OK, so I haven't really gone through SR4 yet (been a little busy with Real Life™, employment hunting & the new GF), but I checked the Cyberware section, and all that lovely Headware memory that I loved from SR3 is.....gone?!
(ie, my character, an Independent Professional Courier, an archetype I made years ago, used 100Mp in Headware memory to cart around data safely...sort of ala Johnny Mnemonic, but with cyberware {I read the shortstory WELL BEFORE the movie, folks!}). Now, the new & improved Datajack/Datalock does the same thing, only it doesn't say how much memory it can hold.

I get the feeling there will be a SOTA 207X (71-72-73?) book in the near future.

They may be treating this like Commlink storage memory, virtually limitless.

Yes, pg 212 has a box A Note on Storage Memoy that says "gamemasters and players can assume that characters have enough storage memory on any particular device to meet their needs, so there is no need to micromanage file sizes and available memory."
So basically any and every device has a virtually unlimited memory, unless the GM wants to limit it for whatever reason.

Ah, I see now. Thanks.

memory was always a retarded thing.

I mean, we have 512 flash cards that cold a crap load of images and text.

In sr3 you had to have memory to store it that cost essence.

(or if you're like me you made a cyber limb, put a cyber deck in it and added as much storage memory as you wanted)

That "free, limitless memory for all the people!" thing is just lazy game design. Because it will take five minutes before a player says, "So I can download every skillsoft in the world into my datajack, right?"

Then I have to say no.

I'm fairly certain there's a comment with that 'no more memory limits' thing that said there is a difference between having room and huge files. - it's one thing to assume you have memory for just about every basic program or file you want, but if it's something VERY large in design, you may need another storage space or twenty to move it around.

all they took out was the numbers, as it wasn't entirely necessary. Now the GM just says 'it's too big for your tiny little head' or some equivalent.

The only thing that keeps someone from carrying Deus around in his pistol/mp3 player is fear that the GM will beat him to death with the hardcover BBB. This, I presume, is why SR4 is the first edition to have hardcover BBB.

then you have a problem

or you can nuke his online storage area

i wonder, how fast can one swap the skills out in a skillwire?

That's a Simple Action.

I know that I, as the GM, can invent lots of ways to interfere with downloading every skillsoft in the world into the datajack. But this just leads to bickering, and situations where the PC does something the rules say is okay, and I make him slip on a banana peel.

What I am doing is declaring that devices have a standard 100 GB storage, and that programs take up GB equal to their rating.

COMPUTER EXPERTS! Please do not post fifty messages explaining how this isn't very realistic. It's only meant as an easy-to-use rule to prevent datathieves from downloading every scrap of data Wuxing owns into their hold-out pistol's ammo tracker.

So... let's buy some RFIDs to be on the safe side, hm?

There is headware called a Datalock page 331. It works just like the memory you want, infact it's designed to be exactly that. It just doesn't have any storage maximum.

Exactly, Heimdalol. I have to learn about the character creation process first, then the conversion, re-convert my original character, then reverse-engineer the archetype. Ouch, migraine. But first, I want to get though System Failure to understand what happened.

this may be the single biggest change from SR3- to SR4, less walls to keep the players in line with...

no, sr3 memory rules were just plain stupid, in relation to the skills it made sense, but in relation to utilities, texts, and other crap it made no sense.

so now we instead have the ability to swap any knowsoft based skill for any other with a simple action?

only trouble is that using those skills dont allow you to use edge

I'd measure it in 10's of megapulses.
Because we don't know what a megapulse is anyway, who's going to complaim?

I believe a megapulse is like one picture.

I'd let them download every knowsoft they bought into memory, plus any they found and possibly some free promotional knowsofts (IE: Ares Firearms Products as a knowsoft freely downloadable from ares, so you know that ares firearms are the best in the world ). Please, why is it that whenever limitations are removed from players there are people automatically shouting "OMG NERF IT AND DROP AN ORBITAL COW ON THE CHARACTER!!!!1111one".

If you really want to nerf it then at-least consider that it's not broken, just mildly silly. If you really must then say that once they've bought enough knowsofts to fill their current memory then they have earned a free memory upgrade voucher. GMs who think micromanagement is fun, and thus enforce it on players, are soon going to find-out that some players don't like micromanagement. Of-course some players like micromanagement, I find a little bit of micromanagement to be fun myself, but I still think the removal of the excess levels of it in SR4 is a good thing.

