Skillwires, Halp! Options

[moosegod]

Two of my runners have decided, out of the blue, that they want skillwires. Seeing as how no one has wanted any before, I have NO clue what I'm doing.

First off, how do you get ASIST rating? Is that just the same as max rating? If this is so, then they're even more ridiculously expensive than I previously thought. If not, then where does it come from?

Also, what, exactly, is the price for 216 MP R6 skillwires? I hope it's not the number I reached.

[Ol' Scratch]

EDIT: Sorry. This is something of a minor bit of help clarifying the rules. According to moosegod I have to learn how to leave minor things like that alone. Silly me.

This post has been edited by Doctor Funkenstein: Dec 6 2004, 05:17 AM

[Glyph]

A base skill, Rating: 6 skillsoft has only 108 Mp, so your example skillwires have twice as much Mp as they need. You can only run up to the rating, so the other 108 Mp is completely wasted. A Rating: 6/108 Mp set of skillwires only costs 324,000 Nuyen, which is affordable with B Resources, and leaves plenty of Nuyen for some wired reflexes and other additional enhancements with A Resources.

I could see having that much headware memory. You could download two rating: 6 activesofts to headware memory, and be able to switch between the two at will, without having to keep a chip stuck in your chipjack. To be honest, though, a skillsoft jukebox is a much more efficient (although much more obvious) way to rapidly switch between skillsofts. And if you have the Man & Machine book, a Chipjack Expert Driver is almost an absolute must-have with skillwires.

[JaronK]

Basically, rating 6 skills need 108 MP, so Rating 6 108 MP skillwires are what you want to use Rating 6 skills.

However, it's much cheaper to use a Rating 3 system, and use a level 3 chipjack expert driver to make up the difference. Much less essence and nuyen... but of course if you had rating 6 with the rating 3 CED, you'd have an effective skill of 9 in everything (with the usual pool limitations).

JaronK

[BitBasher]

It's only 108 mp IF you don't want to use any skillsofts with modifiers. Some of those customizations can increase the size you need.

[GrinderTheTroll]

Just to clarify, you can only run skillsofts for which you have MP allocated for the skillwires correct? So Skillwire-6 (108MP) can only ever run up-to 108MP of skillsofts (you could vary rating to have more going concurrently). Adding some headware would only allow you to simulate a "jukebox" type system for accessing ones you have uploaded for storage right?

[JaronK]

Correct. However, you can optomize the code and thereby lower the MP rating needed, which helps for adding other options.

With my Skillwires sammy, Wildcard, I gave him a cyberhand with a 1000MP optical chip in it, Rating 3 CED, Rating 6 108 MP skillwires, and a datajack, chipjack, and knowsoft link. He can store 9 Rating 6 skills in his hand and load up whichever one he happens to need for any occasion (assuming he's bought the appropriate skill chip at some point). As a result, he can throw 9 dice at almost anything... but he can't ever run two skills completely simultaneously. I believe, however, if he gets two rating 6 Pluscoded Optomized skills, he can run them both at the same time.

JaronK

[GrinderTheTroll]

[mmu1]

Bah. The real issue you need to think about when using skillwires for the first time (since you're GMing) is whether you allow Expert Chipjack Drivers or not. (and remember that they've been capped at rating 3, in case one of your players conveniently misses that detail)