It seems to me that connection isn't necessarily a great description of what the rating should mean. I think that often a contact isn't meant to be used just for who they know or how well they can get things for you, but also for what they can do; and that isn't reflected in "conncection." For instance, a hacker might have zero social skills and can't get you jack, but they're extremely competent as a hacker (have high skill ratings and a good link.) Or a street doc with a rating 1 connection is going to have extremely low skill as a a doctor, but if his "connection rating" is say a 4 he's going to have a baseline skill of 4 in medical skills. He's still not going to be great for getting you non medical stuff, but he can fix you up really well.
I guess what I'm saying here is that I think that "connection" should reflect how capable the contact is for helping you not, just what they can get for you; and that skills both rating and number should reflect the persons connection rating.
anyone got any feed back on this?

As I recall,
Connection is already added to the contact's skill roles already for various tasks. For example a contact with a charisma of 5, and a negotiation 5. With a connection rating of 6 would roll 16 dice when trying to find Aries Alpha for you.
5 for charisma 5 for negotiation and six for his connection.

I just double the connection rating and use that for most of their dice pools. I also limit what kind of acces they have or general ability levels they have by their connection rating.

Check out the contacts on my web site for lots of examples.

So basicily under your rules a connection six contact rolls 12 dice...
While a connection 3 rolls six. (which is less then most faces)

As a general rule yes but I may lower it based on how much of a focus it is of their characters. Sometimes I just roll the connection rating but lower the threshold, depending on how lazy I'm feeling at the moment. I almost never stat out NPCs specifically. Sometimes I'll use the connection rating as their highest dice pool and everything else is lower.

The other thing I do with NPCs is never roll their edge. They are not the main characters and I find their screw ups just as useful for plot as their successes.

Another thing I do with contacts is never roll more then once for locating items unless something has changed. I don't roll several times for them to find something. They roll once and divide that by their interval and that is how long it takes. You can add money to increase the dice like in the rules but there is no reason to keep up with the successes as I go.

Man must take a long time for the PC's get ahold of equipment in your games.

Why not just roll Connection+Loyalty as their dicepool?

The connection is how much clout and skill they have in their various fields of expertise and the loyalty represents how much they are ready to go out of a limb for you to get your stuff.

Someone with Connection 6 and Loyalty one might not like you but are DAMN good at what they do and most likely don’t HAVE to take any kind of risk to get things for you.

I subtract their connection rating from the availablitiy before rolling.

I also write up what they tend to have on hand with their descriptions. One guy focuses on smgs, pistols, and shotguns. If you ask him to get anything else he will tell you no. You then go to your other weapons contact who loves assault rifles but doesn't like Trolls so he wont carry anything in their size for your friend. Then you have a Troll armorer who does nothing but Troll scale and no human scale. He has a full line of 9 ft long claymores made by a blacksmith friend of his from carbinado.

I think that having more then one contact instead of just a single contact with a little of everything adds alot to the game.

I don't like to add in Loyalty for finding things. I see connection rating as their capability and loyalty as how much they like you. Loyalty is already powerful becuase of the favor stuff.

Ok that's good, there needs to be alot of good reasons to actually use your contacts when acquiring gear. and subtracting the connection from the items availiblity is also a really good idea.

My own character has about eight contacts, so far none have a connection or loyality over 3. From smugglers, to cops and mafia. Hmm at least 2 arms smugglers.
He hasn't had to use them as much a I would like, but then again he hasn't tried to aquire any really high availblity gear. Once his starting supply of EX-Explosive Rounds, grenades and other stuff runs low he'll might need one of his arm smuggler contacts to get some more or both plus himself to get it done quickly.

Most of my players dont' really shop around, they go to one of their fixers, as they don't want it known on the street what gear they have.

They also plan ahead, and order stuff weeks ahead, or as soon as they have enough cash to cover the purchase. They make do with what they have during a run.

So far, I haven't even rolled the dice, just used purchasing successes to know how long it would take.

I'm not really tal;king about obtaininggear, as much as the other things they can do for you, like heal you or spoof your data trail or analyze some weird goo you found. The rules for obtaining equipment are pretty well developed.
What I'm talking about is their skill levels and equipment.