Wireless bonus rules suck., Lets write the tacnet rules they should have used. Options

[Shadow Knight]

So... Best case scenario, some indirect aids?

Those were direct aides. Why do you insist that Deckers be treated differently than every other specialist.

Apply your logic to the face, or the sniper, or the occult investigator or the street sam. ... stop singling out Deckers to be a super special snowflake that has to have their abilities work in EVERY situation. While other characters like the Street Sam do not have the same requirement for you.

[RHat]

Those were direct aides. Why do you insist that Deckers be treated differently than every other specialist.

Apply your logic to the face, or the sniper, or the occult investigator or the street sam. ... stop singling out Deckers to be a super special snowflake that has to have their abilities work in EVERY situation. While other characters like the Street Sam do not have the same requirement for you.

You'll note that I did use others as an example when explaining things - and information is indirect, because it is merely the potential for an effect.

[phlapjack77]

Rhat, I noticed your replies are suffering from the "one-sentence syndrome" again. Is it that your position isn't that defensible anymore, or that the discussion just doesn't interest you that much? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[RHat]

Rhat, I noticed your replies are suffering from the "one-sentence syndrome" again. Is it that your position isn't that defensible anymore, or that the discussion just doesn't interest you that much? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Happens when I get frustrated, among other occasions. Keeps me from saying things that perhaps I shouldn't.

[Irion]

Rhat, I noticed your replies are suffering from the "one-sentence syndrome" again. Is it that your position isn't that defensible anymore, or that the discussion just doesn't interest you that much? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Thats sartire of its finest.

Honestly his position is quite easy to defend. As I said a while ago. SR4 was just silly in this regard. The only thing wireless did was open an avenue for the GM to be a dick. You did not tell, you deactivated your XYZ.
The fact that this boni make that impossible (if you have it activated you get the bonus, so if you do not use the bonus it is off.
This alone is an improvement. That most of the people seem unable to get the fact that it is not the wireless boni that made cyberware "worse" is quite frustrating, I have to admit. Cyberware got tuned down. One reason is, that the dicepools should now come form skills and attribute so less dice pool modifiers.

[phlapjack77]

Happens when I get frustrated, among other occasions. Keeps me from saying things that perhaps I shouldn't.

No worries - too bad you didn't fall for my false choice trap...

[Shadow Knight]

Happens when I get frustrated, among other occasions. Keeps me from saying things that perhaps I shouldn't.

Perhaps you should not be sticking deckers on a super special pedestal.

For example a combat medic in the party would be nice. But in a lot of situations there ability will not directly deal damage to the enemy. Because that is not their role. A decker's role is not to deal direct damage but to aid his team in dealing damage by disrupting the enemy or better directing their fire and attacks. Their job is bypassing security of various types. And being a force multiplier. A sniper is not much use in a bar fight as a sniper.

Stop trying to shoehorn Deckers into every role and situation.

[RHat]

Perhaps you should not be sticking deckers on a super special pedestal.

For example a combat medic in the party would be nice. But in a lot of situations there ability will not directly deal damage to the enemy. Because that is not their role. A decker's role is not to deal direct damage but to aid his team in dealing damage by disrupting the enemy or better directing their fire and attacks. Their job is bypassing security of various types. And being a force multiplier. A sniper is not much use in a bar fight as a sniper.

Stop trying to shoehorn Deckers into every role and situation.

You should really stop pretending I'm calling for deckers to deal direct damage. I get that your argument would be easier if I were, but it's just coming off as ridiculous.

Also, snipers have a great fallback option via shotguns, which are baked into their specialty by sharing the skill.

[Shadow Knight]

You should really stop pretending I'm calling for deckers to deal direct damage. I get that your argument would be easier if I were, but it's just coming off as ridiculous.

Also, snipers have a great fallback option via shotguns, which are baked into their specialty by sharing the skill.

Everytime we suggest a decker coordinate his team and handle information which is their specialty you say not good enough. That comes across as you want direct damage.

and what is wrong with a decker just using a gun?

You keep wanting Deckers to hack cyberware. It makes no sense for most cyberware to require wireless access at all. A couple might be able to make the claim to need the processing power. Problem is there is no reason the processing power can't be included in the implant. And it in fact makes more sense to include the process power. If someone can be triangulated and caught by an RFID chip... I know you can do the same with the cyberware on the net. Having your cyberware give away your position is a bad thing and something the corps would not want. As they want their shadowrunners they are paying to be successful.

