apply rule 0 if you want them to be able to use it.

[ArkonC]

You could also just insert problems with the old ware...
Sort of like how move by wire used to give you a degenerative disease...
Or give the implants some negative quality like buggy ware...
Or you can just say that high tech doesn't fare well with 9 years of neglect in a pile of rubble and organic waste that they are unusable in any case...

[Hat]

Kerberos, thanks for the info. I'd missed that. That certainly makes my job easier.

With a sweep of his...

Hat

[Ice Hammer]

Another way to think about the old cyberware is that in nine years there probably has been many advancements in the composite metals and the microcircuitry that are used in the 2070 models of cyberware. In some instances, the out dated models of cyberware from 2061 may have been retired or are no longer being manufactured. If that's the case, than the value of that out dated cyberware will probably be zero. Especially since they were manufactured prior to system failure. So there could be additional compatibility issues from that as well.

[DocTaotsu]

Being a person who refuses to give up Windows Xp till microsoft pries it from his cold dead fingers...

Support. A 9 year old piece of hardware will certainly have some support issues as people have moved on to bigger things. This problem is especially pronounced with wares with custom (beta-delta) wares that were probably in very limited production runs. A runner with a 9 year old standard/alpha grade arm probably doesn't have that much trouble keeping it maintained because there are millions of people with the exact same ware on the streets. Delta grade wares that only got put into 500 members of an elite anti-terrorism task force aren't exactly going to have easily accessible manuals on the matrix.

But that's more of an RP thing. If you want to make the players work for their ware you can have them do a run to try and recover some pre crash optical chips with technical specs and patches on it.

Making it buggy or needing extensive reworking sounds like a good angle too.