Piggybacking on knowsofts, Gaining the bias of the soft's author Options

[simonw2000]

[A Clockwork Lime]

You guys are just talking about a low-rated Personafix with the desired behavioral patterns/biases clustered with the desired Knowsoft or Activesoft and any additional Knowsofts that you feel would belong with the chip. It's entirely game-legal and covered by the rules. CC p. 67, "Cluster," states as much.

As others have pointed out, only ActiveSofts require skillwires; all others skillsofts, including BTLs, can be of any rating desired. If the soft is being manufactured by someone with an agenda, they'll simply swallow the extra costs and sell it as a standard skillsoft; the extra memory and data on the chip would only show up if the chip was checked out beforehand, and CC has rules for that as well.

For example, a standard Rating 6 Pistols skillsoft with a Clint Eastwood sneer and voice pattern (Personafix 2ish) clustered into it would cost 16,320¥ (10,800¥ for the Pistols 6 and 80¥ for the Personafix 2, multiplied by 1.5). If the character selling it were trying to hide the Personafix, they'd just have to swallow the extra 5,520¥ for the clustered Personafix. Regardless, the chip would still only have an ASIST 6/Pulse 108 demand on the user's Skillwires even though the chip holds more data than that simply because Personafixes don't require Skillwires.

I guess I'm just a bit confused about why this is being overcomplicated or seen as a game-balance problem.