Headware memory was one of those things which, honestly, was an absolute pain in the butt to deal with. Given how precious Essence is, it was much more frequent for a player to keep a chipjack hidden away in a body pocket, some storage memory in a cyberlimb, or any of a hundred other tricks to avoid coughing up the decent chunk of essence you needed to have any real amount of head storage.

My personal spin on it is, hey, it's 2070. Technology has advanced, storage has gotten smaller, and you've got enough capacity in those memory chips they buried in the bones of your skull to hold most of what you'd normally keep on a commlink. Things like skillsofts (that is, things which have a noticeable game effect and which you'd normally think of being packed on a chip, with the 3rd ed "or you can load it into headware storage" method not being the norm) have largely moved back to being kept on chips that you slot to aid access times or whatever... I, as a GM, would say "yeah, your commlink doesn't have enough memory/isn't fast enough/isn't built to handle running a skillsoft."

Of course, skillsofts can be downloaded into a commlink (how else do people ship them around the Matrix?)... they're just compressed and unusable until they've been unpacked and burned onto a chip for your wires.

in sr3 they said any ammount of memory would take up essentially the same space because of how tech was (physical space a 1gig chip took up the same space as a 800,000 gig chip) so the essence of it all made no sense beyond a initial investment.

Hurray for progress.

I think they were talking about storage memory (think hard drive space). Active memory (think RAM) is different stuff, and IIRC that's what headware memory was supposed to be.

headware mem could be used as both if you where using a cranial cyberdeck...

Then why is there a separate active memory for C^2 decks listed in Matrix which has 10% of the essence cost of storage memory and cost 1/3 more?
(Mp / 1,000 Essence, 200¥ per Mp, page 168)

That's why I hated M&M. It's like they only wanted to allow cyberlimb decks, because you couldn't make a Renraku Kraftwerk unless you had it and the memory (and this is using the above value for RAM) installed as Deltaware and couldn't get any more cyber.

err, oops, missread. disregard this one...

Actually, my question was leaning more towards, "why bother" re: the headware mem from SR3 when you can use the memory in Matrix. It's at least less painful when it screws you.

The concept behind my archetype was that sometime the Matrix isn't all that secure, especially when you need to transfer the specs for a prototype gizmo from an off-site R&D to the main offices. Containing it in an off-line storage is one thing, but it's easy to lose a disc/chip with the info, especially in airport lost luggage, or just simple forgetfulness. By downloading it into headware memory storage, it's still on you, but you're not carrying a loose-able item. Also, if you get stuck up by some gangers shadow-hired by the competition's Johnson, you lose a dummy disc or chip, not your life.
Yes, it's being a glorified mailman or delivery boy/girl, but it pays.

And all you need to do it is the Data Lock Cyberware, and a Data Jack.

Isn't there mention somewhere about how any common object can now be used to house data? I remember something about clothing used as a datastore.

Here's one mention, but I don't think it's the one I'm recalling:

There are mentions of this sort of thing periodically throughout the book.

On a tangent wouldn't be annoying for your clothes to remind you they hadn't been washed in a while?

It does open up some entertaining job possibilities.

Johnson: "The current girlfriend of a mafia don was looking to sell some information to me, but she has unfortunately gotten herself disappeared before the drop-off. Reportedly she was keeping the data in an encrypted file housed in her undergarments. The clothing is, presumably, still in the mob safehouse."

Runner: "So.... we're going on a panty raid?"

LAMBDA LAMBDA LAMBDA!

And I was wondering what to put my runners through next. HAH!

*laughs* panty raid? Oh my....hehehe, I have ot use something like that, for sure...although I might stick with a cyber sock for now, and work up to panties.

worse yet, johnson gives you tracker for the rfid tag in it...

The don is wearing the panties.

i would hate having to remember what jacket i put the latest pirated songs on

Okay let's look at the biggest hard drives you can get. I think they are terabytes now.

That is 1,099,511,627,776 bites.

Okay in 10 years we went from hard drives around 3gig to 1024 gigs..... So let's say in 2070 they have only gone one step further and have hard drives that are only 1024 bigger than ours. So one patabyte. Most likely they will think of petabytes the same way that we think of megabits. I think that is being conservative. Now if I am not wrong they are using petabytes to measure the band width of large projects and companies today.

So do you worry about hard drive space for MP3s?Why would a shadowrunner worry about space any file?What do you want loggestics to make characters sweat? Do you also makes sure they keep their dead skin cells from falling off?Or maybe just stray hair? Cause if you really think they should bring back file size I think you are being just as anal as the people who do the full CSI bullshit. That being said you can be as anal as you want to be in your games. They are your games after all.