We have given you tons of examples of things a decker can hack in virtually any situation. The fact that you lack imagination on how to use a decker is not our problem or the GMs. Deckers do require the player to think outside the box. You claim hacking commms on gangers won't help... how distracting would it be to have your commlink start blasting music? Or having the streetlights start to strobe? or have every car in 100m alarms go off?

A street samurai can't use their gun skills to hack or be a face. Why do you insist a decker have special combat options?

[phlapjack77]

I think this is tangentially related - in the new videogame SR:R, deckers have an ability called "Mark" that makes it easier to hit the person marked. Was this ability in any of the editions (SR1-3) ? Seems kinda tacnet-y, and even if it is sorta MMO-ish in behavior it still seems to make more sense than wireless bonuses.

[Stahlseele]

If you had the right gear for it, you could do it.
Said gear was hellishly forbidden and expensive though.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

So... Best case scenario, some indirect aids?

Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Rigger Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Face Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Adept) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Mystic Adept) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Occult Investigator (Mundane) Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Smuggler Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Weapon Specialist Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Bounty Hunter Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Street Sam Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Spec Ops Guy Do?
Fight breaks out in a Bar... What does the Infiltrator Do?

Almost all of those people are GOING TO SHOOT/PUNCH/KNIFE THE OPPOSITION.
Mages are not likely to start casting fireballs or stun bolts (Escalation in a Brawl is usually a poor choice, unless it isn't).
Hackers can hit the incidentals easily enough, but are going to be more effective just brawling than they will be hacking anything (unless it is a protracted situation, which it can be)
Same goes for the Rigger, since Drones stand out, and he likely has none in the bar with him (If he does, then HAcker likely has things to hack as well, becasue reasons)
Investigators are out of their element (Fighting is generally not their focus), so they hide or brawl.
Same with the Bounty Hunter and Face. Once a fight breaks out, Facing is pretty irrelevant. You have already decided the Face was irrelevant in your scenario.
So, The Physical Guys go to town, and the others help to clean up when given opportunity.

So, 5 or 6 archetypes provide indirect aid, while the directly physical take the brunt of it. BUT THERE ARE STILL THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR SPECIALTY THAT IS USEFUL, MEANINGFUL, AND DIRECT. For example, in a protracted encounter, the aforementioned hacking of the bar's CCTV/Camera system to help coordinate tactical movements (Immediate Local Situational awareness), or the opposition's communications net (if this is more than a brawl and you are facing more experienced teams that are actually out to kill you), or call your vehicle to come crashing through the door (extreme, but doable), or grab a balloon drone to gain overwatch to give warning of additional forces incoming, or Spoof communications to opposing forces, and you can always grab a gun and shoot someone if things went south. You are only limited by your imagination, situation, and the environment.

You are trying to limit the options artificially by trying to construct situations that are sterile, but these do not really exist in play. There are always things that a Specialist can do, if he looks. Sometimes that means you need to ask a question or two, and other times it means that you make suggestions on environmental conditions. I do not really know how you play, but when a scenario jumps off, if the GM had left anything as vague as you seem to do, I would bne asking questions. FOrtunately, I do not really have to ask a LOT of my GM, since he geives pretty good exposition, and he rolls with suggestions of players for environmental things more often than not, when it is plausible ("Is there a Fire Suppression System in this Place? Awesome, I trigger it to screw with Targeting and general difficulty of breathing, since Halon is toxic... Glad we are wearing our Filter Masks with Oxygen feeds/Internal Air Tanks/Adept abilities to hold our breath").

[Voran]

I am deeply disturbed by the lack of "Burn it all down" options.

[Sendaz]

I am deeply disturbed by the lack of "Burn it all down" options.

Tried that, but apparently all the matches require a wireless bonus to ignite as a Free action.

[Rubic]

Tried that, but apparently all the matches require a wireless bonus to ignite as a Free action.

And yet, the bar always keeps its sprinklers wireless active because that's what absolutely every NPC does, because nobody in-setting can think for themselves underneath the veneer of corporate loyalty, even out in the Barrens or the less-corp-ridden areas. Because kuul-ayd.

And, for that Barrens Bar scenario, I would like to respond "hack a truck parked outside, and ram it through the front door to cause some havoc and damage, because my hacker is a spiteful little drek-bomb with a sliding scale of caring about collateral damage that lowers in times of danger."

