Thanks for your help with my earlier questions folks....Care to take on another?

Ok, I and a few friends have poked around in the BBB, and we have not yet found how the Hacker in the Archetype colorplates managed to turn a low-end comlink into the high Response and high Signal monster he is using.

I've noticed some old discussions here upon searching, that mention that is is cheaper to upgrade low-end hardware than to buy it. But we have managed to miss the rules on said upgrades.

Thanks.

The rules for upgrading commlinks and programs is in the wired (hacker/TM section) of the BBB. I dont have my book with me at work but if I recall corectly it was toward the end of the chapter. If you flip page by page through the book you will see the upgrades list on the lower right hand side of the LEFT page.
Then again... I have been wrong before.

That part of the rules is well hidden, almost steganographically (if that's even a word). You're not the first ones to miss it.

I saw it when I first browsed the book, and I nearly went crazy trying to find it again later .

I'm pretty sure it can be found under commlink customization at the end of the wireless chapter.

Thanks, I'll look there.

Nope! It's under the rigger section, page 240.

Very well hidden.

And there!

Correct me if I'm wrong but is not the rigger section the last 2 or 3 pages of the wired (unwired, whatever) section.

I missed those rules the first few times I read the rules. One of my players is a fountain of great information and he knew the rules. He also says to other players "Buy a blah blah blah for X nuyen, it is better than whats in the book..." darn he is good.

So there is lots of little tweak rules but they are hard to find.

i suppose it depends [edit] on how good of a link you want [/edit] which is cheaper.

if you're looking at the avalon, then yeah that's expensive. but iirc there's a response 4 signal 3 commlink that's not too horribly expensive, and considering signal is so easy to boost without upgrading your link (signal 8 for 500 if you get a satellite link) i always figured that was worthwhile if you wanted a decent machine but weren't a dedicated hacker.

It's cheapest to just buy the Meta Link with Vector Xim and boost Signal, Response, and System up to 5 and Firewall up to 6. Comes out to about 11000 , give or take a little. But if you bought the Fairlight Caliban with Novatech Navi and then boosted up the stats it would be around 20500 , give or take a little. I still think it's more cost economical even if you have it were you only buy up the difference in rating for the attributes of the commlink, i.e. Firewall 3 to 4 is only 1400 because you only had to pay the difference between the 2 prices. Which brings up another question, is Firewall limited by the Response or can it be ran at a rating higher, i.e. the above Meta Link running a Firewall 6 on a Response 5 commlink?

firewall is not limited by system, iirc, and therefore can be run at 6 no matter what the rest of the commlink is.

and as far as the avalon, i believe i *explicitly* used that as an example of one of the commlinks that is *not* efficient. in point of fact, the cheapest way of getting the best stats is not to buy a commlink at all, nor any OS, because nowhere does it say you need those to build a commlink from scratch. all you need is the individual parts.

now then, if you looked, i indicated that certain stock commlinks were well worth the money, but not all. for example, the novatech airware (i had forgotten which one was the 'best' commlink to buy in terms of economy, and it was not the response 4 signal 3 one that i had remembered, which is 500 more than it should cost if you do it custom) saves you a small amount of money. sure, no *hacker* is gonna use it, but a street sam who just wants something that isn't a worthless piece of trash? maybe.

Yeah, I was just backing up your statement. Sorry if it came off that I was attacking you personally. I didn't mean to do that. Cheers, chummer.