[SpellBinder]

Didn't Netcat do that in a short in some book? Wirelessly drive a truck into a bar or something during a shoot out?

[Smash]

My take on this issue is that Catalyst took the wrong approach on how to allow hackers to mess with people's cyberware. They could have just let them do it simply because it has wires and electricity running through it. We're so stuck in this mentality of wifi and modems because that's what we're used to in real life.

Put wireless aside. It's merely an option. Either be susceptible to hacking and get a bonus, or choose not to be and don't. Don't care about the why. It's because analog is immune to science or something right?

You can argue that adepts don't have the same disadvantages, but doesn't that fly in the face of the 'horses for courses' arguments people are using? Can a samurai be susceptible to attacks from astral space on themselves or their foci? No.

Then there's about 10000000 things you can do to still have your wireless bonus and not be in that much danger. Spend some decent money on a good comlink, learn the full matrix defense action and slave your most important wares to your deckers deck. Adopt some tactics to flush out the decker first, if there even is one. I'd say they should be pretty rare. Or you could just be boring and turn your wireless off and lose some minor bonuses.

It's really not the end of the world. You might even get some players wanting to play deckers now. Stranger things have happened.

[Shadow Knight]

So can we actually discuss Tacnets now?

The impression is people don't want to do dice pool increases...but how else can you show the advantage a tacnet gives

[Sendaz]

nm

[Dolanar]

the problem with Dice pools is that, people have issue with DP bloating, its fairly simple to get huge dicepools in 5e right now, & we also now have even more room to increase dicepools, In a Long term game having a base of 15-18 dice before any bonuses is easy (gun pools with 8 agi & 10 skill will not be unheard of) so adding 2-3 more dice onto those pools will not benefit them, especially if the Limits can be reached fairly easily.

I would suggest looking into increasing limits as a portion of the tacnet, if you are looking for a rule bonus, or you can just houserule it to fluff.

[Goonshine]

I realized that my tldr should go at the top so,

To answer the OP, I don't agree that we need a whole new batch of rules for a tacnet in game. I think there are enough rules to deal with as it is, and including something like this would mean including yet another level of preparation for players and for GMs alike, and that just doesn't sit well with me. They made a good decision to try and get a few more things for deckers to do, and the rules are better and make better sense than they did for SR4. Just get some hacking stuff simple and out in the open and making it part of regular combat instead of a totally separate gig helps keep a third of the game, ie the Matrix, in the middle of what are easily the most touched-on rules.

I agree with you that under the current system though, it just feels silly to leave your stuff on and hope nobody dicks with it. I don't think the patch is to add another layer of complexity, I think the patch is to adjust the expectations of people and to beef up the bonuses.

"why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?"

I agree that the bonuses should be a bit more intuitive and played up better. I had the same reaction as many of you, "why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?" Who would want their wired reflexes to get bricked? But I thought about some more, and waded through some of the flames and petulance and the good ideas in this thread, and I thought that maybe there could be a better way to illustrate just how pervasive and important the Matrix is, and how much faster the machine is than man.

I think it might just be a matter of perspective. Maybe none of us are really thinking in terms of Da Future ™.

The Matrix as a jungle

You see, in Da Future ™ the internet is literally everywhere you go. It is a living, breathing environment, woven so cleanly over the real world that you can see and talk to people who aren't even really there. Out in this great vast world, there are ghosts and technomagic and freakin gods, hiding in the numbers. The total cascade of data is so huge and so bright that rendering it all would make you go blind. Let us imagine that the Matrix is actually a jungle, because it certainly is as haphazard and dense as one. The trees and vines and foliage would be all the millions of wireless repeaters and antenna towers, the thick air would be the radio waves themselves. And the predators stalking through the bush would be me and you.

So what does it mean to be wireless? Why would you ever leave your cyberware on?

Triangulating the problem

The Matrix connection is, as I understand, still just radio waves on a particular frequency. Even if something is not transmitting right at you, even if it is a secured signal, it is still transmitting, and that transmission can be triangulated and the source pinned down, especially if they are in the same room as you. You might not be able to hack them, but you will know they are there. Think of it like a sound that only dogs can hear, except that this dog is very good at isolating the frequencies that by their motion and heading seem to be wishing violence on you.

Let us imagine now that wired reflexes has, in addition to all those adrenal boosters and doohickies, some very sophisticated Matrix programming as well. Let's say that it can triangulate the location of nearby objects based on their Matrix connection, like say nearby transmitting commlinks, RFID tags, or other cyberware, like a sort of elegant sonar. If a coffee mug falls from the table, and the coffee mug is wireless enabled (to auto heat the coffee, natch) your reflexes are already aware of the location at their primal electric level, and by the time you have thought "Hey, I wanna grab that mug" your hand already has a few miliseconds head start, and is practically guided right to the cup. Let's say instead that you want to shoot someone in the face. Well, your reflexes already know there is a person there based on the clump of radio signals emanating from their person, and using simple algorithms the reflexes have already come to a decision about how tall the person is, how far away their face is from your bullets, and guides you towards that tragectory before your synapses have finished firing.

Using the Matrix, your wired reflexes are even more wired, you are even more aware of most of your opponents...you are a tiger hunting your prey, you are on them before they know, before even you know, because you are already one with both the real world and the Matrix. I think we can agree this is possible...in Da Future ™.

A few more examples

You can extend this metaphor further. How about if you could get a Body bonus from dermal plating being wireless? Let's say dermal plating has a system to tag whenever a gun is pointed at it, and it then shifts itself slightly to better shield the point of impact? Your cybereyes would almost be better than seeing in the dark, as you could view opponents who were behind any obstacle so long as they had some kind of wireless something on them. And why wouldn't they?

There are people who routinely scrub themselves down with tag erasers, who run totally dark and leave off all wireless bonuses, and come up as total blanks to your Matrix senses. What about those crafty devils? Well, what about them, those who have even no commlink? Well, unless they are using magic to communicate, they are completely cut off from their own team, and will have to communicate by shouting or waving hands or smoke signals. Good luck to them! Even now, even today, almost every damn person you know, almost everyone in world, has a cellphone on them. And don't tell me you are the kind of person who always turns off your cell phone in the movie theatre instead of just flipping it to silent, or that you would happily cut it off as soon as the bullets stop flying because hey, who really wants to call for help?

In conclusion, with some random thoughts

It is a double edged sword to be wireless, for be sure. You don't want to be open to Matrix attacks, and yet, you want to be ready to be attacked. This is why you have the option of turning it on or off. But to most people in the world of Da Future ™, cutting off the Matrix component is like putting on earmuffs or wearing sunglasses indoors or stuffing your nose with tofu. It has got to leave you feeling a bit antsy.

What this whole thing means gamewise is, there should be bigger bonuses for having wireless on, or smaller stat gains if it is off. Wireless bonuses should look much sexier than they do, and for all the reasons I outlined above.

Also the possibility of the street doc failing his matrix damage repair roll and permanently bricking your cyberware is too much worry for a player. They should just prevent cybercombat damage from happening to cyberware. Like you can crash it, you can knock it offline, you can feed it false signals, but you can't ruin it just because some kid felt like ruining it or you went to too many porn sites and caught a nasty virus. I mean, come on, the only people that cyberware bricking really affects is the PCs, and maybe the occasional NPC that they torture.

I have more to say on this subject, as to why in the world the corporate opposition would run with wireless enabled. Actually, their reasons make much more sense, though only for the corporation, not for the poor individual guard. But that is for another post.

[Dolanar]

yes, in some ways, that is part of how wireless is, but the thing about it is this. Wireless that is turned off stops sending those signals, Can you connect to a wireless hotspot that is not transmitting? no, can you even tell that it exists? no.

We are runners, the Lowest drek that exists, we murder, we loot, we do what we have to do to survive, & frankly, if you think I'm gonna let some damned script kiddie botch my run because someone on my team was giving him an open signal while we were breaking into that new Ares Facility, I'll put a bullet in the one who didn't police his signal, the decker who didn't catch it & the script kiddie who rolled over on me to those damned Lone Star dogs.

Point being, yes, the wireless world is all around us, but we do illegal things, is the man stealing from a house going to bring his cell phone with him? probably not. if he does will it be off? if he's good it will. So I personally will only turn wireless on when it is absolutely needed, because having my commlink on is bad enough, giving him a dozen more access points? screw that.

PS- your view of the world is for those who more or less follow the law I think, as such, it doesn't belong in the rules for people who break the law on a daily basis.

[Shadow Knight]

I realized that my tldr should go at the top so,

To answer the OP, I don't agree that we need a whole new batch of rules for a tacnet in game. I think there are enough rules to deal with as it is, and including something like this would mean including yet another level of preparation for players and for GMs alike, and that just doesn't sit well with me. They made a good decision to try and get a few more things for deckers to do, and the rules are better and make better sense than they did for SR4. Just get some hacking stuff simple and out in the open and making it part of regular combat instead of a totally separate gig helps keep a third of the game, ie the Matrix, in the middle of what are easily the most touched-on rules.

I agree with you that under the current system though, it just feels silly to leave your stuff on and hope nobody dicks with it. I don't think the patch is to add another layer of complexity, I think the patch is to adjust the expectations of people and to beef up the bonuses.

"why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?"

I agree that the bonuses should be a bit more intuitive and played up better. I had the same reaction as many of you, "why would I turn on my cyberware's wireless, ever?" Who would want their wired reflexes to get bricked? But I thought about some more, and waded through some of the flames and petulance and the good ideas in this thread, and I thought that maybe there could be a better way to illustrate just how pervasive and important the Matrix is, and how much faster the machine is than man.

I think it might just be a matter of perspective. Maybe none of us are really thinking in terms of Da Future ™.

The Matrix as a jungle

You see, in Da Future ™ the internet is literally everywhere you go. It is a living, breathing environment, woven so cleanly over the real world that you can see and talk to people who aren't even really there. Out in this great vast world, there are ghosts and technomagic and freakin gods, hiding in the numbers. The total cascade of data is so huge and so bright that rendering it all would make you go blind. Let us imagine that the Matrix is actually a jungle, because it certainly is as haphazard and dense as one. The trees and vines and foliage would be all the millions of wireless repeaters and antenna towers, the thick air would be the radio waves themselves. And the predators stalking through the bush would be me and you.

So what does it mean to be wireless? Why would you ever leave your cyberware on?

Triangulating the problem

The Matrix connection is, as I understand, still just radio waves on a particular frequency. Even if something is not transmitting right at you, even if it is a secured signal, it is still transmitting, and that transmission can be triangulated and the source pinned down, especially if they are in the same room as you. You might not be able to hack them, but you will know they are there. Think of it like a sound that only dogs can hear, except that this dog is very good at isolating the frequencies that by their motion and heading seem to be wishing violence on you.

Let us imagine now that wired reflexes has, in addition to all those adrenal boosters and doohickies, some very sophisticated Matrix programming as well. Let's say that it can triangulate the location of nearby objects based on their Matrix connection, like say nearby transmitting commlinks, RFID tags, or other cyberware, like a sort of elegant sonar. If a coffee mug falls from the table, and the coffee mug is wireless enabled (to auto heat the coffee, natch) your reflexes are already aware of the location at their primal electric level, and by the time you have thought "Hey, I wanna grab that mug" your hand already has a few miliseconds head start, and is practically guided right to the cup. Let's say instead that you want to shoot someone in the face. Well, your reflexes already know there is a person there based on the clump of radio signals emanating from their person, and using simple algorithms the reflexes have already come to a decision about how tall the person is, how far away their face is from your bullets, and guides you towards that tragectory before your synapses have finished firing.

Using the Matrix, your wired reflexes are even more wired, you are even more aware of most of your opponents...you are a tiger hunting your prey, you are on them before they know, before even you know, because you are already one with both the real world and the Matrix. I think we can agree this is possible...in Da Future ™.

A few more examples

You can extend this metaphor further. How about if you could get a Body bonus from dermal plating being wireless? Let's say dermal plating has a system to tag whenever a gun is pointed at it, and it then shifts itself slightly to better shield the point of impact? Your cybereyes would almost be better than seeing in the dark, as you could view opponents who were behind any obstacle so long as they had some kind of wireless something on them. And why wouldn't they?

There are people who routinely scrub themselves down with tag erasers, who run totally dark and leave off all wireless bonuses, and come up as total blanks to your Matrix senses. What about those crafty devils? Well, what about them, those who have even no commlink? Well, unless they are using magic to communicate, they are completely cut off from their own team, and will have to communicate by shouting or waving hands or smoke signals. Good luck to them! Even now, even today, almost every damn person you know, almost everyone in world, has a cellphone on them. And don't tell me you are the kind of person who always turns off your cell phone in the movie theatre instead of just flipping it to silent, or that you would happily cut it off as soon as the bullets stop flying because hey, who really wants to call for help?

In conclusion, with some random thoughts

It is a double edged sword to be wireless, for be sure. You don't want to be open to Matrix attacks, and yet, you want to be ready to be attacked. This is why you have the option of turning it on or off. But to most people in the world of Da Future ™, cutting off the Matrix component is like putting on earmuffs or wearing sunglasses indoors or stuffing your nose with tofu. It has got to leave you feeling a bit antsy.

What this whole thing means gamewise is, there should be bigger bonuses for having wireless on, or smaller stat gains if it is off. Wireless bonuses should look much sexier than they do, and for all the reasons I outlined above.

Also the possibility of the street doc failing his matrix damage repair roll and permanently bricking your cyberware is too much worry for a player. They should just prevent cybercombat damage from happening to cyberware. Like you can crash it, you can knock it offline, you can feed it false signals, but you can't ruin it just because some kid felt like ruining it or you went to too many porn sites and caught a nasty virus. I mean, come on, the only people that cyberware bricking really affects is the PCs, and maybe the occasional NPC that they torture.

I have more to say on this subject, as to why in the world the corporate opposition would run with wireless enabled. Actually, their reasons make much more sense, though only for the corporation, not for the poor individual guard. But that is for another post.

The problem is a lot of stuff that has a wireless bonus would not have one. It does not make sense. Wired reflexes need a wireless connection to connect with reflex boosters? Why... A round trip to the matrix and back is going to take more time then wiring the 2 pieces of cyberware together via DNI.

[SpellBinder]

Yeah, and apparently smartguns can't adjust for wind anymore without accessing the Matrix 2.0 version of weather.com (or whatever), even if you're firing inside a building. Especially when 20 years ago the only way a smartgun worked was by having a length of fiber-optic cable run from it to a datajack or your smartlinked glasses and did the exact same thing without a jackpoint.

[Goonshine]

I agree it is hard to work all systems into the new paradigm of matrix access, especially for things like the Smartgun which quite clearly had linked equipment before. Maybe there are people who go looking for older used cyberware specifically to get those kinds of benefits? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But as to why the smartgun gets a wireless bonus, I would point to using RFID triangulation instead of wind resistance as a reason that it gives benefits for having wireless on indoors. Like the examples I mentioned, it makes somewhat more sense to believe that your smartgun is running some formulas to calculate the location of the vital parts of the target automatically based on an aggregriate of their radio signatures, as opposed to logging in to weather.com.

I think with what I mentioned above, you can provide a decent in-game reason for why a shadowrunner would chose to have his wireless on. Runners might be out of the system, but there is no reason they can't use it (or abuse it) when given the option, and I think the RFID triangulation + the equipment automating part of the action provides a clearer reason for the existence of what is an obvious security gap in cyberware.

If you really want to reject wireless for a shadowrunning team, that is fine. It concretely closes a possible backdoor that could be exploited. But keep in mind that first line corporate security will be running wireless and getting the bonuses from it (and will be vulnerable).

Why would corporate security leave wireless on? The most important reason is tracking. Every time that smartgun goes off it is recorded, everything a guard sees through his eyes is immediately available on the servers. As soon as a firefight breaks out, not only does everyone know about it, but they immediately have an accurate model of what is happening. Ares can use the data for bullet trajectories to decide which of their guards performed best under fire, while Lone Star can use the same info to protect themselves from lawsuits from their clients ("No, our bullets clearly missed your employees by more than 3cm, which by our service contract is an acceptable distance for safe counterfire"). If any corporate employee decides change jobs or go rogue, that equipment can also be shut down remotely, adding an extra problem for possible defectors.

The guards are not going to like it, but I guarantee it will be part of their jobs to leave that stuff on. The worse thing that can happen to a corporation is a smudge to their corporate image, which will be followed by lawsuits and a hit to their bottom line.

As for secondary or elite response teams, like Knight Errant or some emergency response guards, well, those guys will go in with wireless down, if they suspect they might get hacked. Come in hot and clean up the mess, as it were. If there is no suspicion of a hacker, then, why eschew the bonuses?

If you don't think wireless is smart for your runner team, leave it off, but I would definitely leave it in for corporate security response.